Dear , thanks for your interest in Afaranwide.

This week we published a post about our visit to Joshua Tree National Park in California and recalled the strange, tragic story of country-music star Gram Parsons. In 1973 Parsons, a former member of the Byrds, died from a drug overdose in Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn. Friends later cremated his body in the park.
Our posts are always well-received when we share them with fan groups. The Joshua Tree Park piece reached 560 members of the Gram Parsons and the Cosmic American Music Appreciation Society, a closed group with a limited membership. They included Rebecca Hite-Storey, who added the comment above. Thank you, Rebecca.

Our other new post was about the day Sue treated Colin to a birthday lunch in Anduze, France, and they ended up witnessing a police manhunt after an incident in the restaurant. Not everything goes to plan.

We've been sharing some of our photos of the iconic QE2 liner with fan groups on Facebook, and thought we'd publish them here as well. The pictures above show the ship in 2010 in what one member of the QE2 Hotel Dubai group described as the “neglectful years”. Dubai had bought the QE2 but was then swept up in the global financial crisis, and the liner was mothballed. The photos were taken from the revolving restaurant on the Hyatt Regency, Deira.The QE2’s paying off pennant – the red strip of cloth on the right – flies on the day she left service in November 2008. The pennant is 39ft long – one foot for every year of service. It was presented to Liverpool’s Maritime Museum.

The pilot’s card for the QE2’s arrival in Dubai at the end of her final voyage, and handwritten details of the trip. Taken from our post about the handover of the QE2 to Dubai.

Next week we return to Dubai as we recall the excesses of the construction boom-and-bust years.

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