On the London to Hereford HST the day after the big snow (??!!) of winter 2003/4 …As usual, England reacted to a couple of inches of snow by completely falling to pieces. Trains ran late, planes were cancelled, the underground – unaffected by the snow but unwilling to be left out – managed a small and otherwise unthreatening fire between stations that shut things down on the Circle and District lines for several hours beginning around 8 PM last night. Along a street that separates one London borough from another, the snow and ice on one side was completely cleaned away but the services department from the adjacent borough couldn’t be bothered to do the same on the other side of the street. Funniest story I heard, though, was about gritting trucks that got out in advance of the arrival of the storm and sanded down streets and ‘pavements’ (sidewalks) in one neighbourhood just to have the grit cleaned off by sweepers that came through not half an hour later!

But, this week in England was otherwise interesting as well. Tony Blair has survived another self-inflicted wound and continues as Prime Minister. Gordon Brown helped round up sufficient votes to pass the ‘top up’ fees bill and avoid a vote of confidence on Blair only because he’s pretty sure, rightly, that he’d not succeed Tony but go down in defeat to that awful man, Michael Howard (he of the acerbic delivery and nasty demeanour).

The top-up fees issue seems to have excited the open toed sandal brigade. What Government wants to do is charge a small amount to students to help pay for their own educations. Britain has recently begun to fall even further behind the U.S. in the higher-education stakes and Government here in Britain has, rightly, figured that students who are privileged enough to be able to attend university ought to be willing to pay for some of it themselves (or persuade their families to). U.S. universities in an open market continue to raise tuition fees regularly and students continue to find the ways and means to pay them. In fact, I’m one of the survivors. I went to an elite university that my father would never have agreed to pay for, even if he could have. The best he could manage, or would agree to, was support equivalent to the amount it would have cost me to go to a good state university (which, even then, about 30 years ago, was more than the amount of the top-up fee charge just approved here in the U.K.). I supplemented my father’s largesse with earnings from a job, student loans and a grant from the university. I only managed to pay off my loans sometime in my 30’s but I honestly can’t see any long-term harm that it might have done me. Graduates, who didn’t earn enough, didn’t have to pay, just as would be the case under the new legislation. I counted myself lucky that I made enough that I could pay my debt.

To my mind, the whole issue can be reduced to the following: the Government’s goal of having half the population attend ‘university’ simply demeans the value of technical education – and way too many good poly-technical and vocational training institutions have been renamed ‘university’. Meantime, in its quest to provide new ‘opportunities’ to the masses, old-style universities have been denied support, their quality has deteriorated, good students and outstanding professors have been lured away by better funded American institutions that will provide them the facilities, remuneration and recognition they crave.

But, there is a more fundamental issue here, which, put simply, is – why should a bus driver pay for my child to go to university? This is so fundamentally unjust that I cannot think of the opponents of the proposed fees as anything but selfish, spoiled and unthinking. The system of top-up fees that was voted by the Commons this week provides so many ways for a student to be excused the charges that I rate it one of the most egalitarian, democratic measures I have seen in some time.

But, as always, I digress although in this case I am not sure from what. I would note in closing, however, that the Hutton report is somehow pleasing. I like Blair. He’s bound to be a bit arrogant after so long as Prime Minister and probably has lost touch but he’s still the best choice to lead the country. A contest between Gordon Brown and Michael Howard might result in Charles Kennedy becoming Prime Minister simply because he’s slightly less objectionable that the others who are patently cut out to play character roles as gangland thugs. The Hutton report has given Alastair Campbell a chance to reinforce his image as a hard-man who, in this case, was right (and my goodness how’s he’s cackled over things). Greg Dyke, appearing pompous and unattractive to the world outside the BBC, has resigned and Andrew Gilligan, the reporter who has inadvertently exposed the inherent anti-Americanism and instinctive knee-jerk left-wingism of the BBC, is exposed as unethical and self-obsessed. I think he should stay in his London flat for the next year or two, having curries and Chinese delivered, pondering what a complete twit he is.

The only thing that could improve my day would be if that terrible man with the loud socks and ties who delivers the news on Channel 4 and who hates everything American and the British Government equally without the need for any justification of his position (at least that I’ve been able to glean listening to him) were to become permanently voiceless or be caught in a compromising position with his pet iguana.

And, the train tonight is not even running that late!

Iraq, Dean's Electability, Toilets in the Czech Republic

There seems to be a change of mood in Iraq. Yes, there are still terrorist attacks and Baghdad looks like a miserable place to live. But, it’s getting better. I am genuinely convinced that is one of the reasons that Howard Dean lost Iowa and, compounded by the now famous yell, will lose New Hampshire. Just as well, we have to find someone who will win to challenge Bush. Special interests are simply too powerful today in America. Dean is a luxury we cannot afford, better Kerry or Edwards who just might succeed in unseating Bush and the heartless, arrogant automaton who is Vice President. Wesley Clark must not get the nomination because with him we might well combine the arrogance of a Bush with the naiveté of a political novice, giving us a completely unproductive presidency, something we can ill afford in the 21st century.

And now I’ve seen Prague and, over the past several days, a great deal of Moravia and Bohemia. I’m impressed. I travelled with a group of Czechs and foreigners round small villages searching for places to build new, environmentally friendly projects. We ate at restaurants tucked in the basements of large, Soviet-era public halls near the centres of small towns. We stopped at remote petrol stations at the edges of villages where everyone but a rather sad cashier was at home, throwing lignite into their boilers to fight the cold, the thermometer was at minus 14 Celsius yesterday afternoon.

The country is clean; there remains much impressive architecture from both the Austro-Hungarian period and before, when these lands at the very heart of Europe were a power in their own right, and, pleasant surprise, there is not an overwhelming amount of ‘sock in the eye’ stuff from the Communist period although there is still too much.

For me though, having now travelled nearly constantly for much of my 52 years (today is my birthday), one great measure of the relative progress and ‘civilisation’ of a country is the state of its toilets. Those in the Czech Republic are, generally, very clean. This is not because they are serviced more often than in other countries; indeed, in some of the places I visited, I’m quite convinced that the cleaners don’t come too often. As much as anything else, the users of these toilets seem to be aware that someone else, another human being, will be using the toilet after them and they try to leave it as clean or cleaner than they found it.

This toilet cleanliness thing is something important. I have sampled them around the world: in China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Venezuela, Spain, Mexico, Australia and many more countries. It has proven to be one of the most accurate measures of how strongly the rule of law prevails in a particular place. For instance, cleaners in many pubs in Britain have, I believe, disappeared years ago but the toilets remains useable – just, mind you – because of the basic decency of the patrons. This latter, of course, is only true of rural pubs, not those cosmopolitan, rude places that are more ‘bars’ than places for congenial congregation, the true definition of what a pub ought to be.

But, as usual, I digress, this was to be about the Czech Republic I think. Nice place, visit it if you can.

Does Winter Smell?

Here in England and in Spain, Australia, Arizona and a few other spots that I've lived, winter is something of an antiseptic time. It can be beautiful and certainly you sleep more but generally it doesn't smell. The one outstanding exception I can think of in these prosperous countries is the sheep that Farmer Edwards brings in to feed-up in the fields around our place beginning in October and November, a season that lasts right through to the beginning of summer.

Apparently Farmer Edwards has a deal with other sheep farmers whereby he takes them when they reach a certain state of maturity and he then fattens them up, they are then trucked off in the dead of early morning and we don't see them again (well, maybe we do but not so you'd recognise; very difficult that, recognising a specific sheep from only the forensic evidence; actually I never think to look until there's only bones left and frequently I've been known to give those to the dog).

But, I digress. Farmer Edwards supplements his income by providing his sheep some homegrown fare, viz mangel-wurzel. As an American this is something with which I was not familiar apart from the occasional literary reference (P.G. Wodehouse mentions them somewhere and I was taken with the name). Now, I have a country place where, whenever I wish, I can look out my window across a field of mangel-wurzel.

According to the OED mangel-wurzel is a beet or potato-like thing, which is fed to cattle. This now worries me because I'm pretty sure that those are sheep that Farmer Edwards is feeding the mangel-wurzel to. If I cared enough the following questions would keep me awake: Why is Farmer Edwards feeding mangel-wurzel to his sheep when the OED distinctly says that the crop is a cattle-feed? Why are the sheep eating the mangel-wurzel when, as noted, it's for cattle? And, am I asking these questions just so that I can write 'mangel-wurzel' several times more? There's even a health question buried somewhere amongst all this: It is healthy for sheep to be eating cattle-feed? Finally, could I be wrong and could Farmer Edwards and other so-called 'sheep' farmers actually be feeding the mangel-wurzel to some mutant sheep-cow combination that they are preparing to spring on the world? If the latter is so, I've afraid the secret is out, Farmer Edwards and his co-conspirators will soon come to realise that they can't pull the 'weather' (combination of wool + leather arising from mixing the breeds) over our eyes!

But, I digress, I think. If I wanted I could scroll up to the beginning of this piece and re-establish what it is that I originally wanted to write about but that would destroy the spontaneity. If I recall correctly (or incorrectly, who gives a damn?), I wanted to write about smelly winters. Around here if the wind isn't very active, there is a concentrated odour that does float down off of Farmer Edwards' mangel-wurzel field where hundreds of sheep are nibbling away. The mangel-wurzel appears to be quite nourishing, the sheep are plump and 'baa' quite contentedly. Though it could well be a dastardly plot to feed sheep cow food, or something even more sinister, the mangel-wurzel has not appeared to do the sheep any harm.

There is an unintended impact on the environment that makes our country life even more authentic than the mud we bring back on our shoes after traipsing across the seven acre field with the dog: the combination of a rich field of mangel-wurzel and several hundred hungry sheep creates a smell you can actually see, it just wafts gently down the slope (it is richer, more character-ful and heavier than air). I've stepped out and taken a big breath on a frosty, still morning that is absolutely redolent with the countryside. No wussy city smells for me, no sir, give me the acrid fumes of sheep-digested mangle-wurzel any day; that'll make a man of you.

But, of course, I digress, for what I wanted to write about was the very noticeable seasonal smells that permeate the winter in Delhi and the Gangetic Plain of India: potatoes and coal! I wanted to comment on the distinctive odours of December and January in small Anatolian villages: wood fires and roasting meat. And, I had dredged up the smell of fresh tortillas and beans in the Mexico of my childhood. All of these are signatures of place as surely as photos or histories and the nose is a great memory. I am grateful to Farmer Edwards for feeding his sheep the mangel-wurzel because he has given me another memory, something increasingly scarce in a world where we are either given the universal odour of uncombusted hydrocarbons in urban air or the artificial sterility of prosperous, gated suburban communities without defining characteristics.

Notes Out of Time: Irena in India

Irena is the name I wish to give her. Our paths crossed in time and space over 30 years ago at a cocktail party in Delhi. British India was long dead but the corpse still twitched in two or three of the hill stations and a few overgrown bungalows in Delhi and in the old presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The first and even the second generation of India's new Indian rulers spoke a pukka English they had learned at Cambridge and the army was officered still by moustachioed gentlemen who dined in the reflected brilliance of regimental silver.

Irena and I shared an interest in architecture – I was fascinated by Le Corbusier’s attempt at urban fusion with Chandigarh and she had an interest in Luytens’ incredible New Delhi, last, mesmerizing gasp of a reactive, antediluvian imperialism. We spent days travelling to meet various architects or to museums and, for recreation, travelled to lesser, hidden buildings, nearly forgotten outposts of empire scattered about the North Indian plain. On these long trips we would fight the boredom, the heat and the dust by sharing not just our common passion in architecture but our personal lives. By some wordless agreement, however, there was a boundary between us that we both honoured. Our relationship was asexual, even when the anecdote (for that mostly was how we communicated) was breathlessly sexual. It was as if we were siblings, out of time, at peace with each other in a way not normally possible in the post-industrial world. We were genteel, decanted into the Indian subcontinent from Jane Austen.

We shared an interest and made common cause against modern India, we mourned the passage of time, not for any lost imperial Elysium but simply for the romance that was now, as the last embers of the raj passed away, tantalisingly just beyond our reach.

You couldn’t help liking Irena. She disarmed you first with the charming accent of Italian schoolgirl English. Physically she was angular, without discernable breasts but tall and the ideal hanger for haute couture; in fact, at some point she had been a model in Milan or Paris. Irena had a confidence whose origin baffled me, she was so far from what I found attractive. Beyond her character, I was immune to her charms; it was fascinating, though, to watch her weave a spell over a man or, even, to hear her talk about it of an evening as the sun settled and we still had many miles to cover before we would be back in Delhi.

Guantanamo ... why do I feel guilty?
In an article some time back in the International Herald Tribune, 'Isolation and Despair in a Legal Limbo', Charles Levendosky chose a strictly legalistic way to reflect what could be a sense of national guilt over the treatment we have accorded the prisoners at Guantanamo. I suspect I'm not alone in sharing Levendosky's increasing discomfort with this situation. The arguement ought to based not just on legal specifics, it ought to reflect our fundamental belief in the philosophical constants that inform the law and which we must not abandon in this war against terror -- the values of liberal democracy that we espouse and were first articulated not by a middle eastern religion of whatever ilk, but by Aristotle, the most dispassionate father of our civilisation. It boils down to this: those we have incarcerated at Guantanamo deserve some sort of due process -- military probably -- as prisoners of war. We can argue whether they merit this treatment in our righteous anger, but it is appropriate for us, as citizens of a democracy, that they are given access to the levers of its legal system. This is, after all, what we're defending. If it doesn't work now, if we don't have the moral courage to employ it in this awful, extraordinary time, are we not undermining the very thing we are defending?