27 May 2007
26 May 2007
Commuting
26 May 2007
The rapeseed is gone. My commute – across the Valley of the Avon, south from Bath and along the edges of Salisbury Plain – is no longer between fields of bright yellow flowers but along macadam lanes bordered by serrated rows of green stalks (early wheat?) and freshly ploughed fields, still brown, awaiting their next crop.
England is a beautiful country. The geology is more varied than that of others countries, particularly given that the nation has been squeezed onto a small island off the northwest coast of Europe. It’s late May now but the temperatures, even in this time of global warming, are still refreshingly cool and, in the early mornings, even bracing.
The drive is a time for reflection. My mind wanders down various mental lanes, into politics, science and beyond, towards pure speculation.
18 May 2007
Is Gordon Brown, the next Prime Minister, a good guy?
15 May 2007
I’m worried he may not be. There is evidence he’s a control freak, paranoid and greedy for power. He can be a frightening man, at least he appears that way from what I’ve seen of him. Oh, I grant you that he’s smart, but so is Dick Cheney. When I watch Gordon, I think I see someone who isn’t really concerned about the ‘people’; instead, I see someone who is focused on an objective that I don’t see at all. Gordon is heading for a goal that is his alone. If it benefits people, that will be a bonus.
Are Dick Cheney and Gordon Brown going to form a new duopoly, a new Atlantic partnership? I’m being a bit facetious but the two do appear to share a number of similar characteristics. They are incredibly smart, probably not as smart as they think they are but certainly very, very smart. They appear to share a sense of entitlement, particularly with respect to power – they are entitled to rule, to power, because of some set of characteristics that they regard as unique. I’m afraid I don’t see what that set of characteristics is; in fact, I can’t actually define what they are. I’d have to ask Dick or Gordon to tell me but both are so apparently paranoiac that I’m positive neither would give us a straight answer.
Gordon’s saving grace in my eyes is that he obviously and sincerely loves his child and his wife. Dick Cheney’s is that he clearly loves his gay daughter; paternal love has overcome any acquired prejudice against homosexuality.
In Gordon’s case I’m open enough to change my mind. He can prove to me that he’s a decent man who cares for the under-served and the under-privileged. He can prove that climate change really is a concern that over-rides his over-weaning ambition. He can prove that starvation and disease are more important than his control of the Labour Party. If he does these things, I suspect – no, I predict! – that he will not only stay Prime Minister longer than if he acts otherwise, he will be elected as Prime Minister in his own right. Go Go Gordon!
I’m worried he may not be. There is evidence he’s a control freak, paranoid and greedy for power. He can be a frightening man, at least he appears that way from what I’ve seen of him. Oh, I grant you that he’s smart, but so is Dick Cheney. When I watch Gordon, I think I see someone who isn’t really concerned about the ‘people’; instead, I see someone who is focused on an objective that I don’t see at all. Gordon is heading for a goal that is his alone. If it benefits people, that will be a bonus.
Are Dick Cheney and Gordon Brown going to form a new duopoly, a new Atlantic partnership? I’m being a bit facetious but the two do appear to share a number of similar characteristics. They are incredibly smart, probably not as smart as they think they are but certainly very, very smart. They appear to share a sense of entitlement, particularly with respect to power – they are entitled to rule, to power, because of some set of characteristics that they regard as unique. I’m afraid I don’t see what that set of characteristics is; in fact, I can’t actually define what they are. I’d have to ask Dick or Gordon to tell me but both are so apparently paranoiac that I’m positive neither would give us a straight answer.
Gordon’s saving grace in my eyes is that he obviously and sincerely loves his child and his wife. Dick Cheney’s is that he clearly loves his gay daughter; paternal love has overcome any acquired prejudice against homosexuality.
In Gordon’s case I’m open enough to change my mind. He can prove to me that he’s a decent man who cares for the under-served and the under-privileged. He can prove that climate change really is a concern that over-rides his over-weaning ambition. He can prove that starvation and disease are more important than his control of the Labour Party. If he does these things, I suspect – no, I predict! – that he will not only stay Prime Minister longer than if he acts otherwise, he will be elected as Prime Minister in his own right. Go Go Gordon!
11 May 2007
Evening ...5 May 2007 ...Bristol
The Church on Whiteladies Road …
Strewn across evening stone, daylight fades.
That Church, late day’s target, is now an auction house!
God bought out!
Reverse take-over!
Gargoyle, age-pocked face leaning vertiginously over the street,
Acrophobic, hanging from a pediment,
Is your stone face a rictus smile or grimace?
Strewn across evening stone, daylight fades.
That Church, late day’s target, is now an auction house!
God bought out!
Reverse take-over!
Gargoyle, age-pocked face leaning vertiginously over the street,
Acrophobic, hanging from a pediment,
Is your stone face a rictus smile or grimace?
09 May 2007
What Beer Has to Teach Us About Saving the Environment
9 May 2007
Up the James River, near Norfolk, Virginia, lie several hundred ships that make up the bulk of the US National Defense Reserve Fleet. Like giant maritime mummies, the mothballed vessels float quietly along the river banks, waiting for the next emergency when they will be called back into service. Within 90 to 120 days from that call, the fleet can be made ready for sea.
Some of the vessels in the Reserve Fleet are pretty old, the battleship ‘Iowa’ has been in and out of mothballs numerous times and she was commissioned in 1943. Recently though, a relatively young ship was withdrawn from the Reserve Fleet. Last year the Maritime Administration authorized the decommissioning process of the ‘NS Savannah’. ‘NS’ stands for ‘Nuclear Ship’. Christened by Mamie Eisenhower in 1962, the ‘Savannah’ was a showpiece of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme. In January of this year, she was tied up to pier 23 at Newport News. From pier 23 the ‘Savannah’ will go someplace, as yet unidentified, for removal of nuclear components and, eventually, a new life as a historic relic, floating alongside a pier somewhere. A historical curiosity, the ‘Savannah’ is/was the world’s first nuclear powered merchant/passenger ship. I wonder if there will be another.
The ‘Savannah’ is a beautiful, sleek vessel; to me she’s the sea going equivalent of the 727 or the Concorde, the last beautiful commercial aircraft – if you anthropomorphized them, it was easy to imagine that flying was a joy for them. In the same way, the ‘Savannah’ looks like it could fly, across the waves.
This piece is about the environment and flying so stick with me. I recently finished George Monbiot’s ‘Heat’. Monbiot proposes alternatives to current economic practices, each designed to help us achieve a truly radical reduction in carbon output. Flying, though, stumps him, he doesn’t have an alternative. No one has come up with an acceptable substitute for kerosene powered turbines (okay, I know that an old-fashioned propeller driven aircraft is less damaging to the environment but it’s only relatively less damaging, the fact is that there is nothing right now that can make flying carbon neutral).
I was talking about this conundrum recently – I’m about to take the family on a visit to relatives in Taiwan and we’re feeling pretty guilty. You see, air travel really does ruin lives but not immediately the lives of the consumers of air travel (at least not yet). Mostly airplanes ruin the lives of people on the economic margin, people in developing countries. It can be hard to summon up real compassion for folks in Ethiopia that are nearly invisible to us and who have no voice that I’ve heard. We’re all generous and caring people but it’s hard to make the link between sitting down in seat 37A and flying to Singapore with a degree increase in average temperature that will mean the difference between growing enough to eat and desertification.
The fact is that we’re not really economically rational beings. If we had macroeconomic sense and took a longer view of things, we’d recognize that slow travel, like slow food, is good for us. We’d take a lot fewer flights, we’d vacation closer to home, if we had a second residence, it would be that cabin in the woods an hours drive away (in our electrically powered vehicle).
Nowadays, though, people fly long, thoughtless distances. They fly to New York for a show and some shopping. They fly to the Canaries for a weekend of sun in the middle of the winter. They fly to a second home in Tuscany. We are simply flying too often and too far. When you include the whole cost of the flight, adding in the price of damage to the environment (which may, in fact, be nearly infinite if the damage takes us past a tipping point beyond which we cannot reverse a process), the amount we pay for the ticket is obscenely and irrationally low.
So the burden of your fundamentally valueless flight is borne by those who are most helpless to do anything about it, desperately poor human beings in places like Ethiopia or rural India. There is, as well, a huge irony in all this because nearly everyone who is suffering because of your flight will never fly themselves.
But it’s not morally black and white; there is another point of view about flying and this has to do with its role as a force for peace. As terrible as it may be for the environment, it may be like the EU, whatever it costs, it’s better than the environmental and human cost of another war. We will never be able to go back, the world is interconnected, when you know someone, it’s a lot harder to kill them and flying lets you get to know more people, quicker.
But, I digress. This is not the place for me to contradict myself or I’ll entirely lose the thread which, if I recall correctly, is about the ‘NS Savannah’, the environment, slow travel and saving the planet.
‘Savannah’ was designed for show. Her gracious lines, thirty staterooms, 100 person dining room, library, verandah and pool were more important than whether she was easy to load or had much cargo capacity. The ship was, simply, a political statement, she was built to be a floating example of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme, a demonstration that atomic power could be put to practical and peaceful purposes. But, because there was only one of her, the support logistics for the ‘Savannah’ were prohibitively expensive. Also, against conventional freighters that were purpose built to carry the maximum amount of cargo efficiently and with fuel at $20 a ton, the 1972 decision to decommission the ‘Savannah’ made economic sense. Two years later, in the midst of the first oil crisis, with fuel at $80 a ton, the ‘Savannah’ was competitive. At about $280 a ton today, game over!
I don’t know what to do with used nuclear fuel and I don’t know how you decommission a reactor so I can’t put together a convincing argument about why we should consider nuclear powered passenger liners as a slow travel substitute for air travel or nuclear powered cargo ships as a substitute for vessels that burn sulphur rich bunker C oil. If you could figure out what to do with the spent fuel, knew what to do about decommissioning and provide for their physical security, nuclear powered sea transportation makes a lot of sense.
1. Their fuel economy is unsurpassed. Nuclear fuel costs 10% or so of what conventional fuel costs.
2. They have zero operating emissions. Imagine moving thousands of tons of cargo across the Atlantic with a zero carbon footprint!
3. They can go very fast. Imagine going from London to New York comfortably in three days. You’d leave on Friday afternoon by train for Southampton (electrically powered of course), catch your nuclear powered liner from Southampton and be in New York, mid-morning, on Monday.
If we could create a culture of ‘slow travel’, if we could learn to prioritise just a bit differently, can you imagine how pleasant a world it would be to arrive in New York aboard a ship, without jet lag, at a civilised hour. Can you imagine boarding an electrically powered bullet train to run over to Chicago in, say, four hours (probably less total travel time than doing it by plane today)?
Of course, there’s no doubt that it would ultimately mean that we traveled less and that we took longer to do it but, managed properly, not that much longer and the positive benefits would far outweigh the negatives: the impact on the planet would be far, far less, and the positive impact on our health – no jet lag – would be good.
Now consider the European habit of taking one, longer holiday a year – and traditionally that was to somewhere easily accessible – versus the British middle-class culture of three or four holidays a year, each one via cheap flight to some haven in the sun, perhaps the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean.
Take our trip to Taiwan. At Waterloo we would board the Eurostar to Paris – two hours from London. We would then shift to our compartment – with toilet and shower – aboard the new Orient Express, an electrically powered bullet train from Paris to Hong Kong – traveling at about 300 mph across Europe and Asia, it would arrive at Hong Kong in two days – an average traveling speed of about 150 mph to allow for stops and so on. From Hong Kong to Taipei via nuclear powered ferry taking a few hours and, presto, we’ve crossed the world within a few days, including stops and at virtually no carbon cost to our poor, sick planet. Australia would be the same – a nuclear powered vessel from Hong Kong that arrived at Sydney in two days. Total travel time from London: an efficient and healthy five days.
Yes, we’d still have planes for those trips that required us to move quickly, for diplomacy, to make peace, for health emergencies and so on. Technology will catch up anyway, one day we’ll even be able to fly en masse again if we want. But, maybe clean, efficient slow travel will become so popular that the people will not want to go back into the air in such numbers.
Remember what the brewers tried to do to real beer in England? They tried to impose lager on the country and to do completely away with traditionally brewed, natural beers. But the people resisted, a real beer movement was launched and it was hugely successful and now, on summer days, all over the island, you will find friendly, crowded, country pubs holding beer festivals with vast numbers of natural, locally made, interesting tipples. What if we did the same thing about flying? What if we opted for something that achieved its objective (getting us somewhere) but gave greater pleasure whilst doing so?
So, cheers!
22 April 2007
Lake Haiku - Wulai, mountain Taiwan
From the balcony of a restaurant overlooking the river ...
White bird wheeling,
River of jade quiet flows,
Evening light fades.
White bird wheeling,
River of jade quiet flows,
Evening light fades.
Haiku - Wulai, Mountain Taiwan ...
Walking alone along a mountain path, I encountered three pleasant women, taking a break,
Smiling as I pass,
The women offer to share
Some guavas they brought.
Smiling as I pass,
The women offer to share
Some guavas they brought.
09 April 2007
Travelogue ...
I'm in the midst of putting together a serious piece on nuclear-powered, civilian-use ships. I believe this may be worth considering as a way to reduce CO2 emissions.
Meantime, however, the wife, daughter and I are on a brief family holiday -- we wrestled with the guilt of plane travel but felt that the time with family was important enough to justify the carbon cost. So, herewith a few photos of the trip.
Coffee is a critical part of the start-up ritual. Many travellers, bereft of coffee, have no idea where they've been, where they're going or where they are! As you can see, I'm very centred.
You probably recognise us having a cup of centring coffee at a sidewalk place on Paternoster Square at St. Paul's. This is one of the world's great structures!
Tapas at one of Harrod's myriad (and expensive!) restaurants. The coffee was not as burnt as typcial Spanish coffee (I think the term is 'torrefacto').
There are other photos to share, many from locales you might consider more exotic. Consider this one, from the mysterious Orient:
Visiting family is always a pleasure. Here we're doing what so many Orientals do: talk about the next meal. Though there was no coffee, the tea was nice and packed a surprising caffeine punch!
Meantime, however, the wife, daughter and I are on a brief family holiday -- we wrestled with the guilt of plane travel but felt that the time with family was important enough to justify the carbon cost. So, herewith a few photos of the trip.
Coffee is a critical part of the start-up ritual. Many travellers, bereft of coffee, have no idea where they've been, where they're going or where they are! As you can see, I'm very centred.
You probably recognise us having a cup of centring coffee at a sidewalk place on Paternoster Square at St. Paul's. This is one of the world's great structures!
Tapas at one of Harrod's myriad (and expensive!) restaurants. The coffee was not as burnt as typcial Spanish coffee (I think the term is 'torrefacto').
There are other photos to share, many from locales you might consider more exotic. Consider this one, from the mysterious Orient:
Visiting family is always a pleasure. Here we're doing what so many Orientals do: talk about the next meal. Though there was no coffee, the tea was nice and packed a surprising caffeine punch!
26 March 2007
All the news that fits?
26 March 2007
Tamil terrorists have attacked Colombo’s airport. What does this mean for tourism to the island once called ‘Serendip’? Over the past decade and more, virtually regardless of how vicious the Sri Lankan civil war has turned, tourists, particularly Europeans, Brits and Germans mainly, have continued to visit the island, staying away from Tamil Eelam territories but otherwise seemingly oblivious to the deadly war that has continued in the rebel areas, lying there on the white sand, sipping tropical things with those tiny paper umbrellas or, more sophisticated, little straws. The cease fire is honoured only in the breach.
And, meanwhile, in Iraq, four more American soldiers were killed today by a roadside bomb, one of the infamous IEDs. The number of innocent Iraqis who have been killed over the past 24 hours beggars the imagination. We have committed a crime in that country. The answer is not withdrawal -- at least not now. The only honourable way forward is a troop surge, a serious one. John McCain is the only candidate who has taken a morally defensible stance on the issue. Obama and Clinton are hypocrites who are led by the polls, they do not have the guts to lead themselves. By inclination I am a democrat, a left-wing one, but in this case I am with McCain. I may end up entirely in his camp, particularly if his environmental policies are anywhere near as courageous as his stance on Iraq.
Fifteen British sailors and marines, one a woman, are in Iranian custody. British diplomats and politicians are all scurrying around wringing their hands and demanding that the ‘hostages’ be released. ‘Hostages’ is what they are. The Iranians are throwing sand into diplomatic eyes, trying to mask their nuclear activities. Ahmedinejad got his visa to visit the UN in New York but some of his travelling party were denied permission or didn’t get cleared in time. Somehow it all seems connected.
There’s been another earthquake in Japan, only 1 dead at last count. Earthquake design really does help. At least, as far as I can tell, this disaster is not related to climate change.
God knows what disasters have befallen Africa over the past 24 hours. The absence of coverage in the media only means that the outrages have not been of sufficient magnitude to merit any substantial attention. You see, crimes against humanity in Africa must be much larger and bloodier than those on other continents to be worthy of attention. Even now, on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire, black people are still not equal to whites. I don’t even know if it’s race or economic value, maybe a combination of the two, but genocide, starvation, disease and even simple war in Africa generally don’t get the attention that their equivalents do in the West. These horrors must be an order of magnitude worse than anything Europe can serve up before we hear much about it here on planet Indifferent.
And out here in rural Worcestershire the sun is rising and you can hear the sheep vocalising, their morning bleats telling us they’ve started another day of feasting in the rich, green fields. It always amazes me how we lead out our lives in parallel, each one pursuing atomistic objectives, only intersecting with others at random points. Weird world, no? Terry Wogan is droning in the background. I prefer Radio 4 most of the time but I don’t think I could stand John Humphrys trying to start a fight with anyone this morning.
And so it goes …
Tamil terrorists have attacked Colombo’s airport. What does this mean for tourism to the island once called ‘Serendip’? Over the past decade and more, virtually regardless of how vicious the Sri Lankan civil war has turned, tourists, particularly Europeans, Brits and Germans mainly, have continued to visit the island, staying away from Tamil Eelam territories but otherwise seemingly oblivious to the deadly war that has continued in the rebel areas, lying there on the white sand, sipping tropical things with those tiny paper umbrellas or, more sophisticated, little straws. The cease fire is honoured only in the breach.
And, meanwhile, in Iraq, four more American soldiers were killed today by a roadside bomb, one of the infamous IEDs. The number of innocent Iraqis who have been killed over the past 24 hours beggars the imagination. We have committed a crime in that country. The answer is not withdrawal -- at least not now. The only honourable way forward is a troop surge, a serious one. John McCain is the only candidate who has taken a morally defensible stance on the issue. Obama and Clinton are hypocrites who are led by the polls, they do not have the guts to lead themselves. By inclination I am a democrat, a left-wing one, but in this case I am with McCain. I may end up entirely in his camp, particularly if his environmental policies are anywhere near as courageous as his stance on Iraq.
Fifteen British sailors and marines, one a woman, are in Iranian custody. British diplomats and politicians are all scurrying around wringing their hands and demanding that the ‘hostages’ be released. ‘Hostages’ is what they are. The Iranians are throwing sand into diplomatic eyes, trying to mask their nuclear activities. Ahmedinejad got his visa to visit the UN in New York but some of his travelling party were denied permission or didn’t get cleared in time. Somehow it all seems connected.
There’s been another earthquake in Japan, only 1 dead at last count. Earthquake design really does help. At least, as far as I can tell, this disaster is not related to climate change.
God knows what disasters have befallen Africa over the past 24 hours. The absence of coverage in the media only means that the outrages have not been of sufficient magnitude to merit any substantial attention. You see, crimes against humanity in Africa must be much larger and bloodier than those on other continents to be worthy of attention. Even now, on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire, black people are still not equal to whites. I don’t even know if it’s race or economic value, maybe a combination of the two, but genocide, starvation, disease and even simple war in Africa generally don’t get the attention that their equivalents do in the West. These horrors must be an order of magnitude worse than anything Europe can serve up before we hear much about it here on planet Indifferent.
And out here in rural Worcestershire the sun is rising and you can hear the sheep vocalising, their morning bleats telling us they’ve started another day of feasting in the rich, green fields. It always amazes me how we lead out our lives in parallel, each one pursuing atomistic objectives, only intersecting with others at random points. Weird world, no? Terry Wogan is droning in the background. I prefer Radio 4 most of the time but I don’t think I could stand John Humphrys trying to start a fight with anyone this morning.
And so it goes …
25 March 2007
What I've been reading ... a few minutes in the library
I’ve just started Fred Pearce’s, ‘The Last Generation’. Climate change, dramatic, horrific, abrupt and cataclysmic, is Pearce’s focus. He’s a respected journalist, someone who has been chronicling the environment and what we’re doing to it for about 20 years. Frightening stuff.
George Monbiot wrote ‘Heat’ intending, firstly, to frighten us and then suggest a carbon diet that would be palatable to our modern, industrial society. What he offers would have a palliative effect and there’s even a chance that we might even be able to make things some better. Monbiot is a terrific writer and his argument is balanced which makes it all the scarier. I’ve got an alternative thought about flying, which he rightly condemns and for which he can find no alternative – I think our world desperately needs continued face-to-face contact, even at some cost to the environment, if we’re to avoid another potential disaster: blowing each other up. More about this one later.
Meantime, I’ve been reading a new translation of the ‘Quixote’, by Edith Grossman. It’s hugely compelling, as would be expected from one of the great books in our Western canon. Obviously we’ve come a long way since Cervantes wrote the book, not as human beings, for there are no characters one half as human and attractive as the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance and Sancho, but as writers, tellers of tales, we have learned to entertain, matching our product, in this day of the internet and television, to an audience that demands instant gratification; you have to be in a mood, willing to contemplate the world, not just be impacted by it, to read a work like this with any profit. This time through – always before I’ve simply picked at the work – the themes that stand out most for me are the notion of battling hopelessly, with scant or no chance of success and a prevailing sense of sadness. ‘Quixote’ is a tragedy; it is farce only insofar as Don Quixote crafts his life into a mockery of mankind’s foibles.
And now for something completely different: Carl Hiassen’s ‘Nature Girl’. He is an engaging, broad, comic writer. The plots are predictable and only the bad guys – always exceedingly ugly – get done in. The heroes and the heroines are all quirky with slightly tainted pasts but they are all decent, attractive folk. Hiassen’s writing has an offended, environmental undertone – he is worried about what has been done to Florida. Rightly so! ‘Nature Girl’ is pablum with a conscience, a sit-com you read. There is no conflict between his values and those things an adult might pray about on going to bed at night.
And then there was William Boyd’s ‘A Good Man in Africa’: a modern picaresque novel set in a fictional West African country where the very flawed hero’s most important and enduring relationship is with a rapidly rotting corpse. It’s funny in a slightly nauseous way. Somehow I think Boyd got started with this one and then lost his way but the irony of the ending is enough to provide me a good week’s worth of that value.
Inspiration -- how my foot reflects my changed life!
This is me, working on my blog. I'm in a contemplative mood. The inspiration for this work of art was Current TV. Terrific fun, I'm learning a lot of new stuff, much of it useless but, equally, most of it fascinating! The young: Keep your mind open to them, try new things. You may be embarassed and you certainly will lose your dignity but you might, just might, learn something about yourself.
Don't expect to keep your gravitas intact.
I recently went through what was, for me, a life-changing experience. I'm not going to write about it without more reflection but this silly little posting is one consequence: go in new directions, try new things. If something comes out that has even the smallest positive impact, the effort will have been worthwhile; the algorithm works because it's also fun for the writer and the algebraic relationship between fun and effort has never been equal. If the output is positive, the input is justified. There's even a universal balancing mechanism. If the effort begins to make the fun problematic, there's generally an automatic break mechanism and you point the energy in another direction.
24 March 2007
This one is serious -- racism!
My wife and I recently underwent an episode of attempted bullying, driven by racism. For her it must be more aggravating and aggrieving than for me, she’s Asian and the perpetrators share my race (sadly).
What is so wrong about the whole thing is that it began over almost nothing (well, a seven pound Shih-tsu who doesn’t bark and for whom we were seeking to find a home). Pets are now allowed in the 'court' where we live without permission. When we returned from America last summer, we wrote a very polite letter to our neighbours requesting that our dog be allowed to live with us on a probationary basis, if he did anything unacceptable, out he'd go. Two neighbours in particular were vehemently against the idea and rude in expressing their opposition. Rather than take the matter to the directors (of which I am one) and risk an unpleasant outcome (whichever way it went there would be bad feelings), my wife and I elected to give the dog away. We then transgressed because the first volunteer to adopt the animal was, in the end, unable to take him and so we had to have him resident for a few days until we found him a second home. It was against the covenants, we knew, but we were actively and energetically seeking to reverse the situation.
The depth and harshness of the feelings against us from two of our seven neighbours were puzzling at first. I could not understand why something that rational people would simply resolve with a few quiet words had prompted such strong and unreasonable reaction. After all, we live in England, a place renowned for both tolerance and civility. Those two values are to be cherished and the way to do that is to treat the expressions of tolerance and civility that you do encounter with great respect, particularly when they may also be the vehicle for a difference of opinion. By this mutuality is a great nation judged.
We did encounter great tolerance and civility and, more, genuine sympathy, from several true friends. For this we are and will remain grateful. From these quiet heroes we also felt something even more important than understanding for our position; they recognised in a civilised and just Britain that the feelings and motivations behind the behaviour of the ringleaders against us were intolerable and unacceptable; they were contrary to the fundamental values that inform this modern, liberal and tolerant society. These friends saw that they had to make a choice. I applaud their wisdom, their humanity and, more, their moral courage.
From the people who were at the epicentre of feelings against us, we expect nothing more than what we encountered. When I understood that the expressions of opposition were being couched in terms of ‘cultural differences’, I recognised the supposedly modern and acceptable face of racism. In fact, what was behind the vehemence of feelings against us over a minor matter was born of immaturity and ignorance. On both counts I’m sad but resigned – those people have to live with that evil in their souls.
There were other ‘friends’ about whom I’m more ambivalent. Although they formed part of the silent majority of people on this island who would be tolerant and civil and patient whilst, in good faith, my wife and I worked to resolve the matter, their failure to actively condemn the means and form of opposition to our behaviour worries me. In a minor way it’s a form of collaborationism or appeasement which is morally weak.
I’m reminded that in New York the twenty year trend of crime to increase was finally reversed – and dramatically so – by the imposition of a zero tolerance policy. New York police, encouraged by the government and supported by the courts, inaugurated a policy of fines, arrests and prosecution for even petty crimes, public urination, defacement of private property, petty theft and so on. The turn-around was dramatic. Within a year or two, reports of all types of crime, minor and major, were falling. New York rapidly became a safer, more civil, more tolerant and, above all, happier place.
The parallel I’m trying to draw here is fairly obvious – when the sort of bullying, racist behaviour that my wife and I just encountered from ignorant and immature people is not immediately challenged, by everyone, the bullies and the racists will simply be encouraged to do it again.
My own dilemma is how to deliver this message to those friends who have failed us in the matter. As a member of a civil, liberal society, it’s incumbent on me to make the point but I want to do it in such a way that I prevent further division and, instead, promote the solidarity, tolerance and, ultimately, the happiness that I’m so anxious to foster.
We've sold our home. In normal circumstances we would be sad to leave such a beautiful home but not this time, we're relieved. We're leaving two racist couples behind who have to live with themselves. Sadly, at least two other neighbours are seriously thinking of leaving as well because of the poisoned atmosphere. Who wants to live around the sort of creepy, ill-mannered bigotry that has surfaced here in idyllic rural Worcestershire?
By the way, we kept the dog. When things got ugly, we boarded him in a nearby kennel where he slept each night. My wife picked him up each morning. He spent the day with her, staying in the car in the garage when my wife wasn't outside with him; we never allowed him in the house (heavens knows what would have happened had we brought him in!). Needless to say, our new home welcomes dogs!
What is so wrong about the whole thing is that it began over almost nothing (well, a seven pound Shih-tsu who doesn’t bark and for whom we were seeking to find a home). Pets are now allowed in the 'court' where we live without permission. When we returned from America last summer, we wrote a very polite letter to our neighbours requesting that our dog be allowed to live with us on a probationary basis, if he did anything unacceptable, out he'd go. Two neighbours in particular were vehemently against the idea and rude in expressing their opposition. Rather than take the matter to the directors (of which I am one) and risk an unpleasant outcome (whichever way it went there would be bad feelings), my wife and I elected to give the dog away. We then transgressed because the first volunteer to adopt the animal was, in the end, unable to take him and so we had to have him resident for a few days until we found him a second home. It was against the covenants, we knew, but we were actively and energetically seeking to reverse the situation.
The depth and harshness of the feelings against us from two of our seven neighbours were puzzling at first. I could not understand why something that rational people would simply resolve with a few quiet words had prompted such strong and unreasonable reaction. After all, we live in England, a place renowned for both tolerance and civility. Those two values are to be cherished and the way to do that is to treat the expressions of tolerance and civility that you do encounter with great respect, particularly when they may also be the vehicle for a difference of opinion. By this mutuality is a great nation judged.
We did encounter great tolerance and civility and, more, genuine sympathy, from several true friends. For this we are and will remain grateful. From these quiet heroes we also felt something even more important than understanding for our position; they recognised in a civilised and just Britain that the feelings and motivations behind the behaviour of the ringleaders against us were intolerable and unacceptable; they were contrary to the fundamental values that inform this modern, liberal and tolerant society. These friends saw that they had to make a choice. I applaud their wisdom, their humanity and, more, their moral courage.
From the people who were at the epicentre of feelings against us, we expect nothing more than what we encountered. When I understood that the expressions of opposition were being couched in terms of ‘cultural differences’, I recognised the supposedly modern and acceptable face of racism. In fact, what was behind the vehemence of feelings against us over a minor matter was born of immaturity and ignorance. On both counts I’m sad but resigned – those people have to live with that evil in their souls.
There were other ‘friends’ about whom I’m more ambivalent. Although they formed part of the silent majority of people on this island who would be tolerant and civil and patient whilst, in good faith, my wife and I worked to resolve the matter, their failure to actively condemn the means and form of opposition to our behaviour worries me. In a minor way it’s a form of collaborationism or appeasement which is morally weak.
I’m reminded that in New York the twenty year trend of crime to increase was finally reversed – and dramatically so – by the imposition of a zero tolerance policy. New York police, encouraged by the government and supported by the courts, inaugurated a policy of fines, arrests and prosecution for even petty crimes, public urination, defacement of private property, petty theft and so on. The turn-around was dramatic. Within a year or two, reports of all types of crime, minor and major, were falling. New York rapidly became a safer, more civil, more tolerant and, above all, happier place.
The parallel I’m trying to draw here is fairly obvious – when the sort of bullying, racist behaviour that my wife and I just encountered from ignorant and immature people is not immediately challenged, by everyone, the bullies and the racists will simply be encouraged to do it again.
My own dilemma is how to deliver this message to those friends who have failed us in the matter. As a member of a civil, liberal society, it’s incumbent on me to make the point but I want to do it in such a way that I prevent further division and, instead, promote the solidarity, tolerance and, ultimately, the happiness that I’m so anxious to foster.
We've sold our home. In normal circumstances we would be sad to leave such a beautiful home but not this time, we're relieved. We're leaving two racist couples behind who have to live with themselves. Sadly, at least two other neighbours are seriously thinking of leaving as well because of the poisoned atmosphere. Who wants to live around the sort of creepy, ill-mannered bigotry that has surfaced here in idyllic rural Worcestershire?
By the way, we kept the dog. When things got ugly, we boarded him in a nearby kennel where he slept each night. My wife picked him up each morning. He spent the day with her, staying in the car in the garage when my wife wasn't outside with him; we never allowed him in the house (heavens knows what would have happened had we brought him in!). Needless to say, our new home welcomes dogs!
13 January 2007
The Ghost at Besford Court ...
1 January 2007
Besford
As our time at Besford draws to a close, I’m minded to share the tale of my sightings (???) of the Besford ghost, one with which I am intimately familiar, a spectre that inhabits the netherworld whose marches rub against those of our apartment, specifically our bedroom.
I know this ghost, we have shared the intersection between her world (she is, indeed, female) and mine. We have shared this connexion in the magical hours between midnight and dawn but we have also shared space in the early evening, in the morning and as we retire.
This existence of this ghost, if her ‘being’ depends on the acknowledgement of her occasional presence, is due to my belief and no one else’s. My wife steadfastly refuses to ‘believe’ or, perhaps more likely, chooses to deny that she crosses or touches the world of living humans in our bedchamber. Indeed, her steadfast refusal to even acknowledge or discuss the possibility of a ghost where we sleep is firm and unshakeable!
Inevitably there are, as is the case with virtually any long inhabited place in England, tales of ghosts associated with Besford. Although the main court is still just shy of a century old, there were residences, messuages and defences, perhaps even a moat (well, it sure looks as if there might have been a moat to me), that antedated by centuries the more recent stone structure where we reside. A lot of life has trod this ground – not all of it can have been happy and we’re told that unhappiness is the midwife of phantasms.
Whatever the story, and no one can substantiate (nor, equally, has anyone ever denied) the existence of the ghost in our home, I have ineluctable and undeniable evidence of her passages into or across our world. This evidence is as plain as the nose on your face.
And what is that evidence? Simple, smell. That’s right, my ghost has a scent. It’s a wonderful, old-world, sweet, slightly heavy perfume. The sort that my great aunts used, the sort that my Mother favoured in the 1950’s or, before we were introduced through the medium of my birth, what I imagine my Mom favoured in the 1940’s; a ‘Shalimar’ type fragrance, flowery, lingering, just airy enough to be wafted along by even a faint breeze.
I’m lying in the bed, it’s, say, 9 PM. I’m reading, it’s late autumn and outside the night is well and truly established. My wife and daughter are not here, they are visiting relatives in Switzerland. It’s quiet and calm, I am settling nicely when an almost imperceptible hint of a breeze passes across the bed. It is a movement that I would most probably never even notice but for its cargo, a perfume from another age.
Funnily, I have never been afraid of our ghost. To me she is a benign presence, entering our bedroom, not from the hall or any adjacent room but from one of a myriad of dimensions that touches ours. She comes in, so softly, so gently that the only perceptible sign of her presence is the sweet, comforting perfume that washes over the covers and quietly soothes me with its presence.
But our ghost never stays long. Her scent washes over us and then passes on. Sometimes she flickers in, her scent leaves and then returns, like the calm waves of the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. Eventually, though, after a minute or, sometimes, even two, she passes on, heading, I suppose, through a shimmering barrier between one world and another. I wonder which one is her home …
And that, my friends, is what I know of our Ghost. Once, before I learned that to mention her was to invite trouble, my wife brought out a couple of scented candles that we keep in the room. Demanding that I sniff them, I did and, to placate her, I agreed that the smell of one was precisely the smell of my Ghost. Of course, we never light that candle and, don’t tell the wife, its perfume is not much like that of my Spectre, she favours a much sweeter and more lingering fragrance.
Besford
As our time at Besford draws to a close, I’m minded to share the tale of my sightings (???) of the Besford ghost, one with which I am intimately familiar, a spectre that inhabits the netherworld whose marches rub against those of our apartment, specifically our bedroom.
I know this ghost, we have shared the intersection between her world (she is, indeed, female) and mine. We have shared this connexion in the magical hours between midnight and dawn but we have also shared space in the early evening, in the morning and as we retire.
This existence of this ghost, if her ‘being’ depends on the acknowledgement of her occasional presence, is due to my belief and no one else’s. My wife steadfastly refuses to ‘believe’ or, perhaps more likely, chooses to deny that she crosses or touches the world of living humans in our bedchamber. Indeed, her steadfast refusal to even acknowledge or discuss the possibility of a ghost where we sleep is firm and unshakeable!
Inevitably there are, as is the case with virtually any long inhabited place in England, tales of ghosts associated with Besford. Although the main court is still just shy of a century old, there were residences, messuages and defences, perhaps even a moat (well, it sure looks as if there might have been a moat to me), that antedated by centuries the more recent stone structure where we reside. A lot of life has trod this ground – not all of it can have been happy and we’re told that unhappiness is the midwife of phantasms.
Whatever the story, and no one can substantiate (nor, equally, has anyone ever denied) the existence of the ghost in our home, I have ineluctable and undeniable evidence of her passages into or across our world. This evidence is as plain as the nose on your face.
And what is that evidence? Simple, smell. That’s right, my ghost has a scent. It’s a wonderful, old-world, sweet, slightly heavy perfume. The sort that my great aunts used, the sort that my Mother favoured in the 1950’s or, before we were introduced through the medium of my birth, what I imagine my Mom favoured in the 1940’s; a ‘Shalimar’ type fragrance, flowery, lingering, just airy enough to be wafted along by even a faint breeze.
I’m lying in the bed, it’s, say, 9 PM. I’m reading, it’s late autumn and outside the night is well and truly established. My wife and daughter are not here, they are visiting relatives in Switzerland. It’s quiet and calm, I am settling nicely when an almost imperceptible hint of a breeze passes across the bed. It is a movement that I would most probably never even notice but for its cargo, a perfume from another age.
Funnily, I have never been afraid of our ghost. To me she is a benign presence, entering our bedroom, not from the hall or any adjacent room but from one of a myriad of dimensions that touches ours. She comes in, so softly, so gently that the only perceptible sign of her presence is the sweet, comforting perfume that washes over the covers and quietly soothes me with its presence.
But our ghost never stays long. Her scent washes over us and then passes on. Sometimes she flickers in, her scent leaves and then returns, like the calm waves of the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. Eventually, though, after a minute or, sometimes, even two, she passes on, heading, I suppose, through a shimmering barrier between one world and another. I wonder which one is her home …
And that, my friends, is what I know of our Ghost. Once, before I learned that to mention her was to invite trouble, my wife brought out a couple of scented candles that we keep in the room. Demanding that I sniff them, I did and, to placate her, I agreed that the smell of one was precisely the smell of my Ghost. Of course, we never light that candle and, don’t tell the wife, its perfume is not much like that of my Spectre, she favours a much sweeter and more lingering fragrance.
01 January 2007
Toilet Entertainment (cave lector)
31 December 2006
Besford
For my money, the very best places for food, drink and recreational urination are those in which the staff – clearly concerned about ensuring that whether the customer is there to ingurgitate or gormandize, every part of the ‘experience’ should be enjoyable – has placed a large block of ice into each urinal just before the dinner rush. When required to make a visit to the facility, the user is entertained by the prospect of trying to help melt the block of ice. Sometimes it’s clearly too large a task for one man to accomplish in one visit. In those cases there appears to be some unspoken male bonding thing that persuades the previous user to see if he can at least split the block into more manageable pieces so that those who come after him can carry on the work.
I’ve run into these frozen urinals in various places. Most recently I encountered one in Spain.
On a commercial basis, especially for bars, they make sense, there is something addictive about trying to melt a small iceberg that encourages the purchase of more beer.
Happy New Year!
Besford
For my money, the very best places for food, drink and recreational urination are those in which the staff – clearly concerned about ensuring that whether the customer is there to ingurgitate or gormandize, every part of the ‘experience’ should be enjoyable – has placed a large block of ice into each urinal just before the dinner rush. When required to make a visit to the facility, the user is entertained by the prospect of trying to help melt the block of ice. Sometimes it’s clearly too large a task for one man to accomplish in one visit. In those cases there appears to be some unspoken male bonding thing that persuades the previous user to see if he can at least split the block into more manageable pieces so that those who come after him can carry on the work.
I’ve run into these frozen urinals in various places. Most recently I encountered one in Spain.
On a commercial basis, especially for bars, they make sense, there is something addictive about trying to melt a small iceberg that encourages the purchase of more beer.
Happy New Year!
26 December 2006
A corner of the mind's topography ...
25 December 2006
Langoria
Atop the mountains the view eastwards was of a desolated high desert valley of scrub and sterile earth. To describe it required a palette of browns and tans. There were dry ravines and sandy, sere riverbeds that flowed only occasionally when the rains spilled between the frigid peaks and the ridge beyond which lay Langoria.
North and south of the saddle that formed the only entry to the desert and, ultimately, into Langoria, the peaks curved, ever higher, until they reached the sea, trapping both the desert and Langoria in a giant horseshoe shaped promontory.
To reach the ridge required a descent, at times nearly vertical, down the rock mountainside. Once at the base, the high desert spread out for three days, rough and scarred and permanently parched.
Only near the sharp edge which defined the top of the ridge and marked the border of Langoria did the earth become gentler and more giving. Behind lay the hot, killing world of the desert.
From the ridge Langoria spread out below towards the sea. The land dropped through a mix of oak and pine and then through fields of oats, barley, hops and wheat, separated by orderly rows of apple, pear and peach trees. Still lower there were grape vines spreading their low green canopies, ripening in the dry sun and the cool air, thickening the fruit until it produced a deep, rich purple wine which the people drank before fires on cold winter nights. Scattered amongst the wineries were groves of olives.
From the wine country the land sloped further towards sea where the altitude and the weather combined to create an unvarying cool, misty world of grazing sheep, peat bogs and windswept shores. The small harbour of Langoria, the eponymous capital of the country, had been formed by the laborious placement of riprap rocks to convert a gentle indentation along the coastline into a small, safe-haven where coasters and fishing boats were moored.
For miles both north and south of the capital there was little in the way of variation to the coastline. It formed an even line between land and sea; sometimes the boundary varied a bit, from sandy, straight beach to cliffs where green fields simply terminated and the land tumbled precipitously a hundred or more feet into the sea.
Eventually the coastal strip that marked Langoria narrowed and terminated where the mountains reached the water, marked by towering precipices, shelves that stretched to the north and south nearly a hundred miles, an impassable, unconquerable barrier between tiny Langoria and the hostile lands beyond those impenetrable mountains.
And so Langoria slept. It was a gentle land. Far from the rest of the world and its conflicts, the tiny country prospered in its own way, leading a national life that was in harmony with the gifts given it by the earth: a temperate climate, a beautiful, rolling terrain and a variety of foods, from land and sea, from vine and field, that gave Langorians long lives, even temperaments and a capacity for calm reflection and tolerance that scarce occurs in more heated climes, whatever the temperature.
Langoria
Atop the mountains the view eastwards was of a desolated high desert valley of scrub and sterile earth. To describe it required a palette of browns and tans. There were dry ravines and sandy, sere riverbeds that flowed only occasionally when the rains spilled between the frigid peaks and the ridge beyond which lay Langoria.
North and south of the saddle that formed the only entry to the desert and, ultimately, into Langoria, the peaks curved, ever higher, until they reached the sea, trapping both the desert and Langoria in a giant horseshoe shaped promontory.
To reach the ridge required a descent, at times nearly vertical, down the rock mountainside. Once at the base, the high desert spread out for three days, rough and scarred and permanently parched.
Only near the sharp edge which defined the top of the ridge and marked the border of Langoria did the earth become gentler and more giving. Behind lay the hot, killing world of the desert.
From the ridge Langoria spread out below towards the sea. The land dropped through a mix of oak and pine and then through fields of oats, barley, hops and wheat, separated by orderly rows of apple, pear and peach trees. Still lower there were grape vines spreading their low green canopies, ripening in the dry sun and the cool air, thickening the fruit until it produced a deep, rich purple wine which the people drank before fires on cold winter nights. Scattered amongst the wineries were groves of olives.
From the wine country the land sloped further towards sea where the altitude and the weather combined to create an unvarying cool, misty world of grazing sheep, peat bogs and windswept shores. The small harbour of Langoria, the eponymous capital of the country, had been formed by the laborious placement of riprap rocks to convert a gentle indentation along the coastline into a small, safe-haven where coasters and fishing boats were moored.
For miles both north and south of the capital there was little in the way of variation to the coastline. It formed an even line between land and sea; sometimes the boundary varied a bit, from sandy, straight beach to cliffs where green fields simply terminated and the land tumbled precipitously a hundred or more feet into the sea.
Eventually the coastal strip that marked Langoria narrowed and terminated where the mountains reached the water, marked by towering precipices, shelves that stretched to the north and south nearly a hundred miles, an impassable, unconquerable barrier between tiny Langoria and the hostile lands beyond those impenetrable mountains.
And so Langoria slept. It was a gentle land. Far from the rest of the world and its conflicts, the tiny country prospered in its own way, leading a national life that was in harmony with the gifts given it by the earth: a temperate climate, a beautiful, rolling terrain and a variety of foods, from land and sea, from vine and field, that gave Langorians long lives, even temperaments and a capacity for calm reflection and tolerance that scarce occurs in more heated climes, whatever the temperature.
10 December 2006
French Fries on the Playa de Cortes
9 December 2006
Besford
The road from Hermosillo to Kino eventually thinned out after Buck Ibarra’s place. Buck was some sort of renegade, part Basque, part Indian and pretty much wholly a rascal. With half a dozen kids from an equal number of mothers, several happily residing together out there in his compound of huts and rusted travel trailers, he was just another of Dad’s curious friends. Many of them had criminal records – some pretty serious. I can vaguely recall that it wasn’t long after we first moved to Sonora that Dad became friends with a gringo staying out at one lonely ranch (God knows how Dad ever met these guys – he’d frequently just show up at dinner time, trailing some shy 'down and outer' who’d fascinate me and slightly disgust my Mom; every one had an interest in mining, many were genuine prospectors of the burro persuasion, for some adventure had become a habit they couldn't break; I never figured out whether they were souls lost or souls with purpose and direction, marching to their own rhythm). This fellow at the ranch, I think it was called Escondido ('hidden' – pretty appropriate, huh?) had already been out there the best part of 7 years when we arrived, never once having travelled the 20 miles or so into town. It was only after the statue of limitations had well and truly expired that he ventured into the city – I'm sure that one of his first stops had to be one of the bars that made up the front rooms of the houses in the ‘Zona’. Even at six I knew the Zona, one afternoon I'd dropped in and had a soda pop with the proprietress of one of the nicer houses but, that’s a story for another time.
Until they began to irrigate the backlands between the river valleys and coast in the 1960’s, the space between Hermosillo, the capital on the river, and Kino, a beach settlement on the Sea of Cortes, didn’t appear to have much to offer man or animal. There were a few scampering desert mammals, Gila monsters, plenty of snakes and some coyotes but not much else. In summer it got so hot so quickly that the trip was only healthy if you left around 7 AM to get there and started back around 6 or 7 PM.
The beach at Kino was very white and very big. The water was clear but you didn’t swim unless you could spot the fins of porpoises in the Bay. The Sea of Cortes has as many tiburones ('sharks') as anywhere in the world. You were only sure that it was safe to swim with the porpoises, otherwise it was build a sand castle.
At one end of the beach there was a point called Black Rock (imaginatively named because of it’s dominant colour) and some ex-fisherman ran a café there. Most of the place was actually jammed back into a cave that had been carved out by thousands of years of waves. You'd give the proprietor whatever fish you’d caught and he’d clean and fry them. His beer was cold (said my Dad) but to me the key thing was that he made papas fritas (‘chips’ or French fries) like I'd never had. He didn’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into wedges and tossed them into a pan swimming in pork fat! There they'd float until they turned a perfect golden brown, flecked with black. Wow! Strange that in the 1950’s, fat wasn’t so bad for you as it is now.
Dad was a hobbyist fisherman – he loved it. He could fish equally in a lake, a stream or the ocean; he even knew how to tie trout flies. Mom fished to keep him company. I mostly played on the rocks or the beach, the only fascination I found in fish was watching them jerk spasmodically as their lives drained away when they were tossed onto the rock. When Dad pulled one in, he would remove his hook and then bang the fish on the head with the blunt end of his pocket knife. When Dad was too far to take care of whatever she'd caught, Mom would just toss the fish onto the rocks, she was too squeamish to bop them. I'd then watch them struggle for breath. Most died in what must have been terrible agony but some managed to bounce themselves back into the sea, determined never to pick at anything dangling at the end of a line, no matter how appetising it looked. Before you go condemning me for my morbid voyeurism, remember that this was the 1950’s. We weren’t as sensitive then and I was only 5 or 6 so I’m not sure that I truly understood what I was watching.
In that decade, I believe that not only weren't we as sensitive as we are now, I’m pretty convinced the fish didn't have much feeling either. Whatever future punishment I let myself in for by witnessing these scenes, though, the memory of the papas fritas is still with me today, half a century later!
Besford
The road from Hermosillo to Kino eventually thinned out after Buck Ibarra’s place. Buck was some sort of renegade, part Basque, part Indian and pretty much wholly a rascal. With half a dozen kids from an equal number of mothers, several happily residing together out there in his compound of huts and rusted travel trailers, he was just another of Dad’s curious friends. Many of them had criminal records – some pretty serious. I can vaguely recall that it wasn’t long after we first moved to Sonora that Dad became friends with a gringo staying out at one lonely ranch (God knows how Dad ever met these guys – he’d frequently just show up at dinner time, trailing some shy 'down and outer' who’d fascinate me and slightly disgust my Mom; every one had an interest in mining, many were genuine prospectors of the burro persuasion, for some adventure had become a habit they couldn't break; I never figured out whether they were souls lost or souls with purpose and direction, marching to their own rhythm). This fellow at the ranch, I think it was called Escondido ('hidden' – pretty appropriate, huh?) had already been out there the best part of 7 years when we arrived, never once having travelled the 20 miles or so into town. It was only after the statue of limitations had well and truly expired that he ventured into the city – I'm sure that one of his first stops had to be one of the bars that made up the front rooms of the houses in the ‘Zona’. Even at six I knew the Zona, one afternoon I'd dropped in and had a soda pop with the proprietress of one of the nicer houses but, that’s a story for another time.
Until they began to irrigate the backlands between the river valleys and coast in the 1960’s, the space between Hermosillo, the capital on the river, and Kino, a beach settlement on the Sea of Cortes, didn’t appear to have much to offer man or animal. There were a few scampering desert mammals, Gila monsters, plenty of snakes and some coyotes but not much else. In summer it got so hot so quickly that the trip was only healthy if you left around 7 AM to get there and started back around 6 or 7 PM.
The beach at Kino was very white and very big. The water was clear but you didn’t swim unless you could spot the fins of porpoises in the Bay. The Sea of Cortes has as many tiburones ('sharks') as anywhere in the world. You were only sure that it was safe to swim with the porpoises, otherwise it was build a sand castle.
At one end of the beach there was a point called Black Rock (imaginatively named because of it’s dominant colour) and some ex-fisherman ran a café there. Most of the place was actually jammed back into a cave that had been carved out by thousands of years of waves. You'd give the proprietor whatever fish you’d caught and he’d clean and fry them. His beer was cold (said my Dad) but to me the key thing was that he made papas fritas (‘chips’ or French fries) like I'd never had. He didn’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into wedges and tossed them into a pan swimming in pork fat! There they'd float until they turned a perfect golden brown, flecked with black. Wow! Strange that in the 1950’s, fat wasn’t so bad for you as it is now.
Dad was a hobbyist fisherman – he loved it. He could fish equally in a lake, a stream or the ocean; he even knew how to tie trout flies. Mom fished to keep him company. I mostly played on the rocks or the beach, the only fascination I found in fish was watching them jerk spasmodically as their lives drained away when they were tossed onto the rock. When Dad pulled one in, he would remove his hook and then bang the fish on the head with the blunt end of his pocket knife. When Dad was too far to take care of whatever she'd caught, Mom would just toss the fish onto the rocks, she was too squeamish to bop them. I'd then watch them struggle for breath. Most died in what must have been terrible agony but some managed to bounce themselves back into the sea, determined never to pick at anything dangling at the end of a line, no matter how appetising it looked. Before you go condemning me for my morbid voyeurism, remember that this was the 1950’s. We weren’t as sensitive then and I was only 5 or 6 so I’m not sure that I truly understood what I was watching.
In that decade, I believe that not only weren't we as sensitive as we are now, I’m pretty convinced the fish didn't have much feeling either. Whatever future punishment I let myself in for by witnessing these scenes, though, the memory of the papas fritas is still with me today, half a century later!
07 December 2006
Sonora Morning ...1950's
6 December 2006
Besford
Only when the rains came, around San Juan day, did the arroyo ever feel riverine. This morning the wan December sun floated through the dry and dusty bottom as men stretched, scratched and spit, rustling up muddy coffee, warming their tortillas on rocks set around the fire, forming them into pockets and filling them with frijoles refritos scooped from an old frying pan.
The plates, pans and cups all matched, blue enamelled metal with white spots, a design that was common up and down the Sonora and a half dozen other rivers. Washing up consisted of wiping them with river sand, water was too precious to waste on unnecessary hygiene.
Some men were still stiff from the overnight cold. It had been clear the night before, nothing unusual in that, but the wind had blown in a ‘norther’ and the mercury had dropped to single digits before midnight. Although the wind then dropped off, the temperature had continued to descend and this morning it was below zero.
Few words were exchanged, the men’s voices were low and quiet, scratchy from the cold, dry air, from cigarettes and tequila. The black, sugary coffee lubricated their voices only enough for instructions to be passed around.
The order that informed their preparations was not immediately visible. Men appeared to be acting independently, without reference to each other. Suddenly, however, the group set off; how they were organised was not immediately apparent but by the discipline that marked their departure from the campsite, fire damped and waste cleaned, was unmistakable.
All of the men, save one, were mounted on horseback. The exception was, however, clearly the leader, he rode a burro. The men treated him with an easy familiarity, they joked and gossiped with him but they also watched him, learning to interpret his moods, to read his body language. There was no fun made of his refusal to ride a horse. He was convinced that a burro was smarter and he would neither go where a burro would not nor go farther in a day than a burro wanted. His selection of camping spots, idiosyncratic but compellingly logical, was based entirely on the whim of his burro, when the burro stopped and would go no more, it was time to camp.
The paraphernalia of camping life - tents, army cots, kerosene lanterns, canned goods, utensils and cooking gear - was all loaded into heavy, waterproof rocket boxes. Surplus from the Second World War, the rocket boxes were heavy gauge aluminium. Fully loaded, each one must have weighed 100 pounds and at about 5 feet long, two of them made a formidable load for the burros that were unfortunate enough not to have been selected to carry the leader. It was, however a close call for the leader's weight verged on 200 pounds, not nearly as well distributed as the gear in the rocket boxes.
The camp was cleared and the party ready to move forward within an hour of waking. The last of the coffee was gulped down and unfiltered Mexican Raleighs lit up. A wispy haze of bluish cigarette smoke marked the trail of the group as it wended its way on up the river bed.
Besford
Only when the rains came, around San Juan day, did the arroyo ever feel riverine. This morning the wan December sun floated through the dry and dusty bottom as men stretched, scratched and spit, rustling up muddy coffee, warming their tortillas on rocks set around the fire, forming them into pockets and filling them with frijoles refritos scooped from an old frying pan.
The plates, pans and cups all matched, blue enamelled metal with white spots, a design that was common up and down the Sonora and a half dozen other rivers. Washing up consisted of wiping them with river sand, water was too precious to waste on unnecessary hygiene.
Some men were still stiff from the overnight cold. It had been clear the night before, nothing unusual in that, but the wind had blown in a ‘norther’ and the mercury had dropped to single digits before midnight. Although the wind then dropped off, the temperature had continued to descend and this morning it was below zero.
Few words were exchanged, the men’s voices were low and quiet, scratchy from the cold, dry air, from cigarettes and tequila. The black, sugary coffee lubricated their voices only enough for instructions to be passed around.
The order that informed their preparations was not immediately visible. Men appeared to be acting independently, without reference to each other. Suddenly, however, the group set off; how they were organised was not immediately apparent but by the discipline that marked their departure from the campsite, fire damped and waste cleaned, was unmistakable.
All of the men, save one, were mounted on horseback. The exception was, however, clearly the leader, he rode a burro. The men treated him with an easy familiarity, they joked and gossiped with him but they also watched him, learning to interpret his moods, to read his body language. There was no fun made of his refusal to ride a horse. He was convinced that a burro was smarter and he would neither go where a burro would not nor go farther in a day than a burro wanted. His selection of camping spots, idiosyncratic but compellingly logical, was based entirely on the whim of his burro, when the burro stopped and would go no more, it was time to camp.
The paraphernalia of camping life - tents, army cots, kerosene lanterns, canned goods, utensils and cooking gear - was all loaded into heavy, waterproof rocket boxes. Surplus from the Second World War, the rocket boxes were heavy gauge aluminium. Fully loaded, each one must have weighed 100 pounds and at about 5 feet long, two of them made a formidable load for the burros that were unfortunate enough not to have been selected to carry the leader. It was, however a close call for the leader's weight verged on 200 pounds, not nearly as well distributed as the gear in the rocket boxes.
The camp was cleared and the party ready to move forward within an hour of waking. The last of the coffee was gulped down and unfiltered Mexican Raleighs lit up. A wispy haze of bluish cigarette smoke marked the trail of the group as it wended its way on up the river bed.
03 December 2006
Memories of Parsley Manor
3 December 2006
Besford
This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).
Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.
I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?
There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!
Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’
Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.
But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.
This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.
Besford
This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).
Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.
I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?
There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!
Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’
Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.
But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.
This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.
26 November 2006
I'm genuinely sorry that my ancestors had anything to do with slavery!
26 November 2006
Sunday
Tony Blair has stopped short of apologising for Britain’s role in the slave trade. I believe that the United States has also failed to apologise.
It seems to me that this is all nonsense. Why not apologise? What would be the implication? If the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says he’s sorry – and, indeed, he says he’s sorry on behalf of the nation – that Britons sanctioned, participated in and profited from the slave trade – there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems to me it’s the right thing to do. There’s something of an irony in the fact there’s a controversy in one action that’s moral and healing in the tawdry history of an unprecedented crime against humanity.
Personally, I’m sorry that so much of the history of the United Sates is built on the blood of unknown and unrecognised men and women held as slaves. The whole concept, if you stop and think about it even for a moment, is so revolting and unimaginable, that you cannot conceive of any reasonable objection to a national and personal apology for it.
Consider: If your grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes, survived a hellish voyage in chains across the ocean and sold into involuntary servitude, would that not be sufficient crime against your ancestors for you to ask for an apology from the inheritors of the culture that committed that heinous crime? And it was even worse, you not only had to survive, you frequently had to survive completely alone, with strangers, fellow-slaves, who did not speak your language and worshipped different gods. Then, having survived these challenges, having been renamed, forced to worship the white man’s god and forced to labour at the whim and sole direction of the ‘master’, imagine the hopeless sense that there was no alternative to this existence, neither for you nor for your descendants (frequently products of a pairing in which you had no choice). It sure doesn’t seem to me that both personal and national apologies are out of order!
The argument may be about where you stop. Are the descendants of the victims entitled to reparations? Should money be given to the societies from which these people were taken? Well, probably not; I think our economies – made up of both former slaves and former ‘masters’ – would be stretched too far to pay for it. What we can do is ensure that we have created a fair and just society for the descendants of those people who suffered this enormous crime.
Sunday
Tony Blair has stopped short of apologising for Britain’s role in the slave trade. I believe that the United States has also failed to apologise.
It seems to me that this is all nonsense. Why not apologise? What would be the implication? If the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says he’s sorry – and, indeed, he says he’s sorry on behalf of the nation – that Britons sanctioned, participated in and profited from the slave trade – there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems to me it’s the right thing to do. There’s something of an irony in the fact there’s a controversy in one action that’s moral and healing in the tawdry history of an unprecedented crime against humanity.
Personally, I’m sorry that so much of the history of the United Sates is built on the blood of unknown and unrecognised men and women held as slaves. The whole concept, if you stop and think about it even for a moment, is so revolting and unimaginable, that you cannot conceive of any reasonable objection to a national and personal apology for it.
Consider: If your grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes, survived a hellish voyage in chains across the ocean and sold into involuntary servitude, would that not be sufficient crime against your ancestors for you to ask for an apology from the inheritors of the culture that committed that heinous crime? And it was even worse, you not only had to survive, you frequently had to survive completely alone, with strangers, fellow-slaves, who did not speak your language and worshipped different gods. Then, having survived these challenges, having been renamed, forced to worship the white man’s god and forced to labour at the whim and sole direction of the ‘master’, imagine the hopeless sense that there was no alternative to this existence, neither for you nor for your descendants (frequently products of a pairing in which you had no choice). It sure doesn’t seem to me that both personal and national apologies are out of order!
The argument may be about where you stop. Are the descendants of the victims entitled to reparations? Should money be given to the societies from which these people were taken? Well, probably not; I think our economies – made up of both former slaves and former ‘masters’ – would be stretched too far to pay for it. What we can do is ensure that we have created a fair and just society for the descendants of those people who suffered this enormous crime.
03 March 2006
Bush in New Delhi
Bush is probably wrong on this one. Do we really need to put geopolitics before nuclear non-proliferation? Are we building an alliance against the Chinese for the next 50 years? Why not build an alliance with the Chinese and use that to dominate the entire globe? The US would dominate Latin America, China would dominate Asia. Africa may not count for much for another century -- blame Europe! Meantime, Europe sits in the middle, prosperous but ineffective. India becomes an industrious non-entity.
India is prickly. Their reaction to many international issues is always reminiscent of some sort of national inferiority complex; reminds me a bit of the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Filipinos. For the subcontinent, of course, it's born of 200 years of domination by the British rather than centuries under the Spanish followed by five decades under the Almighty Dollar (the case of the Philippines).
So, by the terms of this new agreement, the international non-proliferation treaty is gutted but India opens up two-thirds of its reactors for inspection by the IAEA, imports US nuclear fuels, freeing up more of its own production to be diverted to mulitply its nuclear weapons production. This makes US conservatives happy because India's weapons then balance China's.
It gets ever more complicated. I don't want another nuclear power but India already is. So, this will just make them stronger? Does that make China relatively weaker? Do I worry more about China or India?
India is prickly. Their reaction to many international issues is always reminiscent of some sort of national inferiority complex; reminds me a bit of the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Filipinos. For the subcontinent, of course, it's born of 200 years of domination by the British rather than centuries under the Spanish followed by five decades under the Almighty Dollar (the case of the Philippines).
So, by the terms of this new agreement, the international non-proliferation treaty is gutted but India opens up two-thirds of its reactors for inspection by the IAEA, imports US nuclear fuels, freeing up more of its own production to be diverted to mulitply its nuclear weapons production. This makes US conservatives happy because India's weapons then balance China's.
It gets ever more complicated. I don't want another nuclear power but India already is. So, this will just make them stronger? Does that make China relatively weaker? Do I worry more about China or India?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)