Minneapolis

Seville, 3 August 2007

The collapse of a piece of the infrastructure of modern society and the deaths that accompanied that terrible accident is, I'm convinced, even more evidence -- if we needed it -- of the horrific and worsening impact of climate change.

I got up early on Thursday and flipped through the news channels, thinking I would watch the world's stock markets implode for a while but I caught sight of the flattened bridge and watched, in shock, a loop of video that showed scrambling rescue workers, a burning truck and an abandoned school bus only half on the shattered roadway.

But, and this is the point of this comment, there was an engineer who tried to explain why the disaster hadn't been prevented. One reason, he suggested, was that the bridge had undergone repeated recent episodes of thermal stress when the temperature had swung 20 or 30 degrees over the course of just a few hours. He noted that concrete just doesn't like this and reacts very badly.

I was convinced I now knew why people had died. They've been killed by climate change. The bridge had collapsed because of thermal stress. Global climate change means extremes of temperature and weather. We've got to learn to cope with the results of our own actions. Meantime, a typhoon is battering Japan and there are at least two others forming off the Eastern coast of Asia as I write this. Another study recently reported that the number of 'reportable' hurricanes in the Atlantic has doubled over the past 40 years.

We are going to see more typhoons and hurricans and, sadly, more events like the collapse of a highway bridge in Minneapolis.

Train Spotting ...

3 July 2007

My London terminal is Paddington. Just about every daylight hour of every working day there are two trains from Bristol Parkway to the old iron marvel, one of Isembard Kingdom Brunel’s wonders. There are trains from Bristol Temple Meads, the older station near the centre of the city but I don’t think they are as often and some of those go to other London stations, I think.

This has given birth to several thoughts; one is how strange it is that we know so little about things outside the narrow channels in which we live the bulk of our lives. On the tube you see countless hardened Londoners who have some internal GPS and just know when they’ve reached their station; at their destination they just meander off, zombie-like, without reference to the line map above the doors or the station name in tiles on the rounded walls of the tunnel, oblivious to everyone and everything, usually tethered to some i-pod-like device secreted about their person, the only visible evidence of which is the white wire and white earpieces that aliens must think are a part of us. Oh yes, there is one other piece of visible evidence: a sort of blanked off look. The i-pod’ers are one of the most asleep generations we’ve had. It used to be that you had to drink or take drugs to get that alienated from your environment, you actually had to work at it a bit. Now you just press a button on that little white plastic box with all that engineering magic inside.

At my terminal, though – which is where I was before I did what I so often do and digress – what interests me is the way that we all stand and stare slightly upwards at the display boards, willing our train to move over to the left, ever closer to the witching hour when they will depart. Sometimes your train actually slides over to the far left display, panel by panel, and it reaches the end and there is still no platform number next to the name of the final destination so you don’t know where to go to board it. You just stand there and stare, powerless, a mere passenger, pawn of the railways, watching as the actual time passes the time of departure and your train, whichever one of the dozen or so that is currently drawn up into the station, nose first, just sits there (if, that is, it has even managed to arrive from wherever it came).

At least during the evening rush there is a bit of sport; we are also preparing for the made dash down the platform when our train has been identified (and this is the other thought that I mentioned had come to me about two paragraphs up). Until they announce the platform number, you just mill around, covertly appraising the competition, handicapping those who are lugging the heaviest bags, are old or infirm. High heels are deceiving, I’ve seen a woman in a tight skirt and three or four-inch heels scoot down the platform, as fast as a young banker on the make sporting testosteronal Nikes. Of course, this is really only true of the sans culottes, the lumpen proletariat who ride standard class; first class is still not over-sold most of the time and the railway companies conspire to keep it so by raising prices as fast as a Venezuelan brothel keeper (whose pricing policies, I add for the benefit of my wife who might one day read this, I’ve only read about).

So what happens is that your train moves across the electronic displays, closer and closer to that magic place over there on the far left where there is nothing between it and that moment of scheduling magic when your mode of transportation is finally given a platform number. That’s when the mad scramble begins, you walk/jog down the platform and wedge yourself on board and seize the first empty seat you can.

As the late comers make their way down the centre of the car you can feel quietly superior, sitting in your slightly plush, too-narrow seat, knees against the chair in front or, if you’re lucky enough to get a table, against those of the person facing you (frequently someone with peculiar personal hygiene).

It’s all great fun, really so if you only do it once in a while and are still sufficiently conscious of your surroundings to notice them. Or, you can buy an i-pod.

1 July 2007, Fear of bumper cars ...

1 July 2007

These latest threats to my freedom from fear have had less impact than previous ones. Last night we had to pick up my niece from Heathrow. I can’t recall worrying about leaving the car in the multi-storey. Later, in the early hours, as we got nearer home, we passed a crowded nightclub, cars parked up and down the street on both sides for a block each way and the sidewalks/pavements teeming with young partiers. It all looked like great fun. For a second my mind built a scenario about a bomb in a car destroying that atmosphere and many of those lives. Our daughter had gone out to one of these outdoor all-night concerts where insane young people stand around in the mud and rain and listen to the latest electro-techno-indie-scooter-wooter music. And, yes, I had thought the unthinkable about that venue as well.

The decision has to be that you go on, that you adhere to the patterns of life before the first attacks, as closely as you can. Of course those patterns are subtly changed beyond recognition by the simple fact of being forced to consider the action, a concert, an evening at a night-club, a business trip, as at risk from terrorism, even if we reason it through and rightly determine to carry on seemingly as before, knowing the calculable risk is infinitesimal.

I guess we will eventually weave the pattern of these threats into our lives; they will become as commonplace as the risk of an automobile accident on a wet, rain-slicked highway. You know that the possibility is there, you register the risk in your mind but, by and large, you ignore it and go about your business. Life appears to be increasingly cluttered with these little fears.

Scotland Forever!

30 June 2007

It’s just after midnight so the date on the top is not quite right – July is here but so far I can’t tell much difference with June. The rain is just continuing.

Earlier on Saturday, about mid-afternoon, these two yay-hoos, would-be terrorists, drove a Jeep into the front door of Glasgow Airport. Apparently they managed to get their vehicle alight and then just rammed it part way into the concourse. Thankfully they didn’t manage to hurt anyone, other than themselves, so drama becomes farce.

One of the two in the vehicle apparently jumped out and then doused himself with gasoline. The human torch then tried to box a number of policemen and other bystanders. According to one observer he was ‘disoriented’ – which is as it should be when you’ve managed to burn most of your clothes off and have singed your skin, ‘ouch’ pretty much covers it as far as I’m concerned.

Our terrorist boy was a big fellow according to this observer who, by my lights, has cojones the size of grapefruits. In the midst of the melee – terrorist swinging wildly at all and sundry – this fellow just walks up to the perp and knocks him down, modestly claiming later that he couldn’t have done it if the baddie hadn’t been so ‘disoriented’. I’m thinking that this is one of those very tough Scots who basically conquered the territories that made up the British Empire.

I once had one of those tough Scots save my butt from a passle of very large Norwegians.

His name was Bill Christie. He must have been about 45 or 50 but, frankly, he looked like he’d been ridden hard and put up wet. His hair was straggly, long, dirty looking and graying. He can’t have been more than about 5 and a half feet tall and he weighed about 145 soaking wet. Tough, though, didn’t do the guy justice. He had a face that had a thousand stories written on it – mostly hardscrabble tales about drink, fight, loneliness and courage. Christie was a North Sea roustabout who’d managed to raise himself into some sort of oilfield sales role. For me, however, he was a hero.

We were in Stavanger for some oilfield show or the other. I’d driven across the country from Oslo, arriving about 3 in the morning and been put into a room next to Bill’s – he was awake when I arrived and asleep the next morning when I went to the conference. Throughout the three days of the conference that was his pattern, asleep pretty much as long as the sun shone and awake for the rest of it. I think the long winters up there suited him down to the ground.

The second night Bill and I and a bunch of new acquaintances were drinking in the pub/disco of the Hotel Atlantic down in the centre of Stavanger. There was a pretty girl seated at a nearby table with a modern day Viking – bearded, red-faced and drunk. For no reason that I could discern, all of sudden the Viking just punched the girl, the force of his blow propelling her off the chair. She just curled up there on the floor, a pile of seemingly disassociated limbs.

Well, I was facing that table, Bill had his back to them. I must have been drinking a lot more than usual because as soon as the Viking had struck the woman, I was up and on top of him, having thrown myself at him and knocked him back over his chair. I was sort of sitting on his chest, yelling – ‘you can’t hit a woman, that’s just wrong, no matter what she said’.

Now where I got this sense of knight errantry is a mystery and I wont go into it here. What was clear almost as soon as I got the Viking onto his back was that he wasn’t going to stay there and there was nothing I could do, short of shooting the guy, to keep him down. He just put up an arm and swept me over, like batting away a fly.

I got up pretty quick and then watched the Norwegian do the same. He got up, and up, and up. This was one very big Viking. He was taller than he was broader only because he was very tall. I began to wonder if I wasn’t looking at one of the Minnesota Vikings.

Things did not look promising. The Viking was going to kill me, that much was about all that was clear. But, I hadn’t thought about my secret weapon: Bill Christie.

The little Highlander just stepped into the circle that had formed around the Viking and me, the two of us focal points at the north and south hemispheres. He stared at the Viking, the room was quiet.

I can’t do the accent but Bill looked at that monster – and he must have been about 6 foot 6 inches and weighed 280 (say 20 stones) – and Bill says, ‘So, are we gonna have a fight then?’ And he smiled this crooked little smile that every person in the room read right for what it said was this: ‘A fight would just about suit me, and if you don’t kill me, I’ll kill you because no other type of fight is worthwhile.’

There are few men in the world with a stomach for killing with their bare hands. Bill was one of them but the Viking wasn’t. He stared for a while at the little Scot and then you could see his spine begin to get a bit mushy. Beating up women was fine and throwing Americans around the room was okay but getting into a tussle with a Scot who you’d have to kill before he’d give up was just not on.

The Norwegian swallowed …big. That was it. He growled something and then just headed out the door, leaving behind the girl and his honour.

Me? I got back to the hotel about 2 or 3 AM. I rummaged around my luggage and pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich that I’d brought to give to a Norwegian friend. I made my way down the darkened hall and knocked on Bill’s door. He was back and half-way conscious, I gave him the bottle and awkwardly thanked him for saving my life. Bill took it all, except the whiskey, with ill grace. I knew my Norwegian friend would think that I’d acted wisely in giving Bill his bottle of whiskey.

The next morning I had to get down to the conference pretty early, around 9. As I made my muzzy way down the corridor, I looked in at Bill – his door was ajar. My hero was lying there, all 50-something of his years very obvious (because in the morning light it was clear he was older than I’d thought), clutched in his right hand was a bottle of Glenfiddich, about half-empty. I pried the bottle out of his hand and screwed the cap on, leaving it on the nightstand.

Bill Christie was a man. The fellow who tackled the over-sized, dazed terrorist this afternoon at Glasgow was another.

Scotland forever!

Angst ...geographic overload

17 June 2007
Father’s Day (UK)

My sixteen-year old daughter made her way back from a friend’s where she’d spent the night. It was just on 10 AM and the streets of Clifton were virtually deserted. Sunday morning. She was hiking her way back home – about half an hour walk – to make me a ‘fry up’ in honour of father’s day. At first she baulked when I suggested I preferred some of Chandos’ fabulous croissants – finest for a hundred miles around! When I talked her around, a chocolate croissant having aided the cause immeasurably, she was a ‘fry up’ apostate. I’m not sure it’s actually healthier, though, those croissants at Chandos, made upstairs every morning and still warm when they open (I’m waiting at the door for them to unlock), are unimaginably rich – they make you fantasize about fresh creamery butter and the purest organic white flour. So flaky!

Of course, I’m a model of restraint and set the example for my child by limiting myself to two plain and one almond (rich marzipan enclosed in buttery, flaky pastry, mottled with almond slivers). Fortunately she managed to get in there and appropriate about half of the almond.

We drove across country towards the sea at Poole. It was the first time I’d seen that enormous harbour. We ate a father’s day lunch of fried scampi and chips in the garden of a hotel above the beach at Studland. We could look out over the sea, blue in the sunshine. To the east and west we could see white cliffs. Those to the east marked the mouth of the bay.

The queue for the ferry across the throat that separated us from Poole proper was three boats long. Alex slept through the wait, I listened to a play on BBC 4 that involved a scheming woman bent on revenge for wrongs done her family (I admit that I tuned over to Classic FM for a bit and lost track of what was going on).

I’m not sure it’s actually Poole, but the area beyond the eastern terminus of the ferry is wealthy and charming. It reminds me of suburbs of Sydney, beautiful, waterfront or near-waterfront apartments, low rise and glass faced. Another, similar place is across the water from the centre of Perth, a string of low- and mid-rise buildings, spacious, heavily windowed.

You know, it’s strange how many times in life I’ve compared places to Oz – once the wife and I decided to write down our top five, favourite places to live and both of us, separately, listed Sydney and Perth. We’d lived in the former but had holiday-ed in the latter (a lot!).

I belong to that narrow class of humans who are virtually without a place that is truly home anymore. We lived on four continents in the first two years of our marriage. No matter what city I go to, I still play a mental game of ‘could I live here’. I pick out little grocery stores that seem clean and bright and restaurants that might make living in that place palatable. I assess schools and housing; I am particularly alive to the weather, not as a traveller inconvenienced by heat or rain, but as a potential resident, keen to know whether the nights will be sticky and a ‘barong tagalog’ required (and, hopefully, accepted as appropriate).

The last time I recall playing ‘could I live here’ was particularly poignant, I was in Dhaka. I’m now 55 and moving and adjusting to new places requires huge energy and bursting health. I believe that I still possess both but in measure less than when I was in my 30’s. I can adjust to Clifton, the chi-chi part of Bristol, but I question whether I have the strength to make another move to a place as challenging – health, food, weather, culture, language, religion – as Dhaka. Two decades before I would have welcomed an opportunity to live in a place like Bangladesh: I lived and thrived in India, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan …but my mental, if not my physical life in these places has always been a bit of B. Traven, Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Scott, John Masters, even Sir Richard Burton. I am still drawn to the romance but I’m not sure that I’ve still got stamina for the reality.

We’re contemplating purchase of a place in Taiwan where we’ll spend part of each year as we get older. I look forward to this, the island is far richer and more user friendly than it was the first time I visited it about thirty years ago. And that was a decade or so after I’d left India … where I thrived.

I don’t know, though, whether the story is a happy one or sad …. I can’t actually remember the name of the maids my Mom hired when we lived in Mexico back in the 1950s; they took care of me, they were ersatz Mothers and I can’t remember their names – there were two of them, they stayed with us for a couple of years (each) and I can’t remember their names. There have been so many names … so many places … so many names … so many places …

The dog ate the newspaper ...it made him sick! Me too!

16 June 2007
Clifton
Ruminations on building …

Rainy. The dog is running around the house in ever decreasing circles. Earlier he munched placidly on last week’s newpapers, digesting headlines about events that have been overtaken in sensation by disasters that seem to be ever worse.

Time for another coffee. I’m working away on spread sheets for our Spanish projects and will later try to catch up with my correspondence.

I’ve set the mindless talking head volume to nearly zero so that the TV behind me is just a droning noise, like that of some nameless buzzing insect, circling your chaise longue on a summer’s afternoon whilst you, eyes closed, enjoy that precious space between being awake and being asleep – the crepuscle of consciousness. The buzzing is not so annoying as it is reassuring; there is a tangible world to return to when you reach out into that mental space you’re floating in, and retrieve your persona, jerking yourself back into the existence that includes family, job, responsibility and the evening glass of wine.

Penumbra – nice word, derived, I believe, from more recent Latin, means ‘shadow’, particularly the shadow of the earth on the moon when there is an eclipse.

This rain up in the north of England that closed out the working week worries me. I didn’t pick up precisely where it was located but the weathercaster said that many places had received a month’s rain in less than a day. In America the draught is the worst in many places since the dust-bowl years of the 1930’s. Is there a link? I’m inclined to think there may be. But, then, I just read Clive Hamilton’s comments on George Monbiot’s ‘Heat’ in the New Left Review; if we don’t take this 2 degree limit seriously, we’re going to kill a lot of people. It isn’t a matter of PC, it’s going to be a crime against humanity to fly unless you absolutely have to; to jet down to the costas for a weekend is going to make you an accessory to murder! We’re staring in to the abyss my friends!

Coffee’s ready, back to work. I’ve got a world to save. We are going to have to construct as much built space in the next five decades as we did in the previous 4,000 years if we’re to have a hope of providing decent dwellings for all nine billion of us (our total by the middle of the century if we don’t get hit by an asteroid or burden our natural system to the point that it can no longer self-regulate and spiral into an unknown, planet-killing climatic decline).

To build all of these new dwellings, we will have to adapt our construction methods to the realities of a world in which, if we are to survive, we do much more with much less. We cannot afford just to rip the guts out of the earth, consuming all of our natural resources in some two decade long building frenzy – two decades because that’s how long our easily recoverable reserves of many key metals and other resources will last if we continue to live like there’s no tomorrow (which there won’t be).

So, we have to build carefully, using local, abundant materials, we have to build carefully, keeping our real-time carbon footprint as narrow as we can and we have to build for a long time in order to amortise the inherent energy content of the new constructions over a reasonable period. This is important – we must build to last. If we build for 30 years, you just divide the energy input by 30. You get a much larger number than if you divide that same energy input (or, as we plan, a much smaller one) by a much larger life, say 500 years (which is not so difficult to do – just travel around some of Europe’s older villages).

Half term at Eton, end of term at the Grammar schools?

3 June 2007
Sunday

With temperatures hitting 24 and 25 degrees today (that’s about 77 degrees F), it’s beginning to feel a bit like we’ll have some summer soon. But, I digress ... (a first for me, digression in the first paragraph!) ...

Gordon Brown has been invisible recently. Normally you would put that down to his political instincts – he knows to keep his head down when things are getting tough. This time, though, I don’t think it matters, Gordon could be quietly sitting at a table, sipping green tea, somewhere in Western China or he could be sitting at a bar, around midday, sipping a beer at some faceless shopping centre in Germany; whatever he’s doing, wherever he’s been, he’s not responsible and no one is blaming him. He has nothing to do but bask in the political dividend given him by the unbelievable incompetence of the Conservative party.

I admit it. I was fooled by David Cameron’s hair. I thought that he was a breath of fresh air, that after that terrible man, Michael somebody, the previous leader, Cameron was bringing new life and new ideas to the party of Margaret Thatcher.

That hasn’t happened. Instead, the Conservatives have been given a front bench populated by 13 old-Etonians who, if they all hold hands, are, apparently, unable to organise a p**s up in a brewery or have a synapse. Whichever it is, Mr. Brown is looking better and better! A month ago I couldn't have imagined wriiting that!

The biggest muck up was over Grammar Schools – selective secondary state schools that were the path up the social ladder for thousands of lower- and lower-middle class youth ever since they were set up. Apparently the old-Etonians decided that the huge increase in the popularity of fee schools in the UK was not the result of parents deciding they wanted their offspring to experience Hogwarts. It was because Grammar schools had been de-emphasised and their replacements, the infamous ‘comps’ (the comprehensives), had singularly failed to deliver education or opportunity. So, the old-Etonians must have been feeling pretty good; the social divide was increasing with the demise of the Grammar Schools. The good old days were coming back. Most of the front row was made up of the ‘right’ type again. No pushy types like Margaret Thatcher now, the Conservatives were back on the right path.

So, about two weeks ago the Conservatives decided to pre-empt the Labour position on selective education, no more Grammar schools. The great middle class of Britian, that group of poor, tax-paying goops that keep things afloat, was betrayed, the party they thought was in their corner had moved over to the left, right into the lap of Labour.


So, now Labour has moved to the right, taking territory that used to belong to the Conservatives. And what’s left for Maggie’s boys? Not much it seems. What can they do? Jump over the centre that Blair and Co have taken and occupy some of Labour’s weakened left? Realistically, there’s absolutely nothing they can do right now, they’re flummoxed. The only chance they’ve got is to kick up sand into Labour’s eyes and hope they implode.

So Gordon’s instincts this time are absolutely right. Let Cameron and Co dig their own hole. The only downside to all of this is that Cameron is so bad that he may have to resign as Leader of the Conservatives and, if he does, there’s a remote chance that the Tories might find someone half-way competent. If that does happen, Gordon may be in trouble.

The best thing Gordon can do right now is find somewhere to stay put. Perhaps he could do it on some warm, palm encrusted island, far from Britain, where he can relax, his hammock slung well below the parapet, unnoticed and unremarked. I suggest Crete. Wait! I think the Camerons are on holiday there as well. Perhaps their children could play together?

Truth is made, not found - Richard Rorty

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.

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!

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?

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!

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.

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.

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!

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 …

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.

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!

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.