Carwash

My car had become unacceptably filthy, so as I had twenty minutes to kill this morning I took it down the garage and ran it through the £3.99 option 3.  This is supposed to wash, wax and dry.  As it turned out, it may or may not have waxed, it sort of dried, and it quite failed to wash the dirtiest bits.

I don’t get the car washed all that often, preferring to wait for its six-monthly service.  In the meantime windows, lights and number-plates will suffice.  So it was, as I said, pretty dirty.  But surely the whole point of paying to get something done is not to have to do it yourself?  Especially, not to have to do the hardest bits yourself?  And, isn’t automation supposed to be better than humans at simple tasks?

Down the Oxford Road in Reading, there’s a ‘hand car wash’ which I used once a few years ago.  It took around twenty minutes, which is about evens timewise.  It cost, back then, £4.95.  Even if that’s gone up to £5.99 by now, I reckon my time to hand-finish the job the machine failed to auto-complete will be worth considerably more than two quid.  So in what sense can automation economically out-perform human effort, for even such a simple task?  And if it can’t even achieve that, how can I possibly expect it to drive the car to the carwash and back as well?

Of course, it’s academic, because the guys who beautifully cleaned the car down the Oxford Road won’t be there anymore.  They’ll have been repatriated.

Blog minus 1

It's a bit less than nine years since I wrote this record of a much-relished holiday, which prompted my brother to remark "you should write a blog."  I researched how to do that, and started to do so.  This is where my recently neglected blog habit started.



Holiday in Bequia, February 2008

Thursday 14^th
Reading
Completed packing, shopped, made dinner (chicken and lentil curry).  Dick and Val arrived about 7.30.  Got drunk and fell over on patio after ‘the last cigarette’.

Friday 15^th
En voyage; arrival at Barbados; St Lawrence Gap; the Whistling Frog Café

Up 6 a.m.  D drove us to Gatwick and negotiated parking.  Flight very smooth and shorter than expected.  Excel’s idea of in-flight entertainment (not that I was bothered) seemed a bit weird, as pretty well nobody would’ve been able to see the miniscule TV screens.  Arrived Barbados 3.30 p.m. local.

I was first to the immigration queue, which stretched out almost to the runway.  D&V, having been seated amidships in the plane and therefore nearly last off, took a while to catch up.  Inside the building, a zig-zag snake queue, which took more than an hour to negotiate.  Three flights had arrived at about the same time – several hundred people striving, good-naturedly, towards sixteen or so hardpressed officials.  When we finally got through, we found that our luggage had taken even longer to get to the belt.  Imagine our surprise!

Taxi to the Dover Beach Hotel at St Lawrence Gap, to be greeted by charming staff and shown to our very pleasant rooms.  We swam in the rough sea (high winds, D a bit worried about this unexpected aspect), then wandered out to the main Gap drag in search of food and entertainment – ended up at the Whistling Frog Café for dinner.  Apparently, Barbados is populated with frogs, which whistle.  I definitely heard whistles, but didn’t see a single frog.

 Saturday 16^th

Dover Beach; Oistins fish night; karaoke

Breakfast at the hotel bar.  Just after we’d ordered, the bar was invaded by a horde of English teenage sporty girls from some posh school, on some kind of sporty activity holiday.  We were loudly informed that Gemma had been sick, but then that ‘I’ve cleaned up the vomit’.

To my relief, we spent the day lounging around the hotel pool and strolling up and down the Gap strip (which proved to be pretty dreary).  We decided to taxi to the Oistins fish night event – major tourist attraction/trap – overpriced food and 30 mins of local worthies speechifying and Christian entertainment – then back to the Dover Beach for their karaoke night (featuring a different bunch of teenage sporty girls, and some loud Americans).  I will say no more about this – we’ve all been there.  (The karaoke I mean, not the girls …)

Sunday 17^th

Transit; first impressions of Bequia; Gingerbread; Farine

 We negotiate the complex check-in procedure for the flight to Bequia, which turns out to be via Mustique, with pick-ups and drop-offs en route, which almost resulted in my suitcase winging its way back to Barbados.  This is a 20-seater two-engined prop plane, two pilots visible up front, 8,000 feet up (1,000 for the Mustique-Bequia leg), bucking around in the steady breeze.  Mustique airport looks like a par three golf hole in tarmac.  Jolly Mustique holidaymakers with self-consciously beautiful girls and sulky iPod boys come and go.  Landing at Bequia James F Mitchell airport is like aiming at another par three, through trees and cliffs, on the pillion of a bucking motorbike.

Once my case has been salvaged, Curtis, our taxi driver (who we will learn to know and love) greets us and takes us to Gingerbread.  On the way D&V are having local knowledge conversations with Curtis, but I’m just seeing concrete roads, flashes of turquoise sea, glimpses of colonial or shanty buildings; feeling steep ups and downs and vicious speed humps; breathing the warm sea air and odd spice smells: all from the back of this bright yellow Challenger pick-up truck, bench seats each side, which is a Bequia taxi.

Gingerbread is gorgeous.  I feel at home at once.  Easy to wander out around the town, down to a little local beach (Plantation House) for a swim, along to Frangipani for rum punches then back to Gingerbread for dinner and Farine.  They’re a local group – guitar, banjo, bongos, and a varying number of singers – who do a unique take on everything from gospel to skiffle via Motown, Marley and the Beach Boys.  We get pissed and close the bar.

This is my first experience of the mosquito net – essential in these parts I’m told.  It hangs from the ceiling, a huge swathe of muslin which you drape over your bed, tuck in, then crawl under and sleep in your private indoor insect-free tent.  Certainly I wasn’t disturbed by mozzies that night.  But nothing is perfect.  They will get to you sooner or later.  Fortunately, my skin is fairly mosquito-proof (years of conditioning in Italy, maybe), and Bequia mozzies are indolent and rather impotent.  I got bitten a dozen or so times over the stay, but none endured or itched intolerably.

There is a notice in my bathroom which reads, in full:  ‘Flushing toilet.  Do not let the handle spin around.  Press back until down then let it come back up.  Management is working to solve this problem.’

Monday 18^th

Port Elizabeth; Princess Margaret Beach; the Green Boley; Captain Mac’s

We walk into town, where I fail to change money, due to huge queues in the RBTT bank (Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, I learn from Google).

Then we try to walk across the headland to our nearest ‘proper’ beach, the Princess Margaret or Tony Gibbons.  I haven’t researched either of these labels, but I’m inclined to D’s theory: originally, it was probably called ‘Middle Beach’ or somesuch; Princess Margaret went for a swim there one day, slumming it from Mustique; the locals weren’t having that, decided the beach needed an authentic indigenous name – and just then good old Tony walks into the bar.

Whatever, the headland path turns out to have been blocked off by a cavalier housebuilding project.  We were warned of this by a guy cleaning the Plantation House beach and by an American fellow-tourist, but went to have a look anyway – sure enough, a block wall and industrial barbed wire make this public right of way totally impassable.   All the locals act appalled, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.  Even the water-taxi drivers (who stand to benefit) feel that it’s wrong, and probably illegal – yet this construction has obviously been allowed to go ahead, unchallenged to the point of irreversibility.  It’s my first intimation, or reminder (Tobago), of the sinuous workings of Caribbean local politics.

So we get a water taxi.

I am not going to repeatedly describe the experience of lounging on a Caribbean beach for a day – so pay attention: I am only going to say this once!

Find a place with available shade and pitch camp.  Spread your towel and lie/sit on it; read your book, shifting your posture according to discomfort levels, which may be caused by sand, sun intrusion, muscular strain, buried hard objects, or ants.  Go for a swim.  Snooze.  Repeat as necessary until lunchtime.  Have lunch at local hostelry.  Return to camp and repeat above, until it’s time to leave.

Henceforth, this delightful process will be identified by the phrase ‘lounge on beach’.

Lunch, on this occasion, was at ‘Jack’s Bar’, a slick new venue.  Food good (although I still want my tomato remoulade – having looked it up, what I was given no way conforms to that description!).  The place seems unfinished – concrete floors and pillars – and so a bit impersonal.

Rum punches at the Green Boley, ten paces down the Belmont Walkway from Gingerbread.  They’re a tad more rummish than Frangipani’s.  Can’t find out what a Boley is, never mind a green one – but the bar is basic, relaxed, a place you could sit and lime all evening.  We view the sunset, then head off to Captain Mac’s, a new place opposite the fruit market.  Apart from a bunch of American teenagers, we’re the only customers.  We ask for the wine list: two bottles are brought to the table for our selection.  We choose the Chilean Sunrise Merlot, which is to be our staple diet.  Food and service are good; just a bit sad about the ambience, the less than ideal location, the optimistic desperation of the enterprise.  Nice map of the world though, filling an entire wall of the inside, unused, room.

Tuesday 19^th

Friendship Bay; Moskito; dinner at home

The wind (external not self) gets up at 6 a.m. and howls through the shutters and the plants outside the window.  I see I haven’t described my room properly.  It’s big, about 5 metres square, unglazed but shuttered windows on three sides; bed in the middle, nets hanging from the ceiling over big wall hooks, a kitchenette and a bathroom off the fourth wall; big balcony through sliding shuttered doors to the front.  I now have a key to my safe.

Breakfast with D&V (purchased yesterday – fruit, eggs and tomatoes).

We take our first big walk across the island to Friendship Bay.  The ups are a bit challenging, but I’m gratified by how well I manage.  Beach a bit of a letdown, rather narrow and ant-infested.  Good lunch though at Moskito café – excellent well-endowed burgers, and V’s seafood pasta looked good.

Lounged on beach.

Dinner at home uncovered a few issues, mainly that we couldn’t work out how to light the oven – which is a concern when you’re cooking chicken legs.  As luck would have it, Pat Mitchell had decided to install, experimentally, a microwave in D&V’s apartment, and V rose heroically to the occasion.  But we resolved that eating in probably isn’t a high priority option – especially as it seems that raw materials in the shops cost far more than the prepared, cooked and served equivalents in the restaurants.  The starter was a feta cheese salad, at about sixteen guineas an ounce – at any rate, far more than we’d paid for the same thing at Jack’s Bar.  How can this be?  Caribbean economics becomes more and more mysterious. 

Wednesday 20^th

Lower Bay; Da Reef; Devil’s Table

After breakfast, split between fruit at D&V’s and banana bread at Gingerbread café, we walked across to Lower Bay – the best beach.  Far fewer ants.

Lounged on beach.

Lunch at Da Reef, a big canteen-like bar/restaurant right on the beach.  I had conch (pron. ‘conk’) curry.  This is the animal which inhabits those huge shells you see at beach-side venues everywhere, and which can with practice be blown, like a trumpet, to announce, for example, the arrival of the day’s fish catch at the market in Port Elizabeth.

We’ve discovered a great non-alcoholic refresher, lime squash.  Freshly squeezed lime juice, sugar syrup, a dash of Angostura, over loads of ice, made up with tap water – brilliant!  You could add white rum or vodka for a long cocktail … try this at home, when the summertime comes.

Excellent dinner (though not very Caribbean in character) at Devil’s Table, apparently named after a nearby reef.  It’s their ‘reggae night’: a semi-live, semi-backing tape on-stage performance, which worked – I’d have danced had the opportunity arisen –  because of a young, lively crowd, all fired up to watch the total eclipse of the moon.  This duly came about; would perhaps have been more interesting if it hadn’t!  The moon gradually disappears from one side, then gradually reappears – a bit like the London Eye in reverse.  I expressed the view, to a local, that it was being eaten by a dragon, but was told ‘no, man, it’s a shark’. 

Thursday 21^st

Friendship Rose to Tobago Cays; Frangipani BBQ

Up at the crack to join the much-anticipated boat trip.  Strong winds and torrential rain overnight caused some apprehension, but there was no risk of cancellation merely for a bit of weather.

So we embark and set off, with about forty others, mostly Americans, and five crew, under the command of Captain Lewis, who has been running this ship since she was the St Vincent ferry back in the seventies.  Departure is delayed by engine trouble, and in fact we have to return for repairs; but once we get going properly, and clear Admiralty Bay, full sail is set and we are soon scudding along through wine-dark seas past island after island, bucking and crashing through the waves.

We reach the Cays about 11.30, and are ferried to the reef for snorkelling.  The undersea views are breathtaking; but that’s perhaps not the best choice of words.  The sea was choppy enough for me to ship several mouthfuls of seawater through my snorkel, often when I’d just breathed out and so had no air in my lungs to blow through like you’re supposed to do; and the leg action, with fins, is more arduous than I remember from when I was sixteen.  I’m glad I did it, but not convinced that this particular recreation is quite for me any more.

Back on the boat, we are served a good lunch, with unlimited rum punch and wine, then set off for the homeward leg, through a massive blow and drenching squalls – shipping dense spray and occasional green water, plus rain – soaked to the skin several times – boat keeling at twenty degrees – exhilarating!

After regaining dry land (which refuses to stay still for hours), we freshen up and go to the Frangipani barbeque, which is fine except that we’re too knackered to do it justice.  We’re seated at the back of the restaurant, away from the band, along with several of our fellow voyagers – and, as D&V discover to their amazement, a delightful young couple called Cherie and Dylan, from Toronto, whom they’d met in Carriacou five years ago.  Arrange to dine with them Monday.

I’m lulled to sleep, under my gauze tent, by the gentle swaying motion still retained by my body’s memory, sea-legs so thrillingly acquired aboard the lovely Friendship Rose.

Friday 22^nd

Fort Hamilton; Tony Gibbons beach; Tommy Cantina

Despite good intentions to sleep in, we’re up and running by 8.00.  ‘Full breakfast’, which is bacon and eggs, as opposed to ‘English breakfast’, which is that plus sausage, beans, tomatoes, etc etc, at Porthole café, Mrs Taylor’s tight ship.  She and her staff of daughters or nieces are highly organised, but make us feel comfortable and relaxed, the best customer care yet!

We walk up through the town to Fort Hamilton, built by the British in 1760 to defend Bequia from American privateers or French pirates.  The views are great, and we stroll back down, past ineluctable shacks and enterprises, painted in vibrant colours or allowed to rot down to sad greys – some with religiously challenging rasta slogans carefully etched on their facades, others with failed fading bar names.  Now, I am pleased that I didn’t photograph these relics, or record their names.  I am glad that I didn’t demean them in that way.Lunch at D&V’s, using up the solid gold Feta cheese.  Then water taxi to Princess Margaret, lounge on beach, return, rum punches (RPs) at the Green Boley (GB).  An intense meeting of, we think, the Easter Regatta Committee is taking place inside.

Dinner at Tommy Cantina’s – O.K. depending on how far you’re into Mexican.  I ordered a ‘lime daiquiri’ as an aperitif, which turned out to be a rather odd kind of rum and lime sorbet, to be sucked through a straw as it melted – hardly a drink at all, more like a dessert.

Saturday 23^rd

Spring and Industry; Mrs Taylor’s

Buffet breakfast at Frangipani, then walk across the island to Spring then Industry Bay, which is trying to reinvent itself as ‘Crescent’.  Presumably they think ‘Industry’ has adverse connotations (invokes dark Victorian satanic mills, whereas I suspect it was actually named for the sturdy Victorian virtue; ‘Crescent’ is of course free of any such negative associations, or any other sort for that matter).  The beaches, especially Spring, look at first sight like a lost opportunity, but then you think, just how many idyllic tourist beaches can this island, and its fragile economy and ecology, sustain?  Certainly, Industry/Crescent’s café  will have to do better – hugely overpriced and inadequate in quality and service.

At 6 p.m., D&V bumped into Cherie and Dylan at Gingerbread; we all repaired to GB to find they’d run out of RP (we’d drunk them dry), so to Frangipani instead.  Then dinner at Mrs Taylor’s ‘Porthole’ – food very good, but the ambience (irritatingly loud TV) and service not quite up to the price.  Shame, because just a little bit more effort could make this into a star turn (see Fernando’s later).

Sunday 24^th

Lower Bay; Can’t Remember the Name; Gingerbread; Farine

Walk across to Lower Bay.  My legs are getting good at this by now: once you have seen your destination, the journey does become a bit easier!

Lunch at ‘Can’t Remember the Name’, a newly built venue – very nice building, roof made of natural untreated timbers, a good, friendly, professional service, we all had ‘fish and chips’ – not quite as we know them back in Blighty, but then, that’s not what we came for is it?

Dinner at the Gingerbread restaurant, curries.  Farine were playing again – what a joyful, inspirational experience this group is!  The Gingerbread waitress, Arlene, did a couple of numbers with the band, then went back to work.  Next thing, she’s washing up behind the counter whilst performing ‘Stand By Me’ with the band, exactly parallel to Aretha’s take on ‘Respect’ in The Blues Brothers – this woman is precisely conscious of what she’s up to, and, as I told her later, is an unmistakeable star.

I attract the attention of Farine’s guitarist, who forces me to play his guitar for about 45 embarrassing seconds.  I try to decline: ‘no man, I’m too pissed’; he responds ‘yeh, so’m I’; I say ‘yeah man but, you got pissed whilst playing, while I got pissed then got asked to play – there’s a difference!’  He acknowledges this distinction, but makes me do it anyway. 

Monday 25^th

Hope Bay; Fernando’s Hideaway

Heavy rain overnight.  Strenuous walk over Mount Pleasant to Hope Bay – hard work, but there was cloud cover most of the way.  Very humid though.

Hope Bay is a totally deserted east-facing cove with a derelict shelter, self-seeding coconut palms and biggish surf, in which we swam.  Then back up a rough overgrown track, a bit hard to find at first, not helped by well-meaning pink ribbon waymarks which unfortunately had, some of them, been fixed to moveable objects.

Rotis for lunch at Mrs Taylor’s, then lounged around on the balcony.  We walked into town to change money and try, unsuccessfully, to find a ‘live-slow@bequia.calm’ T shirt for me – how can they have failed to re-use such a great slogan?

Cherie and Dylan join us for drinks at D&V’s, then Curtis taxis us across to Fernando’s Hideaway, now I think just called Nando’s, an excellent local-style family run outdoor restaurant, with good fish, stewed eggplant (aubergine) etc. – great meal and lots of good conversation.

Tuesday 26^th

Breakfast with ‘Son’; Princess Margaret’s beach; Jack’s Bar; Moonhole; Moskito

Breakfast at Frangipani, very nice fruit platters.  We chat at some length with Sir James (‘Son’) Mitchell, ex-prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Caribbean world statesman, now owner of Frangipani (and probably half the island), ex-husband of Pat who runs Gingerbread – very interesting.  He isn’t too forthcoming about the famous footpath blocking – a vested interest in there perhaps?  D has bought his autobiography, for which Sir J gladly supplies a dedication.

Water taxi to Princess M’s; lunch at Jack’s Bar, better than last time.  The feta salad costs significantly less than it did when we made the identical thing at home – how can this be?  There’s obviously more to the local economy than meets the eye.  Sorry, I’m repeating myself.

When we arrive at the beach, Friendship Rose is moored offshore and the place is heaving with people.  After a couple of hours, at least forty are ferried back to the boat, which then apparently returns to Port Elizabeth.  Strange, we think.

In the afternoon we visit Moonhole, at the far end of the island beyond the airport.  It’s a complex of nineteen weird and wonderful houses, built from and totally integrated into the local landscape – no straight lines.  It was initiated in, I think, the sixties by an eccentric American called Tom Johnston, and now run by his son Jim and lovely English wife Sheena.  The houses are mostly privately owned, and passed on by inheritance, the managing company having first refusal should anyone want to sell.  So there are a few owned by Jim and Sheena, and rented out.  But they make most of their money, I guess, from guided tours like this one.  Fascinating and great fun.

Curtis taxi to Moskito at Friendship Bay for dinner – very disappointing, at least for me.  My fish was overcooked to inedible, service was rushed, wine vastly overpriced.  Aspirant corporatism at its worst.

Curtis actually seems stressed out – wife ill in hospital in Trinidad; can’t meet demand for his services on his own, but terrified of losing business; drafted in his son to help, but unsure he can trust him to deliver, etc…  Just how ‘laid back, live slow’ is this place in actuality?   Jim Johnston, as laid back as they come, explained how, in the rental homes at Moonhole, all you have to do is make your decisions: the full-time staff do everything else.  In the best restaurants, the staff work their butts off to get it right whilst presenting as ‘laid back’.  V thinks we’re seeing the early signs of a new ‘laid back Bequia’ corporate product range.  The Americans we’ve overheard and talked to certainly think that’s what they’re buying. 

Wednesday 27^th

Quiet day; Mac’s Pizzeria; Devil’s Table

Breakfast at Frangipani.  Good pizza for lunch.  D&V went on a snorkelling trip to Moonhole; I lounged, took photos, read, snoozed.

Quiet (!) dinner at Devil’s Table: nothing like the atmosphere of last week, perhaps due to lack of lunar influences – no hordes of nubile teenage dancing girls, just middle-aged Yanks who really shouldn’t.  Lovely steak though.

Thursday 28^th

Lower Bay; Can’t Remember; Fernando’s

Last day!

We attempt breakfast at Frangipani, but are met with stony-faced opposition (‘all these tables are booked!’) then ignored for five minutes – so we decamp to Gingerbread.  No fruit (how do they manage that?), but otherwise OK.

We walk over to Lower Bay, now confirmed as the very best beach.  There’s a huge cruise liner called ‘Wind Surf’ anchored out to sea, not the first one we’ve noticed, but thankfully its population haven’t made it to Lower.  We lunch at Can’t Remember – their burgers aren’t as good as Moskito’s!

Another nice dinner at Fernando’s, back to Frangipani for a beer, and so to bed.

Friday 29^th

Homeward bound

We pack, pay, and bid a sorry farewell to sweet Bequia.

We by-pass the immigration queue at Barbados, as transit passengers.  Flight to Gatwick O.K., but the seats are incredibly uncomfortable – don’t they test these things?

Luggage doesn’t get lost, though it takes hours to find its way to the reclaim; car delivered by an enthused boy racer; back to Reading, cup of tea – and I’m back where I started.

Notes

Taxis

There are three kinds of taxi on Bequia:

·         Minibus.  We didn’t use these, but they’re standard people-carriers, with mostly edifying names like ‘Don’t Give Up’, ‘Justice’, ‘Faith’ etc painted across the front in graffiti-style lettering.

·         Pick-up truck.  This is Curtis’s style of taxi – a truck with bench seats ranged along each side.  Apart from the taxi firm’s ID, they don’t seem to have names.

·         Water taxi.  Obviously, these are not strictly ‘on’, but are boats with outboards, which hang around the jetties or tout for trade up and down the beaches.  They have racy names like ‘Humble Afrikan’, ‘Sweat’, and our favourite ‘Phat Shag’.

Birds

The following types of bird were observed:

·         Bequia Blackbird.  Shaped more like a starling than its English cousin.  Supposedly says ‘Bequia sweet sweet’, though to me it sounds more like ‘Bequia cheap cheap’, which isn’t entirely true.  They’re everywhere, but mostly hang around restaurant terraces.

·         Brown Boobie.  Four foot wing span diver, seen everywhere around the coast.  They hunt constantly, not hovering like raptors but cruising and plunging on the off chance – but rarely seem to catch anything.

·         Frigate Bird (aka Man o’ War).  Magnificent huge sea hunter, up to eight feet span.  They can’t actually dive, not having water-resistant feathers, so have to snatch prey from the sea surface (or from brown boobies).

·         A tiny yellow and black finch who frequents balconies.

·         Humming Bird.  Surprisingly few spotted, as there are allegedly about 29 varieties.

·         A black heron, seen elegantly winging across the bay one evening.

·         Pigeons.

Music

Quite a conservative scene, with the shining exception of Farine (named apparently after a kind of cassava-based porridge).  Bequia musicians don’t seem to have got over Bob Marley yet – seventies style reggae predominates.  A guy called Elvis plays steel drum at the Frangi once a week, to a pre-recorded backing track.  He’s actually very good, jazzy when he lets himself cut loose, but mostly feels he has to do tourist-pleasers.  Quite a lot of country & western, which seems incongruous.  Very little Soca or other more adventurous forms.

Shopping

We concluded that most locals take the ferry to St Vincent to shop – certainly they don’t get their clothes here!  The fruit & veg market is vibrant and well-stocked, though the sales technique can be a bit off-putting – reminded me of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  A notice on the back wall reminds vendors not to apply this kind of ‘in your face’ selling approach; but one or two of them seem to have missed the word ‘not’.  Clothing is almost exclusively tourist crap – there is some good stuff, but you have to hunt it out.  Prices, as noted, seem on the high side.

 

 

 

 

Trumphalism

I’ve been trying to conduct an assessment of President Trump’s personality without using qualifiers – adjectives, adverbs – emotive verbs and nouns, or psychological terminology.  It’s not easy, but here I go with my considered opinion:

He is self-focussed, and possesses a set of values that recognise very little outside his image of himself.  Anything that transcends or contradicts these values is not only opposed, rejected or even denied –   its existence does not often cross the boundaries of his perception.

When that does happen, he reacts with violence, verbal or sometimes physical. The latter is not a practical option for him personally because he’s not strong or brave enough (he outsources it) so language is his only means of attack.  As far as I can observe, though, he rarely engages in direct person-to-person verbal confrontation, preferring to use technology as a masking intermediary.  This is because he does not recognise the concept of dialogue, preferring one-way rhetoric.

Given that rhetoric is thus his only means of self-promotion, his use of language is elementary.  Most of his communications break two of the rules I set myself at the outset – they consist mostly of emotive verbs and nouns and qualifiers thereof – and his terminological vocabulary is small, certainly not extending into specialist or scientific fields.

Finally, although – allowing for his frequent swerves off and then back onto his chosen road – he is mostly consistent in the notions he promotes, his utterances suggest that the notions themselves are not his own but are drawn from a pool of political philosophy dating back centuries.  Those surrounding and motivating him appear to have these notions clearly in focus, and use a broad repertoire of political skills to promote them through his utterances.  It does look, though, as if even they are struggling to keep up with their own creation.

There, I trust that’s all sufficiently objective?  Good, now I can put it a different way:

I believe President Trump to be a self-worshipping, paranoid, unreasoning, inarticulate, manipulative, destructive, cowardly bully. Popular hysteria inexplicably inserted him where he is and evil forces are propping him up there. If it weren’t for that, frankly, he’d just be boring.

Do I Know You?

I have to get a new passport.  Well, the current one doesn’t expire until July, but some destinations seem to insist that it must be valid for several months from your date of arrival, even though you’re booked on a ten-day package holiday; and anyway we have no idea where we might want to go in the next few months, so why not?  The new online system looks pretty slick (on the face of it…).  I have to attach a digital photo of my upper body (which they’ll trim to regulation), so we’ll have to take that soon, the main requirement seeming to be that it looks like me.  Hmm.

By coincidence, Z approached the same general topic from a quite different direction on her blog today, and it set me off thinking about recognition.  If someone had to describe me to another person who’d never seen me, what, leaving out bodily dimensions, hair, clothing and so on, in other words focussing just on my face, what would they say?  I have no idea; and equally I’d find it almost impossible to describe my brother’s, sister’s or indeed wife’s faces in words.

Border controls, of course, use biometric measurements to solve this, but we can’t all be expected to carry an app around in our brains to replicate that; and anyway the one they use is obviously in its technological infancy (aren’t they all?) if my experiences of it are anything to go by.  The queues at the fast track are far longer than the old-fashioned ones where a human glances at your passport and your face twice each and nods you through.  I once had to go back three times; turned out I wasn’t looking at the right green light or something.

I then wondered how novelists tackle it if they feel the need to describe a character’s face.  It is done, and no doubt you could cite examples of characters that you’d recognise in the street just from the author’s description, but I couldn’t come up with any, once I’d filtered out subsequent screen portrayals.  I did think of Mervyn Peake – I’d recognise Steerpike, Mr Flay, Fuschia, although interestingly not Titus, the hero – until I realised that he’d drawn them and then described his drawings.  Perhaps that’s the trick.

I once had a two- or three-minute conversation with a chance-encountered girl on London Bridge station, which was going pretty well until we both realised we weren’t who we thought we were.

 

Of Mastodons, Eels, Kittens and other people

Apologies to my regular readers in Ukraine, Russia, China, Romania and Indonesia, to whom this post will mean very little.  Also to my three or four readers in this country, who might be too young or old to share my nostalgia.  I hope everyone else enjoys it.

I’ve just finished reading the two Arthur Ransome books Z gave me for Christmas.  These are ‘We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea’ and ‘Secret Water’ (both of which are set, or in the case of WDMTGTS, start and finish in East Anglia, which presumably explains why she found them, in almost certainly the same 1950s editions that I’d read the first time around, in a local bookshop.)

My parents – my mother to be precise, because my father wasn’t a great reader; actually you can leave out the ‘great’ – dutifully supplied us kids with age-appropriate reading.  I don’t remember the full range, but it boiled down to two varieties: numerous variants on Enid Blyton’s single imaginative product; and Swallows and Amazons.

Although Z and I had shared our recollected love of these books, I was slightly nervous about returning to that world after an absence of at least sixty years – that world wouldn’t have changed, but I probably had. 

I’m not writing critical reviews of these marvellous books (oh, oops, I just did), nor will I spoil them with summaries of the plots (though I could quite easily: bunch of kids are placed in unintended peril by their remarkably self- and child-indulgent parents, survive imaginary and real threats by a combination of good luck, rapidly acquired skills and quite implausible grown-upness) or textual analysis (they do talk a bit quaint like, innit?)  Instead here’s a quick breakdown of the main characters and, most importantly, two words each on what they gave me all those years ago.

The Swallows: John (practical, anxious); Susan (elder sister); Titty (mischievous fantasist), Roger (word-playing joker).

The Amazons: Nancy (intoxicated challenger); Peggy (invisible make-weight).

Almost everything else has vanished, if it ever existed; but they haven’t changed, and nor have I.

Christmas Card Audit 2016

I was veering towards another indolence year (like 2014), but overwhelming public demand from Sir Bruin has persuaded me to make the effort.

Executive Summary: 

Note: For the first time, this year’s audit includes cards received by both me and Z.  This does not, of course, affect the overall findings, but I just wanted to say so. 

This appears to have been a year of consolidation, with few significant changes to previous trends.  Points of note:

• Animals and Birds are holding up well.  I have again given a breakdown of this category, with a further sub-division of the birds. 
• Robins have made a small but welcome comeback, as has snow.
• There are a few interesting new categories: mailboxes, choirboys and – surprisingly - booze.

The full figures (2015’s, where applicable, in brackets):

 

Snow/Snowmen/Snowflakes:               10 (2)
Santas/Reindeer:                                  3 (1)

Animals/Birds:                                     16 (13)

of which

Robins:                                     3 (1)

Free-range reindeer:                 3 (4)
Horses:                                     1

Foxes:                                      1
Sheep:                                      1

Cats:                                        1

Squirrels:                                 1

Wrens (we think):                   1

Owls:                                       1 (1)

Penguins:                                 1

Partridges (in pear tree):          1
Bullfinches:                             1

Landscapes:                                         4 (4)
Nativities/Wise Men/Angels:              7 (6)

Christmas trees/Baubles:                     9 (6)
Abstract:                                              2 (3)

Mail-letterboxes:                                 3
Choirboys:                                           1
Booze:                                                 1
 

Special categories:
Homemade/designed:                          4 (4)

Cards with glued-on glitter:                10 (12)
Wonderfully weird:                             1 (0)

 

I can’t nominate a Card of the Year award this year – they are all equal in splendour.

Family Christmasses concluded (for now)

So now all the cards are down* and the tree is sitting naked outside the porch, ready for its final blaze of glory on the bonfire, it’s time to tell you about Christmas with my fourth and last family. 

Except I can’t, because circumstances have dictated that the two I’ve had so far have been only partial gatherings of the entire clan, and although I could retrofit several full assemblies and make it up, that’d be cheating.  So I’ll just say that the two so far have been wonderful in quite different ways, and instead share a few more details from previous lives:

The only first family Christmas I remember clearly was when my brother was born, on December 23^rd.  My sister and I were standing in the hall beside my father when the phone rang, he listened, and told us the news.  It was snowing heavily, and we played out in it next day.  That’s the whole memory, anything more would be made up; but its sharpness still sparkles so I’m sharing it unembellished.

The singsongs started out a bit tentative, but over a couple of years settled down into a tradition: Sloop John B (a gleeful travesty of the Beach Boys, everyone wanting to do the ‘doo-do-da-doo-doo’ part); Alan and my immaculate harmony on the Ev’s All I Have To Do Is Dream; in the early years a lovely solo of a pre-war song I shamefully forget by Alan’s dad Les; my take on Buddy Holly’s Everyday; other stuff; and the grand finale, American Pie, in full.   Eventually it became a chore for me (I was the bandleader, after all) and I almost started to dread it nearly as much as the present-issuing routine.  Now, I wouldn’t mind another crack (if I could still play the guitar – must check that sometime).

*I might do my spasmodically annual Xmas card audit soon, if I can be bothered.

Family Christmasses (cont’d)

When I got married in 1988, I joined my third family.  That was in August, and in about October the subject of Christmas came up.  I’d already realised that they did it on a scale I hadn’t yet experienced, so in a moment of self-confident rashness I said “Well, we can have it here, can’t we?”  There were expressions ranging from bewildered through delighted to highly relieved.  Afterwards, I was consoled.  “Well, you weren’t to know...”

It turned out that we were sleeping eight adults and two pre-teens in our just occupied, barely habitable three-bedroom house.  That proved easy once modesty, privacy, all that kind of stuff had been sufficiently downgraded – after all, I was used to roughing it.  What proved to be harder to cope with was the sheer scale of the thing.  Especially the presents.

This family’s approach to present-giving, it seemed, could be summarised as: if you know you need it, or are going to need it – a shirt, a suit, a pair of shoes, an electric toothbrush, anything –  in the next twelve months, wrap it up and call it a Christmas present.  (I exaggerate, but not much.)  This wasn’t in itself a bad idea, and it did add to the general jollity for the first hour or two – everybody likes a pressie, whether their own or someone else’s, don’t they? – but the rule, it also seemed, was that each one had to be opened, inspected and if you were unlucky passed round the whole family to be admired, before the paper on the next one could be touched.  Time passed.  Slowly.  Eventually lunch came to the rescue.

My exact memory of how it went is hazy now, but I’m sure that at some point after the pudding and before the next round of gifts – probably during the coffee and brandies, come to think of it – I had an inspiration. 

“Sing-song anybody?”

Twenty eyes lit up.

This story will be concluded in my next post.

 

 

Family Christmasses

I reckon I’ve belonged to four families so far, if a family can be thought of as a bunch of people you spend Christmas with. 

All four families were very different, but all four Christmasses were the same in essence, which I don’t need to spell out but will anyway  - gifts; food and drink; laughter and love; the occasional spat and reconciliation; exhaustion and unexpected energy reserves… I didn’t need to, did I?  So I’d like to have a look at the differences.

When I was growing up, Christmas was a time to be taken for granted, of course – I was a child, and children have the feelings they’re taught to and don’t question them much, do they?  So I won’t dwell on childhood Christmasses except to note that gifts were pretty frugal: this was the forties and fifties, and though my parents were well off by most people’s standards, there wasn’t that much left over for extravagance, which in any case wasn’t in their nature.  So our stockings would be bulked out with  tangerines and walnuts – strangely, those are the gifts I seem to remember most vividly.

Then I joined an Italian family.  The emphasis there was on the food and drink.  I read an article recently which feared that this was in danger of dying out, and there’s probably a risk of that, but I have few direct connections with Italy any more, so can’t say.  My Italian family was from Reggio-Emilia, which meant antipasto, then capelletti (or tortellini) alla panna (in cream; none of your wimpish brodo round there), then a huge bollito misto with salsa verde and rosso; cheese (appropriate wines to accompany all that, often home-made lambrusco, but not as you might know it – real lambrusco is raspingly dry and low in alcohol, drunk more in the manner and quantities we’d drink bitter); various desserts probably including zuppa inglese (English soup: trifle to you); rounded off with coffee, a slice of panettone and a grappa or cognac or several.  After all that there wasn’t much time, space or energy for anything else.

The third and fourth families will be along tomorrow.

Overload

Oh heck, there’s a limit to how much of a fatberg can build up in the world before it accumulates until the sewers overflow and it bursts out and drowns us all in colourless gunge. 

OK, here comes Rational Tim.  What can we (I use ‘we’ to mean those of us who are sane, and I use 'sane' clinically) do?

1. Make it geographical.  What happens in one place doesn’t have to happen in another.  So let’s revive and pervert localism (remember that?).  Let’s encourage the inhabitants of Shitsville Iowa and Crudham Doughshire to fight amongst themselves.  That way they’ll lose sight and interest, and the big issues will get swamped by the little ones.  Which leads to:
2. Make it complicated.  Earlier this evening I heard a lawyer explaining on the radio just how convoluted the legal and judicial processes in both the U.K. and America are.  Doing this stuff with due process will, or should, require many man-years of expertise to achieve.  And if anyone tries to ride roughshod over due process, well, they’d be digging their own hole.  The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.  And having done all that:
3. Make it moral.  Artists are the custodians of morality, aren’t they? 

DROs

Earlier this evening, I mistakenly described making risotto as boring, which it isn’t. *  Z put me right by pointing out that, in the right circumstances, making risotto can be quite comforting.  So boring it isn’t.

It is a routine, though.  At least the early stages (the fun comes at the end, when you transform this soggy mess into something uniquely exquisite, or thereabouts): soften the onion, add the rice, then half an hour of ladle of stock, stir, ladle of stock, stir, ladle of stock – with exact timing and quantities, so you’re not even allowed to wander off and do something else.  But you are allowed to think, so naturally my thoughts turned to breakfast.

Now that’s a routine!  Everybody must have one.  (Or at least everybody who actually eats breakfast.**) How else would we get to coffee time?  I’m not suggesting it has to be the same every day, of course; but the breakfast routine is the default when any or all of imagination, energy and willpower fail.  I won’t bore (ha!) you with the details of mine, except to say that feeding the cat figures in there, somewhere between the tea and the toast phases, and that timing (which I find is a key attribute of a good routine) has to be flexible: which keeps the routine from becoming a habit.

Which brings me to what I really wanted to say.  Routines are good, because they can be pulled in to take care of unimportant but necessary business.  Habits are bad, because they can’t be pushed out to make way for anything.  The trick is not to let the former turn into the latter.  Thinking helps.

 

 

* I will never tire of repeating my definition of boredom, which is wanting to do something but not having anything you want to do, even though I know I delighted (not to say bored) you enough with it years ago.

**Marco Pierre White once claimed he always had a three-course breakfast: a coffee, a cigarette, and a cough.

Leeds (4)

I half-promised the other day to write about a certain breed of small vehicle (now thankfully extinct), and as I’ve resolved to blog more often, in the hope of doing my bit towards revitalising this dying art, here goes.

The car in question was an anagram of Brian Retail – although I’m sure they’re no longer made, I’m also sure there are still owners, whom I wouldn’t want to upset should they goggle their enthusiasm and light upon this post.  You know what I mean.

Anyway, this particular one was owned by one of my first digsmates in Brookfield Avenue, Leeds, whose name, as it happens, was Brian.  Brian (who was a dental student and as far as I know never went into the retail trade, but never mind) was quite challengingly mischievous, in a good if dangerous way.  Having ferried me around for a while in this contraption, one day he asked me if I’d like to have a drive.  I’d recently passed my test, and any such opportunity wasn’t to be passed by, so I naturally accepted.

The driving position, as I recall, meant that a tallish person like me had to scrunch himself up like a used tissue just to fit in there, never mind drive the thing.  Having been instructed in the peculiarities of the pedals and the column shift, we set off. 

Brian gave me directions – “left here, straight on a bit, right” – and I was getting quite into it, feeling my way into the car’s unusual responsiveness to instructions, until he said “OK, go left here.  Best you change down to first.”

I did say he was mischievous.  He’d taken me to the top of the steepest hill in, if not all Leeds, then certainly the Harehills district.  It was about one in eight, a good hundred yards down. There was a set of traffic lights at the bottom.  Giggling, Brian told me how to proceed.

“What you do now, you put both your feet on the footbrake, you pull the handbrake up as hard as you can with both hands, and you stand up.  Oh, and pray for green.”

Follow the Van (Caravan diaries)

We’ve been from Norfolk to Pembrokeshire and back in the past week.  As a result, the caravan is now asleep until the spring.

I learnt two interesting things whilst we were there.  (Pembrokeshire, that is, not Norfolk.)  The first was one of those circular routes that start from somewhere completely irrelevant, accidentally take you through several relevant places and drop you off at another completely irrelevant spot just next door.

For some completely irrelevant reason, we started singing that song about my old man said follow the van, you know the one.  Turns out they were evicted, had to load everything onto this van, there wasn’t room for her so she had to walk, toting a completely irrelevant bird, got lost and pissed, etc etc.  The interesting bit was, of course, the van, which started its life as a queue of transport camels crossing the Sahara, turned into a single horse- (not camel-) drawn vehicle which later acquired an internal combustion engine, before performing a career swerve, regaining its full name and becoming a mobile home (a term now exclusively reserved for static ones, the mobile ones being termed tourers) commonly known as a caravan, or string of load-bearing camels but, to us insiders, knowingly referred to as ‘the van’.

The other thing was to do with Julius Caesar, who apparently didn’t say (in Latin) ‘the die is cast’ but (in Greek) ‘the dice must be thrown’, or some such thing that means more or less the opposite.  What I learnt was that I’d been wrongly taught, about sixty-five years ago, that the ‘die’ in question was one of those metal stamps for making coins and ‘cast’ meant ‘forged’, as in cast iron.  Ah well.  I have little of either language, and less of the other.

In other news, there was only one rabbit.

Upgrade

I have received a communication from the manufacturers of my car.  In a major upgrade, instead of having to drive with four wheels, I will now only need two.  This will make the car lighter and hence better.

By the same post, the makers of my cornflakes have informed me that, henceforth, an enhancement to their product will supply me with a solid block of corn, from which I can create my own personal customised flakes.  This improves my consumer choice.

And the government, my newspaper tells me, has decided that the election process will be simplified by allowing only one candidate on each ballot paper, thus removing the risk of ambiguity and error.  My newspaper has responded positively to this by agreeing to eliminate all adjectives and adverbs from their reportage, in the interests of clarity.

Finally, statistics prove that the majority of cats prefer avians to quadrupeds.  As cats outnumber humans globally, legs should therefore be discouraged.

I think it’s still good to be alive, but there’s always room for improvement.

It was a Haunting picture

We were staying in a cottage, inaccurately named ‘Coastal View’, in Porthgain, and we’d arranged to meet up with our friends for a meal at Harbour Lights, the restaurant across the square.  They were staying  in their caravan three miles up the road at Mathry.  I don’t remember the meal, but afterwards I know we went back to our place, had a few drinks and decided to go next door to the Sloop Inn. 

I know that I was drinking whisky of some sort, and so was Paul.  A few artists lived in Porthgain, still do, and Paul got into an argument with one of them, called Bryn.  Bryn was drinking brandy, and we worked out next day that the glasses might’ve got confused.  He did pretty good representational landscapes of the local scene, which Paul decided to challenge on the grounds that he was hypocritically exploiting the tourist trade whilst simultaneously decrying it and thereby squandering his talent, or some such stuff.  Paul is good at challenging when he’s in the mood, and Bryn was in the mood too. 

The pub ran a gallery in the back room in those days, and they dragged each other out there, getting a bit rough.  I was sitting at the bar holding hands with Caro, because she’d reached her weepy phase and I’d reached my amorous one, so I don’t know exactly what happened out there.  Reconstructions suggest that blows had nearly, possibly actually, been exchanged.  They wouldn’t have been very harmful by this stage, but what is sure is that a picture got knocked off the wall, and the frame got slightly damaged.  We popped in the next day and viewed it: an impressionistic depiction of a coastal scene – Druidstone, I think – in a rather abstract style.  Good, but certainly nothing to have a drunken conceptualistic fight over.  We all, Bryn included, laughed and forgot about it.

A few months later, V and I were in Narberth, visiting the old aunts, Margaret and Ray.  They still lived at home in those days, in the house in Spring Gardens that their father had built in the early years of the century.  The carers came in twice a day, did what caring had to be done, and left.  Ours was a duty visit, and the aunts were still just interesting enough for conversation, but there are limits, so we made our temporary excuses and wandered down the Drang and through to the High Street.  There used to be a nice gallery down next to the second-best butchers’, before it failed and got turned into yet another tat shop.  There in the window was the Picture.  We told Paul and Caro about this, and next time they were in the area they went to have a look, but it had moved on. 

On subsequent visits to Pembrokeshire, though, we all seemed to come across it every so often in various unexpected locations.  I don’t remember the details now, but it kept cropping up.  It was clearly stalking us.

That winter, we were invited to Paul and Caro's house for a meal.  When we arrived we were instructed to close our eyes, turn around, open them and look at the wall of the stairwell.

“Well, we had to, didn’t we?” said Caro.

Reading and me, Part Three – Location, Location and, erm, Location

Ah well, two out of three…

The house was ideally placed for my commute, the branch line station being almost literally at the bottom of the garden (although I couldn’t actually get to it that way, having instead to walk a full two hundred yards down the road, something that initially frustrated me until I saw the benefits of not having hordes of commuters and other less savoury station denizens traipsing past the back gate at all hours).  There were good local shops, if we needed them, and a small friendly supermarket just up the road.  There were also a couple of interestingly quirky restaurants.  And the town centre was walkable.  So far, so good.

It was also within staggering distance of three or four inveterate party-givers, who formed part of what I soon learnt was jocularly termed the ‘Reading Mafia’.  This sobriquet wasn’t entirely appropriate; there was no firm evidence that any of them were involved in anything seriously dodgy, although contacts could no doubt be picked up in extreme need.  But the parties were good and frequent; and once the worst of our building work was done we fairly quickly became junior members of this party clique.  I was, of course, the new boy: believe it or not, especially if you know anything of my earlier history, I’d never been anywhere near this kind of scene before.  I dived in headfirst and lapped thirstily.

The only downside of the location, it transpired, was the noise factor.  We should of course have worked out that having a railway in the back garden entailed the odd train going along it – in this case, as it was the main line from practically everywhere to everywhere else, every few minutes during the day and irregularly during the night.  The first 4 a.m. goods train shook us, and the house, awake.  It is, however, surprising how quickly you get used to that.  There was also an unforeseen amount of road traffic; if you saw a map of Reading, and knew where my road is, you’d see that it’s a natural north-south rat-run between the Thames bridges and the M4.  Again, we just had to get used to that.  And secondary double glazing works wonders.

 

Reading and me - Part Two

The house took some finding, because it had to meet several fairly strictly defined criteria.  It had to be nice, obviously.  It had, preferably, to be detached – we’d both had enough of dividing walls – which was a bit of a constraint in Reading, where the nicest properties tend to be terraced four- or five-storey Victorian town houses.  It had to be near enough to the town centre for shopping, and to commuting transport links.  And it had to be the right size and shape for the fabulous parties we intended to throw.

I think we viewed around twenty, over a three month period.  We actually made offers on a couple, which luckily fell through.  Luckily, because out of nowhere the dream house suddenly popped up.  I remember the viewing very clearly.  We briefly inspected the outside – pre-war red-brick detached, imposingly deep front garden, a sense of solidity.  When we got inside, we took one glance at the two spacious reception rooms, the elegant stairway and the galleried landing, looked at each other and just nodded.

The house was an executors’ sale, so there was no upward chain.  You can imagine, if you haven’t done it, the complexity of synchronising two sales with a single purchase, so this was an added bonus.  It was, however, also a wreck.  Not structurally – it had, we were told been built by a builder for his own occupancy, obviously a good sign.  It actually reminded me of the house I’d been brought up in in Bournemouth from the age of twelve, of which the same thing was supposedly true.

But it had been dreadfully refurbished in the 1950s, and then neglected over the years.  Just to give a couple of  instances: the lovely original brick fire surrounds had all been chipboarded over; and the bathroom was a plastic suite in yellow – yellow!   There was no heating worthy of the name.  And the plumbing and electrics were, let’s say, original.

We got rapidly in touch with a friend of Viv’s called Tony, and obtained permission for him to have a look.  Tony was an expert plumber and builder, and the sort of guy who relished a challenge, especially for a friend.  Having had a good inspection and an equally good think, he took us down a local Irish pub and gave us his views on what needed doing, together with a sensible price.  We discussed it in a lot of detail over the subsequent days, but we knew we’d committed in our hearts from the outset.  So we got onto the agents, offered the asking price, which was accepted, and moved in a month later, picking our way across the floor joists.