Rum Cocktails by Rail

I hardly ever drink cocktails. For one thing, they're expensive and that offends my sense of meanness. For another, they are so often sweet and easy to drink that I'd find it too easy to become uproariously drunk in a very short time. However, John E Vistic and cohorts were playing at the Tunnels the other evening; Moonface and I like the music so we went on down.

AS part of the ticket price, early birds were given free rum cocktails - and they were really pleasant, just rum, lime and ginger beer . The music was good, too. We went early as Daisy Chapman was first on. He songs are so dark and twisted that I sometimes wonder about her upbringing: a cloudy mix of murder, obsession, incest, kidnapping and other unpleasantries.

We gave the folk style singer a miss.

Emily Breeze played with her new band: she looked as if she'd crawled off the cover of an early Roxy Music album after a bad night out, and she sounded like the offspring of Eartha Kitt and Ozzy Osborne.

JohnE Vistic was as rocking as ever, but Moonface & I decided to wimp out early, before the pole-dancers got going. We'd taken the train down and as the last return was impending, we nipped across the concourse and walked the last few minutes home from Montpelier. I do like going out by train.

:o)

Walking home

Today was quintessential November: grey, cold, drizzly. We trolled around an art trail yesterday, so fancied a change today. I also needed to try my contact lenses for an extended period in which I wouldn't want to either read or use a computer, so a walk was the obvious answer. As I didn't want to drive anywhere Moonface & I took the local train to Shirehampton and walked home via the riverbank.

Seeing the Avon at low tide from this new perspective and at walking pace is to see it in a very different light as it's lined by low grey cliffs above the mud-line. The walk home is about six miles, of which only the last is through town, and there's about another quarter-mile of tarmac along the Portway to Black Rocks, before climbing up to the Downs.

A few observations: in spite of the weather and the omnipresent sound of traffic the walk had interest and was effectively rural. And I could see without glasses! Today must have been the first time for forty years that I have spent so long awake without glasses on my face. When I finally succeeded in the prolonged struggle to remove the contacts ( I hope that this gets easier with practice ) and replace my glasses, they felt very strange and unwelcome. I should have tried contacts years ago, before my ability to focus atrophied.

In the final mile we stopped for cake & coffee in a new-to-us caff on Whiteladies, then scouted for others to try on subsequent Sundays: winter is coming.

:o)

Health and Safety

Thinking back to France again, on our brief walking break, I was impressed by the lack of health & safety provisions which typically blight interesting locations in Britain. There were no warning signs over sheer drops, crumbling fortifications were unmended, railways unfenced: overall there seemed to be a general concensus that it's an individual's responsibility to act sensibly and to take care.


(Moonface and the Cow's Arsehole)


A case in point was the cave near Meailles. In the Mendips there are many limestone caves and potholes, all of which are carefully closed off by locked steel shutters to prevent the unwary or inquisitive from entering them. Two hours walk into the hills from Meailles, it's a different story. The Grotte de Meailles is 400m long, and descends for over 100 slippery muddy metres into the hillside. And it's completely open to anyone, so Moonface and I investigated it. Locally, it's known as the "Cul de Boeuf". It was a great experience, descending steeply along the sticky clayey boulders inside the cavern. We had two torches, so light wasn't a problem, but there were potholes in the floor of the grotte which we had to look out for. It's the first proper cave I've been in unaccompanied and without guides, since I went into Kirkdale cave as a lad. It was cool, it was sticky, it was wonderful. I only wish that we had spent more time there, but we had a last train to catch from Meailles back to Entrevaux. We saw no other walkers that day, only a solitary woman mushroom-picker in the morning.



:o)

Old

Today, I became old.
In a single transaction in a railway station in the south of France, my status changed.

Buying tickets for Moonface and I to take the meter-gauge train from Nice to Entrevaux up the Var valley, I noticed that the age at which discounts apply for seniors is only 55. And I'm that age.

So I asked for one standard and one cheaper ticket, and received them. Mine was 25% cheaper, and instantly I entered a different age group and became a "Senior". Perhaps I'll become more mature now.

;0)

The Society of Wood Engravers

There's something about wood engravings: the simplicity of the concept contrasts with the complexity and detail of the finished prints. I like the purity of the black and white, the small size and personal nature of woodcuts.

We visited Bath at the weekend, to catch the last weekend of the Society of Wood Engravers exhibition. I coveted practically every small engraving, they were so beautiful. I bought Moonface a little engraving of a hare for Christmas, although I'm not sure that its artwork was quite up to the standard which we saw in Bath. However, it was from a local artist.

Travelling to Bath is almost a pleasure these days, as we can take the local train only ten minutes' walk away, then after a change at Temple Meads we can be walking there in only forty minutes. It's faster and so much easier than driving. After spending our hour or so in the Victoria Gallery we strolled around Bath, regretting the mess made of some of the centre in the '60s, browsing shoe-shops in a desultory manner, half-hoping to find something useful in the sales, and then ate a disappointing couple of sandwiches before another stroll and catching a train home. It made a good day out.


:o)

Bloody French

I was born in a grimy industrial Northern town, with few redeeming features that were not destroyed by planners in the 1960's. There were almost no buildings of style or interest except the local parish church, and the skyline to the North was dominated by the flare-stacks and chimneys of the massive chemical works. When the wind was in the wrong direction, we could scent the acrid brown of nitrogen dioxide which we could see floating towards the town, turning to nitric acid in our lungs.

And yet the industrial background was something to be proud of. Stockton-on-Tees was home to the very first passenger railway in the world, which ran in 1825. The revolution in powered transport for ordinary people started there. The first house in which I lived had a railway embankment at the bottom of the garden, so that I could watch the steam trains slowly shunting by from our back room. The embankment was an extension of my garden for playing in, with overgrown bushes and tall grass to hide in and young trees to climb. So I have always had a fondness for railways, and a preference for rail travel over all other methods. I have watched the slow decline of Britain's railways with despair; our ticket prices high with an arcane charging structure, the carriages often rickety or filthy, and running slower than they did thirty years ago. The slavery to making money at the expense of beauty and effectiveness meant that stations such as Paddington were cluttered with kiosks and booths selling stuff to the travellers waiting for the trains that always arrived late.

And then, three years ago, I took a job with a French company with offices based just by the Gare de Lyon. And I was shocked. The trains, heading for the Mediterranean and points south, were clean, modern and fast. The station looked as if it were built for the public, not the shop-keepers. The next year, in Spring 2005 Moonface and I took a holiday in the south of France, near Nice, and experienced mountain railways that could never have been built here. The tracks clung to the side of gorges, and spiralled upwards inside solid rock, doubling back upon themselves to climb high over Alpine passes. We were impressed and awed at what could be done. Even these branch lines had new, clean, spacious trains. It made me so jealous and angry that Britain's engineering heritage has been pissed away training accountants and lawyers to be better paid and more respected that men and women who can build.

This last weekend I travelled to Nancy in the east of France to see a friend. (More of that some other time) For the return trip I took the direct TGV Est line, newly opened this June. It made me spit with anger. We travelled two hundred miles in ninety minutes, in quiet comfort, in reserved seats with plenty of luggage space at a price far below that of a similar trip in the UK. The same distance from London would take three time as long and cost three times as much.
Oh, and the train ran exactly to its timetable, arriving spot-on at noon.

Bloody French.


:0(