More rips

This time it's a rip current.
I went down with the cycling lads to Treyarnon for the weekend, arriving at the hostel just in time to take a swim at sunset. The water was bracingly cold although no worse than the Lake, but close to the shore was a scary rip. I was swimming steadily north along the shore and the current was dragging me slowly south and out. Not nice. I changed direction to escape and was fine, but it was a salutary lesson in tides and something that I'd not experienced before.

Two days later a bunch of us went for a mid-morning swim from the same beach, just below the hostel, and although Andy and I went straight across the current two of our party who were just behind us were swept along and out, so had to be rescued by the coastguard. Frighteningly, neither Andy nor I noticed the action as we were looking in the opposite direction. If the coastguard hadn't been there, it might have been nasty.

Strangely, half an hour later the tidal conditions had changed so much that the water was benign, good for body-boarding, and quite safe. We should have waited.

:o/

Recalibrating

I've been in the USA for almost a week and I can detect the ways in which my tastes are changing.
In food, the pervading sweetness and large portion sizes (compared with European standards) are becoming normalised.

In a pub last night I found myself looking at women whose comfort-sized waists and arses would exclude themselves totally from consideration back home. It's just that large has become normalised. Even the Metro exit gates seem larger than those in London.

:-o

Impressions of Belgium, i. Antwerpen Station.

Antwerp's main railway station is an object lesson in how to modernise and improve a fine Victorian building. At ground level is an uncluttered, clear area for passengers, well-signed and with few interruptions to a straight stroll across the platforms. The shops are information booths are arranged in the old arches around the periphery: a great contrast to the messy stalls and shops which clutter British stations making the places so difficult and unpleasant to navigate. High above the main entrance is a magnificent rose window set in a series of arches, a testament to imagination and appreciation of art and good architecture for the public’s sake.

What has been changed is below ground level: three layers of underground platforms taking the majority of trains through high halls of concrete and red-brick columns, retaining the light and spacious feel of the older constructions. The passengers have lots of space, there's no feeling of being crowded at all.

The contrast with any new British station is depressing: why can’t we manage to build something as good? St Pancras is vaunted as a trimph but it’s nothing in comparison to the job done in Antwerp.


:o)

Hitcher II

Returning from a cold and frosty walk on the Ridgeway and the first meeting with Fiona for at least a year, we stopped to pick up a hitcher. It's only been a month or so since I last gave a lift, so I was surprised to see another man thumbing so soon.

And that is a relection upon how rare hitch-hiking is these days.

This guy looked like a tramp, with a long coat, woolly hat and long unkempt beard. Moonface told me that he smelled like a tramp, too, but my sense of smell seems to have disappeared again after a recent series of nosebleeds. Anyway, he was a decent enough man, a little terse but open enough, with a lovely Durham accent and a respect for the car: he suggested putting his rucksacks in the boot to keep our interior clean. Nice guy, no money, I hope that he managed to get to his destination before nightfall as it's cold out there tonight.

:o)

Chocolate Orange

Years ago, I think in 1983, Moonface and I had a holiday in what was then Czechoslovakia, behind the Iron Curtain. We drove there across Europe and were struck by the paucity of foodstuffs in the shops and of general goods for sale. Nevertheless, my memories are of an excellent and exciting holiday.

Since we drove there, we had stocked up with food to eat on the journey and somehow an orange had rolled under a seat and become lost for a week or so. We found it again, looking dessicated and tired, when we were staying at a campsite somewhere in the Czech countryside. (As an aside, the campsite was overrun with voles: their burrows were everywhere and we could see them beneath our tent groundsheet in the evenings). We were about to dump the orange when we were asked about it by the couple next to us, they had not eaten one for years. So of course we gave it to them, feeling thoroughly guilty about our Western ignorance of their relative poverty.

I was reminded of this by Dorota when we met in Wroclaw earlier this year, as her memories of pre-'89 Poland include having oranges only at Christmas: the feast and the fruit are firmly linked in her mind. She also likes chocolate, so I determined to buy her a Terry's Chocolate Orange when she visited England in September. But I forgot to buy one for her. We met three times, each time I forgot to look for one beforehand, each time I remembered as soon as we met but never mentioned that I wanted to give her one.

She's recently found a new boyfriend, an Englishman living in Poland. When she told me that he was flying home to Manchester for a long weekend I told Dorota about the Chocolate Orange, and suggested that she ask him for one. She wouldn't, of course. I was quite tempted to dig out his email address from the internet and suggest it to him, but that would have been creepy and interfering and she'd have screamed at me. So I didn't.

Then, last weekend when Moonface and I were walking around Clifton I spotted a pile ready for sale before Christmas, and told her about the ungiven gift. She sneered a little. I think.

And last Monday I spoke to Dorota after her boyfriend had returned from the UK and spent the weekend with her. He had brought her a Terry's Chocolate Orange as a present.

How on earth did he know?

:o/

Hitchers

There are very few hitch-hikers on the roads these days, especially the types with rucksacks, so I was surprised to see someone at the motorway services trying to thumb a lift from the traffic.

Since I have fond memories of doing lots of hitching in my youth, I stopped and took the guy for fifty miles towards his destination. He wasn't the best of company, I must admit, as he was slightly creepy with an over-smiley face and brushed-forward straight hair, something like Bruce Glover who played Mr Wint, the gay Bond villain in Diamonds are Forever. My hitch-hiker was Dutch, lived with his mother, had never owned a mobile phone or had sent an email, and his destination was a Youth Hostel where he knew the warden. Still, he needed the lift, I was pleased to give it, and we both got where we wanted a little faster than otherwise. In my case it was because I drove slightly faster to get rid of him quicker.

I still like the principle of giving lifts to strangers.

:o/

Latitude I

I spent the last weekend at the Latitude Festival near Southwold, and am still a little shaken by it. To be honest, I didn't have a great time. It's difficult to explain why, because I did like the music, and the poetry and the theatre and all the activities; yet I felt slightly on edge nearly all the time. Even when listening and watching a great band, there was a part of me that just didn't want to be there.

I suppose it was the ambience that hit me, I just found that the crowds were too much for me, for all that time. Perhaps only one day at the festival would have been fine. I liked bumping into people whom I knew, though. Perhaps I'm just a particular type of middle-aged middle-class person with a narrow social orbit. Although Latitude was in the far east of England, 350 km from home and seemed to be full of Londoners we met half a dozen friends from just around the corner from us in Bishopston, one of the men I cycle with in Bristol plus his girlfriend, and also a couple of my south Bristol friends / acquaintances. Then I met with two of my cousins, two of their children (whom I'd never met before), and my brother's ex-girlfriend. I think that I was only relaxed when I was talking with or in a group of people I knew. So socially the weekend was great, but I was still uncomfortable.

It's strange that I feel like this, now. When I was younger I was much more sociable and was completely unfazed by such crowds, but gradually it's become less and less of a pleasure. I must be turning into a grumpy old man.

I only went to Latitude because Moonface enjoys them so much. After my last experience at Glastonbury she has gone to many festivals either on her own or with friends, but we enjoy each other's company so I decided to try again. The other factor, I suppose, was the chance to meet up with my cousins from that side of the country; 250 miles is a long way away and I hadn't seen Kate for many years, and had never met Lydia & Darcy, her daughters.

So it looks as if Moonface will be going to the next few festivals without me, except for the odd day trip. She's got at least two more lined up for the rest of the summer - good for her.

*******************

On the plus side, I have decided what would make a good weekend for me: exploring a city, seeing some art & architecture, eating & drinking, then going to see a band in a pub or club afterwards. City breaks are generally fun, but I've never tied any music into the weekends: that might make them even more memorable and exhausting.

:-/

Two Dawns

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the first moon landing.

I can still remember watching it live, staying up all night to do so. I was sixteen at the time, and my family didn't own a television back then, so I walked around to my cousin's house in the evening before and we stayed up all night to see the pictures on their black-and-white TV. I can remember Neil Armstrong fluffing his lines, and how this was not reported.

Strangely, my most intense memory is of the walk back home in the early hours of the morning, walking across the school playing-field all covered in dew, and watching rabbits eating & playing in the longer grass by the surrounding hedges. Rabbits were very rare, back then. It was only a dozen years or so since most of the rabbits in the country had been wiped out by myxomitosis and they were just beginning to re-establish themselves.

*************************

Forty years on, I stayed up all night to drive home this morning from the Latitude festival, 240 miles from Bristol, watching dawn breaking in the van's rear-view mirror as the tractor-like growl of the engine drowned out the nuances of the music on the radio. It was cool when we stopped for a break by the motorway services, red-pink skies and dewy grass.

There's a particular peace about watching morning arrive, when you've been up all night. It's a sense of quiet satisfaction, knowing that something has ween worthwhile - because otherwise, why would you have stayed up?


:o)

Relief & comparisons

I was rather nervous before going out to Wroclaw to meet Dorota, as the last time I had spent an extended weekend visiting a female friend, it had ended very badly and Kaa has not spoken to me since.

With regards to that Nancy weekend, I still don't know what I did wrong (if anything), as Kaa refused to say. That was a weird few days - thinking about it, it's now exactly two years since I flew out to Nancy to meet her and her man. I still cannot work out what I did to offend her, or why she wouldn't say what it was. The situation was surreal. At four in the afternoon of my last day she was happily scampering around naked at her brother-in-law's cabin by the river; by seven she was refusing to speak and had her face set with a scowl like stone. That was probably the worst emotional shock I'd had for years. It didn't help that I'd had a call to tell me that Moonface's mother had fallen badly and was in hospital.

But that's a long time ago, now.

Last weekend in Wroclaw was different. For a start, Dorota and I didn't know each other so intimately beforehand. We'd talked a fair bit when she worked in England, but that was in 2001. And we'd exchanged irregular emails since then, but nothing really personal - it was more of the sort of relationship that men have, I suppose; nothing too deep. So really, things could have gone very wrong but they didn't, and the opposite happened.

We got on very well, surprisingly well, and had such a good time. I'd been expecting Dorota to be there with her boyfriend but it turned out that he'd remained in Torun, and her working days were less extensive than we'd feared. This meant that we had a decent chunk of time every day to just spend chatting, walking around doing some desultory sightseeing and drinking beer. So that's what we did, and enjoyed it. Her work commitments meant that we didn't get on top of each other too much, so we coped better with the time we had and (I hope) extended a good friendship. So here's to her visits to the UK in September and possibly before.

:o)

Wroclaw

Wroclaw is built around its islands, where the Odra used to run in rapids and split into many smaller streams which I guess once made it easier to bridge and the islands into secure places to live. Now the river is tamed and the city has extended, but its heart is still the river, the many small islands and the old town.

I enjoyed my stay there. Obviously for the company, the relaxed atmosphere, but it's also a good little city for a not-very-busy weekend break. The centre is pretty but typically central European, with not much to see beyond the reconstructed square and the many brick churches.

And there are lots of rather nice beer vendors in the main square, serving lots of drinks for very reasonable prices (so far as Brits are concerned). I must confess that I spent quite a bit of time there yet didn't get a hangover at all, which is unusual for me and beer.

It's unlikely that I'd choose to return to Wroclaw except for sentimental reasons, but I do want to go back to Poland as there seems to be much more to see than I'd expected, and the history is something which needs to be explored.

:o)

Weird

I'm in Wroclaw, meeting Dorota for a long weekend although she has to work for several hours per day even over the weekend which means that we've spent less time together than either of us would have liked.

But in a sizeable city, we've just bumped into each other by coincidence, twice.
Yesterday I was strolling back to my hotel through a park on the outskirts of the old town - and there she was, taking a break from teaching. She had her phone in her hand, half-way through sending me a text.

Then today, it was my turn to go somewhere for my lunch so I walked from my hotel to another small park on one of the many islands. Just as I was about to sit down, there was Dorota, with her crocodile of students all heading off to another lecture at a church.

To meet by chance like this not once, but twice was just so strange. What were the odds? Thousands to one against?

But it was lovely to just say "Hi" to her again during the day.

:o/

Moonface in Malaysia

I suppose that the heading should really read "Moonface is back from Malaysia".

Last week was her first ever business trip abroad, and for a first time it was a major one. She has only been at the College for six or seven months yet last month she was asked to go on a recruiting trip to Kuala Lumpur at short notice; a hard thing to turn down in spite of the efforts involved.

We're not sure why it was Moonface who was asked to go, as we would have expected either the College's international marketing manager, of their team or the head of the most involved department to make the trip, but instead it was she who was asked to go. We suspect that there was some deep internal politics involved, but whether it was thought that the obvious choices for the trip were not up for the job (good for Moonface) or whether they thought that anyone making the visit would be set up for failure (bad for Moonface) we just do not know. Or there may have been other reasons which no-one told her about.

Anyway, she's back, having had a couple of semi-successful meetings and presentations under her belt, a bit of tourism and lots of good street food.

On the debit side, she's gotten behind on her normal workload, had to travel via Singapore instead of direct to KL which took much longer, gotten rotten jetlag and had her laptop stolen from her baggage en route. So there were some definite downsides. We don't think that there was anything else stolen.

We now hope that the result will be brownie points for her, rather than criticism and assumptions that the whole trip was a pleasure jaunt.


:0/

Navigation

North of Minions, crossing the Moor, there were no waymarked paths.

I think that I enjoyed the navigation there more than anything I'd done before, since the landscape is so old. We followed the stones of some ancient boundary, and as we ascended or descended the curves of the hill, another stone would miraculously become visible. The traces led to a six-thousand year-old stone circle where each stone was surrounded by a pool of water where cattle had rubbed themselves against the rock.




The next day, we navigated along an invisible bridleway over plains that looked as if they were Wyoming, using a combination of mapwork, compass, the sun and tiny pimply mounds and irregularities of the hillsides, which led us to the right spot some miles onward. We were following tracks of our ancestors, thousands of years old, using the same markers that they had laid down; and it felt so close to nature.

We passed hut circles of the same age, relics of the old transhumance or summer huts when the moors were only occupied in fair weather and wondered at how the world had changed.



Walking is wonderful.


:o)

Little Red Corvette

We were astounded by the number of wild horses running loose on Bodmin Moor, from single mares with their foals to herds of a dozen or more chasing each other unencumbered by fences or fields. They were beautiful and slightly intimidating, especially when the stallions galloped over the grassy moorland with their heads lowered and teeth bared in aggression towards their mares or rivals. We could hear them thundering from a distance, and when seen against the skyline the romance was intense. The horses came in all colours, brindle to grey to roan to piebald and mustang skews, all slightly unkempt and tatty from recently losing their winter coats.

There's a line in Prince's song "Little Red Corvette" that goes: "The place where your horses run free" so the song lodged in my brain for the whole weekend, mixing the presence of Bodmin with my idealised visions of the American plains (which I've never visited) and memories of the preceding New York weekend spent in the company of E and her stories of a complicated past in Texas.





"It was a Saturday night, I guess that makes it alright; and what had I got to lose?"



:o)

Contrast

With my previous weekend spent in New York, the zenith of 20th-century city building, the contrast between that and this weekend's walk around Bodmin Moor could hardly have been greater. Moonface & I took four days to walk a little over sixty miles with plenty of stops to admire the views and wild horses.

Although we had initially decided to follow a trail described in a book (The Copper Trail), in the event we augmented & improved the walk by making much less use of roads and correspondingly more use of the high moorland and unmarked access land. The pub food was acceptable and simple, our B&B excellent, the walking utterly lovely. We should return someday.

:o)

New York Wheels

I usually enjoy city cycling: I love the feeling of being at one with the environment but constantly aware of its dangers, the exhilaration of physical effort and the stimulation of being menaced from all sides by the metal (or mental) equivalent of mindless bulls. Bristol and London are fun: one can outrun the traffic, dodge the cars, scorn the taxis and dodge the pedestrians.

New York was different. I hired a bike for just a couple of hours, starting by a couple of of circuits of Central Park. So what's the fuss about? Yeah, it's a park. Yeah, it's in a city. Yeah, there are lots of runners, mainly grim faced and joyless, pounding around a circuit which surely must pall after a lap or two. But I did see my first american robin, the rusty blackbird that's hardly a real redbreast.





Then I went onto the roads. Ummm. The traffic's faster, accelerates and decelerates harder, drives closer and pays less attention to other users. The roads themselves are more pitted and potholed than I'm used to, with deeeper holes and sheets of slick steel at intervals, all designed to throw off unwary cyclists. To be honest, I didn't like it that much, especially as the traffic intersections are controlled by lights instead of roundabouts, so there was too much waiting around (except when I jumped the lights, which is fun)

I went from Central Park to Times Square via Broadway, 5th Avenue to East River and around. I felt Manhattan's nerves, but I'm unlikely to try it again as I had two traffic touches, two too many in that time. The first was when a taxi cut in front of me then slammed on his brakes. My front wheel hit his fender, and my testicles hit the cross bar, which hurt. I cycled somewhat slower after that, not entirely by choice. Then later, when I swerved to avoid a deep and wide pothole off 1st Ave, my bars touched a taxi which was passing me very closely. My confidence waned, so I cycled back to the hire shop somewhat more sedately than I'd otherwise have done.

As a morning's entertainment it was great, but I'm not sure that I'd live long doing that every day.

:o/

New York Doll

At least the natives are friendly. Well, some of them.

As I said, the architecture is the main attraction of the city so I wandered into Grand Central where I was appropriately amazed at the space and grandeur of the main concourse; larger than most concert halls, better lit and more decorative. It's a beautiful, symmetric and spacious hall, airy and artful. It puts any European station to shame.

Trying to leave, the exit signs & directions meant nothing to me so I asked a nearby woman which of the many exits to take in order to head towards my hotel's street. We fell into conversation and she confessed that she'd just been stood up for the Friday night by her girlfriend - so we agreed to eat together. So we did. She knew the city, we headed for a familiar tapas bar and ate well and drank and talked until it was time for her to get the train home to her distant suburb and husband.

But we got on well. I like rocky music in small venues and it turned out that she also did, having been a musician in a semi-successful punk band years ago and managed bands as well. We swapped musical preferences and tastes, talked histories and families and just felt easy with each other. Since her man isn't into music she offered to take me to a club on Saturday night and of course I accepted.

Hence after my Saturday siteseeing and her domestic day, we met again in the station, took a trip into Brooklyn, ate a good Chinese meal (which she paid for), listened to a crap band, found a good couple of bars, didn't bother going into the club she knew, and had a fun night out in a part of town where I felt quite at home; the equivalent of Southville or Easton for the Bristolians reading this.

Then we parted at midnight at Grand Central station where we'd first met, probably never to see each other again although it would be really good if we did. So "E", if you ever read this - thanks: you made my weekend. And if you're ever in Bristol - I owe you a couple of nights on the town. And probably more.

:o)

New York Greys

Skyline from across Central Park, misty day.

I took a 36 hour stopover en route to Washington for a business trip.

New York, at least Manhattan, is overwhelming.

It's noisy, crowded and the buildings are huge. I'm not a fan of London, but this place was the Square Mile squared. I felt intimidated at first. It's vertical, sheer cliffs of stone and brick and granite and glass only missing pterodactyls to be a scene from a man-made hell. Yet it's thriving and busy and at ground level more than the equal of anywhere else I've been, every frontage occupied with eateries and shops. Most were busy from the huge numbers of people living around only a few blocks from wherever they needed to be.

With only a day and a bit in the city, I chose the wrong weather since the tops of the skyscrapers were dressed in mist, grey ladies in veils. My site-seeing was limited to two hours cycling, lots of walking and a visit to MoMA....next time I'll do more. At least I'll have someone to do it with. Perhaps.



:o)

Rus in Urbs

In London for the weekend to visit friends, we did no traditional sightseeing, no shopping, no shows, no nowt apart from some very beautiful relaxed walking.

We stayed in Camden in a lovely early Victorian square which has been somewhat wrecked by the imposition of modern flats along one side and by the building of greenhouses and what look like educational accommodation in the old green space, but the original houses are still fine. An ex-cabinet minister lives two doors along from our friends.

Our Saturday walk was direct from the house. We were able to reach the lower reaches of the Grand Union Canal and from there walk westwards via Camden Market towards Wembley, passing through thick crowds to start with towards the deserted reaches of Kensal Green and areas of London that I'd hardly heard of before.

We turned at the Grand Junction Hotel, somewhere in West London, taking a drink served by the most unfriendly surly barman I've met for years; an Aussie I think, who was almost reluctant to serve us with anything, and certainly not the coffees which we'd asked for and which were advertised outside the pub. Fortunately it was only a couple of hundred yards from the nearest tube and railway; it only took us half an hour to return back to Camden.

:o)

Life's a bitch.....

We received a postcard from a couple of friends today: Jess & Alan, whom we've known since university. Over the last year or so they have each had some major health scares which are still unresolved. They have now decided that it's time to do the big trip while they can, so they've taken their camper-van off to Europe for at least six months.

I can only agree that it's the best thing to do. There's no point in waiting until it's too late - look at the reason that Moonface & I bought our camper-van in the first place. In some ways I'm surprised that they actually need a van, as they have loads of friends scattered around western Europe as well as two homes there, but as we really enjoy using ours and we appreciate its convenience and just plain fun, I can understand them completely.

So enjoy your time abroad, kids.

:o)