The site of the original Viking parliament or Althing at Þingvellir

The rain in Spain stays mostly on the plain, but the wind in Iceland gets everywhere. It is voracious: after creeping through vents in your coat, it chomps its way through your sweater and then freezes your marrow.

That’s the summer version, presumably the winter wind is more merciless. I learned quite quickly what a Southern Softie I am.

We were on a lightning fast, four day trip, to see friends in Reykjavik, Iceland. The visit was timed to coincide with Menningarnótt, or Culture Night, an annual event featuring music, performance, and open galleries, and a firework finale. Although it’s called Menningarnótt, it’s really a Menningar dagur og nótt – culture day and night – as it starts in the morning.

In the end, the wind and child-care issues drove us home. By the time we left, we’d learned two lessons. Firstly that choirs are very popular in Iceland. At one point there seemed to be another group of singers around every corner, Hanni our Icelandic host and guide explained that choral singing was a national mania shared by many members of his family. Secondly we learned that architecture in the capital is probably not the main reason the city centre was buzzing with foreign visitors. With a few exceptions, buildings were grey, functional and built to resist high wind speeds.

We made it out of Reykjavik for a quick trip into the countryside. Soon after driving out of town you are transported back in time, not to a pre-industrial world as in some developing countries, but through geological ages to a time when the earth was still cooling.

The landscape could be described as desolate, bleak, harsh or inhospitable. You might also say, at the very least, extraordinary. Some parts look like moors in the North of England, while other areas are lunar – Neil Armstrong and his Apollo team trained in the north of the country.  Grey moss covers the ruptured rocks and fractured cliffs of endless black lava fields. On the moorland, shrubs or bushes grow and sheep and horses graze. Bilberries, a close relative of blueberries, are one of these plants and in August the hills are alive with berry harvesters. These hunched figures can be seen holding a dustpan-like scoop with serated edges with which they pick the berries.

The country is also alive: steam leaks from holes and water jets from geysers. At one point we drove through The Valley of the Farts (not its real name) overhung with a great cloud of sulphurous gas and later visited ‘the stinky spring’ (its real name) where small streams boil and mud holes bubble up more smelly gasses.

Volcanic landscape and moss in Iceland

At night we ate the local delicacy ‘rotten shark’ – if you were wondering, yes, it is shark that is starting to decompose. Usually eaten at special Norse festivals once or twice a year, the dish is also brought out for curious, or fool-hardy, visitors. Luckily it is usually consumed with with Brennivín, the local schnapps (which apparently has a strong aftertaste of rubber tyre.) We used vodka, but it still helped to deaden the overpowering taste of ammonia. Hanni, said that a friend of his makes rotten skate and it’s very simple. Just take one skate, put it in a plastic bag, leave it next to the radiator for a month, then cook. Yum.

The shark wasn’t a nightly event. We weren’t tough enough.

Buglers in their scarlet tunics in Bugles at Jalalabad

It is almost a commonplace to say that the current Allied engagement in Afghanistan wasn’t meant to be like this. In April, 2006 the Secretary of Defence, John Reid expressed the hope that “we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction.” With hindsight we can laugh at his optimism, but he wasn’t the first.

As Lady Florentia Sale put it, “it is easy to argue on the wisdom or folly of conduct after the catastrophe has taken place.” She wrote that in the 1840s after witnessing the disastrous retreat from Kabul in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Those words also form an ominous preface to The Great Game Afghanistan, a series of 12 short plays about Western involvement in that country over the last 170 years which is currently running at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. Interspersed between the plays, short monologues, dialogues, and verbatim reports from key players and observers give further insight into the situation.

The plays are broken into three parts, each of which deals with a different era. Firstly, we’re introduced to the era of British involvement from the 1840s to 1920s, then the arrival of the Russians (and the Americans seeking to defeat them) in the eighties, before finishing with Operation Enduring Freedom, the campaign launched by the USA and later NATO in 2001. Theatre goers can either spread this over three nights during the week, or one day of intense theatre-going over the weekend. Autumn and I plumped for a Sunday theatre-athon that started at 11.30 in the morning and finished more than ten hours later at 9.55pm. By the time we finally stumbled onto the tube home, the fine company of actors (including Jemma Redgrave and Nabil Elouhabi from East Enders) felt like old friends (we’d never spoken to).

The Tricycle is famous for its political productions, and has been called “Britain’s foremost political theatre” by The Guardian. For this production, each play was written by a different playwright, many of them famous for their politically-engaged work. However, if this is political theatre, it gives no easy answers to the fiendishly knotty issues raised. To help the less informed members of the audience, a hefty programme contains a modern history of Afghanistan and a ‘Further reading’ section stuffed with pertinent analysis.

The play cycle shows us that Afghanistan’s complex present arises out of an equally complex past. But even if you’d never heard of The Great Game or President Najibullah, the drama is still funny, sad, exhilarating and always engaging. Autumn, hasn’t been following the issues as closely as me, still enjoyed herself.

Proceedings start with British army buglers discussing the massacre of Elphinstone’s army in Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad, with Lady Sale sitting at the side of the stage as a solitary chorus recounting her experiences. Tales are told of the slaughter of British and Indian troops, and so begins one the central exercises repeated throughout these plays and through history: constructing tales about the Afghans. Savagery and martial prowess are defining characteristics of ‘the Afghan’ to the present day.

A bloody handprint seen on a wall at Eastcheap, the City of London. A sadly appropriate image.

Not only do foreigners ideas about the peoples of Afghanistan loop forwards through time, but the various notions of how Western interests are best served becomes familiar too. We hear stories of absurd self-serving politicians, meddling and then disengagement, the state of women as a genuine concern and as a pretext for military action. There are ‘surges’ hailed as the solution, as well as the ever familiar support for tribal insurgents to further geo-political ends. I had no idea that in the 1920s, long before Charlie Wilson’s War, the British were supporting conservative religious elements within the country against the reforming, but anti-imperialist king Amānullāh Khān. The plays not only weave themes, but also histories. In Campaign we learn of Amanullah Khan’s advisor Mahmud Tarzi, who turns up in person in Now is the Time. A map of key political figures and military engagements gradually becomes discernible.

Two of the highlights for me where Durand’s Line, in which Amir Rahman Khan is pushed into signing his name to the new border between British India and his country in 1893 by the Foreign Secretary Sir Mortimer Durand. The two, richly comic characters bounce off one another like a regal Jeeves and a very peevish Wooster playing a metaphysical chess game with the future of Khyber region. Amir Rahman says of Durand’s plans, “It is a kind of magic with you – to believe that is not the map which describes the world but which brings it into being.” Like the Radcliffe Line fifty years later, the consequences of the division would not be painless.

In Miniskirts in Kabul, a meeting between a journalist and the communist president of Afghanistan, Mohammad Najibullah, set in the imagination of the interviewer shines with a strange lyrical quality. This complex man’s perspective on his regime gains added emotional intensity from his imminent death – when the pair watch a video of The Spice Girls singing Wannabe, the song seems to embody the melancholic hedonism of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Both the stories of Najibullah and Amānullāh remind us of a tension between city and country, conservatives and reformers, within the country itself.

The final plays bring us bang up to date with the history of the last ten years: the cruel Taliban, initial Western disengagement followed by aid agencies, and then the military involvement that is so familiar. In the theatre, it all looks like the perfect Gordian knot of a conundrum, but on the ground it’s a bloody tragedy.

Blue sky, trestle tables and community spirit

This Sunday I had no lie in. Instead I went to hang bunting and erect trestle tables on the street.

Sunday 18 July, 2010 was the second national Big Lunch. Run across the country, this is  ‘an annual one-day get together with your neighbours’ with a meal at its central focus. These lunches were started by the Eden Project in Cornwall with the aim of starting a process they call ‘human warming‘ which is ‘a journey into rebuilding our communities’ and an attempt to  ‘make isolation history’.

Apparently, about 100 big lunches were scheduled to happen in London this year and in the end 1 million people joined in across the country. Last year Lewisham put on 27 lunches, which made it one of the boroughs with the largest number in the city.

To get the lunch going, the organisers first had to get permission from all the residents of the street. Apparently, in our road three people initially didn’t like the idea, but eventually came round. The second phase is to drum up participation, the Rokeby Road lunchers held (at least) two meetings to come up with ideas and assign tasks. Somehow we managed to completely ignore/forget about these, so helping out in the morning was an opportunity to make up for lost time. Autumn knocked up some salads and a few other tasty treats too.

The Rokeby Road Big Lunch 'office' - nerve centre of the whole operation

After an overcast morning of preparations, the sun finally burnt the clouds away to leave us with a deep blue sky. A veggie and meaty barbecue catered for both sides of the banger divide, and two tables were piled high with salads, flans, salsa, and an intriguing baked bean pie. People started turning up and a large, weathered sound system from Camberwell started pumping out Motown classics, 60s reggae and a broad selection of other top tunes.

It didn’t take long before I was talking to people I’d never met in almost four years of living on the road. Some of them I don’t recall even having seen before. I couldn’t tell you what anyone was called, but that’s because I have a brain that instantly scrambles names. It’s a memory not so much like a seive, but a vertical drainpipe – there isn’t even a mesh to retain the slightest detail. At one stage I found myself serving ice cream to a crowd of eager kids – satisfaction guaranteed!

Piratitude at the Rokeby Road sound system

As well food there were activities planned: balloon shaving, handbag throwing and a tug-of-war. But by the middle of the afternoon Autumn and I had to go and visit a friend who was making a rare foray into London, so missed these. When we returned later,  the tug-of-war rope was still hanging from the railings in the same jumbled position we’d last seen it and it had been tugged. Perhaps there weren’t enough people to make two teams.

There had been a few murmurs around the tables earlier that the turnout could have been better, the group picture showed about 50 people. As well as residents who preferred to stay inside, there were apparently others who deliberately went out for the day to avoid the commotion. Sound systems are not everyone’s cup of tea. My elder sister used to call family activities with her reluctant son ‘forced family fun’, and perhaps some wanted to avoid ‘forced community fun’.

One woman (who I’d never met before) told me that there used to be lots of parties in Rokeby Road. It’s probably true to say that the street has changed a bit in the last few years: more white people have moved in and replaced the West Indian families who lived here…and had parties in each others houses.

I’d already met my two next door neighbours when I was digging up the garden last summer when I was unemployed, but now I can definitely at least say hello to a few more faces in the street. The Big Lunch may not promise radical change, they’re not proposing a change in the ownership of the means of production, but it’s surely a step or smile or sausage in the right direction.

See more pictures of the Rokeby Road Big Lunch here.

All that was left after my bike was stolen

My old bike might not have been the best, but I was sad when it was stolen. A Ridgeback Velocity, it wasn’t top of the range, but it did the job. Made from steel, it felt as heavy and as sturdy as cast iron. The bike may not have been shiny or new, but each scratch had been hard won.

As there’s no garage at work, I’d left it chained to the railings in front of the building like usual. By lunch time there was a space where a bike should have been. I reported it to the Met, and received their letter informing me the case was closed by the next post. In some ways it’s comforting to think that my bike got so little attention from the police. Surely it must be better that they spend their time tracking and preventing bigger crimes.

When reporting the crime to the police I was asked if I’d registered the bike with Immobilise. I’d never heard of it, but made a mental note to investigate. Immobilise won’t prevent your bike from being nicked, but it might help the authorities recover it if it is pinched.

Immobilise is a website that enables you to add your stuff to a national property database, CheckMEND, so if it is stolen the police and second-hand trade can identify it more easily. The service claims to be the ‘world’s largest free register of possession ownership details’.

They also offer products to aid in the identification of your property. Top of their Products web page is the ImmobiTag Solid Frame Bike Tag, which is such a fantastic product it has its own website: Immobitag.com. This gadget promises  ‘electronic cycle protection’, which conjures images of a James Bond-like tracking device that follows the movements of your stolen bike on a screen. It turns out it is a tag which you hide in your bike’s frame, and it contains a unique serial number linked to your details which the police can use to re-unite you with your wheels. However, the bike has to be found in order for these details to be read, and there’s no Google Maps plug-in that allows you to follow your stolen bike… just yet.

Bike Register is a similar service and allows you to register your bike on a database that the police can access. There are three levels of service: Bronze is free and allows you simply to register your bike; for £14.95, Silver gives you kit to mark your bike in addition to registering it; Gold costs £24.95 and gives you a ‘uniquely coded electronic datatag’ – pretty much like the Immobitag.

When using these databases, remember that one of the most important pieces of information to note is your bicycle’s frame number. This can be found underneath the ‘bottom bracket’ – the round bit the pedals stick out from. Other tips to secure your bike include locking both wheels to a lampost or railing, lock it up in the most publicly-exposed place you an find, spend at least 1/10 of the price of your bike on a lock.

But, to really scare off the crooks, there is the lock which sets off a 120 decibel alarm when the wire is cut. If only it also administered an electric shock too.

Bikes and cyclists living in perfect harmony with pedestrians in Japan

A small black circle of chewing gum pressed into the carpet in the Heathrow disembarkation tunnel heralded our arrival back in the UK from Japan. It marked a stark contrast.  Japan must be one of the cleanest countries I’ve ever visited.

From the outside Japan appears to be an ideal society. It is orderly, well-maintained and efficient, the people are extremely polite and helpful, and that of course is before you admire their powerful economy, delicious cuisine, delightful gardens and so on. Although I’m sure they must have their problems.

Then of course there are the bicycles. They are everywhere. The bike, from an outsider’s point of view at least, doesn’t just seem to be a popular mode of transport in Japan – it is well-integrated into society and free from many of the hassles and hazards that face cyclists in the West.

The first thing you notice about cycling in Japan is that they do it on pavement. Yes, rather than taking their chances on the road, cyclists weave their way through the pedestrian traffic on seats set very low.  Bikes seem to be in the category ‘machine-assisted pedestrian’, rather than ’semi-motor vehicle’.  Some towns even have separate bike lanes at the zebra crossings.

Riding down the pavement means that cyclists have to go at a sensible pace, at least when there are lots of people about. Neither Autumn nor I saw any bike-rage, although perhaps we were just lucky. Cyclists appeared to be considerate and pedestrians tolerant; overall people did seem to be very well behaved.

There also seem to be good facilities for cyclists. Rather than bike stands dotted around the streets, it is common to see cycle parks. These might be in the corner of a car park, filling up the basement of a building, or as in one place we saw, a ramp up into a  multi-story bike park. Unfortunately, we only found out about the most incredible bike storage option after returning to the UK. It’s a sort of storage bunker where cyclists post their bikes into a small opening and they are whisked down into a subterranean mega-rack, see the video here:

Most bikes just seem to be parked in the street, either on their own or in big groups. The lack of cycle stands suggests that cyclists don’t have to lock their bikes to an immovable object because people are less likely to pick them up and chuck them into the back of a white van. The average Japanese bike lock is a flimsy ‘ring lock’ job that British thieves would slice through with nothing so much as a pair of nail clippers. Apparently thefts are reduced as all cycles must be registered with the police.

The Japanese bike is a little different from the bikes you see haring around London. The ‘sit up and beg’ style is most popular (there are far fewer racers, hybrids, mountain bikes or fixies than here) although it’s really the add-ons that make them unique.  Many bikes have boxes, baskets and compartments on the front and back, and some even feature a child seat on the front with a useful Perspex visor to keep the rain out. There are also umbrella holders which clip on to your handlebars.

Japanese bike with baskets, umbrella and doggie

It is pleasant idea to imagine that the Brits could follow in the civilised footsteps of the Japanese, but would it work? Riding to work on the pavement sounds like a very slow and tiresome business to me. Further, we are probably just too barbarous and rude: after landing in Istanbul from Kansai International Airport, virtually every passenger on our plane (most of whom were Japanese) offered to let us get into the aisle as we struggled to get our luggage out of the overhead lockers, while in London we had to wait for almost the entire plane of returning Brits to disembark before anyone let us join the stream of people filing past. That was before we even reached the chewing gum, let alone the Old Kent Road.

The remarkable mossy boulders in the forest surrounding Huelgoat

The town of Huelgoat sits in the middle of a vast, mossy forest. In the summer the sunlight fills the woods with a luminous, dappled light. If you look hard enough, you might see Asterix and Obelix tramping through the trees. There is actually a Gaulish fort buried in the woods, similar to the one that Asterix lived in (surrounded by the Roman forts of Laudanum, Compendium, Aquarium, and Totorum – tot o’ rum geddit?)

In this town – which has nothing to do with goats – the lovely Autumn’s mum now runs a Chambres d’Hote or Bed and Breakfast Huelgoat (that’s like a normal B&B, but situated in Huelgoat!) Called La Mare Aux Fées or The Fairies’ Pool, it has three guest rooms and is just a two minute stroll from the town square where there it’s possible to get a medicinal cidre with your Breton crêpe.

As you can see from the above link, not only does Autumn’s mum now run this homely little hostelry, but it also has a website. It’s a rather swish-looking piece of work, somehow contemporary yet classic. The site was designed by Jamie Winder, a London graphic designer – and one of the elite too. Thanks mate.

Like Cornwall, Brittany is popular with tourists. But unlike its British counterpart it doesn’t feel overrun with city dwellers in the summer. Even better, you don’t have to queue on the A30 to get into Brittany.

One of the other interesting things about Huelgoat is that it is where Jack Kerouac’s ancestor’s came from. There’s even a plaque put up by Kerouac Corp. commemorating the original ancestor who first left the town in the seventeenth century. The name is typically Breton – many names and places start with ‘Ker-thisser and Ker-thatter’, as Jack himself put it in Satori in Paris.

In that book, he visits Paris and then Brittany to look up his Breton ancestry:  “I had come to Brittany and France just to look up this old name of mine which is just about three thousand years old and was never changed in all that time, as who would change a name that simply means House (Ker), In the Field (ouac) –” Unfortunately, he spent most of his time necking brandies and never made it to Huelgoat. Now’s your chance.

My spindly arm, gone purple

Giving blood sounds like a good idea. There’s a great shortage apparently and it helps people in need. At the very least, it’s a very easy way of doing a good deed. Easy, that is, if you don’t mind having a needle jabbed in your arm and a pint of blood siphoned off.

A very long time ago I tried to donate blood, but was turned down as I’d recently had Hepatitis A. I don’t think I’m particularly worried about needles, so when the lovely Autumn donated last year I thought I’d follow suit.

Even if you’re not phased by needles, it’s not that easy to give blood. In late November last year I was turned away as I’d been in India less than six months previously – being just four days within the donation exclusion zone. The snow and treacherously icy pavements in January meant another appointment fell through when the donation centre closed early.

The donation

At last I was allocated a slot about two weeks ago. I turned up to a church hall on a Thursday morning at 9.30 in the morning ready to go. A nurse handed me a questionnaire on my medical past – this time my blood was judged safe. She then sent me to wait and drink water; I had about 1/3 of a pint while, feeling calm, flicking through a copy of National Geographic.

Another nurse took me behind a blue screen to question me on my questionnaire. The tip of my finger was pricked for a drop of blood that was dripped into a tube of blue liquid to make sure it contained enough iron. Then it was time to lie down on the blue plastic stretcher.

I’m right handed, so the nurse stuck the needle in my left arm. A momentary jab of pain – like any normal injection – ‘I can handle it’, I thought. So, I lay there trying to multi-task: opening and closing my left hand, whilst clenching my buttocks and also trying to flex my quads. This is a bit like batting your head while circling your stomach with your other hand, but it’s meant to prevent faintness afterwards.

Then my phone started ringing in my pocket. Another task to add to all the flexing seemed manageable, so I answered it. Soon I was talking to a friend in Australia. Then the nurse said she was finished and I tried to wind up the call.

As the needle was pulled out, a jolt of pain hit my arm as if it been twisted to one side. I put the phone away and ouch, yes, it hurt. Patients are told to sit up for a few moments first and then swing their legs off the bed. When my feet dangled off the bed, the nurse and I both stared at the arm in silence for a split second. A purple dome of blood the size of a quail’s egg stood out of the pale skin. A nervous look appeared to shoot across her face and she called over a more senior nurse.

I was read the ‘blood donor bruising riot act’: “X% to XX% of all donors experience bruising, this can be caused by blah, blah, blah” . The trouble was, by this stage nothing really mattered: I was starting to feel woozy. “Sorry, I think I’m feeling rather faint”, I squeaked. More nurses descended on the bed and I was told to lie back down.

With a block of foam whipped under my feet and a cold, wet flannel flapped on my forehead, it seemed an ideal time to tell my anecdote of the other time I almost fainted – when I almost cut two finger tips off on my first and last trip ice skating. A tight bandage was wound around my arm.

After a few minutes the feeling passed, so I got up and went to get an orange squash and club biscuit before fleeing to work.

The aftermath

Waking up on Friday morning, a bruise had spread across my arm from a couple of inches below my armpit all the way to my watch strap. The crook of my arm, where the needle had gone in, was sore, but not too painful.

The experience made a good talking point and later in the morning I got a call from a friend who happens to donate regularly. She reckoned the faintness might have been because I hadn’t drunk enough water. The 45 minute run before my donation appointment would have made me more dehydrated too.

On Sunday, I was still thrilled to show off my rainbow trout of a limb, but I noticed it ached when I swung my two and half year old niece above my head.

That night it started: A fierce pain in my bicep woke me up and there seemed to be no position where the arm was comfortable. Finally, sleeping with the thing stuck straight out of the bed at right angles seemed to work.

Jolts of pain whenever my bike hit a pot hole on Monday meant that riding the bike became impossible. After another sleepless night on Tuesday, I called the Blood Donor hot-line the next morning only to be reassured that it would get better. My moaning woke Autumn on Wednesday night and I had to press a bag of frozen peas on the bicep to relieve the pain.

Thursday, on my second call to the hotline a sympathetic nurse recommended booking a visit to the doctor, although she stressed this was mostly for my peace of mind.

Bleary eyed from five days of broken sleep I dragged myself to the doctor on Friday morning. Although the arm was constantly aching, showing off the stupendous bruise was still some compensation. “I’ve never seen a bruise that big”, the doctor told me, although that may simply have indicated how young she was.

As it happened, there was a noticeable lessening of the pain that morning. The doc said that as I didn’t have pins and needles in my fingers and the bruise hadn’t gone red, it was unlikely that it was infected so, once more, I must wait.

Friday night I had my first good night’s sleep. The pain started tapering off quickly after that and the bruise faded too.

Now I’m ready to go again. Not right now of course, because you have to wait for four months in between donations, but I think I would do it. With huge wide veins, which are supposed to be ideal for giving blood, I think I was exceptionally unlucky. Perhaps my runs in training for the Brighton Marathon didn’t really help matters. Part of the problem was that I almost fainted when being told about what to expect from bruising, so couldn’t remember what was said.

One night when lying there trying to sleep with the arm propped up on a pillow I thought about the pain. Although I couldn’t describe it as ‘agony’ or ‘excruciating’, the best term seemed to be ‘considerable pain’. Not too bad I suppose, but a bit worrying if you haven’t been expecting it. Perhaps they should put that in the bruises information “You may experience considerable pain, but if it becomes agony give us a call.” Anyway, next time I’ll be very careful to ask for an experienced nurse to extract the needle.

Engrossed in 3D at IMax

I didn’t want to like Avatar too much. It’s the most expensive movie ever made, costing around $280 million to make and another $150 million to hype, and that’s enough reason to give it a wide berth. Besides Avatar is supposed to be pitched against a much smaller, cheaper British film in the race for the Oscars: An Education. The smaller film is set in the unswinging early-Sixties London and by most accounts a more nuanced effort – less crash bang whallop and much more my sort of thing really. Still, I was curious about this movie-phenomenon.

Part of the attraction of Avatar was finally getting to go to an IMAX cinema and to see a film in 3D. I’d never been to either and had this idea that the IMAX are the cinematic equivalent of the Alps with screens that tower into the clouds and leave the cinema-goer dumbstruck and overwhelmed. Unfortunately the Greenwich Odeon screen didn’t seem very big at all. Perhaps it was an IMIN.

It turns out that the movie is pretty engrossing. The hero, Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, is a paraplegic ex-marine who is drafted in to the Avatar programme on the moon Pandora. This involves having his consciousness ported into the body of one of the tall, blue inhabitants of this jungle-covered planet. It’s a sort of a slightly less naff World of Warcraft. The humans are mining the planet for the precious mineral Unobtainium (an amusing name for a mineral that I assumed was original, but according to its wiki page has been around since the fifties). They want Jake to ingratiate himself into a village of blue-skins and persuade its inhabitants to move away so an open-cast mine can be ripped out of paradise.

The contrast between the unspoiled Eden of the handsome Na’vi aliens and the thuggish humans is the key theme of the film. However it has a lot more going on than that, and the movie throws out a relentless barrage of cranky ideas and motifs taken from other films. One of these familiar ideas is of virtual reality, entering another mind or world that has been used in films like Existenz, Total Recall and Strange Days. As in Existenz where players of the Existenz game have to plug in the gaming device into their bodies, the Na’vi connect their pony-tails to plants and animals. This enables them to commune with non-human intelligence – they grok each other – an idea found in Robert Heinlein’s classic Sci-Fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

There are bits of Star Wars, fragments of 2001, and possibly even a dollop of Flash Gordon. However, all this isn’t too obvious, it doesn’t weigh the movie down too much. James Cameron handles his sources like a mainstream Quentin Tarantino and creates something fresh and exciting. The 3D takes it into a new realm of cinematic experience and also isn’t too in your face. Before the film started, we were shown a trailer for a film about the Hubble telescope where the satellite was jutting out of the screen, but in Avatar the technology is mostly used to give the characters and landscapes greater depth.

Some of it’s pretty trippy -  at night the forest turns into a neon-lit, sub-aquatic day-glo rave. All beings on the planet form a vast intelligent neural network – similar to Terence McKenna and Paul Stamets‘ ideas about mushrooms. Some bloggers have even noticed that the blue Na’vi resemble the elf-people you’re meant to see after taking the hallucinogenic Ayahuasca vine from the Amazon. The natives live in a vast, ancient tree whose branches and roots are seen on the computers at the human’s base looking like the Norse tree at the centre of life Yggdrasil.

The most glaringly obvious thing about this film is its anti-colonialism. You can see Avatar as Zulu in reverse, with the Zulus surrounded by the Brits. Or is that The Emerald Forest, where a young man ‘gone native’ joins a fight to save the rain forest from earth moving equipment using only stone-age weapons. I wonder if this is what has contributed to the film’s international success, now that occupation by foreign powers is on the agenda again. Lawrence of Arabia wrote in a letter: “We are calling them [the arabs] to fight for us on a lie, and I can’t stand it.” Luckily, Jake Sully finds a way out. Although I expect Avatar will win more statues than An Education at the Academy Awards, I don’t suppose Cameron would mind if he was trounced by the little guys.

Not all smiles

At work I sit at my desk with my headphones on, sometimes listening to last night’s Late Junction and sometimes with no sound at all. That might explain the how I didn’t quite catch what was going on, at least I don’t think it was an aural Rorschach test.

Just now the bloke who sits next to me exclaimed ‘I fucking hate work’ with some rancour. To which the bloke opposite him responded ‘I hate myself’… Golly I thought, those are heavy sentiments for a Tuesday afternoon. That was until my brain had unscrambled the message and twigged that the first one had said ‘I fucking hate Word’ and the other ‘I hate Excel’!

Widow Twankey honks her horn at the Hackney Empire

What with the snow – or the ice – becoming annoying and the darkness of January grinding its way towards its lowest point on Blue Monday, it’s time for a little warmth and colour. That is, it’s really time for pantomime. So, last week the lovely Autumn booked us tickets to Aladdin at the Hackney Empire.

Since discovering last year that my great-grandfather was a scene painter in Victorian panto, I have a new found interest in the form, but I’ve also never quite grown out of it either. If you are off to see a pantomime this winter it seems that the Hackney panto is the one to see, even the sceptical (and slightly snooty) Telegraph reviewer left walking on air.

It’s easy to see why the reviews have been so good – from the introduction by the panto camel to the final rapturous bows – this is a desert-hot blast of energy and good humour. Alongside our cheery Aladdin (Anna Jane Casey) the other characters are as bright and bold as Dalston Market oranges. There’s definitely a Hackney influence: the Empress of China (Tameka Empson) has taken on a very ‘strident’ African form, complete with village proverbs, and the Genii of the Lamp (Kat B) seems to think it’s 4am in a bashment. Even the catch phrase of the Genii of the Ring (Josephine Melville) is “You get me though?”

Perhaps it’s because most of my panto going was done a while ago, but the Widow Twankey of The Wash-Me-Nicks Laundry seems to be more gregarious than ever. Wearing seven elaborate outfits, Clive Rowe is simply splendid. He’s as wide as a washing machine, with a voice as big as a bus that he left me wanting a him to finish the snatches of songs he sings. Luckily, with comic timing set in Greenwich, there wasn’t time to dwell on it.

If you thought that panto was for youngsters then you’d be wrong: we were sitting behind a row of oldsters. Who wouldn’t appreciate a dance routine featuring mummies from the tomb, or cart-wheeling pandas. All this happens on a backdrop of dazzling sets that flick past at a bewildering speed. The dragon that takes Aladdin from the Peking suburb of Ha-Ka-Ney to Arabia is a particular wonder of ingenuity. The set designers even built a palace just for the final bows. I’m sure Oscar Barrett and John P Barrett would approve.

Despite the jollity of the show, there is a sinister, sorrowful cloud that hangs over the proceedings. This is nothing to do with Abanazer the magician who’s the baddie, and everything to do with the financial problems that threaten to close the theatre. Last summer the Empire almost shut for good and when the panto finishes at the beginning of February, they are having a ‘rethink’ on their artistic direction. Roland Muldoon, a former chief executive and artistic director, believes the changes will move away from the theatre’s ‘black’ programming agenda. This suggests that the management thinks that this agenda is not bringing in the crowds. Whatever is behind these financial problems, this year’s Aladdin is not entirely ‘white’, but it left the audience entirely satisfied, black or white. Book your tickets now.

Christmas garland, St Bartholemew the Great, London

Peace on earth, and good will to all … hopefully

Roast potatoes, courtesy of su-lin

Michael Caine came over as an charming, down-to-earth Londoner on the Desert Island Discs Christmas Special. He trotted out a few great stories and chose some surprisingly contemporary discs (he likes ‘chill out’ music).  As a self-confessed romantic, he told us he loves Christmas and its rituals. Apparently, one of the highlights of the festive lunch in the Caine household is the potatoes. This is because Sir Michael makes “the best roast potatoes in the world” according to his mate, the film director and food critic, Michael Winner.

Presenter, Kirsty Young asked how he prepared these perfect spuds and he gave out a few tips. As his wife is a vegetarian, he uses no animal fat, so here’s Michael Caine’s recipe for unforgettable roast potatoes:

• Pre-boil potatoes “otherwise they’ll be no good”
• Drain and let them steam until “absolutely dry”
• Replace saucepan lid and shake “so that they go all fluffy”
• Place in cold olive oil (”so it [the fat] soaks in”) with rosemary and sage – then roast

I never cook them, so it’s all new to me, but a quick search reveals that rival cooks generally agree about this stuff. Everyone says par-boil them, Jamie Oliver reckons for five minutes, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says seven and Delia Smith 10. Drying and shaking seems to be essential for all the chefs.  Delia seems to think that it’s best to roast the potatoes for 50 minutes. So, possibly Sir Michael’s most original contribution to the art of the roast is the temperature of the oil – cold – and not a lot of people know that.

Science & tech activity on Wikipedia visualised - courtesy of abeautifulwww.com

Bad press on Wikipedia is probably something that most of us don’t fear too much. If you’re someone who does have such concerns, then you might want to set up an alert on Wiki Alarm. This service will alert you about changes to any wiki page that you are concerned about. It’s the latest thing in Online Reputation Management.

The guys behind the product have even found a term to describe the ultimate wiki disaster: Wiki-circularity. This is where a fiction is posted on Wikipedia and this is then taken at face value by a blogger or journalist who writes about it. This article/post gets quoted as a source on wikipedia and your fate – or reputation – is apparently sealed.

There are quite a few examples of nonsense on Wikipedia surviving on the site for a long time, and sometimes even finding their way into the press. The Guardian even used fabricated quotations apparently from Maurice Jarre, a French composer and conductor, in his obituary in April this year. It’s probably no coincidence that this snappy new term was coined by someone in that most dubious of disciplines, marketing. ‘Wiki-circularity’ is one way of putting it, but bad journalism, or even defamation, would be more accurate. Checking sources is basic.

It’s probably best to treat Wikipedia as a brief, tentative overview with (hopefully) some useful leads to follow up. The sources are all important in Wikipedia. Most journalists worth their salt seem to head to the sources anyway according to a study by the American Journalism Review last year.

If you want to know more about making the most of Wikipedia, there are some useful resources available. Many of them are found under the reference section of the site. Last year, the computer book publishing company O’Reilly, published a How To Wiki guide as a part of their Missing Manuals imprint. They’ve also very kindly put the book on the Wikipedia help pages – Wikipedia the Missing Manual. It’s a fairly comprehensive overview of how to use the encyclopaedia. Another practical guide called How Wikipedia Works can also be read online, although not in wiki (editable) form.

There are a few other interesting books for the general reader (rather than dry academic tomes, of which there are a few too) about the ideas behind Wikipedia. In 2006 Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams wrote Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changed Everything which explained just how it made a difference. In March of this year, Professor of Journalism Andrew Lih’s book The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia gave a history of the project. Finally, a couple of months ago Andrew Dalby, a writer on language and food history, has published The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing Reality which looks at how the articles relate to the reality they pretend to reflect.

Wikipedia’s useful and potentially misleading qualities must be fairly obvious, however the number of editors seems to be falling. Dalby and Lih raise a few other issues that seem to be slowing work on the project: it’s possible that almost all of the most important articles have already been written, and the proliferation of rules might be putting people off contributing. In one of Dalby’s earlier books, he looked at the hegemony of the English language and in his Wikipedia book he examines whether its popularity is killing off rival publications, especially outside the Anglophone world. Others complain how Wikipedia monopolises Google results (although it seems staff at Encyclopaedia Britannica are key amongst these critics).

If you don’t like the Wiki-monopoly you can always start contributing to Citizendium, the encyclopaedia started by Larry Sanger who founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger became disillusioned with Wikipedia’s methods for achieving reliability, and his alternative wiki encyclopaedia gives a more prominent role to experts. (You could also consider Conservativepedia who give a more prominent role to bong-smoking US conservatives of the Dubya mould.)

Alternatively you could follow these five simple steps for contributing to Wikipedia:

1. Attribute/ source everything if you’re writing, and treat everything not attributed with caution if you’re reading

2. Have an argument for notability at the back of your mind (deletionists wield this criteria as their chief weapon to cut out articles)

3. Have a look at the featured articles and very good articles to get an idea of the direction you should be heading

4. Remember you don’t own anything on Wikipedia. It’s not your article, but merely one you started or contributed to

5. If you want to upload images familiarise yourself with the Wikipedia images policy and especially the image use policy

Ubuntu badges

I know why Acer computers are so cheap. I also know that although I like the principles of Ubuntu (the software, not ethic), I am not yet committed to the practise. The story started when I was looking to buy a computer. I got lots of advice (including from techies who should know the score) telling me what a great deal Acer computers are. They did compare very favourably with rival laptops, so I bought one. But now I have first-hand experience of one significant cost they’ve managed to cut to achieve their remarkable value for money.

In mid-June the laptop went on the blink after two and a quarter years of working fine. After pressing the ‘on’ button it ran a disk scan trying to repair errors, then just as it made it to the desktop the thing closed down and the whole process began again. Someone at work diagnosed dodgy drivers. In Safe mode I downloaded the drivers from the Acer site, some installed and some didn’t, obviously not enough to help. The same went for the drivers from Drivers.com.

At this stage, most computer owners would get out their back-up disk and either run a repair operation on the operating system, or start again and reinstall it. They would do this if they could find their back-up disk. I couldn’t, so I phoned Acer and was told that I should have burned my own when I first used the computer. Apparently the instruction booklet and a pop-up window tell you to do this. The sympathetic call centre man admitted that most people never look at the instructions and generally ignore the pop-up. About three weeks had passed and I was having to restrain myself from throwing the computer out of the window and then starting a site called acercon.com about what a con Acer are.

The computer was bust, but it seemed most unfair that I would  have to buy a new operating system. I did own the key to a copy of Windows XP, I’d just  forgotten to burn the software. This is when I heard of Ubuntu, this is a free operating system (OS) named after the South African brotherhood of man ethic. It is built using a Linux kernel, the kernel is the central component of an OS and Linux is a programming language that is ‘Unix-like‘. Unix is the language that is used to build the Macintosh operating system. So, at a bit of a stretch, Ubuntu is a Macintosh-like operating system – for free!

The ‘free’ side of the web appeals to me and not just in a download-all-my-music-for-free, take-what-I-can sort of way. Wikipedia must be one the best free things about the web and I contribute. Last week when looking up crumpets, I noticed a disputed point on the Anglo-Saxon roots of the bread, so immediately scurried to Google Books to see if I could find a source to verify the matter. Perhaps I could join the Ubuntu efforts too.

Ubuntu’s advantages over Windows operating systems include that it is faster and more secure. Oh yes, and freer. It starts up with African-sounding drumming and singing, and then you’re ready to go in about 10 seconds. As my windows took five minutes to get going at one stage, that is a big improvement. Rather than having a ‘Start’ menu, all the applications are found in menus on a top panel. It didn’t take too long before I was using it like a natural.

Unfortunately, not all software works on Ubuntu. This is not always a problem, for instance although you can’t run Microsoft Office, you can use Open Office an open-source version with very similar functionality. Also,  iTunes doesn’t work, but you can also plug your iPod into the free and open-source Songbird or even install a virtual Windows within Ubuntu and run iTunes on that. There is more of a problem when you own a gadget that runs using specific software – for instance, our dictaphone,  Speedo swimming MP3 player and Bluetooth dongle wouldn’t operate on it.

There were a few more annoying problems. The computer’s microphone and microphone socket didn’t like Ubuntu and wouldn’t work, so there wasn’t much point in Skype. The mousepad was far more sensitive than with Windows, which meant that when happily writing away at the bottom of the page I’d suddenly find myself in the middle of a word at the top. It also wouldn’t connect to my home wireless, although the work connection was fine. What should have been a jolly, positive thing was just irritating.

Ubuntu release a new version of their software every six months and last month the BBC News site had an article on the latest update. It mentions that Wikipedia use the software – another good thing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep me on the OS. Perhaps it’s just a matter of habit or not having enough persistence to iron out the problems, but I’ve moved back to XP. If I could get the computer and software working properly with Ubuntu I might go back to it, unless Windows 7 tempts me.

The Bamiyan Valley from one of the monastic cells carved into the cliff next to the Buddhas

Developing a tourist industry probably isn’t a high priority in the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan at the moment. IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) would probably put off even the most daring of GAP year students. But the idea might not be quite as daft as it sounds.

A few weeks ago, The New York Times reported on fighting in the Nuristan region of Afghanistan where soldiers were struck by its extraordinary beauty. The country also has a fascinating history and tradition of warm hospitality. In 1970 Peter Levi, an English Jesuit priest, classical archaeologist, and poet set off to uncover some of these riches with his friends, Bruce Chatwin, the travel writer and his wife Elizabeth.

Levi wrote his journey up in The Light Garden of the Angel King, a book which demonstrates both his archaeological training and poet’s eye for the landscape. The title of the book is taken from the inscription on the tomb of the Emperor Babur. The Emperor began the mogul invasions of India, but despite the attractions of the Subcontinent, nonetheless demanded to be buried in the place closest to his heart: Kabul. The overblown poetry of the full inscription gives a flavour of Levi’s sympathies:

Only this Mosque of Beauty, this Temple of Nobility, constructed for the Prayer of Saints and the Epiphany of Cherubs, was fit to stand in so Venerable a Sanctuary as this Highway of Archangels, this Theatre of Heaven, the Light Garden of the Godforgiven Angel King whose Rest is in the Garden of Heaven, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, the Conqueror.

Next, Levi and Chatwin head off to Afghanistan’s other well-known tourist attraction, the Buddhas of Bamiyan. He mentions that Victorian explorer Sir Henry Yule described the arid landscape as having a ‘horrid aspect’, but irrigation seems to have improved the valley since and Levi writes of it as ‘dusky and peaceful’. They spend time around the Buddhas and in the shrines that honeycomb the cliffs and then explore more of the valley.

It turns out that there is more than just the standing Buddhas to explore, especially for an archaeologist like Levi. The Shah-i-Golgola, or city of the screams, was a thriving city until it was razed by Genghiz Khan (hence the screams). The great Khan reached the city after overrunning the Shahr-i-Zohak, a fortress at the other end of the valley, that, incredibly, is said to also be the site of a Greek acropolis (according to Nancy Hatch Dupree, the legendary specialist in Afghan archaeology and author of numerous guidebooks to the country).

Levi hunts down and even stumbles upon archaeological tit-bits throughout his trip. He’s forever remarking on the various ‘wares‘, ‘layers‘ and ‘mounds’ (common archaeological terms) of each site. Although I don’t know much about archeology, and haven’t even watched Time Team very often, I was fascinated by what he finds out. It is common knowledge that Alexander the Great passed through Afghanistan on his way to India, but his empire is only one of those that left their mark (and shards).

Alexander may not have been in the country for very long, but the Greek influence was felt for centuries afterwards. The Mauryan Empire of the Indian Buddhist Emperor Ashoka replaced the Greeks and together with the indigenous Gandhara kingdom produced the Indo-Greeks and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Then there were the Kushans, an empire that started in Central Asia, which somehow got in there too. Of course we shouldn’t forget the Persians, wandering Chinese monks and that’s even before the Islamic Invasion of the country and the numerous empires that have ruled it under that religion. Of course, in the nineteenth century the Sikhs and British had a go too.

The ‘tall, elegant, shadow-cut, biscuit-coloured pencil’ that is the Minaret of Jam is their next stop, which they somehow reach on horse with Levi himself suffering from appalling dysentery. From there they fly to Herat, which in the far west of the country, is the most Persian city. Blue minarets still tower over the city, like ‘big brick cigarettes stormed by swarms of cobalt and turquoise butterflies’, despite the British demolishing many masterpieces of Islamic art in the nineteenth century to improve the line of fire against a potential Russian invasion.

After a few stops in southern Afghanistan – Kandahar is so ferociously hot that it’s impossible to think – Levi and Chatwin head off to the North East, where the ‘greatest archaeological wealth’ of the country lies. They take in Surkh-Kotal, a Kushan city and Balkh, a site of early Islamic treasures. While staying in Kunduz, Levi meets some fellow poets and becomes involved with the local amateur dramatics society. At their Nashir Theatre, most performances are farces, and Levi be-friends Wazir Mohammed who holds Charlie Chaplin in the highest regard.

Levi and the Chatwins however don’t rest in one place for very long, they soon shoot off into the north east of the country. The speed at which they travel, alongside Levi’s keen interest in archaeology and problems with Farsi contribute to one of the shortcomings of the book – the lack of depth in the portrayal of any of the characters he meets. There are many short sketches, but no rounded portraits. Some of these brief encounters, however, can be utterly charming:

‘I offered one of the old men a pinch of English snuff; he took a huge pinch like a charge of gunpowder and sneezed and wept and beamed with happiness and came later to ask for more, because he said his eyes were bad and the doctors despaired of them, and none of the medicines had such an excellent effect on them as this powerful snuff. We became fast friends and he introduced me to his friend who asked me with a speculative eye where I came from. A country called England, I said. Oh yes, he said, England; would that country not be near Kabul?’

As they leave the archaeological heartland of the Uzbek north of the country, the landscape and Levi’s focus starts to change. The book starts to reveal what ideal hiking territory Afghanistan had in 1970. They take a short walk in Badakhshan Province, in the Pamirs, where the hills appear in the morning like ‘piles of fine dust’. This walk is really a preparation for a longer walk in Nuristan. Meaning ‘Land of the Enlightened’, the province was previously known as Kafiristan, or the land of the unbelievers, until 1895 when King Abdur Rahman invaded the region and converted the local people. The paganism of the region got the Victorians dreaming, and the idea grew up that the inhabitants were descended from the remnants of Alexander’s army. (Rudyard Kipling later sculpted this idea into The Man Who Would Be King.)

Levi, and his party walk up the Kamdeh and Kamdesh Valleys where the US Army are now involved in heavy fighting. The valley is beautiful, but wild. The Kamdesh houses are balanced on precarious precipices and the men walk around barefoot, carrying long handled axes. They do, however, encounter a shepherd with his head wrapped in a wreath of flowers who proceeds to sings them songs.

Finally, Bruce and Elizabeth Chatwin fly off to Pakistan, and Levi at last gets a permit to visit the site of the most important Hellenistic city in Afghanistan – Ay Khanoum. The site is in the north of the country near Kunduz, and he bumps into his old Thespian friend, Wazir Mohammed. The man has grown sad as his theatre company had become riven by internal divisions and broken up.

Levi and the Chatwins stayed in a hotel at the foot of the Kamdesh valley after their wlk in Nuristan. The place is run down, but Levi still manages to ’sincerely recommend this hotel to anyone intrepid enough to reach it.’ It is a sentiment that I’m sure he would apply to Afghanistan itself. The Afghanistan, that is, before the advent of IEDs.

(Image courtesy of MastaBaba on Flickr)

Two Buddhist monks, Marine Drive, Mumbai

Coming home from your holidays can make you feel blue. Out of the deckchair and into the office is a dismal contrast. It’s helpful to have a treat waiting for you a few days after you get back. A little something to look forward to.

The week before last Autumn and I did the first week of the Coast to Coast walk (no deckchairs in sight, actually). It was a great ’summer’ holiday, but made even better by fact that smack bang in the middle of the week after our jaunt, we were off to a smashing lecture. Nothing beats a good disquisition. We were scheduled to see William Dalrymple give a talk at the RGS. That’s the Royal Geographical Society to the uninitiated. This institution is where some of Britain’s greatest explorers and travellers have set out from on their way into the wilder parts of the world. And if they didn’t leave from the RGS, they probably ended up telling their tale there when they got back.

William Dalyrymple however is not an explorer or geographer, but a historian, journalist and travel writer. I haven’t read any of his eight books, but I am a fan of his journalism. He draws vivid pictures of the places he visits,and fills them with stories using his finely tuned ear for dialogue and sympathy for the characters he meets. He’s also interested in India and the subcontinent.

His latest book is called Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India which tells the tale of nine people whose lives have been profoundly influenced by the religious traditions of that region. The talk was organised by Stanfords, the map shop. Robust, he strode onto the stage wearing a yellow, quilted Nehru jacket, with a coral red cotton scarf draped around his neck. In one hand he carried his canvas holdall and in the other, an almost empty glass of whisky. He looked like a travel writer.

The talk covered three of the chapters in his book. The first story told of a couple of cheerful Bauls, or wandering monks, from Bengal, the second the melancholy story of the sacred prostitutes or devadasi of Karnataka, and the low caste labourer and prison warder who becomes host to the god Vishnu for three months of the year finishes the book. All the stories were fascinating and affecting. His softly plummy, slightly whiskied tones eloquently conjured up these distant personalities.

The two Bauls (pronounced ‘bowels’) are friends, one is blind and the other is his eyes. Dalrymple explained that he met them in rural Bengal and assumed they were unspoilt by the modern world, but it turned out they’d been to London in the Sixties for a massive psychedelic knees-up with the Stones for the launch of their Beggars Banquet album. Prior to Mick ‘n’ Keef, they’d come from opposite ends of the social spectrum in rural Bengal. Kanai was from a poor family of labourers and lost his sight at six months old. When his parents died and his sister committed suicide, the Bauls provided refuge. Debdas was the son of a wealthy landowner, but he was a rebel and ran away from home and also eventually joined the Bauls. Now they are friends and mutual protectors.

Prostitute, Rani Bhai is a devadasi, part of a tradition of whores who used to be attached to temples. Although the Indian government has broken the official links between prostitution and temples, these women are still seen as having a special connection to the goddess Yellamma. To make it through her grim life, Rani Bhai consoles herself with dreams of retiring to a small farm and occasionally being venerated as a representative of the Goddess. Eventually, Dalrymple learns that this dream is only that: she has HIV and is unlikely to live long enough to tend to her chickens, cattle and buffaloes.

Finally, Hari Das, a stoical chap works as a labourer during the week and supplements his meagre income as a warder in a prison that makes the Turkish prison in Midnight Express sound like the Sandals Caribbean holiday resort. Not only is Hari Das desperately poor, but he’s also a ‘dalit’ – of one of the lowest castes in Indian society. However, for three months of each year he packs in the drudgery and becomes a dancer. Not just an ordinary dancer, but a cosmic dancer. In a jungle clearing, after several hours of getting dressed up and made up, he looks in a small mirror and *boom* his personality is replaced by Vishnu. Then he dances for the assembled masses and the local big wigs and Brahmins queue to touch his feet. Despite their unusual lives, Dalrymple makes the humanity of his ‘lives’ clear.

It’s probably fair to say that most books that address religion, at least in the UK, will have to contend with the ideas of Richard Dawkins. He stands like a bull-necked bouncer at the door of religious debate in the UK. For Dawkins, it’s not enough to say that God does not exist, he goes as far as saying ‘faith is an evil’, because ‘it requires no justification and brooks no argument’; in short, faith ignores scientific method. Dawkins the Bouncer isn’t bothered about scruffy trainers, but if a belief system hasn’t been subject to hypothesis, experiment and peer review, then it isn’t getting in.

It doesn’t appear that Dalrymple’s subjects have been reading The God Delusion. Neither however have they been using religion to justify hatred. It is a part of their lives that provides solace amidst hardship and offers possibilities where options are constrained. Above all, whatever these belief systems might represent, it is difficult to see them as the deluded fancies of dupes.

After we had been introduced to these spirited and curious characters, during the question and answer session an Indian man in audience asked Dalrymple, whether he was not seeking out exceptional personalities and then exoticising them. Taking his second glass of whisky, he replied that although it might be true to an extent, these wandering minstrels and ecstatic dancers do still exist in India and so surely it is worth reporting on them. Perhaps things will change when the Indian economy rivals that of the USA in 40 years time, but for now, these nine lives don’t seem that strange.

The sunflower sprouting numerous sunflowerlets

Sometime in August, someone cut the huge head off my huge sunflower. By this stage the head had already dried out and its huge weight meant that it hung down towards the ground. Then one evening I noticed the head was missing. A clear cut revealed the pithy centre of the stem and the fact that someone chopped it off. Hopefully, it was taken home by some children to study and examine.

Despite the plant missing its head, I didn’t pull it up. This was partly because I couldn’t: it requires a fork and a portion of the afternoon. Such a mighty plant deserved a little bit longer in existence too. A month passed and I noticed small green, bushy growths on the stem. This weekend after returning from a week’s holiday, the little protuberances had flowered into small sunflowers – there are 12 so far, and a few more to come. This sunflower sure wants to bloom alright.

Chanctonbury Ring in West Sussex

Part 2

On our third weekend on the South Downs Way, we reached a momentous juncture – after having crawled across five folds on our map, we finally crossed on to the other side. Luckily, Side B only has three days of walking on it. The second of these – the Sunday – was supposed to be the toughest day of the whole trip – a whopping 20 miles.

More worrying than the hard walk ahead, I was to be possessed by a foul demon. This dark spirit was called Keith. He first came to the attention of the world as the central protagonist in Nuts in May, a lesser known British comedy classic made by Mike Leigh. The film tells of a couple and their summer camping holiday in Dorset. Keith is the highly-strung husband of Candice-Marie, sporting a tweed jacket with a gold Vegetarian Society ‘V’ in its’ lapel. When not dragging his wife off to see the principal local sights, which include some fascinating places such as the local quarry, he spends the holiday on a one-man mission to impose the Countryside Code on the indifferent campers.

Our weekend started at Amberley railway station. A large gang of knobbly-kneed hikers alighted the train and began heading down the trail before us, so we stopped for tea and toast to let them get away. During the course of the weekend we continued to see lots of people; this section of the Way includes many more car parks that allow visitors to take advantage of the Downs. There also seemed to be many more mountain bikers whizzing past. Unlike Hampshire where we walked for a full two days and with only two major roads – one at the start and finish of each weekend slot – this weekend would involve crossing several busy roads. The first, a dual-carriageway without a bridge meant a mad dash across in the gap between the speeding cars.

Once up on the chalky path with the familiar omnipotent view over the Sussex countryside and, like a geeky Mr Hyde, it wasn’t long into our walk before Keith started to manifest himself. Those are some nice looking flowers, I thought, and whipped out my Collins Book of British Wild Flowers to begin classifying. Common Toadflax – grreat! It wasn’t just Keith operating here, I also wanted to know what the writer Robert Byron had been on about in his flower-heavy prose poem All These I Learnt. But then perhaps it was just Keith.

After lunch we came across a round saucer-like earthwork about 50 metres across. A sign announced that the clay-lined depression was a Dew Pond, which was used to collect rainwater for grazing sheep before water could be piped onto the hills. Shortly after, Chanctonbury Ring emerged from the Downs.  First an Iron Age fort and then the site of a Roman temple, and now an area known for UFO sightings, the Ring consists of two circles of low earthen ramparts that rise out of the springy, sheep-nibbled grass on the edge of the Down. The centre of the ring is filled with a mass of small trees and bushes, while larger trees – stretched in wild wind-blown poses – grow out of the earthworks at the edge.

The Way continued along the grassy top of the Downs, until we then turned south to circle around a large natural bowl. A memorial bench looked out over the landscape: sheep, walkers, and para-gliders drifting across the hills.  To the north east, the town of Steyning rested at the foot of the Downs, and to the south east, a huge white L-shaped quarry cut out of the green hillside.

A hazy view of The Steyning bowl

The huge block of Lancing College chapel dominated the horizon to the right on the valley bottom. Steyning is the natural resting point for this stage of the journey, but we’d already decided to press on up the hill alongside the huge quarry. Another mile or two ahead was the Truleigh Hill hostel where, Keith-like, I’d booked two bunks for Autumn and I in the single-sex dorms. It had built up an eccentric ‘youth hostel’ atmosphere even before we got there: when I’d phoned to book our meal, we were offered a starter of either tomato soup or orange juice.

The hostel was in a rectangular 1970s building right on the trail. The corridors in the sleeping quarters smelt of feet, but it was cheap. Staying here also meant we’d already cut three miles off the longest day of the walk that awaited us the next day. The furthest we’d walked so far was 14 miles, and the Steyning to Kingston-near-Lewes section was 20 miles.

Apart from a gang of children and their dads, our fellow guests were not particularly youthful.  They included a grey haired Scottish lady who must have been approaching retirement age, and a large northerner with a loud voice and grey beard. Thankfully, a couple in their thirties who’d travelled down from London in their car with an Aussie mate brought the average age down a bit. The people didn’t wear anoraks or sandals, which made us feel a little less geeky and kept Keith at bay. We ended up sharing a table at dinner with the Scot, who gave us insights into how to make cheap journeys around the country. She was pleased to inform us that she’d travelled down to Sussex from London on the bus for only a pound, and explained that if you are ever travelling north, breaking your train journey in Birmingham can often end up saving you up to half your fare. Our friend tried to persuade Autumn to join our local Youth Hostel Association council after I left the table. It turns out they need more young members as most are over 50.

The next morning was cool and slightly hazy, and we set out under a marbled grey sky. The mountain bikers, joggers and dog walkers were already up. In less than an hour we had reached Devil’s Dyke, a prominent ridge with a pub and valley behind it. A man approached us asking if we’d seen a anyone rolling down a hill in a huge plastic ball. We hadn’t, but once we regained the path we spotted the Zorbing balls being dragged back up the hill on a trailer.

Morning gloom on the South Downs

An hour and a motorway later and the path led through the shiny greens of Pyecombe Golf Cours, as slick and well-groomed as a thoroughbred’s haunch. There were now even more people about: dog walkers, families with children, women on horses. There was also litter, and the opportunity to tut disapprovingly.

We ate at Ditchling Beacon and finally left the day trippers behind at a junction of footpaths in the middle of the afternoon. One path offered us a three mile walk into Lewes., and another six and a bit. After six hours walking, a rest was in order. Autumn nibbled an oatcake and I pored over the contour lines. Gallic accents announced the arrival of a Frenchman and his wife and three daughters from the longer narrow path we’d soon be following. A short discussion ensued, culminating with the man snapping “Non, c’est pas la” before striding off up the path. The four women, all sporting identical blond shoulder length hair, followed.

Soon we were walking across a large hillside dotted with grazing sheep. The ripping and chomping of grass filled the air. By this stage, my moans about the rubbish had turned into picking it up. I’d begun stuffing a small box found by the path full of abandoned sweet wrappers. At the bottom of the valley, beside the roaring A27, we stopped for another short break. Despite the traffic roaring only 10 metres from our feet, we both promptly fell into a dream-filled sleep.

Over the road and the valley opened up into another large bowl, with para-gliders once again wafting over the hillside. The path climbs to a sweat-inducing 150 metres in a horseshoe shape, and on the far side of the valley it becomes Juggs Road, which finally leads to Lewes.  Juggs were the baskets of fish that the wives of the Brighton fishermen carried down the path to sell in Lewes market. Although we hadn’t trudged with loads of stinking fish, it was still time for another rest. From this high point the path heads down steeply from the Downs into the village of Kingston-near-Lewes. Another hour’s walk and two more stops and we finally dragged ourselves into the charming town of Lewes. There I could dump my litter, and then go home to wrestle with my demon.

Keith and Candice Marie - "Follow me Candice Marie!"

The kitchen wall. Top: new paint job, middle: semi-polyfilla-ed hole, bottom: old wallpaper

After almost three years of dreaming (and saving) I’ve finally got round to replacing my old 1980s kitchen. The drawers and cupboards didn’t close properly, the tap dripped and the stove was rusty. It was way past its best; the sort of kitchen that featured where Neil could be found cooking ‘lentil sick’ in The Young Ones.

These are the lessons I learned after putting in our new Ikea kitchen. Ikea might not sell the best kitchens, but they are sturdy and they are about the cheapest. Preparing the kitchen and fitting them is hard work, and constantly hunting for the screw driver and/or pliers can leave you feeling almost stoned.

1. Plan the kitchen
Obviously you must have a rough idea of what you want to do, but you will also have to plan it on the Ikea CAD system. Although it’s possible to download the software and plan at home (unless you’re using Ubuntu like me), using it can be tricky so you might benefit from some guidance from an expert. A trip to pick the brains of someone at Ikea might help – but you will have to book ahead or hang around for hours. Then a period of reflection might help before you actually purchase the stuff.

Meanwhile back at home, you’ll have prepared your kitchen – in our case this meant stripping off the greying yellow wood-chip wallpaper and filling the craters revealed underneath. Then sanding and painting the wall.

2. Plan the plumbing and wiring
Once you have a rough plan of your kitchen, book a plumber and electrician to make any necessary adjustments (moving sockets, putting the gas in right place) before you actually start work. The key is to get work done on a ‘per job’ basis rather than a more expensive ‘per hour’ rate. It is much easier to do this if you plan ahead, and the work itself should be easier without the new cupboards in the way.

3. Get a friend to help
Installing the kitchen is a complex business and a definitely a two person job. Luckily, in my case a friend* who’d fitted a couple of kitchens before volunteered to help out a year and a half ago. I never forgot that offer. You will need two people to heft some of the units and it helps with the planning and measurements if you have some prior experience.

4. You will have to go back to the shop at least once more
It’s very unlikely that you’ll pick up everything you need, and another trip to Ikea is likely. One of our units was too big, so we had to go back on Sunday morning to get another one 10 cm narrower. Earlier, at the shop we found they didn’t have quite enough cupboard doors or shelves which would require another journey back to the belly of the furniture beast in a week or two.

5. It will take much longer than you thought
Not just some jobs will take longer, but everything will. I would say take your initial guess of how long it will take, and double it.

6. Ikea is designed for giants
Following the Ikea CAD plan may produce some strange dimensions. They will suggest that you put the cupboards up at xxm xxcm. Measure this out, and step back to look at it, you might even want to hold up a cupboard to this height before you start securing them to the wall, and see if you will be able to reach the top shelf. More than likely, you may find the top of the cupboards are lost in the clouds and are difficult to reach even if you’re lanky and stand on a chair and then balance on your tiptoes.  The kitchens were designed with seriously strapping great vikings in mind.

7. Doubts are inevitable
You wonder, does this bit go in here or here… and am we doing this right? Is this really a sensible investment? Where’s that Allen Key again? Will it ever end? Why didn’t we just spend the money and get in the professionals? Stick with it. There’s no doubt that it is a good investment – at the very least you won’t have to put up with that horrible wood chip wallpaper.

*Thanks very much Al.

A splendid view from the South Downs

Part 1

Despite my blisters, I’d been looking forward to walking the second quarter of the South Downs Way. So, last weekend we set off again. On the Saturday leg, we were joined by one of the lovely Autumn’s friends, Bruce. Wiry and fit, he often works as a professional football referee. Clever and ambitious, Bruce has been Head of Geography at a school in Southampton for five years, despite being only 31. Bruce and his wife picked us up in their car at Petersfield station and drove us the two miles to where we finished the trail last time.

We started in high spirits – Autumn caught up with the gossip and I quizzed Bruce (an informed and intelligent sort) on his thoughts on the current affairs of the day. This section of the Way starts on a tree-covered country road, so quiet that we didn’t see a single car in over an hour. The only traffic were speeding mountain bikers, shouting warnings before whistling past. After a yet another lycra-clad apparition disturbed our conversation Bruce quipped “I thought you booked the path?” Still, time passed quickly, no doubt sped along by our high speed nattering. Suddenly it was mid-day and we’d walked a third of the day’s distance.

Sun-lit path through the forest

It started raining as we walked across a meadow and wrapped in our hoods we almost missed the first spectacular view to our left. Fields and villages stretched away from us while the dark sky streaked rain; at our feet the copper spire of South Harting church, fluffy-white bonfire smoke and sheep spread out like breadcrumbs on a rectangular green table cloth.

We navigated our way down a slope with an even steeper incline facing us, the speeding mountain bikes were now being pushed up the other side. After a hard climb to the top, we found a couple eating a picnic which included brewing coffee in a cafetiere. This was another Beacon Hill, where fires would have been lit to warn of the Spanish Armada in the 1580s – we’d climbed another on our first day. Bruce looked at the map and figured out that we’d come the short (but hard) route and the Way actually went round the hill.

It was time for lunch. Bruce’s geography-teacher map reading skills came in useful again and allowed us to navigate off the hill, down paths made slippery with ‘chalk flour’. We ate ploughman’s lunch with gigantic slices of cheese bought in a tiny, low ceilinged pub. The beer garden had several large beds of sturdy, richly coloured roses and looked onto a giant bank of the Downs. After a quick visit to the village’s Saxon church, we headed back to the Way.

On the route up we passed a wooden carving of St Christopher carrying a baby Jesus on his shoulder.

St Christopher at Elsted

The saint points the way to the next village and beneath his waist a sign reads:
‘Who carried Christ
speed thee to-day
And lift up they heart
All the way’

Later, sheltering amidst the stinging nettles in a wood, we saw a small gravestone of a German pilot who must have crash landed there in 1940. The stone was recently tended with Poppy Day crosses and large daisies placed beneath it.

Somehow the first day’s walking came to a close and we soon found ourselves heading down from the Downs through a field of rich, deep clover. We spent the night in Cocking, an otherwise picturesque village spoilt by a busy road running through it. The owner of our B&B, Mrs H., welcomed us with the offer of tea, which we had to decline as we were off to have dinner with Bruce and his wife, Laura. Instead, the kettle went on after we returned from our meal, and we finally settled down for a chat.

Tall, with a slight stoop, Mrs H. had been running her bed and breakfast for about fifteen years. It was hard to remember exactly how long, she said. Her house was stuffed with items brought back from Nigeria and South East Asia where she had lived with her husband who had worked for ICI. There were Vietnamese tables, Javanese shadow puppets, and ebony figures from Africa. One wall was covered in ‘chinese’ hats. She said the thing she liked most about having paying guests was meeting interesting people. “Who needs to go on holiday, when the holiday comes to you”, was how she put it.

Many of her guests had been had been walking the Way. Her favourites included four Irish women whose infectious good spirits had filled the house with laughter. One time a Japanese woman had performed the Tea Ceremony on the dining room table. The most unusual must have been the Carthusian monk who had been walking from his monastery in Le Grand Chartreuse to another monastery in West Sussex. The monk knocked on the vicar’s door, who then brought him round to Mrs H.; he too was Irish and had studied at Lancaster University in the 70s. Despite the austerity of his calling, the monk was an excellent mimic and spent his evening entertaining Mrs H with impressions of television personalities from thirty years ago. He left his round straw hat as a thank you, for which Mrs H had insisted he took a straw solar topee in return.

Mrs H. and Jon

After more chat over a hearty breakfast, we left feeling we’d met a real star of our journey. We couldn’t even make it to the end of her drive before turning back to take pictures of our kind host. Before heading up the path back up to the downs, we stopped in to Cocking Church to see the medieval wall painting that Mrs H. had mentioned. The fragment is faded and shows a simple image of a man in a long brown robe with a boy and small dog standing up on its haunches. It’s supposed to be part of the Nativity story of where the angel appears to the shepherds, but the resonances with the local area are clear. Sheep rearing was big in these parts in the Middle Ages – yesterday we walked past ‘The Shepherd’s Church‘ at Didling – and the Downs feature in the scene as an oblong block with a wavy top.

Back on the Way, we came across a farm with flint barns and brown and black pigs in the yard. The farm had a shop where we bought sandwiches and  banana cake from the ruddy cheeked farmer’s wife. She told us that there were tumuli further up the path, and someone she had spoken to had seen signs of prehistoric settlements on satellite images of one of their fields. After saying out goodbyes, we set off under a baked blue sk. The path turned to flint between meadows which grazed deep-red Sussex cows, and then changed to chalk over dun-coloured stubble fields. We walked for long periods through shady woods, before finally emerging in the stubble again and then sweating up a hill under the strong sun.

At the top of a long slope, we found the shade of a small coppice in which to sit and eat our sandwiches. The view looked over our route of the last half hour or so, and someone was already sitting there enjoying it – a pair of knobbly knees stuck out from behind a golfing umbrella. I would have preferred more privacy as I thought this was the ideal spot to propose to Autumn. I’d been thinking about putting the question to her for a while, for too long in fact. Okay, I’ll admit I’d been putting it off. Finally action was called for, so on the Friday before the walk I went hunting for a ring. I finally found one that seemed right. I found it in Hamleys, purveyors of the ‘The finest toys in the world’, that way Autumn could choose her own ring later. Before we set off I reckoned, that there’d be somewhere suitable to pop the question on the South Downs and this spot seemed to be it. So,out came the pink plastic heart-shaped ring, and luckily, she said yes.

Cracking up at the hilarity of it all

Before setting off again I was just about to nip into a hedge and answer nature’s call, when I was approached by a middle-aged man wearing black shorts and a leather bush hat.
“Are you just here on a jolly jaunt?” he asked
Despite wanting to tell him that we were just about to be off on a jolly trip to the loo, I managed to get out:
“Yes, just walking the South Downs Way” while wondering what else we might be doing standing in the path, “What are you up to?”
“Looking for something…” he said, as he put his hand into the undergrowth near a fence post. He pulled out a small plastic sandwich box which contained a roll of paper and a few sparkly, children’s trinkets. It turned out he was called Peter and was a taking part in the sport of ‘geo-caching‘, which is a sort of GPS-powered orienteering. Geo-cachers are given the coordinates of these small boxes and when they find them by using their GPS-systems, they note the fact by writing their names in the log book contained within the box. They can also leave small presents for others in the club, or more accurately, for their children. He said that the game “can become quite obsessional”, and explained that as we were not part of the sub-culture, we were ‘muggles’ – outsiders, although he didn’t mind letting us in on a few of their secrets. Peter joined us for about a mile before heading off in the direction of another cache.

An old Roman road, Stane Street, stretches over the vast expanse of Bignor Hill. There’s also a modern road that leads down to Bignor Roman Villa where you can see some well preserved mosiacs and a hypercaust system. Unfortunately, travelling by foot leaves little time for detours, so we carried on up and over the hill to be presented with another stunning view. After another hill we finally came down from the Downs to the village of Amberley for a pint of beer, to take the weight off the blister (just one this time) and take the (replacement bus service and then) train home.

Part 3