'Gregory is cheerful and disorganised'

Morris Table Dancing Shocker!!

2008-07-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

Just in from the excellent NewsBiscuit site http://www.newsbiscuit.com/article/councils-powerless-to-prevent-surge-in-table-morris-dancing-321

Bolero fully orchestrated on a single cello?

2008-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Dunno what Joseph-Maurice Ravel would have made of this, but I don't think he's turning in his grave......

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs updated

2008-05-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

I was having a board meeting in our favourite inn with my good friend Oakley last evening, and the guest ale was slipping down very nicely. Talk turned to Maslow's Heirachy, and precisely what constituted the basal layer. Whilst I was musing the specific needs, Oakley erupted with his characteristic flash of brilliance by rebranding the bottom deck 'Onslow's Hierarchy of Needs'.

I'll never be able to work again......

2008-05-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

......... now I can watch my beloved creek all day and night.

http://www.fact.org.uk/webcam.cfm

Many thanks to Fellowship Afloat for rigging up the webcam in the lighthouse.

My current squeeze

2008-05-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

Tuesday evening is music night, if I can be arsed to go, and last night I had my inhibitions beaten down by a broad-shouldered Shiraz, so I launched forth into my favourite chanson, 'Will the Circle be Unbroken?' with a fair degree of success.

It put me in mind of the wonderful version I saw on the seminal Transatlantic Sessions which they put on the telly in the late 90s, and with the wonders of Youtube, it has been reinstated as my absolute favourite squeeze. Lineups don't get much better than this, Michelle Wright, Iris Dement and that beautiful creature from Altan with the unpronounceable name, backed by Aly Bain, Jay Ungar, Jerry Douglas, Donnal Lunny and the absolute god of the piano accordion (and, ahem, acquaintance of mine.....)Phil Cunningham.

This is just the best.

Monkeys, typewriters & Shakespeare

2008-05-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

I really despair that pedantry will make it much beyond the 2020s. I was visiting a supplier recently, and despite being lamentably slow at taking in my surroundings and being probably the most appaling observer in the history of curiosity, I happened to notice a whiteboard on the wall. Hoping it would reveal trade secrets, I started to read it, and asked the nearest operative what the heading 'ICENTIVE' meant.

Being in the land of the Iceni, I mused with that possible etymological root, but not for long, as it read 'Incentive' and was I bloody blind or stupid? I bravely pointed out that it perhaps lacked quite that many letters, when the entire office fell silent, then collectively breathed 'Oh yeah....'

The author was present, and had apparently daubed the sign more than six months earlier, but he, and the rest of those present had not spotted what attacked me in a gnat's crotchet.

Perhaps enough monkeys, typewriters and time would produce the works of Shakespeare, but presumably it would be exponentially quicker for one to produce 'Hey, hey, we're the monkeys!'

The Lincoln 10k Run

2008-04-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

Time was when I trundled over the hill from Newcastle to South Shields on a couple of occasions, participating in the Great North Run, and I couldn't get anywhere near breaking the two hour barrier, however hard I trained. I'm just not built for running, big boned, awkward gait and the worst hand:eye coordination I have ever come across, so naturally I never excelled in sports, pub or otherwise.

Whenever I did a half marathon, I busted myself up really badly, and endured the most awful muscle aches for up to four days afterwards, so I decided to give myself the rest of my life off and concentrate on shorter distances that weren't so injurious, and it was 2001 that I first galloped round the Lincoln 10k. It was a record time, too, just over 52 minutes, but it was canine-assisted, as I was towed round the course by a fifteen-month-old cobrador that could have put an Iditarod-hardened huskie to shame. I had a few subsequent races that clocked appalling times as slow as 57 minutes, but this year turned into a grudge match, so draconian training was called for, combined with an Indian-delayed Lent.

Basically, my lovely boys, Sam (19) and Jack (18) both reckoned they could beat each other, and never even gave a thought that this old gimmer could be in the chocolates. As already established, Sam is at Manchester, and despite being a traitor to his genes and working hard academically, spent many hours in the gym and out on the track. Jack had done his basic training at the Army Foundation College at Harrogate a year before, and although he opted out (to a mixture or relief and regret) after the hard bit, was as hard as nails and incredibly fit. Like everything else in his current sloth-like life, training was too much of a hassle, and he knew he could just wing it on the day, Sunday 30th March 2008.

The weather building up to the race was a shocker, complete with snow for Easter Sunday a week earlier, and even the Saturday was a bleak day, but the Lincoln 10k is a charmed race, and the sun has never failed to shine for every one of my five entries.

The official race photographer was Ellie, who if her future is in the field of photography must learn to be a little less economic with the shutter, as herewith is the total of her day's work

Despite the sunshine, there was a cutting north wind, and the start was delayed by twenty minutes as some confrontational shit was refusing to move their car from a pinch point on the course. Eventually we shuffled up to the line........

..... and then we were away, a forced slow start, but probably not too bad for that fact. We had already decided we would run independently, and in the melee of the start, we were instantly parted and I honestly didn't know where they were, although I fancied Jack had already made a dash for it.

Fortunately, the course is around the old town on top of the hill, and does not feature that ball-busting hill up to the cathedral. There are still some spirit-sapping inclines, however, and the first one features in the council estate where everyone seems to run through fear rather than competition. I had started the race with my trusty old greeny-yellow biking jacket to keep my temperature up, but two miles in my thermostat opened and off the outer casing came. I ran with it screwed up in a ball, hoping to see Ellie mid-course and give it to her.

That bit of the plan worked, as she shouted to me, and I cut across the course to throw my jacket at her feet. It was at this point she took her last photo of the day, this unedifying snap of my dispatch.

Two things happened at this point. Firstly, neither Ellie or Jane recognised the fact I had delivered my heirloom garment to Ellie's feet, and coolly walked on and left it there, lost to me forever, and secondly, Jane shouting 'Go Jack! Go Greg!' And there he is in the picture, in the red shirt, the hairy little individual, trying to run my race!

Well, I didn't look round then or until the two furlong mark. I realised that he was hanging on to me, and we were both running my race. So I stepped up the pressure a bit, just at the 5 mile bit where fatigue is biting. The dispiriting thing about the Lincoln course is that it twists back on itself, so whilst you feel you are running the race of your life, the elite runners are cantering past in the other direction, having already done a mile and a half more! There is a flipside to this in that when I reached that very bit on the home straight, the backmarkers were running hard, so I must have been in the top half of the field.

When I rounded the cathedral for the heartbreaking hill climb over cobbles up to the finish line in the castle, I had a hard look back, and Jack wasn't there waiting to pounce, so I carried on running the best race I could. On previous occasions, I seemed to be able to summon up reserves of energy at the end to overtake dozens of people at the death, but this time there was nothing extra left, and the late-surgers were going past me. I was really pleased about that, as it meant I had measured the pace well, hadn't gone too slow or too fast earlier, just a solid performance throughout, a bit like a racing car running out of fuel on the finish line.

Endurance sports make me a bit mad, and I was suffering delusions in the closing stages that I had run a sub-50 time (I don't wear a watch) so I was devastated to see the clock on the line report '55.37'. How could this be, I had just trained for a month, and really pulled my tripe out? The good thing about these modern day races is that many of them, including Lincoln, use a timing chip, so one's time is measured between the lines, rather than from the gun, recorded on the clock. The bad thing is one has to wait until the paper comes out the next day to get the actual times.

My beef with these races is that organisers have starting pens based on expected finish times. Why, then, are there pantomime cows and pub landlords with collecting buckets immediately behind the Ethiopian elite, whom do nothing but slow down serious (or in my case Corinthian) runners? Are they seriously worried about donor-fatigue in crowds lining the course? I am justified in my fulminating, in that my gun place was 1,547th and my place between the lines was 1,541st, so I had overtaken only 6 people during the race.

The most important statistic for me was 54 minutes and 3 seconds corrected time, my second personal best, and without a tug.

1541 2432 Gregory Dunn M 00:55:37 1547 00:54:03
1686 2433 Jack Dunn M 00:56:56 1723 00:55:25
1931 2434 Samuel Dunn M 00:58:53 1981 00:57:21

Needless to say the lovely boys are livid that the old man kicked their arse, but I fear next year I will have to retire toothless to the edge of the herd as the young bucks rob me of my crown!

Sesquipedalian! Me?

2008-04-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

My good friend and colleague Dr Richard Case was recently moved to accuse me of sesquipedalianism. Normally, my defence in that situation is to sit on the fence until I can extricate myself and find a reliable dictionary fast. However, with the good doctor, that sort of pretence isn't called for, as the man is learned way beyond his years, so I just asked for spelling and etymology by email, and this is what turned up.

"sesquipedalian adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

We owe this word to the Roman writer Horace, who wrote in his Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry): “Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba” (“He throws aside his paint pots and his words that are a foot and a half long”). It comes from Latin sesqui–, one and a half, plus ped, a foot. It was borrowed into English in the seventeenth century and has become a favourite of those writers who like self-referential terms, or are addicted to polysyllabic humour.

It appears, somewhat disguised, in The History of Mr Polly by H G Wells: “Words attracted [Mr Polly] curiously, words rich in suggestion, and he loved a novel and striking phrase. His school training had given him little or no mastery of the mysterious pronunciation of English, and no confidence in himself... He avoided every recognized phrase in the language, and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn’t be suspected of ignorance but whim. ‘Sesquippledan,’ he would say. ‘Sesquippledan verboojuice.’ ”

Somebody who uses long words is a sesquipedalianist, and this style of writing is sesquipedalianism. The noun sesquipedality means “lengthiness”. If such words are not enough, there’s always hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist for someone who enjoys using really long words."

I wouldn't agree about enjoying really long words, but I do take delight in trying to select really right words!

Now the rush is over........

2008-04-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

....... of pictures of snow, I thought I'd bung in my Easter pics. The day started with three inches of snow and a monumentally stupid decision on my part to keep up my training regime for the Lincoln 10k run. Being mildly obsessive:compulsive, I have only one calculated route of exactly 10k, and as I can't possibly run for any less or more than the target training distance, it has to be this route. I failed to make the connection between the deadly combination of an uneven seawall on the Humber bank and the deep and crisp and even blanket of slippery stuff.

So it was a complete surprise to tear a muscle in my arse so badly that I thought I'd scuppered the race, still a week away, and I spent the next four days in gluteus maximus hell, but the run itself can await its own telling.

I got these shots before the ill-starred run and before the rapid melt set in.

On limping home, behind the cobrador for once, it was pretty obvious that we could make the drive down to Bury St Edmunds for the Easter feast at Jules' place, which I really didn't want to miss, as it was to be the first reunion of the old India hands, and the rolling out to the wider family of the wonders of Gin & Mango.

In fact, the severe snow coverage was only in remote North Lincolnshire and west of Bury, so the drive was easy and relaxed. Parties at Jules' are always great, and the craic was 90 (I have traced the origins of that peculiar phrase, and one theory was that it originated in the Isle of Man, and not in the Ireland that claims it), even for someone four and a half weeks into the alcohol deprivation of a delayed Lent. We went for the obligatory walk around Icklingham village in a bitingly cold wind and got these snaps.

Then it was lift-off early doors, as we had promised Ellie her birthday nosh-up in a restaurant of her choice, and she predictably chose Damon's, an upmarket burger joint on the Lincoln bypass, popular with the youth of the area and other lovers of predigested food. I love going there, but for anthropological and musical reasons, and certainly not for the disappointment of being told that the fella on the next table just ordered the last lobster, as I was all for ordering steak just to get a sharp knife to poke him in the eye. People's table manners fascinate me, and I wonder why. My late father, a man widely respected as being able to mount a spirited counter-argument to any reasonable opinion, passed on to me his firm belief that food should be loaded and unloaded in private.

Does anyone remember that wonderful play on the telly called 'John Fothergill'? Himself was played brilliantly, as ever, by Robert Hardy, as the restaurateur of that nosh-house in Thame that featured in Brideshead where Anthony B-b-b-b-lanche attempted the seduction of Charles Ryder. The line I remember vividly was Fothergill showing off to one of the glitterati by instructing his waitress to overcharge customers by a shilling if she considered them to be ugly. The scene of corpulent farmers trenching down plain fare on market day made a fitting backdrop.

The musical reason is attached to the anthropological in that it is so surprising that we all have a birthday every 365 days, and we're damn well going to go out and eat burgers and sing about it! Which brings me onto the musical content in that miserable dirge, because in a reasonably large gathering, not only do all twelve notes feature simultaneously, but there are half and quarter tones in the cacophonous farting. Then, after the atonal row during which at least half the choir forget the name of the stupid sod celebrating their epiphany, there is that awful wail that started life as 'hurrah!' and has been corrupted to the drunken belch we are subjected to today. And if that spectacle was enough, the 'management' turn it into a son et lumiere by prodding some poor sap of a waiter into the throng bearing a Swiss Roll with a sparkler in it! Strike a light!

Perhaps you are forming an opinion that I'm not a fan of ingestion as a team sport. Suffice to say it was someone with a far sharper wit than I who proclaimed the ugliest word in the English language to be 'burger'.

Catching up

2008-04-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Life has been extraordinarily hectic, stressful almost beyond endurance at times, and fleetingly beautiful over the past three weeks or so. Here begins a few of the highlights.

Every Australian Boy Needs a Shed?

That is the title of an otherwise forgettable song by Australian band Stampede (there Mary, you thought I'd forgotten!), and put me in mind of a long-held belief, way before Boggy Marsh's fleeting fame, that the true currency of life is sheds. I simply love sheds. This is hardly unusual, pretty much every bloke I know loves sheds, but the real reason that this subject has reared its head is that I have managed to secure tenure of what I can only brag about as being the quintessential foxtrot oscar shed. The sort of shed where I can not only work on my beloved boats, but also rig them! Yes, I can get the effing mast up inside this monster! It features a mezzanine floor, a storeroom, acres of space, natural light, surround strip lighting, three-phase electricity and a disgustingly dirty shithouse.

Needless to say I have expanded to fill the available space already, but the anticipation of driving to Holland this Thursday (unbeknownst of the present Mrs D - she doesn't grace these pages - I don't think?!) to view the mother of all sports boats, Zest, Yachting World Diamond No 1, the first planing keelboat in the history of the world is made all the more enjoyable if terms can be reached, in the knowledge that I can just about squeeze her in me new shed too!

Sharon Shannon

2008-03-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

I freely admit it was the sound of Sharon Shannon that made me want to be a squeezebox player. That was fifteen years ago, and things didn't exactly turn out that way, in that the good woman plays the diatonic melodeon and I ended up playing the chromatic piano accordion, but I'm happy enough with my own style of playing.

Here's a recently uploaded live performance of the excellent 'Galway Girl' with Steve Earle crooning. A gentleman to the end, Mr Earle has always protected the eponymous lady's identity, and as her hair was black and her eyes were blue, we have to discount Shazza as a suspect. Enjoy

Stuff white people like

2008-03-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com

Out of the blue, and into the black

2008-03-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned the Black Diamond, there is a small bit on the electric internet about her:-

http://www.philsfoils.com/Diamond/diamond.html

The new rudder makes her a dream to steer, even on a shy reach in a blow with the asymetric spinnaker stalling.

To infinity....... and beyond!

2008-03-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

OK, Juliet, here goes. I'm definitely the last person out of 4,635,040 to enjoy this animation, but it's a good maiden voyage for glueing anything more complex than a photo to these pages. Here's hoping it'll work........

Heard

2008-03-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

As Ellie's fifteenth birthday was being celebrated Wednesday last, and she was sitting amid heaps of discarded wrapping paper, I was rather taken aback to have the tables of yesteryear turned on me. It was standard practice when the three were tinies for 'consolation' presents to be given to the two 'Unbirthay' celebrants, and I had forgotten that I had received an IOU for a present on March 1st, my big day. So imagine my delight to have my very own consolation present pushed into my unexpectant little hands.

It was the ipod thing that I had cried out for in the midst of tribal music gym hell!

It says Walkman on it, and as monumentally out of step and bewildered by the modern world as I am, even I had a Walkman in the days of C90 tapes and worn out batteries. But this thing is smaller than the meanest biscuit, and it hasn't got any screws so one can take it apart to see how it works. All you can do is look up its arse, for that is the only orifice, other than a suspicious-looking docking mechanism guaranteed not to talk to any other contraption from the panoply of audio reproduction that we are swamped with.

However, only have bred irresponsibly to guarantee little people in the house that can operate video machines and microwave ovens, one came down from university in the nick of time and tethered this Walkman to this thing I'm typing on, and downloaded (see how infectious their newspeak is?) lots of good stuff from Radio 4, and amazing things have happened.

The first miracle was sawing three minutes off my recent record for a 6 mile run. Midweek (my favourite - Libby is a fellow trad boater) took my mind completely away from the brainless activity of running, and dulled the pain of effort. The second was going to the gymnasium and not wanting to punch anyone in the squabble over which tribal music booms out from the tinny speakers in the particularly unpleasant sweat box I attend.

Which brings me to my point of what was heard. Two soundbites, one on 'Start the Week' concerning the difference between the genders - 'There are more male geniuses, but also more male idiots' and the other was in 'From Our Own Correspondent' that asserted that America looks upon terrorism as a war whilst Europe looks upon it as criminality, and our respective reactions differ accordingly.

Bizarre Diamond Blogspot

2008-03-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Having a multi-thousand Googleganger name, I haven't bothered 'Advanced Searching' Greg Dunn since the initial fascination with the electric internet in 1996, but every year or so, I do have a good look through the pages specifically relating to the Yachting World Diamond design.

I am lucky enough to be the current custodian of Black Diamond, sail number K44, of which there will hopefully be much more mention in these pages if I can achieve the potential summer racing programme on offer in the Blackwater this year.

Having a good old Google this evening, I found a rather bizarre site from a fellow blogspotter called 'diamond-r', who seems to have a thing about diamonds and random sentence generation. Since February, this site has racked up and incredible number of posts, well into the hundreds, that tell one absolutely nothing!

This is the page that relates to the Yachting World Diamond:-

http://diamond-r.blogspot.com/2008/02/yachting-world-diamond.html#yachting%20world%20diamond

If anyone can make bow or transom of it, please let me know!

Yours, in confusion........

Incredible India the Last

2008-03-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

We left Chethalli with almost a sense of anticlimax, in that the focal points of our pilgrimage had been achieved, and anything after that intensity was going to pall. Our plan was however to carry on in the footsteps of our forebears and head up to Ooty.

Ooty was the Anglicised jolly hockey sticks corruption of Ootacamund, but the name endured the departure of the British, and 'Ooty - Queen of the Hill Stations' is still proclaimed on the town sign. We were booked into the best hotel in town, the Savoy, again fondly imagining our forebears staying in our very rooms, just up the road from the Ooty Club. Polite society in Ooty was based around a horse race meeting once a year, and long before spin doctors and image consultants, the protagonists of upper class warfare coined the acerbic strapline 'Snooty Ooty', which can only be pulled orf with received pronunciation.

However, actually getting to Ooty is a major undertaking, and we made an early start to cram in as much as possible along the way, leaving Chethalli at 7am. First stop was at the Tata Coffee Curing Works at Kashalnagur. I was particularly interested in this trip, as they also process organic coffee, and that was what I was interested in sourcing.

This is the handraulic coffee turning machine. This is a time-honoured method, and some old fashioned barley maltings in the UK still use this method

And this the organic coffee store

The walls were dotted about with mission statements with a difference, of which this was typical

After a very short visit, we left indecently fast, as we had many miles to cover, and we were keen to visit a Buddhist temple close to Kashalnagur. This is the main temple, which was quite a fantastic architectural feat, and the largest temple in the world outside Tibet

As luck would have it, we witnessed a major festival in the Buddhist calendar, when the monks had been observing a vigil for several days, but didn't show outward signs of exhaustion

We were befriended by a Taiwanese female monk, who explained the whole festival, and the basic tenets of Tibetan Buddhism. She was, however, a foreigner, and therefore outside the hierarchy of monks, but was one of the few 'lay' members who spoke English, so her role was to greet foreigners and explain the ropes. For anyone struggling with gender recognition, she is on the right.

Time pressed again, so we were back into the Tata, with the aircon on (1 rupee extra per mile, mind!) and speeding, when possible, towards Mysore. It was time for lunch, and we stopped at a reasonably up-market hotel cum diner. It was there that I realised how heartily sick of curry I had become. Jules saw the whole trip out on curry for breakfast (idly is an acquired taste!), tiffin, luncheon and dinner, but whilst nursing an ice-cold Kingfisher, I spied noodles on the menu, and they were absolutely deelicious.

We then skirted Mysore City and then turned right, heading due south on the Ooty Road. I have a mobile phone that is the techno version of a Swiss Army Knife, and one of its 'blades' is satnav that includes altitude. The plain to the south of Mysore is at about 2,000', but still very hot, as the phone also told me we were only 12 degrees north of the equator. It was on this road we saw our first monkey colony.

About an hour out of town, we happened upon Vasantha's favourite diner, and he knocked off for twenty minutes and disappeared inside for his scram. We respected his space and poked around the side of the road in the heat and dust. That diner could have been anywhere in the arid parts of middle earth, complete with the obligatory truck, a herd of goats and staring people.

Onwards, and eventually upwards. We passed through a nature reserve that was absolutely beautiful, glimpsing the occasional elephant, and then, climbing slightly we drove towards and then into the bottom of a massive mountain. It dawned on us that they aren't called 'Hill Stations' for nothing when we were confronted with a roadsign on a hairpin bend that had the figure '1' over a figure '36'. Yes, the first of 36 hairpin bends on a single track road that climbed from 3,500' to 7,500', four thousand feet climbing into downcoming traffic of all shapes, types and HGV/PSV classes, in a country where the concept of an MOT is alarmingly remote. I cannot recount how many times Vasantha sat on the horn on the way up, the gaps between were probably the shorter of the two. Suffice to say it was hairy, and we did pass several vehicles that had boiled. However, with every 500 feet we climbed, the temperature dropped another degree, and getting out of the car in the chill evening air was quite shocking, 12 degrees north of the equator.

But that was after we had to pass into Tamil Nadu. We had been in Karnartaka State for the trip so far, so it was quite a surprise to come to a halt just as we had breasted the top of the mountain, where Vasantha had to buy a pass to travel in the state. This seemed a bit rich, as the moment we passed the post, there was two miles of the most shocking road we had yet encountered, but again, there was evidence that something was in process of being done about it.

Ooty is lovely. There is a successful campaign to keep Ooty 'Plastic Free'. The plastic bag is the curse of India, and China, for that matter; it is the new carpet for the towns, villages and highways. Why the Indian Government can't grant a bounty on every sack collected is beyond me. But Ooty has made this plan stick by banning the shops and stalls from wrapping goods in plastic bags, and good on 'em.

It was now dusking as we drove into the opulent grounds of the Savoy. Allix and I drew the long straws and got the most fantastic suite, with our own bedroom and bathroom each, whilst Mary and Jules slummed it in the modern end. The ayah came by to light our fire, and we got stuck into some gin and mango before dinner, and got quietly pissed, to put it frankly.

And as we all know, drinks before dinner, then drinks with dinner.....

......meant I woke not feeling my best. In fact, I had a horrible night, as what had started as the most comfortable bed of the trip so far, with lovely cool, crisp sheets, when warmed up gave off the aroma of having been previously enjoyed by someone with incontinence issues. As there were two enormous single beds pushed together, I cut my losses and climbed into the other bed after having pumped the bilges out of all that beer and wine, but sad to say that they must have been an incontinent couple, so it was horribly whiffy. I planned my invective in the wee small hours, but as is usual in imaginary speech writing, when it came to the denouement, I was probably too delicate, as all they did was turn the mattress and put a protector on, which although it made me feel like the incontinent party, was 90% successful at hermetically sealing the stench.

We had one full day in Ooty, so made the most of it. The day started with a boating trip, as we were able to hire a rowing boat. As with all rules in India, the sign that firmly stated 'NO SELF ROW' was flouted as we hired a heavy carvel dinghy and waved off the services of the lascar.

Drunken people not allowed? Glad I wasn't breathalysed!

But, of course, I couldn't resist turning it into a race with another of the 'skippered' boats. I fancied my opponent didn't understand boat trim, so I made a pain of myself shifting the girls for'ard and getting my transom out of the water and reducing drag. It worked and we were pulling ahead nicely, but I hadn't reckoned on the thin air, and as I was pulling my tripe out like a spinach-fuelled Popeye, I started to feel quite sick.

But you should have seen the other bloke.......

We paddled right round the lake, far away from any of the other rowing boats or pedalos, and then Jules took the oars and showed us she had learned a thing or two down at Woodup all those years ago. As we two are close in age, when we were growing up, I was mad on boats, and she on horses, and it was a strange day indeed that we both were allowed to indulge ourselves in 'our' thing, as she hired a nag later for a canter in the hills. And all this at 7,500'. When I flew back into Heathrow, my plane flew the length of the City at exactly that height, and it is a hell of a long way up.

When we went ashore, Jules couldn't resist a go on the dodgems, or the 'Dashing Cars' as they are charmingly named. Just look at th unbridled aggression as Jules teaches the locals a thing or two about road rage.

From the Boating Lake it was off for a serious cup of coffee, and this was when we happened upon teh Indian version of Starbucks, called Coffee Day, and the coffee was knockout, so much so that we called back in the next day on our way out of town for another scoop. Then it was off to the church where our forebears had worn their knees out with piety (ho ho)

.... where I saw this wordy gravestone. The words are probably used in every second eulogy, but they were new to me, and I captured them for a good friend who is nursing the recent loss of her mother

Then we were back to the Savoy where Jules had hired this 'ornery critter for a hack in the hills. I have to say my sis does sit well in a saddle. She had a wonderful ride, with a Toda syce on a tiny pony as a guide, whilst the rest of us had a snooze and a trip round the shops

It was all a bit end of holiday then, as we dined in the Savoy restaurant. We made firm plans to return for the Christmas of 2009, with as many of the family as we can possibly amass. Next morning, we packed to leave, Vasantha strapped the suitcases to the roof, and we got this one final shot of the good old days

Then it was off, over the appaling road back to the border, and then into Karnartaka and down through 36 hairpin bends. Those who know about my 'thing' for speed bumps won't be surpirsed by my fascination with how Indian drivers avoid them. Simple, just drive on the other side of the road!

It is impossible to show the scale and majesty of the mountain, but here's trying

The trip back to Mysore was enjoyable, but was retracing our outward journey, but this time Vasantha got to dine first. Whilst we waited for him, two goats gave birth to kids, which were of great interest to the dogs, who were gathering to move in for the kill, when the family rushed out and rescued the valuable newborns

We dined regally in the Metropole in Mysore, which was outstandingly good food, but then it was back into the car for the final grind back to Bangalore and the real world beyond. It took an age to traverse town again, but eventually we found our old apartment, unloaded an bade our fond farewells to Vasantha, who had now been with us for six days.

Man

And Machine

We went out and dined lightly in a restaurant near the apartment, and I was struck how differently I perceived the town for only a week before, when I found it a filthy third world ghetto. I realised we were lucky to be in a posh part of town, and the shops and restaurants were quite cosmopolitan. It was undeniably Indian, but had a strange chic about it, one that I really warmed to, and makes me want to go back to Bangalore soon and spend much more time there.

I had forgotten Mary's inability to say goodbye, but remembered it as she retreated, closing the apartment door firmly behind her, for which Jules congratulated her by text, 'best one yet!' There is nothing left of import to impart, other than I am glad I have let a month pass to put the trip into perspective before finishing the narrative.

The defining feature of the trip for me was, perhaps surprisingly, not Dalquarren. It was meeting my sisters for the first time as travelling companions, sharing the very best of quality time, and lots of it, and this is going to sound mawkish, and you know it's coming, but realising quite how much I love them.

Incredible India 4

2008-03-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

If one looks at the following two photographs from 1944 and 2008, just about the only identifiable feature linking the two is the flowerbed in the foreground.

This is my favourite shot of the auld place, taken from down in the coffee drying terrace

And this is the beautiful view, 3,500' up in the clear air, looking northeast towards Mysore.

India was a crazy mix of first and third world, the notable firsts being mobile signal EVERYWHERE, unlike this creaking country, where one struggles to have uninterrupted calls driving up the M1, and the obligatory satelite dish for enjoyment of Bollywood. This beauty is attached to the estate worker's cottage immediately adjacent to Dalquarren Bungalow.

Next door to the satellite dish is this Buddhist shrine.

These are the sheds where the dried coffee beans were stored

This is the back of Dalquarren Bungalow, with Jules acting as a useful perspective

And finally, the roof line of the storage sheds and Dalquarren Bungalow beyond

After the tour of the coffee processing plant and poking around the estate, we were treated to Coorg coffee and cakes by the very welcoming and helpful staff of Mr V Alaggapan, who is the incumbent proprietor of Dalquarren and had very kindly granted us permission to visit our ancestral home. Three hours had elapsed unnoticed, and it was time to leave. The place looked fantastic in the low evening sun as we bade our farewells and climbed into the cars to descend to Chethalli, one mile distant.

We were very keen to find the Post Office in Chethalli, where our mother called daily to collect letters from her beloved Gerald, who was away enduring some pretty rough times in Burma. They wrote to each other daily, but each had the frustrations of a fractured postal service piling up six or seven letters at a time, followed by a week's famine. What was apparent was that the there was no Post Office in Chethalli, so Jepu ascertained that it used to be this building

One interesting fact is that Jules has had more names than Prince, TAFKAP or whatever he is called these days. She started by being Juliana Toffny in the 60s, largely due to my inability to pronounce 'Dorothy' (ha ha, Jules!). She then started the 70s as a woman of the people as 'Julie', but had upgraded to 'Julia' by the end of the decade, only to revert to her birth certificate in swinging 1980s Hong Kong as the much more Empire-friendly 'Juliana'. It was only on marriage that she climbed to a seven syllable name, which is quite an achievement for a non double-barreled surname, but 'Juliana Uniacke' was just too long, so she sawed the legs off Juliana to become 'Jules' her fifth and hopefully final incarnation. She rarely acknowledges these facts, so this is a rare shot of regression therapy:-

As dusk fell, we wandered up and down the single street of Chethalli, the subject of intense local interest. Allix and Mary had some coffee ground in the local hardware store (?) and Jules and I bought some fruit and some lemonade, as we were tiring of our great invention of the trip, Gin and Mango. We then bade Jepu good evening and went back to the Bopaya's homestay.

The next morning it was off to Pollibetta. This was where our great grandparents had a coffee estate called Beechlands, so it was also of great interest to us. We met Jepu at the Anglican church where our great grandparents had worshipped, as our grandfather had until he 'turned to Rome'.

However, he was rehabilitated enough to have hsi adored son included on the war memorial in the church

From there, it was off to a meeting at Tata Coffee Limited, from whom Jepu had retired some years previously. Here we were ushered into the boss's office and had an interesting discussion on the Coorg coffee industry. Jepu had written this charming account that was hung in the branches of a preserved coffee bush that stands outside the swish offices of Tata Coffee Limited

From there we were whisked to Beechlands, and what an eye-opener that experience was. It is the third Michelin star of homestay, and before we had been there many minutes, plans were firmly made to spend Christmas 2009 there with a close nucleus of 25 family members. It is unique, largely down to the monumental snobbery of our maternal great grandmother, in that it is two storey, and as all the Brits thereabouts settled for the the Empire Bungalow, she insisted on an upstairs. It has been largely/totally rebuilt over the years, but we are lucky enough to have a before and after.

2008

1891 - The feminine-looking child is in fact George Parsons at 3 years old

Then we were away to the Bamboo Club, formerly known as the Pollibetta Club. Here we saw three interesting artifacts; the trophy cabinet, containing many well-known Indian and British names, the President's nameboard confirming that great grandfather had been president the year grandfather was born and some bits of rigging from the Zeppelin that Coorg man Leife Robinson VC famously shot down in WW1

Then it was back to Jepu's house where we met his beautiful wife Vani, and enjoyed a wonderful lunch. Looking through Jepu's photo albums of Coorg Coffee Planters reunions was simply marvellous, as previously witnessed. Jepu is a great Anglophile, and it was the only time on the trip that we heard classical music.

Jepu took me up to show me his coffee estate, of which he has 50 acres. Here is a really useful tip if you are suffering allotment damage from elephants. I noticed a heap of dried elephant dung, and asking what it was, Jepu broke open a dried Bismark and revealed that humans aren't the only species that is mad for coffee. He has had significant wild elephant damage inflicted on his estate, and he was trying a sure-fire deterrent - elephant dung and chili powder mixed together and burnt - the smoke drives elephants insane, and they scarper and never return to the source of the stench.

We said our farewells to Jepu and Vani, thanked them for a wonderful lunch and promised to return soon. He is one helluva bloke.

From Pollibetta, it was a longish drive back to Mercara, and I buried myself in an internet cafe whilst the girls did what women do and went shopping for clothes. Therefore the rest of the afternoon and evening was un-newsworthy, and we returned to the Chethalli homestay for our last night.

Next installment - Incredible India the Last - Snooty Ooty!

What a difference a day makes 2

2008-03-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

What a difference a day makes 1

2008-03-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've just had some high octane R&R in my beloved Tollesbury. The following pictures show the top of the daytime tide on Saturday 8th March 2008. The next post will show a tide half a metre higher on the Sunday, with the obligatory seaborne cars.

This is the Sunbeam, Tollesbury's finest vessel and also (IMHO) the finest of the Essex smacks, afloat or otherwise. She has an unusually fine entry, and a beautiful sheer line.

The view of Woodup from the walkway out by Rotten Row, at the top of the tide

It was indescribably cold in the sharp wind, this chap must have had his Ready Brek

The smack yacht Ripple looking a bit sorry for herself. She was built for the Sadd family (of timber merchant fame in Maldon) and skippered by Navvy Mussett for many years, who had not a kind word to say for her. He reckoned she was built to big and shoal draft to go to windward, and she was a pig to sail. He told a story of the imperious Mrs Sadd coming on deck and demanding to know what trade the merchant vessel that was close by in the Swin was engaged in. He replied that it was a banana boat, carrying fruit of London. She disappeared below immediately when the stench of the sewage enveloped the Ripple, on a sea of prophylactics. I've a store of Navvyisms, I'll post when time allows.

Wigborough Hill across Tollesbury Fleet, with Old Hall Marsh, site of Red Hall in Baring Gould's Mehalah, invisible in between.

Memory, hull down in a stiff breeze! The bones of the finest racing barge on the East Coast. Memory had the sweetest lines. She was owned by John Kemp of Maldon, and sailed under the pennant of East Coast Sail Trust. When she was beyond safely putting to sea, in 1968, I believe, she was sold to Fellowship Afloat, and was their first floating clubhouse, before she could hold out the tide no longer, and the new lightship was purchased.

Which brings us to the subject of rebuilding, and this one's nearly ready to go back into the water. Charlotte Ellen, four feet shorter than the Sunbeam, but a fast and well-sailed smack. She has been rebuilt by Cakey Drake in his father's old boatyard that used to feature a splendid thunderbox on stilts beyond the high water mark.

Incredible India 3

2008-03-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

3pm was the alloted time to meet Jepu Uthappa at the bottom of the drive of Dalquarren. I have known Jepu for 27 years, 26 as Mr Uthappa. He is Mr Coorg to me.

The story of Mr Uthappa starts with Independence, as that was the time that many of the British coffee planting community retreated with the Viceroy and the estates were sold to Indian successors who have taken the industry forward to the success it is today. And a big success it is too, as there is so much IT money sloshing around Banagalore (Silicon Valley East I heard it referred to recently) that the latest 'must have' is a coffee estate, and prices have risen to £12,000 an acre for a top notch estate.

History as they say is written by the victors, and we haven't really got to the revisionist era yet if there is going to be laundering of the hitherto tarnished image of the Raj, or at least its closing stages dramatised by Attenborough's 'Ghandi', and I don't need to comment further on the rights and wrongs of independence and partition. The point I do want to make is that the handover of the estates in Coorg was by all accounts a gentlemanly affair, with properties passing from the hands of the old ruling class to the new, and those friendships between Indian and British families last to this day in the form of the Coorg Coffee Planters Association. Jepu Uthappa is prominent among those Indian gentlemen.

This wonderful association was formed in 1979 by Maurice Webb, succeeded by Mike Michell, who is one of the most indomitable characters I have ever met. Now well into his eighties, Mike has held the association together through thick and thin, and has organised well over 25 annual reunions since the early 80s.

I will freely admit right here that in 1981, when my mother invited (read required) me to attend this strange reunion of old planter families and a load of Indians in a curry house in Virginia Water, I was less than thrilled. I kicked off at the very idea, and then petulantly demanded that my then girlfriend Louisa should come, and at least we'd get a decent curry.

What an eye-opener that was, meeting Mr Uthappa in his full Coorg regalia, complete with ceremonial dagger that had caused a stir at airport security even back in those carefree days. I was also struck by the close relationship of all these old friends, irrespective of nationality, but still felt remote from the unifying bond they held. Just jumping ahead in this story, the next day we visited Mr Uthappa's house, where he showed us his treasured photo album, and there, carefully named, are Louisa and I in the full flower of our youth, idealistic vegetarians both, thin as laths with fine features and 80's haircuts.

It was perhaps a tad indelicate of Jepu to point out that I must be very successful to have expanded my girth so, but I was happy to confirm that when I last saw Louisa a couple of years ago, she remains as thin, beautiful and vegetarian as she was preserved in those pictures.

Being a mildly rebellious twentysomething, I didn't do another 'Coorg' until the late 90s, and that was really born of necessity for my mother's and others safety. It was her driving, you see. Minnie, as the entire world knew and loved her, was to put it bluntly, a nutter behind the wheel, but endearingly she was completely unaware of it. When advancing years took her idiosyncratic driving style to new extremes, it became expedient to offer one's services as chauffeur, which suited Minnie right down to the ground, as she got to show off her baby boy at the reunions.

Mr Uthappa only flew over on the odd occasion to attend the reunions, and I think it was 2001 that I finally met him again, and this time it was his turn to not look a day older than our first meeting in Virginia Water. All the latter reunions that I did attend were held at Jane Turner's fabulous home on the Hog's Back in Surrey, and over the years I finally put together some of the Coorg jigsaw of family and estate names that I had heard through my youth, Bucknall, Tumiaih, Rye, Somaiah, Humphreys, Tweedie,they sound down the years.

So that is the backdrop to meeting Jepu Uthappa at the gates of Dalquarren on that beautifully warm February afternoon. He must have thought me a real anorak when I insisted in sitting in the front of his car and filming the entire length of the drive, one whole kilometer, as I wanted to have my first glimpse of my mother's childhood home preserved on film (what a saddo!). So he climbed into the back, and his driver took us up the track.

The track gently climbs up the contours of the hill above Chetalli, escorted by well kept hedges both sides, with tall, thinned out trees beyond, falling away on the left side and rising quite steeply to the right. Beneath these trees are the coffee bushes, heavy with deep red coffee berries. The trees were thinned to provide shade, but not block light as a forest canopy does, as shade-grown coffee is a premium grade. Up the trunk of every tree is a carefully managed pepper creeper, as this is the other premium-priced crop the Coorg coffee estate yields. Half way up the track were wrought iron gates, that were padlocked. It felt like we were entering the estate as the first visitors for years, as the gates creaked their resistance to this uncustomary work. Then there was a sign that stated 'bungalow' and also 'office'. That made me wonder, as I perceived there could only be one building.

The track wound on and on, and I wondered how long this anticipation could possibly last, when there was a sweeping bend, then a short incline, and we were through the gateposts of Dalquarren!

It was horrible! But only to someone who hasn't loved the idea of the place for nearly fifty years of unvisiting, who hasn't pored over faded sepia photographs of the end of Victoria's reign searching for familial features in the starchy faces, with the Empire bungalow behind. I will qualify the horror immediately because it appeared one of subsequent owners had plastered a truly ghastly Sixties concrete edifice on the front of my beloved Empire bungalow

This story now has to split into two; the business and the personal. Getting the business out of the way first will give my tax inspectors the rest of the story off, as my entire trip was funded by work as a bona fide business trip, as I was genuinely there to source coffee as a new commodity. Dalquarren is a big estate as they go, 450 acres, and it has infrastructure to match. Jepu retired from Tata Coffee some years ago (yes, the same Tata as the cars, and new owners of Corus/British Steel) but still wields a big stick in the industry locally, so he was our expert as we took instruction on how coffee gets to Starbucks.

The first principle is that all the estates in these parts are on a hill, so gravity is used as the vector in the flow diagram.At the top of the process is a concrete pen with a hole in the bottom of the lower wall, with the floor sloping down to the hole. The deep red coffee berries are hand picked (the terrain doesn't allow for mechanisation, and trials failed as the machine savaged the bushes too severely) and tipped from the pickers' baskets into the pen

When the donkey engine starts up, it pumps water up a high pressure hose which is played on the heap of coffee berries, and carries them down through the hole into the second process

Then the beans flow down a concrete gully into a sump.

The idea here is that the four sides of the sump retain the beans that float, which are then discarded (or made into instant coffee, more like, won't have the muck on the premises)and the good stuff sinks to pass under the retaining walls of the centre section, and thus flows into the machine that takes their coats off.

I have dozens of pictures of the machine, but will describe it with fewer words. A series of wheels with coffee bean-sized indentations in them first of all pulls the jackets off, and then allows the beans to sit tight in the holes whilst the jackets are separated, ending up in a nice big heap outside

This is the David Bellamy shot of the "luvverly slushy slimy compost that will grow more luvverly coffee"

The next bit was a bit of a surprise to me. What colour are coffee beans? Wrong! They are white, or cream to be precise. The second process in the de-hulling machine is pressure washing the beans to remove the muscillate, the clear sticky glue that surrounds the dicotyledon inside the skin. The two beans inside each berry are thus separated and washed, and are then transported by water to the drying process. About 10% of berries contain a single bean, and this single 'pearl berry' is prized as the top grade, because its uniform shape affords more even roasting.

Then the beans go over the waterfall best described by this picture

And are spread out one bean thick over large concrete/tiled areas that are swept scrupulously clean for the purpose. During late afternoon, as we saw, or if rain threatens, the beans are windrowed and covered with plastic sheeting to avoid the ingress of dew.

There were three such terraces at Dalquarren, and the water is collected at the bottom and recycled back up to the holding pit at the top. And this is what puts the gold into Gold Blend:-

And this is a glum looking Man from Del Monte. Being a bloke, I can't multi task, but I can look stupid and concentrate at the same time. Jepu don't 'arf know some stuff.

The coffee takes three or four days to dry out to less than 10% moisture, and is then shovelled into whopping great hundredweight hessian sacks (try telling that to our nanny 'let's make the next maximum weight a bag of sugar' state, no wonder we've got an obesity epidemic, no one's allowed to lift anything anymore) and transported on ten tonne lorries to the curing works. There, the husk is removed from the bean, which is a very thin mica-like covering, and the naked bean is ready for curing. That is the state that coffee beans are shipped in, as roasting needs to be done as soon before consumption as possible.

Full marks if you're still with me, we now turn to the place, and the spirit of place. It is as well to start with the view. Like the Maharajah's Seat, it is breathtaking, but more enclosed by the tall trees surrounding and immediately below. It was almost as calm as meditation, quietly absorbing the vista, and was overcome with a feeling of wanting to end my days there.

Our family home in Essex was called Great Downs, and I was finally looking at its blueprint, a ramshackle rambling Empire bungalow, desperate now for major works exactly like Great Downs in the latter days, but still ringing with the laughter of the parties my step-grandmother was so fond of hosting. Quite bizarrely for an abandoned house, at least as far as habitation is concerned, there were chairs still set out in the sitting room

The office that George Parsons built on to the bungalow is still used for just that, but the house is unused.

I'll post more photo's as I get them from the girls, but for now I want to close with the spookiest thing that happened. I took myself off away from the rest of them, and found a wall to sit on outside the long room, that afforded the finest view. I was at my most wistful for a few minutes, when Mary joined me and was instantly on my wavelength. What I didn't realise was that Jules captured the moment through the filthy glass of the long room. The fella in the hat is my father.

Incredible India - Part 2

2008-03-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

Our second night in the Lalitha was unremarkable, save fishing a few frogs out of the swimming pool. Day 3 saw an early start, and as Mysore gave way to the foothills of the Nilgiri Hills, India proper (for this country boy, anyway) started.

The roads became a mix of old and new, with evidence of a massive road building programme going on, but not with very joined-up thinking. Several miles of road that reminded me of Ireland before the EU arrived would suddenly give way to a mud track with potholes that could swallow a small car, and buzzing over the mountainous surface like ants passed cars, trucks, motorbikes and cycles, with only placid cows moving serenely and untroubled through the mad scramble. Usually, the good road would be rural, and the unadopted stretches would be through ribbon villages.

We stopped for lunch after crossing the Cauvery River in a village just beyond Kashalnagaur, where we dined with the Somayas. Two notable things happened there. Firstly, I got the heebeejeebees when this critter flew in

It was dismissed as being a 'wasp', but it looked like a genetically modified hornet and scared the bejaysus out of me. The other noteworthy moment was seeing a photograph of me in this house in remote South India. I'll expand later, but both our families had been at the same party on the Hog's Back in Surrey last year.

Chez Somaya. The reason for my brandy glass figure is actually a money belt bulging with 10 rupee notes!

Next stop was our home for the next three nights, and an education in hard beds. It was the charmingly named 'Home Stay' offered by the Bopayas in the coffee estate near to the village of Chethalli, the village where our journey's end lay. But this trip was like pass-the-parcel, as there were many layers to unpeel before we got to the jewel, and despite being only four miles from Dalquarren Estate, the whole point of our pilgrimage, it was to be nearly 24 hours before we would see the wonder of the place.

After a night hiding under a linen cover, listening to countless drive-bys of a mosquito that I was obsessing was malarial, on a litter as hard as a Europallet, I felt quite humbled to find that Vasantha, our driver for the rest of the trip, had slept in the back of the tiny little Tata, and however we remonstrated with him, that was the way it was going to stay for the next five nights. This is probably as good a point as any to touch on the cast system. Our first brush with it was in a posh restaurant in Mysore, where we insisted our first driver dined with us. The staff looked him up and down, and short of shoving him out of the door, ushered him to a table near ours, but made it obvious he was not permitted to dine with us. Vasantha wouldn't even eat at the same times or places, as we learned on the road to Ooty later. Whilst every liberal gene in one's being wants to scream 'stuff your cast system', we were the visitors, and had to adjust to the 'When in Rome' principal.

The first trip of the morning was probably the high point for the girls, as it involved getting up early, and climbing into a river and scrubbing elephants. I scored major points with my Antipodean brother-in-law by keep the moral and literal high ground as official photographer whilst the wimmin rolled up their trousers and did what BIL referred to as 'Coolie work', all in aid of knowing what it is like to scratch an elephant behind the ear. I have a gross of pictures and few tales, apart from Mary upsetting a German lady tourist by loudly referring to elephant turds as 'Bismarks'.

The elephant wash had to be approached by boat, which was my yachting interest for the day.

This was the register, probably half of which turned up for scrubbing

The prewashing ritual

Up periscope

Down to business

And my favourite, looking like the next Spice Girls

Enough! Once decorum had been re-established, it was elephant feeding time, and for some time it seemed the heffalumps were being fed their own Bismarks, but we were assured it wasn't predigested and full of things pachyderms thrive on. These were, after all, working animals shifting timber in the jungle.

From there, Vasantha whisked us to Madikeri, but again we got tantalisingly close to Dalquarren, going past the end of the long drive, and seeing this sign, allegedly original from our grandfather's watch.

The drive from Chetalli to Madikeri is nothing short of paradise. By now I had fallen head over heels with Coorg, or Kodagu as it is now known. Madikeri is the new name for Mercara. Finally, I realised why when I had looked at the large scale maps of India (I must do a cartaholic post soon, I can't be alone in my mania for these wonderful artifacts, surely?) that I couldn't find a single name from the days of White Mischief without realising that neither could I find Bombay or Calcutta.

The Mountain Road (sorry, that's the name of one of my favourite Irish tunes)

Madikeri is absolutely beautiful. Our first stop was at the Maharajah's Seat, which affords quite the most beatiful view we had seen since arrival. It was so mesmerising, I could still be sitting there now, transfixed.

I think it was the feeling that my forebears had stood right there, a grandmother that died twenty years before my birth, an uncle who died a hero in Albania in 1945, a grandfather who died in my dimmest of memories and a mother seeing that vista with a child's eye that moved me so much, more so than anywhere else so far.

We went to the North Coorg Club, where we met by chance an Indian couple from Manchester and enjoyed a chotapeg. This was the hub of the social scene, and we were proudly told that whilst much of the fabric of the club had changed, the floor was original and had definitely reported the passage of my grandfather's brogues.

Perhaps Vasantha isn't David Bailey, but this does show the style of the North Coorg Club

The second poignant moment was visiting what is now the Madikeri museum, but it is in fact the deconsecrated Anglican church, where we virtually had to get local government permission to take this photo of our uncle's war memorial.

Mother always said that everyone loved Alex, who amongst other great character traits was allowed to stay on at Downside for gratis (when times were bad in coffee) as he was 'a good influence on the other boys', so much so that he rose to be Head Boy. I greatly miss having never met Alex.

In the next installment - Dalquarren! Better than my dreams.

The last day of the seventh age of man

2008-03-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

It's me birthday today! 49 years old.

Which caused me to muse on the seven ages of man, which I take to be seven years apiece , so I must be officially old. Naaaaah! 50 is the new 30, next year I join the Saga Louts.

Old? I couldn't feel younger. Take yesterday for instance, not an unusual day for me, just another day in a joyously busy life. I woke at 3.30am, left home at 4am on the dot, headed down the A1 full chat, and straight through security at a remarkably unbusy Stansted for the 7.30am flight to Dusseldorf. I had an intense, but ultimately successful meeting at a biodiesel refinery on the Dutch German border, but cut it very close back at the airport to climb straight aboard the 4.05pm flight back.

I lost my mobile phone, the Precious, on the plane back, which was a surprisingly liberating feeling once I'd got used to the loneliness of being uncontactable, but high-tailed it to Tollesbury, and opened up the boat from its winter slumbers. It was surprisingly undamp, and soon warmed up. After freshening up in the Cruising Club, I had a non-alcoholic snifter with Julian Goldie (sorry, forgot to tell you, I have caused the greatest schism in the church since the Avignon Papacy by observing a different Easter date than the Gregorian Rule, due to having to drink lashings of beer and coffee in India, so I celebrate Easter on April 6th, and am just over one week into my Lententide privations), then cleared off for an 8pm AGM of Maldon Regatta in the Little Ship Yacht Club.

From there, I took in an excellent session at the Cuckoo in Radley Green, and played my socks off on the fiddle. That turned into a late old do, well past midnight, so I eventually rolled into my semi-dried bunk on the boat at 1.30am.

Twenty two hours, that is my kind of day.

However! The wind blew so hard last night, I genuinely feared the boat was going to fall over in the boatyard. I had placed a heavy outboard motor on the cockpit seats, weighing well over 30lbs, and the wind blew it bodily sideways, with a great crash. The ladder blew off the side of the boat, and the cacophony of destruction, or the Devil's Tattoo as it is also known made sleep impossible, so after a few hours of fear and fitfull sleep of exhaustion, I threw in the towel and packed up to drive north and home.

Here's a picture of the Muddy Island from Tollesbury in a gale of wind, Juliet. The lightship is the accommodation for Fellowship Afloat, a Christian charity that delivers the message a la pope on a rope.

This one is the Hard, long after a depressingly low neap tide

And this one is taken facing the other way, of my cheerfully disorganised boatyard home-from-home.

So it was great to wake for my birthday in my spiritual home, but with the wind so cutting, it was for once easy to drive north and enjoy a corporate junket at a rugby match in Bridlington. However, I'm now monumentally tired, so it's off up the wooden hill for me.

Incredible India - Part 1

2008-02-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

One of the things I am thankful to the highest heavens for is my close family. There are six siblings, five still extant, four of which went back to India to seek the essence of our mother, and to some degree our father. No spouses, partners, SOs, children, grandchildren; just us, and our duty-free gin allowance.

The roll call was Alexandra (Allix), Mary Geraldine (Mary), Juliana (Jules) and myself. Allix rolled up in Mumbai from Oz a few days before the quartet gathered in Bangalore. Mary flew in from Sydney, via Singapore, and Jules and I were due to fly in together from Heathrow. Due, that was, until I was short-listed for interview for a Food Standards Agency committee the very day of flying, of which my decision to attend cost me a Maharajah's ransom in switching flights.

My sisters had been madly typing up our mother's life story so that we could make sense of place names, and due to work pressures and crap time management skills, I printed reams of these notes to read on the 14 hour flight. It was an extremely emotional experience reading such deeply personal accounts whilst flying through a cloudless night sky over this mysterious country I have always loved by association, but never visited.

It was dark when I landed in Bangalore at 5.30am. I was first off the plane as, ahem, for the first time I turned left at the top of the stairs, and I was hit by a warm flannel of humid low 30s airport smell. I was through immigration before they had a chance to man the desks, and found airport workers asleep on the baggage carousel. When what approached order was attained, my bag was first off, so out of the Arrivals lounge I came, to be greeted by only three people holding name placards. None of which bore my name! On enquiring where my man was, I was politely informed that he was 'outside'. I exited the building, and was greeted by a sight I will never forget. Literally thousands of people thronging both sides of the walkway.

I must have looked like something out of a Graham Greene novel in my pinstripe suit (I came straight from the interview), and I slowly and myopically made my way down the name placards, of which there were literally hundreds serving the five or so planes that had already landed. I freely admit that my worst life skill is observance, as words don't appear as words to me, but pictures, and I can only recognise my own picture. And boy, was I having some difficulty seeing my picture there! I won't go into what a pathetically slow reader I am here. Also, I had landed in an alien world, where I knew not if the natives were friendly or hostile. And then the heat, the humidity, the dark, my fatigue, I held no currency, knew not where my sisters' apartment was; it was all horribly oppressive.

I decided to work down one side, no luck, and then back up the other, until after about ten minutes, I had found my man, right at the top, but round the corner a bit. What a relief! We were soon in his car, the ubiquitous white Tata, 1200cc diesel, about the size and shape of small Fiat, and speeding through the chaotic traffic protocol of India.

After studying the traffic protocol for a week, it is a wondrous thing. There are no rules, not a one. But it works. It really does. The reason is that the concept of road rage does not exist. All the hooting, squeezing in, squeezing out, overtaking, undertaking, and worst of all, driving down dual carriageways the wrong way, no one gets shirty. I only saw one accident in my time, and that was two ancient trucks that had mangled each other whilst both travelling in the same direction, hopefully without human cost.

A Room with a View

The apartment was very close to the airport, and I my first surprise was the security man fast asleep on the table beneath the apartment. I was delivered into the care of my still half asleep sisters for a hearty breakfast and my first new experience - pan-cooked coffee. It was actually a reintroduction, as my grandmother used to brew coffee the Coorg way, and it was redolent of a far off childhood taste sensation.

It is important to note my first impressions of Bangalore. I was full-on horrified by the poverty, the filth, the wandering emaciated cows and the occasionally disgusting smells. The apartment block was reasonably acceptable to my Western perception, but driving through and out of Bangalore truly shocked me. I couldn't wait to get out into the country. Bear with me, dear reader, this I'm sure you know is 'culture shock', and due process brought me back to a very different appreciation of cool Bangalore a short week later.

Recycling, featuring a three wheeler dust cart

Eventually, and I do mean after an age, Bangalore gave way to a sort of countryside, but the ribbon development, however crude, supports continual roadside community one shack deep. There was dual carriageway south-west to Mysore, but it was Indian-style, with constant constrictions ans multi speed bumps to calm traffic. It is said that there are 900 cars for every 1,000 Americans. In India, there are only 9. Cars, that is. If you include motorcycles, tuk-tuks (three wheel motor rickshaws) and bullock carts, India would beat the US by a country mile.

We visited the place where Tipusultan got his. This geyser was a bit of a charmer who was given to granting absolution to his prisoners to walk free, but only if they could perform the small task of running across his parade ground without him shooting them. I haven't researched the story, but there was a whiff about it that the Brits were quite happy to have this brute on their side until he went a bit Idi, then they topped him, usual pack drill in the Empire Management Manual.

In Mysore, we first visited St Philomena's Church. This church was built by subscription from a largely Portuguese community in 1929 by a remarkable Frenchman Bishop Rene Fuga, who coincidentally Christened my brother Christopher, and our mission, which became secret, was to get a photo of the font before a self-appointed gnome with a cane he wasn't scared of using prevented us.

The illicit photo of the font

Then it was off to our big treat, staying in a humungously expensive (by British standards)hotel called the Lalitha Mahal (http://www.lalithamahalpalace.com/). Maybe I was still in the foothills of culture shock, maybe I expected something as fantastic as the website promised, or maybe I was just judging against the few five star hotels I have enjoyed, but I was underwhelmed by the LM. The perception was coloured on the first of two nights when Jules, Allix and I decided to follow our mother's example and go for a dip in the splendid pool. Moments later, a chatty hotel worker appeared at the poolside, as it was required to have a lifeguard in attendance. It was only when we left that this fellow demanded tipping, and it was another lesson in culture shock.

Tipping is an industry in itself in India. One has to constantly split 100 rupee notes into tens in order to oblige this annoying requirement that a westerner doesn't expect in a five star hotel for anyone other than the bell boy. Even the bloke on security at Bangalore airport seemed to expect a tip!

The hotel certainly was architecturally splendid, but the crude finish in the rooms let it down. It's always worth a trip under the sink in a hotel to see the quality of the finish, and it was like the Black Hole of Chennai. There was the very occasional cockroach, and also a little furry visitor in Allix's room. That was reported, and allegedly deealt with by putting down a strip of glue under the bed, which allegedly the little chap gets stuck in, before being dispatched, one can only hope humanely.

Sunday night in Mysore is party time, as between the hours of 6 and 7pm, the Maharajah's Palace is illuminated with 40,000 light bulbs, and the brass band plays tiddly-um-pum-pum. It is a must for any visitor to Mysore.

Navigators and star-gazers note, the crescent moon on its back. That's 12 degrees north!

The next morning saw us visiting the Mission Hospital, where our mother was born in 1920, and sister Allix (1944) and brother Christopher (1945). It was both harrowing and hopeful touring the wards, seeing the ward that had been the maternity ward in our mother's day, and collecting Allix's birth certificate, signed by the incumbent director. One of the memorable moments was meeting the head of pathology, who apart from being on top of her game was quite the most beautiful woman I encountered on the trip.

With our guides for the hospital visit

After the hospital, we were loaded into an Ambassador for a trip to the Maharajah's Palace, this time in daylight. The Ambassador is an amazing car, still being produced and sold for £4000 a go, a two litre diesel with the heart of a lion.

The trip to the Palace was memorable in that we unexpectedly landed upon an offer of the services of the head guide. An imposing man, his authority became evident immediately when we handed in our shoes without a ticket. On asking how they would know which shoes were ours, he said impatiently 'Because you are with ME!'

Just look into those eyes and see the wisdom of ages

It turned out he is big mates with the current Maharajah (like Her Maj, it is now a titular role, stripped of all regal powers, but still carrying the cachet and respect of an adoring public) and he dished out much homespun philosophy on the nature of the man:woman thing, certainly enough to establish he is 'unreconstructed'. It all made for a most memorable visit.

Here endeth the first chapter.

India - The Prologue

2008-02-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

One of the things I am most proud of doing was imploring my sainted mother to write her life story, and also that I asked it in time, before age and bewilderment took their toll. Her writings start in 1993, twelve years before her death at the age of 85.

This is her account, as transcribed by my sister Juliana (thanks Jules), and this tract is a biography of her mother, Norah Kearns, of Cloonagh, Co Sligo. It also explains my compulsion to visit my mother's birthplace and early home, and my account of that wonderful experience will follow this post.

NORAH PARSONS (NEE KEARNS)

My first aim is to write my mother’s life story. In attempting that is, for me, quite a daunting task is to ask WHY I want to write it. The basic answer is that I feel in time to come succeeding generations of the family may be curious to know what their ancestors were like. I myself have a great curiosity in this direction and yearn to know something of those who have gone before. Now it is too late! I regret so woefully that I never questioned my father on details of his life, not did I hear from my mother anything of life in Sligo in her childhood.

As people age it seems there is a general desire to know more of the past, whereas in youth all that seemed ‘old hat’ and totally irrelevant.

So, in the belief that members of the family in the future really WILL be interested in the 20th century, I endeavour to write what I know of my mother’s life:-

She was born in Cloonagh, Co. Sligo, in June 1886. The actual day is not known, as she never ‘kept’ her birthday after the age of 21! But is was presumed to be June 22nd. This has been adopted by Tiggy (Catherine) Martin born in New South Wales on that day one hundred years later – June 1986.

Christened Norah Gabrielle Kearns, she was one of the younger girls and one son, Michael, born to Catherine and Thomas Kearns, who were tenant farmers at Cloonagh.

A most interesting informative description of life at the farmstead has been written by Ann Keating, daughter of Linda Kearns, the sister of Norah, who was next to her in age and her closest companion. This account is attached to mine, and it is important that it should be read along with this. From this account it will be seen that day to day life was certainly HARD. Water had to be collected daily from the well and peat and firewood brought in to keep the fire going. They baked their bread and their simple but wholesome food consisted of home-grown vegetables and occasionally meat. The cow has to be milked twice daily; butter and cheese had to be made - an unending round of essential tasks made up the daily toil.

All this sounds idyllic, when considered from the modern standpoint of ‘off-the-shelf’ bread, milk and baked beans but what is blurred out is the misery of fingers blue with cold and toes deadened near to frost-bite and the sheer fatigue of carting heavy pails of water up the steep hillside – not very glamorous in reality! Oil lamps that smelt and had to be re-filled – the wicks constantly trimmed – all this is well described by Ann Keating.

I never recall my mother speaking of her home, her family or her childhood, except for one remark about ‘riding bare-back across the fields’ – and when I visited Cloonagh with Alexandra in July 1996 I could well imagine the scene.

Ann’s story tells of the girls walking 5 miles to school and 5 miles back daily – to me an incredible feat- and that in winter as well as summer and on dirt roads, sharp and stony, very different from the smooth tarmac of today. How it came about that Linda and Norah should have been singled out to avail of a spell in a convent in Belgium will always remain a mystery. They must have been seen as intelligent, eager and courageous, who would turn the opportunity to good account, and so the pair set out to spend some months at the Belgian convent.

This must have been a complete eye-opener to them! A glimpse of how the rest of the world lived and it definitely opened up inspiring vistas for them. They would never be able to settle back to a simple life on the farm after that. So they both went to Dublin to train for a nursing career. Linda spent her life working to improve the status of the nursing profession in Ireland, while Norah travelled to India to a very different life. Incidentally Linda was finally rewarded with the Red Cross Medal for Work for Humanity, which was presented to her on her deathbed - a very rare and unique honour.

What of Norah’s appearance? Sadly there are few clear photographs of her, but she was about 5ft 6 in height and of medium build with mid-brown hair with chestnut lights in it – what my father said of her. Here eyes were very large and dark brown, very expressive. Mary has inherited this as well as her amusing way of telling a tale as a very good raconteur, acquired by her Irish descent, no doubt. She gained a very distinguished look when her hair turned show-white and silver in her forties. She stood out with a real air of nobility in her bearing. With a laugh she was always ready to see the funny side which would at once draw the tension out of any situation or crisis. She always complained her face was too big and her complexion sallow, but any shortcomings in her facial proportions (which I, of course, never saw) were outshone by her beautiful smile. To me she was just ‘Mummy’ and perfect because of it.

History leaves a gap in Norah’s life between Belgium and the outbreak of WWI. It is known she did training as a nurse, at the Rotunda hospital in Dublin, I believe, but there must have been several years between qualifying and the start of the Great War, when she would have been aged 28. There is no way of discovering how she spent those years, as she never spoke of it to me. Presumably she did work as a nurse.

However, when war broke out she crossed the Irish Sea for the second time, with three friends (one of whom was Kitty O’Shea, whom we afterwards met) to travel to the Shorncliff Military hospital in Folkestone. There they joined the Q.A.R.N. service (the Q.A’s) She never told us what they actually did there, presumably they nursed casualties evacuated from France, but she did say that whenever volunteers where called for, the four of them put down their names.

So by 1916 they found themselves on a hospital ship heading for the East. There is a wonderful picture of the four nurses each riding a camel in front of the pyramids of Egypt, Norah being the one wearing a veil over her hat. From Egypt the hospital ship went to the Turkish campaign in Mesopotamia (now called Iraq) where it plied up and down the Tigris.

Again very few details have come down to us about her experiences there, except for the incident of the Arab woman and her baby, which she used to tell as a ghost story, and the other an account of the soldiers who were lost in the desert and found their way back to camp, only to die through being overfed on their first return. These tales I have related elsewhere…she also spoke of their sleeping quarters being in the hold of the ship and rats running over them at night!

What we were told was that Norah contracted sand-fly fever and to recuperate afterwards she was evacuated to Coonoor in the Nilgiri Hills, South India! Whether it was that Mesopotamia was very, very hot at the time and a hill station in S. India was the nearest to a temperate climate that was reachable, one can only surmise. However somehow Norah found herself in the beautiful Nilgiri Hills, only about 200 miles from Coorg, where she was destined to spend the rest of her life. The beauty of the scenery and the cool and the greenness must have been a dramatic contrast to the sluggish heat of the Tigris.

However, having recovered her next move was to Bombay to board a ship for England to be demobbed, as it was now 1918 and the Armistice signed. But again volunteers where called for to nurse the Indian sepoys returning from France, who had brought Influenza with them and once again Norah’s name went down on the list. Ireland had no special call for her as her mother had died in 1916. There seemed no real urge to rush back. So she travelled to Lahore to the Indian Military Hospital.

BUT there came at that moment into the officers’ ward a young man with a broken leg, who had come off his motor-cycle while carrying despatches to Army HQ. His name was George PARSONS!

At first in delirium and great pain he was refusing any medication, but eventually took it from ‘the Irish nurse with the soft Irish brogue’ – he told us that many years later! And so a friendship began and quickly blossomed, because by July 2nd 1919 they were married in Bangalore by Father Nauroi, the local French Catholic priest. There survives a wonderful picture of the scene – wonderful for various reasons. The bride and lady guests are wearing ankle-length gowns, surely the latest post-war fashion from England – amazing that it should reach India so soon, and where did Norah get that beautiful lace veil in 1919? A large part of it Dinah later had made by the nuns in Mysore into a christening gown for Alexandra – worn by 22 other members of the family over the years – now quite an heirloom! It was wonderful that they could arrange a formal wedding at such short notice and wonderful that the photo has survived. It seems there must have been a formal reception somewhere but history doesn’t relate where, nor what became of the wedding dress. It could be the one that Norah is wearing 5 years later to be photographed with Alex and myself in the garden at Dalquarren, or maybe it was put to more immediate use by being cut up for underwear or a nightie!

Nothing is known of a honeymoon either, There probably wasn’t one, as Norah would perhaps have been impatient to get on up to the ‘tote’ as soon as possible, curious to see her new home. . (‘tote’ is the Kanarese word for a coffee estate)

How the journey from Bangalore to Coorg was made is not recorded. It is a distance of 150 miles with Mysore City half –way. That half would probably have been by train with an overnight stop. Beyond Mysore there was only one hard road which stretched from one pot-hole to the next, through the occasional group of mud-huts which would make up a village and on through dense jungle with panthers and tigers roaming, though unseen, till finally reaching Fraserpet, the boundary of Coorg. From there yet another 20 miles to be traversed, penetrating even deeper into seeming wilderness and desolation.

Desolation perhaps because of the lack of humankind, but the air vibrated with the calls of the jungle – the …monkeys quarrelling, the parrots, the jungle fowl screeching and the ceaseless yammer of the giri-giri beetles. Did Norah see it as a cacophony of welcome? It is hard to know; with her sense of humour she could have seen the irony of it, but with the constant jolting of the bullock tonga and the hard seats bruising the buttocks and the constant drip of the rain from the awning, the message could easily have seemed the contrary.

Eventually after many uncomfortable hours George announced that the 10th mile, as Chethalli was always called, would be round the next bend. A thrill – but when it actually appeared, what was it? Just one tiny brick building with a big sign ‘Post Office’ and written in Kanarese below, and a ‘toddy shop’ consisting of a ramshackle bamboo shelter with a row of tin mugs dangling from a pole ready to dip in to the huge chatty of toddy fermenting nearby. That was Chethalli in 1919! Not unlike Beltra Post office in Co. Sligo as Norah had last seen it.

There was still a mile to go, this time up a narrow cut track, leading off the road, winding up a steepish hill, with several sharp bends in it. On and on it went for nearly a mile and finally a little dwelling came into view – Dalquarren, there it stood, the outline dimmed by sheets of rain. Whatever Norah had imagined about it, in dreams waking or sleeping, in all her thought that had mounted over the past months, after all her imaginings – there it stood! This was Dalquarren – Journey’s End! - A small mud-built, one room shack with a clumsy door – just a shelter against sun and storm, and to be valued for that, they said!

In they both went, to see a table standing on uneven legs in the middle of the cow-dung floor. Newspapers covered it, thickly spread. They were dated 1914! No-one had entered this room for five and a half years!

They must have been thunder-struck. Poor George, bringing his bride to this! He had accepted the job as manager by post, in correspondence with George Martin, the owner, who had planted up the 80 acres of coffee in the 1890’s and opened up Dalquarren from jungle in about 1898. In the early years the estate had been run by a Writer who controlled the labourers and worked under the direction of George Martin who was living at Abial estate further up the road to Mercara, about 5 miles from Dalquarren.

In the agreement and terms signed by George Parsons, no real mention was made of the bungalow as the residence for the manager. So George inferred there would be some fairly adequate housing in existence.

Imagine then their horror, as they first entered Dalquarren. Poor George must have been flabbergasted and Norah too. Not the poorest shack in Ireland was ever as shabby as this! How could they live here? But times were hard, coffee prices low after the war and jobs hard to come by. George had no experience of anything but coffee so there was no alternative – they must accept life as it was and ‘manage somehow’

That was one of Norah’s sayings ‘Manage somehow’ and undoubtedly it was her humour that saw them through many a difficulty and disappointment, and also her courage, which she shared with George, because he too would need courage to see him through the many ups and downs of his long life.

I do recall Norah speaking of the rat that nibbled her fingers in her sleep that first night at Dalquarren. She thought she was back in the hospital ship! The rat probably did it again and again until gradually life became more civilised! But those first 2 months of the monsoon must have been a testing time – perhaps being newly–weds they were able to survive.

When the torrential monsoon rains eventually ceased by mid-September, life became more tolerable. The sun shone and coffee berries were colouring on the trees. Rooms were being built – a good big bedroom, a dining room, a drawing room with big fire place and large verandah, and office with outside door for George. The original little shack became the dressing room for George and beyond it was a large guest room (or spare room, as it was called). All this was extended over several years, but the fact that a start was made was all important.

The walls were mud – adobe- as it is called in France. This has been a standard method of construction world-wide for centuries, It is extremely durable and of course cheap, but it must never be allowed to get wet, or the wall with disappear! This is overcome by making a very low roof-line which is extended well down over the wall, almost to the ground and the wall painted with white lime. Most of the early planters’ bungalows in India and the Far East were built in this manner. Gradually as things prospered, sun-dried bricks were used and latterly of course manufactured bricks and concrete. This interesting warren of rooms which was Dalquarren, with its tiles roofs and 4 gables was where my two brothers and I were brought up, and which holds vivid memories. The rooms were on different levels, because of being situated on the hillside, and the floors were all of red tile which was quite a modern advance, as most bungalows had rammed cow-dung as a floor, which was then covered with coconut matting – the most uncomfortable, dust-ridden and terrible of materials!

Their first task on arrival was to engage a bearer and a sweeper who was employed to empty the ‘thunder-box’ in the lavatory and to sweep the floors in the house. Those who did this menial work were from the Harijan or sweeper caste – ‘untouchables’ and generally outcast. They had to step aside in the street in case their shadow should fall on a passing high caste person, which would render them unclean and necessitate a lengthy purification ceremony. Many of these untouchables were naturally attracted by the Christian code where all are considered equal in the sight of God, and therefore there were many converts and these people because the source of many of the domestic servants employed by the British.

I think Francis, the old cook George’s parents had employed at Beechlands years before, became their first servant, followed later by Joseph, who was known at first as Chokra (which meant ‘young boy’). Chokra was in fact 8 years old when he first came into the house. He was so small he would run under the dining table when serving and needed to reach the other side quickly! He eventually stayed for 43 years until George sold Dalquarren and returned to England for good in 1953. The sweeper would possibly have been from among the coolie labour employed on the tote. I recall ‘Kali’ years later doing this valuable, essential and unappreciated job.

To Norah all this would have been very strange and soon she became pregnant – another new experience! It was arranged that the birth would take place in Mysore City, being the nearest place for a good hospital and medical care. I duly arrived on June 4th 1920 to be christened Ernestine Mary Kathleen but an Irish nun who was present at the time said ‘Call her Maureen’ – the Irish for Mary and that is what I became and have since remained. Ernestine is my grandmother’s name (George’s mother)

So my life began in the depths of the South West monsoon, with 7 inches of rain beating down on the galvanised tin roof of Dalquarren, sounding as if it was being pelted by sticks and stones. I recall George told me of nights he spent pacing up and down their room with me bawling in his arms, just like many another baby before and since!

Eleven months later, Alex was born on May 10th 1921. Norah told me years after that there was a totally mistaken idea that a nursing mother couldn’t get pregnant! – So much for ‘modern’ nursing knowledge that she had acquired in Ireland!

Alex was born in Bangalore in a rented house. Nurse Philips was engaged for the event. She was a sergeant’s daughter of whom there were many as Bangalore was a military cantonment – a British regiment was permanently stationed there. Nurse Philip became a long-term friend and was there when Patrick was born in ’26 and again for whooping cough in Cannanore in ’28. He was christened George Alexander, which bore important consequences later. Apparently there was to have been another name, but Alexander it was. And apparently this was what decided ‘Uncle’ Alex, George’s uncle, to make George a joint heir of his large estate with his cousin, Cynthia. More of this will be told later.
There is little record of the five years of our early childhood. It was probably a time of consolidating their marriage and enjoying those early years with their children, uninterrupted by too many social engagements. A time for building friendships that lasted over the years. The nearest neighbours were at Paremba Colli (?)), 3 miles away, the Bucknalls, Mullins, Jacksons and Duncans. Possibly they were the happiest times of Norah’s life.
There was a photograph of ‘Oranges and Lemons’ played at a party, probably at Christmas time, with Alex and myself hugging the skirts of one of the ladies who were the arches. And there are the pictures of Norah sitting in a wicker chair in the garden at Dalquarren with the two of us; one with Fonseca, our Eurasian nanny. This must have been about 1925 and from this it appears life was easier financially.
Coffee prices had recovered and were going on to reach a definite peak in about 1930 just before the big slump that followed for a decade. This was the period of great prosperity in planting. There was the Mercara Week, with racing daily on the Downs outside Mercara, when people came from all over South India. It was the important high point of the social calendar. Most stayed with friends but others took rooms at the Mercara and Pollibetta clubs. The week culminated with a Ball where romances that had been growing all week came to fulfilment.
Norah and George were part of the match-making, it seems, their aim being to get Mollie, George’s sister, married off. She and her mother were guests at Dalquarren. They had come from Beechlands, their plantation in Pollibetta and a little tale is told of Norah actually squeezing herself into Alex’s cot, so that her bed would be available for ‘Granny’ and next morning when asked how she had slept, Granny replied ‘I have never been so uncomfortable in my life’! This was typical of the selfish attitude Granny had towards everybody and towards life in general.
Money was short with little surplus for luxuries, but they had each other and obviously thrived in that companionship. One wonders how Norah spent her days. For George there was the running of the tote, which varied with the seasonal work that coffee needed. His day began with ‘check-roll’ at 6.30 when he would walk out to meet the Writer who brought the list of coolies who had turned out for work, and George would give orders for the programme to be carried out that day. He would then return for breakfast with Norah. He would go back later in the morning to survey the work in progress after which tiffin would follow, a twenty-minute ‘shut-eye’ and office work till tea at 4.30. Then an evening stroll with Norah round the tote and back for a chota peg at 6 o’clock with dinner afterwards and bed probably by 10pm.
A simple daily routine, but how did Norah fill her day? They would have had two servants, who would have cared for the every day household chores of cooking and cleaning. Supplies for daily meals would have come from the bazaar in Mercara, Mahthoza Beg or from Spencers who were the big European grocers in South India retailing food and liquor. Rice would have been a staple food, with mutton the main meat dish. Cows being sacred, it was difficult to get beef, unless you could find a Muslim butcher. Often the ‘mutton’ was actually ‘goat’ meat, not sheep. Milk would be watered down till it was nearly blue! Ghee, a kind of butter, was mostly used. Of vegetables, beans were the most plentiful and of course potatoes. Tomatoes too and always onions; ladies’ fingers and brinjal were typically Indian vegetables. There was a wealth of marvellous fruits all the year round, mostly bananas, from tiny delicate finger-sized ‘pooch’ bananas to the giant fat pink-skinned and pink fleshed variety which were a meal in themselves; oranges of many sorts, the most delicious being the Coorg loose-jackets. As the name implies, the skin would drop off at a touch and the flesh within was superb; mangoes in season, guavas, cape gooseberries, tree tomatoes, papayas, melons, loquats and the Coorg plums if you could find them, growing shyly hidden in the bamboo jungle and seldom seen.
With no cooking, cleaning, washing or shopping most of us today would wonder how to fill our time. After breakfast she would meet Joseph, the cook-bearer and give orders for lunch and dinner. She might occasionally supervise the sweeper in the house-cleaning, or make a laundry list for the dhobi who would be seen toiling up the hill once a fortnight with his donkey loaded with the previous bundle of laundered clothing. It was a simple life no doubt. I imagine she spent much time with her two children. Sadly of course I can recall nothing of those early years, nor of her presence.
They were very isolated, with their nearest (white) neighbours three miles away, and Mercara, the nearest town, seven miles further. There was no transport so that many weeks must have gone by without venturing off the tote. Later they did acquire a motor-bike and sidecar, but I have no idea which year this was. After that came a Chevrolet, their first car, which must have been a revelation to them, opening up greats vistas of communication.

But for those first five years they had only each other for companionship and mental stimulation. It is difficult for us today to picture such isolation, constantly bombarded as we are by happenings in the outside world to the point of suffocation. It is difficult to picture the total seclusion of their lives before the days of radio. There was a daily newspaper, the Madras Mail, which came by post, so I imagine they devoured this from end to end, but the news reported was at least three days old. It took three weeks for a letter to reach England. The mail boat, owned by the P and O Steam Navigation Company, sailed from Bombay every Friday, but for urgent communication one could send a cable which got through in 24 hours, so there was no real isolation, such as known in earlier times.
The beauty of the scenery and the climate must have given Norah constant pleasure. For nine months of the year there was daily sunshine and a genial warmth. The worst months were during the south-west monsoons, from mid June to early September, with torrential rain in July – 7 inches a day at times. This was when roads were washed away and some of the outlying plantations were literally cut off. They could only be reached by foot. This never happened to Dalquarren, though it did mean shutting down and being resigned to depending on one’s own company for several weeks on end. Green mould would grow overnight on one’s shoes beside one’s bed!
Once the rains stopped the sun shone and things blossomed into new life. The coffee berries, swollen by the rains, now began slowly to colour and to ripen. For the rest of the year Coorg had a genial climate, brilliant sunshine most of the time, without scorching heat and in the evening the welcome of a wood fire. Flowers bloomed in profusion in response to the beautiful climate, birds and butterflies too. The scenery brought more than a wealth of joy with the beautiful outlook from Dalquarren across the hills to Sidepur with the ever-changing light, as daytime strengthened into noon, and shades of evening fell across the darkening scene.
Therefore her life was never dull, enfolded by such natural beauty
The monsoon season was obviously the time when people tried to get away from Coorg, which was fortunately the best time for ‘going home’, as it was called, for the summer in England. But if not that, then a 10 day visit to Bangalore or Mysore would be a welcome break to the incessant batter of the rain on the galvanised roof and the leeches which swarmed up one’s legs the moment one ventured out of doors for a walk along the paths between the dripping coffee bushes.
Of course when funds were limited there could be no monsoon break, so possibly Norah had to weather the full brunt of the monsoon for three or four years. 1921 after Alex was born in Bangalore on May 10th, 1922, 1923, 1924 and 1925. One wishes there was more that remains with us of those idyllic (we hope!) and unknown secret years. One pictures Norah being plummeted straight into the depths of the monsoon immediately on arrival in Coorg after their marriage in Bangalore on July 2nd. It couldn’t have been worse for her. She had obviously never seen rain like that, being used to the gentle rains of Ireland in her girlhood. It illustrates again the courage she had in tackling situations and how she won through. That first monsoon must have seemed endless – would it ever end? – where had she landed herself? –what sort of a life could this turn out to be? She must have been very homesick at times, recalling the happy scenes round the fireside in Cloonagh years before with all her sisters, and Michael, her only brother, and her parents and the friends and relations that so often crowded in to see them – the happy, smiling rosy faces and the merry laughter, story-telling and fun; potato cakes straight off the griddle and barm brack and soda bread and home-made butter and cottage cheese and the huge brown tea pot steaming on the hob. But as she ‘choked back a sob’ maybe she would probably realise that her dear mother was now dead and all the girls married and moved away to Dublin so the Cloonagh of long ago was no longer a homestead. Ireland too had turned a page of history, having become independent of Britain in 1921 when it became the country of Eire with six counties in the north becoming Ulster.
What must have caused Norah great sadness was the misunderstanding with her mother-on-law, which took nearly the whole length of her marriage to heal. This was on two counts – one, that Norah was Irish and two, that she was a Catholic. In a way this is understandable, because at that time the political situation in Ireland was one of rebellion and hate towards Britain.
There had been the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin and much unrest, although thousands of Irish men and women had joined the Armed Forces to fight for Britain and losses had been high. It was the time too of the Black and Tans, a kind of motley army that had been imposed on Ireland in the hope of imposing order. This is not the place to argue the rights and wrongs of this political strife, but there was an anti-Irish feeling among the public at large.
Of course Norah had enlisted as a nurse in the QA’s and had her war medals to prove it, whereas George had never claimed any medals, as he said that he felt he had done nothing to deserve any decorations, when compared with those in France and in other campaigns. But George’s mother took no account of Norah’s courage in all she had done and would not acknowledge it.
The other reason for her dislike of Norah was her religion. Being a Catholic was the most unpardonable and unacceptable thing in her mother-in-law’s eyes. Admittedly this was the generally held viewpoint of the time. Most people were bigoted in those days and held rigidly to whatever tenets of belief they themselves supported in bitter opposition to any contrary opinion. So one must not blame George’s mother or condemn her too strongly because she was only following the accepted behaviour of the day and that is what most people do all the time in any generation. Though for Norah, with her genial, open and accommodating ways, it must have been very hard to bear. This animosity must have made the early days of their marriage very difficult and certainly didn’t ease Norah’s entry into planting society, because others too will have had the same resentment towards an Irish Catholic. Of course Norah would have certainly experienced bigotry in Ireland in her childhood. Her family too no doubt frowned on her marriage to a Protestant and an Englishman.
Also among the small circle of British planters in Coorg, George Parsons would have been seen as ‘a good catch’ among the match-making matrons, so the fact that he had escaped from their foils must have been a huge disappointment, but they had not reckoned on George’s very independent and stubborn nature – he would decide for himself! – hence his choice of Norah, a woman of outstanding character and disposition. He didn’t give two hoots for protocol!
Actually there were some very beautiful and presentable young women in Coorg at the time, members of the well-established families of Robinson, Duncan, Jackson, Tipping etc. I recall meeting Irene Irwin (nee Robinson) in London years later, a very close friend of Aunt Mollie, and a beautiful and charming woman, sister of Liefe Robinson V.C. who shot down the first Zeppelin in 1916. She said to me ‘You now I could easily have been your mother!”
The fact that George’s mother and his sister, Mollie, lived in South Coorg on their own estate, Beechlands, in Pollibetta, could have been a bonus for Norah. Nothing has been said to me about this but I doubt whether Mummy ever went there. It was about 20 miles away, which is perhaps some excuse for lack of contact and the fact that they quite often went to Bangalore for long spells. I understand Daddy managed the tote in their absence; however they sold Beechlands to Mr Jeffrey in 1926 and went ‘home’ for good. She settled in London in a hotel in Queen’s Gate, South Kensington with her daughter, Mollie, and remained there till her death 20 years later in 1945.

I don't usually........

2008-02-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

....... put random email funnies on here and waste bandwidth, but this one brightened a dark day:-

If the failed 21/7 bombers had just waited three more days, we'd all be calling them the 24/7 bombers. This would imply that they blow things up all day every day and, despite their actual lack of success, make them at least sound like they were good at bombing.
Christina Martin, London

It is said that gentlemen prefer blondes. I hope then that lesbians prefer brunettes, otherwise we might have to organise some kind of rota system.
Johnny Pring

I'm beginning to think there may be something in this climate change after all. Four months ago it was very cold and now it's quite warm.
Alan Heath

A woman whose daughter was hospitalised in a US tornado told ITV News that "God would make her better." presumably, that's a different God from the one that almost killed her with a tornado.
M Lovejoy

"She can dish it out, but she cannot take it", I once heard someone say of me. And it's true - I'm a school dinner lady and I'm allergic to mashed potatoes.
Mrs Pinches, Hereford

I heard on the news that the January storms had cost this country a billion pounds. What an utter waste of money. If anything, they did more harm than good.
S Prodnipple , Scarborough

So Princes Harry and William are throwing a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their mother's death. I'm glad that they can finally laugh about it, but throwing a party seems a bit harsh.
D Antarctica , Rhyll

I think Sir Paul McCartney should try to put his current predicament into perspective. In olden days, if you were unfortunate enough to be robbed by an omniped, it would almost certainly be a pirate. At least he's going to come out of this alive.
Stella Matlock

What is it with diabetics? One minute they're on the floor with a loved one standing by screaming "Give him some chocolate! Give him some chocolate!" The next day someone offers them a piece of chocolate and quick as a flash they say "No thanks, I'm diabetic." I wish they'd get their story straight.
T Potter

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a bored housewife looking for some action. Eager to please the young lady I sent her my ironing. That should keep her quiet for a while.
Warren

THIS new police knife amnesty is a bloody nightmare. I dutifully handed all my knives in and now I've got nothing to eat my dinner with.
Richard Karslake, Oxfordshire

TO THE zookeeper in 1978 who replied "I'll tell you when you're older" when I asked him why one of the monkeys stuck its tongue up another one's arse: I'm 36 now and still waiting for that explanation.
Joe McKeown

I HAVE just returned from a diplomatic trip to the Congo and I can testify that at no point did I see anyone drinking Um Bongo.
Neil Palmer

I'M A terrorist, and when ID cards come into force I will probably employ great cunning and not declare that as my job. I'll probably say I'm a grocer or something.
A Terrorist

WHY DON'T NHS bosses start hiring obsessive compulsives as nurses? Their attention to hygiene and constant hand washing would see an end to MRSA outbreaks in no time.
Stu Bray

'Alton Towers - Where the magic never ends', or so the commercial says. Imagine my disappointment when it closed at 7.30.
Colum Hill

'Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak', sang Thin Lizzy in 1976, 'somewhere in this town'. Well, I'm guessing it's going to be at the prison.
Raymond Wankybollocks

Wrongful imprisonment?

2008-02-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

8,164 days of (but there is no question mark following) wrongful imprisonment.

That is the banner at the top of the website of my childhood friend Jeremy Bamber (http://www.jeremybamber.com/).

Much has been said and written about Jeremy's case, but the prominent fact that sticks up behind the massive tragedy and loss of many human lives is that it is probably the worst case of police bungling yet to be put on record.

The tide seems to be flowing Jeremy's way at the moment, and although the machinery of appeals within the Judiciary moves very slowly, what seems certain is that if Jeremy Bamber is acquitted, the case for damages will break all previous records put together.

If, gentle reader, you would like to know what I think, I shall reply that I side with the Judiciary, and that he was found guilty in 1986. This is the organisation we employ to examine facts and expert opinion, and dispense justice on that basis. Cases of miscarriage of justice are reasonably frequent, but are far, far outweighed by the system working, and although prisoner numbers are regretably high, working well. If he is subsequently released and aquitted, then I am glad for him on a personal level.

Cara

2008-02-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

Oakley recently came up with another incisive solution to a little opportunity I'm wrestling with at the moment, and talk today (during a splendid mid-afternoon libation in the Nelthorpe Arms public house in South Ferriby) fell to himself's lovely mum, Mrs O, reading this tosh all the way away in Abbeyfeale, so hello to you, Mrs O, and I hope we see you back over here in the Former People's Republic when the weather cheers up a bit.

Oakley also tells me he's been playing violin last night in that King's College, although I'm given to believe it was the bar rather than the chapel, so I thought it was high time I gave his triptet the oxygen of publicity. The band is called Cara, and they are visible and audible at http://www.carasmusic.com/index.html

They make very nice music, and have joist-threateningly large quantities of lovely CDs for sale.

In praise of St Blaise

2008-02-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the Catholic Church is so full-on bonkers that it makes me wonder why I still pay my subs. Take today, for example. The Saints Day of St Blaise. Now I won't pretend I didn't lift all this stuff from Wiki, other than getting the idea from our parish priest, but the long and the short of it was that today, I had my throat blessed.

Yes, St Blaise is the patron saint of throat sufferers. As it was recounted from the altar, St Blaise lived in fourth century Armenia, and his accredited miracle was saving the life of a boy who was unfortunate enough to do a Queen Mother special and get a fish bone lodged in his throat. Some time after that, St Blaise was martyred by being beaten, attacked with iron carding combs (yes, I had to look that up too) and beheaded.

After communion, those that wanted were invited up to the altar to receive the blessing of the throat. The blessing is performed by the priest crossing two unlit candles and invoking the spirit of St Blaise. The candles are significant in that today is the day after Candlemas (the presentation of JC at the temple)and it felt an almost pagan rite because of it, having the candles crossed under one's chin.

The incantation is 'May God at the intercession of Saint Blaise, bishop and martyr, preserve you from throat troubles and every other evil' to which the recipient answers 'Amen'.

Probably two thirds of the worshippers opted to receive the blessing, strangely including myself. Why? Why would a free-thinking theologian purely attached to the Catholic Church by birthright and convenience choose to opt in to this mumbo jumbo? Juju, I tell you. Three main reasons; firstly, I lost my dear friend Dudley to cancer of the oesophagus (lovers of hot drinks please note - the scalding of the throat is exceedingly bad for you), secondly because I have just such a scalded throat which recurs whenever I'm too keen to get hot grub or drink down my neck, and a poor third, poor as it is, I want to hang onto my singing voice.

This carry-on added fifteen minutes to proceedings, and so vexed the non-blessed organist that he cut us down to two verses of Ave Maria as the closing hymn.

Still, my throat feels very holy tonight.

Gyms and silence

2008-01-30T07:05:00.000-08:00

Have been to Mersea, Barcelona, Dublin and that London since last I managed breath to post, some of which more later, but I wanted to get today's beef off my chest first.

What is t about gyms that requires the lowest denominator of entertainment be broadcast to the sweating masses? I will expand........

........ which is apt, as I only go to the gym because I am expanding. I turned forty reasonably fit, and still enjoyed having the crap beaten out of me at Shotokan karate (the full fat version, much more bare knuckle boxing than the ballet favoured by some of the weaker variations), but I was getting so slow that 12-year-olds were putting me in A & E on a regular basis, so regular that my then boss ordered me to cease my interest, and with it the amount of time he was paying me to be mended in hospital.

So I turned to the brainless agony of the gymnasium, and with it learnt that these places are populated by boneheads of both sexes, and the entertainment of choice is invariably, God preserve us, local radio. And I hate it, stupid local DJs wittering on about Kylie's bum, Celebrity Big Brother or some such, with a playlist of about ten tunes that pluggers have paid large amount to have the oxygen of airplay.

I then made the realisation that there is a protocol, as long as it is noise of some sort. So I made sure I turned to earlier and earlier in the morning until I made sure I was first there, and then enjoyed glorious silence. But that only lasted until the first moron turned up, and without a by-your-leave, turned the wireless onto Idiot FM and set the volume to the degree that ensures blood trickles out of one's ears. I tried saying that I was listening to my John Cage CD, but that fell on deaf ears (I vastly prefer John Cage to Mike Batt's pale imitation - although it is interesting that the courts ruled against the estate of John Cage because they couldn't prove which 2 minutes of Four Minutes and Thirty Three seconds that Batt had plagiarized). Then I thought I would hang a sign on the wireless saying 'SILENCE IS A CHOICE'. Most of these idiots can't even read, anyway.

On one occasion, I was asked why I hadn't turned the wireless on, and I replied 'Because I am a musician', but even that didn't prompt further debate on machine-produced muzak.

So I set my hat towards being as selfish as everyone else, and tuned into Radio 4, and then propelled myself into endorphin heaven on the cross trainer. Funnily enough, no one who subsequently arrived went anywhere near the wireless, until I was in the process of signing out, when Idiot FM was instantly dialled up.

I think I am going to have to subscribe to the modern age and get one of these Ipod devices and download 'Pick of the Week' for some private pleasures via headphones whilst blowing my brains out on the rowing machine

Prior's Barges and the days before Docklands

2008-01-15T09:52:00.000-08:00

It now looks likely I won't make this year's official London Boat Show, but my earlier posting on the subject put me in mind of my time as a bargee on the London River, and my promise to enlarge upon the subject.

I'm pretty sure it was the summer of 1980 that I was in the Peter P. In the argot of the Thames, one is not 'on' a barge, but 'in' it. Personally, being 'in' something sounds inherently safer than being 'on' it, and as those barges plied the Thames in anything below a Force 9, 'on' sounded like a great probability of falling 'off', whilst 'in' meant being deep loaded nearly to the gunwhale and surprisingly cosy in a seaway.

I had just finished my 'sandwich' year of college, when I worked at Burlingham's Seeds in Bury St Edmunds. I had qualified as a crop inspector (perhaps more of that year later, there are stories to tell) but spent the last couple of months working in the lab, and was, as I remember, flat broke. As I remember, I worked an academic year at Burlingham's, and whilst I was in no way a model employee, I seem to remember that my resignation was well received and certainly not discouraged, so I started in September 1979 and finished in Bury in July 1980, leaving me free to earn some serious wonga before going back up (ho ho) to college.

I'm not saying that Burlingham's weren't fair payers for a next to useless student, but I had to find my board and run a car (the trusty Rust Bucket, an E reg Vauxhall Viva)and knew that my final year at college was going to be equally bibulous as my first, so I needed to have six weeks of hard cash-earning potential. My first call was to my old friend James Juniper, builder to the gentry of Tollesbury. He had been my employer from mid school years, and a fairer boss I have never had. However, there was a haitus in the building trade that probably coincided with the beginning of the Thatcher years, and no work there was.

So, I went down to Woodup to see my new best mate Dudley Padgett (of whom a great deal more later) to ask him if there was any chance of getting a berth in Prior's Barges, for whom he worked. He made a call, and there was indeed a mate's berth in the Peter P, the barge on which Dud was the engineer. These barges sailed three-handed, and the master was Rodney Hucklesby of West Mersea. Now we Tollesburymen don't have any truck with they Merseamen, but needs must when the Devil drives, and I was delighted to sign up as mate.

Mate!!!!! On a Sand barge? How cool is that? I drove over to Fingringhoe with Dud one Monday morning in July and climbed down the ladder onto the Peter P. Down in the foc's'le (I always have to work out where the apostrophes go in that one) I met Rodney Hucklesby and liked the man immediately. He was a man of few words, and when I say that, I mean he didn't waste words, as he talked slowly and in a considered manner that lent weight to his opinions. I was in turn respectful of his rank, and used the same MO as when I started work on the sailing barge three years previously by knowing nothing, as I had seen that self-presentation worked best with professional seamen. I asked Rodney to show me the ship and what did what, and what he expected from me.

The Bert Prior, very similar to the Peter P

As was the James Prior

The first job was heaving the hatches back into sea-going position, as the ballast freight had already been loaded. Then it was made waterproof by hauling the large green tarpaulin over the hatches, and made watertight by placing battens down the hatch sides (to pin the tarpaulin) and then banging the wooden wedges with a mallet into the retaining bars spaced every three feet down the side of the hatch. Wedges always pointed aft, which was obviously the best way as a running sea would force them further in, rather than washing them out if hammered in for'ardways, but I quickly learned that the latter was 'bad luck', the first of three misdemeanours I committed concerning superstition.

Whilst I helped Rodney with the hatches, Dud was doing what engineers do, which is I guess like that mad looking geyser in Das Boot, listening to his diesels talk to him through his screwdriver. Dud sported a surgeon's operating cap and mask, and in chalk on top of his toolbox was the monicker 'Doctor Dudley'

Hatches secured, we came off the berth about a couple of hours before low water, with the skipper at the helm, and I was amazed that the deep-laden barge stayed afloat in a near empty River Colne. She drew nigh on nine feet, and there isn't a lot of that sort of water in the river at that state of tide. As the river gave way to estuary between Mersea and Brightlingsea the throttle went down, and we rode the last power of the ebb down to the Bar buoy, then shaped to port for the red and white striped buoy I knew well as the Wallet Spitway. Once round the Spitway buoy, it was straight for its twin on the edge of the Swin channel. That was another surprise, in that during spring tides, the depth was ....... nine feet. Going aground doesn't slow down the Swin Rangers, as the Priorsmen were otherwise known, just shove the throttle down harder and grind the nuns off the bottom! Another delicious synonym, this time for barnacles.

Once round the Swin Spitway, it was shape away for the Whittaker Beacon, where Dud took the helm, the tide was on the turn and Rodney repaired to the foc's'le. I stayed in the 'wheelbox' with Dud for the duration on the Swin, until we breasted the Blacktail Spit buoy, east off Southend, and start of the Thames proper. During Dud's trick, I learned the radio routine....... 'Thames Coastguard, Peter P, inbound for Deptford, 300 tons of ballast' or somesuch, I really can't remember.

Then I took the wheel of the barge, and my first trick took me right past the supertanker berths of Coryton and Shell Haven and with sea traffic driving on the right, it was within half a mile of the biggest ships I'd ever seen. I was gripping that wheel, ears riveted to the wireless for tanker and tug movements, eyes peeled for smokestacks and movement, but I was blessed with a challenge-free passage past the huge refineries, with the fast progress of 9 knots of boatspeed and a couple of knots of fair tide.

Then it was fairly calm, round Mucking Flats and up to the Ovens buoy at Tilbury, which is where Rodney appeared again to take the barge for the final stretch and onto the berth. That berth was in Deptford Creek, and we brought chaos to road traffic whilst the road bridge was lifted to let us through, a manoevre complicated by a corkscrew turn in the creek immediately prior to the bridge. Then the warps went ashore and were casually made fast. Mooring yachts has always amused me since learning the ways of workboats, with the cat's cradles favoured by various yachting universities, and knots that Alexander the Great would struggle getting a sabre through.

Once we'd secured, it was straight out with the wedges and the battens, hatchcloth off, and then the wooden hatch covers were stacked at each end by means of a hook and a handle, obviously with one man each end. And that was it, my first freight delivered and I was pretty exhausted by this time, and tried to turn in to my bunk in the foc's'le. BANG! What was that? BANG! Dud, what was that? BANG! I shot up the companionway ladder and saw the grab going in for the fourth bite. I then learned that no one sleeps whilst the grabs are working, even in exhaustion, it is impossible.

So, whaddya do when you're at a loose end in London of a day? And it was mostly days, as the London end was union controlled and the Fingringhoe end was not, so it was usual to load at night and discharge by day. In a poor week, we got two freights in, an average week was two and a half freights in (yes, a railway trip home on a Friday, or trip up on Monday) and three cargoes was a lottery win. That is of course because the work was paid piecerate to encourage maximum productivity and speed of turnround. That incentive was very strong, as it overwhelmed the need for sleep, of which more later.

This was also the occasion of my second transgression against Poseidon, Neptune, Bill Nighy or whoever is in charge of superstition down there. I took off my cheesecutter cap and put it top downwards on the foc's'le table, and was shouted at immediately by both master and engineer. I'll get the third one off my chest now. Don't ever, Ever, EVER say the word 'Rabbit' on a boat. I don't know why, just don't, you get shouted at very loudly, it is bad luck of the very worst kind, and you will be blamed for everything that goes wrong, large or small (and the large ones are difficult to live down, as you quickly acquire Jonah status).

Whilst we're in the foc's'le, it is probably best to describe it. It is the smallest area possible, by dint of allowing the largest area possible for the profit-bearing carrying hold, and is not an ideal shape for modular living. These barges are pretty bluff bowed, and the first provision inside the stem is the chain locker for anchoring. Immediately behind this bulkhead is the living quarters, with the 10' long ladder coming down the port side, with a small, very basic galley fitted on the starb'd side. The table sits in the middle, with three chairs, between the four berths, two on each side, one atop the other. Privacy is afforded by means of a curtain hung inside each berth cubicle. The foc's'le was a pretty grubby place, as it remained the responsibility of the ship's company to keep it clean. One memory sticks in my mind most particularly, as it has to do with smell. One freight, we had another Tollesburyman shipped aboard, Guffie Lewis, and he basted himself in Brut 33 or similar to disguise the stench of shipboard life before a run ashore, the purpose of which I can only guess at.

And so to a run ashore, as sleep was impossible on the berths in London. My favourite was getting up Brick Lane for a curry. Dud would order a plethora of dishes, some dangerously hot, and slowly work his way through them, sweating profusely because of the chili rush, and this ritual would take up most of an afternoon. Other pastimes were more earthy, this being the East End, and it was customary for the some of the rowdier pubs on Commercial Road to lay on strippers for lunchtime entertainment. There was a lot of talk about a recent incident when Rodney's pipe was misappropriated by one of the lady entertainers, and that pipe sat in a jar of disinfectant in the wheelhouse window for three weeks before it was used again. I can remember bumming pipe tobacco off Rodney, Clan, I think it was, and hand-rolling smokes, but they were vile to inhale. I was emulating one of the other Prior's skippers that allegedly smoked the pipe tobacco Gold Block as cigarettes, getting rid of a pouch a freight.

The problem with coming back down the London River was the coinciding of the barge being so high out of the water and the necessity to leave on the top of the tide, and when the third factor of a spring tide high water was brought into play, it was positively dangerous. I remember being scared witless heading towards one of the low bridges, Westminster, I believe, on a trip a year later, when Rodney was on holiday and a character called Blackie had command. The tide was phenomenally high, and the fierce ebb had already set in, and to give better manoeverability, the barge was going full chat, so the combination of a high-riding barge, about 12 knots of speed over the ground, a black night with the backdrop of city lights and a very low bridge getting closer extremely rapidly, I was convinced there was no way under God's heaven we could get under that bridge alive. Blackie quietly asked me to lower the radio mast on the wheelhouse roof, which I did short order. The last thing I remember in the moments the bow went under Westminster Bridge was Blackie saying 'Sometimes it takes some bottle to do this job'. Before the end of his sentence, the wheelhouse should have been ripped off the superstructure with no one in it left alive to tell the tale, and I swear I have never seen such large rivets, but somehow, no part of the barge touched the bridge, and we passed underneath unscathed.

Other times were more levitous. It was a sunny day, and we were upbound, passing under the bridges, when Dud was on his way aft from the foc's'le with a mug of tea. He glanced round and saw a group of American tourists taking photo's from a bridge, so he put the mug down on the hatchcloth and danced the hornpipe, the delighted tourists failing to see the intended insult.

Prior's head office was at Orchard Place on Bow Creek, which was also their shipyard. I loved going up there, as we had to pass the Pura vegetable oil refinery, and the smell of palm oil hung heavy in the air. I spent fifteen years thinking that was the smell of lard, as Pura only registered in my mind as being lard, and there was a coaster tied up alongside called the PL Trader, and I was told the PL stood for Pure Lard. It was only when I went to work for Anglia Oils in Hull (now AarhusKarlshamns)that I remembered that redolent smell in Bow Creek. Sadly, Orchard Place, the refinery, and probably even the strippers in the Commercial Road pubs are all gone now.

The other berth we serviced was up at Nine Elms, near Battersea, and that was a bitch of a berth to get onto, as it was the only one athwart the stream, so warps had to be constantly adjusted to allow for tide.

And so back to my first freight, to close the story. When we returned to an empty barge at Deptford, it was customary to leave the hatches open unless it was draughty and therefore expedient to make the ship safe for a seaway. They had water ballast tanks fitted so the light barge could be lowered further into the water for an easier motion at sea, but I don't recall this being done as a matter of course. The bridge was of course raised again to let us out, and very soon we had rounded the Ellis & Everard corner and were back out into the Thames, Rodney at the helm. It was evening time, probably about 9pm

Rodney took her down through the Woolwich Barrier, which was still very new in those days, and on down to Tilbury, where Dud took his turn. I was trying to get some sleep in my bunk, but it seemed only minutes before the foc's'le bell rang, telling me it was ten minutes until I was due on. Sleep, or chronic lack of it, was the cruellest feature of being a Swin Ranger. I reckoned I got between two and four hours sleep in every twenty four, and I have always been pathetic if sleep-deprived, so I found that aspect very difficlut to live with, and thus the weekend became a sleepfest, with at least two twelve hour sleep periods.

It was the Blacktail Spit buoy where I took over, but it being my first trip, I wondered if Dud would stay with me. He knew I knew the Swin channel, so without a word, and with inherent trust, he went for'ard, leaving me with the dark, the flashing buoys, a chart and a wheelhouse light. I was in heaven and heaven above looked beautiful.

I learned to drive barges a couple of years before, and knew the fundamental rule well; that is, just give her a spoke or two, and she'll answer soon enough. The common mistake that the novice makes is turning tentatively, deciding too quickly that she isn't answering, and then give her a whole revolution of the wheel. Then she careens round, whilst you give it two turns the other way, and there is a crazy path left in the water and great embarrassment for the rookie helm. So I was able to conduct my sea trials as I was alone for the first time, timing how long she took to answer to one spoke, different either side, interestingly. I also brushed up on my chartwork, putting her on course and having a good look round for sea room, then turning the wheelhouse light on to work out compass courses between the Swin buoys and correcting them for variation and deviation. One one later occasion, I steered a compass course on a black night from the Wallet Spitway to the Bar Bouy at the mouth of the Colne. Quite remarkably, and I promise this is true, but as late as 1980, the turning mark for commercial shipping heading up Colne was not lit! Unbelievable, doubly so as less important buoys such as the North West Knoll and Eagle were lit, but true. That made my compass course all the more dangerous, and as I had timed the three mile leg from the Wallet Spitway, I was both relieved and alarmed to see the Bar buoy slip past the starb'd rail no further than a barge's length away. The buoy bore the scars of being clouted by bigger vessels than ours, and I'm glad to say it was lit soon after, and of course remains lit to this day.

So, I charged down the Swin with the ebb still under me, shaped up from Whittaker to cross the Crouch and rounded the Swin Spitway. As we were light, there was no depth trobles, but I still studied the echo sounder trace with a need to know just where the Spitway was at its shallowest. When I rounded the Wallet Spitway, I rang the foc's'le bell to stir Rodney for the last few yards from the Bar up to the ballast quay. It was now a pleasant early summer morning, low sun and little breeze, as I rounded the Bar. I shaped her up for Brightlingsea, but there was no sign of Rodney. I figured he was making a brew, but still there was no sign when I passed the Inner Bench Head buoy, so I put the helm on lock and shot for'ard and down the companionway ladder. There was Rodney, fast asleep in his berth.........

And that is the finest compliment I have ever been paid. I wasn't told of it until later, and then only by Dud, as it seemed Rodney was a compulsive worrier, and would never sleep when a new hand was aboard until he was sure he could trust them, and even then he would sleep lightly and notice even the smallest change in teh ship's motion. And there he was, fast asleep on my first trick, I felt ten feet tall.

We rounded onto the berth, tied up, and what happened then I remember not. All I knew was that when payday came around, I received riches untold, and as I was on student rate tax, I was paid more than Dud. He was absolutely furious!

I do pine for those simple days, and keep promising myself I will look up Rodney in Mersea one of these days, God willing he's still with us, as sadly Dudley isn't........... but I'll save his story for another day.

And finally, I was gratified to Google Prior's, and found them to be alive, well and seemingly thriving at http://www.jj-prior.co.uk/index.php?content=welcome

Good luck to them!

Wagamama

2008-01-13T16:47:00.000-08:00

I called in on Sam at Manchester uni on the way back down from the Lakes, and gave him the choice of dining places. I had enjoyed a 5,000 calorie artery-furrer breakfast at High Cross, and didn't have much appetite, but he opted for Wagamama in the city centre.

I hadn't even heard of this chain before, but for the uninitiated, it's a Japanese nosh house, and very splendid it was too

It was made all the more pleasant for meeting Sam's new SO, the lovely Laura, who combines beauty with being frighteningly intelligent.

I like Manchester

A dreek day in Buttermere

2008-01-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

We were supposed to go up on Thursday, but life got on top of us a bit, so just I headed north west to the Northern Lakes. I had a new supplier/customer to visit in Blindcrake, north east of Cockermouth, and it was dark when I arrived for that meeting, a splendid 90 minutes late, entirely putting to death the resolution of punctuality I vowed at the beginning of this year.

Bouyed up by a really useful meeting, I fired up the SatNav and picked my way through the comically named Cockermouth, before heading south for Loweswater. That is the location of two wonderful adjoining farmhouses called High Cross and the Long House. They were bought by Pauls & Whites Social Club way back when, and as I worked for a subsidiary company back in the 90s, we're on the list of 'trusties' who can rent these super places for next to nothing.

Despite a dreadful signal, I managed most of the Archers before arriving to be greeted by Steve and Lea, our best mates from the glory days in Somerset. Steve still works for BOCM Pauls and he had bagged the two houses for the weekend and filled them with family and friends, and Friday night was a fine night of wining, dining and music making.

Saturday, however, dawned late and dark, with very low cloud taking out the top of Low Fell and with it our chances of going aloft, safely at any rate. So it was lake yomping, and crikey, was it a long one. Steve is a nutter when it comes to the great outdoors, so off we marched, suited, booted and a carrier bag full of Kendall Mint Cake (well, Mars bars, much more appetizing).

We dropped down to the river beneath Scale Hill, and then turned south along the eastern shore of Crummock Water. The cobrador was showing too much interest in a recently butchered badger, but at least she resisted her usual urge to roll in the rotting stomach that had been opened. The stench was indescribable, and stayed with us downwind for an uncomfortably long time. We then walked the length of Rannerdale, right up to the saddle above Buttermere, and then dropped down into the village. I investigated the bus timetable for the return trip, but was floored to find out the bus needed booking the day previous. Looking around for a taxi rank seemed inappropriate, and Steve wasn't allowing us into the Fish Hotel (what an imaginative name!) as it was already 13.30 and the daylight that hadn't ever truly materialized was due to fail before we got back to Loweswater unless we got a move on, which we did.

The rout out of Buttermere took us nearly a mile in the direction we didn't want to go, but needs must, as we needed to cross the southern end of Crummock before we could turn north and breast Mellbreak at lakeside level. The walking was surprisingly rough, and as everyone was getting tired, it was prime time for an ankle twist. I am Captain Paranoia about ankles, having busted mine last April in a fit of overconfidence, and the mended bone stood up to the yomp remarkably well.

The last leg was tough going, despite the lack of climbing, but the lure of the Kirkstile Inn was the accelerant, which we finally made it to at 15.15, when the real business of the day began, and we were in for a session. Several glasses later, it was the last half mile back to High Cross, and I felt like I had a leg transplant in the pub. Gone were the aching limbs that staggered painfully up the last hill to the pub, but then I had shipped aboard enough anesthetic to dull an amputation. It's today I'm paying the price.

500 miles today

2008-01-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

I'm getting too old for these 500 mile days. I left Barrow at some time before 8am and had a hassle free trip down to Portishead for a meeting of Bristol Corn and Feed Trade Association, which straddled a fairly decent pub lunch. The nice thing was this view

The trip back wasn't too bad, either, and not too bad a carbon footprint, with the new Golf averaging 52mpg. One problem was the northbound M42 was closed to the east of Brum, so I had to bash on down the M40, skirt Coventry and then head north east on the M69. Gawd, how anorakky is that? Still, I was back in the office for 5.30pm, so not much time was lost.

My beautiful niece

2008-01-09T15:31:00.000-08:00

My brilliant niece Jess came to stay last night. She is over in the UK for Christmas/New Year from her new home in Brunswick Heads, just north of my beloved Byron Bay. Jess and Ray, her partner, started their new life in Oz on 9th February 2004. The reason I remember this date so well is that they cleared off to Oz to start their new life when we chucked caution to the wind and started our own business, and we had a wild weekend in London immediately prior to our mass gambles.

The best bit of that weekend was going to see the stageshow of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and then having a massive blowout afterwards in Chinatown (at Lee Ho Fook's, of Werewolves of London fame). Happy days.

First Monday

2008-01-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

Every first Monday of the month, there is an occasionally brilliant tune session in what is my opinion the finest pub in Hull, the Black Boy, on the High Street. This month was a notably good one, as relatively few musos turned up, and the main benefit of that is that there is less, ahem, variation in the notes played.

Some devilishly strong brew from local brewery Tom Woods was slipping down very well and making the playing very fluid

It was, of course, an excuse to do some out-of-house drinking, and I rather enjoyed putting away 10 units, which gave me a pounding headache during an early morning gym session the following morning.

There were quite a few punters in, who seems genuinely appreciative of the scratching and banging, but as usual, the hollering went down best for the two songs that were permitted.

Not Captain Corelli's

2008-01-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

But mine. And thereby hangs a tale.

I was power-drinking with my dipso and allround good guy brother-in-law in Montmartre one winter Saturday afternoon, the sort of dangerous time, when the shops are still open after chucking-out time, and musicians both, we fell on the idea of a little light window shopping in the Guitar Quarter. It was a runaway success of an idea to stop me buying another guitar by only looking at things with eight strings. Surely I wouldn't buy a hammered dulcimer, a bombarde or a harp. And then I saw it........

....... and I sat all through the posh dinner with the damn thing hidden under the table to keep it from the memsahib as long as possible. It came to light at Charles de Gaulle airport, but fortunately I had that nice Bonnie Tyler sitting next to me in Departures, which curbed a lot of the invective.

Bas Cuisine

2008-01-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

The problem with being probably the best chef in the world is finding anyone to acknowledge that blindingly obvious fact.

I broke my alco-fast this afternoon, and went and took a glass of ale with Oakley, and very agreeable it was too. I was so overcome with wellbeing on the way home that I slipped under the descending shutter door of the local supermarche and beat the 4 o'clock Sunday curfew, and rapidly heaved five quid's worth of steak mince and a plastic sack of spuds into the basket.

I hit the cooker immediately on my return home, having located it (brilliance can be dulled by over-familiarity) and made the wonderful repast pictured here. I apologize for the culinary Tourettes, I often write rude words in my creations, but the cheddar glaze hid the profanity from a hungry family, and it was dispatched with undue speed, with the critics saving their spleen for the post-supper critique that confirmed that Dunn Towers was not being awarded a third Michelin star by the inmates. Bastards.

New Smack Site

2008-01-05T16:04:00.000-08:00

Saw this whilst surfing for the old Alberta CK318 site, a very odd sight of an Essex smack with a German flag on her counter. Here is a taster from the site

pict0077

Things that keep me awake at night......

2008-01-05T10:11:00.000-08:00

Why does the winner of Miss Universe always come from Earth?

Does a tanker full of helium weigh less when it is loaded that when the tanker is empty?

How does the snowplough driver drive to work?

And that's only last night........

Connie the Cobrador

2008-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

We have already established Oakley is wise in all things, and the naming of the Dunn family dog saw no dilution of his wit and wisdom. Connie is the result of a night of unlicensed passion enjoyed by two beautiful pedigree dogs (I'm not a dog person - I know one's a bitch, but it spoils the scan). Sadly, they weren't the same pedigree, and soon the bump began to show on her Long Haired Golden Retriever mother, whilst her Collie father was nowhere to be seen. Oakley used the license we afford to comic genii to overlook that a Retriever ain't a Labrador to come up with the handle that she is known by for streets around - Connie the Cobrador

Connie was born in a litter of only two on 20th June 2000, a very convenient year for remembering how old she is. She was born in high Mendip, in beautiful Somerset. At eight weeks, she clawed, bit and urinated all over my then seven year old daughter for the duration of a five hour Bank Holiday journey from motorway hell all the way up to the Former People's Republic of Humberside, to hide under the kitchen table rather than meet her new family. When she did come out, her reign of terror began, the major casualties being three pine doors completed eaten through and every wellington boot the family possessed, which was as ironic as biting the hand that feeds, given wellies equals walkies.

Whilst Connie doesn't do irony, she is remarkably intelligent, which I can only put down to Hybrid Vigour (I once saw that printed on a Nickerson's cereal seed bag in my seed merchant days, and have stored it until now, sure it would come in useful, lobbed into conversation one day). As already stated, I ain't a dog man. Despite my farm background, I am surprisingly a cat man. We had three cats in my childhood; Wally (named after Walter Clarke of Station Road, Tollesbury, whose kind bequest of a kitten was greeted with less enthusiasm by my parents!), Baggy (the one I named, after Bagheera in my still favourite film, Walt Disney's Jungle Book), and their progeny (or that is what we hoped, although Wally seemed a bit dim) was crowned Chairman Mousey Dunn (work on that one a bit, think Great March and Sino-dictator) as she was always in my father's chair. Sorry, back on message - Mongrels? Clever things. Pedigree? Interbred thickoes.

Time for you to see the good woman, herself, as I attempt to glue my first picture to this page:-

Oh, that's odd, they've appeared at the top

Detox - Take Two

2008-01-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

I am sitting here reading all the indescribably bad shite that goes into Diet Caffeine Free (disclaimer - insert cola drink name of your imagination here). What am I doing to myself? Draw up a chair and I'll let on..........

I am a Roman Catholic. A practicing left footer. Again, there's enough luggage there to jam the bandwidth of the information superhighway, but I mention it solely to bring up the subject of Lent. Every year, I go absolutely banzai and give up shedloads of stuff I genuinely love and cannot live without. And you know what? Yes, it has absolutely zippo to do with JC's temptations in the desert, that is stuff for the mind, not to be mimicked in body. Nope, it is the only time of year, all 46.5 days of it (my mum said it ends at midday on Holy Saturday, and she's in heaven now) that I can fairly say I am in control of my addictions, which I have now whittled down to two - alcohol and proper coffee.

I actually enjoy Lent when I get the hang of it. I also enjoy looking forward to it, as I find my year starts on Easter Sunday, and I start my precious habits slowly and responsibly. It takes until Mersea Week in August to start getting battered seriously again, a process that usually starts with a post race drink on board, and then ramps up in West Mersea Yacht Club in the apres-race analysis. The next big festival for alcoholic over-indulgence is of course Christmas, and then during the run up to Ash Wednesday, I positively ache to give up the sauce.

The first year I gave up the booze was unmitigated hell for the whole 46 days. I was a social leper, avoiding going to the pub at all costs for fear of my defences being breached, I cut myself off from friends and family gatherings and moped (that's a funny word to type, sounds like the family motorbike!) around the house in me slippers. What put the hell into perfect perspective was starting drinking again on Easter Sunday, and finding how weird drink tastes. I found beer the worst, posh bottled lagers tasted unpleasantly metallic. Consequently, I drank much more moderately, and my slow decline into over-indulgence left me with the memory that being dry felt good.

And being dry does feel good. I sleep like a baby, need an hour less each night, and feel massively more energetic when I wake. I always describe myself as coming off the bed like a long dog. The whites of my eyes are whiter, approaching white, I lose weight and I generally combine it with a get-fit campaign. To paraphrase Gene Hackman in one of his less celebrated roles, 'I could rip the ass out of an elephant'.

So what's all this joining in with the atheists, detoxing on January 2nd? The answer, dear reader, is that I haven't given up the sauce, not entirely.

What worried me was a report in the broadsheet press about middle class drinking at home. I calculated I was wiping out an annual figure dangerously close to three hundred bottles of red wine or equivalent. That is a liver-bursting amount, certainly health-threatening, and I'm otherwise proud of a year in the gym and a good basic level of all-round fitness. So it has/had to stop.

So I analysed why I drink. The biggest reason is for social ease. There is nothing I enjoy more than having a snifter with friends, that delicious feeling when the alcohol first delivers its calming wave. Answer - Only drink in social situations. No nighttime glass on the desk whilst tapping away at the VOIP connection with the office, or indeed typing this.

So I thought I'd give it a go. Another factor is the unusually early Easter this year. Anyone bearing the name of the calendar decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 knows that Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, or March 21st. I think I'm right in saying that Easter can be no earlier than this year, 2008, and I am struggling to find the last year it was celebrated on Sunday 23rd March, great though the power of Wikipedia is. My thinking is that Ash Wednesday is going to be around the 9th February this year, so if I rein in my drinking ahead of that, it will be the easiest year ever.

The real problem with this is perennial. My birthday. March the sodding 1st. A nine in ten chance of being within Lent every year. What the hell.

So, tonight is day three of leaving the booze alone, two nights of wonderfully restorative sleep and easy waking, and the prospect of another tonight. Might nip down the pub tomorrow night for a couple, and my dear neice Jess is coming on Monday, so that's a big night out, but if only I can keep this not drinking at home up until Ash Wednesday, then the chances of continuing the new regimen after Easter portend well.

So I raise my delicious Not Coke in a toast to finer living!! Salut!

One London, Two Boat Shows

2008-01-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

It's that time of short days being spent dreaming of long days, otherwise known as The London Boat Show, when an idyllic construct of a Mediterranean quayside is erected in Earl's Court, complete with equatorial temperatures endured wearing Inuit-specked thermals. Why, they even have the ubiquitous Irish bar (otherwise known as the Irish Embassy) in the form of the Guinness stand, where I have always spent an inordinate amount of time, on one occasion it was the only thing I managed to do.

That's the way it is. Or at least the way it was, until a couple of years ago. Exhibitors got fed up with small stand footprints and exorbitant charges, just at the time that the dreadful ExCel was touting for all exhibitia south of the NEC, and the totally soulless experience of the New London Boatshow was born. The overheated delights of Earl's Court were replaced with air conditioned space, rather too much of it, in Docklands, miles from anywhere that isn't mega-expensive on-site parking.

I should state my extreme prejudice concerning Docklands right now; in the 70s, I used to punch aggregate up the London River (barge-speak for the Thames) in an old motor barge. It was in the early days of building the M25, and the project had an insatiable demand for ready-mixed concrete. The easiest way to move the aggregate into London was by barge from seabed dredgers or the quarry at Fingringhoe that my barge worked from. There were seven plants that had jetties or quays that landed the aggregate, mixed the spec required, and the consignment was delivered out to the mother of all motorway hell by lorries with revolving barrels. I'll save the stories of those days (which are many) for another day, but suffice to say that the London River was very different in those days of decay, just on the cusp of the Thatcherite revolution, and I loved it that way. All those beautiful dilapidated warehouses on wharves and in the derelict docks had such a charm that was lost the day the redevelopment started. Call it yuppie envy if you like, it probably is, but I genuinely loath seeing the steel and glass palaces that replaced the wood and brick bosom of the Empire.

So, I don't like Docklands, and I set my hat against the new venue for the Boat Show long before I started to work out how the hell to get there. I went once, loathed it on principle, left early in the happiness of finding it predictably disagreeable.

Imagine my delight to find that a breakaway faction mounted the Earl's Court Boat Show in the early days of December 2007, and my frustration that a various coming-together of immovable circumstances guaranteed I couldn't attend. And the crying shame is that neither did many others, as it seems to have been poorly advertised, and potential exhibitors were allegedly frightened by the bully-boy ExCel show organisers worried about diluted attendance figures. There is talk of a sponsorship deal having been secured for next year, but don't hold your breath.

Now for the humble pie. As I missed Earl's Court, and because the 200 year old Mersea smack Boadicea has been hauled into the Classic Boat magazine stand, I'll turn to for a couple of hours and give the ghastly shed another chance. Also, an author I am fond of, Sam Llewellyn (the Dick Francis of the sea) is lecturing, so I'll try and hit town that day. I'll report back.

Last Night's Fun

2008-01-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

All the bacchanalian excesses of old New Year's seemed to be enjoyed on the Eve, going into the Day, but not this year. Sitting in with cocoa and slippers (well, not exactly, an absolutely stonking bottle of six year old claret, and glad rags on in case anyone invited me to a party at the last minute), it was a pleasure to see the new year in with a new and vastly improved cuddly Kylie on Jools Holland's Hootenannay thrash on the electric television. I much prefer Kylie's new real-woman's bum to the bony, much-photographed affair that helped the good woman back into stardom this century.

Aaah, Kylie; takes me back to my first visit to Australia, when they were celebrating the Bicentennial in '88. We found out the shocking news that 'Charlene' had upped and left Neighbours whilst the good old UK audience, mostly male, were getting lumpy trousers every time Kylie rubbed grease into those gorgeous cheeks, wriggled into her boiler suit and played toyfully with her ratchet spanner. The real shocker on that trip was finding out that Prisoner Cell Block H had ceased production, whilst it was still cult viewing and very much alive in the UK, albeit about four years behind. Nasty Ferguson, or the 'Freak' as her customers knew her as was already doing the post-Prisoner chart show rounds there, and the programme wasn't feted anywhere near as much as in the UK.

Other highlights of that trip were staying in the Spike Milligan Suite of the Woy Woy Motel. Woy Woy is so good they named it twice. Also, nearly drowning in the undertow on the beach at Terrigal, where we also saw a minibus that without a hint of sarcasm declared itself to be the property of 'The Australian League of Old Bastards'.

The only downside of that trip was the pommie-bashing that we were exposed to, on two occasions. I was delighted to find that when we returned two years ago for Christmas 2005, we were treated with nothing but courtesy and friendliness. True, we were up in the tourist belt this time, in the unbelievably beautiful environs of Byron Bay, rather than the suburbs of Sydney, but it felt a different country, much more at ease with itself than first impressions. One thing I noted on the first trip and was glad to see had receded the second time was the use of the word 'Australian', sometimes in every sentence - the raw national pride of an emergent nation - usually on television, when the eponymous label was attached wherever possible. Example - the BBC introduces the weather forecast 'and here is the weather forecast'. The Aussie version was 'and now we have the weather for Australia tomorrow'. A silly example perhaps, but a real example. It was as though the more times one could say the word, the more one swore allegiance to the country, a bit like the very noticeable presence of the Stars & Stripes on every building in that country. Anyway, pleased to say that that facet of Australian self awareness seems to have given way to a more comfortable identity.

What wouldn't I give to be back on Tallow Beach right now, 45 degrees, up to my waist in the warm milk of the Pacific. The old SAD has really kicked in this winter, which was bound to happen having tasted the forbidden fruit of Winter Sun. Still, a few more winters at the grindstone for me yet.......

......which brings me back to Last Night's Fun. Not the excellent band from Sligo, but some of the music of that fair country, as last night we had our weekly traditional music session at our local pub. As the evening started with an excellent curry with my good friend Simon Styles, Barrow's principal penny whistle manufacturer, good cheer had already started flowing, and between then and being emptied out of the pub at 1am, I realised that both my fiddle playing and detox programme had gone to hell in a handbasket. Having successfully retoxed, my head has been pounding all day. A half-life of six hours is a new record for resolution-busting for me.

2008 and all that

2007-12-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

Oakley, who like Mr Dick is wise in all things, saved me from myself by pointing out that I was spending a disproportionate amount of time contributing opinions of dubious value on a website read by literally tens of people. This has to be the answer, a website bereft of far finer minds relegating me to the intellectual cheap seats, read by literally no one! A sound basis for a filing cabinet in which to store various musings and memories that I can harvest and publish when the subject is no longer actionable.

When better to start than a New Year's Day? Funny old days, New Year's; All is quiet on New Year's Day? My arse. It's a mixture of optimism and regret, for me, leastways. The optimism is just the human condition that stops most of us jumping off the Humber Bridge. The regret is the shame of needing to resolve. Resolve, apart from being my saviour on the second-most monumental of hangovers of my interesting life, for me at least has a very short half-life. Half-lives are interesting to me, probably the only thing I understood about nuclear stuff, isotopes and that, and the half-life of a resolution is probably about a week. Then I am only trying half as hard.

However, I use the term half-life advisedly, because the idea is never lost from memory, however crowded it has become by all those other ideas. Why, I remember last year's so perfectly that I actioned it as recently as November. It was a two-parter, Get Organised and Stay Organised. The banner scattered across the top of these jottings has self-evidently stayed with me for what must be fast approaching 35 years; Gregory is cheerful and disorganised - I've worn it like an ASBO, a badge of honour of hedonism and unruliness.

It was my fourth form (add 6, young people, to get to your 'grade' equivalent) teacher David Trenow who wrote this simple epithet in my school report, nothing more, just those concentrated five words that let me understand myself and tell me it was OK to be me. Not a whiff of reproach or disapproval, more constructive criticism - that's the way I took it and still do.

Ah, but within the self-satisfaction of accepting that statement as positive, it is tempting to believe that one is not possible without the other, the yin of cheerfulness can only exist with the yang of disorganisation. I think it's fair to say that I have found organised people to have, well, constrained ability for cheer.

So how have I managed to survive since in a world run by organised people? The answer is by falling short, epically. My greatest downfall has been timekeeping. My relationship with time has been significantly affected by tide tables. The preposition of a tide table is that it tells you what time high tide and low tide will be. There's plenty of guff about variation in tide heights, atmospheric pressure, wind strength and direction and all that, but very little about variation in tide times, and my experience has been that the tide sods off out again when it feels like it.

There must have been at least a dozen occasions during my life when I have been on time, maybe twice when I was early. What a horrible waste of life being early is! And of those times I have been on time, nothing wonderful or mythical happened. Rather the opposite, someone else didn't turn up on time, or whatever, and the occasion was delayed, reinforcing my belief that I should have been late as usual.

I will, however finish with an admission; despite a toe-curlingly good memory for embarrassing others, my corrupted hard disc can only retain record times for journeys, and thus my plain surprise at turning up half a day late in Exeter, failing to remember that the journey time allocated was in fact achieved many years before, in the middle of the night before speeding was a punishable crime.

So ends this start of this year's resolution, to write stuff down, with hope for a long half-life.