A Journeyman's Log

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

2009-07-15T20:19:00.003+01:00

It was a couple of years ago I first heard the Penguin Cafe Orchestra on 6 Radio, the BBC's radio channel on digital radio (DAB) where you can hear modern music with some meaning. The track played was The Sound Of Someone You Love Going Away And It Doesn't Matter. The music fitted my mood that evening and the title made me laugh.

Eventually, this summer I was given their album Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The first track is so happy it made me dance. I love happy music.

Some good choices

2009-07-15T08:51:00.002+01:00

Last weekend our local Blockbusters had an offer of four DVDs for four nights for £10. Marian and I had already decided that we would choose one each for our weekend chill out, so we chose Slumdog Millionaire, The Secret Life of Bees, Changeling and The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas.

For once we enjoyed each film; often we feel thoroughly downhearted at the depressing plot or lack of hope or redemption in recent stories. Not that these were particularly hope filled. Both Slumdog and Bees were more optimistic and fanciful than hopeful. Changeling and The Boy raised interesting questions - the first in a long series of US navel gazing about internal corruption and the second about the consequences to oneself of one's own choices for evil.

If you only want a superficial, unrealistically happy film that skirts real questions of life and morality, choose Mamma Mia. Or a thousand others. Meanwhile, I'd recommend these four.

Ghengis Khan

2009-07-02T21:22:00.007+01:00

Years back I bought a history of Ghengis Khan in Bangalore airport. The style is a mix of travelogue and history revealed, as the author travels around Mongolia in the late 20th Century. Coincidentally, shortly after her birthday, Marian and I saw a film set in Mongolia about the camel who cried. Note I used the personal relative pronoun there; that's because the first-time mother camel didn't bond with her baby. The family's efforts to ensure the little camel is fed and mothered properly are the core of the story. As parents, we both felt the tension and the hopes of the nomadic family, who cared for these and other camels on the steppe. If you can track down a DVD, it's a great film--somebody's film school project, too.

Back to the book. One new word I learned from it was debouch, which is what a river does when it broadens out on a wide plane entry to a sea or lake. The author also likened the effects of a Mongolian ice storm to a carapace, the shell of a tortoise. Such a covering denies food to the otherwise hardy horses bred there, and leads to early death. As to Ghengis Khan, we are still exploring pre-Khan history.

Coupland

2009-06-30T22:08:00.002+01:00

One of Marian's birthday books is Douglas Coupland's Life After God. At first Coupland's style in this book--the first of his I've read--amused me. I laughed out loud at his character's description of human history, basically 5,000 years spoiling the planet. Then I found the rest rather depressing and hopeless. Too many expectations laid at the door of relationships, too much early-life hopelessness and all lived out in the knowledge that God doesn't exist and humans don't need God anyway. Ultimately there is a glimmer of hope, in an enigmatic kind of open-ended, what is that about, kind of manner.

For Marian and me, having spent April this year dealing with her dangerous heart condition, its treatment and the physical and emotional consequences, knowing God is there in all the turmoil has kept us sane and, almost above all, hopeful. I'd say there is God After Life.

No one died!

2009-06-30T22:04:00.003+01:00

My birthday present this year from the family was a barbeque. My youngest son delivered it last Saturday, and later Marian, Rachel, Stephen and I had our first meal out on our parched parcel of grass. This was my first at lighting a charcoal BBQ, first at cooking sausages and burgers without mixing up ordinary, gluten-free and low-calorie items. In the end, no one died and all survivors has a jolly nice time.

Still Learning

2009-06-28T22:30:00.002+01:00

Travels are mainly over, so no interesting journeys to write about. But, learning continues, for example I learned last week that soaking comfrey in water produces an excellent feed for tomato plants. I rediscovered that Sherlock Holmes used heroin, at least he did in The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I read this month. Therein was the lovely word darkling, as in the darkling sky. These days we would use darkening, but Conan Doyle's choice has a nicer sound.

Got my number

2009-03-28T17:36:00.002Z

Some kind soul drove into the front of our car this last week. Like all minor incidents it's more of a nuisance than anything else. For the first time I had to buy new number plates. The shop had to follow government regulations for such things, of course, so I needed to prove first that I was legitimately buying the plates and second that I am me. The first trip was not successful in that I took an old V5 form, not the new one. About five years ago I just stuck the new V5 form in a file and didn't destroy the old. A V5 is the certificate of registration for a car in UK and names the registered owner and keeper. I did take my driver's licence and passport, the former being sufficient for the second proof.

All this regulation is, presumably, to minimise illegal activity by a minority in this country. For the rest of us it's just another layer of rules and regulations that crop up after kind souls do the damage.

A Familiar Circuit

2009-03-25T08:26:00.002Z

My home is close to the South Downs; just to the north of us are two golf courses, one privately owned and the other formerly run by the town council and now in private hands. When the weather is good and it's light I love jogging around the second one, up a path on its western side, across its northern boundary and then home on another path that emerges by some water works, leads to a huge recreation ground, then back to the A27 and west to home.
This morning it was raining a little at dawn; as I emerged the clouds were breaking up and the low light made newly wet brickwork glow; forsythia intensified the light, contrasting with the sky's greyness. Spring flowers must be designed to be visible to the insects they need.
On the northern edge of the course I have to pause, for breath and to enjoy the calm, clean, fresh day. God's grace is like the rain and light, cleaning and freshening me up for the day.

Is rugby war?

2009-03-22T21:02:00.003Z

Yesterday was odd; Marian was at a colleague's wedding and the final three matches of the Six Nations Rugby Championship were showing on BBC1 in succession from 1.30 to around 7.00 p.m. Yielding to temptation like that was easy, especially as the final game was Wales v Ireland. Wales needed to win by 13+ points to win the championship, while Ireland needed a straight win for the championship and the grand slam, which they'd last achieved 61 years ago. At half time Wales was 6 points ahead and Ireland needed the talking to they must have got, because the second half was a high tension game. Finally, in the dying minutes a penalty kick by Wales could have given them a one point lead, denying Ireland glory. The ball fell short and Ireland got the championship and grand slam. What a finish!

Hopping channels before the wedding guest returned led me to ITV4's documentary on D-Day in 1944, which made me wonder whether the battered rugby champs were vicarious warriors for the six nations. We have had generations of relative peace in Europe, at least between nations.

Today in Sydney airport two motor cycle gangs clashed, leaving one man dead. Aggression is deep in human nature, so thank the Lord if rugby has a safety valve effect.

For me, though I am Welsh, I was able to cheer Ireland's victory; just as well, as I have an Irish daughter-in-law.

Is That You?

2009-03-22T20:57:00.002Z

Fiddling with my MacBook is fun. Found an app called Photobooth that surprised me with this shot of me at home listening to Brahms on iTunes--using headphones--and fiddling. Watch out, 21st Century!

I Still Miss NEO

2009-03-20T08:49:00.002Z

On leaving paid work I decided to move into the world of Apple and leave the frustrations of Windows and PCs behind, but I still miss one program that is fantastically helpful. It only works with Outlook and it's the Nelson Email Organizer, or NEO. At heart NEO is a set of instantly updated indexes of email messages; in reality it speeds the retrieval of any email instantly. And that's what I miss.

Apple's Mail email client is good and has many strengths, but I still struggle to find that email I know I had from old Jones...

The trouble is Outlook is such a greedy space gobbler I am glad to have left it behind, with its proprietary file structures and arrogant remoteness from other worthy email clients with whom it refuses to speak nicely. But NEO...

Really!

2009-03-07T08:45:00.004Z

Just had an email from a web-site that holds thousands of sermons, the vast majority of which I have never listened to, nor will I imagine. There's a little graphic from a church in South Carolina, called Faith Free Presbyterian Church, a name that is crying out for a clarifying hyphen to eliminate the ambiguity. Or, are they just being honest?

A Discovery

2009-03-05T08:21:00.005Z

Since retiring from Feba my only journey has been to Derbyshire for a holiday with my wife, Marian, last November (2008). We noticed how beauty, hills and proximity to wealth in cities made the proportion of 4x4s higher than in other places. Steep hills and a wintery imagination made Imagine this in the snow! a holiday catch phrase. The snow in February justified these beasts' existence, though.

A different journey this morning: Exploring the word outwith. Grace Community Church, my home church, will welcome a new pastor in April. He's Scottish and has lived in France for 15 years, giving him challenges to begin to think again in English and get used to southern English ways. Erwin used outwith in one sermon at GCC. Another GCC member, also a Scot, used outwith since, whetting my curiosity. A Google search reveals this to be a word in current use in Scotland, even in a government web site about home schooling--children being educated outwith school, as it reads.

Outwith means beyond or outside, just like the older meaning of without. In the Victorian hymn There Is a Green Hill Far Away Without a City Wall, the hill is outside the city wall, as later editions of the hymn have it, not a plot subject to possible enclosure.

It's good to be on the journey still.

End of a long journey

2008-11-01T06:25:00.003Z

Last evening my former company had an evening to celebrate my retirement. Since summer 2007 I have worked half time with them, having reached pensionable age then. Val and Jacqui organised it all, inviting former colleagues and current staff. We had a great time. My boss, John, is leaving one month later so we celebrated his time, too. That fact allowed him to steal a response I would have loved to make--that he hardly recognised the nice chap the speakers were talking about.

Despite my memory now bringing back fine detail from the distant past and failing to match that for more recent events, I didn't remember some of the incidents recalled by others. Regrettably, I do remember times when I was arrogant and boorish.

Thirty five years with one company is a long time, unusual in Britain these days where it is better to have multiple entries in one's CV. The long spell hides that I have, in fact, held many different positions with a variety of responsibilities. For 27 years they required international travel, explaining the title of this blog and my rather feeble attempts to write about some of the journeys.

Now the frequency of travel will diminish, but the free bus pass will enable local travel in these days of green concerns.

For me, the 35 years have gone by very quickly and left me with a brilliant set of memories of people, places and experiences. My colleagues gave me a 500GB computer hard disk to use as a back up facility for a new laptop just purchased. Converting good memories into computer files is impossible; if it were, 500GB would barely contain them all.

West Sussex Again

2008-10-16T08:22:00.002+01:00

The weather forecast for Dallas was for rain. On Sunday there were wisps of cloud around in contrast with the perfect blue dome the previous Wednesday. I can't rate Dallas/Fort Worth airport very highly; my pre-flight wait was pretty boring. After arriving in good time at Detroit our plane had to wait twenty minutes for someone to find the illuminated wands a ground staff person uses to guide the plane to the gate. Then there was no one to drive the air bridge from which we deplaned. All in all not very impressive.
Unusually, the rail journey to Worthing was fast because the train had a fault, making it 19 minutes late out of Gatwick, so the slow stops along the coast were cut out so it could get back into step with the planned timetable.
Is this a boring post? Not as boring as modern international travel; airport taxes on this journey from London to Dallas were higher than the cost of the ticket itself. And we all know why that is. Who is winning what war, I ask?
Outside our home are a fir, an oak, a silver birch and a sycamore (E&OE). The gutters are deep in rich brown leaves. Autumn is here.

Target not reached

2008-10-12T03:07:00.002+01:00

I never made it to the Target store. While in transit from the hotel to the meeting place the van crossed the bridge over the seemingly impossible junction. There is a pedestrian walk way over the bridge, so it is theoretically possible to go to Target on foot.

Instead I was taken to the Apple computer store in Plano, where I bought some software for the Apple computer I plan to buy soon. While fully appreciating the discipline necessary to run a company's IT, I get fed up with Microsoft's bloated software and storage needs. Currently my Outlook 2007 at home takes a couple of minutes to open up its files and nearly as long to shift an email from one file to another. Don't ask why I do that; I know my cyber-life could be simpler. With an Apple it may be complicated, but it will look nice.

Apple has great visual impact; by my keyboard is the business card of Todd, the young man who helped me earlier. It is clean and classy. Unlike the floor of the eating place this evening, which is strewn with empty peanut shells. See my earlier post.

While we waited for an empty table, pigeons and some black birds waited for any peanuts that might come their way. As the sun went down, hundreds of birds started gathering on the high voltage electricity cables on the far side of the highway, beyond which lies Target. It looked like it could turn into a Hitchcock event if those HT birds decided to really get more peanuts. My steak was delicious.

As a walker in Texas

2008-10-09T10:54:00.002+01:00

Walking is a minority activity here. Yesterday I saw only four other walkers. One was not really walking, just standing in the middle of a road turning, dressed as Father Christmas alongside a resurrected Elvis in white cat suit. They were jiggling sign boards around in the hope drivers would turn in to see the pre-Christmas sale of apartments, standing back a quarter mile from the main road.
Most of the time I used side walks (pavements in UK, but here the pavement is the roadway--important to know that) but sometimes they just ended either side of some green space.
At junctions with bigger roads there are pedestrian signals with a time span favourable to quick reactors and the nimble of foot. At access points to parking lots I have found drivers invariably courteous, holding well back so I could walk on. I did see one man leaning over to peer at me as he turned right ahead of me. So, are the drivers holding back for my safety or theirs? Solitary walker, huh? What do I make of him?

Texas and Large

2008-10-09T10:35:00.004+01:00

Texans' reputation (in British humour) is that everything in Texas is bigger than anywhere else. I walked down for supper to Logan's Roadhouse, the nearest one to the hotel. It was fine, with crackly floors. Each table has a galvanized bucket of unshelled peanuts where Brits might expect bread. Emptied shells are dropped on the floor. I saw no spittoons.
As a Brit, I find the portions huge and there are no other vegetables than potato. I had potato soup to start, nice with cheese and bacon. Then thin slices of beef on Texan toast, which was really just white bread toast, next to a heap of mashed potato cradling thick brown gravy in a dip. Not a solitary veg; nothing green, orange, red or yellow. Except in the mini dessert of cheesecake, served in a miniature galvanised bucket, the kid brother of the peanut holder. Apart from dessert the portions are huge, no wonder so many people there were overweight.
A South African Feba colleague once joked that when beef is on the BBQ his vegetables are pork. In India I learned: After lunch rest a while, after dinner walk a mile. Which I did, stalking out the Target store for the weekend.

Dallas

2008-10-09T01:21:00.004+01:00

Until now my knowledge of Dallas was mediated through the TV series. Actually I am staying in Lewisville at the excellent Residence Inn, a first for me at this chain of hotels. The landscape here is quite flat with a gentle climb to the north. Wendy's, Red Lobster, TGFI and other eating houses are here, giving a strange sense of deja vu but with a Texan accent. As yet I've not heard anything as broad as one Continential Airlines cabin crew member who doubled the number of syllables in "trash" as she collected the "tray-ash" before we landed in Newark. Most of the few people I've talked to are not Texans.

Today I got to the local Barnes & Noble bookstore. Discovery no. 1--the coffee they serve is actually Starbucks. Even so, the range of books, CDs and DVDs in this store far surpasses anything local to my home.

The challenge before I go home is to find a walking route from Residence Inn to the Target store. Today the highest point I reached on my way back was the intersection of two highways, the bypass crossing the interstate by bridge. Target is in the opposite diagonal from my vantage point. The bridge appears to have no side walk.

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May Be In Mombasa

2007-12-08T21:10:00.000Z

In 1971 my first extended time outside UK was in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, for 5 months before I returned home to get married. July can be cold at 5,000 feet elevation, so my memories include woodsmoke, jacaranda and the dark silvery song of a nocturnal bird. Bathing one night in the concrete floored bathroom I met a moth with a wingspan of 6-8 inches and curiosity to match. I don't think my light was shining that brightly.

In May 2007 all I saw of Nairobi was the airport en route to Mombasa, down on the coast. Actually my group was staying north of Mombasa in an ocean-side hotel drenched with seasonal rain. The wind was quite high, the Indian Ocean breakers roaring constantly as they hit the reef edge. My room had mosquito nets, thank goodness, as Mombasa is close to the equator. Surprisingly, the lizards were nearly as bold as the moth.

One afternoon a tribe of monkeys moved across the compound atop the palms. I was amazed to see one leap several metres, landing on a much lower palm branch on his next tree. Clever or stupid? Reckless or finely judged? He made it, so it's your call.

Old Mombasa was fascinating, even on a rainy late afternoon after a visit to Baraka FM, a station serving both the Christian and Muslim communities in the name of Jesus Christ. From their offices there's a great view over the shipping lanes.

Did the Journeys Stop?

2007-12-08T20:00:00.000Z

No. I'm still travelling both for work and for pleasure. It's just that this blog is neglected. I repent and promise myself again to get to writing.

Taking up from April, the next big journey after the walk round Arundel was to Singapore for my work. Despite the horribly long air journey, I enjoy Singapore. The warm, damp air reminds me of Seychelles, where wife and I spent our earliest married years. We took our firstborn at 9-weeks old and our second son was born there. After the air, that similarities end.

Singapore has a reputation for being a controlled society. The end result is a clean, crowded, safe-feeling, prosperous, and--yes--regulated society. A Swedish colleague and I walked from our hotel into town to eat. The traffic flowed, drivers obeyed traffic signals. The pavements were crowded with young people looking healthy, well off and enjoying themselves.

We heard that the Christian church in Singapore is thriving. I'm glad that the prosperity is being moderated by spiritual growth. Materialism, like a nuclear reactor, needs moderating with other, spiritual influences to avoid melt down.

Local TV was fun. In Thailand once I saw a cooking programme on preparing rats. My stomach turned when I saw a dozen tails hanging over the side of the wok. In Singapore I was caught up with a TV soap whose daily tensions grew in the fertile soil of loves gained and lost, flirtations with dishonesty and manipulation, a son watching his father regret infidelity and longing for his parents to be reconciled. I was sorry to leave.

Arundel is in the top ten

2007-04-02T16:38:00.000+01:00

This last week has brought some Spring-like weather to West Sussex. Sunday last, wife and I drove into Central London to visit oldest son and his wife. We walked though St James Park, with hundreds of others, and enjoyed the sunshine and keen wind. It turns out they had visited Arundel two weeks earlier to walk along the river and through the Duke's estate, as wife and I reported in our last posting.

Saturday night wife and I were at the Black Rabbit with two American friends, with whom we'd just seen Amazing Grace, the film celebrating William Wilberforce's struggle to outlaw slavery. For wife it was the third meal at the Black Rabbit that week! Multiple dining medal to be struck and passed over, no doubt.

Success on Sunday

2007-01-10T21:57:00.000Z

Wife and I walked just over 5 miles Sunday afternoon, guided by the GPS. We started at Arundel, West Sussex, parking the car on the road to the Black Rabbit pub, then walking alongside the river Arun to it. The path was pretty muddy. Then on the paved road to South Stoke, beyond which we breasted one hill, then on down to the river bank again.

The Duke of Norfolk's estate is walled, but The Monarch's Way traverses it from Arundel itself to the gate in the wall where we joined it. The GPS was tracking us quite well, but overlaying the track on a digital map at home showed us walking along the middle of the river just before the climb to the top of the estate. We're good, but not that good.

It was a windy, overcast day, but that section of the South Downs is lovely. We promised ourselves a visit in summer. Light was failing now, but it was an easy walk downhill to Swanbourne Lake. The water fowl were grumbling about things and across the valley some teenage boys competed to be loudest.

We needed the compass once, again in woodland; the torch several times as we came down off the Downs; the printed map pretty often. GPS handhelds seem to be fine in open areas but get far less precise in our kind of territory.

Christmas Toy & Lost In The Wood

2006-12-30T05:00:00.000Z

A couple of gifts for Christmas this year were a hand-held GPS device and a digital map of the South Downs. On Thursday this week, wife, oldest son, youngest son and their wives trusted me to take them on a walk on the edge of the Downs, starting 10 minutes from our home.
Starting after lunch on a day overcast with winter cloud we left the car park and the GPS guided us along the planned route--until I missed a left turn. This new toy guided us back to the route after a scrabble through the woods. So far, so good.
On the return part of our walk we had to pass through another wood. After a stiff ascent into it we were faced with a four-way junction and less light, even though most trees were bare of leaves. Not quite trusting this new intrument, we decided on a path that proved to be the wrong one. Unlike at the previous correction, we seemed to go deeper and deeper into the wood and get less and less help from the GPS. Our planned route is the blue line and our actual track is the red one.
As light faded totally we headed due south towards the major road we could hear. Then youngest son and I hoofed it along this road back to the car park, leaving the rest of the party to find their way to the nearest hostelry, where we joined them later.
Resolved: a) to take a traditional compass on future walks; b) to take a torch; c) to learn how to use aforementioned GPS; d) to avoid woodland paths after dark.

Greater Noida, India

2006-12-04T21:20:00.000Z

I hadn't heard of Noida before hearing that I'd be staying there for a week in November. The overnight from London to Delhi was enough to let me sleep most of the way from the airport to Noida's YMCA, so it was a surprise to wake up on arriving at a new, empty facility--both the city and the Y, as it's affectionately known.

Greater Noida has a five-year plan to fulfil the dream of a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, a woman whose village home was Noida. The greater city rises from a dusty plain of sandy soil, is linked to Delhi by a fine highway, is growing, but has acres of empty plots and dozens of empty high-rise buildings.

Crossing the road was hazardous, not for the volume of traffic, but for the locals' habit of using both sides of the dual carriageway as single carriage roads; there are rules for roundabouts (circles), I expect, but it was hard to predict how any one vehicle would move round the large roundabout that lay between the Y, the pizza house and the Internet cafe. Lorry drivers apart, most did attempt to steer round pedestrians, though some motor cyclists thought it fun to buzz the feckless, just like WWII fighter pilots or modern-day Israeli jets over Beirut.

The Internet cafe was three floors up and provided an hour's access to the world for Rupees15, US$0.30 or £0.17. The pizza house was bright, loud, hot and sold good value, piping hot food.

At the end of this stretch of road, to the right, lies a village of labourers; no electricity that we could see, but the road was lit to highest standards with high-pressure sodium lamps. Just before 10 PM, walking back along this road I tried (and failed) to compute and compare the nightly cost of lighting the road with the daily hire of the truck-load of labourers returning to their temporary village. Their main fuel is the hand-crafted, pizza-shaped cowpats neatly laid in lines to dry. The air left one smelling of the smoke; the street lights shone on, oblivious to emptiness or global warming.