Texas and Large

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.

May Be In Mombasa

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

Still Alive

What a year! Busy isn't the word. I hope to write some more very soon! See you.

Jersey, Channel Island

Wife and I took a week's summer holiday in Jersey. Airports are about work and long-haul journeys, for me. So being at London Gatwick with a hop, skip and jump across the English Channel to Jersey felt less joyful than it could have. Wind-blown, tiny-drop, hugely-drenching rain celebrated our arrival. The next morning was just windy. Our hotel on the southwest corner of the island, Corbière Point, is surrounded by gorse-strewn coarse grass, all that can survive the winter gales. A white lighthouse sits on pinkish granite, pummelled clean by the waves. Nearby are several concrete structures, squatting on the rock, a reminder of nervous Nazis in World War II, who were well prepared to resist invasion by British troops, but who--in the end--were beaten by food shortages. Wife was here in her teens; then, she hired a bike to explore the island. This time, a little less energetically but still on cycles, we twice reached the north coast, gradually climbing the gently rising plateau before swooping down to the beach. That left one challenge, the climb back to the plateau high point, before the ride back to a daily five-course dinner. For some reason, clothing seemed to shrink a little and the cycle tyres looked flatter by day four. My father's father ran away to sea at 16. One summer my dad's brother-in-law showed me grandad's log book, signed by each ship's master who hired him. In my teens, I longed to be at sea, but my short sight would have meant engineering, the stink of hot oil in confined spaces, not the romance of navigation and the wheelhouse. This probably explains why I loved the two hours we spent at St Helier watching, without a shred of envy, little craft coming and going while a tug nosed a coaster from the harbour wall, pointing it to the seaward channel and its next port of call. Victorian hymns were all about the perils of the sea as an analogy of life: Will you anchor hold in the storms of life? That afternoon and all in our little Jersey break were peaceful, refreshing reminders of my hero's words, "Peace, be still."

Waiting & Patience

Some other blogs appear to be static for years, so my self-inflicted bad feelings are eased a little. After my last radiotherapy treatment on 11 July my brain numbness grew but has now subsided to near normal levels--it's time to write again. Prostate cancer is such that scans won't be accurate enough to check changes; it's down to the Prostate Specific Antigen Test (PSA). When blood levels of PSA rise, cancer is one of several possible explanations. Now my cancer has been treated, the PSA levels should fall. One doctor suggested a gap of several weeks before the next PSA measurement to let the body to normalise after the radiation. This means? That I won't know until mid-October whether the treatment has helped and the cure held out as one prospect will materialise. I never felt ill before all this started and I feel well now. Since Christmas 2004 I have not taken my regular exercise, so I feel sluggish--but I'm working on it. Today it was wonderful to walk and trot the perimeter of a local golf course. Late summer mornings can be cool, clear and clean. At 6:30 AM only a few maintenance staff are out preparing the course for the day's players. But I did come across a local couple exercising their dogs and shared a few seconds exchanging delight at this wonderful place and moment. "We are blessed," said the gentleman. Blessed at such beauty, at freedom to be out and about and the joy of being alive. I think even their two immaculately-behaved dogs agreed.