The Past Is Another Country

Turunc Promenade

My wife and I have just returned from Tunisia. We had a fabulous time at the wonderful  ‘Les Orangers’ hotel, Hammamet, and will no doubt return one day, as some fellow guests have done for years. However, going back isn’t always a blessing, as we discovered a few years ago on a return visit to Turkey.

On our very first visit there, sometime in the late Nineties, we dined out regularly at a little restaurant tucked away on a narrow, winding country road in Turunc, a small coastal village only just opening up to tourism in those days. The restaurant was owned by Ibrahim, and we have fond memories of his hospitality and the wonderful conversations we had with him over long lazy lunches and dinners. His chicken, roasted in a dish, was to die for, as was his platter-sized pitta bread and the simple but refreshing white wine that he would serve in carafes which just kept coming. No matter how large the meal, the cost would always be just a few pounds, and, in the end, we visited him at least once a day, despite having already pre-paid the meals in our hotel, a bit further down the steep road to the bay.

 When we left for home we promised Ibrahim faithfully that we would return someday and come to visit him for old times’ sake. It was meant seriously, too, but you know how things are: you mean to do something and never quite get around to it somehow. So three years had passed before we went back to visit him again. Here is my diary entry for that day.

 

May 11th 2001

Today my wife and I are off to Turunc to see Ibrahim, shoot the breeze, and taste, once more, his legendary roasted chicken.

Turunc is just a short boat ride away from Icmeler, so we stroll down to the harbour area at about 10.30 to catch the small water dolmus that ferries folk between the two resorts. There is a road now, spectacularly sinuous as it climbs up and down the mountainside, but it is quicker to get the boat for all that.

As we near the harbour area, a few Turks are seated by the side of the path selling boat trips. After over-exposure to countless ”Only Fools And Horses” repeats, they have all adopted, when dealing with the British, a curious Cockney accent that even Dick Van Dyke would disown as too over the top:

“Cheap as chips!”

“Gor blimey, guv’nor, me plates of meat are giving me jip today, innit?”

“Look at me brochure, mate. It’s lubbly jubbly!”

The invitation to peruse the brochure is, of course, merely a way of trapping the unwary tourist into a full-on sales presentation, so we wave politely and shake our heads. In the past I have been known to pretend to be from somewhere in Eastern Europe, feigning incomprehension and speaking gobbledygook in order to avoid the dreaded spiel. Nowdays Turkey is inundated with Eastern Europeans, so I guess I’d be found out. I’ll have to be from somewhere a bit more exotic and hard to understand. Alabama, maybe.

The crude signs above their heads bear names like “Captain Sinbad”,  “Captain Jack” and — I promise I’m not making this up – ”Captain Bullshit”.  Yeah right. Like I’m going to trust my life to a guy called Captain Bullshit. “Remember the name,” shouts the guy to my retreating back, “it’s Bullshit!”  As if I would be likely to forget.

Strolling a little further around the harbour brings us to a jetty, alongside which are parked, sorry, moored, dozens of smallish boats. I really ought to be better versed in maritime lingo seeing as my paternal grandfather was a trawler skipper out of Lowestoft most of his life, but to be honest I don’t know a scow from a schooner. I don’t even know if I just made scow up, or if there really is a boat called that. I’m okay with the most basic terms, such as “pointy end”, but I would probably mistake a poop deck for a public toilet.

We pay the salty old sea dog camped at the booth an inordinate number of Turkish Lira  and he gives me a ticket. To my disappointment he does not say “Garrrrrrrrrrr!” or “Thank’ee lad!”, but he does tell us that our boat is parked first on the left.

We jump on board – literally, since there is no gangplank – and install ourselves on the slightly damp seat that runs down both sides of the boat from pointy end to blunt bit at the back. A sheet of blue plastic provides basic cover from the sun, but offers not much protection from the waves, should the weather get a bit squally. There is room for about twenty or so people, but the boat is only half full when it chugs out to sea at eleven o’clock precisely. As the rocky coastline slides past, the captain, a piratical looking guy who you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of, puts on his tape of traditional Turkish sea shanties. First up is Dolly Parton, then Shania Twain. “Garrrrrrrrrrrr!” (Boat owners here seem unable or unwilling not to share their music with us. Within just a few trips we have been treated to such diverse delights as Celine Dion — the Titanic theme: very comforting — Robbie Williams, Eminem, and, for the kiddies, Li’l Kim, rapping about the joys of cunnilingus.)

The boat bobs along happily enough, pointy end first, which I’m told is normal. In a little while the familiar scenery of Turunc swings into view, its buildings spreading as lichen up the hillside. It’s still a very pretty little place, but already we can see it is much more developed than when we were last here. Before the road was built, a few years back, the only way you could get to Turunc was by boat, or, I suppose, parachute. It was a popular mooring place for gulets and yachts, but the village was left pretty much unspoiled. Ominously there is now a large blue water slide at the far end of the bay.

A lot can change in three years, and we hope that Turunc hasn’t decided to follow in the footsteps of its near neighbour Marmaris, which passed the Baked Potato Stall event horizon many years ago. You cannot walk for more than twenty yards along the seafront at Marmaris without being confronted by yet another Baked Potato Stall. It seems to be a local obsession. Despite this, no one can agree on the correct spelling for potato, so each stall offers a variant: “Patato”, “Petata”, “Potota” and so on. Perhaps that’s why there are so many: they keep opening new ones until one day someone spells it “Potato”, which event will signal the End of Days. 

As we sail into Turunc harbour, the captain’s tape machine is blaring out “Road To Hell” by Chris Rea. A bit harsh, I feel.

*******

Despite obvious evidence of new-found prosperity, a plethora of touristy shops, bars and restaurants, plus a new statue on the quayside of a man on a horse  (Atatürk, I assume), Turunc has still managed to keep its charm. There is an undeniable feeling of community here. Everyone says hello to you as you walk down the street, and you don’t feel that they’re just trying to sell you things. They seem genuinely pleased to see you. Whether you buy or not it is all the same to them, and that, frankly, is a much better attitude to selling in my view. The in-your-face school could certainly do worse than to study these traders for a while. 

Whether any of those who wave and say hello actually remember us from the last time I don’t know, but in those days, too, the same friendly greetings came at us from all sides. Feeling right at home, we stroll around the village, reacquainting ourselves with old haunts and remarking upon new additions. My wife’s eyes take on a familiar gleam as she spots the jewellery shop in which she once bought a ring. I can feel a sharp pain in the credit card coming on.

By now it’s lunchtime, so we decide to wander up the little road to Ibrahim’s restaurant, and be greeted as prodigals. The restaurant is still there, with a new wooden roof replacing the old thatched one. A large ornamental fountain made of big, flat, round stones set in a tall mound of concrete is another change; not altogether for the better, if truth be told. At root, though, it’s still the same small establishment, nestling dozily on the hillside amongst myriad wild flowers. We enter with a feeling of fond expectation. A waiter greets us warmly and bids us sit.

“How is Ibrahim?” I ask.

“He is here. You know him?”

Yes, we say, very well

The waiter smiles broadly. “I will get him. He will be pleased to see old friends.”

He disappears and returns a moment later with a chubby man whom I don’t recognise at all. My wife is looking puzzled too.

“Ibrahim?”

“Yes,” he says. It’s clear he doesn’t recognise us, either. Awkward.

It is Ibrahim, though. It’s coming back to me, now that I’ve seen him. It’s strange the tricks memory plays on you. I had him a lot older and thinner, and with a moustache. My wife, too, had stored a totally different image of the man we once met and dined with daily for a fortnight.

“Er…we stayed here before, about three years ago…”

He is not a good enough actor to feign recognition, but he nods and says, “Welcome…it is good to see you again.” He shakes us both gravely by the hand.

“And who the fuck are you, by the way?” he doesn’t say.

Lunch is quite strained. I think Ibrahim feels obliged to sit with us and make small talk, but somehow we don’t recapture the old relaxed feeling of companionship. The meal, roast chicken of course, is different too, I think. Or maybe our rose-coloured minds had rendered those old meals sublime in the same way they had skewed our recollection of Ibrahim himself.

When we get up to go, I feel a strange sense of sadness, as if we have lost more by going back than if we had just kept the memories instead. Ibrahim goes into his office, and returns bearing a little tourist map of Marmaris and Turunc, which he gives us as a parting gift. We thank him and head back to the harbour, our day unexpectedly diminished.

When we get back to the hotel I turn on the television in our room to discover that Douglas Adams, author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’, has died at a stupidly young age.  What remaining joy the day might have contained is immediately sucked away.

It’s like the man said: the past is another country.

That Was the Drought That Was

 

With April about to end on something of a wet note, I thought it would be interesting to see what some of our greatest poets might have made of the recent weather. Through my spirit guide, Bob, I have been fortunate enough to channel the following works. You’re welcome.

Geoffrey Chaucer

　

Whan that aprill with his shoures great

The droghtes of march hath ended in a spate,

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

(so priketh hem nature in hir corages)

To ferne shores, kowthe in sondry londes,

The sondry hermes luggages in hond,

And specially from every shires ende

Of engelond to gatywicke they wende.

　

Befil that in that seson on a day

In gatywicke at the wytherspoones I lay,

At nyght was come into that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty in a henne partye

That toward fair menorca wolden flye

Alle clad in shirtes of pinken vileynye

On which there was first write debbye

And after does doubles in letters glitterye

　

Now have I told you soothly, in a clause,

Th’ estaat, th’ array, the nombre, and eek the cause

Why that assembled was this compaignye

In gatywicke at this gentil hostelrye

And wel I woot, as ye goon by the weye

Ye care namoore than doth a popinjay

So now is not the tyme my tale to telle

And ye maun look away, saved by the belle.

　

　

　Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

In Milton Keynes did Cameron

A stately water-park decree,

Where once a lot of buses ran

On routes inscrutable to man

(And pensioners went free).

　

So twice five miles of flooded ground

With walls and towers were girdled round :

And there were countless rides with sinuous thrills,

Where threw up several hoodie-wearing thugs;

And here were wardens ancient as the hills,

Enforcing the park’s ban on Class A drugs.

　

But oh ! that deep flume ride whose route was slanted

Down the artificial ski slope t’was athwart !

Ten pounds a ride ! the children were enchanted

Although the Harry Potter Broomstick ride was vaunted

By JK Rowling’s agent and his minions from Hogwarts !

And on this ride, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

Were all the kids who’d wet their pants, still breathing,

But only just: a drop of thirty feet had caused

Their bladders, spleens and colons to divorce !

　

　

William Blake

I paddle through each chartered Mall,
Near where the chartered Thames did flood,
And thank the Lord that I am tall,
And not susceptible to mud..

In every shop on Oxford Street
In every beauteous boutique built,
In each display that seeks to treat,
The major theme this year is silt:

How the Standard-vendor’s cries
Are lost amid the surging swell,
And Cockneys heave collective sighs,
Their whelk-stalls fathoms deeper dwell,

But most, through coursing streets I hear
How useless, ‘cross the nation,
The local flood defences are
When faced with inundation

　

　

　

William Wordsworth

 

I wandered lonely as a boat

That drifts on tides oe’r vale and hill

When all at once I saw, afloat,

A truck stacked with Viagra pills:

Alongside speed, betwixt some “E”s,

They must have been worth twenty Gs.

　

I tried to lasso, with a line,

The truck, ‘fore it could drift away:

It bobbed and weaved — the metal swine! –

It took the best part of the day:

At last I had it bang to rights,

And none too soon, t’was nearly night.

　

I paddled hard against the flow

But Newton’s First Law spoiled my dash:

So with the truck I had to go

Or loose my line and lose the stash;

I mulled–and mulled–but only thought

What wealth the drugs had nearly brought:

　

Now oft, when in my boat I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

I really wish I could untie

And let the drugs escape for good;

But then my brain with horror fills,

I’m so addicted to these pills.

Overnight Snow

 

The men in the window:

Gathered four-strong, ghosts, conversing,

White rush flickering through their transparency,

England, their England, spilling like slipstream,

Becoming past,

A homeland turned to dark vast cold speed.

 

　

Each halt brings resolution,

Lanterns throwing sepia cones

Through white flutterings;

You half expect to see the faun,

Umbrella raised, trot into view,

His winter interminable

(Instead more ghosts gather, grimly,

Discernable in the window).

　

Whiteness resists

The onward rush:

Unexpected hours pass until

England — our England? — is revealed anew.

The ghosts, in cut-glass clip,

Remark upon the strangeness:

The familiar made pristine alien in half-light

As if slipping through a wardrobe;

The shadowlands glimpsed for once

Through a glass, less darkly.

　

With morning sun

The ghosts fade fast,

Shrill ringtones, the workaday maul,

Encroaching upon,

Eroding, Winter’s thrall.

The train, at last, broaching London at a crawl:

“We’ve not seen the like since the last time.”

     ”A wonder we made it at all!”

FRAFINPO (15 Random Album Favourites In No Particular Order)

A Twitter conversation with the inestimable @BearNecessitude underlined to me that even fans of an artist may not always see eye-to-eye over the virtues of a particular album. We both agreed Steve Hackett’s “Please Don’t Touch” was splendid, and then totally failed to agree that its successor “Spectral Mornings” was possibly even better (my view).

Since there’s nothing so gratifying – nor, indeed, so wasting of time – as a jolly good debate over music, I have chosen 15 albums that have seen heavy rotation on my playlists past and present, with a brief attempt to explain why.  It’s not my Top 15 – dear me, no! THAT would be a time-consuming debate – but I’ll be interested to see what you all think of my choices. (Bear, that probably means just you, mate.)

1. The Snow Goose

Camel

You can almost smell the marshland as this classic 1970s instrumental album unfolds in a grand, but not pompous, prog-fest. I first heard this played in our sixth-form common room and was transfixed. It’s quintessentially English, and I recommend it to anyone unfazed by the concept of electric guitars living happily alongside oboes and bassoons…

 

2. The Earth Is Not a Cold Dark Place

Explosions in the Sky

Music that swoops and swoons, chiming guitars, moody percussion; no lyrics — the music speaks for itself. If you haven’t heard this band yet, this is a good introductory album. Tell them Limey sent you.

 

 

3. Aja

Steely Dan

I guess I could have picked pretty much any Dan album – ever-brilliant lyrics, oblique cynical humour, musicianship of the highest order guaranteed – but Aja contains the wondrous Deacon Blues and Josie. ‘Nuff said.

 

 

4. With The Beatles

The Beatles

This takes me straight back to childhood. I had the original Parlophone album in Mono and would play it incessantly. Roughly split between covers and originals it’s just classic early Moptop…as witnessed by the album cover. I’m not saying it was better than their later stuff, but it totally blew me away at the age of five and can still make me smile like a loon forty-five years later.

 

5. Wasp Star

XTC

It’s been said many, many times, but if any group should have inherited the Beatles’ mantle it is XTC. They are still woefully under-rated, but to see what all the fuss is about get this, and its companion piece Apple Venus, and marvel at songs like Stupidly Happy and The Man Who Murdered Love. Rich, layered, packed with fun and whimsy – Andy Partridge gets my vote for Godlike Rock Genius, even if he does hail from Swindon.

 

6. Sounds of the New West

Various Artists: Uncut Magazine

A strange thing happened to me on the way to fifty: suddenly alt.country began to challenge my oft-repeated assertion that I would rather bury my head in a wheelbarrow full of horseshit than voluntarily listen to a Country record. These days I have to admit that the twangs of a steel guitar aren’t necessarily going to consign me to the Seventh Circle of Hell. This album, free with Uncut magazine about ten years ago, is mostly responsible for my change of heart. It single-handedly introduced me to artists such as Josh Rouse, Neil Casal, Lambchop, Willard Grant Conspiracy and The Handsome Family, who now make up a goodish proportion of my record collection. There’s not a duff track on the album; if you can beg, steal or borrow a copy, I heartily recommend it.

 

7. The Seldom Seen Kid 

Elbow

For me, getting into Elbow was something of a slow burn; I could appreciate their potential in early work like Asleep At The Back, but it didn’t quite gel.  And then along came this album and suddenly everything fell into place. Delicate, mesmerising, majestic, capable of moments of sheer perfection, I can now see why Elbow should not be hurried. They are a band to lay back and wallow in.

 

8. Moroccan Roll

Brand X

Yes, it’s Prog Jazz. And Phil Collins is on drums and vocals. I suspect many of you are even now heading for the toilet, but give this a chance and I truly hope you’ll change your minds. Come on…what can you lose? Your eternal soul is already damned for liking Face Value when it first came out.

 

 

9. Listen Now

Phil Manzanera & 801

What do you mean you never heard of it? Okay, so it’s obscure and it’s from 1977, but if you wanted to hear what the bastard lovechild of Roxy Music, 10cc and Crowded House might sound like then: hey presto! Manzanera, Eno, Godley, Creme and Tim Finn are all here. Great songs with an undercurrent of paranoia running right through the album. Not exactly party music, I grant you, but parties are over-rated anyway.

 

10. Rockin’ The Suburbs

Ben Folds

Were it not already occupied by Andy Partridge, Ben Folds would be a shoe-in for the role of Godlike Rock Genius. I’m in thrall to all the Ben Folds Five albums, and his solo stuff is equally good. Zak and Sara, Fred Jones Part Two, Carrying Kathy and Not the Same are highlights, but that’s a bit like saying The Himalayas are a tad taller than the Rockies. It’s all good…better still, there’s a rumour on the street that the Five may be together again.

 

11. Sir Henry at Rawlinson End

Vivian Stanshall

So it’s mostly spoken and only occasionally punctuated by admittedly eccentric music, but this is one that would make it into any putative top fifteen of my favourite records ever. Stanshall takes the English language and effortlessly makes it do his bidding. If you are not reduced to quivering piles of helpless, mirth-ridden jelly by this then I will eat my extensive collection of deerstalkers.

 

12. Sheet Music

10cc

In my humble opinion this album was the best thing they ever produced. Firing on all cylinders, ideas sprouting like Medusan heads from every conceivable angle, the ability to weave together musical genres and make them seem as if they had always belonged together – they have all of that, plus an uncanny prescience: Old Wild Men in which they wonder what will happen to old rock stars when a pensionable age is reached, and Oh Effendi, a gleeful nod to Middle Eastern/American relations, containing the priceless line: “Your guerillas are urban and there’s bourbon on your turban and the sun shines out of your ass”.

 

13. Joe’s Garage Acts I, II and III

Frank Zappa

Wickedly subversive; way, way ahead of his time; completely bonkers. I know Frank’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and this may not be every Zappa fan’s favourite album, but it is an unholy mish-mash that still somehow holds together and rewards every listen in new ways. Hear where Flight of the Conchords and Godley and Creme (consciously or otherwise) got inspiration for some of their stuff.

 

14. Great Day For Gravity

King L

This was criminally overlooked when it came out. Tom Driver and The Dumbest Story Ever Told would grace any gritty guitar rock album, and the fact is they’re not the only tracks that would; it’s a fine album. When you discover that the driving force behind it is Gary Clark (of Danny Wilson fame) everything suddenly becomes clear. Go find it and enjoy yourselves!

 

15. Selling England By The Pound

Genesis

It was only a question of which album. I thought long and hard and in the end I stuck a pin in my iPod. Classic Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and if you don’t like it already nothing I can say here will probably change your mind. Stand out tracks: Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, Cinema Show and The Battle of Epping Forest. Glorious!

Discovering Christmas In England

 

Perhaps it is a sign of national egocentricity, but we English have always rather felt that Christmas belonged to us; sprang fully formed from our cultural loins, as it were.

We listen politely when informed that it was Prince Albert, a German, who introduced the Christmas Tree into our hitherto needle-free parlours; we affect an air of courteous interest when told that Santa Claus is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, who – far from being a jolly old English gent with a merry twinkle, an addiction to soot and a penchant for mince pies and sherry – was, in fact, a Greek, born in what is now Southern Turkey; we smile patiently when learned historians, and other buffoons, challenge our conviction that we spread the Great English Christmas in a globe-encircling diaspora of Victoriana; we experience mild cognitive dissonance when the differing customs and traditions of other countries are shown to us via the wonders of television. “How could they have got it so wrong?” we cry, as one. “Did we not teach them all we knew? Did we not make the concept of wassailing clear?”

Lacking a scapegoat, our natural inclination is to blame the Americans. We understand that, as a nation, they have never truly forgiven us for casting them off like an unwanted slipper in 1776, leaving them to fend for themselves in the big, bad world, without the indulgent patronage of their mother country (you’re doing very well, by the way, America. We knew it was the right thing to do, even if you wouldn’t thank us for it).

Like spoiled children they, not unnaturally, stamped their collective foot and, at a stroke, redesigned the English language without the letter “u”, threw all their tea into Boston harbour and, thereafter, have never truly rediscovered the art of the nice cuppa. Worst of all, knowing it would be a dagger to the heart of the English psyche, they renamed Santa Claus “Chris Cringle” and invented the Grinch as his arch-enemy, as if Christmas were some sort of Marvel comic book escapade. They even cornered the market in heart-warming Christmas movies, and – just to rub salt into the wound – borrowed little Dickie Attenborough for the purpose.

Well I, for one, cannot let the Americanisation of Christmas go unchallenged. I am English and proud of it; I even have all my own teeth, unlike the majority of my compatriots (most of them have thrown their teeth away; I keep mine in a box under the bed). It is high time the world was reminded exactly where Christmas began – and for those of you thinking “stable”, “somewhere in the Middle East”, “wise men” and “Angel of the Lord”, please forgive me if I harrumph. Christmas, as we know it, began in the towns and villages of Olde England, whence germinated all that is best about the festive period, namely the quaint customs and obscure folk traditions.

There are many to consider: from the West Country traditions of weaseling and knock-bunting, to Norfolk’s ringing in the ranunculus and Kent’s, outlawed, kissing the peacock. Alas, I can detail but a few; nevertheless, as we embark upon a whistle-stop tour of England at Christmas, I hope you will revel in the quaintness of it all.

We begin in the industrial town of Basingstoke, Hampshire – officially the Pickle Centre of England –where pickle mines still operate much as they did in Victorian times and the strong tang of vinegar permeates the early evening air. It is Christmas Eve: we pass throngs of tired Pickle Miners, just knocked-off from a hard week’s pickle-grubbing, looking forward to a day’s rest from labour, plodding home in their cloth caps, hobnail boots, and preternaturally pungent horsehair shirts. (Although this is essentially a tour of the imagination, you might prefer to hold your nose before we continue.)

A Basingstoke pickleminer

As the Pickle Miners doff their caps, tugging at their forelocks in gratifying obeisance, it’s sad to think that this is one of the five riskiest jobs in the world: one slip, or a misplaced footfall, and you’re pickled. In the old days, the cry would go up “There’s trouble at t’Dill!”: the whole town would rush to the mine entrance and, in grim helplessness, wait for news. Those were harsh times, but, looking on the bright side, the dead never needed much embalming, which saved greatly on funeral costs.

 

 

 

At Christmas, these stout yeomen still perform the medieval ceremony of Calling In The Pickle. The town Picklemeister reads aloud “Ode On A Pickle”, an opus variously attributed to Shakespeare and Marlowe, but, in reality, the work of Gervase Merryweather (1701-1743), one of England’s lesser poets. The poem has three hundred and two verses, of which, mercifully, I shall quote only one:

O pickle fair, thou hast the Ages’ slothful creep endured,

Come from within thy malted tomb, that thou might be procured!

Come grace our laden tables with thy acid succulence

And let us charge thy brethren out at more than half a pence.

At the poem’s conclusion, a mass pickle fight ensues. Amid the scrum, the search is on for the Grand Gherkin – a year’s supply of pickled parsnips from the High Sheriff of Hampshire’s personal pickled parsnip panoply awaits the lucky retriever of this coveted trophy.

As night falls upon Basingstoke’s merry scrimmagers, we travel south-westward, over the lantern-lit towns and villages of Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon and by-passing Wales completely (Wales is not English, in much the same way that Canada is not American). The land becomes steadily more rugged, until the wild Atlantic draws ever closer, its ocean tang assaulting our nostrils and its salt-spray spattering our faces. We have come to Cornwall, the most southerly tip of England, to seek out the centuries-old custom known as Fleeing The Pudding.

Ahead is the tiny hilltop village of Trepanning, whose stone stairwell leads down, in a dizzying spiral, to a small harbour. Each Boxing Day, villagers gather to set fire to a gigantic Christmas Pudding. It has a circumference of 30 feet, is smothered in 400 gallons of smuggled French brandy, contains 37 tons of suet and several sacks of dried fruit, not to mention the occasional, unfortunate, household pet. A group of ne’er-do-wells from the local jail is given a short head start on the stairway, then the blazing brandy ball is freed and the race between man and pudding begins in earnest. The lucky few who make the harbour in one piece count their blessings as they bob in icy water, largely ignored by rescue services. The less fortunate are no longer a burden to the taxpayer. The Cornish are a hard, but fair, race and figures for re-offending are generally low.

 

Ne'er-do-wells fleeing the pudding: Boxing Day 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Northward now – ignoring Wales again – and we turn right over Mold (a place, not a blight). There we happen upon the Cheshire village of Middlewitch Magna, home of the festive parlour game Hide and Hide, during which many children hide, and nobody at all bothers to look for them. The origins of Hide and Hide are obscured by Time’s dusty net curtains, but records show that, in 1756, by way of testament to the game’s enduring popularity, the ninth Duke of Chester made a gift to the village: a statue dedicated to the Unknown Hider, which is carefully concealed in an undisclosed location, well away from prying eyes.

A dog walker unwittingly passes the statue of the Unknown Hider

A Victorian variant, Blindfold Hide and Hide in the Dark, was outlawed twenty years ago as potentially “too exciting”. It is rumoured that, if you knew where to look, there is still a thriving sub-culture, but, if any such hiders do exist, they are supremely gifted and will probably remain undiscovered for at least three times their natural lifespans.

And there  – all too soon – I am afraid we must leave our peregrination through Old English customs. Thank you for allowing me to be your unofficial guide. May I wish you all an extremely Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

To conclude on a charitable note, don’t forget that for just £5 (that’s about US$30) you can adopt a Pickle Miner and feed him and his entire family for a year. You can find out more at www.pickle-aid.org/donations.

Sunbed Economics

Of whatever else it might be accused, Tenerife could never be blamed for keeping poets awake at night in thrall to its beauty. South Tenerife in particular is best described as “brutal”: miles and miles of scrub-littered rock festooned with scrap metal and cement, some of it fashioned into reasonably eye-pleasing monuments to tourism.

These oases of sympathetic architecture are the exception rather than the rule, and, since the global recession, many such developments have been halted in their tracks: half-completed ~ possibly now never-to-be-completed ~ and blighting still further the unfortunate landscape.

Towering over proceedings is Mount Teide, an extinct volcano, the tallest mountain in Spain and arguably the only true buena vista in the south of the island, save for some occasional blazing sunsets and the ever-dependable sea, raging incessantly against the rocky shores. There are hardly even any natural beaches to offer solace to the hopeful holidaymaker. Instead there are man-made bastardisations, serving only to emphasise that which is missing in the first place.

The travel brochures, never less than optimistic, do their best to paper over these not insignificant cracks in Tenerife’s appearance, but those holidaymakers who return regularly ~ and there are many, including me and my wife ~ do so knowing full well that the glib marketing is mostly fatuous bollocks, dreamed up in the heads of people paid to tell us what we want to hear, rather than the truth.

What, then, is the true appeal of Tenerife? The year-round sunshine undoubtedly helps; the short flight time is good news; the friendliness of the locals is another big plus. However, I suspect a big factor in Tenerife’s success is that it is, to echo the Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy, mostly harmless. It is Africa without the diseases and the alarming social divide; it is Spain without the machismo; it is just about foreign enough to say you travelled, without any need to adjust your mindset. In short, it is unchallenging in just the kind of way that most holidaymakers prefer. You remember how, as kids, you used to camp out in a tent in the back garden and imagine you were lost in the wilderness, knowing full well that mum and dad were really just yards away? Well, Tenerife is like that, only more so.

What I like about holidaying here is less the scenery, more the fascinating interplay of people from different nations suddenly thrust together into a melting pot. For any people-watcher, an all-inclusive hotel is like a series of Big Brother, only quite  interesting, and mostly devoid of Geordie talk-overs.

Any economist prepared to stay a week or two in a Tenerifan all-inclusive would immediately observe that the classic law of supply and demand is brought into sharp focus: if there aren’t enough sunbeds to go round, there ensues a frantic scramble to be the first to the sunbeds in the morning; if there are enough sunbeds to go round, there ensues a frantic scramble to get the best-placed ones in the morning; if there is limited dining space, even though there may be an entire evening in which to take your meal, crowds for the restaurant will jockey for an advantageous position at opening time (with no hint of anything resembling a formal queue).

In short, the all-inclusive brings out the territorial worst in people. It also offers an intriguing glimpse of communism in action. By definition, everyone in an all-inclusive is equal. We wear our wristbands of equality with pride. In principle my right to the best-placed sunbed is no more, nor less, than yours. But where there is limited supply, there must also be haves and have nots.

In an effort to clamp down on antisocial competitive behaviour many hotels lay out an assortment of rules. One such is typified by our current hotel. It is, we are told by numerous signs, strictly forbidden to reserve sunbeds before eight in the morning. Any objects used for reservation purposes before that time will be removed. Very clear, and quite right too, I hear you say. The trouble is, the rule is ignored en masse. I have no idea at what time people actually get up to reserve their beds, but by a quarter to eight they are all festooned with towels, books and underpants, none of which has been removed, as threatened, by the hotel’s Pool Enforcement Agency (or the Towel Guy, as he is better known). Thus, those who suffer most, the least equal by default, are the poor saps who decided to play fair and observe the rules. Understandably, they are disinclined to continue to do so, and the whole thing goes to Hell in a handcart. This, it seems to me, is the EU in microcosm: earnest rules aplenty, designed to make things better for all, disobeyed by the majority to the complete disadvantage of the rule-abiding minority. Result: bitterness, recrimination and a general inability to get the Greeks to pay any tax. 

So sunbeds are an eternal source of fascination for the dedicated observer of human behaviour. I was once told by a guy we met in Greece that he had ended up in jail alongside a German and the hotel manager after a row over sunbeds had gotten out of control the previous year in Spain.

 Apparently the affair had started off in the usual way. A gradually escalating war of earlier and earlier alarm calls, the loser having to suffer a whole day of smug satisfaction from the winner before getting the chance to reverse roles the next day. One particular morning, the English guy goes out about four o’clock and puts his towel on the sunbed, before retiring to bed with a warm glow of satisfaction. But what’s this? In the morning he finds his German pal smugly adorning the top of the sunbed, and his own towel wetly adorning the bottom of the swimming pool. The shit, as they say, hit the fan. Or, more accurately, he hit the German, after a brief war of words had failed to get the desired confession to crimes against towel-kind. The fight was hardly under way before the hotel manager stepped into the fray and got himself hurt too as both protagonists turned on him. The Spanish Police were called and all three spent a night in the local chokey reflecting on the error of their ways.

I suspect that a mischievous Spanish pool cleaner probably laughed his cojones off over that jape. Three victims in one go, including his boss, a Brit and a German. Who could ask for anything more?

Sunbeds, then, are a serious business. At least five major wars started off as disputes over sunbeds. Fact.

One particularly interesting form of behaviour is what I call “Sunbed Chess”. During the course of an average day, sunbathers, heliocentric like sunflowers, tend to follow the sun around, and the shadows of sun-umbrellas become bones of contention. It may be that you didn’t get the good umbrella, but you can always smuggle your sunbed into its penumbra, particularly if you make your move whilst the umbrella’s lease-holders are away at lunch or in the pool. A good Sunbed Chess player will move his own sunbed in a series of almost imperceptible moves that eventually brings him into pretty close proximity with the shadow. One more move and the takeover is complete.

Alert sunbathers will note these moves and act to block further encroachment by pushing their own sunbed, or a chair or table, further into the shadow, a move that I call “The Barrier Defence”.

Of course, those with a longer-term view recognise that it’s not where the shadow is now that you need to worry about, but rather where it will be in, say, three hours time. The Barrier Defence is of no use in this example, because your opponent is already ensconced, just waiting for the sun to do its inevitable thing. This tactic is known as “En passant”. When it happens to you, the only available defence is to lower the umbrella, a kind of lose/lose option, but nevertheless offering a degree of grim satisfaction, as the encroacher can hardly complain. It’s your umbrella. You control its destiny, at least for today.

Incidentally, all of the above moves are made without the slightest attempt at any form of verbal communication. Hard stares are permitted, but it is extremely bad etiquette to say “Bog off and find your own umbrella, you bastard,” however tempting that may be.

So there you have it. Tenerife is a petrie dish of eccentric tourist behaviour. For this I can forgive it its less than beautiful scenery and occasional eyesore buildings. Chuck in free beer, food and days brimful of sunshine and, in my book, you have a recipe for holiday success.

Pschiiiiiiiiit!

My last blog bitched about two passengers who blighted our recent flight to Tenerife. I hate to be predictable, but it wasn’t the first time. Oh dear me no. Not by a long chalk. Let us see what happened on a flight to Mexico some fifteen years ago…

Flying is a curiously numbing experience for something that is, in principle, so extravagantly dangerous:

“Ladies and gentlemen we are going to take you up to a height of 35,000 feet, from where, believe me, we will make a very large hole in the ground should we lose forward momentum for any reason. These reasons may include any, or all, of the following: bird impact, pilot error, terrorist attack, catastrophic engine failure, inversions in thermal layers, and  – for you fans of “The Twilight Zone” – that gremlin sitting on the starboard wing.

“In the event of an impending air-ground interface, could I please remind you that smoking is not permitted until the Captain has illuminated the “It Doesn’t Matter You’re Dead Now” signs, and the aircraft is safely buried forty feet underground.

“Thank you for choosing to fly with us today, and, if there is anything we can do to rid you of the fear that, at this height, cosmic radiation is radically rearranging your DNA, please don’t hesitate to consult a member our very inexperienced cabin crew.”

People react in differing ways to package-style flying: some hunker down with a book and blank everything out; business types extract unfeasibly expensive laptops and pretend to understand the pie charts; I play electronic chess on a machine with an annoying bleep and a pawn that went missing somewhere over the Bahamas; my wife falls instantly asleep the moment she fastens her seatbelt and thereafter stirs only in the event of the drinks trolley, Duty Free services, and some of the more major emergencies.

Life as a passenger should be sweet, but – as we saw in the last blog – it’s not uncommon for fellow travellers to be unduly problematic. Were you to look for a couple to epitomise the problem, then I would have to point you in the general direction of Mr and Mrs Hermesetas, on our flight to Mexico in the Spring of 1997.

We saw them first in the Departure Lounge at Gatwick. You could hardly miss them: they appeared to have dressed by a process of random selection.

She was a prematurely greying forty-something, wearing a floppy white sun hat, a bright azure football shirt, grey-and-rose-hued flowery slacks – just that bit too tight for her ample hips  – and a purplish wrap, worn poncho-style. Setting off the whole ensemble was a pair of blindingly white trainers large enough that they might easily once have served duty as floats on a sea-plane 

Her husband – a florid-faced, Grecian-2000-haired, troll of a man – was also wearing a football shirt, one of those garish day-glo jobbies, in such a particularly vile shade of lime green that it could induce migraines, so dizzying was the interference effect that assaulted your eyes as it rippled about his considerable bulk. I imagine the crowd that  cheers these colours is forced to wear protective goggles by the Health and Safety Executive. Emblazoned across the back of this fashion atrocity was the name of the footballer, a  Mexican centre-forward whose name I can’t clearly recall  – something like “Hernississos”. On the spot we christened him Mister Hermesetas. Since colour clashing was the order of the day, he had chosen to inhabit a rather fetching pair of red chinos, plus white trainers even larger than those his wife was clumping around in, with the additional bonus of little red lights that blinked on and off as he walked. He was hatless, but I have no doubt something wide-brimmed with dangly corks was in his luggage.

 The couple we were holidaying with saw them first and instantly fell about, clutching their sides and stage-whispering “Don’t look now, but…”

So of course we had to look, and, at that moment, we knew two incontrovertible facts: one, that these two were going to be trouble; two, that they would be sitting next to us on the plane.

 I hate to be right all the time.

 The next thing that struck me about Mister Hermesetas, once I had adjusted to the dress sense, was that he seemed able to talk without pausing for breath for what seemed like an eternity. How he accomplished this without keeling over from lack of oxygen I don’t know. Perhaps he sucked up air through his arse: if so, the Gods had also seen fit to give him the ability to talk out of it most of the time by way of compensation. His was not so much a conversational style, more a stream-of-consciousness rant, encompassing as many tributaries and backwaters of drivel as he could. Within two minutes of sitting in the seats directly in front of us (of course), he had turned, eyes a-boggle, and informed me – my wife was feigning sleep – that the Mexicans loved him, he was going back there for the second time after last year and had arranged this directly with the hotel, but not the same hotel as last year, because strangely they were fully booked this year, which was odd because they hadn’t been full this same time last year, and he was going to have a word with the Hotel Manager who was a personal friend and he was taking a suitcase full of biros because the Mexicans were a poor people and their children needed writing materials and you can’t get biros in Mexico, so he was going to go down to the local school and talk to the children and give them biros, because the Mexican children loved him last year only he didn’t have biros then, so now that he had biros he was going back, which would make the poor Mexican children very happy and, so, he would be happy too, and there was so much more he could have brought if only he had the room in his suitcases, but erasers were probably out of the question, so biros would have to do, and, anyway, the Mexicans might be poor but they are a proud people and they wouldn’t like to be treated like charity cases, and they loved his wife too but it was very strange that the hotel they stayed in last year was so full, because he knew they were looking forward to seeing him again, particularly as he was on a mercy mission for the poor children…

By this point in the proceedings my mind had gone into standby mode. I couldn’t be arsed to inform him that he had probably badly underestimated the availability of biros in Mexico, because, to be brutally honest, I didn’t want to get into conversation with him at all. Like so many Englishmen, I have an immense talent for looking politely interested whilst actually not listening at all. Of all the talents of various nationalities around the world, it is this that probably gets least press, because we are so darned good at it: “You English are so polite…”, yeah, right; you think I’m listening, but I’m just nodding and making little grunts of affirmation, hehehe, I wonder what I’ll have for dinner later…

Mister Hermesetas was still gabbling away, something about Portugal now, so I’d obviously missed an important link, but I tuned out again anyway, because I was pretty sure it would come round again at some point in the fourteen hour flight to Puerto Vallarta.

Fourteen hours. Shit.

Our friends, in the seats behind us, were doubled up at my misfortune. I could hear them digging each other in the ribs, saying “biro” in daft voices, and speculating whether the Hermesetas would be in our hotel, perhaps in the room next to ours. This prospect was so appalling that for a while I stopped being a passive receiver of information and actually instigated a direction for the conversation: namely, what hotel would the Hermesetas be gracing with their biro largesse?

The question seemed to throw Mr H. I’m not sure he’d ever had anyone take part in an actual dialogue before that moment, so his brain was probably dealing with a whole new sensation. Like a slow motion set piece in a John Woo movie, the world seemed to hold its breath as I awaited his answer. It was the longest five seconds of my life. Mercifully, he told me he was staying at the other end of town, and I murmured a tiny prayer of gratitude to the Big Fella upstairs, just in the extremely unlikely event that He actually exists. You can’t be too careful with your own afterlife, particularly with the possibility of having to share it with people like the Hermesetas.

As our plane negotiated its tortuous path to the runway I had to put up with the nonsense, but after take-off  Mr Hermesetas turned his back on me and got down to more important business. From the stowage locker he produced a large cool-box, which he had somehow managed to smuggle on board without any awkward questions. From this he extracted, with the elaborate flourish of a conjuror with a top hat, can after can of beer and cider, all of different makes. There was a can of Diamond White, another of Scrumpy Jack, a Stella Artois, a Labatts Ice, a Worthington Best Bitter, a John Smiths Yorkshire Bitter, a Guinness, a Mackesons, a XXXX, a Carling Premier, and so on, seemingly endlessly. I wasn’t sure if I should applaud when, at last, the cool-box was empty. Clearly Mr H valued variety; equally clearly he was preparing for a plane party of some magnitude. What I find strange to this day is that, as a frequent flyer, he must have known he would never be allowed to drink these whilst on board, yet he lined them up on his food tray like some sort of homage to alcohol. It was the very epitome of conspicuous consumption, with his very own private bar, and, thus provisioned,  he hunkered down for some serious guzzling.

 The very first “pssschiiiiiiiit” as he opened the Labatts drew the ferret-like attention of a passing air stewardess. She paused for a long moment, obviously unable to believe what her eyes were telling her, then she came out fighting: “I’m sorry sir. You may only consume alcohol that you have purchased on board the plane. I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you to put those cans away.”

Mister Hermesetas received these tidings with the blank expression of a schoolboy grappling with a particularly difficult bit of algebra. You could see the cogs whirring away inside, but obviously it did not compute. He took a slow and deliberate swig of lager, just to aid contemplation, his shark eyes suddenly glazed with the effort of all that thinking.

“Sir, I’ve told you that you can’t drink that here. Please put it down.”

A vein in his forehead bulged alarmingly as he slowly repeated “Can’t…drink…”. It was as though the words had somehow been translated into Mandarin Chinese in his scrambled egg mind. “Can’t…not allowed…no drink?”

Behind the stewardess’s bright toothsome smile you could see the words “We’ve got a right one here” forming an orderly queue in her front brain: “That’s right sir. You’ll have to put the beer away.” To help reinforce the basic concept she gently removed the can of Labatts from his palsied grasp. I don’t think I have ever seen a man look so bereft as Mister H did at that moment. I’m sure he’d have willingly lost a kidney rather than part with that drink, but the stewardess was relentless and had begun packing the rest of the cans back in the cool-box. For a horrible moment I thought she might even make him sick up what he’d already consumed.

When the box was stowed safely back in the locker, the stewardess decided to mend fences by enquiring whether she could now fetch Mr H a drink from the bar. He perked up immediately. “Do you sell champagne?” he asked.

“Yes sir. We have Lanson in quarter bottles at six pounds fifty a bottle.”

“I’ll have six bottles.”

There was a momentary pause, as she assimilated the order.

“Sorry, sir. Six?”

“Or twelve. Make it twelve.”

You could see that the poor girl’s customer services training had never envisioned this scenario. Give her a gang of armed terrorists led by Alan Rickman and she’d be fine, but Mister Hermesetas was a whole new world of trouble. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly a few times before she gave up and went off in search of twelve quarter bottles of champagne. After much rummaging and a few pleas to her colleagues she eventually returned to inform Mr H that she could only find ten, would that do?

Would that do? He was as happy as a lime-green-football-shirted idiot in pig shit, and shortly after his affirmation he set about quaffing the first of the bottles by way of proof. It barely touched the sides: the effervescent fruits of Epernay – tended lovingly in dark caves for years, turned a quarter turn every day by a man whose only job was to turn champagne bottles a quarter turn while the miracle of fermentation worked its ancient magic – flowed into his capacious gut and were gone forever. Mr H. smacked his lips appreciatively, belched loudly for good measure, and set about demolishing bottle number two with the same unswerving dedication. At no time, as he made his way through all ten bottles in about fifteen minutes, did he so much as enquire of his wife whether she might like some. Mrs H was not a conversationalist and seemed content enough with her enormous Thermos flask of coffee, which we later realised was spiked with copious amounts of brandy. She passed out somewhere in mid-Atlantic and did not bother the scorers for the remainder of the flight.

Having sorted out Mister Hermesetas the stewardess was obviously keen to return to dealing with normal people for a change, so she smiled brightly at me, and I smiled a sympathetic smile back, two human minds meeting and sharing a moment of embarrassed empathy for her recent plight.

 ”Can I get you drinks from the bar, sir?”

 ”Yes. Twelve bottles of champagne please.”

 Her face was a picture until she realised I was only kidding.

 I had to bear the brunt of Mister Hermesetas’ special brand of companionship for most of those long, long hours that it took to reach Mexico. I was hoping against hope that he might eventually follow the selfless example of his wife and lapse into an alcoholic coma, but his capacity for the stuff seemed boundless. I can’t honestly say that he seemed drunk at any stage, but since drinking turns most of us into witless morons I guess he was just lucky to have a head start.

 In rude desperation I tried playing chess on the annoying bleepy chess set with the missing pawn. Mister H eyed this thoughtfully for a moment, then said: “I’ll let you play in peace. I now how annoying it is when someone interrupts you while you’re playing chess.”

Result!

He turned away for perhaps a nanosecond before getting back in my face with a stream of waffle about playing chess against Gary Kasparov in a hotel in Brighton. I gave up the unequal struggle and went back to just nodding politely, as daydreams about chainsaw massacres – pleasant reveries, in which his decapitated, be-Grecian-2000ed head was booted around a football pitch by a bunch of dayglo-green clad footballers – vied with the equally appealing scenario of drowning him in a swimming pool full of various brands of lager. On second thoughts, he’d have probably enjoyed that last one.

Somehow I managed to make it to Puerto Vallarta without giving in to the small voice in my head telling me that the world would erect a statue in my honour in every park if I just throttled him where he sat.

We were lucky enough, for the most part, not to meet the Hermesetas whilst out and about in Mexico. He was obviously around, because all the poor Mexican children were running around poking each other’s eyes out with brand new biros, but we had to make do with just reminiscing about him. My Mister Hermesetas impression was really quite good, and it was towards the end of the holiday, in a local Supermercado, that I was favouring my wife with yet another rendition of the biro speech when suddenly the man himself leapt out from behind a shelf of Mexican condiments shouting “Angelica!”

My wife gave a little scream and jumped backwards, but we could see that he had a packet of green angelica in his hand, so he wasn’t about to attack, merely being helpful in naming local produce for us.

On the plane home he was seated two rows ahead of us, and had brought sandwiches in his cool-box to share with all his pals on the plane (the beer having been consumed within the first half hour in Mexico I would imagine). He dipped into the box and dragged out ominous chunks of bread filled with unknown delights – egg, certainly, judging by the smell, and angelica, possibly, judging by the fact he was an idiot – which he thrust into the deeply ungrateful hands of all those around him. Quite why he took it upon himself to do this when the plane had a perfectly good trolley of tasteless airline fodder of its own is anyone’s guess, but having distributed biros to the needy youth of Mexico he had probably caught that manic missionary zeal that makes one so distrustful of polite young Americans from Salt Lake City.

By the time we stopped over at Sanford Airport he had heartily pissed off everyone around him, and was now definitely showing signs of being worse for wear, spluttering little eggy gobbets of saliva over his near neighbours as he wobbled on about whatever was on his mind. He wanted to get off the plane, a sentiment we all heartily endorsed. We would have loved him to get off the plane too, preferably at 35,000 feet without the aid of a parachute. The stewardess was implacable, however, and would not let him off. We had a whip round to see if we could bribe her, but to no avail.

My last memory of the Hermesetas was of passing their vacated seats as we disembarked, to see that he had chomped his way through about three sackfuls of pistachio nuts. Along with the detritus from several thousand sandwiches, and – yes! – a couple of empty cans of cider and beer, the empty shells were heaped about a foot high on the floor where he had been. It was a fitting memorial to a complete nutter, I thought.

You can’t buy symbolism like that.