tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22178660076210801862024-03-14T16:09:57.105+00:00A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGETOM MANDALL'S WEEKLY COLUMN FROM MARPLE BRIDGE - EVERY FRIDAYUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-29974771917447522072010-11-19T07:00:00.001+00:002010-11-19T07:00:00.729+00:00Enough saidTom's run out of puff.<br />
<br />
Thank you for joining me these last 40 weeks or so.<br />
<br />
From Mrs M and me<br />
<br />
Goodbye!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-51144005408733779122010-11-12T07:00:00.038+00:002010-11-12T07:00:18.502+00:00Down Time<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ejAqQdfawtwDL6SXxBICXQkIRVzNi3h_H2XkNBCq7m_4ValXkzwAgFJt3yzH8T_O1Rkj9z66XfGVEIlHaDuasqSwY6t2t19qnKay5sxSND9t4shK6if0BwsrpgWaJ35Mjg7ki-IFEc8/s1600/BangersandMash+-+Andy+Bullock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ejAqQdfawtwDL6SXxBICXQkIRVzNi3h_H2XkNBCq7m_4ValXkzwAgFJt3yzH8T_O1Rkj9z66XfGVEIlHaDuasqSwY6t2t19qnKay5sxSND9t4shK6if0BwsrpgWaJ35Mjg7ki-IFEc8/s1600/BangersandMash+-+Andy+Bullock.jpg" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: center;">Welcome home</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.torontolife.com/daily/daily-dish/culinary-curiosities/2010/06/21/canada-escapes-the-haters-list-of-the-worlds-worst-food/"><i>Andy Bullock</i></a></div><br />
Among the many emails awaiting await me on my return to the Bridge, let me share a couple with you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Hi Tom. Just heard about 'change of plan': they don’t want me to start fieldwork on Mon as I'd hoped. Pity...I'm exhausted here!! Baby not sleeping, and boys having terrible troubles with homework.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I offered heartfelt sympathy. I am having terrible troubles working the grill, after two months of the international cuisine provided by Oasis Camps by the Nile. I managed not to burn M3’s potato waffles this morning, which is more than I can say for what the grill rack did to my foot. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Tom. Did I tell you about the tourist who breezed into town this week? He announced that he hadn't actually read your report yet but that he didn't agree with it. Then he looked at his watch, announced he had to get to the airport, and breezed out again. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In this context, I need to explain that a “tourist” is a consultant, official or politician who stays for an even shorter time in the field than a freelancer. In the old days, tourists conducted a “windshield survey” from the four-wheel drive, or even indulged in "over-fly research". Nowadays, the smart virtual tourist needs a memory stick at most. The tourist who actually lands and exchanges words with the local earthlings, or even with a freelancer, is to be applauded. And properly rewarded with a decent <i>per diem</i>.<br />
<br />
I’m sure he’s quite right about my report. The trouble with us freelancers, you see, is <i>methodology</i>. We just don’t get it.There is a panoply of -ologies out there, of which the tourist is master. But with a freelancer, you're lucky to get any method at all, just a lifetime of experience of getting it wrong.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
"What shall I do about supper?"asks my fragrant lady.<br />
<br />
Perhaps either of my readers may be able to enlighten me on the methodology of rhetoric employed by Mrs M when I return from my travels. She sits bolt-upright several minutes before the alarm is due to go off, starts reciting lists, and continues this process while executing a neat sub-routine that involves selecting some of the animals for waking, and others for shooing out of the back door. Before I have had a chance to turn on Radio 4, she has delivered to my bedside tea from the blessed Teasmaid, may its name be praised.<br />
<br />
She returns to bed long enough to take a sip from her own. "It'll have to be bangers and mash, I suppose... I'd better go and see if M3's shoes are dry." I hear her tripping daintily downstairs for the second or third time.<br />
<br />
<i>Friday Tex-Mex night at Oasis. The home-made </i><i>nacho chips are much praised. And there's guacamole and sour cream to go with the fresh tortillas if you get to the trough before the Russians.</i><br />
<br />
I manage to be-stir myself to take a large slurp from my cooling tea, before collapsing again onto the pocket-sprung mattress. May the name of John Lewis live for ever. My mind is completely blank about what I might offer instead of bangers and mash.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rEOEVm6S_6VdVrVkQJfLL47D33fteP06prkmgJHZ27cSvUXc44wR53phLzctld4u_8_Tah7vlJRQDG4RUkJksr8o5OBWH1JdZ-eg9CAnQkKt1SxVWBUTANgM22Ux6Kj-RmxKtFQcZXU/s1600/vegLasagne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rEOEVm6S_6VdVrVkQJfLL47D33fteP06prkmgJHZ27cSvUXc44wR53phLzctld4u_8_Tah7vlJRQDG4RUkJksr8o5OBWH1JdZ-eg9CAnQkKt1SxVWBUTANgM22Ux6Kj-RmxKtFQcZXU/s200/vegLasagne.jpg" width="200" /></a>The L word may have risen momentarily to consciousness before I banished it.<br />
<br />
There is just so much not to do during down-time. Currently I am enjoying one of these rare but happy occasions when there is another outing booked in the weeks ahead. This means that I can bask in the prospect of another cheque.<br />
<br />
For a start, there is the condition of the garden. The Mandallay estate normally rivals the Augean Stables on my return, despite Mrs M's best efforts. (Ever since a particularly tricky moment when the children were as small as the puppy, she has sent me a series of bulletins about the achievements of various animals, starting the week before my return.) Also, the boys' lacrosse sticks need attention, and the boiler is bleating. The hoover's hose leaks, and the outside lights are, always, always, on the blink.<br />
<br />
Yes, it all takes a lot of time not to attend to. Instead, I shall spend most of the morning, I am sure, trawling the internet, and consdisering the options for updating my lance. It's so twelfth century. They do them in alloys and even carbon fibre nowadays, collapsible, self-cleaning, even with a guidance GPS.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rEOEVm6S_6VdVrVkQJfLL47D33fteP06prkmgJHZ27cSvUXc44wR53phLzctld4u_8_Tah7vlJRQDG4RUkJksr8o5OBWH1JdZ-eg9CAnQkKt1SxVWBUTANgM22Ux6Kj-RmxKtFQcZXU/s1600/vegLasagne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rEOEVm6S_6VdVrVkQJfLL47D33fteP06prkmgJHZ27cSvUXc44wR53phLzctld4u_8_Tah7vlJRQDG4RUkJksr8o5OBWH1JdZ-eg9CAnQkKt1SxVWBUTANgM22Ux6Kj-RmxKtFQcZXU/s320/vegLasagne.jpg" width="320" /></a>"Lasagne," I capitulate.<br />
<br />
<br />
"I expect they'll be going out, but that would be perfect tomorrow."<br />
<br />
I'll have to think of something else. <br />
<br />
<i>Saturday at Oasis. Barbecue night. The roasted goat is surprisingly good.</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-76323718751272716152010-11-05T07:00:00.021+00:002010-11-08T08:59:07.744+00:00Six Hours in Java<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UYTXpl9_d4wEcOAlhRNJo1uZgXaeR9kMTuyiE-V_Xp7MIsfelgY9L60V1C_3H8qzrTkEa6xXTT8jWSs4nqBkpRzlViL13XRWrOC56YMyE2TzFCY3iz0mpnDYQyYJXPp3CEMtDGuzkMQ/s1600/ah2bahn-salvador-dali-clock-9-14-05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UYTXpl9_d4wEcOAlhRNJo1uZgXaeR9kMTuyiE-V_Xp7MIsfelgY9L60V1C_3H8qzrTkEa6xXTT8jWSs4nqBkpRzlViL13XRWrOC56YMyE2TzFCY3iz0mpnDYQyYJXPp3CEMtDGuzkMQ/s320/ah2bahn-salvador-dali-clock-9-14-05.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Wrong time, wrong place: <i>Clock</i>, Salvador Dali 1945 </div><br />
Nairobi Airport. Again.<br />
<br />
The plastic lions at Jomo Kenyatta International are very lazy this afternoon. I’m spending a long layover in the Java Bar and Lounge. I’ve legged up and down the departure lounge enough times to know that the Java is the only place with padded seats to sit out six hours of waiting.<br />
<br />
There seems to be some failure of Kenyan self-belief here. When you grow your own coffee, why name your coffee bar after your competitor on another continent? Hakuna matata, as it says on a hundred t-shirts.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I find the only empty booth. It’s by the window. Perhaps the view will inspire my weekly column. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s nice and quiet in here. The main noise is the air-conditioning, which is blowing out hot air, happily displaying graphics of blue ice crystals and a temperature of 32 degrees Celsius. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There's not much happening on the apron, so this freelance lowers his mental visor and looks inward for inspiration. He sleeps, of course, instead. An hour passes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
When I wake, the aircon has made my head even fuller of hot air than usual. I peep through my visor at my fellow layabouts. Six hour layovers in Nairobi are the norm for inter-continental travellers. Not many of them look like East Africans to me, but I couldn’t be sure. I have a growing retinue of saw-bones, blacksmiths and head-shrinkers to keep me in the saddle nowadays. When one of them said I didn’t appear to be of Kenyan stock, I thought that was fairly obvious. It turned out he was referring not to skin, teeth or hair, but to my rump which, while perfect in form and proportion,was never going to break the world record at 100 metres. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Apart from <i>other </i>people's physical appearances, the main entertainment is what they are reading. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I took the lady in the straight hair and smock for an American, because she was chewing gum with her mouth open. If I knew about these things, I would say she was trying to look like Rachel out of <i>Friends, </i>but lacked the wherewithal of someone with the royalties off a 20 disc boxed set. (It has been suggested to me that M1's preference for <i>Friends</i> over football is a bit metropolitan for Marple Bridge. Surely not.)<br />
<br />
I noted that Rachel was reading a document from GTZ the German development agency, so perhaps it’s <i>Freunden</i>. And I cunningly divined the linguistic persuasion of the lady opposite me reading <i>Les hirondelles de Kaboul</i>, even before she asked: “zer is no wee-fee?” Carry on, Hercule.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A second hour limps past.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Oh dear. The <i>view from the bridge</i> is ... not a lot. What will my three readers think of me? I open my book instead, and doze off. Another sixty minutes. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Get the computer out: the only way to write is to write. Think into ink. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mrs M says I should keep a stock of <i>Views</i> for Thursdays like this. I could have a catalogue of cook-chilled <i>Views </i>on such terrible topics as the Hash House Harriers, the “Drinkers with a Running Problem” who “<i>tried to get to heaven, but went the other way.” </i><br />
<br />
Anything but the bloody hash. Readers, you know I would never hash you up a cook-chilled <i>View</i>. Though I wouldn't put it past Mrs M to weasel a way around the problem <i>in extremis</i>. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The fourth hour. I have nothing to show for my hour but success in<i> Spider Solitaire</i>. 40% of my battery remains. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some time after I completed the second suit of clubs, Robert Mugabe’s younger brothers descended onto the bar stools like a flock of glossy starlings, dressed in charcoal suits, thick spectacles and shiny black skin.<br />
<br />
There goes the neighbourhood.<br />
<br />
Unlike the other Layabouts, these guys are loud. My experience of my contemporaries in the Bridge is that many of us do not have a great deal left to talk about. Every now and again, one comes across a freelancer in his dotage, who has an unstoppable need to share with you his joy in the confluence of the A627, A629 and A625 at Thrapston, but many male freelancers of a certain age prefer to watch the river or the game without comment. They will scrape together a conversation with a female or a foreigner, but it is not long before they cite an urgent match or report that requires them to hasten back to their cell.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">These Roberts aren’t like this at all. They shout. They laugh. They have teeth. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I wake up, a party of middle aged white men has replaced the Mugabes. They could be freelancers, though the intensity of the tan and the vibrancy of the polo shirts suggests golf is more likely than civil engineering. The beers arrive, and with it their voices, which reveal them as Scousers and Scots, sousing and sotting. Mountains of Tuskers and plastic glasses are piling up in front of them, and their laughter has risen to hysterical girlish gigles. These men are contrary to my theory, and shall therefore be ignored.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nope: nothing whatever. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Time to go through yet another security check. I'll try again next week. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-48054071090492991042010-10-29T07:00:00.058+01:002010-10-29T20:56:17.467+01:00Guns and Butter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5gtdoVMvU-TxQnj8A3Guuqpn7kNzvmjAhiRIZl6bHm8bweTcSKYq60n01e__ZNVoqI1k7tn1eB5Cq_aaQ-YEfiR4MryBDotsWNoMS5jVFGk37IkUbBe1vJTrpV95dfbrPxypSt6g4wOk/s1600/Juba+sunset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5gtdoVMvU-TxQnj8A3Guuqpn7kNzvmjAhiRIZl6bHm8bweTcSKYq60n01e__ZNVoqI1k7tn1eB5Cq_aaQ-YEfiR4MryBDotsWNoMS5jVFGk37IkUbBe1vJTrpV95dfbrPxypSt6g4wOk/s400/Juba+sunset.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"> <i>Boda-bodas at sunset</i> </div><div style="color: black; text-align: center;"><a href="http://citizenshift.org/boda-boda-sunset-juba?term_tid=51%20">Eugene Marais</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">I’ve told you before how people here appear to prize the plastic protective wrapping on things, long after it’s served its usual purpose. Drivers of boda-bodas – the motorbikes that pass for taxis – like to keep rotting bubble wrap on the mirrors and indicators. It certainly adds to the sense of adventure. I heard a rumour that South Sudan might change from driving on the right to driving on the left, but from current traffic behaviour it wouldn't make much difference. Mrs M will be glad to know that a wise freelance eschews the bravado of the boda-boda for a more robust steed.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The authorities staged a little practice riot the other day. Afterwards the police sloped back to their barracks sweating beneath their riot helmets, and with cling-film dripping from their transparent riot shields. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t remember our constabulary parading cling-film at the Orgreave coking plant as they taunted the miners with truncheon on shield. Although I was not in full sympathy with the boys, and perhaps girls, in blue on that occasion, you won’t find any cling-film on <i>my</i> shield either.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As Juba inches towards voter registration on 14<sup>th</sup> November for the January referendum on partition, there seems to be a change of mood here. For instance, the camp was overwhelmed last week by large numbers of men, politicians perhaps, supported by almost as many armed minders. The politicos sat around the large umbrellas on our terrace in circles of twelve or more, sometimes staying in extended silence for many hours. Then someone’s phone would ring and he would jump up, shouting angrily into it for some minutes, so loud that the Nile almost stopped in its tracks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I was told that these were delegates, or perhaps delegates to delegates, to a conference at the Nyakuron Cultural Centre, where various factions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement were patching up their differences ahead of the referendum. “Peace is very expensive,” remarked my fellow traveller, “all those hotel bills and <i>per diems</i>.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In case you are unfamiliar with the life of the freelance, the <i>per diem</i> or subsistence allowance is, exactly, meat and drink to the freelance. As a rule, my <i>per diem</i> is inadequate, yours is generous, but theirs is an unseemly abuse of public money.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I watched the delegates or the delegates’ delegates from the big comfy chairs by the smooth Nile where I had slumped happily next to a soldier or policeman. He was half looking on, half enjoying the shade of the mango tree like me, and held a large gun easily. It was smaller than an AK47 which is the only one I recognise, but it wasn’t a pea-shooter either. Its metal stock was shiny with wear. No bubble-wrap here: South Sudan has been at war, off and on, for fifty years.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The sad fact is that my ignorance of life in South Sudan has grown many times faster than any pin-prick of insight in my six weeks here. I feel, above all, more thoroughly foreign than in most of my holiday destinations. Apart from anything else, Sudan, even South Sudan, is just so <i>big</i>. A colleague staggered in yesterday after nipping out to the next town, a 100 miles away or so. It was an exhausting ten hour round trip on the worst roads, many flooded, that he had ever encountered. It made my recent triathlon look like a walk in the park, which you may say is the truth of the matter. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Political conversations with one’s host are always tricky for the freelance. The <a href="http://www.jubatimes.com/">Juba Times</a> and the<a href="http://www.sudantribune.com/"> Sudan Tribune</a> have news but it’s hard to grasp when you haven’t <i>been </i>there. And being in Juba just doesn’t count as being in South Sudan. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some of the expatriates I meet don’t express strong opinions about much beyond the pre-fabricated office that contains their ministry or aid chest, perhaps because some don’t get out much more than I do. Those who do go further, sometimes tell me more: at the hash (of which more another day, when I can bear to describe it) I learned of the military build-up at the disputed border in the oil fields, and the steady emigration of those who can get away from it. I listen, dumb. It's hard to explain to a newbie jubie. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Actions speak as loud as words. Christmas seems a good time for many to take an extended holiday till after the referendum. I shall be off next week. <br />
<br />
* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Meanwhile, perhaps the SPLM is following the example of Louis XIV who kept his courtiers busy and out of the way in the palace and gardens of Versailles.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gmmvM2JhXZ9sEhIlNnruDjRmQeo13z5x6BYbD_e4cwNWwu6gUYpUxX2YDXy1pS-ZFGjcsuO-lxnqvHmeHwBJG4BYsspb_lRSMmubVqfutF9gvfmPpkKmCUkofoQpM10VxLA7RRbv3_0/s1600/versailles_garden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gmmvM2JhXZ9sEhIlNnruDjRmQeo13z5x6BYbD_e4cwNWwu6gUYpUxX2YDXy1pS-ZFGjcsuO-lxnqvHmeHwBJG4BYsspb_lRSMmubVqfutF9gvfmPpkKmCUkofoQpM10VxLA7RRbv3_0/s320/versailles_garden.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Versailles: the way forward for Juba? </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/France/North/Ile-de-France/Versailles/photo753814.htm">Alfredo Wong </a><i><br />
</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">The Sun King's design for living must be a serious contender in any challenge to replace the grubby grid of Juba with something more socially and aesthetically desirable. For my money, and fortunately it isn't, I'd say Versailles was a nose ahead of the <a href="http://tom-mandall.blogspot.com/2010/09/there-be-rhinos.html"><i>preposteropolis</i> </a>recently proposed by some of my fellow travellers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, we are leading the way here. Keeping the delegates afloat with <i>per diems </i>in <a href="http://www.oasiscampjuba.com/">Juba's finest riverside palace</a> is an excellent way of sustaining jaw-jaw - which is always better, as the man said, than war-war.</div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4AZ5nXuni9kgkxcsQZn5xDfxN3RyzeLhBE9hhIY1h6e8MMFDLmnQSgHWL49sO1rjSpwwj_c_qq4msn3VO84M53yYcBqVuMhxhb9K6V5Fhd-gsLChmwlAZTTBdqpNucUR058PWNe5oVs/s1600/winston_churchill_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4AZ5nXuni9kgkxcsQZn5xDfxN3RyzeLhBE9hhIY1h6e8MMFDLmnQSgHWL49sO1rjSpwwj_c_qq4msn3VO84M53yYcBqVuMhxhb9K6V5Fhd-gsLChmwlAZTTBdqpNucUR058PWNe5oVs/s320/winston_churchill_01.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">Keep buggering on, Clemmie.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-51951668615039192272010-10-22T07:00:00.036+01:002010-10-25T10:31:57.612+01:00Nightmare on Nile Street<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxVnXm_3WWZQ5qLX9ZRVuklLHV0XQywlI2uzZws0vI-D6BlobnFcbVz8Pot8L5KAkSMSjmhaAkXgEOK1lREWgMfrV2ujMa2pIG7Sbo9r4vNDXP34UIDuIui6kADJILQUYTtIz61KiZqmo/s1600/womanhangingnet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxVnXm_3WWZQ5qLX9ZRVuklLHV0XQywlI2uzZws0vI-D6BlobnFcbVz8Pot8L5KAkSMSjmhaAkXgEOK1lREWgMfrV2ujMa2pIG7Sbo9r4vNDXP34UIDuIui6kADJILQUYTtIz61KiZqmo/s400/womanhangingnet.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://www.malarianomore.org/">www.malarianomore.org</a> </i></div><br />
<i>Wagons are everywhere, churning mud between their fat tyres, blasting burning diesel smoke into my face, some trying to reverse over me, some trying to move forward. </i><br />
<br />
<i>Wagons and wagons full of long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets. <o:p></o:p> </i><br />
<br />
<i>I didn’t mean to order that many. It was a slip of the decimal point. </i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<i>I try to flee to the river, knowing it is full of schistoso-something or other, and not having a clue what that is. A visiting Minister of Health is driving a crocodile of trucks ahead of me to the river bank where I saw naked men washing yesterday. He is trying to explain to me about snails, and how the schisto thing gets into bathers and bladders. Now the snails are driving us into the river, one truck over the other, as we try to make a bridge of mosquito nets over the Nile. <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>A friendly soldier says it’s fine to drive into the Nile but we MUST NOT TAKE PHOTOS. I explain that Mrs M has borrowed the camera to take pictures of Jeanette Winterson. The soldier throws me an orange, and waves happily as we sink, sink into leachy Nile mud, beneath nets tangled in water hyacinth. <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I splutter awake, my heart is pounding again. I’ve managed to turn off the telly and the aircon, but it’s stuffy and airless. At least no mosquitoes. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>“It was only an </i>illustrative<i> budget, Your Excellency. You know, one of those ones that doesn’t really matter. Yes, I did put three hundred million nets on the spreadsheet, but I really meant three million... Yes, Your Excellency, I agree that the long-lasting insecticide-treated net is a tremendous innovation: it really is helping Africa get on the right road with malaria. Three hundred million of them should stretch from Kampala to Khartoum. Or would you prefer the opposite direction?”<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">(I expect most freelancers have their moments of panic. I have at least one thumper on most expeditions. However, although we more experienced freelancers may be at higher risk of losing a decimal point or two, we have the advantage that we can usually remember a situation worse than the one that is currently jangling the chains. The benchmark for me is a terrible night long ago in the now abandoned Johannesburg Carlton Hotel. It reduced me to my creaking knees, forehead scrunched onto the grimy carpet, shallow-breathing the stale smoke of a twenty-first floor, air-conditioned room with sealed windows. No panic since has come close to my Carlton Moment.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHn2vYPPPzwL2YjzIe5EKp1Rt3FqYSJ_3btH2gG419kjyOcYXBkpvJLaaFtO2hva7UUSY_2TWxKBtRZG7GP3595j2SHbJS0ePqwdWfyROBfoT9cZo7pBb7IUpU-clSruePpsBN36QjJ-w/s1600/Carlton+hotel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHn2vYPPPzwL2YjzIe5EKp1Rt3FqYSJ_3btH2gG419kjyOcYXBkpvJLaaFtO2hva7UUSY_2TWxKBtRZG7GP3595j2SHbJS0ePqwdWfyROBfoT9cZo7pBb7IUpU-clSruePpsBN36QjJ-w/s320/Carlton+hotel.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i> The Carlton Moment</i></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The music from the neighbouring camps has stopped, and I hear a cock crow. It must be morning. No rain on the roof. I am glad for the quiet, but somehow it seems wrong. For although our camp is bordered by the silent fat river on one side, there is an ever-growing settlement on the other. I wonder how many hundreds or thousands live there. We drive past them every day, and most days I run past them too. Children and adults join me, shouting and laughing. Today a woman with an old weather-beaten face in a filthy ragged smock and flip-flops kept pace with me for a few hundred yards. We cheer each other on. Indeed, I think we cheer each other up.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I know I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but it takes me a while to register the daily lives of the people around me. The makeshift homes between the Oasis Camp and the Goat Market seemed poor and mean at first, but you get used to it. Also, the children always shout, at every hour of the day, “MORNING!” and “How are YOU?” with great big African vowels and gap-toothed smiles. We smack hands. They are very endearing... </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">(The children's greetings also make me want to hide behind my visor a hundred times a day when I catch myself saying “Morning,” and “How are you?” without a care for the well-being of the person I am so assaulting. Perhaps this is a sign that a pith helmet would not be completely inappropriate. It is no wonder that these are the only words of English that the children know.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">... So, it takes me a while to cotton on to the lives around me. Why aren’t you in school? Where do you go to the loo? And where do you go to fill up those water tanks? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My latest observations are that many households seem to have nothing at all to sit or lie on, apart from a dirt floor. I don't know what happens when there's a downpour, which must make everything flood, for there is no drainage. I suppose you stand under the shelter all day in your flip flops. When I come home from my run in the evening, families are sitting bolt upright around cooking fires. Already the settlement is going quiet. There is only the roar from our camp’s generator whose exhausts roar into the waste land that is now our neighbours’ homes. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I cannot see any newspaper or anything to read, except the markings on the cardboard boxes that some people use for walls. The light has almost gone, and the only glow is from the embers. There are no lamps. Perhaps people just go to sleep, and hope for a better tomorrow. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Few of the shelters seem to have complete walls. I am on the look-out for the white, pink or green tell-tale of a mosquito net against the mud-brown of everything else. Long-lasting, insecticide-treated, or otherwise. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I'll tell you when I find one.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: center;">MORNING!</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdbN3Z5sdj-4oTUDA1LyUFfzYzPkwmWeCdjCoHFWVfBqkJ3TnK_BciBTxSr3Go48VpHgzcSQ3lH12flUBnIwiavuz7k49nHr-kY9CQ464Fuus7UBKQX0q5cy14N4eJzJzi6cDQ4b2_5pc/s1600/mosquito.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdbN3Z5sdj-4oTUDA1LyUFfzYzPkwmWeCdjCoHFWVfBqkJ3TnK_BciBTxSr3Go48VpHgzcSQ3lH12flUBnIwiavuz7k49nHr-kY9CQ464Fuus7UBKQX0q5cy14N4eJzJzi6cDQ4b2_5pc/s320/mosquito.gif" width="244" /></a></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-20731706920561667372010-10-15T07:00:00.011+01:002010-10-16T18:43:24.195+01:00Plenty o' Horn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNJQdLJ8cmlxGZzdlLRFOBnjC-iug4kNoX38C3HBiJwjaQQHvEpKBQedoOACg6yV-yUuJbrmD4VMI8C3UbRCMKKPmCvW80AheNDuF8QVAaVcopqN3dMe2R1AOobCL277iESGeiJEUuy0/s1600/kishorn+1978.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNJQdLJ8cmlxGZzdlLRFOBnjC-iug4kNoX38C3HBiJwjaQQHvEpKBQedoOACg6yV-yUuJbrmD4VMI8C3UbRCMKKPmCvW80AheNDuF8QVAaVcopqN3dMe2R1AOobCL277iESGeiJEUuy0/s400/kishorn+1978.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i> Loch Kishorn Dry Dock in the seventies</i> <a href="http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/854375">Stanley Howe</a></div><br />
<br />
“Welcome to Loch Kishorn”, enthused my driver. “They say you’ll get no kisses here, but plenty o’ horn.” I was 19 years old, and hitch-hiking my way as far north as I could to escape the fag-end of a long hot Mancunian summer. I nodded and refrained from further questioning. I stared out at the brand new slick of tarmac curving down to the loch. The concrete gullies on either side were full of empty beer cans chucked out, I supposed by oil rig workers.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">We were discussing the unlikely prospect of me seeking employment in Loch Kisshorn’s rig fabrication yard. I see now that my Highland excursion that summer, as much as reading Karl Marx on the parental tennis lawn, was an essential element of the freelancer apprenticeship, providing skills in <br />
<ul><li>proposing absurd hypotheses (me on an oil rig); </li>
<li>nodding without understanding; </li>
<li>learning at others’ expense; </li>
<li>accepting free rides shamelessly;</li>
<li>using bullet points pointlessly.</li>
</ul></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">All of which brings me to the present day. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The <a href="http://feelgoodtheatre.co.uk/">Feelgood Theatre Company</a> has been a stable-mate of the Mandall family for many years, though arguably neither is particularly stable. Feelgood’s plays, or <i>larks</i>, mostly take place in unlikely parts of North West England, including Burtonwood Aerodrome, the Imperial War Museum, and various parks. It's always a worry when you bump into Feelgood's director, Caroline Clegg, because you don’t know whether she will ask you to find her a NATO battle-tank, or enquire whether you have chanced upon a flea circus suitable for an adaptation of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The night before my first visit to South Sudan, Mrs M sat me down in front of a TV drama called <i>Slave</i>, about a young girl who is captured in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, before being enslaved first in Khartoum and then, for many years, in a suburban home in London. Family viewing. We rang Cleggy, because she is doing a play in which the real life slave-girl acts out her story at the Lowry Theatre in Salford. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">By the end of the phone call, I had taken orders from Clegg for DVDs of Nuban music, as well as sundry gourds and leg jangles.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">Somehow, my commute between our Upstream camp on the Nile and the Ministry in downtown Juba doesn’t take in a lot of markets specialising in local music, gourds or shells on strings. So, on the final day of my last outing to Juba, I confessed my failure in a text message to La Clegg.<br />
<br />
I got her reply on the way to the airport. She said that if I could get her a horn, it would be like Christmas and Birthday coming all at once.<br />
<br />
A horn for the bird? This was definitely a moment for nodding and staring at the view. In fact there was plenty of time, because we were stalled on the Airport Road behind a demonstration in relation to the forthcoming referendum on South Sudan’s proposed secession from the North.<br />
<br />
It was at this moment that my driver unburdened himself to me of his desire. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It was for a camcorder from the duty free shop. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">This is not the sort of thing I normally get into. What if I get the wrong one, we fall out over the money, it doesn’t work, or it gets taken by customs?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Then I remembered the horn. Perhaps a small horn would get me off the hook for failing with the gourds and jangles. On the other hand, I mused, if I came up with the horn, there was a risk that she might ask me to provide a Dakota or a ride in Richard Branson’s new spaceship for her next performance.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The traffic started to move. Now or never. "If you get me a horn, I’ll get you a camcorder," I told the driver. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">He said he would order it at the market after dropping me at the airport. “Which market”, I asked, puzzled. “You know the one by your camp, with the goats and the cattle,” he explained. To make a cow horn, it seems you first need a cow.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">We exchanged our acquisitions shortly after my return to Juba two weeks later. I’d got his camcorder through customs in a corner of my cabin bag, but my horn took up the whole back seat of the Land Cruiser.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Recumbent on the mock calf-skin seat covers of which their owner is so proud, my horn boasted the black red and green of the new South Sudan, tastefully separated by splodgy bits of masking tape. Two foot of stiff plastic pipe led to a rugged mouthpiece.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">We had a practice blast outside our happy row of prefab homes that I have come to know as Urinally, due to its proximity to the Gents. Everyone had a go. My neighbour Albert made it sing like a bugle on steroids.<br />
<br />
They will hear it in the Nuba Mountains. They will hear it in Yei and Wau. They may even hear it in Khartoum. They will certainly hear it in Salford.<br />
<br />
And here we are on youtube<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMxYmAFUWsg">Plenty o' Horn: first attempts in Urinally</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33tlJ3PIeRQ">Plenty o' Horn: the Master of Urinally</a></i></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thelowry.com/event/slave"><i>Slave – a Question of Freedom</i></a> opens at The Lowry, Salford Quays on 23<sup>rd</sup> November.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRjp_koBNmdnovbelIQ9wVYP-7pzKFBDOTvycJj0PHrGHCGguRRTjwUNrJ1oer0zFRUIlcLtFb_YTHMc0g5HVVfypFvBuB8lTj0CBDroFFZwOdP-JBKjd25stJvTDK-DZvQPFRj13lZQQ/s1600/Feelgood+Slave+PR+launch-24+crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRjp_koBNmdnovbelIQ9wVYP-7pzKFBDOTvycJj0PHrGHCGguRRTjwUNrJ1oer0zFRUIlcLtFb_YTHMc0g5HVVfypFvBuB8lTj0CBDroFFZwOdP-JBKjd25stJvTDK-DZvQPFRj13lZQQ/s320/Feelgood+Slave+PR+launch-24+crop.jpg" width="260" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Photo by Neil Matthew</i> </div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-65902593496827490412010-10-08T07:00:00.017+01:002010-10-08T07:00:03.221+01:00Love in TransitionI salute the unflinching courage of Mrs M in offering to witness my first attempt at a Triathlon last Sunday. However, she had been up till 2 am collecting M2 from his restaurant job, and was also fending off reading lists from the University and an attack of the shingles. I suggested that if she really insisted, she could put in a brief attendance at the triathlon “Transition”. She didn’t insist.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The Transition is the technical and spiritual heart of the modern triathlon. These triathlons consist, my patient teachers have explained, of three events: swimming, cycling and running. So the Transition is where you saddle up for your ride after the swim, and where you return to dismount, before tackling the run. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMF-jun9n14S6ldLVf8ZykjkyYnJhAE6TbhXE1HVXM04hzkaD00WBTt-aP517RB8YfDf5SGDzA706YquoHNr9wFFx9X9f2_Wny-jOiHARZMwV7A3FJCVGtwQaAIC_Mqw5UVA2_fmhVsRg/s1600/womtig.blogspot.com.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMF-jun9n14S6ldLVf8ZykjkyYnJhAE6TbhXE1HVXM04hzkaD00WBTt-aP517RB8YfDf5SGDzA706YquoHNr9wFFx9X9f2_Wny-jOiHARZMwV7A3FJCVGtwQaAIC_Mqw5UVA2_fmhVsRg/s1600/womtig.blogspot.com.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrRyTOCBkgMFS5XeyJsdw0WnHWxVqjF-Prt2ooQzf13pjmvY1JkQANAfuhldwd-njWELJWJ9qmK7ZZOuwDCeSBtxs99qQFi-xBt4js4cAgDsEdN7qtaM8_DTF8RoRsl2xUxyfy3y4XOLs/s1600/httphydedailyphoto.blogspot.com200708hyde-mill-tower.html.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrRyTOCBkgMFS5XeyJsdw0WnHWxVqjF-Prt2ooQzf13pjmvY1JkQANAfuhldwd-njWELJWJ9qmK7ZZOuwDCeSBtxs99qQFi-xBt4js4cAgDsEdN7qtaM8_DTF8RoRsl2xUxyfy3y4XOLs/s200/httphydedailyphoto.blogspot.com200708hyde-mill-tower.html.jpg" width="150" /></a>The Tameside Triathlon starts near Stalybridge, just a few miles north of Mandallay, but of course I got lost on the way. Someone had knocked down the former <i>Senior Service</i> cigarette factory at Hyde Mill. People aren’t smoking enough...</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>RIP <a href="http://www.hydedailyphoto.blogspot.com/">Hyde Mill</a> and <a href="http://www.womtig.blogspot.com/">Senior Service</a><o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm5bmEvmy6NNuz35ftPhfxuhWeYqxlbCcKDBbSPBlEI7PYTDhsdW__-oMg74wO3rc-Cpo7iS5h-q5rBnQF99ofvbQ4TZ1YVp06mMWI0Z-WOKq3n8mkVDJfcdvnYwsqeksIf2wRjR3zuOA/s1600/120px-Mottram_Church_02.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm5bmEvmy6NNuz35ftPhfxuhWeYqxlbCcKDBbSPBlEI7PYTDhsdW__-oMg74wO3rc-Cpo7iS5h-q5rBnQF99ofvbQ4TZ1YVp06mMWI0Z-WOKq3n8mkVDJfcdvnYwsqeksIf2wRjR3zuOA/s1600/120px-Mottram_Church_02.JPG" /></a><br />
<br />
... Then the sat nav got lost too, and I found myself looking for a second time at Mottram church, perched high on the moor, behind a curtain of rain.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
<br />
<br />
Strange to say, this is part of old Cheshire, though it really feels more like Derbyshire. Not a mini in sight.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The rain hadn’t stopped since I left home. Even in Mandallay, it was persistent enough to penetrate the ceiling of what only an estate agent might call the Master Bedroom. The Bunker would be a better name, but unfortunately the door is not blast-proof, so is regularly stormed at all hours of the day and night by enraged Ms, who come on raiding parties for money, clothes and toiletries, or just to vent their rage on their parents, for not having done their homework for them, or for being inappropriately attired.<br />
<br />
This leads me to one of the main attractions of a triathlon: getting away from home.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Triathlon designers have many ways of causing competitors pain. The best that I can say for the Tameside triathlon is that the swim takes place in an indoor pool, where things don’t generally fall on your head. It would have been more in keeping with the rest of the event, if they had made us swim across one of the chain of black reservoirs coming down the Pennines.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">A special feature of the Tameside Triathlon is that they make you run half a mile from the pool up-hill to Transition. The grassy incline to Transition was light mud by 8 am, but there were still a few rocks to hold onto, as I pushed my bike and a plastic box full of helmet, shoes and other essential kit for the event. Mrs M’s decision to stay in bed was, I considered, wise.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">“This is bloody stupid, pal,” said the bloke in front in a blue top, as we puffed up the hill. “Bloody stupid.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The start of the triathlon is staggered. The slowest competitors are the first to stagger. We line up at the end of the pool, the long and short, thin and podgy, and, especially, the tattooed, along with the perfectly formed freelancer.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Great attention is given to kit. Some have opted for high triathlon <i>couture</i>. Within seconds of completing their swims, they have slipped their feet beneath the elastic laces of their trainers, and are skipping up the bank to Transition. I lumber out of the pool in Dad’s Embarrassing Speedos, and grope for my spectacles. I spend some minutes jumping up and down trying to persuade a tee-shirt to descend over my wet back. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The next stagger is up the bank through the rain. The last rocks have sunk into the mud. A familiar voice behind me is saying “This is bloody stupid, pal. May as well walk.” He speeds past me. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Transition is the place for the love of kit. Here, the triathlete sheds trainers and claims specialised bike shoes, helmets, gloves, and the bike itself, whose every component is a buttress for the strength and self-belief of the triathlon amateur. I have heard men confess that they buy their bike bits in cash, so that the missus doesn’t know how much they really spent on the latest innocent-looking bit of metal, which is actually a hand-crafted fluid-formed titanium creation of such impossible levity, elegance, strength and ergonomic effectiveness, that replacing the Fiesta offers no contest.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The gender balance of competitors is different from that at running activities. Boys are easily outnumbered, for instance, in the group that I run with at the <a href="http://www.stockportharriers.com/">Stockport Harriers</a>, for which reason we refer to the squad as the Harriets. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">But Harriets were in short supply at Tameside Triathlon. One male friend opined that some ladies do not feel the true love for kit with the same intensity that a man does. I look forward to the views of correspondents on the matter.<br />
<br />
Of the ride itself, I cannot tell you much. There was a lot of going up: rock, mud, flood, stiles, streams, bog, peat. And rain. There was also a lot of down, if anything more painful than going up. My helmet proved fit for purpose in its encounter with a stone wall, and I probably also remain fit for most purposes after my encounter with the crossbar. I have a vague memory of a bloke in a blue top passing me, saying “this is bloody stupid, pal. Not much of a view is it?”</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Then hurray, we slurp back into Transition for another kit change. The inflatable “Finish” arch has collapsed into the bog. We change into running shoes, and most of us ditch our bike helmets too. I can report that one freelancer set off for his final run, still wearing his battered bike helmet.<br />
<br />
Yes, throw what you like at a freelancer, but don’t expect him to take off his helmet. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-44164434046442144822010-10-01T07:05:00.002+01:002010-10-01T10:42:35.017+01:00Cheshire Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiamovpV3cUV8tM6fIT3gvhH-iWVKuTsgqXSx4TyX8OVsrSJtXhvDGwjmQ2Lhdz7iQ_K4FS35n3CGHDqkOmJP9XZcpxKcjbjaNb0yZJHxG_QcZiavJPaILbmMpYrP0vNGWwa3qtT7MGonY/s1600/Cheshire+Cat+by+John+Tenniel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiamovpV3cUV8tM6fIT3gvhH-iWVKuTsgqXSx4TyX8OVsrSJtXhvDGwjmQ2Lhdz7iQ_K4FS35n3CGHDqkOmJP9XZcpxKcjbjaNb0yZJHxG_QcZiavJPaILbmMpYrP0vNGWwa3qtT7MGonY/s320/Cheshire+Cat+by+John+Tenniel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">GO AWAY! <i> </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Cheshire Cat </i>by John Tenniel</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-89AqvQqiu9u66f_38il-xuykVNhcZW2Q4fC_EpWc7nn9EiSHPT1bivq6RvRhxE_nQLNsn65P5yd8xHkioQOV-sEGSW-pVeHWIi8NmhyvKXzsL-hkw0TjdYRwMdYONIEWT8YoF0sJHgE/s1600/lowry-oldstepsstockport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div>The gestation period for an attack of Cheshiria may be anything up to six weeks. Sometimes, however, the innocent victim may instantly exhibit severe symptoms arising from even a fleeting encounter with a Range Rover emerging from the warm red embrace of a Cheshire farmhouse. One bite is enough.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that the last line on Mandallay’s Post Office address is Cheshire. That County Palatine is surely a lovely place, but we do not live there. Mandallay rests in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, and before that was invented, Derbyshire reached West to the River Goyt to include Marple Bridge, all of which apart from the Bridge itself arguably lies on the East bank.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Nevertheless, the contagion of Cheshire has swept up from the lowlands, a soft wind of sweet pastures warmed by dairy herds and Agas, bearing bling and blondes to the Bridge. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Even the briefest contact with Cheshire can bring me out in a rash. I now know that Mandallay goes on full alert some days before my return from a tour of duty. The household has tried many techniques to forestall or mitigate attacks of Cheshiria. Tactics include house-cleaning, laying in dark chocolate, moving furniture to hide evidence of animals, and scattering handfuls of the “Excellent Work” postcards mass-produced by the boys’ Specialist Exaggeration College for teachers to hand out when students arrive in school before the bell. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Years of exposure have made Mrs M, and me too, to some extent, better at managing Cheshiria. Just as a resident of Freetown or Juba immediately recognises the symptoms of malaria, and knows just what to do before they sink into delirium, I know that the only thing to do when Cheshiria strikes is to dive for cover in a darkened room before everyone else catches it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Even so, I wasn’t expecting an outbreak in John Lewis at Cheadle Royal. I should have known. After all, Cheadle Royal Hospital is well known to the Mandall ancestors as a refuge for the spiritually challenged. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">All I was doing was trying to buy a suitcase. Now that Mrs M is a student of Contemporary Literature and Culture at Manchester's greatest seat of learning, I thought she might recognise a post-metrosexual irony in my patronage of the Samsonite brand. She didn’t doubt it. M3 explained to M2 that Samsonite is for five stone weaklings with nothing else to boast about. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The Partners at John Lewis were of course as obliging as ever, but they were out of stock of the particular contraption I sought, and had to summon one up from their online chums. By the time their till had connected to the internet, and the internet had connected to my bank, and my bank had connected to something else that wanted the passcode to the security code to my password to the freelance credit card, and I had connected my phone to Mandallay to find out what said passcode was, I was so late for my next appointment that, well, yes, I snapped. Not quite that bad. Let's say I was a little dyspeptic. I'm not proud of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">I left in a hail of patent leather handbags amidst the stench of hair lightener. Then I got stuck in the car park because a man in a bad pin-striped suit was having a stand-off with the Scouser who was washing his Jag.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">On the A538, a herd of Fresians blocked a squadron of yellow minis emerging from a Garden Centre where their drivers had been lunching.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Once I finally got to The Priory in Hale Barns, I was so very late for my appointment that I took a small risk. Instead of parking off-off-Rappax Road, I charged over the bumps along the long sweeping drive to the car park, knocking a couple more Range Rovers into the roses, and found myself, like Mr Bean, doing a four-wheel drift followed by twenty-nine point turn between a BMW and an Audi to get into the last space. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">By now, my Cheshiria was full-blown. Hives had erupted all over the Fiesta too. I dashed into see the doctor, who was mercifully running late too.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">I am happy to report that the shaman appears to have had a very pleasant holiday, and has lost a few pounds, so he’s doing very well. His bill will be along shortly. I always find it good value, because it helps me wave away all doubts whenever I issue my own. In fact, this is one more good reason why a quarterly visit to a consultant psychiatrist is the secret of success, or at least survival, for many modern freelancers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">There are days when I like to delight or bore you with the varied pleasures of home on the Bridge. In truth, there are more days when I find it easier to not to dwell on the people, so I blather on instead about a soft mist on the Goyt, or rainwater blasting rocks out of its course as hurtles down Linnet Clough. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">There are also days when I’m grateful to be somewhere else. On days like that I find myself saying I come from Marple, or even Stockport, instead of Marple Bridge or Mellor. Its pretty little hamlets like Moor End and Brookbottom can go hang. On those days, what was once magic and warmth is just mud and mither. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">And there are days too, when even grimy old “Stockport” sounds too colourful. As though a bit too much of Lowry got snagged on it, even in black-and-white.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_072tk6jnfZaA6buFCfitg6qqM-YnjCaAbxYHX09aXJKuXEokB2Qy2lVxU_07OjVWqXBkM-vRTC2Xrxqi36qVEdA0uZ1E7KqzpN1Sd2BL-6AaIsZOMO1_Jns_zVSj3o4-s6ZrwKjpjw/s1600/lowry-oldstepsstockport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_072tk6jnfZaA6buFCfitg6qqM-YnjCaAbxYHX09aXJKuXEokB2Qy2lVxU_07OjVWqXBkM-vRTC2Xrxqi36qVEdA0uZ1E7KqzpN1Sd2BL-6AaIsZOMO1_Jns_zVSj3o4-s6ZrwKjpjw/s320/lowry-oldstepsstockport.jpg" width="243" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Old Steps, Stockport</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i> </i>L S Lowry</div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">On those days, I find it best to say I live in Manchester, which is technically true as Stockport is in Greater Manchester. At least it’s somewhere they’ve heard of. And whatever they think of, it won’t be anything to do with me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">I do not, however, live in Cheshire. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><i>This is a work of fiction. No cats, counties or hair products have been harmed in the making of this column.<o:p></o:p></i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-26643113212891859402010-09-24T07:00:00.038+01:002010-09-24T07:00:06.382+01:00Losing ConsciousnessI lost <i>Consciousness </i>on Monday. As you may imagine, I’m not quite sure how it happened. I think it might have been in the morning, in the gym, which is a lean-to beneath some mangoes, with a view of the Nile through the somewhat grubby plastic awning.<br />
<br />
The gym’s got a working exercise bike, with a little fan to wave away the mosquitoes. I’m sure I had it then. Then, the next thing I knew I was in bed, looking for something to send me to sleep. That’s when I found I’d lost it.<br />
<br />
I do recommend to you the Oxford series of <i>Very Short Introductions</i>. Last December, M1 was supposed to be doing an essay on the French Revolution. I’d long since lost track of my Pelicans on the subject. For all I know they are even now growing an ever-deeper bloom in the dungeons of Mandallay. Too lazy to search under the record collection and various nick-nacks from afar, I ordered<i> The French Revolution: a Very Short Introduction</i> from Amazon. It was a delight to read, and I was very gratified that the author regarded the texts I was meant to read in the Remove as good “modern” history. Perhaps I’ll dig them out, but probably I’ll take his word for it.<br />
<br />
Mrs M barely blinked at my pretentious request for the <i>Very Short Introductions</i> to <i>Linguistics </i>and <i>Consciousness </i>as Christmas presents. Linguistics was a very dry mouthful, but Susan Blackmore’s <i>Consciousness </i>has pictures. It has been quite entertaining. It’s only taken me six months to read the first 20 pages, and there are barely the same to go.<br />
<br />
But now I’ve lost it. I left it on the exercise bike I think.<br />
<br />
My youngest sister is a Buddhist. She wrote out a short passage, with a coloured-in crayon drawing, for another sister (I have many of them) on the subject of mindful washing-up. It now hangs framed next to the sink. I think it’s all about being in the moment with the washing-up brush and the scouring pad and the bubbles.<br />
<br />
Losing <i>Consciousness </i>has not quite made my life flash before me, but it has made me wonder. When, for instance, did I become content to skate so lightly over the world’s surface, when I sally forth as a freelance? I used to want to try everything, to learn languages, to smell wood smoke and sweat on damp clothes, huddle on the back of a truck, chew food on the street.<br />
<br />
Well, alright, I’m still partial to a goat.<br />
<br />
But by and large, I’ve become a bit of a Holiday Inn-er, riding between the office and the hotel. And nowhere more than here in Juba, a capital city next door to South Sudan, but nothing, they tell me, like it. And the ministry is only next door to Juba.<br />
<br />
I once heard tell of a consultant who entertained his colleagues all the way through a two week assignment in Zimbabwe with his concern as to whether the Harare Sheraton would credit his frequent flyer card with Tier Points towards his Platinum Card, or Non-Tier Points.<br />
<br />
He is not one of the Bridge’s Happy Band of Mercenaries.<br />
<br />
There again, travel is not what it was. I am not against all travel guides. I won’t hear a word against the Latin America Handbook, which gave me many hours of entertainment when the BBC World Service on short wave had filled my head with a surfeit of snap crackle and pop. But the <i>Rough Guide</i> and the <i>Lonely Planet</i> are oxymoronic. Thanks to them, the planet is no longer quite so rough or lonely as one might like.<br />
<br />
No, the road less travelled is surely the washing-up. Or if, as so often happens to the itinerant freelancer, someone is doing it for you, the washer-up may hold a key to the mindfulness of the ministry that is the freelancer's elusive holy grail. <br />
<br />
<br />
My ministerial pre-fab is cleaned by a lady I know as Elizabeth. When I was given a desk, she came and washed, then dried, the desk-top. <br />
<br />
Mindfully.<br />
<br />
We are getting to know each other. She cleaned the windows one day, and I helped her reach the bit at the top behind the mosquito screen. Then she came in with a tin of sweets to celebrate the fact that her cousin has just got the top job in the ministry. <br />
<br />
The kitchen is just the other side of our thin metal wall. When we stop talking and typing, we hear her humming resonate the biscuit tin that is her domain. I am not the only one who comments how happy Elizabeth sounds in her work. Every day, she is the first to arrive, and the last to leave. She brings us hot water and clean Pyrex tea cups, and sometimes I bring her a cake from the hotel.<br />
<br />
One day I mentioned to a Sudanese colleague that Elizabeth had gone to fill the flask with hot water for tea. “Who’s Elizabeth?” he said. He knew her by another name.<br />
<br />
Next day, Elizabeth gave me a sheet of paper with two other names for herself. It reads<br />
<br />
<i> Akongo => it means Alcohol</i><br />
<i> Angieh => " " Cold</i><br />
<br />
She said that her mother died soon after her birth. Her father was a drunk and died two months later. Her aunt gave her these names. <br />
<br />
“I do not like these names,” said Elizabeth Akongo Angieh.<br />
<br />
Before I could do anything, I was assailed by a large and fictional lady crashing into the office in a small white van. Before I could stop her, Ma Ramotswe herself of<i> The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency</i> had bounced off the highway from Cape to Cairo to take posession of my soul.<br />
<br />
“Then I will call you Blessing,” I heard myself say.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-89615656099657669792010-09-17T07:00:00.004+01:002011-08-11T22:50:22.234+01:00Good Evans<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0bBfObizoadt4a1ji15uMR6tb05oFsubxJt6yvknffGEKCQyKMY_qAJozuDscu8JeefnixR3u42y11mQSXC7cESYPTEwrxucE56ARFqYHjie0DHCaey15yGLgdzOZAWQetKutx9lJQsA/s1600/Nuer+Girl+Milking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0bBfObizoadt4a1ji15uMR6tb05oFsubxJt6yvknffGEKCQyKMY_qAJozuDscu8JeefnixR3u42y11mQSXC7cESYPTEwrxucE56ARFqYHjie0DHCaey15yGLgdzOZAWQetKutx9lJQsA/s320/Nuer+Girl+Milking.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i> <a href="http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk/details/1998.355.69.2/">Nuer Girl Milking</a></i></div><div style="text-align: center;">EE Evans-Pritchard, 1935 <span id="goog_2072626343"></span><span id="goog_2072626344"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a>Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford</div><br />
Juba, Southern Sudan <br />
<br />
“I’ll tell you the thing about S<i>oo</i>-d<i>ar</i>n.” The way Doctor Doctor Tremendous pronounces Sudan reminds me of the way some of his North American compatriots used to say “S<i>ar</i>dd<i>ar</i>m H<i>oo</i>ss<i>ai</i>n”, and, most memorably, “K<i>ow</i>s<i>ow</i>v<i>ow</i>”. Somehow it conveyed their unshakeable assurance that they knew about the things they were treading on.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Doctor Doctor T has left a fine rhetorical pause, so that all those in the warren of offices at this end of the ministerial pre-fab have the pleasure of awaiting his insight. “It is this.” Another pause. “In traditional tribal society here, they don’t have kings. That’s right!” He is triumphant now. “That’s why social anthropology was invented here!”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Now that Doctor Doctor Tremendous is getting into his flow, I settle my gaze on the plastic strip at the top of my laptop screen where it cuts off the expanse of Tremendous’s white shirt and striped tie. That way, I can feign enough interest to avoid rudeness, without encouraging him to expand further. My good South African friend Paul says such niceties are quite wasted on foreigners: Dr Dr T couldn’t care less.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">“That’s right!” he continues, unnecessarily. He is, of course, rarely wrong. “That’s why the British colonial authorities hired Evans-Pritchard. They were failing to subjugate the Sudanese, and that's why he did all his work on the Nuer and all the other tribes of Southern Sudan. No kings, you see. Same as Afgh<i>air</i>nist<i>ar</i>n. I know a great deal about it actually. I’ve studied this in many countries.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">I have to admit that his theory engages me. Like his namesake, DDT is all-pervasive, indiscriminate, hard to get rid of, but nevertheless useful from time to time. God bless America.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer, the Azande... The haze of my student days in the common room of the School of African and Asian Studies seeps back at me. The social anthropology students are sitting on the floor, smoking Indian <i>bidis</i>, or wearing Vibram-soled clompers...</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
To me, the social anthropology students all appeared either impossibly good-looking, or to be raised some six inches above the singed carpet, or both. Sometimes they enacted anthropological events, of which the most dazzling was a New Guinea pig exchange. Having arranged a day, the students converged on the Common Room to present each other gifts of ever-increasing numbers of Britain’s plastic pigs, as testimony to each other’s, and thereby their own, greatness. Eventually, a hoard of students besieged and ultimately overran the office of Professor David Pocock (who liked to lecture first-year students on the significance of shit in social anthropology) with plastic Gloucester Old Spots in their Hundreds and in their Thousands.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
That's all I remember about social anthropology, except a documentary about the Pitt Rivers Museum that Mrs M had a hand in.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ezMSdoSb8RMXUkaAQQSWHsaJNk66H3ftCemYl8AZaXV0boAf-vQpTd7oHeJ1QR7QDfAAnif8_twN2fGog6yNkYk-VR9tF8Qm_Nz390aJvOeKIgT64Kg1TfiMc-oR5byEjCuwTPAurHE/s1600/Evans_Pritchard_(1902%E2%80%931973)_in_Sudan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ezMSdoSb8RMXUkaAQQSWHsaJNk66H3ftCemYl8AZaXV0boAf-vQpTd7oHeJ1QR7QDfAAnif8_twN2fGog6yNkYk-VR9tF8Qm_Nz390aJvOeKIgT64Kg1TfiMc-oR5byEjCuwTPAurHE/s320/Evans_Pritchard_(1902%E2%80%931973)_in_Sudan.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Evans-Pritchard with Zande Boys</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i> </i> </div>I wonder what Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard would have to say about our consulting tribes. I expect we behave a little like the tribes of colonial officials and soldiers he met in his travels across the world. Take relations between the Upstreamers and the Downstreamers. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The Downstreamers live in the next plot down the Nile from us, and some Upstreamers don’t think much of them, largely out of jealousy. The Downstreamers’ camp started out, like ours, under canvas, but has now turned into neat permanent dwellings, with patio doors and a gentle curve in the road, like a suburban corner of the homeland. “A little picket fencing,” quipped an Upstream wag, “and they could film <i>Desperate Housewives</i> here.” At the end of its suburban road, is the Downstream shrine: an open bar under a thatched roof with two big screen TVs blaring different sports channels. It’s very pleasant, but it’s a bit, well, Downstream, like a Holiday Inn. Their leaders regard the compound as secure, because there is a guard at the front with a book. Sometimes Downstreamers sign their guests in and out. Their leaders are Americans, and they are passionate about security. They send each other messages warning drivers to vary their route. Above all, however, Downstreamers are experts on everything and everywhere. Like DDT, they have researched, tamed, and transformed hundreds of countries. Some display a dazzling technical knowledge, based on diligent research. For others, it is clear that just by flying over a country, not even invading it, they learn more about it than the miserable natives glean in their entire lives.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Downstreamers visit our Upstream camp. For many, it’s off-limits, security-wise. And those who do visit, generally just come once. Our pre-fabs are overcrowded, the bar is rubbish, and so is the internet connection and the TV. The Upstream management allow cats to wander around the dining area, and no one gives a damn. There are all sorts in the camp, particularly Russian helicopter pilots, and local people, just wandering in, to sit by the Nile. It’s hard to imagine how the Upstreamers stay clean. Evidently, they don’t. (Regrettably, I may be partly responsible for this perception by removing my shoes in meetings at the ministry.) The food takes hours to order and more to arrive - visitors rarely try the excellent and varied Upstream buffet. Worst of all, the Upstreamers are so stand-offish you wouldn’t think you existed. If they have a business card at all, they refuse to put any letters after their names, or their position in the corporation, so you never know who you’re talking to. Their knowledge is a patchwork, sometimes clever, but sometimes out of date and threadbare. And as for their attire, you’d think clothing was still rationed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Take your choice: Wisteria Lane or Bletchley Park.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">However, the big sloppy chairs under the mango trees take a lot of beating. Unfortunately, the cushions won’t take a lot more before they crumble through the remnants of the cane into the Nile.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">This Upstreamer knows better than to brag about anthropology. It’s pretty certain that any of my fellows can make me feel a mug whether I choose ministerial intrigue, sport, or cinema. In this company, therefore, my special subject is silence. And that’s the worst thing about Upstreamers: we’re just as vain as the Downstreamers, just too vain to admit it.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-36757818719518560292010-09-10T08:06:00.004+01:002010-09-17T17:53:37.140+01:00Thinking inside the boxWednesday 8th September<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXApe24nZ3EqXn064GUdXKGXKTqDnN2sFGF4XSJufFByrKuxMrZ_IvzX2u3yUPIvhtwacr-YOkiF1h3l2YPLr7aCVQzXm_9tBfNiBQ4AasRu8VDadf4Ms-0FSY6anHhG64cPEbvnXc7V0/s1600/no+pics.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="53" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXApe24nZ3EqXn064GUdXKGXKTqDnN2sFGF4XSJufFByrKuxMrZ_IvzX2u3yUPIvhtwacr-YOkiF1h3l2YPLr7aCVQzXm_9tBfNiBQ4AasRu8VDadf4Ms-0FSY6anHhG64cPEbvnXc7V0/s200/no+pics.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><i>For reasons which escape me, Sudan bans the use of cameras without an official permit. And even though South Sudan seeks independence from the North next year, the rule still applies. Indeed my team leader tells me that a policeman reprimanded a visitor recently for looking </i>too long<i> at the bridge over the Nile. <o:p></o:p></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It’s not that I set out to be different, but I’m not very good at copying the way other people do things. Long ago, I went for a job with a consultancy firm. A man in a suit chatted with me in a bar at Victoria, then invited me to an event called an Assessment Centre, where they gave us pastries and orange juice. They talked a lot about thinking outside the box, pushing the envelope, and blue sky thinking. Next day, the chap in the suit rang me to say that perhaps I thought just a little too far out of the box for his clients. Mrs M professed brief indignation at his folly, and went off to work.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">This evening I am thinking inside the box. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Like many buildings in Juba, my hotel bedroom is a pre-fab hut. It is made of grey coated metal panels, linked by galvanised struts. They seem to treasure protective plastic on things here, and it hangs like sunburnt skin from the roof. Fortunately my room also comes with air-con and a lady called Saaeda who cleans it and washes my socks. And the hotel seems to have recruited from all over the region to cook rather tasty versions of TexMex, Jalfrezi, Irish stew, and Ugandan matoke plantains.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">My pre-fab is in CAT Alley, as we call it, as this part of the hotel “camp” is largely populated by freelancers under contract to CATatonix, the celebrated consulting firm. CAT Alley is also home to many cats who remind me of Mandallay’s dear departed Trinny. We had thought her looks to be Egyptian, but these pussies' fine bone structure, ginger blotches on white fur, and ringed tails suggest that Trinny too may have been South Sudanese. Either way, Trinny must have been a lady of the Nile. For the great glory of my hotel is that it is on the west bank of the White Nile, a great conveyor of water, a quarter mile wide, by which we eat our big East African breakfasts and dinners. We also take pastries from the breakfast buffet in paper napkins for lunch.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In the morning, my associates and I leave our tin boxes, and enter a 4X4. We bounce over the dirt till we get to Juba’s small network of paved roads, and then fan out with our papers and pastries, to our various ministries and offices. These are also largely in pre-fabs of grey coated metal panels. We spend much of the day stabbing at our rectangular laptops, to the background of each others’ conversations through thin walls. My boss entertains me by talking about the plays he is writing, and his forthcoming book on Juba Arabic, that he says is a pidgin of classical Arabic. He skypes his brother in Khartoum, and the whole family joins in. Then he shares a bag of hot, fat cassava chips with me. My laptop goes on standby.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In order not to lose my wits entirely, I have to seize the sliver of day between the working box and the sleeping box. So at 5.30 I chivvy my zealous fellows to the 4X4 to jig back to our night-time cuboids, where we can watch the rectangular portable television, or type more rectangular emails, if there is a connection.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Running shoes on. My relaxed team leader says it may not be wise to leave the beaten track. The war has been over for five years, but land mines are still a possibility. He later explains that the landmines in question are deposited by people who lack access to Thomas Crapper's contraption, or even to a pit-latrine. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">At last, a brief moment without rectangles. The cars, motorbikes, children and animals criss-cross between the pot holes and obstacles. Many of the tracks are just made by feet and vehicles. All around are hovels of laths, wattle, cardboard, plastic sheeting emblazoned with UNHCR, most homes barely more than shelters, and no taller than me. These seem to be returnees from abroad, or country people in search of work. People sit, wash, cook, eat in the open. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">I hear voices, African languages of which I know nothing, then suddenly a few slightly more familiar sounds, perhaps Juba Arabic. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Old men and children cheer me on, and some join me for a few yards. We negotiate a herd of goats being driven towards the market pen, where men holding tethered animals are in earnest debate. A rich goaty aroma rises with the dust. Tall long-horned cattle look over the fencing. Beside a footpath is a rough plot patterned with mounds, perhaps for cassava plants. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"> “Morning!” shout the children at any time of day. Or “How are you?”, and once “Give me one pound.” They carry jerry cans to fetch water, from where I have not discovered. Ours comes from a borehole below the hotel. It is clean, but makes the tea taste of salt and earth. Suddenly I get a biff on the bum, and turn to see a young girl, waving her plastic water can triumphantly, shrieking with laughter with her brother.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The dusty remnant of sunset at my back guides me East over the potholes to the flashing green illuminated palms of the hotel entrance. I sit by the blackening surface of the Nile, and watch ghostly branches bobbing in the water. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">If I’m honest, I’m rather disappointed that no one has apparently seen the moon tonight in time to declare Eid, so we could all have a day off. I could take my laptop through the heat down to the trees and easy chairs beside the river. But they haven’t. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Instead I lie on the bed, and two miracles happen. Mrs M hooks my phone up to Skype, despite her professed ignorance of any invention more modern than the Biro.The other miracle is that all three Ms find their tongues to grace me with a version of their lives appropriate to an old man.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
Tomorrow is another box. I wonder what’s in the envelope.<br />
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<i>Sorry for late posting. T 'internet isn't what it might be here.</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-12369955271315165202010-09-03T07:22:00.005+01:002010-09-05T15:49:29.697+01:00There be Rhinos1st September 2010<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEggmf1lhgXQi0UGrfxU1qInptcWA-1XM8tOj1qMVdWAApp5w5viVepjAy74uR1oB0x6_EWv0EM8YApqCPhpcapg3VKMMxv2lVXk4DKdvmcHGgmuSP7bicZNtzXiloAhGWGsbmGxiCf3Y/s1600/albrecht-durer-rhinoceros-pub-dom-473.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEggmf1lhgXQi0UGrfxU1qInptcWA-1XM8tOj1qMVdWAApp5w5viVepjAy74uR1oB0x6_EWv0EM8YApqCPhpcapg3VKMMxv2lVXk4DKdvmcHGgmuSP7bicZNtzXiloAhGWGsbmGxiCf3Y/s320/albrecht-durer-rhinoceros-pub-dom-473.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I was some way from Marple Bridge, when I received the call to Southern Sudan. The entire Mandall family was strolling to the jetty for a day-trip from Puerto Pollenca in Mallorca, when I had to deal with the embarrassment of having the phone in one hand and suntan lotion in the other. Ten days later I find myself en route to Juba. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Amsterdam is <i>Tulips</i>: Schiphol Airport has boxes and boxes of them, all frills and colours, all wire and paper, standing to attention next to the travelators. There are bargain buckets of bulbs outside the gift shops, and fibre-glass tulips four foot high too for children to play among.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Nairobi is <i>Elephants</i>: arriving passengers at Jomo Kenyatta are heralded by great plastic heads, crowned “DUTY FREE”, and stationed at intervals along the curved mall. I settle in the soft seats (it’s 6 hours till my flight to Juba) at the Savanna Self-service, cheek by jowl with the Java Bar and Lounge. It must be continental drift. There’s plenty of time to sample the tea at both. It’s made with frothy milk from an Espresso machine. At last, here is something authentic and slightly dangerous. Like the tea on Kenya Airlines, this treat is a stout liquor of tang and tannin, nothing like the usual lazy Lipton, lolling in its own tepid mess. It can even shake a trunk at Mrs M's Red Label. Half way through my first brew, I’m ready to charge despite three hours sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Juba, I learned from Mandallay’s daily, is to be <i>Rhinos</i>: at least this is the vision of some consultants. Here’s the blueprint: build a city in the shape of a rhino 10 km away from the current site, and move everyone in. Raze the old town and anyone who happens to be left. It will cost £6.5 billion, a snip at 5 times Southern Sudan’s annual budget. Somehow, I don’t think the consultants will be living at the dung end. Still, I suppose they could put the military in the horn, and perhaps they could co-locate the red light district. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98JOH5IBBjT8ke8WpaukT9immh3Kp4h5PZZRMsckQDLGiINQ1DUCqHX8JsapAmCPiEOpFYSBWv9wOxFB_4zrFRFuW0RmTbyzJUeDS7xHzK88kk3vk73tXiuM0D1FkCGlu3Ni3_v9qxhI/s1600/Pg-25-rhino-city-ma_435062t.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98JOH5IBBjT8ke8WpaukT9immh3Kp4h5PZZRMsckQDLGiINQ1DUCqHX8JsapAmCPiEOpFYSBWv9wOxFB_4zrFRFuW0RmTbyzJUeDS7xHzK88kk3vk73tXiuM0D1FkCGlu3Ni3_v9qxhI/s320/Pg-25-rhino-city-ma_435062t.jpg" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Yes, we consultants like to keep things simple </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In which case, here's something I knocked up earlier, a blueprint for the redesign of Nairobi.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIV58wshIs-IjX4ZScalk0Ciw9JRfu_vTuEYmWxmksY-BmMtE4W9El3bfFtXjhah5FW7UqYU-wqdZs4c60GjaXCBaqFFmnyyFicJSaC18uGLcsK8qzW9oin4nw_1bWHK0uLmmYqWZpbTQ/s1600/elmer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIV58wshIs-IjX4ZScalk0Ciw9JRfu_vTuEYmWxmksY-BmMtE4W9El3bfFtXjhah5FW7UqYU-wqdZs4c60GjaXCBaqFFmnyyFicJSaC18uGLcsK8qzW9oin4nw_1bWHK0uLmmYqWZpbTQ/s320/elmer.jpg" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The advantage of my layout, as you will see, is that there is considerably more scope for peri-urban sprawl, once the elephant is full up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">My bill’s in the post. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">* **</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
I've no idea whether there are rhinos, mythical beasts if ever there were, anywhere near Juba, though I have heard there is a huge area of open country in Southern Sudan surprisingly undisturbed by the war, and full of wildlife. <br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Sitting here in Nairobi airport, Juba feels a very long way away still, almost as far as Nairobi from Marple Bridge. Southern Sudan, of which Juba is the capital, seems to be a place known more by rumour than experience. One freelance companion claims to have visited the place, but that was passing through in 1979. I downloaded The Lonely Planet Guide, but it only covers the top half of Sudan. It stops at the Nuba Mountains. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Beyond is Southern Sudan, a nation-in-waiting that hopes to become independent after a referendum next year. The same article says it’s dubbed the world’s first “pre-failed state”, but that sounds to me about as full of myth as the rhino: let’s wait and see. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Enough!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Marple Bridge is Brambles, but hardly unique for that. Perhaps the Apple Lady, as we know her, has left a box of cookers beside her garden gate, with a sign saying “help yourself”.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">I see<i> Cheshire Life </i>is running a feature on Marple Bridge this month. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><i>Marple Bridge celebrates the modern northern kitchen. This fine recipe for Lambrini Apples was given to me by local author, Tom Mandall. <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><i>“Take 6 baking apples, or else buy them at the Co-op. I found my brambles in the public car park by the Gardeners Arms in Offerton, avoiding the lower brambles for obvious reasons. I p</i><i>icked enough brambles to fill up the little box between the seats in the Fiesta. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><i>“Core the apples, making sure you remove all the toe-nails. (The boys probably won’t eat them anyway, but Never Give Up Hope.) Score them round the equator, so that they puff up nicely, unless you think they will provide more entertainment if they explode all over the Aga. [This recipe is for </i>Cheshire Life<i>, after all.]<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><i>"Wash the brambles too as a concession to hygiene. Stir into them about two tablespoons of unrefined sugar. (This may be difficult to find locally, as we are not terribly refined ourselves.) Stuff the apples, and put them all in a baking dish.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><i>"Search the fridge for something to stop this drying out. I found a tail-end of Lambrini from M2’s Results Day bash. Sweet, vaguely grapey and alcoholic. It must have been for the girls. <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><i>"Feel your home fill with the autumn warmth of brambles, apples and industrial ethanol. Goes well with cream, but the boys prefer the yellow stuff.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-66512741921721184162010-07-29T22:09:00.005+01:002010-07-29T23:29:25.231+01:00Dog DaysYes: it's summer time, and the Mandalls are off to Mallorca. We Ms like <a href="http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/mark-lawson/battle-for-room-service.htm">journeys to all the safe places,</a> saying which should ensure that something goes terribly, terribly wrong. <br />
<br />
If I knew where to look, and if the heavens weren't so murky here in the Bridge, I expect the dog star would be telling me that we are deep in the silly season. What with the Leeds - Liverpool canal drying out, and Mr Cameron on safari, the signs are there.<br />
<br />
T'internet really should be closed for the summer, but only the most confident freelancer strays far from his or her iLance.<br />
<br />
We can't stop the world entirely, but I hope a few other amateur Bloggers will follow my lead: blogger off to Benidorm and leave the blathering to the blasted professional scribblers. It's what we pay them for.<br />
<br />
Thank you for all the lovely things you have had to say about my column since my first <i>View from the Bridge</i> in December. I see that it was about <a href="http://tom-mandall.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00Z&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00Z&max-results=1">Holiday Time</a>. Well, well.<br />
<br />
I seem to have raised one or two smiles, the children haven't entirely disowned me, and Mrs M is hastening home from the salt mines as I write, to celebrate the remnant of her birthday. <br />
<br />
That's quite enough for me.<br />
<br />
I'll be back in September. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tom.<br />
<br />
<br />
PS If you're stuck for something to do on another drizzly summer evening in the Bridge, apart from watching <i>Toy Story 3</i> at a proper cinema like the <a href="http://www.regent-marple.co.uk/">Regent</a>, you could go and see if the kids laugh at Olly Gomm playing <i><a href="http://www.royalexchangetheatre.org.uk/event.aspx?id=223">Charley's Aunt</a></i> at The Royal Exchange.<br />
<br />
Mrs M had to give M to M resuscitation. It's on till 7th August. After that you're on your own till Dr Faustus in September. Can't wait.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX1f48EHdp04R2Gc6_mqt-P8m64R-btQSTQJyIbiU21l47RASTLwAQ_RNtRkVlLNmmK885oyt6Qxre1eLlgBHiW0lqwu2zj_tS1JC2UUg5VRkVgJkdkRDvDEeqEEwbY7TclM9BbggKStw/s1600/charleysauntlge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX1f48EHdp04R2Gc6_mqt-P8m64R-btQSTQJyIbiU21l47RASTLwAQ_RNtRkVlLNmmK885oyt6Qxre1eLlgBHiW0lqwu2zj_tS1JC2UUg5VRkVgJkdkRDvDEeqEEwbY7TclM9BbggKStw/s320/charleysauntlge.jpg" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-61283674243242141572010-07-23T07:00:00.067+01:002010-07-23T15:04:03.918+01:00Nightmare on Town Street<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5a-9RrZf5FjWs-OeragZByPGrY321yPy5FDAlxRwX564jMSQJ1HIbcBc9FG3ajVIAkQf6UGDzbuIHtibtqbCzFK82YA8uMNEU5hQ7UasmEOLeAViRN3KkYoyfleGFQNztPSJVn8PG5rI/s1600/quaker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5a-9RrZf5FjWs-OeragZByPGrY321yPy5FDAlxRwX564jMSQJ1HIbcBc9FG3ajVIAkQf6UGDzbuIHtibtqbCzFK82YA8uMNEU5hQ7UasmEOLeAViRN3KkYoyfleGFQNztPSJVn8PG5rI/s200/quaker.jpg" width="195" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: center;"> <i>Quaker. By Pepsico. </i></div><div style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: white;">My eighty-two year old uncle bounced into the kitchen at one minute to eight.</div><div style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: white;">“Where’s my breakfast?” he demands with the innocent and radiant beam of one who has already been up for an hour contemplating the latest volume of his guru’s teachings. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">“And what would you <i>like </i>for breakfast, Lance?” Mrs M and the boys all have excellent hearing, nurtured in the tranquility of Mandallay. However, as they are all elsewhere in their temples of service or pleasure, I am free to unleash my diaphragm so that Uncle Lance gets the full 80 decibels.<br />
<br />
Lance lives alone. He likes solitude. Sometimes, when he feels quite alone, he works on a very big landscape painting. Every year he sends his family a card with a miniature of a recent picture on it. Mrs M’s late mother kept them all in a shoe box.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">Living alone, he has little use for his howling, banging, hearing aid, so he left it behind. “Accidentally,” he says. “Accidentally on purpose,” I shout back. “No, just porridge please,” he grins, exposing an impressively preserved mouthful of tombstones, gaily painted by half a century of tobacco and wine, both of which he now eschews.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">“Water please, not milk. If it’s not too much trouble.” I remind myself that I am delighted to offer this small hospitality to Uncle L, for he has given me gentle refuge since I was 16. After all, even <i>I </i>can make porridge, provided we have oats in the cupboard.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">Oats.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">“We seem to have run out. I’ll just nip to the shop.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">In the words of the ditty adopted by la famille Mandall on a particularly challenging summer holiday to Foreign Parts: <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da3zjQgEy0E">It was supposed to be so easy.</a></i></div><br />
I spin backwards out of Mandallay, avoiding both the Harrytown School Bus and another round of “if it’s not too much trouble."<br />
<br />
I know too well how it goes from there. <br />
<br />
“<i>If it’s not too much trouble” ... “I could have toast perhaps” ... “I’m not sure about that”... </i><br />
<br />
<i>“I always have porridge at home” ...</i><br />
<br />
and finally<br />
<br />
<i>“I think that porridge would be best really” ...</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Silence. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then <i><span style="line-height: 115%;">[da capo]</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> (what's that, asks M3? Take it from the top. Or, if you prefer, chop his head off.) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“If it’s not too much trouble” ...</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xMFUxB6e5ogvq770EcmcVoTaU_V8yeukz69xSlhBQF8f8jZvHQBzhxvvSuD9G4ISB_iIm0f42CFfRNMuwqLIwntUvUoHP_-b8ZAvL5c-CmI5ofyxFm5PIbq97O-vmt22Eu3UcRNi9rs/s1600/oatsosimple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xMFUxB6e5ogvq770EcmcVoTaU_V8yeukz69xSlhBQF8f8jZvHQBzhxvvSuD9G4ISB_iIm0f42CFfRNMuwqLIwntUvUoHP_-b8ZAvL5c-CmI5ofyxFm5PIbq97O-vmt22Eu3UcRNi9rs/s200/oatsosimple.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Oats? So Simple. Then I remembered that Mrs M had said something about Town Street Stores being closed, and conjectured whether that was for refurbishment, or perhaps for selling too much C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>5</sub>OH to the younger members of the Mandall family. I really must pay attention.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
Perhaps for old times' sake, they haven’t taken down the signs offering Red Stripe and Barcadi, but behind them is now a neatly fitted layer of newspaper. I was delighted to see a small notice for a meeting of MESS, which stands for the Marple, Marple Bridge and <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;">Mellor</layer></layer></layer></layer></layer></layer> Energy Saving Scheme or similar, on or around June 18<sup>th</sup>. Would that be 2009? I had the impression that the planet is somewhat "last year", but I promise to look further into this MESS, when the opportunity arises.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
Losing the Spar, as we still refer to Town Bridge Stores, is a bit like discovering that the Bridge has lost a tooth. <i>You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. </i>The old lays are the best, as we knights say. Mind you, a few more parking spaces in Marple Bridge might have given Town Street Stores a better chance. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">The new Post Mistress has been quick to find the pulse of the Bridge. She has pushed aside a whole row of Jiffy Bags and geometry sets to make room for eggs, instant coffee and Fruit’n’Fibre. But, alas, there are no Oats on offer. Still, they manage to give me today’s <i>Guardian </i>for Uncle L, and I order one for tomorrow, for delivery with our <i>Beano</i>. Tomorrow’s <i>Guardian </i>is just about the only other thing that the Post Office doesn't stock. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">I finally get home by 8.45 with Lance’s Quaker Oats - “oh, Quaker, my favourite!” - and a bogof of biscuits from the Cooperative (G<i>oo</i>d with H<i>oo</i>b N<i>oo</i>bs) which I shall hide from the boys and from myself. Fortunately Mrs M usually guesses where to find them for us.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">By nine o’clock Uncle Lance is in deep contemplation with the Vedas, and the porridge has landed heavily where my diaphragm was before.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">I steel myself for an ordinary day in Daddy's Study. Visor down. Still, I'll get out and shake a leg, when the Quaker allows.There's not much to report from the Bridge, or up in the wilds of <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-1" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-1" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-1" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-1" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-1" style="color: black;">Mellor</layer></layer></layer></layer></layer> today.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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Except for a dancer in a pink tutu on that garden gate? I turn around but he’s gone. I’m imagining it. Maybe they cut some Shakers into the Quakers. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSt-QmKVHU4-kuaO3_PEKWf9JA7TRHFaCCrDcRvOChZ1tc96_cpY9_oY2PF8x1Ah_FGSPF56gp54jb9kiEC1H4hscNxtfPv1DCA7qV6B5P3aWQp6VB6HrVNbN3S4v5Ez1KMTNluY9gcoc/s1600/scream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSt-QmKVHU4-kuaO3_PEKWf9JA7TRHFaCCrDcRvOChZ1tc96_cpY9_oY2PF8x1Ah_FGSPF56gp54jb9kiEC1H4hscNxtfPv1DCA7qV6B5P3aWQp6VB6HrVNbN3S4v5Ez1KMTNluY9gcoc/s200/scream.jpg" width="150" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Take it easy now, Tom. This isn’t what we're used to on Longhurst Lane. I shouldn't have changed the pills.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcO3_l8SZpJLaABjDy_NyrQZ30HZhyy2C_IHB2hSNSIGNn_Gxi-LOZKTiN2qKHxoogV76H291sGuPgTghboA2WXnfG_1JRTCHcj8mMXepCyOhhU5WzoA7rP-o_m8Z98zve177V122MiYM/s1600/saga+good+time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcO3_l8SZpJLaABjDy_NyrQZ30HZhyy2C_IHB2hSNSIGNn_Gxi-LOZKTiN2qKHxoogV76H291sGuPgTghboA2WXnfG_1JRTCHcj8mMXepCyOhhU5WzoA7rP-o_m8Z98zve177V122MiYM/s200/saga+good+time.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><br />
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I'm not sure I like the way she’s looking at me either. Doesn’t she normally do Vestry Group with that old rocker chap?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2zZqbCYqVwZ0DAbLB-GZtRoHrtvRL3SN80pk3g509NLPoTsjBv9VXy9TQ7VGZbU4t3xMPd7xae0IryWZYdnpfrsF7TEC5OvI97pUXJ0zwkn_c_YXLfutuNq0ZOU-GcCSgPi2krIBJs8/s1600/air+guitar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2zZqbCYqVwZ0DAbLB-GZtRoHrtvRL3SN80pk3g509NLPoTsjBv9VXy9TQ7VGZbU4t3xMPd7xae0IryWZYdnpfrsF7TEC5OvI97pUXJ0zwkn_c_YXLfutuNq0ZOU-GcCSgPi2krIBJs8/s200/air+guitar.jpg" width="153" /></a></div><br />
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That's him! One should not demean people just because they are old, especially in a place like the Bridge, especially when one's own kit is running low on 3-in-1. A gentleman of advanced years may still strum his lute pleasingly...<br />
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... but I can't help thinking that this trio means trouble, even without their vuvuzelas.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9Zj3enIfwZKlkhjcROipbBpx8ZoRohUG_sXoC1lH8j91Y-f1W5cdqSNhk2iaNa0z6bKfdejXCGFZUg0LaWjOooxMAH9e_GB-7jmJs5qgLQMjeWLpzsI3WS7_uhrmMJWPNe8XCw2W1WU/s1600/ingerland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9Zj3enIfwZKlkhjcROipbBpx8ZoRohUG_sXoC1lH8j91Y-f1W5cdqSNhk2iaNa0z6bKfdejXCGFZUg0LaWjOooxMAH9e_GB-7jmJs5qgLQMjeWLpzsI3WS7_uhrmMJWPNe8XCw2W1WU/s320/ingerland.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Perhaps they were downgraded on the way back from Joburg.<br />
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Is that why they closed Town Street Stores? <i>It must be the Oats!</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">Dangling feet tend to make a freelance uneasy, particularly in black and white.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Ak8Q4CqOJvBUphtxnAxR_4ZV4MrZJ85d5xm4jiU7YbCQpqQvSo5MHmU-fTEbwt_3Qs1EIILjDijEJrZu5KA6bF49T0zsj72c82fQsX8sCPeCZdkr9f-9JcKUCClB7aNaoxwKm026MvY/s1600/lamppost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Ak8Q4CqOJvBUphtxnAxR_4ZV4MrZJ85d5xm4jiU7YbCQpqQvSo5MHmU-fTEbwt_3Qs1EIILjDijEJrZu5KA6bF49T0zsj72c82fQsX8sCPeCZdkr9f-9JcKUCClB7aNaoxwKm026MvY/s320/lamppost.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu8KQQ8KTZuQCN4QwXOh9T2KO7l89ATgi9R0Dhet_SxkzPAO8z26rbgafFqKMq8JmPQLKYRLjJx5c2BGGADkn1jnXUSzCbYCt7Gk39FTMhPfEveYYVPq5tO8ttvFBbhLp91FFy_7AZrM/s1600/minni+the+lynx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu8KQQ8KTZuQCN4QwXOh9T2KO7l89ATgi9R0Dhet_SxkzPAO8z26rbgafFqKMq8JmPQLKYRLjJx5c2BGGADkn1jnXUSzCbYCt7Gk39FTMhPfEveYYVPq5tO8ttvFBbhLp91FFy_7AZrM/s320/minni+the+lynx.jpg" width="240" /></a><i> </i><br />
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<i>Oh My Three Letter Acronym</i><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXla1Rr5tAWdPkMpX58QjFiJOJfU0rUpOr5_2E3YD57mQvsXTJIFPOxcTdAj3N3JpMmY_FxPTnTP78FYuY3tLKhpCGF4z_HKCVZZ2iE8SBf1RVvNAmiJGPqY423kgkqOnsQotJUDOpPS0/s1600/hangin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXla1Rr5tAWdPkMpX58QjFiJOJfU0rUpOr5_2E3YD57mQvsXTJIFPOxcTdAj3N3JpMmY_FxPTnTP78FYuY3tLKhpCGF4z_HKCVZZ2iE8SBf1RVvNAmiJGPqY423kgkqOnsQotJUDOpPS0/s320/hangin.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-1" style="color: black;">How</layer> long has he been hanging on?</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9iwnmeFBeoT-1rti2YtQQHYT2b-c0e4qvIFljLQM_EnWipdHTxOV7RD7g4LbjYcDzxEbWMvjtHRMJiKDP5W0OjHEZauwvlptYGFdX215Uj2P2SCrnpxXviVG-gwCH1ADV_Xx97PP4N8/s1600/theydidnhaveta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9iwnmeFBeoT-1rti2YtQQHYT2b-c0e4qvIFljLQM_EnWipdHTxOV7RD7g4LbjYcDzxEbWMvjtHRMJiKDP5W0OjHEZauwvlptYGFdX215Uj2P2SCrnpxXviVG-gwCH1ADV_Xx97PP4N8/s320/theydidnhaveta.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<i>They didn’t need to do that to her.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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<layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-0" style="color: black;">Soft!</layer> What beating wing or cape<br />
Delights my thrumming ear? <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
<i>Is it a crow? Can it be?</i><br />
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He went <i>that</i>-a-way!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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No <i>this</i>-a-way!<i> </i><br />
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<i>"I </i>may be a confused stereotype but <i>you </i>badly need the diversity."</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;"><br />
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<a href="http://www.mellortennisclub.co.uk/">Anyone for <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-5" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-5" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-5" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-5" style="color: black;">tennis</layer></layer></layer></layer>?</a><br />
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<b> </b><br />
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<b>The <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-2" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-2" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-2" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-2" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-2" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-2" style="color: black;">Mellor</layer></layer></layer></layer></layer></layer> <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-5" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-5" style="color: black;">Show</layer></layer> is at <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-3" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-3" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-3" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-3" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-3" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-3" style="color: black;">Mellor</layer></layer></layer></layer></layer></layer> Primary School on Saturday 24th July. </b><br />
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<b>There's even a <a href="http://www.buxtonac.org.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=480&sid=37a8fea946d30c0b05845bf9286b5cbc">hop and skip over the hills</a> to Smithy Lane Farm for any freelancers with a flickering residue of the competitive flame. 12 noon: three quid on the day at <a href="http://stockport.enquira.co.uk/sports-recreation/sports-clubs/mellor-sports-club-l3441.html"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-4" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-4" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-4" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-4" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-4" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-4" style="color: black;">Mellor</layer></layer></layer></layer></layer></layer> Sports <layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-6" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-6" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-6" style="color: black;"><layer id="google-toolbar-hilite-6" style="color: black;">Club</layer></layer></layer></layer></a></b><b>. </b><br />
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<b> </b> </div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-72773012867905249932010-07-16T18:00:00.007+01:002010-07-21T12:09:28.245+01:00Cry Freedom<div class="MsoNormal">I return to the theme of <a href="http://tom-mandall.blogspot.com/2010/05/keep-red-flag-flying.html">waving flags</a>. <br />
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Here I am, right up to the minute. It’s only five days since the final whistle and I’ve just taken in <i>Wavin’ Flag</i>, the official Coca-Cola anthem of the FIFA World Cup. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I hate football.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Wavin’ Flag </i>was on the radio again. M3 had imbibed the lyric and was singing along to it. So I got him to tell me the words. Loud and slow, as to a foreigner, which I am.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Once upon a time, I may have imagined, like the song’s author, K’naan, that “When I get older, I will be stronger.” But I certainly I will not admit that I ever fancied that “They’ll call me Freedom, just like a Wavin’ Flag.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So why is it that I feel a small flutter in the breast, a tear behind the visor? Drat! Yet again, Coca-Cola is teaching the world to sing, and yet again I’m a sweet sucker for it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I find it helps me to apply the concept of freedom generously, and then I find it in plenty. Once upon a time, for instance, I had the freedom to stare at any one of the four walls of my empty cell, or even at the TV. Today I have the freedom to decide whether or not to attempt to evict M3 from the Mandall marital bedroom, where he is demonstrating remarkable skills in multi-tasking: channel-hopping, reviewing Facebook, conducting a stretch-test on the laptop cable, complaining that his phone hasn’t got internet, and demanding that I (that’s right: <i>me</i>) that <i>I </i>fetch his phone from the Fiesta, because <i>I</i> offered to get it fixed, so<i> I </i>must retrieve it. (He found the wretched thing in the creatures formerly known as his jeans.) </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Such freedom! Happiness is mine.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At this moment, I am claiming the freedom to shut myself in the L-shaped cupboard, laughingly called Daddy’s Study.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>“Give me freedom, give me fire, give me reason, take me higher”</i>, sings K’naan. Perhaps it’s the big Zulu thump on the beat. Or perhaps it’s just that damned F word: I can’t help it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Cry<i> Freedom!</i> The word, especially in a South African context, makes this freelancer weak. The chains of the profit-and-loss and the logical framework, the environmental appraisal and the Executive Summary all fall to the floor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>It’s Sunday 1<sup>st</sup> May 1994, and I’m flying into Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg for a small joust at the expense of the tax payers of the European Community. (Do you remember those halcyon days, when we were still a </i>Community<i> and the whiff of Ludwig Van’s </i>Eau de Joy<i> still lingered over the Brandenburg Gates? Ah, </i>Freedom<i>!)<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK-IQQxoYY2keuBlVeT77q4u-s8h7B0Ft2w9_F_po-mVhwiqBbIGSZzSo-NwnvqTCj99gmbfgwl_wyGo0HXuRseqthPrZFROGpV4iHm3_AXNZbUQZWlvUT5rSRVNaczpKaMGok00nMr7I/s1600/Mandela.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK-IQQxoYY2keuBlVeT77q4u-s8h7B0Ft2w9_F_po-mVhwiqBbIGSZzSo-NwnvqTCj99gmbfgwl_wyGo0HXuRseqthPrZFROGpV4iHm3_AXNZbUQZWlvUT5rSRVNaczpKaMGok00nMr7I/s200/Mandela.jpg" width="130" /></a><i>The polling stations for the first </i>free<i> South African elections have just closed. From the 747 window, I see a new South African Y-Front flag flying over the police hut by the runway. Later that night, Uncle Percy stops the car in an empty white suburban street. He steals me an election poster off a lamp post. He holds it at arms’ length and stands quite still, beaming back into the smiling face of Nelson Mandela. Madiba (as we came to know him) got a bit bent in my suitcase, but it’s still here in the cellar at Mandallay, in amongst the Mandall family’s abandoned instruments of music, sport and torture.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">K’naan didn’t start out with the Coca-Cola FIFA version of <i>Wavin’ Flag</i>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxmEd9lcn0k&feature=player_embedded">This version of Wavin' Flag</a>, on t'internet as northern wags like to call it, seems to be about waiting and wanting in Mogadishu. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: maroon;"><a href="http://www.yoursonglyrics.com/waving-flag-knaan/">Born to a throne, stronger than Rome </a></span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;">But Violent prone, poor people zone</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;"> But it’s my home, all I have known </span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;">Where I got grown, streets we would roam </span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;">But out of the darkness, I came the farthest </span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;">Among the hardest survival </span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;">Learn from these streets, it can be bleak </span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: maroon;">Except no defeat, surrender retreat<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxmEd9lcn0k&feature=player_embedded"></a> </div><div class="MsoNormal">* * * <br />
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My job is to make you smile but it’s hard today. Trinny has died, beloved sister of Susannah, our friendly little two-year old cat who has kept us all company and made us laugh on dark nights and sunny days. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Trinny was victim of a hit-and-run driver outside Mandallay. In the daytime, we Bridgers are the most considerate of drivers, waving each other through, smiling and greeting on our way to the station or the church. But when night seizes the Bridge, we like nothing better than to clip a carousing teenager, or crush a crazy kitten – then scarper.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Trinny sometimes denied that she lived on the edge, but usually owned up. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP8_7RBGIRFXSCfs_f9xAEAzw6uJKuPmg6XXeV83ECtx2Jr3IXRlbw5T_2x2JQRppyB3rEQ5kSYH2sknq1xQdwB5U5ke6MQYEH6UBdFQOhTJOUG4KlXz3fywuc6Fl8XHxHbKykVFD_vCs/s1600/Trinny+in+tartan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP8_7RBGIRFXSCfs_f9xAEAzw6uJKuPmg6XXeV83ECtx2Jr3IXRlbw5T_2x2JQRppyB3rEQ5kSYH2sknq1xQdwB5U5ke6MQYEH6UBdFQOhTJOUG4KlXz3fywuc6Fl8XHxHbKykVFD_vCs/s200/Trinny+in+tartan.jpg" width="138" /></a>Looking out of an attic window one day, I observed parallel wobbly white scratches on the slates of the West Wing. A few days later, Mrs M brought Trinny in, confused, panting, and bleeding. We kept a vigil all night, and by morning Trinny was fine. She professed not to know anything about it, and said that her cat food must have been spiked. In any case, she promised Polly, our old bitch* retriever, not to do it again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
But there was no stopping her. The roof of the West Wing has more stripes than Trinny’s tartan top.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I remonstrated with Trinny about the risks of base-jumping. Of course, there’s nothing you can do. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“<i>Freedom</i>!” she miaoued, and skipped off across the road, wavin’ her bag.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVDgk6P9WqGSmBuin1GA5gJYG_a1YQ9sTPlNZXlaXpQGnDcawxfyuYL7vxQ95ykRG6p1xS6EN_ySRJYDqnx1dxFHkte3EsyZjO0PrtwzIakK-FFO8EM-qNG4Mgdc3gvHFe7TTYlrz2npo/s1600/dior2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVDgk6P9WqGSmBuin1GA5gJYG_a1YQ9sTPlNZXlaXpQGnDcawxfyuYL7vxQ95ykRG6p1xS6EN_ySRJYDqnx1dxFHkte3EsyZjO0PrtwzIakK-FFO8EM-qNG4Mgdc3gvHFe7TTYlrz2npo/s320/dior2.jpg" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i>So long Trinny</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<i>*Polly is the old bitch formerly known as Bruno in this column. Polly told me she doesn't do butch, and didn't want to keep up the pretence any longer. I do appreciate, incidentally, my continuity editors who check my column for errors. Thanks to you, Mandallay is settling down to a standard location and orthography on Longhurst Lane. Your corrections give this old freelancer that rare and lovely feeling that he is being listened to. </i><br />
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<b>NOTICES<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Deaths </b></div><br />
<b>HADDOCK Fannie, nee Mae, and Johnny </b>found capsized in their tank on 14th July. Married only for one week, Fannie and Johnny have gone to re-join their beloved <a href="http://tom-mandall.blogspot.com/2010/07/just-thought.html">Freddie</a>, who departed this life on the 7th of this month.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">WOODALL Trinny </span></b></span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">suddenly on Longhurst Lane on Monday. Missed by her sister Susannah, by all the Mandalls, and possibly by the bitch, Polly. Laid to rest ‘neath the Leylandii. Free to roam without fetters. No fish please.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSx5SK34JiZkWSwIlAwUPKw7P3HgwyMHv-vU8XT83m3s7EjqNtZ0LOQ0N7YsWmXFugIEgxq_BKxsvDDSNgvUDTtn0GDTlylQQPJY-GxqqHOEFtaU8jlwJQuxlOIjFRLwL2YTExMG8bsMY/s1600/Trinny+and+roses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSx5SK34JiZkWSwIlAwUPKw7P3HgwyMHv-vU8XT83m3s7EjqNtZ0LOQ0N7YsWmXFugIEgxq_BKxsvDDSNgvUDTtn0GDTlylQQPJY-GxqqHOEFtaU8jlwJQuxlOIjFRLwL2YTExMG8bsMY/s400/Trinny+and+roses.jpg" width="326" /></a></div><br />
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</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-12341888362378908052010-07-16T07:00:00.002+01:002010-07-16T12:07:28.186+01:00Don't worry: it's on the wayUnusually, I have a little business to attend to.<br />
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A fuller edition will be with you later today.<br />
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T.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-81975624983138673282010-07-09T07:00:00.010+01:002010-07-21T12:05:37.716+01:00Just a thought<div class="MsoNormal">It’s just a thought, one of those bats that flits through the empty belfry of the freelancer’s cranium.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">(I’ve heard it said that one of the reasons that we freelancers spend so much time fettling up the lance between campaigns is that we have a short attention span. Bad habits from an early age. Hence, it’s just the one thought. Invoice in the post.) </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This particular thought is a thought about a - never mind. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> <br />
The point is: the following notice has appeared on Stockport Road in Marple. <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Can you see that? It says:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Young drivers THINK</span></span></b></div><br />
There’s a thought. One would like to think that this thought is founded on observation, but I haven’t found any evidence to back it up. However, I expect that it’s the considered view of our friends over at <a href="http://www.stockport.gov.uk/services/transportstreets/trafficservices/"><i>Traffic Services</i></a> in the Stockport Communities, Regeneration and Environment Directorate, CRED for short. (I mustn’t knock CRED. By this time next year, I fear the Big Society will just be a Big Hole, and that our liberal democrat council will have lost its street CRED altogether.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mrs M and M1 rage against this sign every time they pass it. It’s making a terrible mess of the Fiesta. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mrs M is a great defender of modern youth. Returning recently from one of our family outings to Pizza Hut and the <a href="http://www.royalexchangetheatre.org.uk/">Royal Exchange</a> in Manchester, for instance, Mrs M observed that the younger Ms ahead of us were having difficulty persuading a G4S security operative (who has replaced the ticket inspector) at Piccadilly Station to let them board the Marple Express.<br />
<br />
The boys’ rational arguments appeared to be having little impact on Mr G4S: mere boyish reason was nothing to him. I don’t know whether it was the force of Mrs M’s reason, or the end of the rounders bat poking out of her capacious handbag, but, at her appearance, Mr G4S quickly waved the Mandalls and the rest of middle-aged, middle-class rabble onto the <i>Marplestar</i>.<br />
<br />
“They always try it on with the kids,” she said, poking the handle back in her bag. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I don't want to fall out with the family, but I think <i>Traffic Services</i> have got a point. There is plenty of evidence that young <i>people</i> think, and I am not aware of any research that young <i>drivers</i> are an exception. Young people conceivably employ thought in choosing whether to protest against a war or join the army. Some may use thought in the course of their research into the relationship between prime numbers and the Neanderthal genome. Others weigh up the economics of having a baby at 15, while yet others discourse on whether <a href="http://www.mumfordandsons.com/"><i>Mumford and sons</i></a> are <i>arrivistes</i>, and whether their bumbling onto the stage at summer festivals to coincide with their surprise hit single, is not quite as haphazard is it appears. ("Dad," I hear the chorus. "Stop trying to be Down With The Kids." I'm not, I retort. I heard about them on Radio 4. So there.)<br />
<br />
The strongest evidence that young people think, however, is Facebook: young people spend a great deal of time thinking about each other, about themselves, and about hair products.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I suspect that Peter Jenner, the vicar up in Mellor, might agree with <i>Traffic Services. </i>Peter says that he hopes his parish is a place for “seekers” at least as much as for “finders”. We think, we seek, we hope. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If Peter is right, perhaps Marple is a bit different from, say, Alderley Edge, whose portals sport following the message:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjSDFzifGDBGVKwcjdvp2DMEAhe5ohvMxHpI51W2bCmHp7WisLO4TaraxwImuVcWypzOPE7iFDf5LOikL46l-ANtAVSH1eY2NetuV25Tey4HGJeW7uRLUqVCghmF9ziTquvmJBVHlXqHM/s1600/children+please+drive+slowly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjSDFzifGDBGVKwcjdvp2DMEAhe5ohvMxHpI51W2bCmHp7WisLO4TaraxwImuVcWypzOPE7iFDf5LOikL46l-ANtAVSH1eY2NetuV25Tey4HGJeW7uRLUqVCghmF9ziTquvmJBVHlXqHM/s320/children+please+drive+slowly.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div style="color: red; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Children please drive slowly</span></b></div><br />
This, one feels, is addressed to under-aged footballers who have already found themselves in possession of everything that they ever wanted, and have therefore already wrapped their first Lamborghinis around my Zimmer frame.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Back in Marple, and a little further along Stockport Road, <i>Traffic Services</i> – or whoever – exhorts us as follows:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheblWm7P4axY9V1CrlbtGZ8uuGE2-brLjyaduwPDR11AshmGn6ZTjXRd5zNrfGCHw7rMcnIzNPCb8BsoPOlup_dWc9mDKF-hhLxKMZGBJWysShFpmij4OC99lxvdHmF2adZ4q8f3bW3Z4/s1600/07072010143.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheblWm7P4axY9V1CrlbtGZ8uuGE2-brLjyaduwPDR11AshmGn6ZTjXRd5zNrfGCHw7rMcnIzNPCb8BsoPOlup_dWc9mDKF-hhLxKMZGBJWysShFpmij4OC99lxvdHmF2adZ4q8f3bW3Z4/s320/07072010143.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
That's right:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't become a Statistic</span></span></span></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One thing we are never short of is a statistic. 56,817 drivers and riders aged 30 to 39 were involved in <a href="http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesmr/rcgbmainresults2008">recorded UK road collisions in 2008</a>, nearly as many as the 58,846 under-24s. (That's approximate: Mrs M wasn't available to check the figure-work.) What is more, the alcohol level in the blood of thirty-something drivers involved in crashes is much more likely to be over the legal limit (39%), than that of 16-19 year-olds (23%).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Anyway, all I was thinking was that young drivers might like to know this too, before they are crashed into by a drunken git in a bloody Range Rover.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">M3 has just come back from an extended Graffiti workshop at our local <a href="http://www.marplehall.stockport.sch.uk/">Specialist Youth-Wise Communication College</a>. I have suggested that he add a rider (so to speak) to the road sign.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Young drivers THINK</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Thirty-somethings DRINK</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was just a thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>NOTICES<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Deaths<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>MAC </b>our dear goldfish <i>Freddie Mac</i>, on 7<sup>th</sup> July at Mandallay, of a bloated bladder, bravely borne. He leaves his beloved <i>Fannie Mae</i>, and their young friend from Brabyns Fair, <i>John</i>. Freddie is re-united with the Dreamers on high. Donations to Lehman Brothers. No weed please.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Marriages<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>HADDOCK</b> <i>Fannie Mae</i> to <i>Johnny </i>on 7<sup>th</sup> July, after a long engagement. The Bride’s Maids wore salmon, and the periwinkle bouquet was caught by Ann Chovy. Fannie and Johnny plan to honeymoon in Wales, before returning to found a Cordon Bleu School in Mandallay.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-83825353170377859462010-07-02T07:00:00.007+01:002010-07-09T11:30:19.964+01:00Every Little Helps<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mrs M advises me that the key to enjoying a holiday is anticipation. In bed, she reads me extracts of her guide to Majorca.<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">It is but a small step, barely worth donning the slippers for, to a shopping expedition. <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I mustn’t moan. It is true that a holiday is a good excuse to stock up on swimwear, but a forthcoming tour of <i>duty </i>makes the old Barclaycard quiver with anticipation. I can feel its chip gently sizzling in my back pocket. There is no getting away from it: a freelance loves to shop. <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Of course, I would like to shop locally. Viv and Alf’s Post Office in Moor End used to be the place to buy a coal scuttle, a wedge of cheese, and an airmail stamp for Mongolia. Alas, no more. Down on Town Street, butcher bank and booze shop have all gone too - though you can still buy a second-hand book to enjoy at the Royal Scot next door.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Marple Bridge Post Office thrives too, and Town Street Stores does a great line in Bacardi Breezers and Haribo sweets. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I can’t understand what the kids see in Haribos: they would make a tube of green Fruit Gums taste like heaven. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Forget the Haribos, mum. There's not much here for the freelance either.<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Fear not: we still have a clutch of corner shops. On the corner of the M60, down in the valley that is forever Stockport.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Ray the Taxi recalls when the valley was all factories and engine sheds. Now just the viaduct and a few mills remain to remind us of past glories.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk1xgnEoyUzBgdhry51aKsuHqbyXxDJEm3eSnwzk_F9F1eX_AdU39LUbkY99KJeuvZBybNcRnfzIxBvCySmjkE6y3wtttMilPtYVKn5MkLNHrLV27KF0J-MszHf5XaA54kaiBaBvVHLJY/s1600/pear+mill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk1xgnEoyUzBgdhry51aKsuHqbyXxDJEm3eSnwzk_F9F1eX_AdU39LUbkY99KJeuvZBybNcRnfzIxBvCySmjkE6y3wtttMilPtYVKn5MkLNHrLV27KF0J-MszHf5XaA54kaiBaBvVHLJY/s400/pear+mill.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"><i> <o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Pear Mill Stockport<br />
<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesdyson/2747923166/">by James Photo Dyson</a> </span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">The new sheds are retail - much more fun! Here is everything a freelance needs. Just a stone’s throw from the Bridge – provided Dan Bank’s open and you pick the right time of day (or night). </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">B&Q’s got just the thing to touch up my breastplate. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Then there's Decathlon for the </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://tom-mandall.blogspot.com/2010/06/travel-advice-for-marple-bridge.html">collapsible canoe</a>.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">And Tesco’s got everything else. Especially phones.</span></div></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s1600/free+phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s320/free+phone.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> Just what we need! As they say at Tesco's, "<i>Every little help</i>s".</span><br />
<br />
** *<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">On the way home, Dan Bank is closed again. Do you remember those days before the M6 Midlands Link, when traffic jams in Wednesbury lasted until Thursbury? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">What a moment to relive the glory days when the <i>Singing Kettle</i> saved the Mandall dynasty from <i>Pulp Fiction.</i><o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Let’s play <i>Keep the Kettle Boiling</i>.” I offer.<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">“I don’t know any songs: let’s play the shopping game." </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">M3 starts: "I went to Tesco’s and I bought an apple – ” <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Was it an Air Book?” interrupts M2. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“No, it was a green one.” <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“I went to Tesco’s and I bought a Burger Bun and an <i>Apple Air Book</i>” insists M2.<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“I went to Tesco’s and I bought a Hannah Montana Celebration Cake –” <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Girlie. You should have got a Man U cake.” <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Crap. Hate U. Alright a <i>City </i>Celeb Cake, a burger bun and an Air Book”.<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“City begins with an S”. <o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Stupid. Crap begins with C.”<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Enough!</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
M3 has brought along his Quentin Tarantino boxed set. Peace at last.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I'll play the supermarket game all by myself. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I went to Tesco’s and I bought:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">a zapper<i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Ya-yas in Bloom</i><o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">an X-Box</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">a Wii<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">a vile violet vase<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Ultimate cheese-cake<o:p></o:p> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Tsingtsao beer</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">sliced smoked salmon<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">recycling bin</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">The <i>Qu’ran</i></span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">phish food (ice cream) and three phree 3G phones for the boys ...</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s1600/free+phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s200/free+phone.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">... olive oil</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">nobby’s nuts</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">more mobile phones</span> <span style="font-size: small;">... </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s1600/free+phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s200/free+phone.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">... a large lamb leg</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">kinky knickers</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">jelly babies</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">insurance for iPods, and just about everything</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">a house</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">gravy granules</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">fish food for Fannie and Freddie – alright, free fones for the fish too ...</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s1600/free+phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s200/free+phone.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">... England World Cup Razor (special purchase)</span> <span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">DVD players for the back of the Fiesta (buy one get one free) </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“Shut up, dad." M1 this time.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“Why?”</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“You’re annoying me even more than usual.”</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“Every little helps.”</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“Shh. I’m trying to watch this DVD. The screen’s rubbish. Don’t you care about the people in China, dad?"</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“Yeah." M2 joins in. "What's the point? Why didn’t you get some decent ones?”</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">“They were on Bogof. Eat up your phone. It’s getting cold.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s1600/free+phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbzRZeMZcP2XqEuuArG3RhJOblQUeZkmCpZdE12oDXQ8QBLJ2YeM9ZP-NFNCsLF11oNH6qyAXhaOBpDVUNx_9_MskyqIaIuXuapgHbDhNFLiRIdxY1Po62hamuzxi2kWsw_ywf6Wjmg4/s200/free+phone.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Every little helps</span></i></span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-13546805028576843192010-06-25T07:00:00.067+01:002010-06-25T16:26:30.790+01:00Minchinhampton: Escape from Novotel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWV-e90X7y8KIzwm9_l44miygB9ztPWz5Ei-Lis9Bkcwje0uzs8IsXa9NCxXsT8Urmklj3cYc2n4llK-OGfoTDaAWwaqk60i09WpqFccQzVg663MgjOa10BGQIGDdqqQDZb4cSc8g1f9w/s1600/Alcatraz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWV-e90X7y8KIzwm9_l44miygB9ztPWz5Ei-Lis9Bkcwje0uzs8IsXa9NCxXsT8Urmklj3cYc2n4llK-OGfoTDaAWwaqk60i09WpqFccQzVg663MgjOa10BGQIGDdqqQDZb4cSc8g1f9w/s400/Alcatraz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
One of the more challenging features of any expedition is accommodation in the field. The very names of the modern hospitalliers strike fear into the soul of the freelance:<i> Best Western</i> , <i>Jurys </i>[sic] <i>Inn</i>, <i>Novotel</i>. It does not do for the freelancer to ponder exactly what “<i>Holiday</i>”, “<i>Inn</i>” or “<i>Express</i>” may be behind the brick wall next to Junction 39 and a half. <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none;">Here we pause for all who labour in such terror within the <i>Campanile</i> chain that they fear to tell the boss the difference between a belfry and a rabbit-hutch.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Spot the difference:</i><br />
<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSeaUUPyzjLJfXIzUPTIkImEAqxqd170XF96LFkzEpfdzD5XLxFf1_QwSTzaJVmCRWkvatyu2ZHV8fXjKEIMUPy198S3VmZc7_NiF7SKLFWNKyLyqWUTjINM_iwIljuln5YhSDkYIqrOQ/s1600/campanile-venice-vndpal4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSeaUUPyzjLJfXIzUPTIkImEAqxqd170XF96LFkzEpfdzD5XLxFf1_QwSTzaJVmCRWkvatyu2ZHV8fXjKEIMUPy198S3VmZc7_NiF7SKLFWNKyLyqWUTjINM_iwIljuln5YhSDkYIqrOQ/s320/campanile-venice-vndpal4.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6qVtxbJyppnZgyQEMTwRGKFs1g_2ohkqKYRcnWMbJunMtCcJT2HnfBXsjycfZqmIva5oL-Cp5iv-7VK8H32c_FZ_AUuQAT3WE6p8LFmRKkVC1REIrqaA0ZXA7pA8kf8-GhADJED9ZO8/s1600/capanile+hotel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6qVtxbJyppnZgyQEMTwRGKFs1g_2ohkqKYRcnWMbJunMtCcJT2HnfBXsjycfZqmIva5oL-Cp5iv-7VK8H32c_FZ_AUuQAT3WE6p8LFmRKkVC1REIrqaA0ZXA7pA8kf8-GhADJED9ZO8/s320/capanile+hotel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Send not for whom the buzzer buzzes: </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>“this is your automated wake-up call.”</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Therefore, when an outing is in the offing, I turn my surviving synapses to the challenge of escaping the shackles of the hotel chains. <br />
<br />
Relatives are ideal: they are cheap, hospitable, and are generally approved by Mrs M. My relatives and I are always glad to see each other, and we can all be confident that I will be gone in a day or two.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So it is that I find myself in the company of my mother – Mrs M, <i>Senior</i>, of course – in her new Gloucestershire home. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mrs M Senior is moving around her new manor with alarming speed. As the garden is about 15 feet across, this takes her no time flat – in fact, just long enough to advise me on the depredations of the rose chafer beetles on her perfect pink blooms. “They eat the buds, and if you get anywhere close, they drop to the ground and you’ve lost them. So I hold a jar of soapy water beneath the bud. Plop!”<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj66tzk_WRMxW8PoSknVh8Ltak3FTJKXorMCvaFrM0UvnTJZ3t_wezVq34gR5cb380TnHSZVkY9CLGLS7FRxsOFJwllOGfI5usZjxfjd6ZOWk9he97f6eUz5jOkMmZtGpmrYKp41WpGF0Y/s1600/Rose+chafer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj66tzk_WRMxW8PoSknVh8Ltak3FTJKXorMCvaFrM0UvnTJZ3t_wezVq34gR5cb380TnHSZVkY9CLGLS7FRxsOFJwllOGfI5usZjxfjd6ZOWk9he97f6eUz5jOkMmZtGpmrYKp41WpGF0Y/s200/Rose+chafer.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://newnaturalist.com/category/animalia/insecta/coleoptera/">Cetonia Aurata</a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The move to Minchinhampton, near Stroud, appears to have been wonderful for my mother. Some two years ago, after approximately the third hip replacement - if that is possible - she double-locked the front door of the old family pile in Newcastle upon Tyne for the last time. In exchange, she took possession of a double-glazed apartment in a new courtyard development of Cotswold stone, attached to someone else’s old pile.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Two-thirds of the way across the garden, Mrs M has made a handbrake turn, thus swinging around to face the back door. A jar of soapy goop stands innocently on the shelf above the dustbin. Half a dozen iridescent blue-green chafers float beneath the surface in various states of decay. She smiles wickedly at them, and holds them up to me to share her delight.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“The secateurs are in the bucket, I think. Would you mind fetching them so I can take the heads off this clematis?” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For some time now, I have been seated on one of her surprisingly comfortable teak garden chairs, with my spurs resting on a less elegant plastic one, and my sword against the water butt. Somehow my mother manages to cram every room, and in this case her garden, with rather more furniture than it can tolerate. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">She discourses on the budget and the welfare system. I hazard a comment on the historic advantages of tax credits to the Mandall household. Then her conversation switches back to her new manor. “By the time the builders got to this end, they’d run out of money, so the garden is just rubble. Nothing grows. I keep on digging out rocks.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qRkwp9SLrcDbdzmUdPY8PGs-Pp7zOtaWsKiXsvOhIaW9tSB9KHFayvde5jk1gp_672k1HFxR2rkq9vkLDC9zFFrxbTJobCr8B9hirsjxm6Il3PskKG-8SENLhVNKOcfndMf5qX8vL7c/s1600/plastic+sword+UP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qRkwp9SLrcDbdzmUdPY8PGs-Pp7zOtaWsKiXsvOhIaW9tSB9KHFayvde5jk1gp_672k1HFxR2rkq9vkLDC9zFFrxbTJobCr8B9hirsjxm6Il3PskKG-8SENLhVNKOcfndMf5qX8vL7c/s200/plastic+sword+UP.jpg" width="53" /></a>I can just hear this over the racket made by the French beans which have just broken the sound barrier. They are climbing so fast that they will soon wind themselves around the clock tower above the new Courtyard development, where they will imprison the golden heron weathervane. (“Such a waste of money, ” says Mrs M, Senior.) Any minute know a giant (or perhaps Mr Osborne) will descend the bean-stalk to wreak unearned revenge on my mother. I check that my trusty sword is still within reach, before settling back into my chair.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“We’ll need some parsley and mint for the potatoes. The scissors are by the Telegraph.” I rise from my seat again to fetch the herbs, and observe that she has nearly finished the crossword that I was tackling in vain over lunch. She has also cut out an article concerning the advantageous effect of the bacteria in bovine manure on the rate at which laboratory mice navigate a maze. “These scientists keep changing their minds, don’t they?” <br />
<br />
I hack through a jungle of sage, thyme and flowering chives, to reach a large bush with the most delicate crinkly heads of glistening green English parsley.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mrs M’s white trainers with the Velcro fasteners flash past me into the tiny kitchen. By the time I have brought in the parsley, she has executed a soft-shoe shuffle between the hob and various stores of raisins and dried worms with which she is tempting a large female blackbird. “This one’s so greedy,” she says. We debate whether this is an overweight youth or a mother preparing meat and two veg for the chicks. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“There’s so much to learn, y’see,” she says. “Look at these chafers. If you touch the rose, they just drop to the ground – plop!”<br />
<br />
“You’ve told me already.”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Have I? Short term memory’s terrible.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>“Have a sherry." </div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj66tzk_WRMxW8PoSknVh8Ltak3FTJKXorMCvaFrM0UvnTJZ3t_wezVq34gR5cb380TnHSZVkY9CLGLS7FRxsOFJwllOGfI5usZjxfjd6ZOWk9he97f6eUz5jOkMmZtGpmrYKp41WpGF0Y/s1600/Rose+chafer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj66tzk_WRMxW8PoSknVh8Ltak3FTJKXorMCvaFrM0UvnTJZ3t_wezVq34gR5cb380TnHSZVkY9CLGLS7FRxsOFJwllOGfI5usZjxfjd6ZOWk9he97f6eUz5jOkMmZtGpmrYKp41WpGF0Y/s200/Rose+chafer.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://newnaturalist.com/category/animalia/insecta/coleoptera/">Haven't we had this before?</a><br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Must dash: castles to capture, dragons to slay.<br />
<br />
<i>"The bell invites me.</i><br />
<i>Hear it not Duncan; for it is a knell</i><br />
<i>That summons thee to heaven, or to Novotel."</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-40050544376447628242010-06-18T07:00:00.048+01:002010-06-18T10:34:46.178+01:00Travel Advice for Marple Bridge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0x9f_OwjqfLW_jnpX__cWUoPI-koGNNNtESKommFZxbwmhZsMEvD-PKnmjmUXsbnAjrCCeVgdBUH2dHCrXiEdCAZJgQncPQA7eAWL1uotGLAEEbJPxdo4_2LEMFvdAc-X7IxoedXGKXQ/s1600/collapsible+canoe.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0x9f_OwjqfLW_jnpX__cWUoPI-koGNNNtESKommFZxbwmhZsMEvD-PKnmjmUXsbnAjrCCeVgdBUH2dHCrXiEdCAZJgQncPQA7eAWL1uotGLAEEbJPxdo4_2LEMFvdAc-X7IxoedXGKXQ/s400/collapsible+canoe.png" width="396" /></a></div><i> </i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup4/The-Berthon-Collapsible-Canoe.html"><i>A collapsible canoe is essential</i></a></div><br />
Uncle Percy in South Africa tells me that his compatriots have got the hump about the way the foreign press is portraying their wonderful country during the World Cup. Apparently we all expect to be charged by a rhino, preferably bearing a machete with menaces, on every street corner in Johannesburg.<br />
<br />
Now, come on, ladies and gentlemen of the press, you know this simply isn’t true. Indeed, I remember a number of young men explaining most emphatically on the beach front in Durban 35 years ago that rhino were not to be found in “whites-only” areas. They thought it was a very good joke. After I laughed a bit, they left me in peace to eat my Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fortunately, some things in South Africa have changed more than the sense of humour.<br />
<br />
I sympathise with Percy: surely even Sky News must have got the point by now: no rhino in its right mind would risk going out after dark in Durban, let alone Johannesburg.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, Uncle Percy, Mrs M and I had quite a close encounter with a rhino in South Africa, but it wasn’t in Johannesburg. It’s not the sort of thing you can prepare for, except by memorising prayers for a) deliverance and b) thanksgiving. Otherwise, my top travel tips are:<br />
<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;">Wear a seat belt, however much the natives laugh at you.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;">Wrap your cafetière in your spare clothes: there is nothing worse than celebrating your survival, with a cup of broken glass and coffee grounds.</li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
All this set me thinking about our preparations for the 2012 <a href="http://tom-mandall.blogspot.com/2010/06/spirit-of-austerity.html">Austerity Games</a> in Marple Bridge. I bumped into (so to speak) my fellow freelancer, Sir David of Cestria. He specialises in that hardy British perennial, health-and-safety. I asked Dave to suggest how we should alert travellers arriving in Marple Bridge, so we can put it on the <a href="http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/europe/?l=U">Foreign and Commonwealth Office web-site</a> (which is excellent for every country except the UK).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga-qbu3NxCL81A0L8-l_KBkAP3aM2LpAl7YJELJ-rnLsNjVdJgt6MlfvTfuUgXz-pwKa9cu0soih3Q-R62bhNUtHzmPrYtHXkwEcnOQ5HU3htWhFfUy45hj7Y8lxZq2ZzZxwq3J7IoEC8/s1600/ride_on_36V_hummer_jeep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga-qbu3NxCL81A0L8-l_KBkAP3aM2LpAl7YJELJ-rnLsNjVdJgt6MlfvTfuUgXz-pwKa9cu0soih3Q-R62bhNUtHzmPrYtHXkwEcnOQ5HU3htWhFfUy45hj7Y8lxZq2ZzZxwq3J7IoEC8/s200/ride_on_36V_hummer_jeep.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Drivers should take care near 20 MPH signs when travelling through the Bridge. Certain village elders, typically driving a red Honda <i>Jazz</i>, observe these limits, without any consideration for others. <i><br />
<br />
</i>By contrast <i>Hummers </i>driven by sensible toddlers do not normally pose any major threat to visitors, provided they are also in a <i>Hummer</i>.<br />
</li>
</ol><ol start="2" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Loitering around our primary schools can result in expense, embarrassment or prosecution at almost any time of year. Visitors should resist offers from ladies and even young children of cheaply photocopied tickets to dubious entertainments. <i>On no account, accept an offer of a “strip” for £5. </i>These offers should be treated as highly suspect, <i>particularly </i>when accompanied by the terms “nativity play”, "raffle ticket" or “picnic hamper”. </li>
</ol><ol start="3" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Improvised Litigious Devices (ILDs) are common throughout the North West, and are increasingly sophisticated. The paved drinking area around the Royal Scot is known to be frequented by celebrities, as well as bankers, solicitors and philosophy lecturers, many with connections in Liverpool. At all times of day, there is a severe risk of criminal and civil litigation in relation to libel, fraud, trips, match-fixing, driving under the influence and metaphysics.</li>
</ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz6VtYp_gkbiSOeuNOgoNbg_0iAGZJlgRBbKmAnAQXvntWQ7TSYvyBVHTVcQ-wK5ilCgekzTq4G3_SCRv7YAQHdcFsDcnL4wfv0lze-8xnbVNOMOO6jCsV69xf_t4BWa0KQuORNElqNWU/s1600/Mellor+church.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz6VtYp_gkbiSOeuNOgoNbg_0iAGZJlgRBbKmAnAQXvntWQ7TSYvyBVHTVcQ-wK5ilCgekzTq4G3_SCRv7YAQHdcFsDcnL4wfv0lze-8xnbVNOMOO6jCsV69xf_t4BWa0KQuORNElqNWU/s200/Mellor+church.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><ol start="4" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Ethnologists visiting the <a href="http://www.mellorparish.org.uk/mellorparishchurch.html">St Thomas’s church</a> should not be surprised to find the door open. There is no need to call the police. Old Anglican churches are frequently left open, in the hope that Roman Catholics will take them back again and fix the roof. It has been reported that some Anglican <a href="http://www.ship-of-fools.com/">minds</a> are open too, but this is not confirmed. </li>
</ol><ol start="5" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Sponge-cake rolling trials may take place without warning in any location with a gradient greater than 1 in 10, during the preparation for the Games. One of the few places safe from rolling sponges is therefore the Royal Scot, <i>op cit.</i></li>
</ol><ol start="6" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Despite warning signs, there are no traffic cameras in Marple Bridge. Visitors wishing to be photographed are encouraged to wear <i>burqas</i>, flowing robes and/or heavy beards. This may persuade the Anti-Terrorist branch to fund real cameras, so we can take action shots of the bob-sleigh course through Moor End, just like at Alton Towers.</li>
</ol><ol start="7" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Visitors may photograph the Iron Bridge, the Roman Bridge (again), the <a href="http://www.regent-marple.co.uk/">Regent Cinema</a> and other landmarks. However, care should be taken before snapping natives, particularly staff of the Royal Mail: they are quite within their rights to bite you or your pet in retaliation.</li>
</ol><ol start="8" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Do not approach camels or donkeys travelling up Church Lane in the season of Advent. They may contain nuts.</li>
</ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJ0n2NNpXz55cVZBeB8uJDJR6OeNEw7ma7XZSfvLyxdNnLSIhY8S3bYtnH6WpsoS2xvZaJSlW1ZAYqqIJ0yzT6lxOImKLDglC6Z2szTAnLJqXy8zR2YmzDtXDvFMrbciP12tXJEjbkK0/s1600/orange_peel_syndrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJ0n2NNpXz55cVZBeB8uJDJR6OeNEw7ma7XZSfvLyxdNnLSIhY8S3bYtnH6WpsoS2xvZaJSlW1ZAYqqIJ0yzT6lxOImKLDglC6Z2szTAnLJqXy8zR2YmzDtXDvFMrbciP12tXJEjbkK0/s200/orange_peel_syndrome.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><ol start="9" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">Orange peel is an eyesore. Visitors are strongly warned against displaying it. Exposure is regrettably wide-spread during sunny intervals, and whenever Boots has fake tan on special offer. Orange peel displays are presented by the members of the species <i>homo </i>so-called <i>sapiens sapiens </i>of all ages, genders and persuasions. A Posterior Double Outspan was exposed outside the Royal Oak by a visiting football enthusiast after England’s unfortunate game with Mexico. <i>Visitors are advised that <a href="http://www.marple-uk.com/Marple.htm">PC Potter and his Peelers</a> will not tolerate excessive exposure, and may well tear a strip off offenders.</i></li>
</ol><ol start="10" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal">It rains a lot in Marple Bridge. It is entirely likely that you will find a flood on Town Street. As rhinos are rare, a collapsible canoe is indispensable. </li>
</ol><div class="MsoListParagraph"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Please let me know of any additions or amendments to this list, before we submit it to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for inclusion in its helpful website.<o:p></o:p></i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-31549929461933884132010-06-11T07:00:00.007+01:002010-06-11T08:51:49.814+01:00The Spirit of Austerity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhGpP1hwkd8sjhZB_wQDJsr1XgGKcngJUVPtOl1R2JerRxdImH3jtEosEJgW5x0JQBPssEKLWBfVD9jkL_hKF1-zhvaA67dSmUtGqqAhsEjcIfcdHZiFGDz0bgGQ-w5r9QKc9roZpvdHE/s1600/250px-Spam_with_cans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" qu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhGpP1hwkd8sjhZB_wQDJsr1XgGKcngJUVPtOl1R2JerRxdImH3jtEosEJgW5x0JQBPssEKLWBfVD9jkL_hKF1-zhvaA67dSmUtGqqAhsEjcIfcdHZiFGDz0bgGQ-w5r9QKc9roZpvdHE/s320/250px-Spam_with_cans.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>... in which we look forward to the London Olympics of 2012</i></div><br />
At least the Word Cup will provide an original reason for the boys to ignore anything I make or do. My shepherd’s pie was spurned by all three of them, on grounds of vegetarianism (M1), Facebook (M2) and preening (M3).<br />
<br />
I have been been receiving intelligence from my fellow freelancers, for whom <i>UMzantsi Afrika</i> holds many attractions. A few years ago, Uncle Percival in <i>Gauteng</i> told me he had decided to invest in cement because of all the football grounds to be built across South Africa. He now tells me that the rebuild of Soccer City in Soweto is a billion Rand overspent, so I hope that next time I stay, the former “maid’s quarters” will have been rehabilitated.<br />
<br />
As every freelance knoweth, there is nothing like unto a contract for over-spending it. Neither South Africa’s new stadia, nor my neighbour’s extension works, are exceptions. <i>Plus ça change</i>. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKi6RosmJZtsFxWiaAtR9iJWRn1Sm6QrLIzvGObCxasI3rvTSDvlOzBTD4F3z8c3LVreyMjDIh7Ud_REhDdNTdp9kd90t2oT5mXYf-3YDw-jcXAP5sk8vIUMljvOyA_JMYqCZX1wfrXMw/s1600/another+day+another+contract.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" qu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKi6RosmJZtsFxWiaAtR9iJWRn1Sm6QrLIzvGObCxasI3rvTSDvlOzBTD4F3z8c3LVreyMjDIh7Ud_REhDdNTdp9kd90t2oT5mXYf-3YDw-jcXAP5sk8vIUMljvOyA_JMYqCZX1wfrXMw/s400/another+day+another+contract.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<i><a href="http://boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/preparing_for_the_world_cup.html">Workers fix a giant vuvuzela soccer horn on top of Cape Town's famous unfinished highway bridge (REUTERS/Mark Wessels)</a></i><br />
<br />
I like the new addition. Is its creator hinting at an uncertainty in the national psyche, in this outsized plastic horn?<br />
<br />
Closer to Mandall Mansions, my tax adviser Isolde tells me that the bill for constructing the Olympic facilities in London will make the South African over-hang look puny. She fears that even Sir Bors will not be able to prevent Dave’n’Nick from reducing the number of Olympic Rings from five to three.<br />
<br />
Never mind: we islanders know how to put a brave face on things. As Mrs M puts it, we must look beyond the misery of cheese-paring, and embrace the Spirit of Austerity. What finer example for us than the famous 1948 London “Austerity” Olympics!<br />
<br />
Informal soundings around here have shown that the spirit that gave us the Spam Fritter and the Bouncing Bomb lives on in our community. We have raised our eyes above the wobbly wheels of the paper mills and Winchester disks down in the lowlands. We have raised our eyes unto the hills.<br />
<br />
Some readers may be aware that the <a href="http://www.cheese-rolling.co.uk/2010_YouTube_video.htm">harmless sport of cheese-rolling</a> has fallen victim to the national shortage of neck braces. We were therefore especially pleased to receive the WI’s proposal to introduce Olympic Sponge Cake Rolling in Moor End. Former Moor End post mistress, Mrs Vivian Ayres, is to be approached to provide the official sponges, at a regulation unfilled weight of 1lb 3½ oz. Vivian’s cakes have long been prized at Mellor church fete and other events for their compression strength and high tensility, making them perfect for fantastic birthday constructions. A number of cake-rolling sites are being assessed for safety. Personally I favour the meadow that descends from the south face of the church down to Knowle Farm. I’m sure that John will be more than happy to keep the cattle out of harm's way for the day.<br />
<br />
We have received several submissions in relation to the archery contest. Mrs M feels that the Devonshire’s garden-feature pergola offers more scope than the Royal Oak, even though the Oak would just about have room for a darts board if it rains. <br />
<br />
There has been one disappointment. We have had to advise Chris Mann and the bell-ringing team that Teddy Bear Bunjee-jumping from the church tower is unlikely to be accredited as an Olympic Sport in time for 2012. <br />
<br />
Great sporting events are so often marred by bad weather. We wish the South Africans well: the Johannesburg winter can be vicious. The winter of 1997, when I was playing my small part, ahem, in the preparations for the coming spectacle, was especially bitter. A hard July frost having cracked the yellow crust on top of the mine dumps, the Highveld wind mixed it with the sulphurous smoke from a million coal braziers, before blasting a fine, frozen, and toxic grit through my host's leaking office window, 100 foot above ground level in Soccer City. It was so cold I had to wear long-johns and a balaclava under my armour, even in my freezing Holiday Inn bed.<br />
<br />
Our local contributors have considered every meteorological eventuality for the 2012 Austerity Games. For instance, if drought dries out the route for the canoe slalom in the River Goyt, we will build a bob-sleigh run down Moor End Road. M1 has been test-running this in the Fiesta. <br />
<br />
He says he’s minded to compete. I say he’s off his head.<br />
<br />
Come on, England!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-2545700516424643212010-06-04T08:32:00.010+01:002010-06-06T11:05:37.853+01:00Hokeh Tokeh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcl3n1G6UEYiONc5-_zoS4-8Tgcrr44HY2VHPlqMdSqAli_PI-TFmHa0Z9mlfMoV6i2u1V9UgHKBTY6KcO84hdwle9DF-3de9M9pH3cUQn6FHz0ZN-5ZPi6s5Q6C_ASsEhyvLkOjlgYgg/s1600/Tokeh+beach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcl3n1G6UEYiONc5-_zoS4-8Tgcrr44HY2VHPlqMdSqAli_PI-TFmHa0Z9mlfMoV6i2u1V9UgHKBTY6KcO84hdwle9DF-3de9M9pH3cUQn6FHz0ZN-5ZPi6s5Q6C_ASsEhyvLkOjlgYgg/s400/Tokeh+beach.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em>Does Tom ever do any work?</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Le Club Med Africana, Tokeh Beach 2009 by </em><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephmalyon/3713392434/"><em>Steph Malyon</em></a></div><br />
It’s not that I pine for Mandallay on my excursions to foreign fields. Still, by the end of a Saturday that is too hot or wet to do anything much but listen to the air-con, I’m ready for anything: even a meeting of the <a href="http://hhh.lumleybeach.com/">Freetown Hash House Harriers</a> on Tokeh beach, which they tell me is about 10 miles out of Freetown.<br />
<br />
I hitch a lift from a “hasher” in a diplomatic Land Rover. I think it may have been one of ours, but off duty as it were. <br />
<br />
The road from Freetown to Waterloo is paved with good intentions, and little else. At least as far as Tokeh. As long as I’ve been coming here, it’s been in the process of reconstruction. One day it may be finished, so that taxis and poda-podas can run up and down, taking people and produce hither and thither. Until then, Tokeh is a long way out.<br />
<br />
A hand-painted arrow on an abandoned tanker directs us to the beach. We pass a heap of tangled concrete and steel bars, and drive onto the beach, a great arc of white sand, with a flat rocky platform in a crystal sea. We pull up in a glade by the only intact structure, a pleasant villa. <br />
<br />
The Hash House Harriers tell me that they are “a drinking club with a running problem”. They give themselves curious names: Brown Nose, Black ‘n’ Pecker, Star Babe. I understand this last is in honour of a West African beer. <br />
<br />
We stood around in a circle and shouted at each other. This advanced shouting technique is familiar to me as it is the way people got me to do things at school. I also practise it frequently with the boys. Several of the Hashers are, I understand, management consultants.<br />
<br />
After the circle, some of the more energetic hashers ran around in larger circles shouting “On On” and blowing a horn. The rest of us had a very pleasant morning. It had rained heavily the night before, so it wasn’t too hot. We plodged behind the runners though soft warm flood meadows, green blades of grass shooting from glistening water. Every now and then, there would be a cry of “False Trail” when the paper trail the runners were following gave out. Soon afterwards, runners wearing fluffy ears in tooth-grinding hues of orange and green would dash back past us. So we could gently turn around, to resume our conversations and our ambling in the opposite direction. I met all sorts of people. <br />
<br />
Then it was circle time again. This time they poured beer over their own or each others’ heads and other body parts, then sang “Swing low, sweet chariot” with gestures. <br />
<br />
Several local people watched this patiently. A very persuasive villager called Barry sold me a coconut which he opened expertly with his cutlass. It was full to the brim with cool milk. His friend sold me half a dozen delicious oysters, after which I considered it safest to close my eyes, before anyone tried to sell me anything else.<br />
<br />
Brown Nose must have chosen this moment to start telling me how, before the civil war, Tokeh was an outpost of that great French institution the <em>Club Med</em> holiday village: Club Africana Tokeh. It seemed, I reflected, a long way from the Mediterranean, but then M1 and myself are in full agreement that France is a state of mind...<br />
<br />
<em>“Bonjour monsieur Mandall, Gentle Member. I ‘ope you have travelled well from Angleterre. I am your Village Chef, Henri Toulouse Lautrec. You can call me Chef. And I will call you Gentle Member."</em><br />
<br />
<em>"Please don't. I find it embarrassing."</em><br />
<br />
<em>"But Gentil Membre, it is an indication of our respect to you. Montez dans mon ‘elicopter, and I will whisk you to ze Club Africana Tokeh. ‘Ave a meringue.”</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>“No thanks, chef. I’ve just put one out.”</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>We land in the palm-fringed bay, on the platform of rock. A bridge connects it to the shore. Little golf carts are taking us around like extras in Port Marion. Chef shoos away a film crew for a </em>Bounty<em> advert, and resumes his commentary.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>“Ere we ‘ave ze village, ze village bar, ze ‘urts with all ze modern convenience, and ze hunderd bed hotel... and ‘ere is la piece de resistance, ze village dance floor for ze crezzy hokey tokey. </em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>“We ‘ave all sort of diversion for your degustation. There is Jacques Cousteau making ze scuba. See, Gentle Member, where Presidents Mobutu and Giscard play at 'Risque' -" </em><br />
<br />
<em>"I said, please do stop all that 'member' business. I know it's different in France, but still -"</em><br />
<br />
<em>"It is, 'ow you say: "to err is 'uman'?"</em><br />
<br />
<em>I resist the temptation to say that Tou-louse is stupid.</em><br />
<br />
<em>"- et voila Jean-Jacques who runs his classe extra-murale de philosophie, and Brigitte Bardot who is modelling for Paul Gau - "</em><br />
<br />
I awake to find the Hashers packing up the remaining cases of Star beer. I’ve missed the fried chicken and rice. Barry and his mates are drifting away. They did quite well with the coconuts, but, strangely enough, there weren’t any other takers for the oysters.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2JeYMNQxunAZ2oYqcixqmtJi1nNipMNkm8sp-9DBH8CLvQHX8XiHIPKSoGP32MSYb8JRd6_Q-O7qjOwSUFiEqy29AKSIQgRYcr9wPn3flwyvQboOlcQV_NiRJg2qSu1AuthRxP97IVAM/s1600/beachboys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2JeYMNQxunAZ2oYqcixqmtJi1nNipMNkm8sp-9DBH8CLvQHX8XiHIPKSoGP32MSYb8JRd6_Q-O7qjOwSUFiEqy29AKSIQgRYcr9wPn3flwyvQboOlcQV_NiRJg2qSu1AuthRxP97IVAM/s320/beachboys.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.vanessawithoutborders.com/archives/gallery/beachboys.jpg">Beach boys - by Vannessa without Borders</a></div><br />
Some kids hang around hungrily, hoping for tips. <em>Club Med</em> kept Tokeh in work, before it got destroyed in the war: ten, twelve years of dreadful comings and goings. Just the busted concrete remains. I don’t look too closely for stains and chips on it. <br />
<br />
Now there are a few fishing boats, but, with the road so bad, it’s hard to get it to Freetown to sell the catch. Still, there’s a new hotel being built. Maybe one day the road will be finished. Things'll brighten up yet.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>I apologise for late publication this morning. We ran out of internet here.</strong></em></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-22138638762371896902010-05-28T07:00:00.009+01:002010-06-18T10:39:57.662+01:00Wok the Line<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCF1-F0lUe1YMnbbHIb3QhyphenhyphenkeGww6QrH-1q9ts9U0rujSOF2IiJ_cMWjpTnNhc7IfBLZdIaEwuBvEjcyEUjVTdyb55e2x9ncEd90V8gBXdetVO6cn-gpXYczVGqLJgG9twZrr6aOfx4zA/s1600/cAPE+sIERRA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCF1-F0lUe1YMnbbHIb3QhyphenhyphenkeGww6QrH-1q9ts9U0rujSOF2IiJ_cMWjpTnNhc7IfBLZdIaEwuBvEjcyEUjVTdyb55e2x9ncEd90V8gBXdetVO6cn-gpXYczVGqLJgG9twZrr6aOfx4zA/s400/cAPE+sIERRA.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Slow down Joanna:</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://standardtimespress.net/cgi-bin/artman/publish/index.shtml">Lumley Beach reaches Cape Sierra at Aberdeen</a></i></div><br />
The enthusiasm with which the ladies of the night greet me in Cape Sierra village ought to be embarrassing, but it makes me smile. I will pass over the telephone call that reached me in the Freetown City Council Chamber, where I was in earnest discussion with the members of the City Health Committee. I must impress on my young friend Mamood to be careful whose telephone he borrows to ring me.<br />
<br />
I had arranged to meet Mamood at 6pm to run along the beach as usual, but he was nowhere to be found when I jogged into Cape Sierra village tonight. He does not have a watch. I waited outside the cafe, with the ladies and the little brown baby Frankie. We discuss the night’s work ahead, the bars and restaurants they will visit. "I don't envy your job", I offer, rather gallantly I hope. "We don't like it either," is the reply, "but life is very complicated." The proprietor keeps her eye on us. Somehow I imagine that she is my chaperone, her comfortably padded form guaranteeing my fidelity to Mrs M.<br />
<br />
No sign of Mamood, so I jog off down the road to Aberdeen Circle, and onto Lumley Beach. It’s a good two miles from here along the gentle curve of the bay to the Atlantic Bar at Lumley. If the Atlantic's loudspeakers haven’t been fully wound up, you can relax in the big cushioned wicker chairs. <br />
<br />
Otherwise, my preference is to use the plastic chairs on the beach where the staff get sand in their shoes to bring your Star Beer or Schweppes tonic water. I like to sit just above the high tide, somewhat smarter I fancy than Canute, watching the light fade into a thick humid sky, feeling the "fresh breeze", that everyone likes here. Between mouthfuls of tonic and free popcorn, I say “fresh breeze” over to myself. I try to copy the lovely soft Freetonian French “r”. It cools you just to say it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgavY_VUV7ubRwEb6WvJtQw7HvI7pVxjw4rAcV2zNDAjq77XT2oGla-3AABGHS52laaHfoZzDWTybjg7mVKX_EivEJjV6hhKSjptRMNE5C-rp4ZUzHvA8bDcOP5yFvDHLN_18FkrWKkGAY/s1600/sunset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgavY_VUV7ubRwEb6WvJtQw7HvI7pVxjw4rAcV2zNDAjq77XT2oGla-3AABGHS52laaHfoZzDWTybjg7mVKX_EivEJjV6hhKSjptRMNE5C-rp4ZUzHvA8bDcOP5yFvDHLN_18FkrWKkGAY/s320/sunset.jpg" /></a></div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none; text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2902571960040365082CxSSMk">photo by coolasas</a></i></div><div style="border: medium none; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;">It’s a run-walk-run session this evening. It takes me an age to get to the big “Africell” mobile phone advertisement billboard that marks the half way point to the Atlantic Bar. I think this must be the hottest and most humid time of the year. The rains are still just an occasional downpour, though we had strong winds last night, bringing down trees and advertising hoardings. We will have to wait till July before the gods open all the taps. Then everyone who has a house just has to sit inside till the rain stops, or till the house gets washed off the hill or into the sea.</div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;">There are empty coconut shells on the beach, but I have yet to locate someone who sells them, so settle for a coolish Fanta from one of the vendors outside the Atlantic. Nobody would mind if I pranced into the Atlantic in my “Stockport 10” running top, but, over the last 19 years, the 3Ms have instilled an iota of shame in me. The funny thing is that Mrs M has taken the opposite tack: once prone to raise a well-trained eyebrow at a misuse of the word “pardon”, she may yet dance naked in the garden beneath a full moon. It is better to travel hopefully, they say.</div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
<b>Wok Tok</b><br />
<br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;">Mamood intercepts me on the return journey to Aberdeen. He has been doing his laundry. He says he has not been to wok since I was last here. Between puffs of warm air I explore the significance of this wok. It seems that the Chinese frying pan in question refers to some form of paid employment on the beach, which he does when he is not in school. </div><br />
I conclude that Mamood is keen to tell me that he has been going to school, and I share his pleasure in this. I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but for the price of two shrimp kebabs at the Barmoi Hotel, I was able to settle the unpaid portion of his school fee on my last visit. As I hope to be coming here for up to three years - what joy for a freelancer is such a prospect! - I thought I’d at least be able to keep in touch with him, so we can see how it goes. I feel a bit sheepish about this, but my colleague Lance tells me he has four boys in Malawi, where he worked for many years. They are now all adults. He talks of them as fondly as of his grandchildren, and of his other favourite subjects, which include the opera and Premier League football, the latter more useful for small talk here than the first. <br />
<br />
Mamood is studying twelve subjects, he tells me in the walking bits, but maths is difficult. Outside the oddly named bar, Family Kingdom, a motorcycle has left a convenient tyre track in the sand. I draw markers across it with my finger: a circle for Aberdeen Circle, a bottle for Atlantic, and the Africell Billboard in the middle. We put numbers underneath, and a zero under Africell. The ladies come past in a taxi, on their way to Roy’s, and stop to say hello.<br />
<br />
Mamood and I play hopscotch along our number line. +2 -1. What’s that? +1-2. What’s that? <br />
<br />
"I have never seen that thing," he marvels. "They have never taught me this." It is possible that he has realised that I am mad. I say that the number line is the greatest thing in mathematics, and the zero in the middle was invented by an Indian. I don’t know these things to be true, but they are good enough for now. <br />
<br />
Mamood says he will come to bring me his maths homework. Not now I hope. It is past my bedtime. We leave early tomorrow for Port Loko. <br />
<br />
A freelance is the happiest of men.<br />
<img height="72" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrd7vKXMgE8EVvIbTWprZFSLfpzc5wPlbE-vI12jl9WvZks2bWbpOvybHKPQtj6r9fV4Wox6R6dlGAvcV1aIzSJxBNfwlqej4SfBk-LwSX802AoMBDgD267RNAjgB4DS9SkKdpVlhpio/s400/sunset.jpg" style="left: 421px; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 745px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-9488813834836781982010-05-21T10:28:00.004+01:002010-05-21T10:35:42.790+01:00Triplets alive and wellA little research shows that Stockport, not specifically Marple Bridge, has longstanding associations with Beziers and Heilbronn. I'm not sure about the latter, but Beziers sounds a handsome town with almost as many locks as Marple.<br />
<br />
Here we are, all having a grand time together at a Masterchef competition between the three boroughs.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QZzs4JoIxRzqk5ipEWwMR-b7EJmHzkPVpYsm3e9JhaQxDLYNQ80TnlJs5BEoGPxVmzn8b5oydj1x9zpDYDiJapiuZYzrp4itZ9yGAJ6Vqf4XN97R0SoL8GKmc-HyQR65VopLgo5DROM/s1600/281_5yu2qw22g9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QZzs4JoIxRzqk5ipEWwMR-b7EJmHzkPVpYsm3e9JhaQxDLYNQ80TnlJs5BEoGPxVmzn8b5oydj1x9zpDYDiJapiuZYzrp4itZ9yGAJ6Vqf4XN97R0SoL8GKmc-HyQR65VopLgo5DROM/s320/281_5yu2qw22g9.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<a href="http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/Cheshire/Cheadle/SK8/Transport-and-Environment/Stockport-Borough-News/155134-German-culinary-success-in-twin-town-Masterchief"><i>"The dessert competition saw a competition between, from left to right, Bastien Boudiaf from Beziers; the winner Carolin Haeussermann from Heilbronn; and Tom Curbishley from Stockport"</i></a><br />
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Well done, everybody!<br />
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So that's alright. Still, I think it makes the three boroughs triplets not twins. By which logic, Marple Bridge, as a small part of a small part of Stockport, is perhaps just a great nephew or niece.<br />
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Enough!<br />
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* * *<br />
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The pudding club meets tonight at number 72. So I've been instructed to kick the shoes under the chesterfield, and put the dog out.<br />
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Mrs M has decreed that we shall have read <i>Mrs Dalloway</i> by Mrs Woolf, or was it the other way round? By any standards, this is a hard read.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG5yY0iY2PMQMlhhRN5V7S0K0FlyXrNEvvGJGzm3d_DDgFeEsIk9_3UrgxGWk8ckNQcpcjjBjtzOtiXQTvvwCAbieq9g1td8s0raDB0UQMClwXiiTo_9WbycbdYfuvAx2AXTu5Olwo9Ps/s1600/8-virginia-woolf-21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG5yY0iY2PMQMlhhRN5V7S0K0FlyXrNEvvGJGzm3d_DDgFeEsIk9_3UrgxGWk8ckNQcpcjjBjtzOtiXQTvvwCAbieq9g1td8s0raDB0UQMClwXiiTo_9WbycbdYfuvAx2AXTu5Olwo9Ps/s320/8-virginia-woolf-21.jpg" /></a><i>Sitting in the suburban spare bedroom that looked on to the little patch of lilac-shaded grass passing for a garden, it was as doubtful to Thomas as to the few readers of his weekly scribble whether he could coax the clacking keys to a finale, even allow one half-formed hackneyed thought to pass; to contemplate the smallest act as entire and complete as that of the blackbird on the lawn collecting a worm for its nest, without the unbearable cost of reflection. No, he said to himself, for he knew his place was far from the extended sub-clause</i><i>, and nicely nuanced semi-colon; from the conveyance of the nagging of a glove seam that will not yield to a clumsy mannish hand, through the ingenuity, incomprehensible to him, of a third person gerund.</i><br />
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I know my place. I've got a Dead Man's Leg and a Spotted Dick to make. With Bird's yellow Custard.<br />
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And the last 39 pages of <i>Mrs D</i> to read. If that doesn't sound much to you, try it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2217866007621080186.post-30632880292608449632010-05-21T07:00:00.002+01:002010-05-21T09:15:35.537+01:00Lost twins? Shock horror!Approaching Marple Bridge from distant Glossop, and still a mile or more before reaching what I regard as my beat, I was surprised to see this sign in a remote lay-by:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxV_16a3Lf3jnEh8OBqkEAJl2msbJgHlJ-nUcNKBnKGQzbf2DA6F1QJ8O92zDkX52IkBinRWuNeTkAD0QCEPcSz5PNRX24tcNUX9u9-FzH0embJZ-f-P85QXJoSF5am7icqlRqrWKzaeQ/s1600/Twin+-+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxV_16a3Lf3jnEh8OBqkEAJl2msbJgHlJ-nUcNKBnKGQzbf2DA6F1QJ8O92zDkX52IkBinRWuNeTkAD0QCEPcSz5PNRX24tcNUX9u9-FzH0embJZ-f-P85QXJoSF5am7icqlRqrWKzaeQ/s320/Twin+-+web.jpg" /></a></div><br />
We have a twin! Nay twins! Callooh Callay.<br />
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But where are they? Has anybody seen? <br />
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Hold the front page! I must find out more.<br />
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Fear not. I'll report back with a special late edition before Friday's out.<br />
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Your intrepid local scout, <br />
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Tom.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0