Gestingthorpe is a hamlet tucked inside the northern county boundary, but estate agents prefer to say Suffolk borders. The pace of life is unhurried. I watch the vicar tacking posters to the church noticeboard as sunlight spears through medieval glass exposing arcs of dust. Thatched Tudor cottages surround a tidy green, coated in pretty pastel colours and overhung with winter roses. “No to Stanstead Expansion” says a handwritten sign in a ground floor window and as if on cue, the throaty buzz of airplane engines pass over.
A Georgian manor house stands on higher ground at the end of a narrow lane. A century ago, Titus Oates became Lord of the Manor, but itchy feet led him all the way to Antarctica and he died in 1912 on the way home from the South Pole. His memorable final words are inscribed on a polished tablet in the church nave, “I’m going out, I may be some time.”
Friday, 30 March 2007
Monday, 26 March 2007
The Grove Tavern, Walthamstow
I like the Grove for three reasons: 1) It has proper locals, 2) Sunday night is ‘song night’ and 3) I used to live opposite.
The Grove is a small square boozer on the corner of a late Victorian terrace. There was talk of ‘doing it up’ once but talk was all it was. I like the fact that nearly everyone in the pub has an armful of tattoos and claims to be on the fringe of east London gangland, “Ronnie was a nice guy, but with Reggie you had to be careful.” All pinch of salt stuff. If you ask the right questions to the right people it’s like a local history museum of east-end bullshit.
The Grove comes alive on Sunday night. The locals (including ‘Young Terry’ who is mid-fifties) sit around the edge sipping stout or sticky sherry. Pipes are puffed, cigars are sucked and visibility is at a minimum. The sound of coughing wavers in pitch, but never falters. A pianist tinkles away in the corner for a while and then asks for volunteers. It looks spontaneous, but there is a strict hierarchy. One by one the regulars clamber onto the tiny stage and belt out terrific music hall songs. Frank’s party piece is “Give Me a London Girl Every Time” which he sings with a lecherous grin. Joyce is revered among her peers for her voice. She sang “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” one night and I almost wet myself with excitement. In the summer I used to sit in my back garden and the songs would float across the road.
I remember going to the Grove the night the twin towers collapsed. The regulars were in and the telly was on. They looked at us as if to say, “see, we told you things had gone to pot”
The Grove is a small square boozer on the corner of a late Victorian terrace. There was talk of ‘doing it up’ once but talk was all it was. I like the fact that nearly everyone in the pub has an armful of tattoos and claims to be on the fringe of east London gangland, “Ronnie was a nice guy, but with Reggie you had to be careful.” All pinch of salt stuff. If you ask the right questions to the right people it’s like a local history museum of east-end bullshit.
The Grove comes alive on Sunday night. The locals (including ‘Young Terry’ who is mid-fifties) sit around the edge sipping stout or sticky sherry. Pipes are puffed, cigars are sucked and visibility is at a minimum. The sound of coughing wavers in pitch, but never falters. A pianist tinkles away in the corner for a while and then asks for volunteers. It looks spontaneous, but there is a strict hierarchy. One by one the regulars clamber onto the tiny stage and belt out terrific music hall songs. Frank’s party piece is “Give Me a London Girl Every Time” which he sings with a lecherous grin. Joyce is revered among her peers for her voice. She sang “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” one night and I almost wet myself with excitement. In the summer I used to sit in my back garden and the songs would float across the road.
I remember going to the Grove the night the twin towers collapsed. The regulars were in and the telly was on. They looked at us as if to say, “see, we told you things had gone to pot”
Pop Pilgrimages No.6 - An Empty Bench in Soho Square
I didn’t realise how much I liked Kirsty MacColl’s music until she died.
I sometimes feel sad listening to her voice, it carries weariness even in the happy songs. An anthology released earlier this year captures it well, all the heartbreak and make-ups and curious diversions. She wrote so many good songs about herself and when her own life dulled, she covered others wisely. There was also a period as the 80’s flipped to 90’s when every single record in the charts featured Kirsty on backing vocals.
I loved the Tracy Ullman version of her first single, the way the guitars chimed and the baaaaayyyyyyybe yell that could shatter glass at fifty paces. I remember sitting in a school girlfriend’s garden and kissing her enthusiastically as this record soared from an upstairs window. Her parents were in the kitchen and I thought it prescient, they don’t know about us. I also didn’t know she had glandular fever and kissed my way to a fortnight off school.
And so it’s Soho Square where I find myself. One of those windy days when the sun is dancing through the clouds and you’re forever taking layers off, then hastily replacing them. Grey skies then shocking sunlight and where is my brolly? The pigeons shiver in the naked breeze she wrote in the song, Soho Square. Maybe, but they also poo on the bench to your memory. A shiny plaque gives the years of her life. She was just 41.
Kirsty’s bench was free so I sat down and munched through three veggie sausage rolls. Soho Square was buzzing with life; office workers quickstepping to the tube, twitching nutters with hands glued to dark beer tins. Everyone else was Japanese. I threw the end of my sausage roll onto the grass and started a pigeon riot.
I thought of Kirsty and that early kiss to her song, then all those years when I never really paid attention until a pub conversation with a friend in late 2000. “What about Kirsty MacColl, then?” I didn’t know what he meant, but the look on his face told me she was dead. And she died the most un-rock’n'roll of deaths.
The Justice Campaign for accountability for her death
Originally posted May 18th, 2005
I sometimes feel sad listening to her voice, it carries weariness even in the happy songs. An anthology released earlier this year captures it well, all the heartbreak and make-ups and curious diversions. She wrote so many good songs about herself and when her own life dulled, she covered others wisely. There was also a period as the 80’s flipped to 90’s when every single record in the charts featured Kirsty on backing vocals.
I loved the Tracy Ullman version of her first single, the way the guitars chimed and the baaaaayyyyyyybe yell that could shatter glass at fifty paces. I remember sitting in a school girlfriend’s garden and kissing her enthusiastically as this record soared from an upstairs window. Her parents were in the kitchen and I thought it prescient, they don’t know about us. I also didn’t know she had glandular fever and kissed my way to a fortnight off school.
And so it’s Soho Square where I find myself. One of those windy days when the sun is dancing through the clouds and you’re forever taking layers off, then hastily replacing them. Grey skies then shocking sunlight and where is my brolly? The pigeons shiver in the naked breeze she wrote in the song, Soho Square. Maybe, but they also poo on the bench to your memory. A shiny plaque gives the years of her life. She was just 41.
Kirsty’s bench was free so I sat down and munched through three veggie sausage rolls. Soho Square was buzzing with life; office workers quickstepping to the tube, twitching nutters with hands glued to dark beer tins. Everyone else was Japanese. I threw the end of my sausage roll onto the grass and started a pigeon riot.
I thought of Kirsty and that early kiss to her song, then all those years when I never really paid attention until a pub conversation with a friend in late 2000. “What about Kirsty MacColl, then?” I didn’t know what he meant, but the look on his face told me she was dead. And she died the most un-rock’n'roll of deaths.
The Justice Campaign for accountability for her death
Originally posted May 18th, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.5 - Wayne Hussey’s willy, London
I used to be a bit of a goth. No, that’s not true, I used to be a lot of a goth; a suede-booted, black-haired, cross-in-ear, bangle-wristed embarrassment to my parents.
My gig-going days began when the Sisters of Mercy split, a spawn of goth bands scurried from their ashes. Ghost Dance one night, The Mission the next, reborn Sisters at the weekend. There were various establishments where people like me could congregate away from those who wanted to punch us. The Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh and Prince of Orange in Chelmsford were both places with Snakebite-varnished floors and Nephilim friendly DJ’s, where gothic sub-culture almost looked like a movement. However, these places were merely staging posts on the path to goth enlightenment.
The holy grail of goth pilgrimage was the Intrepid Fox in Soho. In the late eighties acceptance in the Fox (by barstaff, by crimped nutters) meant you had passed your goth finals. The Guinness came decorated with a five-pointed star and the pool reserving system was based more on bullying than leaving a coin on the table. I revisited about a year ago for the first time in a decade. The Fox looked lighter, cleaner and a bloke in a suit sat at the bar. A gang of bikers should have been beating him with a stool, but no. It had changed irrevocably, although the smell of ancient sick still haunted the place.
My finest goth moment came at the Fox. All About Eve were touring their hippygotharse nonsense about harbours and meadows at the Astoria. Post-gig, Wayne Hussey of the Mission sat in the pub with his hairy bandmates. In an interview in that week’s Goth Times he’d complained about the inadequate size of his manhood. In the scrum for his autograph I asked him if it was true. He sighed and scrawled small willy Wayne on my arm in black biro.
So this meeting between the goth singer and the goth fan ends in anticlimax with the former writing ‘willy’ on the latter’s arm. Using the law of diminishing returns (scientifically proven by Cult albums) I think this ends the pop pilgrimage.
I washed my arm a week later when my manager in the Bank of England Financial Markets division asked what the writing under my sleeve was all about.
Originally posted March 23rd, 2005
My gig-going days began when the Sisters of Mercy split, a spawn of goth bands scurried from their ashes. Ghost Dance one night, The Mission the next, reborn Sisters at the weekend. There were various establishments where people like me could congregate away from those who wanted to punch us. The Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh and Prince of Orange in Chelmsford were both places with Snakebite-varnished floors and Nephilim friendly DJ’s, where gothic sub-culture almost looked like a movement. However, these places were merely staging posts on the path to goth enlightenment.
The holy grail of goth pilgrimage was the Intrepid Fox in Soho. In the late eighties acceptance in the Fox (by barstaff, by crimped nutters) meant you had passed your goth finals. The Guinness came decorated with a five-pointed star and the pool reserving system was based more on bullying than leaving a coin on the table. I revisited about a year ago for the first time in a decade. The Fox looked lighter, cleaner and a bloke in a suit sat at the bar. A gang of bikers should have been beating him with a stool, but no. It had changed irrevocably, although the smell of ancient sick still haunted the place.
My finest goth moment came at the Fox. All About Eve were touring their hippygotharse nonsense about harbours and meadows at the Astoria. Post-gig, Wayne Hussey of the Mission sat in the pub with his hairy bandmates. In an interview in that week’s Goth Times he’d complained about the inadequate size of his manhood. In the scrum for his autograph I asked him if it was true. He sighed and scrawled small willy Wayne on my arm in black biro.
So this meeting between the goth singer and the goth fan ends in anticlimax with the former writing ‘willy’ on the latter’s arm. Using the law of diminishing returns (scientifically proven by Cult albums) I think this ends the pop pilgrimage.
I washed my arm a week later when my manager in the Bank of England Financial Markets division asked what the writing under my sleeve was all about.
Originally posted March 23rd, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.4 - Rachel and James, Manchester
A different sort of pilgrimage this time. Rachel was a college hanger-on. One of those lost souls who drifts about campus, knows everyone, but doesn’t technically belong there. A rumour surrounded her and excited a lad of my disposition and record collection; Tim Booth of James wrote Come Home about her.
Anyway, she fell into my orbit. This was Manchester. Hang on, it was 1992, this was Madchester and my taste in fashion was curated by Afflecks Palace on Oldham Street.
So I’m at the Boardwalk one night at (forgive me sweet lord) a Northside gig, when Rachel flashes her lashes in my direction. The band are chugging along in their bowl cuts, playing Conference level indie-dance and saying “fookin’ yeah!” between songs. I tuck curtain hair strands behind my ears. Rachel has a beautiful lilting Irish accent, a voice that sings through sentences. I’m enraptured and better still, I’m in.
So we head back to my digs in the hard-to-find-beauty of Bolton, where the mills that Blake found satanic are just crumbling away, a town living on past glories of looms and spinning mules and where it never stops raining. The house is asleep although upstairs I can hear one housemate, Good Looking Grant, playing Sonic on the Megadrive. She puts a shushy finger to my lips and we retire to the lounge. We drink homemade beer from stained coffee mugs. I try, with subtlety, to confirm the rumour about the James song. This approach is skipped around, so I just blurt it out, “are you the Come Home girl?” She smiles a maybe, says she knows the band well and tells a complicated story about Tim Booth, Attila the Stockbroker and her teenage runaway self. It sounds feasible and before I get the chance to interrogate she kisses me and storytelling for the night is at a close.
She left town a week later and I never did discover the truth. If this sounds too romantic, let me tell you she also got it on with Good Looking Grant before she went.
Originally posted March 22nd, 2005
Anyway, she fell into my orbit. This was Manchester. Hang on, it was 1992, this was Madchester and my taste in fashion was curated by Afflecks Palace on Oldham Street.
So I’m at the Boardwalk one night at (forgive me sweet lord) a Northside gig, when Rachel flashes her lashes in my direction. The band are chugging along in their bowl cuts, playing Conference level indie-dance and saying “fookin’ yeah!” between songs. I tuck curtain hair strands behind my ears. Rachel has a beautiful lilting Irish accent, a voice that sings through sentences. I’m enraptured and better still, I’m in.
So we head back to my digs in the hard-to-find-beauty of Bolton, where the mills that Blake found satanic are just crumbling away, a town living on past glories of looms and spinning mules and where it never stops raining. The house is asleep although upstairs I can hear one housemate, Good Looking Grant, playing Sonic on the Megadrive. She puts a shushy finger to my lips and we retire to the lounge. We drink homemade beer from stained coffee mugs. I try, with subtlety, to confirm the rumour about the James song. This approach is skipped around, so I just blurt it out, “are you the Come Home girl?” She smiles a maybe, says she knows the band well and tells a complicated story about Tim Booth, Attila the Stockbroker and her teenage runaway self. It sounds feasible and before I get the chance to interrogate she kisses me and storytelling for the night is at a close.
She left town a week later and I never did discover the truth. If this sounds too romantic, let me tell you she also got it on with Good Looking Grant before she went.
Originally posted March 22nd, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.3 - Athens, Georgia
REM of course. And the B52’s. And Pylon I suppose, but REM mostly. I’ve wanted to visit for years. I remember old interviews with the band where they raved about the city. I grew up on REM and I stick by them even now, in their run-out-of-tunes twilight.
Athens is technically a city, but with the feel of a town. The vast campus of the University of Georgia sits downtown and the place fans out around it. I could tell it was a university town because I was the only one about at eleven in the morning and, sadly, the only one getting ready for bed come eleven at night.
In Starbucks the barista asked my name. I was caught off-guard and (in typical English reserved formality), I said, ‘Mr Gregory’. This produced behind the counter mirth, “Can I get, ahem, Mr Gregory a tall latte to go, please?” He bowed stiffly as he handed over my coffee and I left in red-faced embarrassment.
Athens has attractive suburbs. Away from the buzz of the university, hilly residential districts hide wonderful homes. I discovered pristine antebellum houses framed by manicured lawns and arcaded porches. There was a tree that owned itself and a great vegetarian grocery, and behind the cash register, the prettiest girl.
I did the REM sites. Weaver D’s Cafe with its Automatic for the People sign (now placed well out of nicking it reach), Peter Buck’s old house, the 40 Watt club. Outside the club a guy stopped me and introduced himself, “I’m DJ Zee” He was handing out flyers for the weekend with his buddy. He asked if I had heard of him and I said I hadn’t. He looked upset, so I told him I was from England. He relayed this data to his mate who looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked me if I knew someone in Swindon called Kenny.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
Athens is technically a city, but with the feel of a town. The vast campus of the University of Georgia sits downtown and the place fans out around it. I could tell it was a university town because I was the only one about at eleven in the morning and, sadly, the only one getting ready for bed come eleven at night.
In Starbucks the barista asked my name. I was caught off-guard and (in typical English reserved formality), I said, ‘Mr Gregory’. This produced behind the counter mirth, “Can I get, ahem, Mr Gregory a tall latte to go, please?” He bowed stiffly as he handed over my coffee and I left in red-faced embarrassment.
Athens has attractive suburbs. Away from the buzz of the university, hilly residential districts hide wonderful homes. I discovered pristine antebellum houses framed by manicured lawns and arcaded porches. There was a tree that owned itself and a great vegetarian grocery, and behind the cash register, the prettiest girl.
I did the REM sites. Weaver D’s Cafe with its Automatic for the People sign (now placed well out of nicking it reach), Peter Buck’s old house, the 40 Watt club. Outside the club a guy stopped me and introduced himself, “I’m DJ Zee” He was handing out flyers for the weekend with his buddy. He asked if I had heard of him and I said I hadn’t. He looked upset, so I told him I was from England. He relayed this data to his mate who looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked me if I knew someone in Swindon called Kenny.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.2 - Leonard Cohen, Chelsea Hotel, NY
The man on reception seemed a bit put out, but reluctantly conceded we did indeed have a booking. “How did you hear about the hotel?” he asked. I said something that I don’t normally say to hotel receptionists, “From the Leonard Cohen song.” He nodded and brightened up, “We were trying to get Len (Len!) back for his 70th birthday. Not sure he can make it what with the Buddhism.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. A rest stop for rare individuals says the website which doesn’t explain much. It was the only place I wanted to stay in New York, but the online reviews didn’t exactly sell it. “I was scared to walk the corridors in case I got mugged” said one, “I got electrocuted by the shower” said another. I netted these minuses against a whole load of plusses from pop history. Dylans Bob and Thomas both had rooms here, Sid killed Nancy in another and Janis Joplin gave Len (as I now always call him) head on the unmade bed.
The whole place is stacked with art, it hangs on every landing and in many of the rooms. Some of it is great, but much of it is not great at all. Guests are encouraged to hang their own creations and the quality threshold leaps and dives on an ongoing basis. It is certainly unique and I spent one elevator ride trying to work out if the person squashed against me was male or female. There was barely enough room for two people, let alone his/her four yapping dogs.
We were up high on the sixth floor and the windows opened behind the neon sign, level with the ‘O’ in Hotel. I asked if anyone famous had lived in our room, “a writer” the receptionist said, but he couldn’t remember the name. The room was lined with empty bookshelves and decorated in faded everything. I asked a maid if she knew who the writer was. She thought he wrote science fiction and I was a little disappointed.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. A rest stop for rare individuals says the website which doesn’t explain much. It was the only place I wanted to stay in New York, but the online reviews didn’t exactly sell it. “I was scared to walk the corridors in case I got mugged” said one, “I got electrocuted by the shower” said another. I netted these minuses against a whole load of plusses from pop history. Dylans Bob and Thomas both had rooms here, Sid killed Nancy in another and Janis Joplin gave Len (as I now always call him) head on the unmade bed.
The whole place is stacked with art, it hangs on every landing and in many of the rooms. Some of it is great, but much of it is not great at all. Guests are encouraged to hang their own creations and the quality threshold leaps and dives on an ongoing basis. It is certainly unique and I spent one elevator ride trying to work out if the person squashed against me was male or female. There was barely enough room for two people, let alone his/her four yapping dogs.
We were up high on the sixth floor and the windows opened behind the neon sign, level with the ‘O’ in Hotel. I asked if anyone famous had lived in our room, “a writer” the receptionist said, but he couldn’t remember the name. The room was lined with empty bookshelves and decorated in faded everything. I asked a maid if she knew who the writer was. She thought he wrote science fiction and I was a little disappointed.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.1 - Nick Drake, Tanworth-in-Arden
I sat on a bench opposite the pub. An elderly lady was sunning herself. “Are you here because of Nick Drake?” she asked. I said I was, um, how did she know? “We can usually spot them,” she said as if there was a collective noun for pilgrims traipsing around Warwickshire looking for dead singers. She pointed out the church and Drake family home and told me about her new hip.
Tanworth was a one-bus-a-day kind of place. Pub, church, village hall. The pace of life was unhurried and the shops shut on Sunday. Sturdy Georgian cottages surrounded a tidy green, a war memorial sat in the centre, winter roses curled around its base. The village was almost the definition of slightly posh, Mail-on-Sunday England; the flesh of Nick Drake’s songs.
Drake lies buried beneath a beech tree in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene. The gravestone was weather-battered and decked with dying flowers. The epitaph is simple, Nick Drake, remembered with love and the years of his life. The names of his mother and father are chiselled below, recent additions. Etched on the back are the words, ‘now we rise and we are everywhere’ two lines from the closing song on Pink Moon. I startled a cat, asleep against the gravestone and it followed me into the church. A brass plaque above the organ commemorates Nick’s life and music. The church was beautifully silent. The cat curled up on a pew, yawned and returned to sleep.
From the church, I walked to Far Leys, Nick’s boyhood home and the house where he died. Behind lie the Warwickshire hills, rolling middle England. The building is huge, austere; red bricked with thick square chimneys. It seemed too large and a little impersonal. Nick’s sister, Gabrielle always insisted their childhood was idyllic. I wondered how close a family could be in a house with so many rooms.
Originally posted March 21 2005
Tanworth was a one-bus-a-day kind of place. Pub, church, village hall. The pace of life was unhurried and the shops shut on Sunday. Sturdy Georgian cottages surrounded a tidy green, a war memorial sat in the centre, winter roses curled around its base. The village was almost the definition of slightly posh, Mail-on-Sunday England; the flesh of Nick Drake’s songs.
Drake lies buried beneath a beech tree in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene. The gravestone was weather-battered and decked with dying flowers. The epitaph is simple, Nick Drake, remembered with love and the years of his life. The names of his mother and father are chiselled below, recent additions. Etched on the back are the words, ‘now we rise and we are everywhere’ two lines from the closing song on Pink Moon. I startled a cat, asleep against the gravestone and it followed me into the church. A brass plaque above the organ commemorates Nick’s life and music. The church was beautifully silent. The cat curled up on a pew, yawned and returned to sleep.
From the church, I walked to Far Leys, Nick’s boyhood home and the house where he died. Behind lie the Warwickshire hills, rolling middle England. The building is huge, austere; red bricked with thick square chimneys. It seemed too large and a little impersonal. Nick’s sister, Gabrielle always insisted their childhood was idyllic. I wondered how close a family could be in a house with so many rooms.
Originally posted March 21 2005
Thursday, 22 March 2007
A small and curious exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery
This is an eclectic show. How could it not be? A wide remit of three hundred years and the only filter is sex.
The photos and paintings of the women fall into distinct groups. The first are the free spirits, leaving home after a scandal, ready to get away from moustachioed husbands and covered chair legs. Several had Bloomsbury affiliations and pose with a twinkle in their eye. Jane Digby was the essence of this group, leaving England after a messy divorce and finding refuge in the Middle East, sampling local men along the way (according to the caption).
Others were more circumspect and found themselves in colonial outposts as part of their husbands’ careers. Many were propelled by wanderlust alone. Rose McCauley captured Spain in the 60’s before the Costa del Sol obliterated the fishing villages and Martha Gelhorn had feet so itchy, even her husband [Hemmingway] trailed in her slipstream.
There’s little in the Captain Scott style of adventuring, all minus 20 marching and shoe leather suppers, but the legacy is an unsurpassed collection of literature that highlights the adrenaline-fuelled absurdity of male exploration in the same era.
More curious were the public themselves, many wore rucksacks and gore-tex, as if they had just returned from trips of their own. Jumbled by the exit are mock suitcases, the idea to write a tag of your ideal travel destination and pin it to the handle. It was a mix of thrilling and dull; Benin and Benidorm, Kathmandu and Rome, Timbuktu and Home.
The exhibition runs to the end of October and is free.
Originally Posted on Monday, July 12th, 2004
The photos and paintings of the women fall into distinct groups. The first are the free spirits, leaving home after a scandal, ready to get away from moustachioed husbands and covered chair legs. Several had Bloomsbury affiliations and pose with a twinkle in their eye. Jane Digby was the essence of this group, leaving England after a messy divorce and finding refuge in the Middle East, sampling local men along the way (according to the caption).
Others were more circumspect and found themselves in colonial outposts as part of their husbands’ careers. Many were propelled by wanderlust alone. Rose McCauley captured Spain in the 60’s before the Costa del Sol obliterated the fishing villages and Martha Gelhorn had feet so itchy, even her husband [Hemmingway] trailed in her slipstream.
There’s little in the Captain Scott style of adventuring, all minus 20 marching and shoe leather suppers, but the legacy is an unsurpassed collection of literature that highlights the adrenaline-fuelled absurdity of male exploration in the same era.
More curious were the public themselves, many wore rucksacks and gore-tex, as if they had just returned from trips of their own. Jumbled by the exit are mock suitcases, the idea to write a tag of your ideal travel destination and pin it to the handle. It was a mix of thrilling and dull; Benin and Benidorm, Kathmandu and Rome, Timbuktu and Home.
The exhibition runs to the end of October and is free.
Originally Posted on Monday, July 12th, 2004
End of the Routemaster Era
“On average, six people die each year, falling from a Routemaster.” The conductor on the 38 laughed, then scolded himself. “The problem is the survivors. They sue us.”
I sat upstairs, right at the front, a large window onto London from one of the few surviving Routemaster journeys. In another sense, the 38 was a personal journey. My family have lived at various points along this route since the 19th century and one even paid his dues as a conductor. As luck and prosperity ebbed and flowed, my ancestors moved with the times, but be it tram or bus, they were never far from a 38. As we creaked from Clerkenwell to Holborn, as east became west and the streets more moneyed, my ancestors petered out and the bus started to fill.
There has always been something archaic about Routemasters; the two-man crew, all those cramped seats, that bone shaking suspension. They are almost toy-like, capturing the era before Oyster cards and plasma screens. Like veterans of a certain age, every year their numbers have grown thinner, but they’re not leaving without a bang and last October, a body of enthusiasts got together to organise a festival in North London.
“Basically, it’s a tank without a gun barrel” said a man in a ‘Routemasters Forever’
t-shirt as I walked through thin winter sunshine in Finsbury Park. This was considered insightful, judging by the vigorous nodding it produced. Lined up smartly on a bluff were hundreds of Routemasters. Green prototypes stood polished to perfection and rubbed shoulders with later models clothed in adverts, “Back the Olympic Bid”, “Jubilee” & “Harry Potter”.
From above, on the café terrace, the buses did look like tanks, unarmed and far from dangerous, but impressive, as if drilled into line. Parked at the end of one row was an early 38, one of the first to ply this old tram route in the 1950s. A sprightly young man suggested a tour. His enthusiasm was overwhelming and his manner insistent. “I bought it cheap, put in a new gear box and added the interior myself.” The last statement didn’t register until I peered into the upper deck. Instead of ripped seat covers and incomprehensible graffiti lay a bed and pretty rows of floral curtains. “This is where I sleep,” he added, unnecessarily.
The festival attracted a devoted and knowledgeable crowd but that wasn’t enough for some. Two red-faced men were arguing, “No, Martin, it terminated at Holborn.” Martin wasn’t having any of it, “John, the 14 terminated at Holborn, the 27 went to Ludgate Circus.” John looked like he wanted to punch Martin and punch him hard. You had to be passionate too.
Back on the bus and near the end of the journey, the 38 was a buzz of activity. Along Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, every stop in traffic signalled a new game of musical chairs; soundtracked by car horns and the incessant chatter of west-end streets. Impatient locals skipped through traffic and jumped from moving platforms. Tourists joined in the challenge, photographing their accomplishments. It takes practice to ride a Routemaster but in this blame culture era of no win-no fee litigation, a passenger is only a mistimed leap away from swapping a bus journey for an ambulance, with the lawyers hot on their heels.
Even among Routemasters, the 38 has its own identity. Squeezed snugly between the 3 and the 8 logo sits a small heart with a story attached. “The heart is the shape of the route, from Clapton to Victoria,” explained a booming voice at the London Transport Office. I floated this theory to several conductors along the route. All laughed.
The heart-shaped route was an urban myth. In fact, the bus traced a path that resembled no recognisable shape; a kind of jagged lightning bolt, like an addition added by hand to illustrate a broken heart.
The conductor shouted “All change” as the bus snuggled into Victoria Station. I careered down the narrow stairs and stumbled onto the platform. No recorded message told me to stand back while clever doors beeped open. The only voice belonged to the conductor. “Careful”, he said.
I sat upstairs, right at the front, a large window onto London from one of the few surviving Routemaster journeys. In another sense, the 38 was a personal journey. My family have lived at various points along this route since the 19th century and one even paid his dues as a conductor. As luck and prosperity ebbed and flowed, my ancestors moved with the times, but be it tram or bus, they were never far from a 38. As we creaked from Clerkenwell to Holborn, as east became west and the streets more moneyed, my ancestors petered out and the bus started to fill.
There has always been something archaic about Routemasters; the two-man crew, all those cramped seats, that bone shaking suspension. They are almost toy-like, capturing the era before Oyster cards and plasma screens. Like veterans of a certain age, every year their numbers have grown thinner, but they’re not leaving without a bang and last October, a body of enthusiasts got together to organise a festival in North London.
“Basically, it’s a tank without a gun barrel” said a man in a ‘Routemasters Forever’
t-shirt as I walked through thin winter sunshine in Finsbury Park. This was considered insightful, judging by the vigorous nodding it produced. Lined up smartly on a bluff were hundreds of Routemasters. Green prototypes stood polished to perfection and rubbed shoulders with later models clothed in adverts, “Back the Olympic Bid”, “Jubilee” & “Harry Potter”.
From above, on the café terrace, the buses did look like tanks, unarmed and far from dangerous, but impressive, as if drilled into line. Parked at the end of one row was an early 38, one of the first to ply this old tram route in the 1950s. A sprightly young man suggested a tour. His enthusiasm was overwhelming and his manner insistent. “I bought it cheap, put in a new gear box and added the interior myself.” The last statement didn’t register until I peered into the upper deck. Instead of ripped seat covers and incomprehensible graffiti lay a bed and pretty rows of floral curtains. “This is where I sleep,” he added, unnecessarily.
The festival attracted a devoted and knowledgeable crowd but that wasn’t enough for some. Two red-faced men were arguing, “No, Martin, it terminated at Holborn.” Martin wasn’t having any of it, “John, the 14 terminated at Holborn, the 27 went to Ludgate Circus.” John looked like he wanted to punch Martin and punch him hard. You had to be passionate too.
Back on the bus and near the end of the journey, the 38 was a buzz of activity. Along Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, every stop in traffic signalled a new game of musical chairs; soundtracked by car horns and the incessant chatter of west-end streets. Impatient locals skipped through traffic and jumped from moving platforms. Tourists joined in the challenge, photographing their accomplishments. It takes practice to ride a Routemaster but in this blame culture era of no win-no fee litigation, a passenger is only a mistimed leap away from swapping a bus journey for an ambulance, with the lawyers hot on their heels.
Even among Routemasters, the 38 has its own identity. Squeezed snugly between the 3 and the 8 logo sits a small heart with a story attached. “The heart is the shape of the route, from Clapton to Victoria,” explained a booming voice at the London Transport Office. I floated this theory to several conductors along the route. All laughed.
The heart-shaped route was an urban myth. In fact, the bus traced a path that resembled no recognisable shape; a kind of jagged lightning bolt, like an addition added by hand to illustrate a broken heart.
The conductor shouted “All change” as the bus snuggled into Victoria Station. I careered down the narrow stairs and stumbled onto the platform. No recorded message told me to stand back while clever doors beeped open. The only voice belonged to the conductor. “Careful”, he said.
Overground Rivers - The Lea
The Lea is a complicated river. For a start, it has two names, Lea & Lee. The river is no longer a dividing line, but historically it defined the eastern edge of London. After the Romans left, The Lea was the border between the Saxons and marauding Vikings and later between the city and another unrefined trespasser, Essex.
The Lea is also a river that has been ‘worked’ over the years. Navigation arms, flood channels, mill streams; the Lea is a microcosm of industrial London history. It’s also the first thing I see from my window in the morning.
The Lea rises to the north of Luton and like anyone who’s been there, quickly moves away. By the time it hits North London suburbia, there are several branches weaving through the Lea Valley. The Lea is an awkward river, and delineates the East London road network. Ever had to make a two-mile detour? Blame the Lea.
The Lower Lea valley even has a couple of big houses, that’s big as in Breakfast and Brother, although the latter has been razed. After Stratford, the navigation arm splits, creating the Bow Back Rivers as it drops into the Thames Valley. If you’re in a boy band and after a gritty backdrop to your new video, this is your shoot. Perhaps by 2012 it’ll be unrecognisable, the site is primed for Olympic regeneration.
Just before the Lea enters the Thames, the river loops, cutting a peninsula then emptying opposite the Dome. The peninsula is industrial wasteland, but it once housed the Thames Ironworks, supplying ships for the British Navy. In 1895 the workers formed a football team and seventy years later won the World Cup.
Originally by Wednesday, August 18th, 2004
The Lea is also a river that has been ‘worked’ over the years. Navigation arms, flood channels, mill streams; the Lea is a microcosm of industrial London history. It’s also the first thing I see from my window in the morning.
The Lea rises to the north of Luton and like anyone who’s been there, quickly moves away. By the time it hits North London suburbia, there are several branches weaving through the Lea Valley. The Lea is an awkward river, and delineates the East London road network. Ever had to make a two-mile detour? Blame the Lea.
The Lower Lea valley even has a couple of big houses, that’s big as in Breakfast and Brother, although the latter has been razed. After Stratford, the navigation arm splits, creating the Bow Back Rivers as it drops into the Thames Valley. If you’re in a boy band and after a gritty backdrop to your new video, this is your shoot. Perhaps by 2012 it’ll be unrecognisable, the site is primed for Olympic regeneration.
Just before the Lea enters the Thames, the river loops, cutting a peninsula then emptying opposite the Dome. The peninsula is industrial wasteland, but it once housed the Thames Ironworks, supplying ships for the British Navy. In 1895 the workers formed a football team and seventy years later won the World Cup.
Originally by Wednesday, August 18th, 2004
Serendipity in the West Midlands
The discovery of art in the provinces is my 2005 ambition. Fuelled by finding a gallery devoted to GF Watts in a small Surrey village, I’ve started looking elsewhere for small-town galleries. So I went to Walsall.
Women called me ‘love’ which I liked, although I called them ‘mate’ back. In a café I asked if the vegetable curry was vegetarian. The woman sized me up and said, “no it’s got a donkey in it, love.” Walsall also has a funky bus station full of glass and a podlike canopy. I gave the leather museum a miss.
The art gallery is four years old and purpose built to house a permanent collection. That collection is built around 40 sculptures and paintings from Jacob Epstein, augmented by a lovely Modigliani and hundreds of woodcuts and antiquities. Space is set aside for temporary shows, but the floorplan on these upper levels is too open and the art seemed timid and out of context. The roof terrace confirmed my first impression of Walsall as a bleak industrial town.
Women called me ‘love’ which I liked, although I called them ‘mate’ back. In a café I asked if the vegetable curry was vegetarian. The woman sized me up and said, “no it’s got a donkey in it, love.” Walsall also has a funky bus station full of glass and a podlike canopy. I gave the leather museum a miss.
The art gallery is four years old and purpose built to house a permanent collection. That collection is built around 40 sculptures and paintings from Jacob Epstein, augmented by a lovely Modigliani and hundreds of woodcuts and antiquities. Space is set aside for temporary shows, but the floorplan on these upper levels is too open and the art seemed timid and out of context. The roof terrace confirmed my first impression of Walsall as a bleak industrial town.
Teenage Wanderlust
I haven’t always wanted to travel. Football and music were my first obsessions. I can trace the addition of wanderlust to one particular weekend.
I spent my teenage years in a small commuter town, where three quarters of the population took the morning train to the City, leaving a shell of a place.
The dullness proved too much for some and several friends of mine ran away from home. To this day, I don’t know why they picked Swanage, but there they stayed. I went to visit a few months shy of my seventeenth birthday.
To a kid in denim jacket and a Smiths t-shirt, this was freedom. Over the weekend, I got drunk on cider, stoned on weed and fell in love with a runaway from Motherwell. She was rebellious and beautiful. A free spirit like none I’d known. She was in some sort of trouble and had to leave town. I remember accompanying her on a desperate journey to catch a National Express to London. The ferry from Studland delayed us further and the connection was missed. She simply looked at the departure board and booked a seat to another city.
This was about the time I clicked into a different person. I was stranded and due in work at 9am the following morning. I phoned my parents (livid), phoned a work colleague to explain my absence (amused) and spent an unscheduled day in an unregulated new world.
It was a weekend of instant nostalgia, where the furious reaction of my parents was something I didn’t fear and barely acknowledged. I was grounded for a while. No problem, I wanted to spend some time reliving the weekend. My little runaway ranaway again but the others returned from Swanage and joined the commuter stream. Swanage was their last adventure and it was my first.
I spent my teenage years in a small commuter town, where three quarters of the population took the morning train to the City, leaving a shell of a place.
The dullness proved too much for some and several friends of mine ran away from home. To this day, I don’t know why they picked Swanage, but there they stayed. I went to visit a few months shy of my seventeenth birthday.
To a kid in denim jacket and a Smiths t-shirt, this was freedom. Over the weekend, I got drunk on cider, stoned on weed and fell in love with a runaway from Motherwell. She was rebellious and beautiful. A free spirit like none I’d known. She was in some sort of trouble and had to leave town. I remember accompanying her on a desperate journey to catch a National Express to London. The ferry from Studland delayed us further and the connection was missed. She simply looked at the departure board and booked a seat to another city.
This was about the time I clicked into a different person. I was stranded and due in work at 9am the following morning. I phoned my parents (livid), phoned a work colleague to explain my absence (amused) and spent an unscheduled day in an unregulated new world.
It was a weekend of instant nostalgia, where the furious reaction of my parents was something I didn’t fear and barely acknowledged. I was grounded for a while. No problem, I wanted to spend some time reliving the weekend. My little runaway ranaway again but the others returned from Swanage and joined the commuter stream. Swanage was their last adventure and it was my first.
GF Watts
Among the green waves of the North Downs and straight outta the tiny village of Compton is the GF Watts Gallery. No more than a coaching post between Guildford and Godalming, it is a quiet rural place with an extraordinary gallery. ‘Celtic Art Nouveau’ says the leaflet. We laugh, but cannot describe it better.
Watts was a product of the Victorian era. In the context of the times, his heart was in the right place and his wallet backed it up. He donated money to the poor and established Postman’s Park in a London churchyard; publicising tales of local heroics. He was once dubbed the English Michelangelo, something that pleased him initially and then stalked him forever.
As a painter he was prolific, churning out portraits and landscapes. He was a contemporary (and friend) of Ruskin, Burne-Jones and Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite style is in every pout and chiselled cheekbone.
The gallery and family chapel are both Arts and Crafts designs; every stone ripe for decoration and each door laced with iron. Watt’s second wife added the chapel after his first forage into marriage (with the actress Ellen Terry) was annulled. She was 16 and he, a little more experienced at 47. It didn’t last long.
Considering its location, on Saturday afternoon the gallery is packed. I’ve always thought this style of painting has an unfashionable stigma around it. Something to do with the forced morality behind some paintings or because Andrew Lloyd-Webber likes it. Here it works, perhaps because the last thing you expect to find in a village on the North Downs is a gallery full of Victorian melodrama.
Originally Posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005
Watts was a product of the Victorian era. In the context of the times, his heart was in the right place and his wallet backed it up. He donated money to the poor and established Postman’s Park in a London churchyard; publicising tales of local heroics. He was once dubbed the English Michelangelo, something that pleased him initially and then stalked him forever.
As a painter he was prolific, churning out portraits and landscapes. He was a contemporary (and friend) of Ruskin, Burne-Jones and Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite style is in every pout and chiselled cheekbone.
The gallery and family chapel are both Arts and Crafts designs; every stone ripe for decoration and each door laced with iron. Watt’s second wife added the chapel after his first forage into marriage (with the actress Ellen Terry) was annulled. She was 16 and he, a little more experienced at 47. It didn’t last long.
Considering its location, on Saturday afternoon the gallery is packed. I’ve always thought this style of painting has an unfashionable stigma around it. Something to do with the forced morality behind some paintings or because Andrew Lloyd-Webber likes it. Here it works, perhaps because the last thing you expect to find in a village on the North Downs is a gallery full of Victorian melodrama.
Originally Posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005
Glimpses of Essex #1 - Romford on a Friday Night
“I can’t believe you snogged Scott” says a squeaky-voiced Romfordian to her mate. “Well, Dave was throwing up” shrugs the Scott snogger. I’m in one of three identical pubs along the main street. It is towns like Romford where the stigma of Essex as a place of tackiness and stilettos began.
The girls wear tiny skirts and mascara, holding cigarettes and alcopops. The boys hunt in packs, fuelled on lager, their conversations undercut with aggression. The pub bouncers are sculpted from gigantic blocks of muscle and everyone is frisked for weapons on the door. The police hover outside in a thankless attempt to maintain order and discourage the use of shop doorways as urinals.
The behaviour of people is almost tribal and the estuary accent and bad grammar suggest dimmed intelligence, which is probably unfair or at least mirrored in Kent or Herts or Surrey, but in Essex the stereotype sticks hard.
The girls wear tiny skirts and mascara, holding cigarettes and alcopops. The boys hunt in packs, fuelled on lager, their conversations undercut with aggression. The pub bouncers are sculpted from gigantic blocks of muscle and everyone is frisked for weapons on the door. The police hover outside in a thankless attempt to maintain order and discourage the use of shop doorways as urinals.
The behaviour of people is almost tribal and the estuary accent and bad grammar suggest dimmed intelligence, which is probably unfair or at least mirrored in Kent or Herts or Surrey, but in Essex the stereotype sticks hard.
Cheese Rolling, Coopers Hill, Gloucs, May Bank Holiday
What’s the origin? No-one really knows and so out come the traditional explanations like harvest festival and test of virility. Medieval Jackass in other words.
The gradient of the hill starts at 1:2 although further down it shoots vertical for a short stretch and the slope is uneven for most of the 200 yard ‘course’.
Vegans are up in arms. The pierced and shaven-headed food fascists want to substitute the cheese with a soya alternative. “It is unethical,” they say but sympathy has more pressing assignments. Injuries happen every year; sprains and bruises, breaks and splinters. In 1997 a ‘competitor’ went to hospital with head injuries after the cheese cracked his skull.
I gave it a go a few years back. The first few steps are fine, but gathering momentum the hill rises up and physics demands stumble then tumble. The first to the bottom gets to keep the cheese. Those with double Gloucester in their sights have developed the ability to run and fall simultaneously and their acceleration is frightening. Bottom of the hill are private medical officers ready to stop and catch and load onto stretchers.
I don’t wish to be rude to the west country, but some of these folk were a bit Deliverance. Head-over-heeling down the hill I was more worried about some sister-fiddler landing on my head than naturally cracking my own bones. The calcium in the cheese should repair the bones shattered in its pursuit, I suppose. I got to the bottom grass-stained and intact but the cheese was long gone.
Originally Posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005
The gradient of the hill starts at 1:2 although further down it shoots vertical for a short stretch and the slope is uneven for most of the 200 yard ‘course’.
Vegans are up in arms. The pierced and shaven-headed food fascists want to substitute the cheese with a soya alternative. “It is unethical,” they say but sympathy has more pressing assignments. Injuries happen every year; sprains and bruises, breaks and splinters. In 1997 a ‘competitor’ went to hospital with head injuries after the cheese cracked his skull.
I gave it a go a few years back. The first few steps are fine, but gathering momentum the hill rises up and physics demands stumble then tumble. The first to the bottom gets to keep the cheese. Those with double Gloucester in their sights have developed the ability to run and fall simultaneously and their acceleration is frightening. Bottom of the hill are private medical officers ready to stop and catch and load onto stretchers.
I don’t wish to be rude to the west country, but some of these folk were a bit Deliverance. Head-over-heeling down the hill I was more worried about some sister-fiddler landing on my head than naturally cracking my own bones. The calcium in the cheese should repair the bones shattered in its pursuit, I suppose. I got to the bottom grass-stained and intact but the cheese was long gone.
Originally Posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005
La Tomatina Festival, Bunol, Spain
Rowland Rivron walks past in an Ealingly clean white suit. I point at him, “you’re going down Rivron.” “Not me” he pleads, “get Clarkson instead.”
But Jeremy is in a bad mood. He’s munching away on a piece of chicken (”donkey food”) and isn’t keen on the Spaniards (”lazy twats who sleep in the afternoon”). We make mental notes to hurt them.
La Tomatina is a tomato riot in a small Spanish town near the city of Valencia. It lasts for one hour for one day, every year in August. Its origins are blurry and its clean-up operation an endeavour of Forth Bridge proportions.
The day starts as all good days do, with a giant ham stuck atop a greasy pole. Local lads shin up, arse-over-tit down and eventually reach the ham. “Jamon Jamon” shouts the crowd, unwittingly marketing a tapas bar in Camden. This is the signal for part one of the pain to begin. Water hoses roar into the streets and drench everyone with powerful spray. T-shirts are removed, bunched up and thrown into a neighbour’s face. At noon, a klaxon sounds and a temporary truce is called. The lull before the storm.
You hear them first, heavy wheels trundling through the medieval streets. A cheer goes up and the tomato trucks roll into the central plazas to dump their loads. A free for all begins as the streets run with red juice and nowhere is a hiding place. It’s a fight for survival. Darwin with weapons of fruit. A mobile phone floats past in a knee-high stream of red floaty-bits. An Australian girl cries and a drunken couple snog and form a popular target.
A horn sounds after an hour. Hands are shaken, bruises compared and the town heads downhill to a row of communal showers. Clarkson walks past, still not reconciled to the Spanish way of life. “Fuckers” he mutters. The smell of tomatoes stains our nostrils forever more.
Originally posted on June 6th, 2005
But Jeremy is in a bad mood. He’s munching away on a piece of chicken (”donkey food”) and isn’t keen on the Spaniards (”lazy twats who sleep in the afternoon”). We make mental notes to hurt them.
La Tomatina is a tomato riot in a small Spanish town near the city of Valencia. It lasts for one hour for one day, every year in August. Its origins are blurry and its clean-up operation an endeavour of Forth Bridge proportions.
The day starts as all good days do, with a giant ham stuck atop a greasy pole. Local lads shin up, arse-over-tit down and eventually reach the ham. “Jamon Jamon” shouts the crowd, unwittingly marketing a tapas bar in Camden. This is the signal for part one of the pain to begin. Water hoses roar into the streets and drench everyone with powerful spray. T-shirts are removed, bunched up and thrown into a neighbour’s face. At noon, a klaxon sounds and a temporary truce is called. The lull before the storm.
You hear them first, heavy wheels trundling through the medieval streets. A cheer goes up and the tomato trucks roll into the central plazas to dump their loads. A free for all begins as the streets run with red juice and nowhere is a hiding place. It’s a fight for survival. Darwin with weapons of fruit. A mobile phone floats past in a knee-high stream of red floaty-bits. An Australian girl cries and a drunken couple snog and form a popular target.
A horn sounds after an hour. Hands are shaken, bruises compared and the town heads downhill to a row of communal showers. Clarkson walks past, still not reconciled to the Spanish way of life. “Fuckers” he mutters. The smell of tomatoes stains our nostrils forever more.
Originally posted on June 6th, 2005
Spanish Restaurants in London
I love Spanish food. I am vegetarian. Two statements that make uneasy bedfellows.
Go to Spain and the selection is limited. Tortilla, patatas in one form or another, gazpacho in the south, peppers, maybe something with asparagus. Nearly everything else has recently been running in a field. You eye the stew suspiciously. “Does this have any meat in it?” They look affronted, “No meat, just chicken and fish.” London, by comparison is a vegetarian delight.
Many of the Tapas restaurants in London (and the UK?) are Galician. I’m not sure why this is. Galicia has a similar climate to the UK and a Celtic influence unique to Spain, but that doesn’t seem to explain why they predominate the trade. The best, like Laixero, on Columbia Road, near the top of the Flower Market are the perfect marriage; Spanish ambiance, veggie heaven. Galician owned and elbow-knockingly compact. Customer reviews suggest the service was inattentive. Never noticed it myself. Not only is it attentive, but cute too.
El Toro Loco (Wanstead) is another good one, lovely Albarino wine and extra points for chasing me down the road saying “Meester, you have left your bag”, There are plenty dotted around town, Galicia (Portobello Road) has a noisy ambience with octopus a specialty. La Vina in Crouch Hill came up with decent food despite our arrival with Spain’s exit from the World Cup. Gloom and doom in the kitchen, lovely food in dining room. Not everywhere gets it right. One restaurant in Greenwich tried a little too hard, sat us in a scummy upstairs room and misunderstood the serving of tapas. Everything should arrive at the same time.
I love Spain. It has everything I like in a country; climate, great architecture, incomparable art galleries, the best football on the planet, but it treats vegetarians in the same way the Inquisition dealt with Protestants. England’s vegetarian population (between 5% and 10% according to the UK Vegetarian Society) ensures menus are more veggie friendly. It's the best of both worlds.
Go to Spain and the selection is limited. Tortilla, patatas in one form or another, gazpacho in the south, peppers, maybe something with asparagus. Nearly everything else has recently been running in a field. You eye the stew suspiciously. “Does this have any meat in it?” They look affronted, “No meat, just chicken and fish.” London, by comparison is a vegetarian delight.
Many of the Tapas restaurants in London (and the UK?) are Galician. I’m not sure why this is. Galicia has a similar climate to the UK and a Celtic influence unique to Spain, but that doesn’t seem to explain why they predominate the trade. The best, like Laixero, on Columbia Road, near the top of the Flower Market are the perfect marriage; Spanish ambiance, veggie heaven. Galician owned and elbow-knockingly compact. Customer reviews suggest the service was inattentive. Never noticed it myself. Not only is it attentive, but cute too.
El Toro Loco (Wanstead) is another good one, lovely Albarino wine and extra points for chasing me down the road saying “Meester, you have left your bag”, There are plenty dotted around town, Galicia (Portobello Road) has a noisy ambience with octopus a specialty. La Vina in Crouch Hill came up with decent food despite our arrival with Spain’s exit from the World Cup. Gloom and doom in the kitchen, lovely food in dining room. Not everywhere gets it right. One restaurant in Greenwich tried a little too hard, sat us in a scummy upstairs room and misunderstood the serving of tapas. Everything should arrive at the same time.
I love Spain. It has everything I like in a country; climate, great architecture, incomparable art galleries, the best football on the planet, but it treats vegetarians in the same way the Inquisition dealt with Protestants. England’s vegetarian population (between 5% and 10% according to the UK Vegetarian Society) ensures menus are more veggie friendly. It's the best of both worlds.
The Cities of Old Castile Feb 2003
I flew to Madrid on a gloomy London day and immediately headed out of the city on a train that meandered slowly westwards. The sun sank slowly over the horizon and England seemed a great deal further away than it was. I had a vague plan in my head that involved a relaxed tour of the cities of Castile and Galicia, accompanied by plenty of wine and football. At the end of a fortnight, I'd come home fluent in Spanish and with a greater understanding of Castilian history. To be honest, I realise the wine will quickly erase those brain cells charged with learning new stuff and the only phrases I'll pick up will be things like 'relegation dogfight' or 'he was ONSIDE, you nonce'. But, I'm too lazy to do it the proper way.
I adore Spain, it's easily my favourite country and if only it didn't treat vegetarians in the same way it did the Moors, I'd live here permanently. Avila was my first stop; a sandstone city surrounded by a perfect ring of 11th century walls. Avila's history is intertwined with that of St Theresa, a 16th century nun and mystic who is the joint patron saint of Spain. I spent a day in her footsteps. In the convent where she nunned, I saw her rosary beads, her trusted crucifix and, (that revolting relic of Catholic saints), a mummified finger. She was much concerned with humility and rode around Spain on a mule, establishing convents as she went. She rested in barns or slept in disreputable inns, which inspired her most famous phrase, 'Life is a night in a bad hotel'.
Now, I'm not one of those religious nutcases, but I am quite fond of St Theresa due in no small part to the fact that she could, by all accounts, levitate. I have a friend who once levitated at a party in Walthamstow, but it was later found to be a trick. St Theresa, however, could hover at will. Probably even in northeast London. After her death in 1582, her body was rather impolitely dismembered and scattered throughout the country. During the dictatorship, General Franco ended up with a limb that he would obsessively carry around in a briefcase whenever he went dictating:
Mrs Franco: 'Come on Franco, we're late. You got your keys?'
Franco: 'Si.'
Mrs Franco: 'Wallet?'
Franco: 'Si.'
Mrs Franco: 'The mummified arm of Saint Theresa?'
Franco: 'In my briefcase, woman'
Avila was short on sin, strong on saints and thanks to its status as the highest city in Spain, icy cold at night. Locals describe the weather as nine months of winter and three months of hell and I saw rain, snow and sunshine in the two days I stayed. I left in a swirling mist and caught the train to Salamanca.
In Salamanca I found a hotel overlooking the main square. The town is famed for its ancient university and regarded as Spain's equivalent of Oxford. The distinctive brick used in this region is red tinged sandstone and when the sun hits the buildings, the town is transformed into a series of elegant plazas framed by baroque balconies. Not that I could see any of this form my 10 Euro hotel room as it had no windows. Still, the Winnie the Pooh bed cover more than made up for that. St Theresa would have loved it.
The first place everyone heads to in Salamanca is the old university building. On the facade is a huge plateresque collage of shields, skulls and statues surrounding an image of Ferdinand and Isabel, the Catholic monarchs who defined the Spanish golden age. Hidden among all this heraldry is a frog. If you spot it unaided, you'll have good luck and be married within the year. An oxymoron if you ask me, but it didn't matter because I couldn't find it. Even after someone pointed out where it was.
I wandered around the narrow streets hemmed in by convents and two huge cathedrals. The university buildings blend in seamlessly and as the blue skies returned, shadows were thrown about and a more beautiful town appeared. The university walls are full of inscriptions painted in bull's blood. A tradition upon graduation. I thought back to my own graduation and wished I had left a more significant memento of my studies instead of drinking lots of lager and being sick. In the evening I joined the paseo, that cultural custom where families and friends stroll around town dressed in their finest. I stomped around in my new boots trying to tread on those parts of my feet yet to blister. With all the lights trained on its 13th century sandstone, Salamanca was incredible after dark. I came out of my hotel onto the plaza, looked up and said 'wow. I decided I could live in Salamanca, although it was more elegant than I'll ever be.
From Salamanca I headed west to Ciudad Rodrigo, the last major town before the Portuguese border. I arrived at siesta time and for two hours had the whole place to myself. Like all historical Spanish towns, Ciudad Rodrigo has Christian walls built directly over Moorish foundations and on top of the roofs sit hundreds of squawking storks. The sun was blazing as I walked along the ancient walls, circling this beautiful town. I dived into the centre and spent a happy hour wandering among the plazas and blasted white trees that characterise this part of the world. I had a look at the 15th century castle. Not only did it defend the town from numerous waves of barbarians, but it was also my hotel. Having spent just thirty quid on three nights accommodation, I decided some luxury was in order. My window overlooked Portugal and there was hardly any room in my rucksack for all the bathroom accessories. I looked into the mirror in my marble bathroom and was delighted to have got a tan.
Curiously in this far western province of Spain, there was a plaque by the cathedral commemorating a British Major General, Robert Crawford. In1812, Crawford was part of the Duke of Wellington's regiment sent to combat Napoleon's megalomania in the Peninsular War. The British stiffened their upper lips and blasted Jonny Frenchman out of the city. Mr Crawford was one of many British casualties.
Back in the castle / hotel I found a way up onto the roof and sat down among the turrets to read. I watched the sun set and dashed inside as the temperature plummeted. I sank into the bath and thought to myself, 'what a beautiful hotel'. Not the sort of place St Theresa would have approved of and I couldn't get used to people calling me Sir. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see some foreign diplomat standing impatiently behind me. Back in the bath, I watched my tan disappear down the plughole. I guess it was just dirt.
There wasn't much Spain left to the west, so I retraced my steps to Salamanca and headed to Tordesillas. I chose it because it straddled a major junction and I had no idea where to go next. I delighted the local tourist office who weren't expecting foreign tourists in February. I came out with a bag of leaflets in various languages, most of which I didn't recognise. I spied a wine shop near the main square and unexpectedly had a great half hour in the company of the endearingly enthusiastic and slightly eccentric proprietor. I showed some interest in the locally produced wine and before I knew it, she was leading me into Mozarabic tunnels in the cellar beneath the shop. This building was sat atop an old Arabic house. We crawled through arches that have stood here for a thousand years. She dashed off Castilian history with a flourish and explained the role of Tordesillas in determining the succession of the Spanish monarchy. In rat-a-tat Spanish she reeled off the medieval kings and queens. They all had idiosyncratic suffixes after their names; Pedro the Cruel, Juan the Bald etc. She pointed out the convent where Juana the Mad could go loopy without embarrassing the royal court and mentioned many others whose names I forget but were probably 'Pablo the Twatty' or 'Alfonso the Spaz'.
I emerged back onto ground level and into the present day and worked out my next move; tomorrow was Saturday and therefore time to devote some time to a part of Spanish history that is perhaps the most important of all; Football.
Valladolid wasn't a pretty city. It looked like someone had started with the right intentions and designed a smart central plaza, then got fed up and left the rest to the towerblock builders. Luckily I hadn't come for the architecture; I was here for a football fix. Valladolid aren't the trendiest team in Spain, in fact they go out of their way to invite ridicule by wearing lilac striped shirts. They took on the rather more fashionable Deportivo La Coruna on a bitter night in a gap between the towerblocks. The three not so wise old men next to me thought I was an English scout. To fuel their curiosity I asked the occasional 'scout' question, like how old the right back was and made a quick note. They asked which team I was representing. I just tapped my nose conspiratorially. Next morning I found the towerblock housing the bus station and left the big ugly city amid a huge anti-war demonstration. I headed to Leon.
If I was trying to be intellectual I would say I went to Leon to enjoy the famous stained glass in the gothic cathedral or to tour the monastery with its 11th century Romanesque frescos and tombs of ancient kings.
The unintellectual (and real) reason I went was because the guidebook said it had a good pizza restaurant. And it was spot on! The stained glass was alright, the Romanesque frescos fairly Romanesque and the tombs full of the dusty bones of Fernando the Burpy and Carlos the Smug, but the pizza was done to perfection; the crust grilled just long enough to lose its doughy texture but not so much that it became too crispy to cut. Leon was a long way to come for a pizza, but vegetarians are the modern day infidels in Spain, and I will always associate the town with a magnificent margherita.
After the pizza pilgrimage, I decided to join a real one and caught the train to Santiago de Compostella in the province of Galicia, far up in the top left hand corner of Spain. The city translates quite poetically as 'St James of the field of Stars', for it is here (supposedly) that the bones of the saint lie. St James was the first cousin of Jesus and, boiiing!, the son of Zebedee. The city is one of the holiest pilgrimage destinations in the whole of Christendom, ranking alongside the shrine at Lourdes and the Doctor Martens stand at Upton Park.
Galicia is a land of cause and effect. The effect is lush green hills and wooded valleys. The cause is rain. Lots of it. The Galicians have Celtic origins, their own language and the local music scene is centred around that instrument of oral torture, the bagpipe. It is also vegetarian hell. Roasted suckling pig is the delicacy in these parts and is served up as if it has just been embalmed. It reminded me of the dish of the day in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from the Douglas Adams series of books. I was half expecting it to start recommending parts of its flesh to the diners, "Sir, I've been fed on acorns and my rump is deliciously tender." There's no point asking for vegetarian food, they just think you're an idiot for passing up the opportunity.
As the train was dropping down from the mountains into Santiago a lady asked me for help with her baggage. Then another did the same. Before long, my, ahem, bulging muscles were in continuous use. One baggage hold-all was so large, I can only assume the tiny old lady owner was going to put it on a trolley, zip herself inside and ask for a push into town. It was dark after I had unloaded the whole train's luggage and most hotels were filling up fast. I found a room after several attempts, but it was b*llock freezing cold. I slept in my woolly hat. Even St Theresa would have had second thoughts about this place. I upgraded the next day to a hotel for the warm blooded.
The cathedral at Santiago is carved from granite. It is intricate and overwhelming. The grey brick silhouetted against the night sky was like walking into a vision of Mordor. If you can imagine Middle Earth populated by drenched Christians rather than Hobbits, that is. Because of the wet climate, moss sprouts between the bricks and plants emerge in the cracks. It looked as if the cathedral was in bloom. It was the end of the line for the pilgrims and many smiled in the way that Jehovah's Witnesses do when you open your front door in your underwear. Inside the cathedral, you place your hand in the carved marble tree of life and ascend the altar over the crypt of St James. I felt a bit of an outsider but I love the religious atmosphere of Spain rather than the religion itself, and it's hard not to believe in something when you're surrounded by the intimidating iconography of the cathedral and the intense application of the thousands who have trodden the path to Santiago every day for centuries and centuries.
It was easy to be cynical in Santiago but the pilgrims I met had some amazing stories to tell. Some had endured the most wretched lives and wished to prove something to themselves, others took it as an opportunity for seeing Spain; tourism the hard way. One woman I spoke to had walked all the way from France. She stomped over the Pyrenees in the middle of winter and had (unsurprisingly) contracted bronchitis along the way. And she was 68 years old! I really admired her. She wanted to do something that tested her physically and replenished her psychologically. She was a fascinating lady and didn't overplay the faith element when I said the only religion I believe in kicks off at three on a Saturday afternoon.
It rained relentlessly all day so I dived into a couple of museums. The first was a history of regional agriculture. And the text was all in Galician which appears to be a cross between Spanish, Portuguese and Klingon. To be honest no translation could have saved it from being the dullest museum in history. A whole room on traditional shoe making? Fantastic. A gallery devoted to fishing nets? No, please, me first.
I left Santiago the following morning (it was raining of course) and after I had loaded everyone's luggage back onto the train, we rode through the green mountains back into Castile. As if the heavens were controlled by the flick of a switch, it immediately stopped raining.
And started snowing.
I adore Spain, it's easily my favourite country and if only it didn't treat vegetarians in the same way it did the Moors, I'd live here permanently. Avila was my first stop; a sandstone city surrounded by a perfect ring of 11th century walls. Avila's history is intertwined with that of St Theresa, a 16th century nun and mystic who is the joint patron saint of Spain. I spent a day in her footsteps. In the convent where she nunned, I saw her rosary beads, her trusted crucifix and, (that revolting relic of Catholic saints), a mummified finger. She was much concerned with humility and rode around Spain on a mule, establishing convents as she went. She rested in barns or slept in disreputable inns, which inspired her most famous phrase, 'Life is a night in a bad hotel'.
Now, I'm not one of those religious nutcases, but I am quite fond of St Theresa due in no small part to the fact that she could, by all accounts, levitate. I have a friend who once levitated at a party in Walthamstow, but it was later found to be a trick. St Theresa, however, could hover at will. Probably even in northeast London. After her death in 1582, her body was rather impolitely dismembered and scattered throughout the country. During the dictatorship, General Franco ended up with a limb that he would obsessively carry around in a briefcase whenever he went dictating:
Mrs Franco: 'Come on Franco, we're late. You got your keys?'
Franco: 'Si.'
Mrs Franco: 'Wallet?'
Franco: 'Si.'
Mrs Franco: 'The mummified arm of Saint Theresa?'
Franco: 'In my briefcase, woman'
Avila was short on sin, strong on saints and thanks to its status as the highest city in Spain, icy cold at night. Locals describe the weather as nine months of winter and three months of hell and I saw rain, snow and sunshine in the two days I stayed. I left in a swirling mist and caught the train to Salamanca.
In Salamanca I found a hotel overlooking the main square. The town is famed for its ancient university and regarded as Spain's equivalent of Oxford. The distinctive brick used in this region is red tinged sandstone and when the sun hits the buildings, the town is transformed into a series of elegant plazas framed by baroque balconies. Not that I could see any of this form my 10 Euro hotel room as it had no windows. Still, the Winnie the Pooh bed cover more than made up for that. St Theresa would have loved it.
The first place everyone heads to in Salamanca is the old university building. On the facade is a huge plateresque collage of shields, skulls and statues surrounding an image of Ferdinand and Isabel, the Catholic monarchs who defined the Spanish golden age. Hidden among all this heraldry is a frog. If you spot it unaided, you'll have good luck and be married within the year. An oxymoron if you ask me, but it didn't matter because I couldn't find it. Even after someone pointed out where it was.
I wandered around the narrow streets hemmed in by convents and two huge cathedrals. The university buildings blend in seamlessly and as the blue skies returned, shadows were thrown about and a more beautiful town appeared. The university walls are full of inscriptions painted in bull's blood. A tradition upon graduation. I thought back to my own graduation and wished I had left a more significant memento of my studies instead of drinking lots of lager and being sick. In the evening I joined the paseo, that cultural custom where families and friends stroll around town dressed in their finest. I stomped around in my new boots trying to tread on those parts of my feet yet to blister. With all the lights trained on its 13th century sandstone, Salamanca was incredible after dark. I came out of my hotel onto the plaza, looked up and said 'wow. I decided I could live in Salamanca, although it was more elegant than I'll ever be.
From Salamanca I headed west to Ciudad Rodrigo, the last major town before the Portuguese border. I arrived at siesta time and for two hours had the whole place to myself. Like all historical Spanish towns, Ciudad Rodrigo has Christian walls built directly over Moorish foundations and on top of the roofs sit hundreds of squawking storks. The sun was blazing as I walked along the ancient walls, circling this beautiful town. I dived into the centre and spent a happy hour wandering among the plazas and blasted white trees that characterise this part of the world. I had a look at the 15th century castle. Not only did it defend the town from numerous waves of barbarians, but it was also my hotel. Having spent just thirty quid on three nights accommodation, I decided some luxury was in order. My window overlooked Portugal and there was hardly any room in my rucksack for all the bathroom accessories. I looked into the mirror in my marble bathroom and was delighted to have got a tan.
Curiously in this far western province of Spain, there was a plaque by the cathedral commemorating a British Major General, Robert Crawford. In1812, Crawford was part of the Duke of Wellington's regiment sent to combat Napoleon's megalomania in the Peninsular War. The British stiffened their upper lips and blasted Jonny Frenchman out of the city. Mr Crawford was one of many British casualties.
Back in the castle / hotel I found a way up onto the roof and sat down among the turrets to read. I watched the sun set and dashed inside as the temperature plummeted. I sank into the bath and thought to myself, 'what a beautiful hotel'. Not the sort of place St Theresa would have approved of and I couldn't get used to people calling me Sir. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see some foreign diplomat standing impatiently behind me. Back in the bath, I watched my tan disappear down the plughole. I guess it was just dirt.
There wasn't much Spain left to the west, so I retraced my steps to Salamanca and headed to Tordesillas. I chose it because it straddled a major junction and I had no idea where to go next. I delighted the local tourist office who weren't expecting foreign tourists in February. I came out with a bag of leaflets in various languages, most of which I didn't recognise. I spied a wine shop near the main square and unexpectedly had a great half hour in the company of the endearingly enthusiastic and slightly eccentric proprietor. I showed some interest in the locally produced wine and before I knew it, she was leading me into Mozarabic tunnels in the cellar beneath the shop. This building was sat atop an old Arabic house. We crawled through arches that have stood here for a thousand years. She dashed off Castilian history with a flourish and explained the role of Tordesillas in determining the succession of the Spanish monarchy. In rat-a-tat Spanish she reeled off the medieval kings and queens. They all had idiosyncratic suffixes after their names; Pedro the Cruel, Juan the Bald etc. She pointed out the convent where Juana the Mad could go loopy without embarrassing the royal court and mentioned many others whose names I forget but were probably 'Pablo the Twatty' or 'Alfonso the Spaz'.
I emerged back onto ground level and into the present day and worked out my next move; tomorrow was Saturday and therefore time to devote some time to a part of Spanish history that is perhaps the most important of all; Football.
Valladolid wasn't a pretty city. It looked like someone had started with the right intentions and designed a smart central plaza, then got fed up and left the rest to the towerblock builders. Luckily I hadn't come for the architecture; I was here for a football fix. Valladolid aren't the trendiest team in Spain, in fact they go out of their way to invite ridicule by wearing lilac striped shirts. They took on the rather more fashionable Deportivo La Coruna on a bitter night in a gap between the towerblocks. The three not so wise old men next to me thought I was an English scout. To fuel their curiosity I asked the occasional 'scout' question, like how old the right back was and made a quick note. They asked which team I was representing. I just tapped my nose conspiratorially. Next morning I found the towerblock housing the bus station and left the big ugly city amid a huge anti-war demonstration. I headed to Leon.
If I was trying to be intellectual I would say I went to Leon to enjoy the famous stained glass in the gothic cathedral or to tour the monastery with its 11th century Romanesque frescos and tombs of ancient kings.
The unintellectual (and real) reason I went was because the guidebook said it had a good pizza restaurant. And it was spot on! The stained glass was alright, the Romanesque frescos fairly Romanesque and the tombs full of the dusty bones of Fernando the Burpy and Carlos the Smug, but the pizza was done to perfection; the crust grilled just long enough to lose its doughy texture but not so much that it became too crispy to cut. Leon was a long way to come for a pizza, but vegetarians are the modern day infidels in Spain, and I will always associate the town with a magnificent margherita.
After the pizza pilgrimage, I decided to join a real one and caught the train to Santiago de Compostella in the province of Galicia, far up in the top left hand corner of Spain. The city translates quite poetically as 'St James of the field of Stars', for it is here (supposedly) that the bones of the saint lie. St James was the first cousin of Jesus and, boiiing!, the son of Zebedee. The city is one of the holiest pilgrimage destinations in the whole of Christendom, ranking alongside the shrine at Lourdes and the Doctor Martens stand at Upton Park.
Galicia is a land of cause and effect. The effect is lush green hills and wooded valleys. The cause is rain. Lots of it. The Galicians have Celtic origins, their own language and the local music scene is centred around that instrument of oral torture, the bagpipe. It is also vegetarian hell. Roasted suckling pig is the delicacy in these parts and is served up as if it has just been embalmed. It reminded me of the dish of the day in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from the Douglas Adams series of books. I was half expecting it to start recommending parts of its flesh to the diners, "Sir, I've been fed on acorns and my rump is deliciously tender." There's no point asking for vegetarian food, they just think you're an idiot for passing up the opportunity.
As the train was dropping down from the mountains into Santiago a lady asked me for help with her baggage. Then another did the same. Before long, my, ahem, bulging muscles were in continuous use. One baggage hold-all was so large, I can only assume the tiny old lady owner was going to put it on a trolley, zip herself inside and ask for a push into town. It was dark after I had unloaded the whole train's luggage and most hotels were filling up fast. I found a room after several attempts, but it was b*llock freezing cold. I slept in my woolly hat. Even St Theresa would have had second thoughts about this place. I upgraded the next day to a hotel for the warm blooded.
The cathedral at Santiago is carved from granite. It is intricate and overwhelming. The grey brick silhouetted against the night sky was like walking into a vision of Mordor. If you can imagine Middle Earth populated by drenched Christians rather than Hobbits, that is. Because of the wet climate, moss sprouts between the bricks and plants emerge in the cracks. It looked as if the cathedral was in bloom. It was the end of the line for the pilgrims and many smiled in the way that Jehovah's Witnesses do when you open your front door in your underwear. Inside the cathedral, you place your hand in the carved marble tree of life and ascend the altar over the crypt of St James. I felt a bit of an outsider but I love the religious atmosphere of Spain rather than the religion itself, and it's hard not to believe in something when you're surrounded by the intimidating iconography of the cathedral and the intense application of the thousands who have trodden the path to Santiago every day for centuries and centuries.
It was easy to be cynical in Santiago but the pilgrims I met had some amazing stories to tell. Some had endured the most wretched lives and wished to prove something to themselves, others took it as an opportunity for seeing Spain; tourism the hard way. One woman I spoke to had walked all the way from France. She stomped over the Pyrenees in the middle of winter and had (unsurprisingly) contracted bronchitis along the way. And she was 68 years old! I really admired her. She wanted to do something that tested her physically and replenished her psychologically. She was a fascinating lady and didn't overplay the faith element when I said the only religion I believe in kicks off at three on a Saturday afternoon.
It rained relentlessly all day so I dived into a couple of museums. The first was a history of regional agriculture. And the text was all in Galician which appears to be a cross between Spanish, Portuguese and Klingon. To be honest no translation could have saved it from being the dullest museum in history. A whole room on traditional shoe making? Fantastic. A gallery devoted to fishing nets? No, please, me first.
I left Santiago the following morning (it was raining of course) and after I had loaded everyone's luggage back onto the train, we rode through the green mountains back into Castile. As if the heavens were controlled by the flick of a switch, it immediately stopped raining.
And started snowing.
Architecture and Wine in Rioja
In a region better known for its grapes, the owners of the wineries (or bodegas) of northern Spain have turned their attention to front-of-house impressions.
The Marquis de Riscal’s new bodega and hotel at Elciego in Rioja is perhaps the most daring. Designed by Frank Gehry, it resembles a gayer Guggenheim with pinkish fins and sparkling curves. It’s not finished yet and all the more interesting for it, allowing an eye into its construction.
In the Simpsons, Springfield erects a Gehry building; a conventional structure attacked by wrecking balls to knock out the angles. Not too far from the truth! Underneath the skirts lies the geometry; all girders and supports, a corset to hold it together.
On the road past the bodega, a car lay bashed in a ditch. The consequence of building an incongruous building by a busy bypass? After the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the Los Angeles Concert Hall, Gehry is becoming a one-trick pony, but it’s still a decent trick.
Down the road in Laguardia lies Santiago Calatrava’s sparkling Ysios bodega. The building is glass-fronted with a choppy-waved roof and sits atop a bump in the landscape. Spring-blue skies bounced zig-zag shadows over the vines. A wedding erupted from inside. The entrance hall gave a more critical assessment, a reality of drips and buckets.
Architecture attracts architects. In Bilbao, Gehry built the museum, Norman Foster the metro (a first draft of Canary Wharf) and Calatrava added a bridge and an airport. Now everyone wants a go at bodegas. Richard Rogers is next and, hot on his tail, Norman Foster has one too, both in Ribero del Duero.
Originally posted April 4th, 2006
The Marquis de Riscal’s new bodega and hotel at Elciego in Rioja is perhaps the most daring. Designed by Frank Gehry, it resembles a gayer Guggenheim with pinkish fins and sparkling curves. It’s not finished yet and all the more interesting for it, allowing an eye into its construction.
In the Simpsons, Springfield erects a Gehry building; a conventional structure attacked by wrecking balls to knock out the angles. Not too far from the truth! Underneath the skirts lies the geometry; all girders and supports, a corset to hold it together.
On the road past the bodega, a car lay bashed in a ditch. The consequence of building an incongruous building by a busy bypass? After the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the Los Angeles Concert Hall, Gehry is becoming a one-trick pony, but it’s still a decent trick.
Down the road in Laguardia lies Santiago Calatrava’s sparkling Ysios bodega. The building is glass-fronted with a choppy-waved roof and sits atop a bump in the landscape. Spring-blue skies bounced zig-zag shadows over the vines. A wedding erupted from inside. The entrance hall gave a more critical assessment, a reality of drips and buckets.
Architecture attracts architects. In Bilbao, Gehry built the museum, Norman Foster the metro (a first draft of Canary Wharf) and Calatrava added a bridge and an airport. Now everyone wants a go at bodegas. Richard Rogers is next and, hot on his tail, Norman Foster has one too, both in Ribero del Duero.
Originally posted April 4th, 2006
Laurie Lee – Almunecar of the Sugar Canes
Laurie Lee blurred the division between memoir and travel literature.
A Rose for Winter is the poorest of the Spain books. The naivety and wonder has gone and the writing feels syrupy, the descriptions rose tinted. The gypsies of Andalusia are romanticised almost to cartoon level. My own encounter with gypsies in southern Spain may have coloured this; sprinting after a bag thief in the streets of Cordoba who pulled a knife when confronted. The sort of experience that can only lead to prejudice and a million miles from Lee’s depiction of camp fires and guitars and the loveable vagabond.
Laurie Lee was rescued by the British Navy as the civil war gathered momentum and a memorial graces the main street in Almunecar. The town is close enough to Malaga to have a tourist overlay and pizzerias line the promenade, British and Germans in the bars. He came back and fought and the book of his civil war experiences is a strange one. The war is almost peripheral to the text and the danger inadvertently brought on by his own naivety and ill-health. Lee was too much in love with Spain to be a spy, but I can understand why the Republicans had suspicions.
Laurie Lee died in 1997 and lies buried at Slad in the Cotswold foothills; his gravestone hasn’t had time and weather enough to blend into the churchyard and looks stark on the steep hill. Opposite is the schoolhouse and the landscape of Cider with Rosie, the home he walked away from, to discover the beauty of other lands and to fight and romanticise them so many years later.
A Rose for Winter is the poorest of the Spain books. The naivety and wonder has gone and the writing feels syrupy, the descriptions rose tinted. The gypsies of Andalusia are romanticised almost to cartoon level. My own encounter with gypsies in southern Spain may have coloured this; sprinting after a bag thief in the streets of Cordoba who pulled a knife when confronted. The sort of experience that can only lead to prejudice and a million miles from Lee’s depiction of camp fires and guitars and the loveable vagabond.
Laurie Lee was rescued by the British Navy as the civil war gathered momentum and a memorial graces the main street in Almunecar. The town is close enough to Malaga to have a tourist overlay and pizzerias line the promenade, British and Germans in the bars. He came back and fought and the book of his civil war experiences is a strange one. The war is almost peripheral to the text and the danger inadvertently brought on by his own naivety and ill-health. Lee was too much in love with Spain to be a spy, but I can understand why the Republicans had suspicions.
Laurie Lee died in 1997 and lies buried at Slad in the Cotswold foothills; his gravestone hasn’t had time and weather enough to blend into the churchyard and looks stark on the steep hill. Opposite is the schoolhouse and the landscape of Cider with Rosie, the home he walked away from, to discover the beauty of other lands and to fight and romanticise them so many years later.
The Guggenheim Museum of Contemporary Art
In 1997 a strange thing happened to the Basque city of Bilbao. Amid the industrial gloom of its docks, an apparition was reported. The man behind the apparition was Frank Gehry, a Canadian with a unique eye for architecture.
The apparition is known colloquially as The Goog and it sits on the harbour-side like a melted collision between the Sydney Opera House and the Thames Barrier. A marriage of glacial cubes and tumbling angles, the Guggenheim appears to the eye like a mathematics puzzle wrapped in silver paper.
Once you catch a glimpse of the building, it tags along as you wander the streets of Bilbao. Just when you think you’ve shaken it off by turning a corner it suddenly confronts you again, peering out from behind a bank or lounging patiently at the end of a boulevard.
Inside, the permanent collection has been carefully curated to accommodate an eclectic mix from Chinese artefacts to popular abstract. Directly across from the Guggenheim is the provincial arts museum, standing subdued in the shadow of its smart new neighbour, like a cynical older relative catering for an earlier generation.
Bilbao has welcomed this addition to the skyline with genuine enthusiasm and the ensuing publicity has had positive effects in raising the cultural and touristic appeal of the city. Although the filthy river washing through the city makes the Thames look like bottled Evian, the knock-on regeneration is obvious as gloomy crane-squatted docklands once again become inhabitable.
Gehry’s Los Angeles Concert Hall is the latest in a string of Guggenheim inspired buildings, but Bilbao was the catalyst. An exceptional backdrop to a gritty industrial port with more refined aspirations.
The apparition is known colloquially as The Goog and it sits on the harbour-side like a melted collision between the Sydney Opera House and the Thames Barrier. A marriage of glacial cubes and tumbling angles, the Guggenheim appears to the eye like a mathematics puzzle wrapped in silver paper.
Once you catch a glimpse of the building, it tags along as you wander the streets of Bilbao. Just when you think you’ve shaken it off by turning a corner it suddenly confronts you again, peering out from behind a bank or lounging patiently at the end of a boulevard.
Inside, the permanent collection has been carefully curated to accommodate an eclectic mix from Chinese artefacts to popular abstract. Directly across from the Guggenheim is the provincial arts museum, standing subdued in the shadow of its smart new neighbour, like a cynical older relative catering for an earlier generation.
Bilbao has welcomed this addition to the skyline with genuine enthusiasm and the ensuing publicity has had positive effects in raising the cultural and touristic appeal of the city. Although the filthy river washing through the city makes the Thames look like bottled Evian, the knock-on regeneration is obvious as gloomy crane-squatted docklands once again become inhabitable.
Gehry’s Los Angeles Concert Hall is the latest in a string of Guggenheim inspired buildings, but Bilbao was the catalyst. An exceptional backdrop to a gritty industrial port with more refined aspirations.
Don Quixote and Picasso
Not many people I know have read Don Quixote. At least not all of it. Or even some of it. The thousand odd pages of dense text can appear rather daunting. It's also a novel with an odd structure and the second half tips a wink to a pirated sequel that Cervantes had no hand in. It's a story within a book, told via a narrator and if you think too much about it, your head hurts.
I bought mine from a one legged man in Tanzania. I had time to kill and nothing to kill it with. I paid six dollars for it. Rather excessive for a tatty paperback. In hindsight I should have just taken it. What was he going to do, hop after me? For a week I immersed myself in the comical sad world of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The book is over five hundred years old but the comedy could have been written this morning. It's just two blokes, one with a vast imagination and tenuous grip on reality, the other naïve in some respects and cynical in a whole lot of others. The interplay is everything to the story but it's the evolving relationship between the two that kicks the book along. Other characters come and go and some hang around the periphery, but Cervantes uses them to bounce around ideas and to skewer the main characters into new adventures.
My copy was weather beaten and stained. It dated from the late sixties with a beautiful Picasso drawing on the cover. It must have taken him thirty seconds and it captures everything I love about the book. A series of squiggly lines form an outline of Quixote sitting with an imperial air on top of Rocinante. The drawing looks effortless, but full of detail. Abroad stroke gives Quixote a jutting chin as he contemplates the windmills in the distance. His horse is a mesh of dark jabs over bandy legs. A swish completes his face and adds expression. It is simple and perfect.
I began to treasure my copy and after a thorough wipe and some sticky tape, it began to resemble a proper book once more. However, a thousand page treasure carried in a rucksack quickly turns from book to brick and I soon swapped it for something altogether less grand. I wasn't too bothered, promising myself I would find a copy when I came home.
Of course I came home, searched everywhere for it, but never found that edition. The best marriage of book to cover I've come across and the best $6 I have ever spent.
I bought mine from a one legged man in Tanzania. I had time to kill and nothing to kill it with. I paid six dollars for it. Rather excessive for a tatty paperback. In hindsight I should have just taken it. What was he going to do, hop after me? For a week I immersed myself in the comical sad world of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The book is over five hundred years old but the comedy could have been written this morning. It's just two blokes, one with a vast imagination and tenuous grip on reality, the other naïve in some respects and cynical in a whole lot of others. The interplay is everything to the story but it's the evolving relationship between the two that kicks the book along. Other characters come and go and some hang around the periphery, but Cervantes uses them to bounce around ideas and to skewer the main characters into new adventures.
My copy was weather beaten and stained. It dated from the late sixties with a beautiful Picasso drawing on the cover. It must have taken him thirty seconds and it captures everything I love about the book. A series of squiggly lines form an outline of Quixote sitting with an imperial air on top of Rocinante. The drawing looks effortless, but full of detail. Abroad stroke gives Quixote a jutting chin as he contemplates the windmills in the distance. His horse is a mesh of dark jabs over bandy legs. A swish completes his face and adds expression. It is simple and perfect.
I began to treasure my copy and after a thorough wipe and some sticky tape, it began to resemble a proper book once more. However, a thousand page treasure carried in a rucksack quickly turns from book to brick and I soon swapped it for something altogether less grand. I wasn't too bothered, promising myself I would find a copy when I came home.
Of course I came home, searched everywhere for it, but never found that edition. The best marriage of book to cover I've come across and the best $6 I have ever spent.
Likoma Island, Malawi
"Hey Mazungu!" a voice calls, "I am Gift, and this is my brother, Advice." The younger boy smiles shyly. Mazungu is a generic Swahili word meaning white man, although its curious literal translation is man without smell. Gift offers himself as a guide. I ask Advice what pearls of wisdom he can impart. He points to the lake and says, "crocodiles."
Likoma Island lies near the north tip of Lake Malawi, nudging into Mozambique waters. Baobab trees front the shore acting as natural umbrellas, for the humidity is intense and the sun dangerously hot.
Over the next week, the brothers spend their days showing off the island. I pant along behind, no longer without smell. Gift introduces his friends and we spend idyllic afternoons as the boys coach me in dialect and I teach them chess.
One blue-sky morning we walk across to a neighbouring village and wait in the dusty square. Slowly villagers drift in from the fields and we head into a large adobe hall. A squat man, bearded and grey walks to the front. Dressed in dirty whites covered by an ornate robe, he looks impressive and the hum from the crowd cuts to silence. He introduces himself as the Likoma Witchdoctor.
The ceremony begins with song, a lilting prayer sung in harmony. Patients come forward and describe their symptoms. The maladies are often emotional and alien to western prognosis. Spells and omens play a central role and the doctor removes the evil spirits using thick cleansing potions or by slaughtering cockerels.
There’s a small hospital on the island, set up by a Christian charity, but pills and injections are viewed with suspicion and locals prefer the less orthodox prescriptions of the witch doctor. After closing song, I’m asked to say a few words and shuffle embarrassingly to my feet, thanking everyone for allowing me to witness the ceremony. The doctor requests I tell my friends at home to visit. I think of them in their suits & offices and smile.
Outside, I thank the brothers and we retire to a bar to continue our chess game. The Doctor unwinds in the corner, wiping blood from his knife and drinking Carlsberg. Advice is young and restless, but Gift is keen on chess and soon has my king backed into a corner. My pawns are overrun one by one. I swear in Chichewa and my opponent laughs at the pronunciation. Gift is several years my junior, but we share a sense of humour and an obsession with football. A friendship grows between us.
The night before the mainland ferry docks, we travel to Gift’s home village. He introduces his mother and an endless stream of relatives. Overlooking the lake, we sip thin tea from cracked china cups. The air is still and darkening towards twilight. I feel happy, part of the scene and a long way from home.
One of the villagers walks down to the lake to wash. Wrapped to her back a baby squeals. Mother and child slip into the water. I watch with detachment, chatting to family, framing it as background. But then the woman screams and ducks beneath the water. She re-emerges in a whirlpool of blood amid the thrashing tail of a crocodile. She is only six feet from the shore in waist deep water. A couple of men wade in, but mother and baby are gone. Gift’s mother screams and rushes to the shore.
The wake begins at once. At the top of the valley is a wooden Anglican cathedral. On this island of Christians and witch doctors, crosses and offerings, the church becomes the focus of grief. The women begin to wail and the noise is incessant. The dead woman is Gift's cousin. I drink my tea, say a million sorrys and slip away. I am invisible anyway.
The brothers catch me up the following morning, as I board the ferry back to mainland Malawi. I hug them both and smile weakly. Gift senses my discomfort and says, "it happens, it happens;" but it doesn't happen where I'm from and I don't know what to say.
I subsequently tell the story many times, passing long African evenings with other westerners. The tale is always well received. I notice the hush as I turn the perfect afternoon into a bloodbath. With each performance the story improves; a change of tone, more flesh on the characters and a fine closing line, “if you meet someone called Advice, listen to what he has to say”, until one evening someone gets upset and accuses me of exploitation. We have a pointless shouting match, but I know she’s right. Two people lost their lives that afternoon and I’ve turned it into an anecdote.
Likoma Island lies near the north tip of Lake Malawi, nudging into Mozambique waters. Baobab trees front the shore acting as natural umbrellas, for the humidity is intense and the sun dangerously hot.
Over the next week, the brothers spend their days showing off the island. I pant along behind, no longer without smell. Gift introduces his friends and we spend idyllic afternoons as the boys coach me in dialect and I teach them chess.
One blue-sky morning we walk across to a neighbouring village and wait in the dusty square. Slowly villagers drift in from the fields and we head into a large adobe hall. A squat man, bearded and grey walks to the front. Dressed in dirty whites covered by an ornate robe, he looks impressive and the hum from the crowd cuts to silence. He introduces himself as the Likoma Witchdoctor.
The ceremony begins with song, a lilting prayer sung in harmony. Patients come forward and describe their symptoms. The maladies are often emotional and alien to western prognosis. Spells and omens play a central role and the doctor removes the evil spirits using thick cleansing potions or by slaughtering cockerels.
There’s a small hospital on the island, set up by a Christian charity, but pills and injections are viewed with suspicion and locals prefer the less orthodox prescriptions of the witch doctor. After closing song, I’m asked to say a few words and shuffle embarrassingly to my feet, thanking everyone for allowing me to witness the ceremony. The doctor requests I tell my friends at home to visit. I think of them in their suits & offices and smile.
Outside, I thank the brothers and we retire to a bar to continue our chess game. The Doctor unwinds in the corner, wiping blood from his knife and drinking Carlsberg. Advice is young and restless, but Gift is keen on chess and soon has my king backed into a corner. My pawns are overrun one by one. I swear in Chichewa and my opponent laughs at the pronunciation. Gift is several years my junior, but we share a sense of humour and an obsession with football. A friendship grows between us.
The night before the mainland ferry docks, we travel to Gift’s home village. He introduces his mother and an endless stream of relatives. Overlooking the lake, we sip thin tea from cracked china cups. The air is still and darkening towards twilight. I feel happy, part of the scene and a long way from home.
One of the villagers walks down to the lake to wash. Wrapped to her back a baby squeals. Mother and child slip into the water. I watch with detachment, chatting to family, framing it as background. But then the woman screams and ducks beneath the water. She re-emerges in a whirlpool of blood amid the thrashing tail of a crocodile. She is only six feet from the shore in waist deep water. A couple of men wade in, but mother and baby are gone. Gift’s mother screams and rushes to the shore.
The wake begins at once. At the top of the valley is a wooden Anglican cathedral. On this island of Christians and witch doctors, crosses and offerings, the church becomes the focus of grief. The women begin to wail and the noise is incessant. The dead woman is Gift's cousin. I drink my tea, say a million sorrys and slip away. I am invisible anyway.
The brothers catch me up the following morning, as I board the ferry back to mainland Malawi. I hug them both and smile weakly. Gift senses my discomfort and says, "it happens, it happens;" but it doesn't happen where I'm from and I don't know what to say.
I subsequently tell the story many times, passing long African evenings with other westerners. The tale is always well received. I notice the hush as I turn the perfect afternoon into a bloodbath. With each performance the story improves; a change of tone, more flesh on the characters and a fine closing line, “if you meet someone called Advice, listen to what he has to say”, until one evening someone gets upset and accuses me of exploitation. We have a pointless shouting match, but I know she’s right. Two people lost their lives that afternoon and I’ve turned it into an anecdote.
Kurt Cobain Lives in Bolivia
I couldn't place the song at first. It was drifting across the courtyard and flaking in the breeze. I wondered where the radio was and why it was playing American music. I roused myself and followed the source of the noise.
It wasn’t a radio at all; it was a blond-haired guy hunched over a guitar. He didn’t see me approach and I stood silently until he finished playing. The song was About A Girl and the singer? Well, yes, the singer. See, that's the thing, it was Kurt Cobain.
Except it couldn't have been, because it was February 2001. I knew the story. Kurt had got bored of his head and removed it with a gun a few years back.
We chatted for a while. He was the first English speaker I'd encountered for a fortnight and he was as surprised at the chance of company as I was. The courtyard belonged to a hostel in Tupiza, Bolivia. I was retreading the final days of Butch Cassidy’s life. Him? Well, he never said. Evasive to say the least. American, but he offered no more. After a little silence he strummed through Lithium. The voice, the piercing eyes, the unkempt hair. Everything about him was Cobainish. I snapped a photo of him.
We spent the evening chatting music and discovered a mutual love of the Raincoats. I’d never met anyone who liked the Raincoats. We hit it off. Cheap wine and a shared passion for screechy music can do that. I was never bold enough to probe too deeply and after the third bottle, I was so convinced I was chatting with the dead grunge man, I didn’t want annoying facts to shatter the illusion.
In the morning he disappeared. Gone by the time I woke. I don’t know where he could have gone. There was nowhere to go to. Perhaps he popped over to see Elvis
In an otherwise perfect camera film, one photo came out totally black.
It wasn’t a radio at all; it was a blond-haired guy hunched over a guitar. He didn’t see me approach and I stood silently until he finished playing. The song was About A Girl and the singer? Well, yes, the singer. See, that's the thing, it was Kurt Cobain.
Except it couldn't have been, because it was February 2001. I knew the story. Kurt had got bored of his head and removed it with a gun a few years back.
We chatted for a while. He was the first English speaker I'd encountered for a fortnight and he was as surprised at the chance of company as I was. The courtyard belonged to a hostel in Tupiza, Bolivia. I was retreading the final days of Butch Cassidy’s life. Him? Well, he never said. Evasive to say the least. American, but he offered no more. After a little silence he strummed through Lithium. The voice, the piercing eyes, the unkempt hair. Everything about him was Cobainish. I snapped a photo of him.
We spent the evening chatting music and discovered a mutual love of the Raincoats. I’d never met anyone who liked the Raincoats. We hit it off. Cheap wine and a shared passion for screechy music can do that. I was never bold enough to probe too deeply and after the third bottle, I was so convinced I was chatting with the dead grunge man, I didn’t want annoying facts to shatter the illusion.
In the morning he disappeared. Gone by the time I woke. I don’t know where he could have gone. There was nowhere to go to. Perhaps he popped over to see Elvis
In an otherwise perfect camera film, one photo came out totally black.
Greyhound Travel
We all have romantic notions of travel. Often it's best to keep them this way. Reality can pinprick those dreams. Mine was a Greyhound tour of the States. For years I'd thought about it; the interesting characters I'd meet along the way, a smeary window on America.
Last year, I had to change planes in Atlanta, so I stopped for a week and joined the Greyhound squad. It was hugely lacking in romance. In a country ruled by the car, those who travel by Greyhound do it through necessity. It’s obvious, but my romantic notions didn’t factor in economic reality. The buses are often dirty and late and the terminals are in the scummy part of town, full of tired and irritable folk. I saw a fair amount of aimless aggression.
The redeeming feature of Greyhound travel is Pac-Man. Every terminal has one. I scored 50,000 in Athens, beat it in Augusta and by the time I got to Macon I had a crowd of impressed onlookers. I also had repetitive strain injury.
As for the characters, well it wasn’t what I expected. There's a kind of social bubble on the journey which you wouldn’t get on our more prissy isle. Much Chatter across aisles and lots of head swiveling as the conversations gain impetus and expand in numbers.
Two people spring to mind. A 19 year old Army kid struck up a conversation. He was proud of his country and wanted to tell me about it. He asked me what currency we used in England. I showed him a five pound note and he recognized the Queen. "Cool." He was like a blank canvas.
The other memory is Eric. Now, Eric seemed an intelligent man. Our taste in books was similar even if our taste in music was polls apart. What can you say when someone says they like Carcass? We swapped e-mail addresses. I wish I hadn't. I read the first three thousand word e-mail he wrote about his whole life. But not the second one a day later. Nor the one that started I HATE THE WORLD.
I stopped in Athens, Georgia for a while. I was heading for Savannah, but you can’t get there from here. It was in Athens that I hit the magic ton on Pac-Man and realised I was enjoying the stopovers more than the journeys.
Originally posted September 28th, 2004
Last year, I had to change planes in Atlanta, so I stopped for a week and joined the Greyhound squad. It was hugely lacking in romance. In a country ruled by the car, those who travel by Greyhound do it through necessity. It’s obvious, but my romantic notions didn’t factor in economic reality. The buses are often dirty and late and the terminals are in the scummy part of town, full of tired and irritable folk. I saw a fair amount of aimless aggression.
The redeeming feature of Greyhound travel is Pac-Man. Every terminal has one. I scored 50,000 in Athens, beat it in Augusta and by the time I got to Macon I had a crowd of impressed onlookers. I also had repetitive strain injury.
As for the characters, well it wasn’t what I expected. There's a kind of social bubble on the journey which you wouldn’t get on our more prissy isle. Much Chatter across aisles and lots of head swiveling as the conversations gain impetus and expand in numbers.
Two people spring to mind. A 19 year old Army kid struck up a conversation. He was proud of his country and wanted to tell me about it. He asked me what currency we used in England. I showed him a five pound note and he recognized the Queen. "Cool." He was like a blank canvas.
The other memory is Eric. Now, Eric seemed an intelligent man. Our taste in books was similar even if our taste in music was polls apart. What can you say when someone says they like Carcass? We swapped e-mail addresses. I wish I hadn't. I read the first three thousand word e-mail he wrote about his whole life. But not the second one a day later. Nor the one that started I HATE THE WORLD.
I stopped in Athens, Georgia for a while. I was heading for Savannah, but you can’t get there from here. It was in Athens that I hit the magic ton on Pac-Man and realised I was enjoying the stopovers more than the journeys.
Originally posted September 28th, 2004
Central American Travels 2003
Fever in Antigua
The Guatemalan city of Antigua is stunningly beautiful. After flying in from Atlanta, which was stunningly drab, Antigua is a picture postcard of Spanish colonial architecture. Bright painted houses support terracotta tiles and hide pretty patios. Cobblestone streets thread towards a main plaza flanked by artisan shops and a snowy white cathedral.
I booked a week of Spanish lessons, rented a room and fell into a daily routine, spending my free afternoons exploring the city. A substantial tourist scene bubbles under the surface and the old Mayan ladies are never far away with their 'nice prices' and 'special deals just for you' . You can buy all sorts of textiles and accessories. They're cheap and they're mostly stripey. The tourist scene can get a little tiresome; there's only so many times you can politely decline the purchase of a carved wooden sun god without wishing to shove it where the sun don't shine. But away from the centre, the tourists thin out and volcanoes loom ominously around the fringes of town. Antigua also sits above capricious plates and has twice been destroyed by earthquakes. Tremors are common and one night I was juddered awake as I lay in bed.
I found dusty plazas where I could sit and read away the afternoons, and restaurants where admitting to being vegetarian wasn't met with a blow to the head. The Hare Krishna restaurant did accompany my tofu burger with the Thompson Twins greatest hits, but that was the only punishment I received.
After twenty hours of intense one to one lessons of Spanish, I came away with a horrible fever that kept me bedridden for a couple of days. I was freezing under half a dozen blankets, then sweating with all the windows open. At least the hours I spent in the bathroom gave me an opportunity to practice my irregular verbs.
Fever or not, I decided to get the bus to Honduras to visit Copan. In the premiership of Mayan sites, Copan occupies a champions league position. Despite the indirect route I took to get to Central America, the romance of lost cities in the jungle was the whole purpose of this trip.
I can trace my fascination back to a renowned academic and definitive intellectual source; Tintin. When I was about ten years old I started collecting Herge's Tintin books. I read them all, but the ones I returned to time and again were the stories of Tintin in the Americas. The colourful drawings of towering, steeped temples, fearsome indigenous people and storylines about solar eclipses and ancient curses made a strong impression on a young Gregory. It wasn't long before girls reared their pretty heads and ruined jungle cities took a backseat. But I got there in the end.
Copan was one of the Maya world's big cities and hit its peak between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, a time when the Mayan race as a whole was also in its prime. Its downfall arrived when a neigbouring city invaded and Copan's great ruler, Eighteen Rabbit was beheaded (presumably due to a silly name cull). Copan obviously didn't give credence to the warning and elected Smoke Monkey as his successor, but the city's star was now on the wane.
In sweltering heat I tramped up the sheer stone steps of the acropolis temple. I gazed over the ball court, which in Mayan times was a literal game of life an death, the losers had their hearts ripped out as offerings to the gods. This 'game' personifies the Maya, they developed a calendar which accurately predicted lunar cycles and they were professors of calculus, yet they never came up with the wheel. They established the number zero a thousand years before it was used in Europe, yet human life was regarded as cheap and sacrifices were on a grand scale. The Maya believed that their gods required blood letting as a kind of mortgage payment for living on the earth and the young males would scrape their genitals with stingray spines to appease them. Oddly, one of the Mayan gods is a spitting image of Matthew Kelly.
Through the tail end of my fever, the giant carved monoliths seemed blurred in the heat haze. I was half expecting Captain Haddock to appear, sucking on his pipe. I went back to my hotel. In a cage on the balcony outside my room was a parrot. "Hola" I said as I walked past. "Hola" it replied and gave me a wolf whistle. I closed the blinds to the outside world and slept for a long time.
Wandering Without Aim
It took a while but my fever eventually subsided and I ditched the dry biscuits for more interesting food. I appeared to be in Honduras, so headed to the mountains for some recuperation. I spent a week trundling around the mountain villages on the local chicken buses. To travel anywhere in Latin America you can't avoid taking the chicken bus. It's a generic term for any local bus where the person sitting next to you could be friend or fowl. In a previous incarnation the chicken bus was a US school bus. Once they've been destroyed by the youth of America, they're shipped south, given a psychedelic paint job and live out their retirement creaking around Central America.
I stayed in pretty towns with names like Santa Rosa and Gracias. Back in Copan I hiked south from the village and into the green hills. I passed farmers returning home from the fields dressed in straw stetsons and carrying rusty machetes. I was heading for a small Maya ceremonial site known as Los Sapos (The Toads). I was waylaid by half a dozen Swedish hippies. One stoned fool even spoke with a Jamaican patois through his blond dreads:
"Wat bring you to Honduras, man?"
"Mayan ruins. You?"
"Da weed."
Los Sapos was a hilltop site, deep in the tobacco fields. Rocks had been chiseled by ancient hands into lifelike toads. Carved eyes stared as if ready to pounce. Down below in the valley, the sun dropped behind jagged peaks and a curl of smoke twisted and dissolved in the dusk. Honduras was a quite beautiful country.
In town crowds of locals were gathered around the entrances to local shops. On tiny, flickering TV screens, Baghdad went up in flames. I was watching the scene with an American paramedic. He said, "Tony Blair and George Bush are kicking ass!" I felt a little ashamed to be English. I knew little about Honduras before I came, only that they had started a war with El Salvador thirty years ago over a game of football. Even that seemed a sounder pretext than the bombing of Iraq.
I crossed back into Guatemala and flew to Flores in the northern jungle. There was a huge hole in the outside wall of my hotel room. I rang reception and told them. "Air conditioning" the lady said. I eventually changed to a room on the sixth floor. "Nice view" she said. It was, but the elevator was out of action and I guess this was her revenge.
The next morning I left town at 5am, walked for half an hour through the jungle and then scaled a steep, stone temple up rickety narrow ladders. This was Tikal, the grandest, most elegant of all the ancient ruins in Meso-America. The jungle canopy was broken only by the roof combs of these gigantic temples. I felt exhilarated watching howler monkeys screaming in the trees in the thin, gray skies of the dawn. Tikal's pyramids are aligned with the solstices and represent the Mayan's fascination with astronomy. The Mayan astronomers plotted the orbit of Venus to an accuracy not bettered until the advent of computers. They also predicted eclipse cycles hundreds of years into the future. The Mayan calendar consists of two interlocking wheels, one representing the solar year and another of 260 days based on a recurring theme around the Mayan gods. It is more complicated than long division, but what it does say is that the current world will end on November 21st 2012. Scarily close and annoyingly half way through the football season.
The previous day at Tikal, an American tourist on spring vacation had slipped by security and illegally spent the night camped atop Temple IV, the tallest structure in the ancient city. He woke up in the dark, forgot where he was and fell hundreds of feet to the jungle floor. The Mayans didn't build their pyramids to function as backpacker hotels. The walls are steep, so sacrificial blood could flow down the stone tiers. Tikal was a haunting, magical city, but even a thousand years after it was abandoned, you still had to watch yourself. The tourist died on the way to hospital. I headed east, over the border and into Belize.
Belize is an oddity in Central America. The Spanish conquistadors weren't really interested in the country as it didn't contain gold and its offshore reef was hazardous and patrolled by pirates. The British stepped in, brought slaves of African descent in from St Vincent and only granted independence twenty years ago. The legacy is an English speaking country, about the size of Wales, with a flavour of the Caribbean. Buses blast out the musical crimes of Bob Marley and the supermarkets stock tins of rasta pasta. In San Ignacio I went caving; swimming across underground streams and climbing into stalactite decorated chambers, full of Mayan ceremonial offerings. The skeletons of a thirteen-year-old boy and sixteen-year old girl lay next to the obsidian axes that ended their lives. The Mayans didn't ground teenagers, they sacrificed them.
I took the Hummingbird Highway to the Caribbean coast. The further south I traveled the more houses there were without roofs; the more bendier the trees. There is a simple reason for this; Belize is hurricane country. In the coastal town of Placencia, the first two hotels I picked from the guidebook didn't exist; the victims of hurricanes Mitch and Iris, respectively. I eventually found a complete one, although the owner, Lucille, said it had narrowly survived Hurricane Keith. I suppressed a giggle. If ever there was a non-threatening hurricane it had to be Keith. Hurricane is a Mayan word, but Keith could only be British. Belize was full of these linguistic idiosyncrasies.
My cabin was made of driftwood and sat upon slender stilts over the beach. From the porch I could see the warm Caribbean sea washing gently against the sandy shore. I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling. A lizard ran across followed by the biggest cockroach in the world. Except it wasn't the biggest, because the one behind it was even larger and looked as if it was carrying surface to air missiles. I knocked at Lucille's house and woke her from a slumbering siesta. Lucille reminded me of the housekeeper in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons and spoke in the same sing-song Caribbean lilt, "Wat is wrong wit you? Wat you tink dey gonna do, eat you? Huh?" I must have looked pretty pathetic because she followed me back armed with weapons of mass insect destruction and liberated my room.
I spent two days in the blistering sun and end this e-mail pretty much as I started it, lying in a darkened room with a wet towel over my head. I had some factor 15 sun block with me but should have taken the hint from the local shop that sold only factor 30 and 45. I guess I'll never learn.
Mayans, Hippies & Lunatics
In the early sixteenth century, the highlands of Guatemala were the heartland of the Maya civilisation. For 1500 years the only conflicts they fought were local squabbles with neighbouring villages. The Spanish arrived in 1523 and changed their way of life forever. They put to the sword those they couldn't forcibly convert to catholicism and anyone still standing had to contend with old world diseases in the new world. Smallpox and TB ravaged their immune systems and millions died.
After independence from Spanish rule three hundred years later, the Maya were given no respite as a new ruling class descended from the conquistadors simply viewed the people of the highlands as a cheap and expendable labour force. If constant oppression wasn't enough, hundreds of thousands were killed or 'disappeared' in the recent civil war. For five hundred years the Maya of the highlands have been relentlessly persecuted. And if all that wasn't enough, these villages are also home to hundreds of hippies.
What keeps the Maya here and, at the same time, attracts the spaced out gringos is the natural landscape; perfect to photograph and ideal for growing marijuana. The hippy epicentre is Lago de Atitlan, an incredibly picturesque lake, walled in by a chain of volcanoes. The lake itself is a collapsed volcano cone, or an energy vortex depending on if you believe in science or silliness.
Small boats bounce across the lake linking trade across the villages and ferrying the hippies between holistic healing temples and meditation classes. The locals dress in hand woven shawls and stylish pyjama trousers, colours identifying their village ancestry. The hippies look as if they've sailed straight from Woodstock.
I hired a horse and rode around the crater, staying in a number of villages. Each had a slightly different local flavour and a particular sub-culture of hippies. One was for those with an interest in Buddhism, another for those searching for their inner child. Without the patience to sit and chant 'Om' and having sent my inner child to an inner children's home, I kept away from these places. The most disappointing aspect of this set-up is that there is the lack of interaction between the communities; the hippies regard the Maya as ancient dudes and the Maya just think them fools.
What stops them fighting each other (a fight the hippies would obviously lose) is the incredible landscape. I stayed in a couple of places described in my guidebook as 'bohemian retreats'. In each, there would be a circle of stoned gringos sitting together. One would be playing a battered guitar, another would be armed with a pair of tom-toms. At least three people would be asleep and another meditating. One person would be giggling uncontrollably at the word 'flip-flop'. Empty tubes of`Pringles would litter the ground. Conversations would go:
Hippy 1: "Hey man, how's it going? Where you, like, from?"
Me: "England."
Pause
Hippy 2: "Where you from, man?"
Me: "England."
Longer Pause
Hippy 1: "Whereabouts in Denmark do you live?"
It was amusing at first but conversations with people with no short term memory soon become tedious. It wasn't just young gringos either. There were those who had lived here since the sixties with shiny bald heads and weedy grey ponytails. They all had that thousand yard stare that comes from either fighting in Vietnam or smoking grass for thirty years. There was one guy who wore a full length patterned brown poncho and had laughable amounts of facial hair. He looked like Moses!
Strangely, the hippies didn't point and laugh at me as much as I did at them. I caught a glance of myself in a shop window one day; sandals, cotton trousers, ethnic shirt, jade necklace and god knows when I last shaved. By a process of laid back osmosis, I was becoming one of them.
Yet despite all this nonsense, something made me hang around. Perhaps it was the vegetarian restaurants or the bar that had a 'Hippy Hour' or, hey, maybe it was even the energy vortex, but the lake did have a magnetic quality that was a little irresistible. I began to peer under the surface of the tourist scene and in the old parts of the villages, a different, unchanged way of life was evident. One afternoon I caught a lift in the back of a pick-up truck (the horse was being MOT'd) to a tiny hamlet high on the volcano. There must have been a dozen people of all ages crushed together; kids, parents, chickens and baggage. The women wore elaborate shawls and skirts decorated in all the shades of the rainbow. The men wore bright pantaloons, stitched in a riot of primary colours. I looked out through a mass of kaleidoscopic bodies. As we drove down to the plaza, my cap flew off and by a stroke of luck I instinctively threw out a hand and caught it. This was met with laughter. The woman to my right tapped my shoulder and made to throw her baby off the truck. A child picked up a chicken and feinted to launch it into the road. I almost felt as if I had crossed the local / tourist divide. Then we came to a halt and I had to pay double the local fare. Parity was restored!
Leaving one set of stoned tourists, I headed further into the hills where three years ago a Japanese tourist was (literally) stoned to death. This was Todos Santos, a village high in the mountains, away from the hippy catchment area and as remote as any place I've been to. This is a place notorious among travellers as justice is controlled by vigilante groups 'inspired' by evangelical preachers and many foreigners are too scared (or sensible) to come. I had been advised by several people to avoid the place but as an incentive for travel, contrariness is a great justification. The poor Japanese tourist was spotted taking a photo of a child and deemed a satanic baby stealer. The locals cornered him and his guide and killed them with rocks.
This is a remote place in a sheer valley with its own language, culture and idiosyncrasies. The valley is home to the M'am; a people who still use the Tzolkin, a 260 day Mayan almanac rather than the Christian calendar. As the sun drops behind the mountain ridge, a fog rolls in, enhancing the mystery of the village. Saturday was market day and anarchy regined. I witnessed some spectacular drunkenness. Men with blood splattered noses were throwing punches indiscrimanately while their girlfriends screamed abuse in their ears or fought cat fights of their own. Even Romford on a Friday night couldn't match this. I swerved around the fights and stepped over those who were sleeping in the road. Next door to my $3 a night hotel (which doubled as a brothel after dark) was the jail. Built onto the street with mud bricks and caged iron cell windows, the inebriated prisoners traded insults with passers by. Above the village was an ancient Maya pyramid littered with animal sacrifices. Todos Santos was like a village from the middle ages and I had a fantastic weekend.
Sometimes in Guatemala, the landscape masked the fact that this is a dirt poor country. It is a country of stunning natural backdrops; lakes, volcanoes, jungle, it has it all. The indigenous people still cling to traditions and dress that date back two millennium. Yet these very people are the ones who have lost the most. The arrival of the Spanish in Guatemala began the process that turned the new world into the third world. The descendents of the Maya people have the lowest life expectancy in the western hemisphere, but their dignity (Todos Santos excepted!) is something that can't be supressed (and something the hippies will never have). It was a short chicken bus journey to the border and I was already missing Guatemala as I crossed into Mexico.
Mexico
It was only after I paid my $10 visa registration fee at the Mexican border and was back on the bus that I translated the big capital letters on the visa: IMPORTANT - THIS FORM IS FREE. Mexico is notorious for bureaucracy & backhanders and it is not a country in a hurry. I went to cash a traveller's cheque in a bank. I joined the back of a huge snake of people, shuffling slowly to the front. Only two windows were open, although one of them was staffed by a kid of about eighteen who wore a steep learning curve expression. I watched the other bank teller in action. He kept leaning over and borrowing a pen from his young colleague and then handing it back after each transaction. One pen, two staff, many customers.
In the forty-five minutes it took to make the front of the queue, I worked out a number of efficiency measures that would speed up the process. I would propose a one man - one pen working environment and confine cigarette breaks to periods when less than one hundred customers are tapping their feet impatiently. Deodorant would also be compulsory.
For Semana Santa (Easter week), I headed to San Cristobal de las Casas. This town shot into the news in 1994 when the the revolutionary Zapatista army took over the town to launch a manifesto aimed at empowering the impoverished local Mayan population. The Mexican army drove them out again, but the seeds of rebellion were sown. A decade on, the town has cashed in on the revolutionaries. You can buy Zapatista pizzas and tiny dolls of the enigmatic leaders as tourism clings to history's coat-tails. On Good Friday I attended my first crucifixion. Fortunately, it was only a re-enactment, but the crowds crushed in to see it anyway. A struggling PA system played crackly dirges and the whole affair was performed with great dignity in the sweltering heat. Many Maya were present. With their pre-Hispanic idols and ancient beliefs you can sometimes forget Latin America is a catholic stronghold. A crucifixion is a good reminder.
Good Friday turned into Bad Saturday as West Ham lost to Bolton. Only Mexican wine was helping me get through the relegation struggle. I headed north into the Yucatan peninsula stopping in the city of Campeche (or Lord Sun Sheep Tick as the Maya delightfully knew it). My hotel was once a Spanish colonial mansion. There were traces of former glory diminished by nineteenth century tiling and art deco furniture. My room was the old scullery. I visited a number of ruins on the peninsula; Tonina, Palenque, Edzna, Uxmal, Tulum, Chichen Itza. The Maya never had imperial ambitions and intercity feuding ensured there was little co-operation between population centres. One thousand years on from the Maya collapse, the result is a collection of ruined cities, each with its own unique identity. Uniformity of architecture can be found solely in the overall design; a central plaza, pyramid temple and ball court. Despite proximity, each is as different as London is to Barcelona.
I travelled around without a care in the world (well apart from West Ham which was a constant concern). For two weeks I had the time of my life, constantly amazed at the restored Mayan sites and beautiful colonial metropolises. At Edzna I met a man atop a pyramid who taught me some Mayan words. A sign at the site was explicit; 'The Maya did not receive extra-terrestrial help in building their cities.' I said it seemed an unnecessary statement. He laughed, "You wouldn't believe some of the freaks we get here."
Uxmal had pyramids crawling with scaly iguanas and the air was thick with white butterflies. Palenque had a Tarzan jungle setting with a soundtrack of howler monkeys. Izamal was a colonial town painted egg yolk yellow. It had Mayan temples in the centre, a Spanish monastery, leafy plazas and skies of cloudless blue. At Valladolid I swam in a cenote, a natural limestone sinkhole dappled with sunlight. Tulum had the best location of all the Mayan sites, with a cliff top view of the Gulf of Mexico. It was prime first millennium real estate. Chichen Itza was full of daytrippers from Cancun. They were hungover and didn't give a monkeys about the Mayans. "I got home at 5am this morning and was woken up at 8am to go on this damn pyramid tour" said one goatee bearded dude.
Undoubtedly the best part of visiting these ruins is the fact that you can climb all over them. If the Maya civilisation had flourished in the US or UK, it would be a different experience. In Central America there are no guard rails or access ramps for the disabled. The Mayans never had the wheel, let alone the wheelchair. The downside is that people do fall off these pyramids and every year there are injuries and deaths. In the UK, minority groups would have a field day. In the US, there would be a scrum of lawyers camped at the foot of every crumbling pyramid.
I dipped back down into Belize for a few days to visit the post-classic Mayan city of Lamanai. I stayed at a hotel in Orange Walk Town with grounds sloping down to a river. A tiny wooden jetty extended into the water and I caught a boat to the ruins an hour downstream. Unfortunately I was sat next to an ornithologist and he kept pointing and saying excitedly, "Look a plum-tailed heron!" or "Quick, up there, a blue ponce twatter!" Despite the bird watcher, Lamanai was gorgeous; temples built onto a steep plateau above a crocodile patrolled inlet. Returning on the boat a Kiwi tourist said, "Christ, that was a great day out." He spoke for everyone, even the bird watcher.
The following day was Labour Day, a national holiday and an excuse for the locals to get legless. In the evening I sat in the hotel bar watching CNN. A rather hefty lady lurched up to my table and shouted "hey, whitey, wanna see some pussy?" I almost spat my beer across the bar and stammered, "no, no...please, no." She shrugged, staggered off and the locals roared with laughter. The place was run by an American ex-pat, "you were lucky," he said, "she doesn't always ask first."
For the last leg of the trip I hit the Yucatan shoreline, Mexico's main tourism corridor. The length of coast from Tulum to Cancun is known as the Maya Riviera and it's the country's version of the Costa del Sol. I stayed a few days in Playa del Carmen to sunbathe on the powdery white beaches. Once a fishing village of a few dozen people, it is now a 'resort town' for thousands of inebriated yankees. Historical Mexican attractions such as McDonalds and Burger King sit next to shopping malls and hard sell timeshare operators. Signs read 'Continental Breakfast' or flash 'Ladies Night' in pink neon. On the plus side, it only took five minutes to cash a traveller's cheque. I tried not to be cynical (different strokes for different folks and all that), but you couldn't even have dinner without a Mariachi band surrounding your table and blasting out Guantanamera. It was hilarious and it made me cringe and it wasn't like Mexico at all.
In a way it was an appropriate place to end; a kind of air-brushed perspective of the Maya people. On this stretch of coast you could take a Mayatours bus to the pyramid shaped Hotel Maya along the Maya Riviera. The word Maya was used simply as tourism bait. The package deal holidaymakers see only the smiling villagers on the cover of glossy brochures and not the real state of the Maya nations. Throughout the Maya region; in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize & southern Mexico, I saw these same people living in utter poverty. There's some irony in the fact that a thousand years after the collapse of the Maya world, it's these vast empty cities that draw the visitors, yet the descendents of its inhabitants are the ones begging in the streets for your spare change. I felt so sorry for these downtrodden people living in such misery. But, throughout the world, history is written by the conquerors and the Maya were always better farmers than they were fighters. The last two and a half months have been simply amazing.
The Guatemalan city of Antigua is stunningly beautiful. After flying in from Atlanta, which was stunningly drab, Antigua is a picture postcard of Spanish colonial architecture. Bright painted houses support terracotta tiles and hide pretty patios. Cobblestone streets thread towards a main plaza flanked by artisan shops and a snowy white cathedral.
I booked a week of Spanish lessons, rented a room and fell into a daily routine, spending my free afternoons exploring the city. A substantial tourist scene bubbles under the surface and the old Mayan ladies are never far away with their 'nice prices' and 'special deals just for you' . You can buy all sorts of textiles and accessories. They're cheap and they're mostly stripey. The tourist scene can get a little tiresome; there's only so many times you can politely decline the purchase of a carved wooden sun god without wishing to shove it where the sun don't shine. But away from the centre, the tourists thin out and volcanoes loom ominously around the fringes of town. Antigua also sits above capricious plates and has twice been destroyed by earthquakes. Tremors are common and one night I was juddered awake as I lay in bed.
I found dusty plazas where I could sit and read away the afternoons, and restaurants where admitting to being vegetarian wasn't met with a blow to the head. The Hare Krishna restaurant did accompany my tofu burger with the Thompson Twins greatest hits, but that was the only punishment I received.
After twenty hours of intense one to one lessons of Spanish, I came away with a horrible fever that kept me bedridden for a couple of days. I was freezing under half a dozen blankets, then sweating with all the windows open. At least the hours I spent in the bathroom gave me an opportunity to practice my irregular verbs.
Fever or not, I decided to get the bus to Honduras to visit Copan. In the premiership of Mayan sites, Copan occupies a champions league position. Despite the indirect route I took to get to Central America, the romance of lost cities in the jungle was the whole purpose of this trip.
I can trace my fascination back to a renowned academic and definitive intellectual source; Tintin. When I was about ten years old I started collecting Herge's Tintin books. I read them all, but the ones I returned to time and again were the stories of Tintin in the Americas. The colourful drawings of towering, steeped temples, fearsome indigenous people and storylines about solar eclipses and ancient curses made a strong impression on a young Gregory. It wasn't long before girls reared their pretty heads and ruined jungle cities took a backseat. But I got there in the end.
Copan was one of the Maya world's big cities and hit its peak between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, a time when the Mayan race as a whole was also in its prime. Its downfall arrived when a neigbouring city invaded and Copan's great ruler, Eighteen Rabbit was beheaded (presumably due to a silly name cull). Copan obviously didn't give credence to the warning and elected Smoke Monkey as his successor, but the city's star was now on the wane.
In sweltering heat I tramped up the sheer stone steps of the acropolis temple. I gazed over the ball court, which in Mayan times was a literal game of life an death, the losers had their hearts ripped out as offerings to the gods. This 'game' personifies the Maya, they developed a calendar which accurately predicted lunar cycles and they were professors of calculus, yet they never came up with the wheel. They established the number zero a thousand years before it was used in Europe, yet human life was regarded as cheap and sacrifices were on a grand scale. The Maya believed that their gods required blood letting as a kind of mortgage payment for living on the earth and the young males would scrape their genitals with stingray spines to appease them. Oddly, one of the Mayan gods is a spitting image of Matthew Kelly.
Through the tail end of my fever, the giant carved monoliths seemed blurred in the heat haze. I was half expecting Captain Haddock to appear, sucking on his pipe. I went back to my hotel. In a cage on the balcony outside my room was a parrot. "Hola" I said as I walked past. "Hola" it replied and gave me a wolf whistle. I closed the blinds to the outside world and slept for a long time.
Wandering Without Aim
It took a while but my fever eventually subsided and I ditched the dry biscuits for more interesting food. I appeared to be in Honduras, so headed to the mountains for some recuperation. I spent a week trundling around the mountain villages on the local chicken buses. To travel anywhere in Latin America you can't avoid taking the chicken bus. It's a generic term for any local bus where the person sitting next to you could be friend or fowl. In a previous incarnation the chicken bus was a US school bus. Once they've been destroyed by the youth of America, they're shipped south, given a psychedelic paint job and live out their retirement creaking around Central America.
I stayed in pretty towns with names like Santa Rosa and Gracias. Back in Copan I hiked south from the village and into the green hills. I passed farmers returning home from the fields dressed in straw stetsons and carrying rusty machetes. I was heading for a small Maya ceremonial site known as Los Sapos (The Toads). I was waylaid by half a dozen Swedish hippies. One stoned fool even spoke with a Jamaican patois through his blond dreads:
"Wat bring you to Honduras, man?"
"Mayan ruins. You?"
"Da weed."
Los Sapos was a hilltop site, deep in the tobacco fields. Rocks had been chiseled by ancient hands into lifelike toads. Carved eyes stared as if ready to pounce. Down below in the valley, the sun dropped behind jagged peaks and a curl of smoke twisted and dissolved in the dusk. Honduras was a quite beautiful country.
In town crowds of locals were gathered around the entrances to local shops. On tiny, flickering TV screens, Baghdad went up in flames. I was watching the scene with an American paramedic. He said, "Tony Blair and George Bush are kicking ass!" I felt a little ashamed to be English. I knew little about Honduras before I came, only that they had started a war with El Salvador thirty years ago over a game of football. Even that seemed a sounder pretext than the bombing of Iraq.
I crossed back into Guatemala and flew to Flores in the northern jungle. There was a huge hole in the outside wall of my hotel room. I rang reception and told them. "Air conditioning" the lady said. I eventually changed to a room on the sixth floor. "Nice view" she said. It was, but the elevator was out of action and I guess this was her revenge.
The next morning I left town at 5am, walked for half an hour through the jungle and then scaled a steep, stone temple up rickety narrow ladders. This was Tikal, the grandest, most elegant of all the ancient ruins in Meso-America. The jungle canopy was broken only by the roof combs of these gigantic temples. I felt exhilarated watching howler monkeys screaming in the trees in the thin, gray skies of the dawn. Tikal's pyramids are aligned with the solstices and represent the Mayan's fascination with astronomy. The Mayan astronomers plotted the orbit of Venus to an accuracy not bettered until the advent of computers. They also predicted eclipse cycles hundreds of years into the future. The Mayan calendar consists of two interlocking wheels, one representing the solar year and another of 260 days based on a recurring theme around the Mayan gods. It is more complicated than long division, but what it does say is that the current world will end on November 21st 2012. Scarily close and annoyingly half way through the football season.
The previous day at Tikal, an American tourist on spring vacation had slipped by security and illegally spent the night camped atop Temple IV, the tallest structure in the ancient city. He woke up in the dark, forgot where he was and fell hundreds of feet to the jungle floor. The Mayans didn't build their pyramids to function as backpacker hotels. The walls are steep, so sacrificial blood could flow down the stone tiers. Tikal was a haunting, magical city, but even a thousand years after it was abandoned, you still had to watch yourself. The tourist died on the way to hospital. I headed east, over the border and into Belize.
Belize is an oddity in Central America. The Spanish conquistadors weren't really interested in the country as it didn't contain gold and its offshore reef was hazardous and patrolled by pirates. The British stepped in, brought slaves of African descent in from St Vincent and only granted independence twenty years ago. The legacy is an English speaking country, about the size of Wales, with a flavour of the Caribbean. Buses blast out the musical crimes of Bob Marley and the supermarkets stock tins of rasta pasta. In San Ignacio I went caving; swimming across underground streams and climbing into stalactite decorated chambers, full of Mayan ceremonial offerings. The skeletons of a thirteen-year-old boy and sixteen-year old girl lay next to the obsidian axes that ended their lives. The Mayans didn't ground teenagers, they sacrificed them.
I took the Hummingbird Highway to the Caribbean coast. The further south I traveled the more houses there were without roofs; the more bendier the trees. There is a simple reason for this; Belize is hurricane country. In the coastal town of Placencia, the first two hotels I picked from the guidebook didn't exist; the victims of hurricanes Mitch and Iris, respectively. I eventually found a complete one, although the owner, Lucille, said it had narrowly survived Hurricane Keith. I suppressed a giggle. If ever there was a non-threatening hurricane it had to be Keith. Hurricane is a Mayan word, but Keith could only be British. Belize was full of these linguistic idiosyncrasies.
My cabin was made of driftwood and sat upon slender stilts over the beach. From the porch I could see the warm Caribbean sea washing gently against the sandy shore. I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling. A lizard ran across followed by the biggest cockroach in the world. Except it wasn't the biggest, because the one behind it was even larger and looked as if it was carrying surface to air missiles. I knocked at Lucille's house and woke her from a slumbering siesta. Lucille reminded me of the housekeeper in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons and spoke in the same sing-song Caribbean lilt, "Wat is wrong wit you? Wat you tink dey gonna do, eat you? Huh?" I must have looked pretty pathetic because she followed me back armed with weapons of mass insect destruction and liberated my room.
I spent two days in the blistering sun and end this e-mail pretty much as I started it, lying in a darkened room with a wet towel over my head. I had some factor 15 sun block with me but should have taken the hint from the local shop that sold only factor 30 and 45. I guess I'll never learn.
Mayans, Hippies & Lunatics
In the early sixteenth century, the highlands of Guatemala were the heartland of the Maya civilisation. For 1500 years the only conflicts they fought were local squabbles with neighbouring villages. The Spanish arrived in 1523 and changed their way of life forever. They put to the sword those they couldn't forcibly convert to catholicism and anyone still standing had to contend with old world diseases in the new world. Smallpox and TB ravaged their immune systems and millions died.
After independence from Spanish rule three hundred years later, the Maya were given no respite as a new ruling class descended from the conquistadors simply viewed the people of the highlands as a cheap and expendable labour force. If constant oppression wasn't enough, hundreds of thousands were killed or 'disappeared' in the recent civil war. For five hundred years the Maya of the highlands have been relentlessly persecuted. And if all that wasn't enough, these villages are also home to hundreds of hippies.
What keeps the Maya here and, at the same time, attracts the spaced out gringos is the natural landscape; perfect to photograph and ideal for growing marijuana. The hippy epicentre is Lago de Atitlan, an incredibly picturesque lake, walled in by a chain of volcanoes. The lake itself is a collapsed volcano cone, or an energy vortex depending on if you believe in science or silliness.
Small boats bounce across the lake linking trade across the villages and ferrying the hippies between holistic healing temples and meditation classes. The locals dress in hand woven shawls and stylish pyjama trousers, colours identifying their village ancestry. The hippies look as if they've sailed straight from Woodstock.
I hired a horse and rode around the crater, staying in a number of villages. Each had a slightly different local flavour and a particular sub-culture of hippies. One was for those with an interest in Buddhism, another for those searching for their inner child. Without the patience to sit and chant 'Om' and having sent my inner child to an inner children's home, I kept away from these places. The most disappointing aspect of this set-up is that there is the lack of interaction between the communities; the hippies regard the Maya as ancient dudes and the Maya just think them fools.
What stops them fighting each other (a fight the hippies would obviously lose) is the incredible landscape. I stayed in a couple of places described in my guidebook as 'bohemian retreats'. In each, there would be a circle of stoned gringos sitting together. One would be playing a battered guitar, another would be armed with a pair of tom-toms. At least three people would be asleep and another meditating. One person would be giggling uncontrollably at the word 'flip-flop'. Empty tubes of`Pringles would litter the ground. Conversations would go:
Hippy 1: "Hey man, how's it going? Where you, like, from?"
Me: "England."
Pause
Hippy 2: "Where you from, man?"
Me: "England."
Longer Pause
Hippy 1: "Whereabouts in Denmark do you live?"
It was amusing at first but conversations with people with no short term memory soon become tedious. It wasn't just young gringos either. There were those who had lived here since the sixties with shiny bald heads and weedy grey ponytails. They all had that thousand yard stare that comes from either fighting in Vietnam or smoking grass for thirty years. There was one guy who wore a full length patterned brown poncho and had laughable amounts of facial hair. He looked like Moses!
Strangely, the hippies didn't point and laugh at me as much as I did at them. I caught a glance of myself in a shop window one day; sandals, cotton trousers, ethnic shirt, jade necklace and god knows when I last shaved. By a process of laid back osmosis, I was becoming one of them.
Yet despite all this nonsense, something made me hang around. Perhaps it was the vegetarian restaurants or the bar that had a 'Hippy Hour' or, hey, maybe it was even the energy vortex, but the lake did have a magnetic quality that was a little irresistible. I began to peer under the surface of the tourist scene and in the old parts of the villages, a different, unchanged way of life was evident. One afternoon I caught a lift in the back of a pick-up truck (the horse was being MOT'd) to a tiny hamlet high on the volcano. There must have been a dozen people of all ages crushed together; kids, parents, chickens and baggage. The women wore elaborate shawls and skirts decorated in all the shades of the rainbow. The men wore bright pantaloons, stitched in a riot of primary colours. I looked out through a mass of kaleidoscopic bodies. As we drove down to the plaza, my cap flew off and by a stroke of luck I instinctively threw out a hand and caught it. This was met with laughter. The woman to my right tapped my shoulder and made to throw her baby off the truck. A child picked up a chicken and feinted to launch it into the road. I almost felt as if I had crossed the local / tourist divide. Then we came to a halt and I had to pay double the local fare. Parity was restored!
Leaving one set of stoned tourists, I headed further into the hills where three years ago a Japanese tourist was (literally) stoned to death. This was Todos Santos, a village high in the mountains, away from the hippy catchment area and as remote as any place I've been to. This is a place notorious among travellers as justice is controlled by vigilante groups 'inspired' by evangelical preachers and many foreigners are too scared (or sensible) to come. I had been advised by several people to avoid the place but as an incentive for travel, contrariness is a great justification. The poor Japanese tourist was spotted taking a photo of a child and deemed a satanic baby stealer. The locals cornered him and his guide and killed them with rocks.
This is a remote place in a sheer valley with its own language, culture and idiosyncrasies. The valley is home to the M'am; a people who still use the Tzolkin, a 260 day Mayan almanac rather than the Christian calendar. As the sun drops behind the mountain ridge, a fog rolls in, enhancing the mystery of the village. Saturday was market day and anarchy regined. I witnessed some spectacular drunkenness. Men with blood splattered noses were throwing punches indiscrimanately while their girlfriends screamed abuse in their ears or fought cat fights of their own. Even Romford on a Friday night couldn't match this. I swerved around the fights and stepped over those who were sleeping in the road. Next door to my $3 a night hotel (which doubled as a brothel after dark) was the jail. Built onto the street with mud bricks and caged iron cell windows, the inebriated prisoners traded insults with passers by. Above the village was an ancient Maya pyramid littered with animal sacrifices. Todos Santos was like a village from the middle ages and I had a fantastic weekend.
Sometimes in Guatemala, the landscape masked the fact that this is a dirt poor country. It is a country of stunning natural backdrops; lakes, volcanoes, jungle, it has it all. The indigenous people still cling to traditions and dress that date back two millennium. Yet these very people are the ones who have lost the most. The arrival of the Spanish in Guatemala began the process that turned the new world into the third world. The descendents of the Maya people have the lowest life expectancy in the western hemisphere, but their dignity (Todos Santos excepted!) is something that can't be supressed (and something the hippies will never have). It was a short chicken bus journey to the border and I was already missing Guatemala as I crossed into Mexico.
Mexico
It was only after I paid my $10 visa registration fee at the Mexican border and was back on the bus that I translated the big capital letters on the visa: IMPORTANT - THIS FORM IS FREE. Mexico is notorious for bureaucracy & backhanders and it is not a country in a hurry. I went to cash a traveller's cheque in a bank. I joined the back of a huge snake of people, shuffling slowly to the front. Only two windows were open, although one of them was staffed by a kid of about eighteen who wore a steep learning curve expression. I watched the other bank teller in action. He kept leaning over and borrowing a pen from his young colleague and then handing it back after each transaction. One pen, two staff, many customers.
In the forty-five minutes it took to make the front of the queue, I worked out a number of efficiency measures that would speed up the process. I would propose a one man - one pen working environment and confine cigarette breaks to periods when less than one hundred customers are tapping their feet impatiently. Deodorant would also be compulsory.
For Semana Santa (Easter week), I headed to San Cristobal de las Casas. This town shot into the news in 1994 when the the revolutionary Zapatista army took over the town to launch a manifesto aimed at empowering the impoverished local Mayan population. The Mexican army drove them out again, but the seeds of rebellion were sown. A decade on, the town has cashed in on the revolutionaries. You can buy Zapatista pizzas and tiny dolls of the enigmatic leaders as tourism clings to history's coat-tails. On Good Friday I attended my first crucifixion. Fortunately, it was only a re-enactment, but the crowds crushed in to see it anyway. A struggling PA system played crackly dirges and the whole affair was performed with great dignity in the sweltering heat. Many Maya were present. With their pre-Hispanic idols and ancient beliefs you can sometimes forget Latin America is a catholic stronghold. A crucifixion is a good reminder.
Good Friday turned into Bad Saturday as West Ham lost to Bolton. Only Mexican wine was helping me get through the relegation struggle. I headed north into the Yucatan peninsula stopping in the city of Campeche (or Lord Sun Sheep Tick as the Maya delightfully knew it). My hotel was once a Spanish colonial mansion. There were traces of former glory diminished by nineteenth century tiling and art deco furniture. My room was the old scullery. I visited a number of ruins on the peninsula; Tonina, Palenque, Edzna, Uxmal, Tulum, Chichen Itza. The Maya never had imperial ambitions and intercity feuding ensured there was little co-operation between population centres. One thousand years on from the Maya collapse, the result is a collection of ruined cities, each with its own unique identity. Uniformity of architecture can be found solely in the overall design; a central plaza, pyramid temple and ball court. Despite proximity, each is as different as London is to Barcelona.
I travelled around without a care in the world (well apart from West Ham which was a constant concern). For two weeks I had the time of my life, constantly amazed at the restored Mayan sites and beautiful colonial metropolises. At Edzna I met a man atop a pyramid who taught me some Mayan words. A sign at the site was explicit; 'The Maya did not receive extra-terrestrial help in building their cities.' I said it seemed an unnecessary statement. He laughed, "You wouldn't believe some of the freaks we get here."
Uxmal had pyramids crawling with scaly iguanas and the air was thick with white butterflies. Palenque had a Tarzan jungle setting with a soundtrack of howler monkeys. Izamal was a colonial town painted egg yolk yellow. It had Mayan temples in the centre, a Spanish monastery, leafy plazas and skies of cloudless blue. At Valladolid I swam in a cenote, a natural limestone sinkhole dappled with sunlight. Tulum had the best location of all the Mayan sites, with a cliff top view of the Gulf of Mexico. It was prime first millennium real estate. Chichen Itza was full of daytrippers from Cancun. They were hungover and didn't give a monkeys about the Mayans. "I got home at 5am this morning and was woken up at 8am to go on this damn pyramid tour" said one goatee bearded dude.
Undoubtedly the best part of visiting these ruins is the fact that you can climb all over them. If the Maya civilisation had flourished in the US or UK, it would be a different experience. In Central America there are no guard rails or access ramps for the disabled. The Mayans never had the wheel, let alone the wheelchair. The downside is that people do fall off these pyramids and every year there are injuries and deaths. In the UK, minority groups would have a field day. In the US, there would be a scrum of lawyers camped at the foot of every crumbling pyramid.
I dipped back down into Belize for a few days to visit the post-classic Mayan city of Lamanai. I stayed at a hotel in Orange Walk Town with grounds sloping down to a river. A tiny wooden jetty extended into the water and I caught a boat to the ruins an hour downstream. Unfortunately I was sat next to an ornithologist and he kept pointing and saying excitedly, "Look a plum-tailed heron!" or "Quick, up there, a blue ponce twatter!" Despite the bird watcher, Lamanai was gorgeous; temples built onto a steep plateau above a crocodile patrolled inlet. Returning on the boat a Kiwi tourist said, "Christ, that was a great day out." He spoke for everyone, even the bird watcher.
The following day was Labour Day, a national holiday and an excuse for the locals to get legless. In the evening I sat in the hotel bar watching CNN. A rather hefty lady lurched up to my table and shouted "hey, whitey, wanna see some pussy?" I almost spat my beer across the bar and stammered, "no, no...please, no." She shrugged, staggered off and the locals roared with laughter. The place was run by an American ex-pat, "you were lucky," he said, "she doesn't always ask first."
For the last leg of the trip I hit the Yucatan shoreline, Mexico's main tourism corridor. The length of coast from Tulum to Cancun is known as the Maya Riviera and it's the country's version of the Costa del Sol. I stayed a few days in Playa del Carmen to sunbathe on the powdery white beaches. Once a fishing village of a few dozen people, it is now a 'resort town' for thousands of inebriated yankees. Historical Mexican attractions such as McDonalds and Burger King sit next to shopping malls and hard sell timeshare operators. Signs read 'Continental Breakfast' or flash 'Ladies Night' in pink neon. On the plus side, it only took five minutes to cash a traveller's cheque. I tried not to be cynical (different strokes for different folks and all that), but you couldn't even have dinner without a Mariachi band surrounding your table and blasting out Guantanamera. It was hilarious and it made me cringe and it wasn't like Mexico at all.
In a way it was an appropriate place to end; a kind of air-brushed perspective of the Maya people. On this stretch of coast you could take a Mayatours bus to the pyramid shaped Hotel Maya along the Maya Riviera. The word Maya was used simply as tourism bait. The package deal holidaymakers see only the smiling villagers on the cover of glossy brochures and not the real state of the Maya nations. Throughout the Maya region; in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize & southern Mexico, I saw these same people living in utter poverty. There's some irony in the fact that a thousand years after the collapse of the Maya world, it's these vast empty cities that draw the visitors, yet the descendents of its inhabitants are the ones begging in the streets for your spare change. I felt so sorry for these downtrodden people living in such misery. But, throughout the world, history is written by the conquerors and the Maya were always better farmers than they were fighters. The last two and a half months have been simply amazing.
Florida 1982
As the aircraft lifted into the afternoon skies, I craned my neck to see Miami below. I'd begged for the window seat and bagsied it before my sister. She sulked as a ten year old does. At two years her senior I was entitled to the privilege. Despite securing the seat with a view all I could see was wing. I silently reproached my father for this oversight. He should have known.
I gazed at the two huge engines and was surprised when one exploded. The fuselage rocked and my dad said "shit" and looked alarmed. I tugged his sleeve and pointed to the engine; a stream of green and blush smoke trailed behind.
The captain made an announcement, "A little trouble with Number 2 engine...nothing to worry about…this is a 747 it can fly on 3 engines…our journey will continue." His voice was reassurance itself. If he added that he was going to blow the other three engines and glide back to London, it wouldn’t have raised a murmur.
Except, we had stopped climbing and appeared to be circling off the Florida coast. Ten minutes later the captain was back and all traces of reassurance were gone. "Back to Miami…dump fuel…emergency landing." I guess there was more, but panic took over and everyone shouted at once. For twenty minutes the plane completed endless laps, jettisoning fuel from the wing tips. A lady passed out, then a man. As a twelve-year-old kid, my frame off reference was narrow. I’d spent the holiday negotiating my way around Pac-Man machines and had just been to see ET. The reality for me was something between a game and a movie. Another passenger passed out. Not a great movie.
The captain made a final announcement, which was pretty much “Don’t Panic”. The runway loomed up as we approached the airport. A woman behind me bit the crown from her tooth and screamed in pain. My mum said “we’re going to die” then repeated it over and over as a kind of mantra. Her prediction was wide of the mark. We hit the ground hard and bounced up again. Stomachs were playing catch up. The overhead lockers flew open and luggage rained down. Then the wheels hit again and stayed put. Fire trucks and ambulances roared alongside; a hundred flashing lights of blue and orange. We slowed and everyone whooped and hollered their approval. Apart from the woman with the crownless tooth. She was wishing for the place to crash and her misery to end. Our stomachs taxied to meet us.
Disappointedly we didn’t get to use the emergency chutes. Pan-AM herded us onto a later flight; a flight characterised by empty seats. To compensate for the ‘delay’, every passenger received free earphones. I let my sister take the window seat.
I gazed at the two huge engines and was surprised when one exploded. The fuselage rocked and my dad said "shit" and looked alarmed. I tugged his sleeve and pointed to the engine; a stream of green and blush smoke trailed behind.
The captain made an announcement, "A little trouble with Number 2 engine...nothing to worry about…this is a 747 it can fly on 3 engines…our journey will continue." His voice was reassurance itself. If he added that he was going to blow the other three engines and glide back to London, it wouldn’t have raised a murmur.
Except, we had stopped climbing and appeared to be circling off the Florida coast. Ten minutes later the captain was back and all traces of reassurance were gone. "Back to Miami…dump fuel…emergency landing." I guess there was more, but panic took over and everyone shouted at once. For twenty minutes the plane completed endless laps, jettisoning fuel from the wing tips. A lady passed out, then a man. As a twelve-year-old kid, my frame off reference was narrow. I’d spent the holiday negotiating my way around Pac-Man machines and had just been to see ET. The reality for me was something between a game and a movie. Another passenger passed out. Not a great movie.
The captain made a final announcement, which was pretty much “Don’t Panic”. The runway loomed up as we approached the airport. A woman behind me bit the crown from her tooth and screamed in pain. My mum said “we’re going to die” then repeated it over and over as a kind of mantra. Her prediction was wide of the mark. We hit the ground hard and bounced up again. Stomachs were playing catch up. The overhead lockers flew open and luggage rained down. Then the wheels hit again and stayed put. Fire trucks and ambulances roared alongside; a hundred flashing lights of blue and orange. We slowed and everyone whooped and hollered their approval. Apart from the woman with the crownless tooth. She was wishing for the place to crash and her misery to end. Our stomachs taxied to meet us.
Disappointedly we didn’t get to use the emergency chutes. Pan-AM herded us onto a later flight; a flight characterised by empty seats. To compensate for the ‘delay’, every passenger received free earphones. I let my sister take the window seat.
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