CLEAR SKIES

My! The sky was beautifully clear the other night as the cosmos danced its graceful dance against a sea of deepest indigo, without a cloud to block the view. Sadly, the limitations of my photographic skills and equipment are always most demonstrated by my attempts at taking pictures of the stars, so instead I’ve done you a quick drawing on the computer of what I saw. A bright new moon hung above the horizon towards the south-west with its crescent pointing towards the sun which picked out the features on its surface making them ironically possibly more visible than they are during a full moon.

Below it, the bright discs of two of our nearby planets could be seen so clearly even with the naked eye. They’re the ones that look like very bright stars but don’t seem to be doing any “twinkling” if you decide to go and take a look. The one that appears larger is the smaller of the two but, as Father Ted might have put it “Venus is small, but Jupiter is far away…”

If you look in the other direction, the bright reddish dot that you might see in the sky is Mars and I’ve been told that, if you’re very quick (which I seldom am these days) you can even spot the frantic little planet that we call Mercury hanging around near to the sun just after it sets.

Beyond all that, the constellations of the stars were about as clear as they are possible to be and as we arrived home after another late-evening run to the station for me (after having been abandoned again in favour of more interesting social interaction…), we simply had to stop and stare at how beautiful it all was. So much so, in fact, that it seemed a shame to go indoors.

This, of course, is at a time when the evening sunshine has already left and the sun-worshippers have packed up their barbecues and only the most determined (or maybe the most drunk) remain outdoors chatting away. There’s also the added advantage that a clear night at this time of year doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be scraping the ice off the car’s windscreen in the morning, so it’s a bit of a “win-win” if you like such things.

I’m always surprised about the relative position of the moon in the sky. Here where I grew up, the lunar cycle from  “new” to “full” and beyond goes from right to left, but in other parts of the world you grow up with it seeming perfectly “normal” for that sequence to go from top to bottom, right to left, or bottom to top. This all seems perfectly normal if it’s just the way you’ve always seen the moon, but doesn’t half seem odd to any visitors who pay attention to such things.

This, I suppose, was some of the “evidence” that finally convinced the early astronomers about how the Earth moved through space once we started moving about on this planet instead of living our entire lives in one little village, which probably helps to prove the old adage that travel really does broaden the mind.

As the planets get closer and closer to the much-talked about (and feared?) alignment, they are giving us a stunning display as they sit there, shining brightly in the evening skies. Granted they’re not hanging there quite like the huge (and gravitationally improbable) discs that are painted in the sky in film and TV science fiction, so it might be a slight problem to persuade any children that you might be eager to inspire that this is quite such a fantastic thing.

Well, not unless you get the telescope out.

We were recently in a nature reserve looking out towards the ocean and doing a bit of whale-watching, and both got terribly excited at seeing momentary water-spouts erupt on the distant horizon. Sadly, however, one of the Park Rangers was chatting to us later and said that it’s very difficult to persuade their younger visitors about how wonderful this actually is. She blamed the “Discovery” Channel for having raised their expectations when it comes to seeing whales. Somehow a distant spurt of water doesn’t impress when they want full hi-definition slo-mo of the whale-tails rearing up as they dive, and, I suspect it’s a similar problem with stargazing.

Somehow, the back garden astronomer is never going to compete with the images taken by the Hubble space telescope, but that’s not really the point. If it’s dark enough and clear enough, the night sky is just a thing of beauty in itself.

FUEL-ISH BEHAVIOUR

I don’t like to get overtly ‘political’ on the old blog but, honestly what madness is it that overwhelms my fellow countrymen whenever there’s even the slightest sniff of a fuel shortage…? There’s a vague possibility that there might be a tanker driver’s strike in about a week or so and we all seem to get this overwhelming desire to drain the entire network of fuel stations of every single available drop of fuel when there’s not even a shortage yet, causing tempers to flare, huge queues to form and then actually creating massive shortages when they aren’t really necessary.

What, as they say, fresh madness is this, people o’Britland…?

Are we just overwhelmed with this ridiculously selfish notion that we are not prepared to live with merely an adequate amount of fuel in our tanks when there’s a chance that the other fellow might have more than us? Are we that insecure? Must we all really fill up our tanks to bursting just in case the strike starts before we’ve had another opportunity to top it up again as we use it all up over the course of the next week or so?

There is a rumour that this is all a political conspiracy designed to top up the Chancellor’s tax coffers before the end of the tax year and make sure that any strike action has a minimal impact because we’re all going around with the stuff sloshing around going “Yah! Boo! Sucks!” to those workers with a legitimate safety worry.

The one (was it really?) eleven years ago was bad enough. Remember? When we all thought £1.00 per litre was intolerable… It doesn’t seem so bad now, does it? Back then, the fuel-buying madness started expanding out in waves until we were nearly all joining in, and I suspect that it’s the memory of that that causes much of today’s chaos. I can clearly remember that I worked for a “no excuses” kind of a company back then and, living as I do, miles from any petrol stations, I suffered quite a lot of what we would probably call “range anxiety” in my old jalopy of the time. Thankfully, in those days, that particular car could run on four-star as well as unleaded, and so I managed to muddle through, but this time I won’t be quite so lucky and fully expect another bout of high anxiety as I stare at the quivering needle.

Wierdly, the musical “panic” sting from “A Night to Remember” always came into my mind at that time whenever I passed a queue of cars, which just goes to show that it really is the strangest things that you remember. If things get really bad this time around, I shall go to work, pick the computer up from my desk, drive home with it and work from there. After all, I did that for over three years and it’s really not the worst option.

Of course, eleven years ago things  then rapidly returned back to normal, and once regular delivery services had returned we all kind of forgot just how dependent the whole country is on the fuel supply and how easily everything can be brought to a skidding halt when something so vital gets cut off. The difficulty is always that the people most hurt by these protests are never those who the protesters want to punish, but those who are, for whatever reasons, totally dependent on their cars to get to work, or the holiday destinations dependent on tourists getting to them that can no longer be reached, or the thousand and one other things we do when we create a nation that is almost totally dependent upon road transport, build all of our major shopping centres out of town, cut back public transport to the bone and then switch off the petrol tap.

Obviously there’s no corresponding fool shortage to go along with it which, as we approach another “All Fools Day” is probably, at the very least, appropriate. Mind you, H.M.G. don’t really help when they know that the very best way to get everyone panicking is to tell us not to panic. “Why’s he telling us not to panic?” “There must be something they’re not telling us!”  “That makes me panic!”

This is then fuelled (sorry!) by the TV news teams going off and finding the one petrol station that actually has run out of petrol and broadcasting it so that just about everyone then goes out and empties all the rest thinking that there’s a crisis, after which, of course, there is one.

“Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” We should put that on the Union Flag or the nation’s Coat of Arms: “Non Agitare! Non Agitare!”

I imagine our neighbours across the Channel or our friends across the Atlantic must wonder what all the fuss is about. Well, maybe we would just get a French Gallic shrug, but I wonder what would happen in their, much more open countryside, if a similar dispute was to happen...? “Zut Alors!” Equally, I hate to think about what might occur in the U.S.A., but I suspect that there might actually be some bloodshed, so I can only hope that we deal with this “non-crisis” with a certain amount of dignity and respect for our fellow motorists.

What do you think are the chances of that?

Ah, well… We’ll see…

But then it’s not been the greatest of weeks for H.M.G., has it? What with the so-called “Granny Tax” and its consequent emergence of a definite schism between the young and the elderly in this country, because the young feel that the elderly are spending “their” tax money and there’ll be none left for them when they get old, presumably because none of them are doing any breeding, and the elderly feeling the injustice of having worked long and hard, paid for the generation before theirs’ retirement plans, and believing the “Daily Mail” when it claims that the young are just a bunch of work-shy, rioting layabouts.

Or “Pastygate” where an attempt to level the playing field between takeaway food outlets and the supermarkets only manages to make a lot of us resent paying a tax which we already were paying anyway… and equally coming to resent the superior attitude of those who don’t eat like the “common herd” hiking up the cost for those of us who do… As I said on FizzBok to little acclaim: “In one Greggs I once went in there was a sign: ‘Sausage Rolls 25p each OR 4 for a £1’ - Now THAT’S how to do economics...!” Ho, ho, bleeding ho…!

Or “Postgate” where the announcement of restrictions on Post Office price hikes is immediately followed by the biggest price hike in years, but H.M.G. can then claim that it’s not their doing… but the generation that still use the post most are, again, the one most likely to suffer. I don’t know how they really can get away with calling it “First Class” any more anyway. We all know that they love a bit of “rebranding” (remember “Consignia”…?) so perhaps they should just have one rate and just call it “The Post”.

When it comes to services like that, one flat rate might be a better option anyway. I remember once being in Boston, Massachusetts and being terribly impressed with their “one fare – anywhere” policy. That meant that if you went just one stop or thirty, the fare was the same. I “reckon” that if transport companies in all of our major cities tried doing that, at, say, a quid, in the end they’d actually make more money.

But what do I know…?

Luckily, we’ve got our heroic “Number One Test Team in the World” to distract us from all these woes…

Oh, wait a minute…

JET LAGGED

Ah, my sleep patterns have been all over the place over recent weeks. Granted, this came out of being fortunate enough to have been on holiday in a place in a significantly different time zone, so it’s hardly something to complain about, but nevertheless it’s been playing some pretty sneaky tricks on this old body and its strange little habits, I can tell you.

It began, as these things do, with my general insomnia managing to transport itself across the sea and find me still waking up at generally the same wee small hour as I do at home, albeit “time-shifted” by eight hours. This continued throughout the holiday with a gradual shift towards what you might call “normalcy” if you really wanted to, although I don’t really hold with such verbal shenanigans.

Then the flight home threw me a curve ball. I watched a couple of movies whilst the rest of the cabin was put into darkness, and as “J. Edgar” finished, I decided that I would have a nap myself only for the cabin lights to be immediately turned on and a light breakfast to be served and for us to be hurtling homewards on final approach without me having had so much as a blink of sleep and facing the prospect of having to turn around my driving technique back to what I would call “normality” after two weeks of doing the opposite Stateside.

Once safely home (phew!), the beloved dozed off pretty immediately and slept for 24 hours. I, rather (un)naturally, stayed awake, mostly doing some photo-wrangling until about 2pm where I sloped off up that wooden hill and actually managed about 2 hours sleep before waking up again. Happily, I staggered off to Bedfordshire once again a couple of hours after that and slept more-or-less through for sixteen hours, which is, as some of you may know from my previous musings on insomnia, rather unprecedented.

I now thought that happily I was back on schedule, but no. Sunday night brought little sleep, and Monday night, despite almost crippling (and frankly quite dangerous) fatigue that had overtaken me after being at work all day following that, was still very poor in the acquisition of the required quantities of winks.

Tuesday night was far more successful. In fact it was so good that I had to be woken by the alarm for the first time in years, which came as something of a shock to the system (and the morning routine), I can assure you. Nevertheless, ever since then, which, I’ll grant you isn’t really all that many days, I’ve been sleeping right through until about 5.30AM which might still sound like a kind of insomnia to many of you, but is actually rather unheard of at Blogfordshire H.Q. and might, at the very least, be symptomatic of proving that the holiday did indeed manage to relax me in some small way.

I’m sure that it won’t last...

What has really suffered, of course, is being able to find those little moments that I used to use to write my nonsense in. Those “wee small hours” which I used to spend concocting nonsense like this are suddenly spent slumbering away like some sort of “normal” human being, whatever that might turn out to be, and my tiny sparks of “creativity” seems to have been largely snuffed out. I also find that the “post-holiday malaise” has rather made me less inclined towards the process of writing anyway. Somehow, “broadening the mind” has made it feel a less “vital” pastime than once it was.

However, I do sometimes find myself still thinking about things, albeit in a slightly less “thorough” way than I might once have done. For example, I always find it very strange when I think about things like time zones anyway, so there is nothing really unusual in that, I just might not have thought it worthy of much comment in the past, that’s all. All that life going on just as it does every day whilst the likes of us sleep or have already finished our working day. Just as the day was getting started “over there” I had to make a strange mental adjustment to accept that m’colleagues would be packing up to go home over here. Then, when you start to think about our Antipodean friends, the whole mind-bending process goes into another loop-the-loop. Their day is done before ours has even begun and the Americans are so far behind them that they almost meet them getting up the next morning.

That’s just the kind of thinking that’s likely to keep me awake at nights...

SOUND AND LIGHT

Less than one hundred years ago, someone managed to synchonise a soundtrack with the flickering images of early cinema film and the talkies were born. “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” as the line so famously went, and, of course, we hadn’t.

Well, obviously people had been seen walking and talking in reality for centuries prior to that, in full colour and in 3-D, sometimes even on a stage, but in terms of cinema and storytelling, a new medium was born and, once we’d got over the limitations of the technology that led to a certain amount of rather “stilted” and “over-emphatic” performances due to the actors needing to be very close to the primitive microphones, pretty soon the “talkies” developed the vocabulary to become the entertainment medium that has become so popular to audiences all over the world for almost a century.

A few years earlier we had finally achieved wireless telegraphy just in time to hear the Titanic calling out in her distress, and about fifty years before that, a Morse message was finally successfully transmitted across the Atlantic from southern Ireland to Newfoundland and the world got a little smaller.

That world was still mostly lit by candles, oil lamps and gaslight and remained a very gloomy place once darkness fell. Early experiments with the mysterious force known as “electricity” led to arc lighting in public places, but that remained far too bright, expensive and downright dangerous for the average domestic living room. Later on, the filament led to the lightbulb and all of our lives eventually got a lot brighter, but even so, in the early days, such things were objects of wonder and amazement and people would go out of their way to witness early public demonstrations of this new fangled electric lighting, and these so-called “illuminations” could refer to even something that we would consider very unimpressive in our modern world.

Electricity became eventually something that we could control enough to start lighting our homes with extreme comfort and safety and, whilst the lighting in the average home is still about 500 times less intense than that of the great outdoors, we were no longer tied to the seasons and the natural cycle of the night and day and so our lives got infinitely more complicated (some might suggest better...) as we had far more hours to get stuff done in.

In the 1950s technology had come on in leaps and bounds and whilst the two world wars had managed to develop huge leaps in the name of science, our control over electricity was still rather clunky, with all those dials and tubes and great big switches to deal with, but somehow the world managed to work despite the lo-tech nature of it as it may seem to those brought up in a world where wireless has a truly different meaning to the meaning it had to my parents’ generation. I sometimes think about the almighty leap between those wax cylinders and those tiniest of iPods and wonder whether such an object would really seem like magic to someone from the Victorian era.

Movie makers, of course, were quick to embrace the advent of sound when it came in, and yet, rather strangely, almost overnight, the universal language of the silent era was lost to the world. Before sound came in, with just a piece of celluloid, a piano and a few caption cards in the language of choice, film entertainments could be shown almost anywhere in the world and the same laughter and heartaches could be experienced by almost anyone, anywhere. This strangely tragic side-effect is something that it has taken the motion picture industry almost ninety years to finally address in the rather wonderful movie “The Artist” which won all those awards recently, but that was really only the beginning, and developments in the technology used to make the sound and light show that we now think of as being movie magic are, quite frankly, astonishing.

The young people of fifty years ago would be amazed if someone told them what we can now do with pictures and sound, and yet many of them have lived to see it. When you compare a modern television set with one of its forebears of only sixty or so years ago, they barely resemble the same technology. The same goes for home music which has moved on from wax cylinders to records to tape to compact discs to just sitting there in a tiny box without any visible means of transmission at all...

As I said... Magic!

Nowadays we can pretty much listen to our sound and watch our vision pretty much anywhere and it’s difficult to imagine just how much “better” it can get but I do wonder what people from fifty years from now would tell us, if they could, about the primitive devices that we’re all carting about with us...

And if I could even begin to predict what those devices might be and how they would look, or even how they might work, well, I suspect that I wouldn’t be sitting here droning on about the past, but I’d be out there conjuring up those next miracles which, I’m almost certain, won’t resemble the future as we see it in one way at all. After all, even the most forward-thinking minds of the last century would have struggled to believe that we could have music players with no moving parts that can be about the size of a tie-pin, carry a whole library of music and sound like an orchestra, or a television the size of a wall and about as deep as a small box of chocolates, or that we could pluck power from mid-air, or make ceramics and fibres that are stronger than steel.

It’s truly a world of miracles we live in, and, if we do all need to keep looking and listening to all that sound and light, sometimes we also need to stop and think, because it’s the thinkers and visionaries who will bring us the next big thing and when they do, I’m sure the rest of us will all still be wondering how on Earth they managed to come up with it.

FLYING TONIGHT

I’ve never been the biggest fan of flying. To be honest it drives me to levels of trepidation that can be difficult to explain to people in these days when the process seems to be so utterly ubiquitous. I suppose that it all comes from a strange “first flight” taken when I was eight. A family holiday to Yugoslavia (yes, I am that old) which involved a lot of “circling” as we approached our home airport which made my mother rather tense (although ever since she’s rather loved to travel...) which obviously transmitted itself to me in some small way because, after that holiday, whenever the next one was booked I would spend all the intervening time worrying about the flight out, and the fortnight of the holiday itself worrying about the flight home.

Strangely enough, the most terrifying flight my parents ever experienced, with all its aborted landings, steam coming from the vents and old ladies knocking back the brandies came on the first holiday where I didn’t go with them, so what do I know...?

My own worst landing came many years later on the way home from a tetchy week spent with friends on Kos. As we boarded the plane we were all barely talking, but our own aborted landing in horrendous crosswinds soon got the chat flowing again after the pilot’s rather breathless “Well, I think we’d better have another go at that” came over the loudspeakers. In the end it was the third go that was the charm, but we made it and lived to be friends again another day.

In later years I became rather morbidly aware of air “incidents” (as they euphemistically came to be known) as this was the 1970s when DC10s just couldn't keep themselves in the sky and some of the worst passenger “incidents” happened to occur and got themselves plastered all over the news just after “The Magic Roundabout” had been on. Later still this became a rather bleak “interest” for a while as I would watch all of the documentaries that were shown on the topic and buy quite a few books about it, too, becoming far too knowledgeable about things like “windshear” and “metal fatigue” for my own good.

However, as I’ve got older, I seem to have relaxed a little more about such things because, in order to be able to see anything of the world on my timescale and budget, I have had to “grasp the nettle” somewhat in order to do go to such places, and, by and large, the “fear” is largely kept at bay these days. That and the fact that, in some ways, and on some level, it feels like it might be a kindlier option when compared to the ravages of old age.

But that’s a thought for another day, and I really shouldn’t tempt fate with such thoughts.

As you can see, I still have my superstitious little rituals with regards to any flight that I may have to take of course. All my “I’ll be backs” and mysterious little ticks and walks and phrases that I pull out of my mental carpet bag when the prospect of launching myself up into the wild blue yonder in a silver bird becomes ever more imminent. I used to insist on “viewing” the plane as best I could, although the black residue around the engines that I spotted just before one flight to Barcelona terrified me so much I almost went home. Wasn’t it the actress Lindsay Wagner who once declined to board one plane that subsequently got itself involved in an “incident”, or am I remembering that wrongly? Anyway, giving the plane a good old once over has become less possible in recent times when you spend the entire boarding procedure in air-conditioned tubes. I do miss that short walk across the tarmac with the scent of  jet fuel floating on the breeze...

That said, flying nowadays seems to have generally become a much more mundane pastime than it once was. Checking-in now seems to involve a certain amount of being treated a bit like a convicted criminal arriving at a maximum security institution (which I will accept is wholly necessary and can be tolerable if approached with a certain amount of irony on the part of both parties), and then requires a certain amount of computer literacy to acquire your many boarding passes. After that its mostly a couple of hours of boredom (and, if you’re me, wondering whether this is how you are destined to spend your last few hours on Earth...) mooching around what is basically a shopping mall and trying not to buy so much coffee that your bladder might risk bursting in those inevitable gaps when access to toilet facilities may be denied you.

Zonal boarding and the amount of overhead storage becomes a slight source of angst when you realise that everyone that they’ve already let on has now filled up the storage spaces and you might be left without your tiny little bag of goodies because everyone else has been allowed to flout the regulations and bring along everything they own including the kitchen sink.

In America the sheer size of the country and the scattering of families means than “domestic” flights are so much a part of the ritual of everyday life for a large part of the population that the going to the airport seems rather akin to going to the bus station, and many people seem to load themselves up with a similar amount of bags and carry-ons as if they were getting on a bus, and treat the airliner in much the same way too.

Flying “Economy” does tend to mean “no-frills” too. Whilst there still seems to be an obligation to provide drinks, airline food on these trips which either means risking the snack boxes or salads they sell at inflated rates (and risking that they’ll run out of them before they bring the cart far enough back to get to the actual seat you are in), or else buying the, admittedly rather good, food that can be purchased on the concourse, whilst hoping against all hope that there’s not suddenly some new policy that means you have to stuff it all down your gullet whilst simultaneously stripping off your coat, belt and shoes for another security inspection, and hopping from foot to foot wondering just how soon the pilot is likely to switch off the seatbelt sign and allow you to move about in the cabin.

So I suppose that I must be thankful for the “Transatlantic” phases of my journeys where, despite still being an “Economy” option, there is a relatively high level of pampering that is possibly inversely proportional to the available legroom. Still, if you choose the right airline you will get those fancy little screens on the back of the seat in front of you to watch a few films on (assuming that you don’t happen to sit behind a habitual “recliner”) and so the time will pass.

I still pay very careful attention to the safety procedures even if both those doing the demonstration and those supposed to be watching it seem endlessly bored by the procedure. Oddly enough I’m pretty convinced that I’ve never yet found my life-vest so I do wonder whether, should I ever be unfortunate enough to find myself plummeting towards a mountain, that my last thoughts will be about wondering where it was they actually put it and what it was they said about the straps again...?

Meanwhile, there are, of course, all those other tiny troublesome things to worry about, like the tricky little matter of “viable connections” that the airline assure you mean that you have ample time to get to your next plane, but somehow the combined time-munching of security, immigration control, travelling between terminals and identifying your transfer luggage seem to chew up just enough of that time to find you dashing at full tilt along another concourse hoping that someone else hasn’t been allocated your seat to sit in.

One of the airports I was recently in added a new worry, the tiny issue of “Restroom refurbishment angst” (I’ll gloss over - for the moment - the issue of that euphemistic language option) whereby my all-too-frequent pre-flight bathroom trips were complicated by the nearby one being renovated, and the amount of sinister workmen strolling around carrying lengths of pipe just looked like a Bruce Willis movie backstory in the making. My mind was racing, wondering how many times they are security checked as they go back and forth to their little plumber’s van, and how long it is before complacency sets in and just how much like a bazooka that lengthy section of three inch copper pipe actually looked...

Nowadays when you are finally aboard the aircraft, and have left the gate, the planes themselves seem to make some rather alarming noises (a bit like a dog barking in the basement if you ask me) as the various checks are gone through whilst you are still on the tarmac. Those never sound all that healthy to me. I also had my own little “moment” when I saw someone slip into the toilets before seatbelt buckling time and I really wondered whether the cabin crew had spotted him as they didn’t seem to actually check the “restrooms” much at all on the assumption that they would be empty. Naturally, it turns out that it was one of the crew I actually spotted slipping in there, but you never know. On another flight, once upon a long time ago, we left the gate only for the entire cabin to be plunged into darkness after we were disconnected from the ground electricity supply, which made me immediately wonder what would happen if that occurred at 30,000 feet, so that didn’t turn out to be the calmest of flights either. These are the moments when you really wonder whether to risk being labelled a “troublesome passenger” and start asking those awkward questions so unbeloved of the cabin crew, but I’m so terribly “British” that I’m unlikely to ever do that, so, for as long as I continue to make any successful flights, I suspect that these little moments of mental gymnastics are always likely to mean that it remains something of an ordeal for me.

If it doesn’t kill me, that is...

OW

My holiday reading for my recent trip, if you are at all interested, which I am sure you’re not, was the second volume of Simon Callow’s biography of Orson Welles, which I’d picked up in a remaindered book shop a while ago, added to the reading pile, and never got around to actually reading. Still, as I fussed around trying to pick out a book to take with me, its title “Hello Americans” kind of leapt out at me as being appropriate to where we were going.

Normally these days, if I do take a book along with me, I find that I either end up buying another one that interests me slightly more at the airport, so that I don’t actually end up reading the original, or that I simply don’t find any actual time for reading in the general hubbub of holiday adventures. Airport bookshops are treasure troves of temptation, I find, what with all the volumes as yet unavailable in the high street and that glorious freedom of the option to pay the full whack because you have very little option if you want to actually read the thing on the flight that you’re about to take. Strangely, however, I didn’t find anything to buy in the Departure Lounge outlets this time around, although I did come very close to buying a book about the periodic table of the elements. Luckily I didn’t as, when I mentioned this thought, it turned out that we already had a copy of it at home.

Another bullet dodged there, eh...?

Nevertheless, on this trip, not only did I actually find the time to do some reading, but I also found that I not only did manage to read this book in its entirety, and indeed, that it rather precisely and neatly book-ended the entire holiday as I started it as we set off on the first outward-bound flight of the trip, and I read the last few pages as the aircraft was on its final approach to my home airport.

Simon Callow’s now-to-be three volume biography of Orson Welles is turning out to be something of a labour of love project for him, but also a bit of a marathon rather than a sprint. This one has been out for five years and I seem to recall reading the first volume at least a decade ago, and I don’t have a clue when the third one is expected. I hear on the grapevine that these books have provoked something of a mixed reaction, but I’ve found both of them rather fascinating so far.

As to the life of Orson Welles himself, or “Obediently yours, Orson Welles…” as he humbly used to sign off as, well it remains a rather intriguing one. After all, his astonishing early successes in the theatre, radio and, of course with that movie “Citizen Kane” which is often still voted the greatest film ever made by those in the know (less so by the “Star Wars” fans...), would be enough of a career for most of us, but to have achieved so much before he was thirty and then spend the rest of his life somehow not quite living up to that early promise makes for a mesmorising life story. This volume deals with the years immediately after “Kane” and Mr Welles’ apparent intention to burn as many of his Hollywood bridges as possible over the course of the next decade. This almost pathological dedication to paving the path of destruction, and towards sowing the seeds of his own downfall is what makes up the bulk of this volume of the work, and at times it makes for a both massively painful and intriguing story, but also can be quite maddening when you consider the opportunities missed or lost, sometimes simply because of a lack of communication, or understanding or just plain old-fashioned human decency on the part of so many parties, no least Mr Welles himself. Perhaps sometimes he just took the role of “everyman” far too seriously for his own good.

That in itself is a fascinating tale, but I was most moved by the chapter regarding the incident Welles himself referred to as the case of “Officer X” which told the story behind a dark chapter in the fight for civil rights and equality in post-war America. Basically a returning war veteran was beaten and blinded by a racist cop in the deep south, and Mr Welles was so incensed by this story that he turned over a series of his radio broadcasts completely over to the topic and vented his ire in the direction of the policeman he dubbed “Officer X” and seemed to not care one jot for the risk to his own person that taking should a stand might entail. The intolerance and racism still evident in that nation so shortly after it had won the war against fascism is a truly disturbing thing to read  about, and it was truly a brave thing to do for a public figure like Mr Welles to hold up his head and speak out against an issue that still much divided his fellow countrymen. Some of the deeply racist beliefs that come across in some of the letters that he received (and which were quoted at length in the book) after his broadcasts are truly shameful and speak of a level of hatred that modern readers would (hopefully) find totally abhorrent.

On a happier and more personal note, it’s somewhat appropriate that during our own little trip, we did stop to have lunch at the place which Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth bought during their brief marriage; Nepenthe. It is a rather beautiful, unforgettable place, overlooking one of the most magnificent parts of Big Sur on the California coast. Whether Mr Welles bought this place because William Randolph Hurst had his “castle” at the other end of that particular stretch of coastline, in an “anything you can do” kind of a way is for more psychologically qualified observers to ponder upon, but it was a passing thought that struck me as I looked at the horizon on that pleasantly blissful afternoon.

So, as I sign off for another day with that most pleasant of memories at the forefront of my mind, I bid you a pleasant farewell, and indeed, if I may be so bold, I shall remain “Obediently yours, Martin A W Holmes…”

SLO

What with one thing and another, and spending far, far too many hours last weekend going through the photographs I took on my recent holiday, I seem to have got myself so very far behind with all this blogging mullarkey and simultaneously got myself far, far ahead of myself. After all, our time spent in San Luis Obispo was over halfway through the trip and, apart from telling you about dear old “Tim”, I’ve barely told you anything yet about the latest great adventure, and I certainly haven’t given you the opportunity to make your excuses and quietly leave before your eyes glaze over at the awful enormity of having to experience someone else’s holiday experiences...


Actually, looking at those recent stats, maybe you’re already well aware of what’s coming and have all gone into hiding... Still, no matter. Tales are there for the telling, even if nobody wants to hear them, but many of them are going to have to wait because we have some unfinished business from yesterday to attend to first.


You see, with all my chat about San Luis Obispo yesterday, I failed completely to mention the name of the Motel we stayed in, the name of the café that I was so impressed by, or to mention the Mission Bells, so, in order to rectify that less-than-dreadful omission (in the great scheme of things), here are a few more photographs taken on that Monday morning, including the one of that hummingbird which I was so pleased about.


The rather lovely Motel we overnighted in was called “The Peach Tree Inn” and was one that we got out of the “Lonely Planet” guide so, I suppose, we shouldn’t have been too surprised to find it so full of students at breakfast in the morning. I, rather naturally, got rather intimidated by their brimming over-confidence and the fact that they all had the air of being far older than me despite the fact that they couldn’t have been. One of them oozed so much confidence that I abandoned the toaster and fled with my bread still pale and pasty rather than have to be anywhere near her for any longer. They were all, it seemed, in the middle of some vast cycling enterprise which I imagine had something to do with charity and which required copious amounts of food from the owner who had a very tolerant ex-services air about him, and a vast amount of support crew and equipment to see them on their merry way.


Happily, as the car park cleared, the bird life that the owner seemed to encourage into his own little oasis of calm in the world, returned. The soft chirruping of so many strange and unusual breeds on a warm, sunny morning is something I am really trying very hard to cherish, and obviously, capturing that moment with the hummingbird was just the icing on the cake, especially as the beloved had kept on spotting them whilst I was otherwise engaged taking one hundred and one pictures of the same old dreary bit of rock that was patently not festooned with hummingbirds. Another guest remarked as I pounced with my camera that morning that, on a previous visit, she’d seen at least ten clustered on one of those feeders, but such lofty ambitions in the bird-watching field were not on my agenda that morning. One would and did make me deliriously happy, and actually, I saw two, but the green one was far too quick for me.

The five bells of the Mission of San Luis Obispo del Tolosa (to give it its full title) each have individual names, which were given to them in order to honour the patron saints of Alta California’s first five missions (it says here...). The names are (from left to right in the picture) “Carlos”, “Diego” and “Antonio”, with the other two (which can’t be seen in my photograph, but have slots in the wall around the corner to the right of these three) being named “Gabriel” and “Luis”, all of which provide a distinctive background to the soundtrack of life in San Luis Obispo. There’s also a “little shop”, but the walls covered in plaster saints and stained glass trinkets were not to my personal taste and so I did a quick “about turn” and departed swiftly.

Interestingly (perhaps), the missions in California seem to play a large role in the general support of the homeless population in much the same way that general society chooses not to. Certainly more than the average number seemed to gravitate towards these spiritual houses and were presumably given suitable help by having done so. To the casual observer, which is, of course, all I could ever really be, America seems to be a tough place to live in if you have failed to live up to the American “dream”, so it’s very lucky that there are still these places to provide such support, especially in a culture that seems to suggest that being in such a situation is always “your own fault”. As always, the truth is always far more complicated in many cases. Happily there seems to have been a cultural shift amongst the so-called “super rich” that maybe, just maybe, it is possible to be too well off, and a certain amount of philanthropy seems to be returning to the public debate. Well, that’s certainly how it appeared to me, at any rate, and returning home to face this “budget week”, maybe that’s another American idea that we should think about importing and embracing.

Finally, I just must share the noticeboard from the Kreuzberg Café (as my snapshots seem to be telling me it was called) with its list of sandwiches based around the names of famous authors because it is simply a wonderful way to remember all of those writers in an environment that seemed to be rather devoted to that most lo-tech of pleasures, the humble book. Granted, I’m not completely convinced of the wisdom of ordering a “Sylvia Plath” (especially if the chef is having an off day) or an “Ernest Hemingway” for that matter, but they all looked very good and it is a lot of fun spotting just who they haven’t named a book after. I wonder whether they change it from time-to-time, depending upon how the mood (or the current curriculum) takes them? Dammit! I always think of these clever questions when it’s far too late to ask them...

GIRL IN A CAFE

San Luis Obispo didn’t promise much. The guide book actually seemed to imply that it was probably “a bit dull” and this was despite it being a university town, which are generally rather lively and interesting places on the whole.

Still, that guide book was aimed at a rather racier set of circles than I usually move in, so perhaps for them it had seemed to be rather lacking in the general sense of awe and wonder the more iconic of American cities seem to possess.

Certainly the elderly lady volunteer at one of the state nature reserves seemed to have liked it when we told her of our intended destination that day. She described it as being far enough from both L.A. and San Francisco to have so far avoided being tainted by either, and I kind of know what she was getting at. Maybe the wisdom of those with a few years on the clock is something I’m starting to appreciate more and more as my own warranty expires, but I really should learn to trust their judgement more.

After all, we only intended to sleep there overnight anyway, and then planned to get the hell out of Dodge come the morning, so the general lack of excitement on offer seemed to be just what we were looking for, and so our plans for the day remained much the same as before, with a couple of extra stops which she recommended added to them.

Anyway, after our journey, the tale about which I can share on another day, as we approached this supposedly dull little town at sunset, our expectations were rather low which meant that it all came as rather a lovely surprise to find out how pleasant it actually was as we drove along the main drag with the deep orange sunset behind us, trying to spot the name sign of our preferred choice of overnight accommodation.

So why had we chosen to stop overnight in such an unpromising place? Well, one of the main advantages it had was that it wasn’t San Simeon, the only other place we’d ever stopped at in that area after our similar trip to the area however many years ago it was now. That particular little clump of Motels that served Hearst Castle had proven to be one of the lowlights of that trip when we very quickly found out that there was pretty much nothing else other than the Motels in that cluster of buildings and had consequently been “treated” to a less-than-appetising meal that evening in the alleged restaurant attached to our Motel of choice.

Having decided to spend a long, languid day driving down Big Sur, (oh, now I’ve gone and spoiled the surprise...) we needed to find a place that was at the southern end of it, and, as we looked at the map, San Luis Obispo seemed to fit the bill splendidly.

So, as I mentioned, we drove along the strip and found one of the Motels that was recommended in the guide book and checked in after a long and enjoyable day on the road, and settled down for the evening. The beloved was feeling unwell and went to sleep early, and so I was left reading the various brochures and guides that were left in the room for the use of visitors and found out a great deal more about the little town we had found ourselves in and it all sounded rather lovely.

Now, I’ll grant you that such information is not likely to be unbiased about the assets of the town it is written for, but it managed at least to persuade me to investigate further and, come the morning, I suggested that we spend some time exploring the town just a little before we headed off towards our next goal.

This seemed a good decision because, when we emerged from our little chalet, we also discovered what a lovely little Motel we were actually staying in, and I spent a happy hour around breakfast taking photographs of the wild birds that were being positively encouraged into the grounds by the owners. Outside the main building there were hanging a number of hummingbird-feeders and I finally got to spot a couple of them which made me feel stupidly happy after several near-misses over the years.

San Luis Obispo is always going to have a fond place in my memories because of that.

Anyway, after loading up the car and checking out, we headed downtown and parked the car on a meter before exploring the Mission and then heading into the shopping and retail district. It was still quite early on a Monday morning and very little had actually opened yet, but we found a rather excellent café which was always going to earn many brownie points with me as all of its sandwiches were named after famous authors.

It seemed to be my kind of a place.

One of the waitresses was chatting to us and was telling us about the recent visit of her Aunt from Sheffield and, just to help burn the place properly into my memory, I took a couple of photographs of the interior of the place and, over that coffee, we decided that if we are ever lucky enough to return to California one day, San Luis Obispo is definitely a town that we should like to return to.

It was only when I got home and looked at the photographs on a bigger screen that I spotted the girl in the café, sitting at that table looking like she had all the cares of the world on her shoulders. I suppose that she must have been a student working away at some project of other that probably seemed very important on that morning, or maybe other issues in her life were troubling her. America is a wonderful country but the continual pressure to be successful seems to make a great many of the people very miserable indeed for much of the time, and that seems to be written all over her face as she studies her notes with such determination.

I don’t even remember her being there that day. Perhaps sometimes people become so very self-absorbed that they just stop drawing attention to themselves and the rest of us stop noticing them. This, of course, is when we are at our most vulnerable, but I hope that she had friends and family to support her and see her through her troubles. Another, more confident seeming student back at the Motel had managed to intimidate me away from toasting my toast, but this one seems very different to her. I look at her and hope that her Monday got better, but I also had to be reminded that even the most confident of them only seem confident, and extreme overconfidence is sometimes the best defence mechanism they’ve got, because they’re quaking with fear on the inside.

Which, of course, we all are.