Barry's Ramblings

Cars, social castration and ….. sunshine

Posted on March 3, 2011 by BarryH

As I admitted in the last blog, the case I sketched out for the car being a vehicle of social castration was oversimplified. It is more complex than that. I have no doubt the increased use of the car has and continues to contribute to the breakdown of social interaction and community spirit but it is by no means the only causative factor.

But perhaps the main point which needs to be made is that the adverse effects of riding around in a car all the time cannot be reversed by simply encouraging walking and the use of public transport.

Over the last 50 years the planning system has delivered an urban infrastructure which is completely dependent on the car. Low density housing, greenfield industrial estates and out-of-town retail parks have created a long term inflexible framework for significantly changed social and employment habits. Food and household shopping is geared to one big weekly trip, and best-value goods are increasingly multi-pack. Furniture and other consumer durables are taken home in the car in flat packs. Job insecurity and rapid turnover of employment means people travel further for work and the location of the house not the job is now regarded as ‘fixed’. And modern, ‘sophisticated’ society is so time-pressured people don’t have time to walk or take the bus. What is perhaps even worse is that people actually prefer to isolate themselves in their car so they don’t have to interact with other people. One traffic engineer I know said he wouldn’t travel on the bus because you didn’t know who might come and sit next to you, and they might not have good personal hygiene. But that leads on to a whole different area of thought, opens a whole new can of worms, including 4×4 Syndrome. So I’ll finish there.

The point is that use of the car and the adverse effects that has had will only be reversed over a long time or via a major socio-economic lurch of seismic proportions. Me? I will continue to leave the car at home and travel on foot or by public transport as much as I can. But then I have both the time and the inclination to do so.

And since I have been back up North the weather has been fabulous for walking to places. Cloudless blue sky in South Manchester ever since I got here. Covered about 25 kilometres in 2 days so far. Walking around with the camera has been a pleasure.

Colourful sign on the Trans Pennine Trail alongside the Mersey

Sunset over pond on Heaton Mersey Common

Stockport Beach .... under the M60

The iconic Stockport Pyramid

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The car as a vehicle of social castration

Posted on February 27, 2011 by BarryH

I have been doing a lot of walking recently. Not going up into the mountains but walking as a means of getting to places. As explained in a previous blog my concessionary bus pass, issued in Wales, isn’t valid in England so I walked most places when I was up North.

This is where I have to admit to having become obsessive about it. The key is the pedometer which Ruth and Tim gave me for Christmas. Unlike the old one I had it is pretty accurate and comes with the software and the facility to download the data to a PC which then displays the information in graph form. It has become compulsive.

Ruth has a target of 5,000 steps a specified number of times a week to get some kind of benefit from a healthcare package. So subconsciously I set myself an initial target of doing that number of steps each day. Not too bad really, the house is quite big and I was doing about 3,000 a day even if I didn’t go out, working out at about 2.5 kms.

Because I was doing such big distances each day up North, backwards and forwards to the superstores or to the town centre, that my daily average for February shot up to over 10,000 steps, about 8 kilometres.

Now I’m back home I walk places, or at least walk to the bus, most of the time with the result that my daily average is still pretty high.

Copy of the pedometer graph. Note the increase in distance after 12 February when I lost the use of my bus pass

Generally I only take the car out once or twice a week and then only because there are no buses on a Sunday and I need to get to church and back and because if I go up to see the family the last bus home is at 19.05. This poor bus service is a combination of tunnel-visioned transport accounting and yobs smashing up buses in the evening. What is worse is that the bus service is likely to be cut further as council subsidies to the bus companies are again being reduced because of the recession. If the bus service was better I could probably manage quite well without a car.

Which may not be such a bad thing and indeed may be positively beneficial. A couple of chance encounters in recent weeks have led me to think about the benefits of walking and using public transport, apart from the obvious health benefits, conservation of finite fuel resources and reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

What triggered this reflection was a 10 minute conversation I had with a guy on the platform waiting for a train late on Tuesday night. He was meeting somebody off the train that I was getting on it. Never met him before, never likely to meet him again but it was one of those chance encounters which was uplifting to the sagging spirits. We chatted about nothing of very great consequence, then shook hands and went our separate ways. I could have travelled by car in which case I would never have met the guy nor enjoyed a stimulating conversation.

It reminded me of the similar encounter I had with a young Italian girl on a ferry in Greece in July last year. We chatted for an hour and then I got off at Symi and she continued further up the Dodecanese. It made my day.

These are the exceptional encounters but there are countless others which simply don’t happen travelling everywhere by car.

Walking to and from the house and most days I meet at least one of the neighbours and stop for a brief chat. Nothing ground shaking but keeping in touch and finding out how things are going. Leave the house by car and there is no more than a nod of the head and maybe a smile and wave of the hand. Soon after we came to this house in 1975 there was a street party for some Royal event or other. Neither Enfys nor I were royalists but we took part because this was a community event. There is no danger of a street party this time. Most people don’t even know what their neighbours look like. There is nolonger any community. Incarcerated inside a car there is no social contact.

Watch any traffic queue and the majority of cars are occupied by just the driver. Regarded as a punishment for bad behaviour in HM Prisons, why do people submit themselves to this daily solitary confinement for maybe an hour or more at a time. Whole families leave the house and confine themselves in a barely large enough box to travel around, with increasing amounts of electronic gubbins to make sure that there is no social interaction even within the box. More expensive cars are now sold with monitors in the head rests so soon it will become a standard requirement.

Admittedly I am oversimplifying the case but I am convinced that by travelling everywhere by car we are castrating society. Maragaret Thatcher famously said “there is no such thing as society” and to put emphasise her point that individuals must help themselves and not rely on state support said “It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour”. This philosophy of “self first, neighbours second” is now deeply engrained in the UK ethos and I think it can be argued that by isolating ourselves in our houses and in then in our cars we have removed the ‘neighbour’ bit completely in any practical sense. The society that Thatcher denied existed in the first place has been destroyed. The present Government’s emphasis on the ‘Big Society’ is nothing but a cynical attempt to remove local services and facilities from the public purse and leave them to the voluntary sector.

I prattle on about how far I am walking these days but that is as nothing compared to Enfys’s grandfather who lived in the tiny mountain lead mining village of Ystumtuen in Mid Wales and at times walked across the tops of the mountains every day to work in the lead mines in Cwmystwyth and then walked back, carrying his tools in a canvas bag on his shoulder. It is not mere coincidence that in those days the community was central to life. Maybe in the summer I’ll go up the Mid Wales and replicate that walk.

But I’m getting carried away. Back to now and grey reality. The grey weather continues in earnest. Birds are again taking to the trees with a rather spectacular tree top percher one morning.

Heron perched in the topmost twigs of a tree at the end of the garden

Zooming in

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Grey economy business opportunity

Posted on February 22, 2011 by BarryH

In the first series of the Beiderbecke trilogy Trevor Chaplin, the James Bolan character, meets Big Al, played by Terence Rigby, and is introduced to the concept of the White Economy, the perceived threat of which is the underpinning of the plot. It is explained that Whitehall calls it the Black Economy but Big Al and Little Norm are trying to improve its image. Big Al excuses it on the grounds that it was Whitehall and ‘The System’ which made him redundant and he is merely redressing the balance. He insists that none of the goods are stolen but that they are cheap because the middle-man is cut out. The establishment in the shape of the McAllister brothers, local businessman and local councillor, not unnaturally object on the grounds that people should buy things from ‘proper shops’.

First screened in 1985 in the middle of the Thatcher era (1979-1990), a world-view of economics gripped by monetarism, massive unemployment, the rise of the Banking Class and conspicuous consumption, and a sea-change in ethos towards selfishness, the series and the philosophy it espoused caught the public imagination.

Saturday morning and I walked to the station to catch the train back home from up North. Though it is essentially urban there is a route along the River Mersey, part of the Trans Pennine Cycle Route.

I walk this way regularly and so have got to know it fairly well. Not as well as Ruth who until recently cycled along here most days on her route to work. Some time ago she pointed out what at first seemed a minor bit of illicit fun. Somebody was pinching bits of the wooden fencing.

We thought it was just some local scally taking it to fence off his garden. It seemed harmless, if illegal, because the bits of fencing which were being taken were in front of a retaining wall at the foot of a steep bank and seemed to have no real function. Then it increased in scale. The council would come along and replace the missing pieces and within a short time they too would disappear.

Now there are long sections of missing fence rails, many of them at the top of a steep drop down into the river. This is not flimsy stuff but good quality 4×4 and 6×2 treated timber rails. Even the odd post is going missing. Far more has now been taken than would be needed for a bloke’s garden. Or even his neighbours’. I reckon somebody has identified it as a business opportunity and is making the most of it. An example of a Grey Economy in action.

On Saturday I noticed that a section of substantial wrought iron fencing had been unbolted and removed. A little further along some paving slabs have been removed and others loosed as if in preparation for removal.

Diversifying into iron railings

This Grey Entrepreneur is clearly diversifying but sticking to the basic business model.

As well as Big Al’s rationalisation I have heard this sort of thing excused with arguments such as “it’s not doing anybody any harm”; “if the council didn’t want us to do it they would build the fence better”; “the Government doesn’t pay enough in unemployment benefit”; I’m just doing a favour for a few mates”; I’m just earning a bit of money” .

It raised a smile at first but has now gone well beyond a joke. Apart from it being theft it raises two major concerns. First the barrier at the top of the drop to the river is being removed along 100s of metres of the cycle path. I know people who have gone off the canal towpath and cycled into the canal by accident. This is potentially more dangerous. Second, the cost of repairing/replacing the fence comes out of the public purse at a time when public finances are being severely cut.

So where is this going? Will it continue to escalate as the Grey Economy booms in time if recession? Will the council do anything to stop it? How long can the council ignore its third party liability? Will the police take any action? Or will the Grey Businessman eventually make enough money and go legit as is so often the case.

One thing is sure. The Grey Economy is far bigger than a bit of cheap fencing.

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Back to my origins

Posted on February 18, 2011 by BarryH

I travelled up oop North on the train. At £13 return that takes some beating. But it means that I am without the car while up here. So in more ways than one it has been back to my origins.

I was brought up in Salford in Lancashire, now part of Greater Manchester, and because the family didn’t have a car, very few did in those days, I went everywhere on foot or by bus or train until I got a bike at the age of 14.

I’ve been back in Greater Manchester, albeit a different, somewhat more modern and middle-class part, for a week and have been going everywhere on foot or by bus or train. Though in reality very little has been by bus or train.

I have walked miles. Into the town centre. To a couple of large supermarkets. To see an old college friend. Averaging about 8 miles a day. There have been two consequences of this.

First, because it is flat round here, compared to South Wales anyway, and because there has been a lot of walking to do, I am now walking a lot faster. Positively haring round. Burning rubber.

Second, I have got to see a great deal more than I would have by car. I try to avoid roads where possible, very difficult in a major urban conglomeration but there are some good short distance semi-natural corridors. One is through an area of urban common and another is along the River Mersey. This offers a strange mix of wildlife and urban dereliction as well as unexpected historic interest.

Moorhen on the pond on Heaton Mersey Common

Wary heron keeping a watchful eye

I bet they didn't get those shelf brackets from B&Q

The wise man built his church upon the rock

There are advantages to always carrying a decent compact camera.

One thing which is very clear is that the traffic congestion in the Greater Manchester area is far worse than anywhere in South East Wales. At peak times it is ludicrous. Gridlock. Log-jam. Why do people put up with it? Why do they make a fuss when Governments or Councils try to do something about it.? Ken Livingstone in London is the only person to have achieved any kind of success and Boris campaigned successfully for the mayoral role partly on the basis of repealing those measures. Madness!! Greater Manchester Council baulked at the perceived political cost and decided not to introduce similar measures. Yet the problem only gets worse. Several times I have been walking significantly faster than the traffic. I cross dual carriageways through stationary traffic.

I have only used the bus once since I have been here, not because of the traffic but because my concessionary bus pass is not valid in England. Similarly an English bus pass is not valid in Wales. It must be said that the scheme in Wales seems to be considerably better than that in England, from the point of view of the holders of the bus pass.

I was opposed to the Welsh Assembly being set up and remain highly sceptical of its value having seen it’s workings at close quarters. Its one achievement of any worth is the concessionary bus pass scheme. Opponents focus on the cost of funding it but completely fail to take account of the social benefits and the savings to the health service and social services. If the total cost were compared to the total savings my guess is that the balance would be in the black, quite apart from the enormous benefit in quality of life.

In England the operation of the scheme is decided by each local council and the result is a patchwork. In some area the pass can only be used outside the morning peak hours and not at all in the afternoon. The result is a patchwork and must be a problem to work out any journey across local authority boundaries. I e-mailed the local council where I am to ask if I could have a pass for the few months I am here and was told that only permanent residents are eligible. So I have to pay. Which goes against the grain so I walk more.

Not unexpectedly I spend most of the time on my own and occasionally, just occasionally, have a moment of madness, encounter weird sights.

The aliens are watching!

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Grey, uncertainty, chaos ….. but put in perpsective

Posted on February 13, 2011 by BarryH

Apologies for the long gap since the last blog which was uploaded on 3 February. Those suffering withdrawal symptoms should seek medical attention. Or get a life. At least one person out there cared enough to e-mail to check that I was OK. I guess the lack of blogging has been due partly to being very busy with a lot of stuff happening, and partly to being overwhelmed by the Grey.

I’m in the process of having a new gas fire which has meant major disruption verging on chaos. It began on Friday 4 February when the Corgi man removed the old fire and expressed surprise that I was still alive. Seems that the vent from the back of the fire wasn’t connected to the flue and the slot to make the connection had in any case been crushed. It was concern about the safety of the fire which led me to decide to replace it so it was encouraging to know that despite the huge cost I had made the right call.

This was what was behind the old gas fire

With the fire taken out and the prospect of the builder coming to knock a big hole in the wall on Monday I spent the weekend replacing dividing doors in the new open plan look we decided on when we had the new carpet a couple of years ago and moving most of the furniture into the front room. Very cramped but hopefully would limit the amount of dust getting into it.

Fat chance. The hole was huge because a new flue had to be fitted which would meet modern standards. Why is it that standards for gas and electricity installation change every time you blink? It seems that any gas or electrical installations fails to comply with ‘current’ standards after about 10 minutes.

This is just the rubble that came into the house ... far more in the garage

The dust-creating part of the job was finished on Monday so I spent the evening cleaning up. The dust got everywhere throughout the house requiring dusting and hoovering and shaking. I shook the large curtains over the balcony to get the dust out but with the first one forgot to remove the metal rings they were hooked onto with the consequence that at 20.30 I was grovelling around in the garden below looking for them with a head-torch before I went out at 21.00 to meet Mike. I didn’t make the same mistake again.

Later that night Ruth and Tim e-mailed to say that after overnight snow it had been a good ‘powder-day’ for skiing on Monday. Well, I had had a powder day too. But it hadn’t been such good fun. There was a bit of construction work to finish on the Tuesday. And then more on Wednesday. Except by then it had been decided that the 5 foot by 3 foot hole in the garage wall wasn’t big enough and it needed to be another foot higher which meant that Wednesday was also a powder day.

Thursday I couldn’t take any more and escaped to Cardiff to meet up with a friend for mid-morning coffee and then, lunch being for wimps, a lunch-time coffee with more friends. And I booked my train ticket.

Friday and it was time to fit the new fire. Which went almost to plan. It’s nearly finished and it looks very good.

Now I can fall asleep in front of the TV easy in my mind that I won’t get gassed as I miss the denouement in the umpteenth repeat of Morse, or Frost, or Wycliffe or some other monosyllabically titled detective series.

Put back together

Ever shifting art

In among all this chaos I’m in the throes of making three lots of claims which takes an inordinate amount of time and mental energy. I loath filling in forms particularly ones in which I feel morally obliged to get as good approximation to the truth as can be achieved. The first claim and attendant forms, as blogged about previously, is to overcome the hurdles put in place by the insurance company to stop me recovering the money I paid out when I was injured skiing in Canada. The second claim is to recover the cost of repairs when chunks of the chimney fell through the roof while I was in Canada. And the third is to recover from the FRSC the 25% of my retirement package lump sum invested in a ‘Secure’ Income Bond misappropriated by fraudulent activity. The amount involved eclipses the other two claims but the hoops which have to be jumped through are proportionally greater and the process takes considerably longer.

With the exception of Tuesday when the sun shone and I ate my dinner (‘lunch’ to Southern Jessies) outside in the garden, the weather has been unremittingly grey. It grounds you down. It grinds me down. Sometimes it seems to seep into your brain and cloak it in gloom, taking away enthusiasm and creativity

But it has not been all grey. There have been odd bright spots like the corner of the shelf in the loo where one of Ruth’s Christmas cacti has come belatedly into flower to the amazement of the two fish bought on a whim in the airport on Alderney. You can’t make this stuff up. The photos prove it.

Amazing brightness

And there have been bright moments like the geese panicking and rushing to get back to the farmhouse on the one occasion I managed to get out for a walk last week.

Geese on a mission

But it is nothing like the problems David and family have had. In the strong winds at the beginning of the week the fascia boards, guttering and seemingly half the tiles on the roof blew off their house and the insurance company refused to let a builder who was on the spot carry out repairs because they hadn’t sent out an assessor. The family dog was declared by the vet to have an inoperable cancer. Michelle lost her mobile phone. The washing machine flooded the kitchen and utility room. Then on Friday the gear box in the family car packed up for the fourth time since they bought it in October. Check it all out – http://sanctifiedrant.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/a-week-from-hell-or-was-it-heaven/

What do I have to complain about!!!

Oh! And that train ticket? I’ll be spending a good part of my time over the next couple of months house and cat-sitting for Ruth Tim up in St Ockport. I decided to travel by train because Arriva Trains Wales has reintroduced their ‘Club 55’ offer which means that as I have now passed my 55^th birthday I can take advantage of it and by deploying my newly acquired Senior Rail Card I can travel anywhere on the network for £13 return. I don’t yet know where I will be when which makes it very difficult to organise anything.

And just to add to the uncertainty, I’m toying with the idea of going back to Canada in April to do a bit more skiing. Or to Greece for the Greek Easter which is something I would very much like to experience. Or to stay at home and make a stab at sorting the garden. Or to hire an industrial sander and sand the floor of Ruth and Tim’s house while it’s empty except for me.

That’s where I am now. But more about that at a later date.

Posted in Grey Britain, Grumpy Old Men | 1 Comment

The grey cliffs of Sussex: or 3 Grey days and 2 sunsets.

Posted on February 3, 2011 by BarryH

And now for something completely different. I’ve been down in Sussex staying with friends, walking along the cliffs and on the South Downs. Very different from the Rockies …. and Greece … and Wales. But with its own attractiveness. Altogether more mellow. Landscape shapes best described as sensuous. With cliffed edges.

I travelled down on a drab Sunday and arrived mid afternoon. Gratifyingly the sky cleared in time for a brisk evening walk around the lanes with a good sunset.

Clearing sky

Red sky at night ...... or false hope

Monday dawned drab and grey, the old adage about red skies at night not being borne out by reality, but we stuck to the plan to head down to the coast and walk westwards from Birling Gap along the tops of the Seven Sisters cliffs. The cliffs are dramatic but in the poor light it was more a case of the Grey Cliffs of Sussex. Fortunately photographic interest was added by the detail rather than the grand vistas, bits of cliff cracking away, rabbit holes burrowing into thin air and flocks of gulls on the sea 500 feet below.

Severn Sisters, part of the grey Cliffs of Sussex

Part of the cliff cracking off

Maybe if we give this a push ....

The sun shines on one piece of cliff showing how grey the rest is without photographic assitance

Time it right with camera in and you catch take-off

We followed the cliffs to the flood plains of Cuckmere Haven and then turned away from the sea to follow an inland route through Friston Forest back to the car. In the grey light this was nowhere near as interesting photographically as the cliffs or the meandering river through the flood plain but we eventually dropped down to East Dean and a very good pub lunch.

Cuckmere Haven

From there it was only a couple of miles along a path rising up and coming out on the top of the hill above Birling Gap with clear blue sky and great light as the sun sank towards the cloudy horizon. We spent quite a while wandering around with the cameras on the hilltop, photographing the barn which someone had enlivened with red paint, the wind-bent trees, the cattle and in the distance the now famous Belle Tout Lighthouse.

Great light, great colours

... and in close-up

Ridge-top cows and ridge-top Belle Tout Lighthouse

Wind-bent but surviving

The light was so good that we dropped down to the foreshore with its strip of dramatically white chalk pavement. For the non-geographers, that’s like a limestone pavement but made from chalk. And yet more sunset photos.

Altogether a grey day but an enjoyable walk and a glorious technicolor end. Maybe the ‘red sky at night’ weather forecasting system would work this time.

Chalk cliffs pink in the setting sun, chalk pavement gleaming white

Flint nodule set in the chalk

The sun sinks behind horizon cloud

... and closer up

The vivid colour finally starts to mellow

Not to be. Tuesday was even more grey and gloomy.

This time it was a circular walk from Alfriston on the South Downs. A steady climb up to the top and then the distinctive view of large open fields which accentuate the impression of expansive, sensuously rolling hills. It was by no means as cold as it had been recently but the light was very poor and it was spitting with rain most of the way. Cameras stayed firmly in our pockets and rucksacks, coming out only occasionally. Again, it was the detail which caught the imagination not the broader vistas.

Sensously rolling Down

On reflection

The timing was very good. We got back to Alfriston and a pub lunch just as it started to rain heavily. By the time we had finished lunch it was definitely time to head back to the car rather than wandering around in the now pouring rain.

Raindrops on car roof

Self portrait

Reflected tree

Altogether a good two days despite the grey and damp, with the occasional brilliance of sunlight enlivening the landscape.

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Recipes and the connexion between garlic and paragliding

Posted on January 30, 2011 by BarryH

It’s been pretty grey, cold, damp weather recently, the sort of weather when you tend to stay indoors. Gardening out of the question. Walking not very stimulating. The mind starts wandering, mainly backwards rather than forwards. It’s amazing how the brain makes connexions. Mega-rambling.

I was making the midday meal yesterday when it struck me that I’ve made that particular dish several times recently. I’m getting into a groove. Or is it a rut? I’ve eaten it a lot recently because it’s easy to make, nutritious ….. and very tasty.

The recipe? – Boil pasta (wholemeal) for 10 minutes and, while it’s cooking, chop up a stick or two of celery (quite small), a handful of cherry tomatoes, and 2/3/4 cloves of garlic (depends how much you like garlic). Cut 2 or 3 slices of peppered salami into small pieces. Add the whole lot plus half a small bottle of pasta sauce to the pasta after draining it and heat for about 5 minutes. Whole process only takes 15-20 minutes.

I digress.

Fact is that the realisation I was getting into a culinary rut triggered the recollection that when I was in college I had Welsh rarebit with raw onion every day for months on end. Throughout my time in college, and indeed for 10 years afterwards, I didn’t have a day’s illness which helped to reinforce my view that eating raw onions and garlic have very positive health effects. This was further reinforced in 1990 when the New Scientist published research results on the subject. Why I do remember the year so clearly?

Simple, I went skiing in Switzerland and encountered Miss Haw-Haw. That’s not her real name of course but she was hyphenated. She was staying in the same chalet as me and the mountaineering club crew with her coterie of fellow merchant bankers (both a fact and a euphemism). They kept themselves very much to themselves, having nothing to do with us oiks from the lower classes and cliquing-up at mealtimes. But one evening we conspired to split them up and force them into conversation.

Conversation with Miss Haw-Haw turned to healthy eating and the benefits of garlic. Tongue-in-cheek I suggested that the benefit of garlic in keeping people free of colds and viruses was that others avoided them because of the smell, hence no infectious contact. To which came the Hawty retort that health food shops sell garlic powder which is free of smell. With the New Scientist article fresh in mind I contributed the view, supported by the research, that the health-giving properties of garlic and onions is in the essential oils – the smelly bit. Take away the smell and it is nolonger effective.

With max-haughtiness came the memorable verdict “They sell it in health food shops. Of course it works!”. With a sharp intellect and worldly wisdom like that it isn’t surprising that these City Types earn such good money. Certainly reinforced my prejudices.

Flagging conversation then turned to what everyone might do the following afternoon when the higher temperatures and sunshine made the snow too soft for skiing. This time Miss Haw-Haw and I were of the same mind. We had seen a poster advertising paragliding for 20 Swiss francs. We both fancied some of that. But there we parted company again. I thought the instructor would show us what to do and we would then lob off a mountain on our own, a prospect I relished. She thought it would a two-up ride down behind a hunky instructor. Needless to say, and very annoyingly, she was right and I was wrong.

This really rankled. Big time. So much so that when we got back home and found out that some of the guys from the mountaineering club had organised a paragliding ‘come-and-try-it’ weekend I immediately signed up. And got very firmly hooked. I have lobbed off mountains in the Alps several times since.

Therefore I have to reluctantly admit that I owe Miss Haw-Haw and her rosy view of the morality and integrity of the retail trade, and of the efficacy of garlic powder, a debt of gratitude.

Amazing how the mind makes connexions. And amazing how it incentivises action.

You will also note from the above recipe that I am still hooked on raw garlic.

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Grey and Grumpy

Posted on January 26, 2011 by BarryH

I don’t know whether it is the return to grey weather or the insidious effect of Grey Britain but I seem to be becoming increasingly grumpy. Seeing as I’m already well established as a Grumpy Old Man increased grumpiness can’t be a good thing. The photo below seemed to sum it up for me, grey, gloomy background, birds sitting in the top of bare trees looking dejected ……

Grey and gloomy

I have always tried to take a positive view on things, to treat change as an opportunity rather than a threat. But I’m finding it increasingly difficult.

It has been particularly difficult in the past week. Coming back from the ice and snow and magnificence of the Rockies to Grey Britain. Rattling around in the house on my own again after living with Ruth and Tim for a month. Having to fill in my Income Tax Self Assessment and finding I owed them money. Trying to sort out a repair to the damaged chimney before more bits fall off and damage the roof again. And filling in an insurance claim form to try to recover the cost of medical treatment for my damaged knee in Banff.

I was, quite frankly, hacked off with the insurance company anyway. I had contacted them by phone the day after the accident and provided a mass of information before they then passed over my ‘case’ to an agent in Canada who e-mailed and asked for the same information again. It went from bad to worse. They sent me an e-mail with a declaration to sign with no way of entering information or signing it. To cap it all, the clinic recommended that I should continue with the treatment in Canada, but the insurance company failed to reach a decision so I had to continue paying for it myself with the prospect of trying to claim it back once I was home.

When I got home the company then sent me a 9-page, very poorly set out claim form requiring information to be filled in which they already had either from when I purchased the insurance or provided on the telephone, or in the subsequent e-mail. In addition I was asked to provide originals of receipts and other documentation including the ‘Schedule of Insurance’ which they had issued in the first place. The whole process was very cynically designed to put people off making a claim. The only smile the whole process raised, albeit a very weak, wan smile, was when I came to the page numbered ‘7 of 9’. But even that was still assimilated, no free-thinking allowed, every scrap of humanity crushed. (you need to be male and a Star Trek ‘Voyager’ fan to appreciate that one).

Much of the claim form was irrelevant or repetitive. Most of the documentation simply didn’t exist, the booking having been made on-line. But I filled in the form, despite a natural and almost overpowering aversion to form filling, printed off the documentation, and eventually put the 4mm thick envelope in the post.

Why is it that some insurance companies pile on the charm when selling you their ‘product’ and take such a cynical, obstructive attitude when you try to claim?

Up to a point I can understand it. It seems to be generally accepted, certainly in the UK, that insurance companies are there to be ripped off. I know several people who have made fraudulent claims. One guy wanted a new PC so he banged the old one on the corner of the desk, dropped it on the floor and claimed that his baby had pulled it over. Another couple hired a canoe, capsized it, and claimed from the hire companies insurance for the loss of all manner of expensive high tech electrical equipment which sank without trace.

It’s not just individuals who play this game. Garages and builders enquire when you ask for a quote for repairs “is this an insurance job or are you paying for it yourself” and you can routinely get different quotes for both sets of circumstances. Insurance companies changed their replacement policy to stop people replacing stolen or damaged property themselves or pocketing the money and now have an arrangement with national suppliers to replace them directly. Some years ago Enfys had a pair of binoculars stolen, replacement value about £110 which a well known camera and optical equipment company acting for the insurance company tried to replace with a pair worth about £140. We didn’t want them not simply because it was fraudulent but also because they were the wrong specification for bird-watching so we insisted on a replacement of what had been stolen.

This rip-off mentality, a variation of ‘Rip-off Britain’, creates two problems. First it increases the amount insurance companies pay out and so increases the cost of premiums. Second, it means that those who have genuine claims get treated as if they are trying to perpetrate a fraud. I object to it being assumed that I am lying.

Not all insurance companies treat you like criminals once they have sold you the policy. A few years ago we had a car insurance which, when we had a serious accident and the car was written-off, couldn’t have been more helpful. I am far more inclined to give that company repeat business than one which is obstructive. By contrast I will definitely try to avoid the travel insurance company in the future.

Ho Hum! I ought to try to be less grumpy because I get the feeling that being grumpy just makes me merge into the grey background.

Where did I go?

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…. and what about Grey Britain

Posted on January 21, 2011 by BarryH

I had intended to write this blog about Grey Britain. The day I arrived back from Canada it was grey and wet and continued like that for 5 days. But I got up on Tuesday morning to cloudless blue sky and again Wednesday and Thursday mornings. It was misty first thing Friday morning but it soon cleared. There have been overnight frosts, down to -6.5^oC last night, and it has been cold out of the sun during the days. But it has been good.

The cloudless skies have meant that the sunrise over the hill on the opposite side of the valley have once again been pretty dramatic and at a civilised time for getting up to photograph them unlike during the summer months. There have been occasions when I have been outside standing on the roof to take photos about 05.00. This is much better.

The sun peeps between the roofs on the ridge top

Wednesday morning I was sitting having breakfast with the sun coming in through the French windows when I noticed the vapour trails high in the sky. This is a very common sight here because 2 major air-lanes cross more or less directly overhead. Sometimes as many as 10 vapour trails can be seen at one time, usually fairly early morning, slashing straight as a die, brilliant white against a blue sky. So it was Wednesday.

Sun bursting over the ridge, vapour trail straight as a die

Vapour trail cuts across the blue

Except that in one part of the sky to the South East the trails were far from straight. It suddenly looked as if the planes were being driven by a drunk, zigzagging wildly. I know it couldn’t have been that but the high-level winds which were creating this effect must have been very variable and strong. Dramatic! I hope the passengers were strapped in, if the wind was blowing the vapour trails that much it must also have been buffeting the planes.

Plane out of control?

But Britain being grey is about more than just the weather. The brightness can be taken out of an otherwise sunny day by the lack of civility, downright rudeness and lack of respect for others which now seems to epitomize the general culture and attitude. The difference seemed pretty stark when I got back from Greece in the summer but in the week I have been back from Canada it somehow seems even more glaring. A couple of recent examples.

On Thursday, walking to the shops I had to cross a busy dual carriageway close to a roundabout. The pavement has dropped kerbs to indicate that there is an official crossing but no traffic control of any kind. Time and time again in Banff I walked towards a road junction or road crossing and the cars in all directions stopped to let me cross. That is the norm at junctions where there are no traffic/pedestrian lights. Not here. Cars accelerate across the roundabout and came out of it like a sling shot. No signalling to let you know if they are turning left or right or coming straight at you. Eventually I got tired of waiting for certainty and started to cross when the angle of attack of a car seemed to indicate it was turning right. It was but another car accelerated out from behind it coming straight at me, horn blaring. I tell this anecdote not because it is a rare occurrence in Grey Britain but because it is a common experience, the norm. Living here all the time you just come to accept it. But it really jars when you regularly see a different norm, behaviour which seems both more rational and more considerate of others.

It is the same with pedestrians. Again on Thursday, I stepped into a shop doorway to let a large lady get past on a narrow section of pavement and she just walked past as if I was something she didn’t want to step in. A little while later I turned a corner in the shopping centre and the bloke coming in the other direction continued on the collision course without a flicker of acknowledgement or intention to change his line. Again, this attitude is not unusual. It’s almost as if people think they would demean themselves if they gave way or acknowledge mild gratitude if somebody else does so.

This is not just me being a sensitive soul. There is an advert on the TV for a major insurance company at the moment which has people walking along a pavement and bumping into each other, shouting and screaming and getting overtly aggressive. The message? “You don’t behave like this on foot, why do it in a car”. But people are increasingly behaving like this when they are on foot. Look at how people walk around now, look into their eyes, and it is clear that the same aggressive “I get out of the way for no-one” attitude is becoming more prevalent. It’s all to do with lack of respect and contempt for other people. Read Lynne Truss’s book ‘Talk to the hand’ if you doubt this. In fact, read it anyway. Wikipedia has an entry on this rude phrase/gesture and its origins back in the 1990’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_to_the_hand)

Having spent some time over the last 12 months in Greece and Canada and seen something of other cultures this lack of respect for people does seem to be more prevalent in the UK. And it contributes significantly to the view that life in the UK is not very appealing.

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Back to Grey Britain and a New Direction for air travel research

Posted on January 16, 2011 by BarryH

Wednesday 12 January and, sadly, very sadly, time to leave the Rockies and return home. I have enjoyed it here very much. The mountains, the rivers, the snow, the cold, the skiing, the walking, the town, the people. And being here with Ruth and Tim

Ruth and Tim were leaving too, going to Calgary for a couple of days before moving on to Jasper for 10 days skiing there. So we had to pack and clear the apartment. It took all morning until the 13.00 check-out time. There was a vast amount of stuff. I had 4 bags including a ski bag padded out with clothes which Ruth and Tim had decided they would not need. Ruth and Tim had more.

The apartment is behind the hotel on Banff Avenue from outside which the airport shuttle bus would pick us up at 15.30. Ruth and Tim were coming to the airport to make sure I left the country and were then going to their hotel.

It had been snowing most of the night and all of the morning so we trundled the bags across the car park to the hotel lobby through about 6 inches of powder snow. A real shame to be leaving such good conditions. It took 7 person-trips in all but then we left the luggage with the reception staff and went to the food hall in the basement of one of the shopping malls for something to eat. The wind was very gusty, whipping the fine snow off roofs and making it necessary to walk bent over and head down. I couldn’t help reflect on the wet, grey weather forecast for home and feel gloomy. I far prefer this sub-arctic weather.

It was still like that when the shuttle bus came, more or less on time.

That’s when, necessarily but sadly, I entered the worm hole. Fans of Star Trek will know that Deep Space Nine is a space station adjacent to the entrance to a worm hole which leads from the Alpha Quadrant to the Delta Quadrant. It’s a kind of transit conduit between two very different sectors of space and is itself like neither of them, is populated by aliens and passing through it is mind-numbingly disorienting. The relevance of this potted intro to Star Trek??

We carried the bags from the lobby to the bus and that was the last contact with the real world for a very long time.

The first leg of the journey was two hours on the shuttle on the Trans Canada Highway and circumnavigating Calgary. Most of the way it was light so at least we could see the outside world through the window but we were in a sealed pod with no real contact with it. When we pulled up outside the airport it was pitch dark in a freezing cold and windswept tunnel. We went straight inside, a walk of about 12 feet.

The parallel between an international airport and Deep Space Nine is clear. Both are populated by aliens in transit in an unreal environment offering hospitality and entertainment at an inflated price and subject to strict levels of security and control. The main difference was that in Calgary airport some of the uniformed staff were dressed like cowboys, including Stetson hats, an acknowledgement that Calgary is the centre of cattle country.

We had a sandwich and drink, my introduction to Subway butties, and then I went through security check into the inner sanctum. Ruth and Tim went back to the outside world and the rest of their stay in the Rockies. After hanging around DS9, sorry, the airport, for 3 hours it was then time to file to a shuttle bay and thence via a tube into the aircraft. Once again still inside the worm hole and no contact with the outside world. Take-off 20.20 Rocky Mountain Time, only 25 minutes late.

The 9½ hours on the plane is best forgotten. The main objective of the trip seemed to be to sleep as much as possible to help overcome effects of jet-lag. Prostrate bodies everywhere all wearing complimentary British Airways eye shades. I don’t sleep much anyway so was on a different schedule. Read a book, watched documentaries and TV comedies, walked up and down the gangway, dozed a bit.

The window screens were closed for night flying and remained closed as we flew towards the sunrise. Cabin crew kept them closed throughout the flight to maintain the illusion that it was still night so that people would continue to sleep. But it wasn’t really night for much of the trip. In terms of RMT we were arriving at about 05.00 but in New Real Time we landed at about 13.00 GMT by which time it had been light outside for a good few hours.

Straight off the plane into a shuttle bus. 15 minutes driving around the airport with all the space and comfort of a sardine tin. Into Terminal 5, long corridors, security and ‘UK Border Control’, then the baggage hall. Hang around in arrivals for half an hour and out under the canopied bus terminus. Still inside the worm hole.

Next stage was onto a National Express coach for another 3 hours. By now I had had more than enough of this worm hole. I finally emerged back into the real but very different world of Newport Bus Station at 17.30 GMT. A total of 17 hours in the worm hole without any contact with the real world. Daylight, snowing, -20^oC at one end. Night-time dark, very wet, very grey and +10^oC at the other end.

Ever get the feeling you just want to turn round and go back? If only it was that easy to use it as a two-way tunnel.

Anyway, as I’m in science fiction mode, the experience was so mind-numbing that I thought I should consider what can be done to improve the travel experience. The starting point is the universal acceptance that long distance air travel is boring and tedious and that the only way to cope is to switch off your brain. Planes are full of people trying to render themselves unconscious with cabin staff only too pleased to assist by issuing eye-shades, pillows, blankets, and alcohol, maintaining the illusion that it is night time.

So why not take more positive steps to achieve the desired goal? Oblivion for the duration of the journey!

Solution? Medically induced sleep. Advantages? Many!!!

From the passengers’ point of view the journey is already so many hours out of a life and removing the tediousness of it must be advantageous. They could be woken up from sleep at an appropriate time to offset jet-lag. From the airlines’ point of view more people can be crammed into a plane because they would require less space. It would save on feeding passengers. It would save on loos which, by having catheterised plumbing, would increase carrying capacity and save on cleaning costs and paper. Ryan Air could even load passengers on board in wooden boxes to facilitate handling and administration costs in the unfortunate event of a crash. I could go on but you get the message. There would be lots of advantages. A genuine win:win situation. I suggest a major change of direction for R&D into air travel.

I hope to go back to the Rockies. The destination is very appealing, The getting there is not. But these changes would make the prospect much more acceptable.

Posted in Canada, Grey Britain, Reflections | Leave a comment