More about Life

Christmas is a time for family, buying stuff and remembering the world's most famous magical Jew. Many of us cram onto planes, spend hours queuing in shops and feel very lucky not to have to spend the holidays giving birth to babies, surrounded by animals because we'd forgotten that the Holiday Inn Beth Lehem is always booked up this time of year.

A few days before the famous day itself, we crept early out of our flat, leaving our feline family to fly to see my human one. My parents live near Brighton, the British Florida. The main difference is, of course, that the British sun retired a long time ago to the American Florida.

With a few days before Christmas, we used our time wisely: We shopped amidst the crowds and pockets of hopeful carol singers; pretty much the way early Christians did, although there was less tinsel in those days.

We did much of our shopping in the nearby town of Lewis. Lewis is a pretty, historic town populated by people who only read first editions of ancient books. This is based on the fact that there are two small shops selling new books, two small second hand bookstores and about a dozen antique bookstores. All of the rest of the shops are charity shops which is a well-recorded phenomenon in the UK.

The main shopping area was filled with seasonal busking, often done by kids who of the age when they really ought to be out hanging round bus shelters. Most notable being one young guy playing carols mournfully on a clarinet. I enjoyed it because, for me, it summed up the pathos of the season and was a nice break from the otherwise relentless good cheer.

We also used our time to grab some kultcha. Cath is a fan of Mark Rothko who was having a retrospective at the Tate Modern (formerly Battersea Power Station). For those of you know don't know, Rothko is famous for his huge works such as Black Square on Red Background; Red Square on Black Background and Black Square on Black Background.

The pieces are not only impressive in their size, but also in the work that went into them. It may seem like a simple shape painted on top of a painted canvas, but it took a surprising amount of planning and experimentation. Even the often rough edges of the shapes are very deliberately and specifically so. And they do have an impact when you see them in the flesh that a tiny little reproduction in a book or on a computer screen doesn't convey. It is however a very homageable style, and I have tried my own emulations. One of my efforts now hangs in a millionaire's villa in Southern France.

Christmas period itself was the usual mix of too much traditional British Christmas foods (minced pies, Christmas cake, sausages wrapped in bacon), traditional British Christmas television (James Bond, Morecombe and Wise. Wallace wrapped in Grommit) and the local village's annual Boxing Day pram race.

A couple of days after the festivities, it was time to return home. Our flight back was delayed a little. They tried to hide this for a while by not telling us, but sooner or later the cat was let out of the bag.

As usual the flights to Amsterdam are serviced by Sterile Island, a block of gates separated from the main terminus by a bridge into which is piped bird noises and new age music. As I have said before, standing on the conveyer belts in this bridge, with this calming audioscape coming at you and arriving at a half-empty, cold, remote, sterile place increasingly makes me think of a Soylent Green-style old folk reprocessing plant. It explains why 90% of the time, airline meals are "chicken." Old people taste of chicken. If you get "beef" or "lamb," you've got a Mediterranean labourer.

I wrote in my notes that we got upgraded to Club. This was so many flights ago and so short a flight, I don't recall it. And it wasn't as exciting as the time I got upgraded temporarily because I was allocated a seat where the stewardesses sleep. Actually that was more disappointing than exciting, and a different story.

For once the plane landed close to the terminal instead of in Utrecht, where it normally seems to land; there was no queue at immigration; so that meant the last possible delay to getting home was, yes of course, waiting for Schiphol's computer system to stop contemplating the meaning of life and deliver our luggage. Anyway, Merry Magical Jew Day!

Labels: Anthropology, Art, Christmas, Food, Music, Religion, Shopping, Transport, Travel, TV, UK

I haven't really said how great the breakfasts were at our bed and breakfast. In fact both the bed and the breakfast were splendid. And I do feel the bath should also have got a mention. But somehow Bed, Bath and Breakfast never caught on. Probably because it sounds like a novelty American store or a doss-house. There was a lot of thought and effort gone into these breakfasts. And our keepers must have got up so early to make them. I couldn't run a bed and breakfast place. Bed and lunch, perhaps. But not bed and breakfast.

As I'd said before this is an area chock full of First Nationals (this doesn't seem to be the correct term, despite seeming like should be) and there are a few places to find out about their culture.

One tribe have organised their own trail (seemingly with some help from the queen who apparently is an expert in the tiimapt and poo-up flowers). The Nuu-chah-nulth trail (previously the Wickaninnish trail) begins with the Wickaninnish Interpretative Centre, which sounds like a dance studio, but is in fact a museum undergoing refurbishment and gift shop. BTW, an interpretation of Wickaninnish is Nuu-chah-nulth.

At the museum we picked up more brochures on what to do in case of bear attack. Apparently it depends on the type of attack. Sometimes you play dead and sometimes you retaliate. And woe betide you do the wrong one. Basically, pregnant or nursing female bears require the opposite tactics to curious male bears. Which all means that the only way to know how to survive a bear attack is to be a competent bear psychologist and gynaecologist. Seems that bears are not the simple picnic-hamper-stealing creatures we all thought.

In one part of the Interpretative Centre, a ranger was giving advice in a strong Scot's accent. I think that made him a Celtic ranger. (That was the kind of joke you should play dead for.) I was disappointed his advice was not something along the lines of "ye be'er no bother a bear wi' bearns." (That was the sort of joke you should attack with a stick.)

First thing you see on the trail is a totem pole donated by the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe. It depicts an eagle standing on a whale which is balancing head-first on top of a bear eating a fish. The Nuu-chah-nulth are presumably circus folk. Although I am pretty certain "Nuu-chah-nulth" was a hit for Bananarama in 1986.

Near the totem pole is a stony beach covered in shell fragments. Here we had another encounter with the mysterious local habit of balancing stones on top of rocks. Apparently it stems from basic First Nations trail signals, and the stones mean things like, "turn left here," "bear seen ahead" and "wasp nest 300 meters South-West in the leaning tree." (You could say they were "really saying something," which is the last Bananarama joke I will ever tell, I promise.)

A little way on there is a barrier with not one but two signs warning you about bears. In this part of Canada, bears seem to be the equivalent of paedophiles in Britain and terrorists in America. I was expecting a sign saying, "Current Security level: Bearcom 3"

For all these warnings, bears seem to be pretty thin on the ground. (Not unlike paedophiles and terrorists.) On no part of the pathway, sorry, trail did we see a single bear, curious, pregnant, male, female or otherwise.

The path, however, was a haven for that neglected and oft vilified member of the animal kingdom, the slug. Give it its own curly home and it's cute. But, homeless, it's disgusting and slimy. People are so shallow.





We never had time to get all the way to the end of the path (at Florencia beach), but we got close. We rested near a couple of surfers who were discussing where the best places to surf were. Surfers, stoners and hackers. All three only ever talk about that one thing they do.

We traversed the trail back to the gift shop and then drove further along the coast to the small town of Uclulet. The exciting part of the trip is that you pass a tsunami hazard zone. Although, I believe tsunamis are actually more scarce than paedophile bear terrorists.

Uclulet is much less quaint and we didn't even stop. (Sorry Uclulettians.) We headed back to Tofino where we took in a gallery of First National stuff, a couple of shops and then ate Thai food at the Schooner restaurant. Here they played a reggae version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. (This was probably Dub Side of the Moon by the Easy Star All-Stars, who have also redreaded the Beatles and Radiohead.) It worked remarkably well, but then one is famed for being laid-back music beloved by stoners and so is the other.

It was another day with a lack of bears. They must have been off terrorising Americans or hanging outside British schools. Despite this lack, it was quite the wonderful day and could only be rounded off with a bath overlooking the jungle.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Art, Food, Music, Sport, Travel, Wildlife

Again I seemed to be on an early schedule and got up and read on the balcony long before Cath and breakfast were served.

First order of the day was to get our clothes cleaned. Hotels charge to clean things about what it costs to buy them and by now we were getting low on fresh clothes. So we found a laundrette; slotted in the clothes, piled in the coins, and waited. We killed some of the time in an outdoor clothing emporium and a tiny little health-food shop that was squatting a much larger closed-down store.

After lunch, we took one of the many trails the island has to offer. We picked the Schooner trail, presumably named after the pub/restaurant. The map warned the trail was "steep in places and passes the community of Esowista, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation." Well, perhaps it's fairer to say it "noted," rather than "warned." In the olden days a wooden sign painted red would have merely stated "cliffs!!! Injuns!!!"

The trail was not really steep, as Canadians like their trails to be safe. For almost all of it, there was a wooden walkway and inclines were stepped. To me this is not a trail. It's a pathway or promenade. This doesn't mean that it's entirely safe; there were still warnings about bears and signs indicating the dangers of dancing to Bon Jovi albums. Only in Canada are such signs necessary.

The trail led to another great stretch of sandy beach, next to the First Nation community. These were not made up of wigwams, tepees or tupiks but template houses like any other in the North Americas.

After the trail, we headed home and then out again to eat. We chose SoBo which does great world cuisine. I had a mushroom enchilada fit for a gourmet, Mexican hippy.

On the toilet doors, a nautical theme was there to cast no ambiguity over which door to use. The girls had a mermaid and the men a highly phallic conch.

That night we leafed through a magazine highlighting the wildlife photographer of the year and decided to ditch the tiny little pocket camera in favour of finding something with a bit more oomph. There were 12-year-old kids winning categories with far better cameras then we had. Mind you, it turned out in all cases that the parents of these kids were also wildlife photographers. It's not often what you know, but who spawned you.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Art, Food, Music, Travel, Wildlife

These instructions came with a Microsoft mouse. I love their simplicity and beautifully illustrated statement of the bleeding obvious.

Labels: Art, Computers

Canada is the US's personal New Zealand. On the surface, Canada looks very like the US. Same roads, same street signs, same stores, same clothes. Only a slight preponderance for beards gives you a hint at the vast difference that lies beneath the surface.

First thing that caught our eyes as we drove along the highway was a mega mosque. This is the equally vast equivalent of the American mega church and confirmed our suspicions that Canada is in fact a Muslim country.

There are several subtle differences that we immediately noticed with the Canadian way of doing things. Their traffic lights do a strange flashing green light thing that seems to mean, "go, but I ain't taking responsibility." Also there seems to be a conscious effort to make blocks of flats and other tall buildings ugly.

After driving into the core of Vancouver and finding our hotel, we headed out for food. We had received a recommendation from one of Cath's colleagues. A place called "Sanafir" which is a Silk Road / fusion restaurant. Basically you are served a series of dishes based on points of the Silk Road which connects the Middle East / Mediterranean and Asia. It was great, enormously tasty food served by Bond Girls. I kid you not, all the women were supermodels in their own unique interpretation of the tight, black uniform. Any one of them could have met James Bond at the roulette table and ended up back in his hotel room, chastely under the sheets not realising this was their last night on Earth.

The street that the restaurant was on was one of the major going-out / shopping streets in the city, despite being in the process of being dug up. (If that's not too many "beings.") There were lines of young and enthusiastic "pimplies" lining up outside all sorts of pubs and clubs getting ready to shake their pimples to the music of their choice and maybe even, if their luck held out, meet another like-minded member of their sect and press pimples with them.

We passed a great human statue. Normally, I have a problem with human statues as the only real skill involved is being able to keep still. Personally, I feel if you have this skill, then buy a camera and produce great wildlife photography or buy a gun and become a sniper. Don't clutter up the streets. It almost only becomes acceptable when the outfit and makeup is intricate and, when there is movement, it is done well and in keeping with the theme. But in general, anyone with a few motors, some Mechano and a cloak could build a machine that does exactly the same thing; freeing the human version to go and work in a salt mine or something like that.

In Amsterdam, especially, the art-form has been lost. If you go to Dam Square, you'll see scores of "human statues" but instead of standing still in an intricate outfit with painted skin and stylised hair, you'll see middle-aged men in ill-fitting rented costumes, standing fidgeting on a box. However, sometimes they are so bad they become fantastic. (This is Rule 9 from Ed Wood.) My personal favourite is a man with middle-age spread, a Batman suit and a bored, dejected expression on his face. Only the truly ironic (or a rose-tinted child) would want their picture taken with this guy.

On one corner there was an enthusiastic troupe of Christian street thespians performing for a small group of mostly other Christian street thespians. I think they were re-enacting the parable of the non-Samaritans who passed by on the other side rather than help an ailing art form.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Art, Food, Impro, Movies, Religion, Travel, US, Wildlife

First order of the day was to check out. The conference being over today, we couldn't justify our luxury hotel any more. We left our bags and Cath went to the conference and the free coffee there whilst I went to a branch of Tully's, another local coffee outlet. I sat, read, wrote and listened to the eclectic mix tape the store played. One track was in Dutch by great Dutch band Bløf. It seemed unlikely to be listening to Bløf so far from Bløfland but I'm sure a local music journalist could explain it in terms of the local music scene.

I picked up some lunch-like things from a Chinese bakery and wandered through some more of the market. I watched some more fish being thrown, a giant squid being abused and tourists being scared with a monkey fish, before heading back to Tully's. While I was in there the second time, the chairs were replaced. Two burly, not-too-much-nonsense guys came in and replaced the chairs around as people sat and drank coffee. I assume they were official and not part of some elaborate plan to steal old chairs leaving newer ones in their place. I'm glad I was there when it happened, because even though the new chairs were quite different, I doubt I would have noticed whatsoever had I come back after the fact. I like to think I am that observant, but men don't notice the minutia like women do. Minutia like new chairs, new shoes, changes of hair style or colour.

Actual lunch was a plate of Thai food served by a Middle Eastern man. I had it with that exotic Thai drink, Dr Pepper. Actually I had the Dr Pepper because I never see it and there was a stage, when I was knee-high to something mid-sized, that it was my favourite drink. I am way taller than that thing now and Dr Pepper is just a quirky cola that you only find in unexpected places. Although I hear that in some quarters it is still popular and people even drink it warm. I kid ye not.

In full conference husband mode, I made myself feel better about not being the main bread-winner by visiting the hairdresser. My hairdresser (or barber, as he corrected, although he had been a hairdresser) was originally from Mexico but eventually found his way to Seattle and has been cutting hair for 25 years. Because of the length of my hair his first question was if I was a musician. Nope, lazy comedian. Being a Seattle barber, he'd cut a few rock star hairs, including members of Nirvana and, one time, Kurt Cobain. Were I the type, I would have said "wow" and been part-, full- or even over-awed. It was at least a cool thing to tell the kids back home. And to tell the truth there is a modicum of awe as it is my closest, if somewhat tenuous, connection to a dead rock star whose work I do admire. I guess closest connection apart from seeing his widow in concert.

The barber asked an innocent question at the end about if he wanted it cleaned up underneath. I said, "yes" expecting some clipping action under the back of the hair. Instead he got out the vacuum cleaner and hovered up the back of my hair! I'm not sure if it was just a local thing or something only he does to dumb tourists, but it certainly was a first.

Sporting my new post-grunge locks, I grabbed an iced decaf latte and skipped over to the conference centre and used the free internet until Cath came and only just recognised me.

We carted our stuff over to our new hotel on Pioneer Square. Coming from the old one with it's fluffy bears, four-poster beds and real coat hangers, there was a period of adjustment. Our view was now of a blank wall instead of Puget Sound (it's a kind of bay).

We seafooded at McCormick's and of course saw a rat on the way home. A gallery a couple of doors down from the hotel was preparing itself for something big. That thing, explained an emerging artist, was the next day's art walk. The artist added that he worked a lot with larva and insects and they seemed as much the creators of the art as he was. We said we'd try and come by, and maybe shake antennae with a few of them. We didn't make it.

Labels: Anthropology, Art, Drink, Food, Music, Netherlands, Travel, US, Wildlife

It was another peaceful day high on the hills above the French Riviera. Even the noises that broke the silence, actually seemed to add to the peace. The constant cricket, the bird with a chirp that sounded like it was sneezing, the occasional jet and the odd child.

First and only port of call was St. Paul de Vence, a village on and almost behind the next hill, famed for being a haunt of artists. Nowadays it's a place for tourists and all the artists who live there, and plenty of others, have little shops. There are certainly some great places there for perusing art. And the town itself is a beautiful, old, walled affair and is particularly enchanting in the streets off the main tourist arteries. The latter are quite choked with international cholesterol.

After wandering around, we all met up for bieres et Oranginas at a large café next to a boules-playing area (pétanquerie?). Here we watched local characters demonstrate their skill at France's national sport. Chuck Norris and Deadly Pipe-Smoking Woman seemed to be thrashing the local mafia.

The trip inspired even more of us to do paintings. Our unimaginably generous host had bought a huge order of canvases of various sizes and invited us to perform art on them. It was one of those exercises that really shows you that putting paint on something and getting a pleasing result is not so difficult. Getting something great, is another matter, of course, but some of us succeeded. Us, not meaning me. Although I was pleased with my red background, that became a Rothko hommage.

Final game of the day was the name game, where names of famous people have to be described to members of your team.

For pictures see: Flickr

Labels: Art, Drink, Europe, Games, Sport, Travel

Just over from the park was our first post-brunch port of call. Il Chiesa di St. Caterina was supposed to have a nice interior plus being named after one of Lady Catherine's namesakes. However the building was having its façade worked on and we had to leave it be.

We walked a bit more, past some random ruins, not in the guide, of a former Roman baths. It was one of those things where if there hadn't been a plan and description with diagrams of what it used to look at, the uneducated in ruins such as ourselves would have just looked at it and said, "looks like a bit of a castle."

After a short bit we saw the crooked top of one of the world's most recognisable landmarks peering over the buildings. Within a couple of minutes we were staring at the full drunken glory of the Leaning Tower.

Pretty soon after the tower was completed in 1370, and it was already leaning, I'm certain a poor potter whose work was not good enough to be selected for one of the many churches, made a miniature potted copy of the tower. Nowadays there are factories and factories churning out scores of these every day. And its not just statues any more. Lamps in the shape of the tower are popular. That is popular with the stall holders. I never saw anyone actually buy one. Also common are T-shirts, leaning mugs and I wouldn't be surprised if I saw leaning platform shoes. Stalls selling such prized works of art form the gateway to the Piazza di Duomo and suggest the likelihood of there being a higher than normal concentration of tourists in the following neighbourhood.


It's quite impressive to see it up close, but it is one of the world's most used images so it somehow doesn't feel new. I was expecting it to be more disorientating. Unfortunately, the wonder of "How does it stay up?" has long since gone. There are explanations everywhere of the procedures that have been put in place to keep it standing but leaning enough to still bring the tourists. In many ways the tourist industry has done very well out of what was basically bad planning and flawed surveying. But what we are often much more interested in the freakish than the beautiful.

We didn't go in the tower, as it's quite expensive and we would have had to wait until the evening before a slot was free. Plus, I would have only gotten up a few flights in such a twisted building before vertigo kicked in. There is no way I could have appeared at the top and stood there looking down at the leaning world. We didn't even do the classic photo of us holding up the tower. We watched a few people doing it, all duplicating pictures taken since the dawn of photography. My idea was to take one with my having done a karate kick from the other side, but I'm sure this would be duplicating pictures taken since the dawn of kung fu movies.


We did go in the cathedral near the tower. This is because it was a lot cheaper and Cathedrals are always cool. Cool as in cold. Plus there were no high bits you had to go into.

The cathedral is a big affair thrust full of art and artefacts. To go in, men had to remove their hats, and ladies had to cover their shoulders. This is pretty typical in Italian cathedrals, as I recall. For the purposes of the latter, there were blue coats provided which looked like the sort of thing you have to wear in hospitals. The blue really didn't fit in well with the sombre twilight of the interior. The shoulders of young children were perfectly allowed to be visible as far as we could see. I expect there's a passage in La Bibbia that states this rule exactly. "And upon entering the house of God, all heads shall be laid bare and the shoulders of women of marriageable age shouldst be covered by sheets of the holiest blue."

Even when the theme is religion, there were a great deal of subjects for the pictures that lined the walls of the cathedral. There were ascensions to heaven; martyrdoms, sermons being given. Something Catherine pointed out is something that is common for a great many such pictures. Often when such and such a person is saying or doing something important, the picture has lots of other people in them. However, these people, for the most part, are paying no attention to the main action of the picture and are doing their own thing. It seems odd that something that was an important moment, perhaps one of the plot points in the Bible, instead of everyone looking and heightening the importance of the event, practically everyone else is looking away, and in some cases even looking bored. I'd have burned them all as heretics.

What we did not seem to have a photo of was a picture of a rather malevolent looking Jesus being carried by a particularly worried Mary. Maybe we took it and it didn't come out. Anything is possible with a painting like that.

Sculptures are also prevalent. One of the smaller pulpits was surprisingly modern and cubist, depicting Jesus and two other characters, one of them looking highly doubtful. Probably Simon. The main pulpit was a large cage sitting on a forest full of lions killing gazelle. The message here was clear. Listen to what the guy up there says, or be pounced on by the Lions of Satan. The Lions of Satan are Pisa's premier Heavy Metal band. Not to be confused with Leaning Tower, who are definitely Prog Rock.

Labels: Anthropology, Art, Fashion, History, Language, Religion, Travel