Great Expectations?

          On Tuesday morning, out of simple curiosity, I took the newly established ferry service that runs from Plymouth, up the Tamar estuary and over to the Cornish town of Saltash. The route affords a close-up view of the Royal Naval dockyards that line the Plymouth side of the river but are not so visible from the city itself. If I had hoped to see His Majesty’s mighty fleet at anchor, I would have been disappointed. But, knowing that the Navy is no longer the force it once was, I was not surprised to see that the few vessels docked there (apart from a visiting French warship) appeared to be rusting away or else under repair. Still, it’s a pity that, in my excitement to set off on my outing, I forgot to take any of the three pairs of binoculars or two telescopes we own. I might have caught a glimpse of something more exciting.

          Since I’m familiar with Saltash, I had no intention of staying long, so when I stumbled across a well-stocked e-bike station next to the landing stage, I hit on the idea of renting one to ease my progress up the exceptionally steep hill that takes you into the town. I don’t know whether the bike I chose was a dud, but it didn’t make it up the ascent. Despite my vigorous exertions on the pedals, I was forced eventually to dismount and push the (very heavy) machine to the brow, by which time my heart was thumping, my breathing laboured and my thoughts were on whether I might expire before docking the bike, thereby lumbering my estate with a steep bill for its hire. I survived the ordeal, though my faith in e-bikes was dented. And I had found, incidentally, an explanation as to why the stash of e-bikes down at the ferry landing was so much bigger than the one at the top of the hill.

          Since I had expected technology to make my labours easier, not harder, the lesson I took was that I need to work on managing expectations. So, I put this into practise later in the week, when I traded in our five-year-old phones for a couple of newer models. Foreseeing complications (is it just me?), I laid down some parameters, the chief of which were: no migration from Android and no deviation from Samsung. The last time I did this, I learned quite a lot about how to screw things up; this time would be less of a disaster. Even so, I duly anticipated irritation at best and exasperation at worst, so I set aside plenty of time and emotional energy. In the event, all went smoothly, but this was due in large part to the fact that Android and Samsung have developed the software to make it so.

          Flush with success (and funds, having picked up a couple of bargain-price handsets) I then tackled one other thing on my to-do list: booking tickets for summer music festivals. I haven’t done it for some time, but the bug is biting and the campervan is crying out to be put to good use. (I say “I” because my Other Half is no fan of such events: but that’s another story). Ideally, I would have got tickets for Love Supreme, but the campervan pitches are sold out and taking a tent would be an insult to the van. However, I booked a pitch at Womad – without electricity! – and can look forward to a few days of comfortable, convenient accommodation, from which I can emerge at will to drift in and out of transformative musical experiences as the fancy takes me. At least, that is my expectation: the last festival we went to, Port Merrion, was abandoned early because of incessant rain and consequent flooding. I won’t dwell on the details, but that is the gist of the other story referred to above.

Training It

          We returned yesterday from a three-week round trip to spend time with friends in Catalonia and Tuscany. Choosing not to fly short haul (fortunately, we can afford the time and expense of minimising our carbon emissions) our journey involved one ferry, one bus, thirteen trains, four taxis, and a lift in a friend’s hired car. As for accommodation, there were six hotels, one Airbnb and several nights at each of our friends’ places.

          Knowing we have a campervan, one of my pals asked why we chose not to use it for the journey, a reasonable question but one that has a complex answer. It’s not that I had done a complicated carbon emission calculation; it’s more to do with wanting to engage with foreignness rather than cocoon oneself in a mobile home parked on out-of-town campsites. Plus, there’s the powerful attraction of letting the train take the strain as you sip wine while whizzing through the Camargue and the Alps, or skimming along the Mediterranean coast past Cannes, Nice and Monaco, where the sea is littered with motor yachts of unimaginable cost and questionable utility, their owners apparently heedless of the environmental impact.

          If there is a downside to travelling this way, it’s the inconvenience of luggage. We try to keep it to a minimum, but it does have a tendency to self-bloat – an inexplicable phenomenon – and things are not helped by my Other Half’s predilection for full-blown picnics on trains, which means we carry not only food and drink but also cutlery, plates, beakers, napkins and condiments. Her argument is that a buffet may not be available and, even if it is, it may not offer what you fancy. And what happens when your train gets stuck between stations for four hours (as it once did)? You won’t complain about the luggage then, will you?

           Well, as long as I remain fit enough to haul it around, I suppose not. Besides, cases have wheels now (I remember when they didn’t) and, although ours are old and tatty and have only two wheels, they remain effective. However, I’ve been eyeing up the four-wheel models that everyone but us has these days. They seem to glide along smooth floors and make light work of the rough terrain of medieval city centres. They also stand upright without a prop and come in enormous sizes, possibly with all the clothes inside neatly arrayed on hangers.

           There are travellers (mostly youngsters) who prefer backpacks, though it’s hard to understand why. Some of them are bigger than their owners, some come with a matching frontpack – useful for posture balance – and they are all unsuitable for carrying clothes that have any pretence of being smartly casual – though I don’t suppose that’s an issue, since you would have a permanently sweaty back anyway.

          For one night, in Genoa, we did actually stay in a hostel full of back-and-front-packers, though it was not by design. We booked the Britannia Hotel online, unaware that it has a dual identity and is, in reality, the Bello Osteria, an establishment obviously catering to an impecunious but cool and adventurous younger set. They gave us the key to a suite of rooms that included a kitchen and two more beds than we needed, so I went back to the receptionist to make sure we would not be joined later by a group of partying young people. I was assured that we would not. We had been “upgraded”, she said – and breakfast was included – all for a mere £68! The bar was open 24/7 but we opted for an early night, aware that we were out of our depth.

          So, now that we’re home and our tattered but still-functioning cases are stashed away, the lure of the Continent endures and some of its mysteries remain. Like, why do they have double-decker trains but single-decker buses?

Travellers' Checks

          We can all be travel-agents now – if we have decent broadband, good apps and, of course, the inclination. All those well-thumbed timetables and hotel brochures that used to be the stock-in-trade of professionals have migrated online and become available to those of us amateurs who have the will to sift through them and the confidence to press the ‘book now’ button. Those who don’t are best advised to pay for the service and enjoy whatever insurance comes with it. I have long been an enthusiastic DIY booker, so planning the three-week trip that we are currently part-way through – to Spain and Italy via a ferry and numerous trains – was not a chore but an integral part of the anticipatory thrill of travelling to meet up with old friends in exotic locations. It had been suggested to me that I might buy European Interrail passes that allow you to ‘hop’ onto any passing train, thereby adding flexibility to your timetable, an arrangement that no doubt appeals to younger, more carefree explorers but which is too uncertain for older adventurers like us, who prefer their excitement tempered by the comfort of knowing that we have reserved seats.

          So, I booked everything that could be pinned down and at the end of the process could barely believe that I had only two pieces of paper: one, the written itinerary that I had produced as a back-pocket aide memoire, the other a print-at-home ticket for the sea-crossing an anomaly that is hard to account for. Otherwise, the beauty of the operation is that all bookings were on (or in?) my phone – that same phone that I remembered I had left charging on the sideboard shortly after locking the front door and setting off. We had barely crossed the road, so it was no hardship to go back for it. Nevertheless, there was initially a moment of panic. What if we had set sail on the ferry with the old-fashioned paper tickets, only to find ourselves well and truly at sea? But a moment’s reflection brought relief. All those bookings are, of course, neither ‘on’ nor ‘in’ my phone: they inhabit a cloud server and can be retrieved using some other device. It was not the narrow escape from disaster that I at first thought it might have been. Now, if those tickets had all been on paper and left behind on the sideboard (along with the traveller’s cheques) …well, those were the good old days.

          I should not have been surprised, given the off-peak timing of our journey, to find that the passengers on the ferry were mostly retired folk, many of whom were heading back to their holiday homes in the sun. I thought I detected an undercurrent of grumbling in the cafeteria queue and, when I probed a little, I learned that yet another adverse consequence of Brexit is in play, namely the curtailment of free movement. So, the Brexiteers triumphed insofar as Johnny Foreigner can no longer park himself in Britain, no questions asked, but – quid pro quo – Brits may now only reside in their continental bolt holes for a maximum of 90 days in any 180-day period before having to travel home to get their passports stamped. Surely none of those who voted in favour of national “sovereignty” thought this would be a beneficial consequence?

          Anyhow, it feels good to be back northern Spain, tasting the food and wine in situ, even though we are onlookers, envious of the way the natives spill into their urban streets and squares to take their ease and socialise. I know that some of the elements of Continental culture have been adopted back home, but immersion is a more satisfying experience. And travelling abroad serves to shake me out of the complacent conviction that home is the centre of the universe.

 

Anxiety Rising

          The other morning, I bought a takeaway coffee (£3.90) and a bacon bap (£4.50) and took them to a quiet spot where I could sit and celebrate the arrival of spring. I chose the Elizabethan Garden, which is tucked amongst the jumble of buildings that comprise the Barbican, the oldest part of Plymouth. Accessed through a passageway and invisible from the streets, the garden is often bereft of visitors and the silence of their absence enhances its historical atmosphere. Alone, I sat and observed the budding foliage of the box-hedges luminesce in the sunshine, while the ancient stones absorbed the warmth of its rays and the tinkling fountain played a medieval soundtrack. Before too long, the mild resentment I’d been harbouring at the extraordinary cost of ‘dining out’ dissipated and left me in a peaceful frame of mind.

          However, this state of bliss was interrupted by an incoming call from an unknown number, accompanied by the warning, “Suspected Spam!” Ordinarily, I would take heed and kill the call but, feeling relaxed and expansive, I decided to pick up and be kind to the unfortunate person I assumed to have been tasked with trying to sell me goods or services for which I have no need. People must make a living, after all. In this case, it turned out to be a bailiff earning her bread by demanding that I pay a debt of £1100 immediately. The spell of the garden was broken and I returned abruptly to the hum-drum business of life.

          Alarming though it was at the time, the debt turned out to be a mix-up in the council-tax department and was soon resolved. But hard on its heels came a couple of other concerns – the simultaneous reporting of leaking toilets at the two tenanted flats we still own 300 miles away in Manchester. As a long-term landlord, I can attest to the fact that if anything is going to go wrong it will be the plumbing. Even so – and considering that the flats are in different blocks – two failing toilets in one day is unusual. Fortunately, I still have connections in Manchester, one of whom is a handyman who is, unsurprisingly, especially handy with plumbing and, after a swift exchange of gruesome videos on WhatsApp, he set to.

          During these various negotiations, I noticed that my anxiety levels were impinging on my ideal of a laid-back lifestyle. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly anxious person, but lately I’ve been reassessing that assumption. I’ve caught myself worrying unduly about relatively unimportant issues – not just debts and plumbing but also whether there will be a good attendance at the next jazz evening, for example. I’m formulating a theory that worrying at this level is a consequence of not having anything more important to worry about and may be an inevitable consequence of no longer being engaged in a career. I recall someone telling a story about going back home to visit his retired parents and finding them, despite their comfortable circumstances, anxious to an extraordinary degree about trivial matters. He described his father as being “on 24-hour bin-watch”. I like to think that I would never reach that extreme, but it has to be said that bin etiquette is fairly high on my list of neighbour grumbles.

          Perhaps it was the cost of toilet repairs that was the catalyst, but yesterday I tried economising on the mid-morning indulgence. I went to a city-centre branch of Greggs, where £2.85 buys you a flat white and a bacon bap! It’s a long way from the Elizabethan Garden, so I took a seat at the window and observed the arrival of spring as celebrated by the wearing of shorts, skimpy vests and flip-flops to expose sun-starved flesh, tattoos and knobbly knees – and all done with a degree of self-confidence that betrays no sense of anxiety.

A Logical Conclusion.

           When I got a message telling me to make an appointment for (yet another) covid vaccination, I chose a Tuesday morning at 09.40, carefully calculated so that I could mosey on afterwards to the excellent coffee shop on the corner, just in time for my habitual ten o’clock brew. But I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the jab is nowadays completely routine. There’s no queueing, no stewards, no masks, no ‘distancing’ and – notably – no anxiety. The two nurses – one jabbing at arms, the other jabbing at a keyboard – were polite, efficient and inured to the jokey comments that I was certainly not the first to have made. It was all over in thirty seconds, leaving me with a full quarter of an hour to amble to the coffee shop. I arrived earlier than planned but, fortuitously, they were busy, so the coffee actually arrived at my table bang on ten o’clock. I love coincidence.

          After that satisfactory start, the rest of the day followed suit, but by the evening a reaction to the jab was making me feel poorly. I went to bed early, hoping to recover by morning, but the next day I was worse and I spent most of it lolling around, feeling unfit for much except reading the novel I had begun earlier in the week. If there’s any good comes out of feeling poorly, it’s the justification – if any were needed – for reading novels during the day. In this book*, the protagonist has a pet dog that has only one leg. (Yes, the rest of the story is equally incredible, but suspension of disbelief is the key to enjoying it.)

           Towards the end, I came across the word “syllogism”, which I had to look up. It’s a term used in philosophy to describe a particular process of logical proof. First identified by Aristotle, the definition can be hard to follow: it’s a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. Fortunately, the dictionary gave a helpful, not to mention spookily apposite example: “All dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore, all dogs have four legs.” I am not making this up. As I said, I love coincidence.

          On reflection, a one-legged dog may have been born that way, or might have lost limbs in an accident. Either way, it calls into question the proposition, “all dogs”. Furthermore, the statement that “all animals have four legs” does prompt the enquiring mind to ask about kangaroos and suchlike. But of course, the example purports to illustrate the structure and function of a syllogism, not the validity of its propositions. If asked, it would be best to stick with the bog-standard example: “All men are mortal; Aristotle is a man; therefore, Aristotle is mortal.” Those propositions are pretty hard to rebut.

          Yesterday, restored to full vitality, I cycled out on an errand, using a stretch of pavement as a short cut. Although I went slowly, careful not to distress the few pedestrians, nevertheless an older lady cursed me and asked the question, “What’s wrong with the bloody road?” I made the mistake of stopping to explain and excuse my transgression, but she would not be pacified and our exchange became tetchy. At last, she waved me away in disgust. However, coincidence came to the rescue soon afterwards, when we met again, this time in a nearby café. As an act of contrition, I took the opportunity to apologise to her for being a bit of an arse. Pavements are for pedestrians (by law); cyclists are not pedestrian (when they are cycling); therefore, I should have been on the bloody road. She certainly appreciated the apology, but the time was fast approaching ten, so I ordered a flat-white-to-go and left her relishing her syllogistic triumph over what appeared to be a large cappuccino.

*Dr. No by Percival Everett