City Life

There’s a heat wave on and the neighbours, who have just returned from Greece, are pleased that they can continue to sport their beachwear. Not everyone is happy though: a fire is sweeping through the normally sodden moorlands north of Manchester and wind-blown smoke is spoiling barbecue parties all the way to Liverpool. Meanwhile, those of us with campervans dodge such obstacles and discover the sweetest spots in the countryside for dining al fresco. Not that I am desperate to escape the city, even in summertime: right now, I am sitting in a small, city-centre park feeling connected with the human race. A runner, passing on the adjacent road, stooped to pick up a tiny bird. It would not or could not fly so she brought it into the shrubbery for safety. One man took a photo of it. Another gave it some water in the lid of a takeaway coffee cup. “I think its nest is in that tree,” he said, pointing across the street. None of us knew what species it was, nor could we do much to help it. We are city folk, but I make no apology for that.

I thrive on the concentrated diversity and ceaseless activity of the city. The other evening, on impulse, I went to a gig at BOTW, where I spotted Toby Jones, an actor I admire. Others recognised him too and asked for a selfie, which he graciously granted, though they did not linger afterwards to talk with him. I would have liked to introduce myself but, in such situations, I am always too slow and tongue-tied. (The one occasion when I spoke up was when introduced – by a friend – to the author, Rosie Boyt, but it turned out she is shyer than a dormouse and returned only a brief, beguiling smile before shrinking away.) The gig itself was uninspiring. The ten-piece African funk group was not as exciting as I had hoped. The leading performers were two old geezers who had been big in Bulawayo in the 70s but had atrophied since then and were coasting now on a repetitive, low-energy groove. At the interval, I nodded at Toby (he looked bewildered) and slipped away to Matt & Phred’s, arriving in time to catch the first set by a group of young Turks who blew up an enthusiastic and accomplished jazz storm. And so to bed, a contented man.

The next day I pointed the van towards the Lancashire coast, intent on a couple of days of rural exploration. The campsite was near a village in the throes of its annual Scarecrow Festival, the manifestation of which was a profusion of stuffed dummies sitting, standing, leaning, or hanging outside peoples’ houses in apparent competition. Perhaps, at the culminating Scarecrows’ Ball, prizes would be awarded for dress, posture, size, wit or originality – I meant to ask but forgot. I was more interested in the notice board outside a house that advertised home-grown produce within. An old, weathered, but very sprightly woman opened the door and led me in to the enormous garden, where she pulled beetroot, broad beans and lettuce for me. “All organic,” she said and went on to elaborate on her horticultural technique and its associated lifestyle. She asked where I lived and shuddered in horror when I told her. “I couldn’t live there,” she declared. I felt it would be useless to argue the case for living in cities, so I paid the £4 that she eventually decided upon as a fair price and gave her an extra £1 for the Feral Cat Rescue Operation she runs. The experience – and the produce – was far better than shopping at Sainsbury’s Local anyway.

Meanwhile, back in the city centre park, I was studying a map of the coast path in Anglesey where, tomorrow, I will go hiking when, suddenly, the little bird recovered its composure and took flight. I must say I was happy that the creature, like me, was back in its element and, to be honest, I was pleased to be relieved of any responsibility for its future welfare.

A Burning Issue

The recent meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump might appear to have been a good thing – better for them to talk face-to-face than to threaten each other from behind nuclear bunkers – but I found it disheartening to see these two men take to the world stage, masquerading as sagacious political leaders when, in reality, the former is a dictator and the latter aspires to be one. We have more than enough political bullies already – Duterte, Erdogan, Sisi, Orbán and Putin to name but a few – either established or busily working the trend of “populism” to cement their powers. If I believed there was such a thing as a god, I would pray for it to strike them down with thunderbolts. Their supporters, however, do believe there is a god. He is male and he is on their side.

I just saw The Breadwinner, a film about the ways in which the Taliban regime in Kabul repressed women, without exception and without compassion, under the pretext of doing God’s will. The Taliban may no longer control Kabul, but their ambition remains intact. And, in case I might feel smug about such a thing being unlikely to happen in the West, that evening I watched an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, which depicts another regime oppressing women. It is fiction, of course, based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of 1985, yet there are right-wing fundamentalist Christians in America that make me wary of complacency: and are they not fervent supporters of Trump?

What is to be done to lift one’s spirits out of such miserable thoughts? I sought diversion in a sports pub, watching rugby between England and South Africa, but the genial atmosphere soon dissipated when it became obvious that England would lose; another pint of ale was poor consolation. Then I went to a jazz gig – Laura Jurd & Dinosaur  at BOTW – and this time, it worked: they played exciting, progressive, engaging music that restored my optimism in the human instinct to create rather than destroy – and the instigator was a young woman on trumpet.

Nevertheless, dystopia was a recurring theme in my week. I had decided it was time to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Published in 1954, it is one of those books so well known that I never felt an urgency to read it. I knew it to be set in a future where the job of firemen is not to extinguish fires but to burn books. I knew, also, that “where books are burned, in the end, people also will be burned” * so the story seemed predictable. When I actually read it, however, the most chilling pages were unexpected: they describe how hatred for books arose out of what we now describe as “populist” politics i.e. the triumph of ignorance over learning, the belief that there is intellectual elite that controls society to its own advantage and excludes the majority from economic benefits. Compulsory book-burning was established on the back of popular enthusiasm for it.

I was reading Bradbury outside, in a public space, enjoying the balmy weather and the gentle civilised buzz of the city. During the hour I sat there, three people interrupted me and, each time, I looked up half expecting to be admonished for blatant book-reading. But my Bradbury-induced paranoia was momentary: the first person merely wanted directions, the next information and the last my attention (I think he was mentally ill). Books may be losing ground to other media, such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube – the tools beloved of populists – but they are still being written, printed and read, for now.

* Heinrich Heine, 1823.

Our Defensive Ancestors

While traversing Highland Scotland recently, I marvelled not only at how uninhabited it is but also at how it always has been (at least there are no archaeological sites to indicate otherwise), whereas on the Orkney Isles, a short ferry crossing north of its tip, ruins of 5000-year-old settlements abound. One explanation might be that small populations, needing to protect themselves from predators, settled in positions that are easy to defend, such as small islands, where there is less likelihood of attackers approaching from the hinterland.

This attraction notwithstanding, it is hard to imagine ancient peoples living in such isolated places as these. When I was there, in June, the weather was clement and the days seemed endless but, at that latitude on the edge of the Atlantic, winter is a tough challenge. Still, I suppose they had no choice but to persevere: they would not have known that it was easier to build stone circles in balmy Wiltshire and, even if they did, had no means to migrate there. And maybe it wasn’t so bad after all: seafood was plentiful, the land was fertile during the short growing season and they had become accustomed to the climate.

These days the Highlands and Islands are one region, the defence of which lies in the hands of the motherland United Kingdom. Modernity has made life less arduous for inhabitants of the northern fringe, seafood is plentiful enough to supply a huge export market and the summer encourages an influx of tourists from near and far. There are Southern softies like me, come for a fix of wild landscapes: people from deepest Europe, for the rugged coastline; those from flattest Europe, for the mountains; and Americans come to see the country of their ancestors. Overall, it’s a popular tourist destination, attracting even the famous and the wealthy. The late Queen Mother liked it so much that she bought a modest holiday home here (the Castle of May) to which she – and her household staff – retreated every August for two weeks (though, personally, I am surprised that her holiday entitlement was so mean). In the early days, her family would sail up on the Royal Yacht to join her but latterly, the boat having been given up, they drove.

Most tourists do get around by driving but there is a hard core slugging it out on bicycles. I saw grim-faced cyclists, their machines laden with luggage, pedalling in super-low gear up the steepest of inclines. I felt sorry for them, even though they had chosen to travel this way and their plight was not my concern. In any case, they sported a more gleeful expression on the downhill stints. Actually, my hero was the man with the donkey. I saw him a couple of times, strolling along with his four-legged friend carrying their gear from place to place. I don’t know whether he made it to Orkney (are donkeys permitted on ferries?)  but I thought it the perfect way to tour, nevertheless.

My first visit to Orkney was in 1996, when I stopped overnight with a group of fellow sailors on our return from Svalbard. We took the opportunity to see the Neolithic village at Skara Brae and the Ring of Brodgar standing stones. As I recall it, there were no ticket booths and we were the only admirers present. The circumstances made it a special experience, for which I am thankful, because the area is now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means that fences and visitor centres have been erected to cope with the increased numbers of tourists and the magic is gone.

Meanwhile, at Hoxa Head, ruins that are more recent attract attention – the WWII concrete fortifications built to protect the Royal Naval fleet at anchor in Scapa Flow. They are intact but beginning to crumble. A thousand years from now, will tourists look on them and marvel at the defences built to protect an ancient, primitive civilisation?

Remote Aspirations

As I may have said before, I once heard someone dismiss camping as “a complicated way of getting wet” and so it is if you are unlucky with the weather. Not that the weather matters to me, having swapped canvas for campervan years ago. Still, I do recall the excited anticipation of adventure that camping stirred up in me, from that first night as a child with a tent pitched in the garden, to grown-up sorties into the hills for weekends of hiking. The sense of adventure was only part of it: there was excitement also in the acquisition of kit – not just the tent but all the paraphernalia of portable domestic utensils, sleeping bags and weatherproof clothing that goes with it.

I’m writing this while on a campsite, having been “on the road” for a couple of weeks, driving north through Scotland, crossing the sea to the Orkney Isles and returning south via the Atlantic coast of the Highlands. This campsite, like many others, caters for all forms of mobile accommodation, therefore providing the opportunity to compare and contrast the choices people have made. Whether caravan, motor home, campervan or tent, there is, for the aficionado, as much interest in these mobile habitations as there is for someone weighing up the pros and cons of regular houses. My least favoured option is the caravan, mainly because its dumb reliance on a tractor unit renders it clumsy but also because so many of them have been designed to replicate such a degree of suburban comfort – portable conservatories, televisions, garden furniture etc. – as to suggest that their owners are averse to any kind of lifestyle change beyond the scenery. Mobile homes have the advantage of autonomous propulsion but, even so, are often so overblown and laden with home comforts that the only challenge left for their owners is finding somewhere level to park. Campervans, of course, are my favourite. They are suitable for impulsive getaways, nimble enough to access tracks and lanes, cleverly equipped for (relatively) comfortable accommodation and viable as an everyday vehicle. Such is my campervan.

Good as it is, however, I would rather own the one behind me, a Land Rover with a pop-up roof and a bristling array of add-ons that promise to take its lucky owner anywhere on the planet – even on to wet grass. For the fantasy of a true campervanner is to get away to remote places. On this trip, that fantasy is being pursued as vigorously as it may be with a regular two-wheel-drive vehicle, which is to say a road is required. This latest spot, Altandhu, is on a peninsula, at the end of 15 miles of single-track road. Prudence dictated that I stock up on fuel, food and booze before leaving the nearest town though, when I got here, all of these commodities were available. The popularity of remote campsites is so strong that the canny Scots have provided picture-perfect settings, cafes, bars, shops, post offices and wi-fi. Even caravan owners turn up. It’s only the absence of a phone signal that makes this place feel a bit cut-off. Away from the site, however, it is possible to get the feeling that one is in the wild. On a six-mile coastal walk yesterday I did not encounter anyone else. Perhaps the others were cycling or kayaking or taking boat trips to see the seals – or just sitting in their conservatories.  

The last time I slept in a tent, five years ago, was during a hike on the Knoydart peninsula, where there are no roads. The weather was warm, dry and sunny – as it is now – but midges made life miserable. Right now, I am sitting in the front seat of the campervan, with an unimpeded view of the sun setting on the aptly named Summer Isles – and of the tent dwellers dementedly making their way to the pub to escape the attentions of the midges.