08.30.06
Posted in Travel at 6.58 pm by niltiac
I picked up my photos today and it’s been really exciting going through them all. It counts as work too since I have to choose the best ones and upload them to the server of the magazine I am writing for.
Here is one, just to prove that I saw polar bears! This was a big old bear, with battle scars etched across his face. He followed a mother with two cubs for a while until she took a chance to make a quick get away – hungry male bears have been known to hunt cubs for food. Then he decided to take a swim. Most of us were safely ensconced in zodiac boats – big rubber dinghies with outboard motors – but the assistant kayak guide was paddling and had to beat a hasty retreat!
We saw quite a lot of bears, from various distances, but never when we were on land, thankfully. We saw the afore-mentioned mother with cubs on the beach chowing down on some seaweed, which they only do if they are very hungry apparently. We saw one bear walk over to a group of walruses and then lie down about a metre away from them. He was obviously interested in the walruses – they would make a tasty treat if it weren’t for the damage they could inflict with their tusks. The walruses on the other hand were completely unfazed. We also saw a young bear rolling on its back – very cute but it was from quite a distance so the pics are nothing special.
Polar bears are everywhere on the Svalbard Archipelago so we had to keep a close watch for them at all times. We only went to shore after the staff had scoured the vicinity with powerful binoculars, both from the boat and then with an advance party of one or two on shore, to ensure there were none nearby. The staff carry rifles in case we are surprised by a bear but they will use a flare gun first in an attempt to scare them away and buy time to get back to the boats. It’s a really big deal if you have to shoot a polar bear. Not only would it be very sad and a horrible thing to have to do and for the passengers to witness, but the law requires you to notify the governor of Svalbard immediately. The authorities will usually fly out in a helicopter to identify (many of the bears are tagged) and study the body and the tour operator will have to answer for its actions and can risk losing its licence if negligence has been proven. Thankfully, it’s a fairly rare occurrence although as the pack ice retreats further north and more bears stay behind on land for a long and hungry summer, encounters with humans could become more common.
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08.29.06
Posted in Food, Travel at 11.08 am by niltiac
It might have been difficult to get there but Cornwall was more than worth the effort. We were blessed with beautiful sunshine all weekend – it was probably only about 20C in the shade but lovely and warm in the sun – and the countryside is stunning. We even went for a swim on Sunday, at the beach near Padstow. The water was a little cold but quite refreshing – and probably warmer than the fjord in Oslo.
We hired a car for two days and drove around, exploring little villages and stopping now and then for a meal or Cornish cream tea. In Australia we usually call them Devonshire teas but actually Cornwall and Devon are big rivals in the cream tea stakes. Proper cream teas involve clotted cream, which according to legend was taught to the Cornish by a Phoenician sea king. There is no way of knowing if this is true but clotted cream is still made in Lebanon today. It involves heating the cream so it goes really thick, almost like butter and has a crust. Mmmm…
One of the things I miss most about Australia is the ocean so it was wonderful to be surrounded by so much of it. The Cornish coast is quite wild (by British standards), with craggy cliffs, windswept moors and beautiful sandy beaches and rocky inlets. I can imagine it as a base for smuggling and fishing in times past. We did go to Land’s End but it’s somewhat ruined by “The Legendary Land’s End” fun fair theme park that has been built around it. However, over-development was not a general problem though – there was plenty of unspoilt natural beauty.
We visited the village of Saint Mawgan, near Newquay, where my grandmother was born. She lived in one of the cottages at Trevenna Cross, just outside of town, and she and her twin brother were baptised at the Catholic Carmelite convent, next door to the Anglican church. Her father was a coast guard in nearby Watergate Bay, which we also visited. My grandmother left Cornwall as a baby after her father was laid off from his job as a coastguard and found a caretaker’s job in France. Unfortunately her father died when she was very young and since he died abroad, my great-grandmother was denied the veteran’s widow pension. She moved back to Cornwall and survived by sending her eldest daughter to be brought up by relatives and taking in washing to support herself and the twins. My grandmother remembers going to mass at the convent because there was no Catholic church in the village and since they couldn’t sit with the nuns, they sat behind the choir instead. They later moved to Wales, which is where my grandfather came from and where my father was born. My grandparents and their family emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, when my father and his twin (there are lots of twins in my family!) were five years old.
St Mawgan was very beautiful. It is slightly inland, although only ten or fifteen minutes drive from Watergate Bay and the sea. It’s a classic little English village with a church and a post office and a general store and a cricket green and not much else – no chain stores clogging up the high street and turning it into Clonetown UK and lots of ivy and stone. We looked inside the convent – the order nearly died out but they imported some nuns and also some monks from Thailand and the Philippines and it’s a thriving religious community now. We saw a monk in his habit walking around the grounds – he looked like Friar Tuck with the habit and the rope around his waist, the only difference being that he was Asian and his robes were blue not brown. We didn’t see the nuns but we heard their squeals and laughter from what sounded like a football match behind the cloistered walls.
We stayed in a B&B in Saint Austell, which is on the main train line from Plymouth to Penzance. It is also the site of the Eden Project, which we visited yesterday. It’s quite an amazing achievement. In 1998 it was just a disused quarry, much like any other in Cornwall. Now it is a huge botanic gardens, with massive domes to recreate the climates in different parts of the world. There is one dome for warm temperate climes – the Mediterranean, California, South Africa, parts of Australia – and a huge one for the humid tropical regions. The domes are built like bubbles with hexagonal and pentagonal pieces that can open up to control the climate by letting in more or less air. They are currently raising money to build two more domes, including one for the dry tropics, but it’s quite amazing to think that they started with £25,000 from the local council and a contractor that was willing to risk getting paid only if the project were a success. They have a huge amphitheatre stage and host all sorts of concerts there throughout the year – they had Goldfrapp and Snow Patrol last weekend for example but tickets were sold out. It would be a great place to go for a concert.
We didn’t make it to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, also near Saint Austell, but that’s all the more reason to go back another time. I would love to do some walking along the clifftops and it’s also meant to be a great place for kayaking and diving. Surfing too – although having taken a look at the size of the waves at the famous Newquay, I think I’ll wait until I’m back in Australia for that.
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08.25.06
Posted in Travel at 7.07 pm by niltiac
I am writing this on the train to Cornwall, where I am planning to spend the bank holiday weekend with my boyfriend and two friends of ours, Matt and Leah. (We went to Bruges with them earlier this year). I’m looking forward to the weekend but the train journey is a bit of a ‘mare. We boarded at 6.03pm at Paddington and we are due at St Austell at 10.20pm, though we’re almost certainly running at least half an hour late since we left late.
We met our friends at about a quarter to six but when we tried to compare notes on where we were sitting, I realised that our tickets had printed “no seats reserved” where the seat numbers should have been. When we boarded the train, it was absolutely packed to capacity – there were people in every aisle and the vestibules were as crammed as a Northern Line Tube in the morning rush hour (in other words you either had to ram people or stay on the platform). We paid £70 each for the tickets but there was no chance of getting a seat. (I wouldn’t begrudge it so much if standing tickets were cheaper than seated tickets but they’re not).
Then the announcement came that the train was dangerously overcrowded and that anyone who was not specifically booked for the 6.03pm service should disembark. Then they asked that anyone who was going to Reading, which is not far out of London, could go to Platform 9 for a service twenty minutes later. This made very little difference and quite frankly it seemed a bit too late – no one had checked tickets before we entered the platform area or the train itself and there was certainly no way a ticket inspector was going to get through. So then after a bit they announced that the train would NOT be stopping at Taunton or Exeter and passengers for those stations should disembark.
We had a stroke of luck at that point as I was able to snare the seats of two people caught out by this sudden cancellation. I would have been utterly furious in their position but it was admittedly a blessing for us, since we were facing the prospect of a four hour journey crouched over our luggage in the vestibule area, along with dozens of others.
I don’t know what those people were meant to do or how they were going to get to their destinations. There are plenty of trains to Reading, not so to Exeter. The incredible thing was that it was all a lie anyway. They made a quick stop at Taunton, supposedly to let anyone who was finding the conditions on board “unbearable” since carriages A and H had no air conditioning off the train to wait for the next one. But then they stopped at Exeter too! We saw a man from our carriage get off, he was just like “yep, I knew they’d stop, they always do” and sat tight.
I went to the dining car about an hour ago, after we got too thirsty to hold on any longer. It was three or four carriages away and I had to squeeze past and step over people the entire way. I even had strangers press money on me, begging me to bring back something to them, which I did. Of course, when I got there they were out of anything except peanuts but I did manage to get the last two bottles of still water.
No one has checked out tickets – too hard, I guess – and in the last hour people have started smoking. I don’t blame them – I would have very little respect for authority left by this stage too – but I am getting gutfuls of smoke every time the doors open. At least I have a seat though, and they don’t, so I can’t very well say anything.
I do find it amazing that they are able to get away with this. The trains in Europe are more reliable and more cost effective and you don’t get penalised for buying your tickets on the day of travel either. The system in Britain where you have one operator for the train tracks and dozens of train companies simply doesn’t work. Privatisation is not more effective when the train companies know they can rely on subsidies and that the government will never allow them to go bust because the infrastructure is too important for the nation.
Still, it beats driving to Cornwall in the bank holiday traffic. That would probably take all weekend!
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Posted in London, Theatre at 11.02 am by niltiac
Last night I went to see Market Boy, a new play set in 1980s Britain, at the National Theatre. I was a guest of Royal Mail, who were presumably treating me because of my status as a media journalist rather than disgruntled customer. (The connection is that Royal Mail is an important partner both for magazine publishers and for the direct mail industry).
The play, by David Eldridge, is set in the period 1985-1991, and follows the life of a barrow boy at Romford Market in Essex. This was Thatcher’s Britain from the heady confidence and new consumerism of the mid 1980s, a time when Essex barrow boys could become stockbrokers and drive Porsches, to the grim reality of the early Nineties recession, when Britons learnt the meaning of the term “negative equity” (something I hear is raising its ugly head in Australia right now).
The main character, called simply Boy, starts working on a shoe stall when he is thirteen and the lively market with its cast of colourful characters from Steve the Nutter to Fish Woman is where he learns about life. All the action takes place in the market; a microcosm of the Society that according to Thatcher didn’t exist.
The play was very lively and energetic, with a pumping soundtrack of Eighties tunes and market banter and movable sets with the boys swinging from the stalls like monkeys. It was very entertaining but I also appreciated the way it made use of the medium. This was and couldn’t be anything but theatre. Some plays are no different from a film, except in the fact that they are performed live on stage. Market Boy was nothing so literal – much of the action was figurative. This was true right from the start when they wheeled out the ten types of woman who patronise the shoe store and continued to be true with the frequent appearances of Thatcher throughout the play. Some plays attempt this and fail – if it’s done badly it can be self-conscious and pretentious and tedious – but with Market Boy I thought it really worked. As a theatre fan, I enjoyed it but it kept the attention of the whole audience and I heard a few people make remarks along the lines that they didn’t normally go in for theatre but they enjoyed this.
I never lived – or even visited – Britain in the 1980s and Thatcher was well and truly gone by the time of my first visit, as a teenager in 1991. Australia in the 1980s was similar and yet different. Of course, some things are shared – I recognised the music and the phenomenon of “yuppies” but I didn’t get all the cultural references such as the reference to “Zammo”, which had the audience in stitches, but sailed straight over my head (a character from some TV show called Grange Hill, apparently). Mainly the politics were different since Australia at the time had a Labor government under Bob Hawke, which was quite a different beast to Thatcher and the Tories. Although Australia underwent many of the same economic reforms (privatisation, floating the dollar and so on) and we shared the same cycle of economic boom and bust, the mood was different. Hawke was not the hate figure that Thatcher was, although his treasurer Paul Keating came close at times. Crucially, Hawke was able to come to accord with the unions so this was not a decade marked by the crippling strikes that occurred particularly in 1970s and early 1980s Britain.
The National runs a £10 season, sponsored by Travelex, every summer so it’s quite possible to get very affordable tickets to their shows. I really should do this as they put on a lot of good plays and it would mean I could indulge my love of theatre without busting the bank.
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08.21.06
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 3.58 pm by niltiac
It was not until the second half of the book when the Joad family were in California and on the heartbreaking quest for work and a decent living that this book really started to move me. The first half was enjoyable enough and there was much in the writing to admire but it felt more like a long introduction, while the second half felt like the main story.
The book works slowly, building up a picture line by line and layer by layer until the full devastation hits you. Perhaps it hits different people at different times but for the book became really gripping around the time the family arrived in the government camp in California. The emotional intensity builds to the very end and the ending, although a little surreal, brings home the way people can lose everything and be at rock bottom, yet they still have more to give and there is always someone worse off.
This is a deeply important book about an aspect of American history that is little written about. Stories about the Great Depression tend to be urban and little is known about the great westward migrations and the dispossession from the land. I was familiar with the term “Okies” to mean “hick” or “redneck” but had no idea of its origins. I knew nothing about the Hoovervilles across the country – named for President J. Edgar Hoover who was blamed for his economic crises – and the shameful role of the police in persecuting people who had already lost everything. (This is not covered by the book but the biggest Hooverville was in Washington DC where it was one General Macarthur who was responsible for razing the shanty town to the ground and slaughtering thousands of Americans).
Yet this book, although published in the late 1930s about what was then very recent history, is not just about the past. The story of dispossession and exploitation and repression goes on. It is still the case that food production is in the hands of fewer and fewer owners and that farmers find it difficult to compete unless they are involved in processing as well. It is still the case that migrant – or these days immigrant – workers are lured into jobs on false pretexts and kept on casual contracts at minimum wages for years, often under the most dire conditions in terms of health and safety. The problem is now globalised so that vast tracts of Amazon rainforest are now cleared to grow soy crops for cattle feed to supply the burger industry at the lowest possible cost. Books like Eric Schlosser’s excellent and entertaining Fast Food Nation or Felicity Lawrence’s Not on the Label tell of this more recent history and current events. The shame is that we no longer have the Great Depression to blame for it.
This copy is from BookCrossing – see all journal entries here.
35 down, 65 to go…
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08.18.06
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 1.14 pm by niltiac
I released this on 20 July 2006 in the dining car of the London to Glasgow train. I actually saw it get picked up and I received this journal entry today:
Journal entry 3 from Anonymous Finder from n/a, n/a n/a on Friday, August 18, 2006
My daughter passed the book on to me, and I will probably leave it in the Lake District where I am due to go to soon. The book was not my style and I found it boring.
CAUGHT IN LONDON LONDON ENGLAND
book rating: 1 out of 10
See all journal entries for this book.
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Posted in London at 10.39 am by niltiac
Before I went away, I signed up to do the Maggie’s Metro Life Hike in September with my boyfriend, my friend Tash and another friend.
On 15 September we will be joining hundreds – possibly thousands – of other Londoners to hike around the Circle Line (17 miles) by night. The idea is to raise money to build a new Maggie’s Centre. The first Maggie’s Centre was built in 1996 and there are now five around the country. The centres provide psychological and emotional support for cancer patients. I have known people who have died from cancer and also people who have fought the disease and survived and the needs of a cancer patient go far beyond the clinical treatment that the health service provides so I believe that this is a very worthwhile cause.
If you agree, please sponsor us. The easiest way to do this is online at www.justgiving.com/tortoises. You can donate from anywhere in the world but if you are a UK resident, you can increase the value of your gift by ticking the Gift Aid box and allowing the charity to reclaim your tax.
Thank you.
UPDATE: My very first donation has come from a generous skater over at the Serpentine Road forum. Thank you and congratulations on being first!
I also had someone express concern about the idea of me walking around the Underground at night. Rest assured, the route is ABOVE ground, from station to station.
SECOND UPDATE: And now one of my BookCrossing friends has sponsored us. Cool! Keep it coming!
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08.17.06
Posted in Life, Media & Internet at 8.17 am by niltiac
Go to Wikipedia and search on your birthday (excluding the year), then list three events, two births and one death by year.
On 2 June throughout history:
Events
455 – The Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city for two weeks.
1800 – First smallpox vaccination in North America, at Trinity, Newfoundland.
1999 – The Bhutan Broadcasting Service finally brings television transmissions to the Kingdom for the first time.
Births
1740 – Marquis de Sade, French author (d. 1814)
1935 – Carol Shields, Canadian novelist (d. 2003)
Deaths
1882 – Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian revolutionary (b. 1807)
Thanks to Jenny for the meme.
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Posted in Travel at 7.25 am by niltiac
Yesterday, after walking the castle ramparts and visiting the statue of the Little Mermaid with her throngs of admirers, I went to check out the Free City of Christiania. Squatters moved into former army barracks in 1971 and declared it a free city, independent from control by Copenhagen or Denmark. The government eventually decided to let it be and treat it as a social experiment.
The place attracted a lot of people seeking a truly alternative lifestyle but over the years also addicts and petty crims. In the 1980s the residents banded together and pushed the pushers out of Pusher Street. There are signs throughout Christiania exhorting people to “say no to hard drugs” and about as many pro-cannabis signs.
The street is actually called Pusher Street, though I didn’t see any deals going on. It was a colourful street, with lots of people and flags hanging between the building. The rule in Christiania is you can do anything as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else. Obviously that doesn’t apply in Pusher Street as when I tried to take a photo, a guy stopped me. He said you can take a photo anywhere else in Christiania but not Pusher Street. “Christiania is a free city but we want to be free to sell our hash,” he said.
Away from the bustle of Pusher Street, it was a bit more relaxed. I found a nice cafe and had a panini and some coffee under shade cloths while I absorbed the atmosphere. I am quite familiar with what a hippy commune looks like but I’ve never seen an urban one before. No surprises though – lots of graffitti, murals, sprawling gardens, greenery growing through cracked paving stones. The people were mostly Danish – it didn’t seem as multicultural as other places in Copenhagen – although I did hear a bit of English spoken as well. In terms of style, they wouldn’t be out of place in Glebe or Byron Bay. Same, same.
It’s an interesting phenomenon and particularly so that the government allowed it go ahead rather than reclaiming the land. I have lots of questions though… Of the roughly 1000 people living there, how many grew up there and how many moved in as adults? How much interaction is there with Copenhagen? I would assume that a fair number of people work or go to school in the wider city. There were quite a few cafes around and a bicycle hire shop and of course some people are in the drug trade but it didn’t seem enough to support 1000 people and I also didn’t see much evidence of food growing. In Australia they might be on the dole but since Christiania is legally separate, my understanding is that they don’t get welfare. They do use Danish crowns as their currency, however.
One of the charms of Copenhagen is that it’s small enough to walk pretty much anywhere in twenty minutes. The locals cycle and I think there are probably more bicycles than people and definitely more bikes than cars. There are cycle lanes everywhere, even around round-abouts, and the motorists always seem to stop and give right of way when they should. The bikes come in all shapes and sizes but a common configuration is to have one wheel at the back and two at the front, like a reverse tricycle, with a wheelbarrow-type container inside. Anyway, I digress… I walked back from Christiania to Kongens Hove or the King’s Gardens, basked in the sun for an hour and then met Natalie and some of her friends for drinks.
Today is my last day in Copenhagen and I’ve got some work to do so my sightseeing is basically done. Good timing though as the weather yesterday was glorious but it’s raining today. Back to London tomorrow.
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08.16.06
Posted in Travel at 7.35 am by niltiac
Norway is very beautiful but I was glad to leave when I did as it’s also very expensive, especially for food. It costs $US5 for a Snickers bar!
I had a brilliant time in the fjord district. I stayed the first day in Voss as I was mentally tired and didn’t want to venture too far afield. I hired a bicycle and rode it around the lake, stopping for wild raspberries and to admire the views. There is a beautiful gorge halfway around and it looks like a lovely place to swim, although a bit cold.
The second day, I went exploring. I basically followed the same route as the Norway in a Nutshell package tour, although I did it myself. I caught the train to Myrdal. From there you can catch the train to Flam on what is one of the steepest rail journeys in the world. I walked the first half down to Berekvam (about 10km) and it was the most stunning scenery, with soaring mountains and tumbling waterfalls on all sides. I caught the train for the second half of the journey and in Flam transferred to a boat to Gudvangen. The boat journey, which is on narrow parts of the Sognefjord takes two hours and it’s very beautiful – I saw river dolphins! From Gudvangen I caught the bus back to Voss.
I didn’t have time to go to Bergen as I needed to get back to Oslo because my boyfriend was coming. Unfortunately the terrorist scare in London meant his flight was cancelled so I ended up solo. I still had a nice time though. I was staying in a B&B right near Vigelslundpark, which is filled with phantasmagorical stautes and sculptures. I went to a few of the museums – the folk museum, the Viking ships museum, the Kon-Tiki museum (all right near one another), and also the Munch museum and the Nobel Peace Centre.
The folk museum had displays of Norwegian folk art and folk dress (George, your mother would have loved it!) and also an open-air section with a stave church and traditional farmsteads. The Viking ships museum houses three Viking ships from the 10th century discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were used as burial ships, which is why they are in suh good repair (although restoration work has also been done). The Munch museum houses paintings by Edvard Munch, who is most famous for The Scream and similar works but actually seemed to have quite a diverse body of work.
The Kon-Tiki musuem was a real surprise because I had never really heard of Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki Expedition. In 1947 he built a balsa raft and with his crew took 101 days to sale from South America to Polynesia to prove that it was possible that Polynesians could have come from South America originally. In 1970 he sailed from Morocco to Barbados in a papyrus boat in 57 days to prove there could have been contact between Egypt and pre-Columbian Central America. In 1978 he did it again, crossing the Indian ocean from Asia to Africa in a reed boat. He also lived in Polynesia with his wife for a time, going completely back to nature and living as the locals did. A fascinating guy!
The Nobel Peace Centre had lots of modern technology and interactive exhibits. It was quite interesting to see who the recipients of the Noble Peace Prize have been over the years – Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi but also Henry Kissinger (oversaw the Vietnam War), Theodore Roosevelt (who invaded Cuba), Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres. The Peace Prize is awarded from Norway but Nobel was a Swede and all the other prizes are awarded from Sweden. Ironically, he made his fortune from inventing/discovering dynamite! Perhaps he thought he had a lot to make up for.
I caught the train to Copenhagen on Monday and am now staying with Natalie in her lovely flat on the north side. Copenhagen is compact and friendly and especially around the palace area, very beautiful. The weather has been a bit variable but I did some exploring yesterday and in the evening met up with Nat and went to Tivoli Gardens. It’s an amusement park in the centre of town and it’s really nice. We went on the Sky Star, which goes up 50 metres and spins you around in little swing seats, and the rollercoaster, and we also saw a ballet of Thumbelina.
Back to London on Friday… It’s been a great trip but I’m looking forward to getting home.
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