Leaving my second home.

On the eve of leaving for Amsterdam, Scandanavia and European realms unknown, I'm reflecting on what England means to me. First in the mind and the heart is the wonderful support, reliable and warm, that my extended family shows me. There's not many Kingstons in Aotearoa, and whereas over here, we had sixteen family members helping blow out on the 96 candles on Nana's birthday cake. I'm starting to understand the joys that extended family bring. (Now just keep putting up with the overstayer, when he comes back 'kay folks?)

British Wildlife Report #2

For a long time I've been meaning to write about the wildlife here - subtle and cryptic, seasonal, evocative.

When I first came it boggled the mind to have no substantial wilderness around, now the little woods and moors bounded on all sides by development seem normal. Another aspect to the countryside that took getting used to was the smog-haze. Sometimes on a clear day, even in rural areas, a hill one mile away can seem hazy and indistinct. Anything more than 15 miles away can be virtually invisible! It's a combination (an interaction?) between moisture, dust and pollutants. More recently though, I've noticed the variation in this. Some days, especially in summertime, after rain, the atmosphere is as clear as in New Zealand - you can guess I relish those days!

I also relish the seasonal changes here - I caught the end of Autumn in Sussex, with its glory of russet and gold, then the bleak winter in Northumberland, Argyll, Derbyshire and London, when the land lies truly naked. (In most parts of the country, evengreens seem to account for just a few percent of the trees around) I watched the trees dress up again, one by one - beginning with the chestnuts and ending with the limestone-loving ash and the elegant lady: northern beech. Then, to cap it off, the sea of bluebells that rises to lap among the trunks in early May was breathtaking.

I can't put my finger on the particulars, but there seems to be birds around that weren't here in winter - the birds of prey in particular. I should check their migration details out. The kites with their v-shaped tails and the astounding kestrel (you may know G.M.Hopkin's The Windhover) are favourites. The crow family was faithful though, and have stuck around enough for me to identify between jackdaws (gregarious, whitefaced) and ravens (large, curved beaks, mainly solitary). Both were plentiful as I walked the vertigo-inducing path along the clifftops in south-west Cornwall. Crows and rooks are harder to distinguish. Readers' digest tells me rooks appear to wear 'baggy breeches'. Dubious

Jackdaw (Photo by John Haslam- CC Attribution licence)

There are three animals I wouldn't have seen without the aid of keen British wildlife-watchers. Walking along a canal towpath in Derbyshire, an elderly gentleman is staring at something on the other side of the canal. 'It's a grass snake'. Indeed! With the naked eye, it looks like a stick, but we are offered the view through others' binoculars and zoom lenses (by now there is a crowd). It's funny to say this, but, my first impression was... it's got no legs! A brain, a tongue, eyes.... but no legs! Like a fish, but on land. Weird.

Amazingly, it transpires it is not just one grass snake but two. Trying to eat the same toad. Incredible, to watch the drama of these three creatures, maligned in our folklore but beautiful. It is again, a fellow nature junkie who shows me the peregrine falcon chicks, perching on the custom-built nestbox on the spire of Derby Cathedral. They are fledglings, at home in the city centre, with their aggressive curved beak and comical head-bobs.

Badger, of course! (Public domain)

In Devon, around 10pm, my cousin's neighbour calls up to tell us 'the badger is here'. We head to his kitchen and watch it through the large window. It is out, on the steps, thinner than i imagined, but many times more beautiful. It picks up the bread left out for it nightly, and scoffs a slice in the shadows, before returning again and again for more. I am entranced.

345 to South Kensington

It makes sense to write about local transport first - in London the topic fills our conversations, the printed page, and even the cinema. It is why my 35 hr week leaves me tired as. The underground system doubles as a navigation system - If you’re going to meet someone, chances are, you will choose a tube station as the spot. People find their way around London not by street names but by tube stations, in association with the Mondrian-esque trance inducing tube map. People didn’t know what to say when I told them I was a couple of miles from the nearest tube.

For the first couple of weeks, to get from Camberwell to my work in Chelsea, I would take the bus and then the tube. One upside was the the guide-book-sanctioned experience of emerging from the brushed steel interior to see the Gothic grandeur of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben's tower. Once or twice I tried the 345 bus to travel the four or so miles to Chelsea, and found it took longer than a bus from Nelson to Motueka.

A quiet tube

And I didn’t enjoy standing all the way to work, I didn’t enjoy the feeling of breathing recycled air, I didn’t enjoy spending five quid it on it every day. I didn’t enjoy reading trashy free papers to avoid eye contact. (My sister sent me a text telling me to scan the tube map to find the only station name that contains none of the letters M,A,C,K,E,R,E,L. “something to do on the tube when you don’t know where too look”) So learning how to bike to work was good.

With the help of Sustrans and Transport for London's cycle maps, I bike through Camberwell, two hundred years ago a satellite village, now very urban, with its not-very-trendy bars, 'Sophocles Bakery’; an olive vendor, the smelly Chinese grocery, and evangelical churches. I keep pedalling, overtaking gridlocked cars and buses, through Kennington, dominated by the Oval, London’s second cricket ground. I dismount to navigate the tangled crossroads of Vauxhall (once 'Folke's Hall') I like to see the collection of contemporary architecture here- the very ostentatious spy headquarters, and apartment blocks that look like the construction of a hyperactive child and the new Vauxhall station itself, with token solar panels on the steel rooves sheltering those waiting for the buses.

[photo - Johnnie Blows - licence: CC ShareAlike]

Then I meet 'Father Thames' and follow him upstream past the wasted hulk of the iconic Battersea powerstation, past a particularly hairy and unavoidable roundabout, and to Battersea Park. I hesitate now, as urban oasis is an overused metaphor, but this collection of playing fields, tennis courts, a gaudy peace pagoda, gardens, cherry trees white-blossomed against a slate sky, is my five minute refreshment - and as I reach it, I stop pedalling, and sit up straight and swallow.

Then it's Albert Bridge over the river. Seeing it lit up after dark adds to its charm. It’s an old shaky bridge this one and troops are advised to 'break step while crossing the bridge'. From there it's a short ride across the latte suburb of Chelsea to my work on Old Brompton Rd.

Albert Bridge at Night

There's the question of the danger and difficulty of cycling, but I'll leave that for another post. For now, I just want to dwell on the fact that biking to work makes me feel the city is a much more varied and lively place than hurtling under it does. My 45 minute morning ride takes me from tower blocks to topiary, from grime to glistening marble. Freewheelin.

(unless otherwise noted, images are in the public domain or distributed under GNU free distrubition licence)

Blog updated, on hiatus for now.

Entries on Barga, Pisa, Roma 1, Roma 2, have been posted in the September section - my travelogue of 2007 is basically complete. So what will you be seeing in 2008 here?

Well, I've been in Britain for almost two months now, and I notice my only post has been about New Zealand! Homesick? Perhaps a little. I'm still travelling though, for a good while yet.

I have had several experiences I have felt were almost deserving of a blog entry. They include: escorting a bleeding drunk youth home in Newcastle; Ceidlhs and Scottish folk music nights in Newcastle and Glasgow; visiting my great-grandparents' graves; looking for stray golf balls at Gourock Golf Club with two adolescents who claimed they were drug-dealers; packing gourmet smoked goods into hampers 14 hours a day in Oban; learning to understand the words 'hame' 'hoose' and 'fer'. My funniest story would be getting very excited seeing a magazine in a Glasgow newsagents, coloured green, titled 'The Alternative View'. Great! some counter-cultural reading! I fish for a pound in my pocket. On closer inspection the subtitle was
'the magazine for Celtic supporters that deals with the real issues'.
Of course it was about fitba', not ecology. But what kind of place has multiple magazines about a single football club?



But I can't keep writing this blog while I'm here. There are many reasons. Sadly, perhaps unavoidably, I don't feel the wide-eyed wonder that I have had all through my trip, including the first time I was here. I think wonder is vital to good travel writing. Practically, I want to save money here, which can lead to both fatigue and monotony. To boot, a lot of the rest of my time is spent interacting with my family, and you don't want to know what we get up to!

In any case, many of you are already very Britian-savvy. You know that it is becoming more multicultural by the minute (The manuals in my last job are now written in Polish and English, for example) You know that 'security measures' both state and non-state, are ubiquitous (closed circuit television is everywhere). You know that West Scotland is wild and beautiful and England is crowded.



I do encounter things that inspire me personally, that you will be interested in, but they will be expressed in other ways than this site.

I would like to say 'Ta very much!' to everyone who has skimmed, read or devoured my tangential ramblings, and especially to those who commented, or wanted to comment but couldn't manage Blogspot's sometimes labyrinthine interface.

Hopefully this blog will rise again on phoenix wings, when I leave the UK. When will that be? Next summer, probably. Where will I go?



Across country to Southeast Asia via more of Europe (Mycenae! Amsterdam! Stockholm!), Siberia, China and Japan.
Peace.

Kaitakitanga

Back in the UK, my cousin shows me an old news article. "Have you seen this?" I haven't. It's quite interesting.

Triggered by the recent strange events involving 'the Urewera 16' and the armed defenders, the Guardian has published a feature entitled The Maori Resistance. Its a long article, so I'll pull out the bits that leapt out at me:

Though 'much of the very iconography of [NZ's] state is maori', the Waitangi Tribunal is basically overworked and impotent,('it's decisions are non-binding') and the UN is 'unimpressed' with the government's Foreshore and Seabed Act. In the 1960's the NZ government claimed there was no race relations problem at all.

Reading about race relations in my homeland seen through the eyes of a middle class left-leaning Brit is fascinating, like seeing one's own image on closed circuit TV. Familiar, yet bizzare (or zarrebi?). Overall it confirms my conviction that we have a long way to go to harmony in Aotearoa, and it is Pakeha who need to be doing more of the listening and making more of the sacrifices.

This is old news for some, but I've only just found out about the Wellington part to the story. Wellington readers might be interested in seeing the footage of the dawn raid on 128 Abel Smith Street. Terrorism? We fix bikes and read poetry in there. Oh brother.

Manchester

I only got rained on, lost about three times (Buxton information centre entirely unhelpful to cycle tourists heading to Cheshire), had to bike along the hellish A6, and fell off my bike into a muddy puddle while following tracks along the Mersey to Manchester. The shame!

But I´m happy to be here. Manchester is much less grimy than I expected. Perhaps it´s the good company. But the architecture is amazing. There´s loads of red-brick mills (industrial revolution again) which have become apartments, and a few blocky art deco things, but my favourite is the osentatious Gothic buildings, built with cotton money in the 19th century. The city seems proud too. Not as cosmopolitan as London, but quite left-wing. We walk past the spot where the Labour party (I know, I know) holds its annual conference and cousin Tullis shows me where the manhole covers are taped down to prevent terrorism. (Aside: I´m sick of the paranoia here, as the graffito in Oxford says, "closed circut TV is a crime". A ubiquitous crime, extending to country pubs and parks. In Coventry I almost have my hand luggage confiscated because I left it outside for a second and it´s full of bombs, apparently, at an airport containing around 50 people.) But back to the left wing stuff. There´s also the bafflingly eclectic People´s History Museum, containing a lock of Tom Paine´s hair, much info on the Suffragist movement, films of 1930´s football matches (with pitch invasions) and, my favorite, a chance to make your own badges. I make two. Mine has a picture of a needle and thread and the words 'please don´t raise my standard of living´. I make one for Tullis that says ´I love jamming´. Tullis is on a bit of a high, planning his trip to India. Apparently it is monsoon season, but his friends over there are assuring him he´ll be fine. The monsoons must have relocated here. I do not exaggerate to say there has been perhaps three days since I arrived in the midlands that it hasn´t rained. That´s how British towns get flooded, I suppose.

I am priveleged to hear the first recording session of the Noise Upstairs band (soon it will have a real name) It comprised Tullis on trombone and laptop Anton on guitar and effects pedals and Kate on cello. These music graduates made sounds like the swollen Mersey that flows through this city. Turbulent yet graceful.

As a last night out in Manchester, Tul reccomends the Nextmen (from London) at some club I don´t remember the name of. Innovative party hip-hop. I have one of those moments of realisation that I´m in a foreign country while riding in my first British cab, and then getting patted down at the entrance of the club. Weapons? No, they were looking for drugs... but they didn´t question the existence of a tealight candle in my pocket. Inside the party is great! a good vibe, and great sounds including a Dr Dre accapella mixed with a doubletime breakbeat. Thanks, Manchester.

Wirksworth-Manchester

It is time to leave old Wirksworth. (Or `Wazza´ as some call it). I´m glad of the company of Uncle Graham, who cycles with me to Buxton, in the heart of the Peak District. The name may conjure up images of our bikes ascending alpine pinnacles a la Lance Armstrong, but really it comes from the old English ´peac´ - rolling hill, and we biked along old railway lines. Mainly flat. And it was awes, man. We bike through the White Peaks - an area of limestone jutting like teeth from the green gums of pastures. Graham tells me that D.H. Lawrence (a local boy) calls this area the navel of England. It´s where the flat grain fields of the South give way to the hilly sheep and cattle pastures of the North.

A typical Ewan late start and it´s the mid-afternoon when arrive in Buxton. I fill my water bottles from the famous mineral water, flowing free like the speights tap in Dunedin. "It tastes metallic" Graham warns. Nonsense! Then, in understated English fashion, we part and I am travelling alone again for the first time in a month.

Of hair and head-tilts

Yes, it’s been a while since my last entry. It’s not that I’ve been uninspired, in fact, I’ve been doing a lot of writing*. It’s just that I’ve been leading a rather pedestrian life, literally. My bike is in the garage here in Wirksworth and some days I don’t leave the house. Here in Wirksworth, an old town of 9000 in the limestone quarry part of the Midlands, the focus has really been family. With my Nana and Grandad (ninety-five and ninety-two) it’s flavoured by the numerous cups of tea, the stories of time spent in Malawi in 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, the bus trips to villages up the valley of the ‘mighty Derwent’. Helping them with some small challenges – opening fiddly juice containers and pesky email attachments - is a pleasure. Aunty Rosie and Uncle Graham are consistent with hugs and literature suggestions. Cousins Elliot and Alexander show me how to party – Wirksworth style. They have strange rules for pool here. And a wah-wah pedal! I also earn some pounds helping renovate houses for a local.

You may have heard of the flooding in nearby Yorkshire. Intense. Six people have died and there’s been around a billion pounds of damage. (Not nearly as bad as the floods in Pakistan, though) The rain definitely got to Derbyshire, but don’t fret, pet, we’re safe. Perched on a hill, it all drains away from Wirksworth.


What’s it like living here, in the midst of England’s countryside? You guessed it, it’s quaint. Quaint little “pooubs” quaint old shop-keepers who call everyone “duck”. Quaint houses from the local stone, strewn higgledy piggledy around the hills. And people probably think I’m quaint. Having conversations with people I pass myself off as normal; it’s the small interactions with strangers that I fumble my way through. I still haven’t completely weaned myself off the very kiwi eyebrow-lift, chin-tilt greeting and I pay the price in blank stares. And when people say “y’right?” over here, it’s a warm greeting, as Mel tried to teach me, not an anxious probe. And sometimes, like when I make jokes to strangers at the tennis court, I think maybe I’m just being too friendly, even for Wirksworth.

Even the monumental and historic buildings are quaint. I visit Cromford, a village famous for being the 1771 site of Lancashire entrepreneur Richard Arkwright’s deployment of mechanised cotton-spinning and the factory system. Some call it the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Most of the ”mills” (really factory buildings) still stand, large they may be, but (see photo) still pink and cute. Not like the working conditions. Surplus labour from the dying lead industry was exploited, and children crouched under the water-powered spinning machines to clean or “scavenge” any debris. If you weren’t bang on time for your twelve-hour shift, you couldn’t work any of the day. Those who know about my punctuality can envisage my potential cotton spinning pay-check. Other factories were even harsher, apparently


It really is a strange place to be spinning cotton. Several thousand miles from your nearest cotton field, it was only intense secrecy about industrial practices (and the protective measures of the British government) that meant the industrial revolution happened here, rather than closer to the cotton itself.

Arkwright had one of his mills destroyed early on by anti-mechanisation rioters (hooray!) and promptly developed a militia and a cannon to guard this one. Oh, yeah, I was talking about quaint. Get this. Arkwright picked the relatively remote Cromford for his project for several reasons – but how was this foreign guy familiar with the place? He was a wig maker, and travelled to large gatherings to gather the human hair for his wigs. The story is that nearby Wirksworth had a good deal of country fairs, and thus a good supply of hair. Arkwright came for the hair, but he stayed for the prime factory location!

*If anyone is keen on reading my new Roald Dahl-(think Tales of the Unexpected, not BFG)-esque short story, let me know, and I’ll swing you an email copy.

The best conversion of energy to distance/ is when your food is your fuel and your feet are your pistons.

I cycle north on my Uncle Keith's green touring bike through the midlands from Oxford. The countryside is a green sheet, punctuated. The commas of hedgerows, stops of tiny country villages. Church steeples form exclamation points and squirrel's tails make question marks.

It is delightful. I cycle through, not past the landscape, only slightly perturbed by the hazy smog that cuts out views. Cycling through a particularly lush avenue I raise my arm in glee, like a tour-de-france winner or a baptist testifying. The horse-rider approaching is confused. "The flies are bad around here, aren't they" she says.

I passed by more riders and walkers than I am cars. Two routes of the National Cycle Network (54 and 6) take me from Oxford to Derby, with only brief stints on major roads. They are detailed on a specially designed Sus(tainable)trans(port) map. Of course I lose the snaking cycle track (marked by little blue signs) about three times in every large town, but I am very grateful for this facility. Mad props.

My bike is laden with gear, which means I can't cycle no-hands (damm) let alone Vish's no-hands-no-bum trick. But it does mean I am self sufficient. I stayed my first night in a little thicket just off the road (shush). Tenting is great but it does make the brightness of the morning (4am at this time of year) very evident.

Solo cycle touring is also lonely, but I make friends rapidly through the couch-surfing website. Dave in Northampton is an accountant when he must, and a globe-trotter when he can. He is a very generous and fascinating host. Reevsie and Zena here in Leciester are lively conversationalists. They are also conservationists committed to living "low-carbon" lifestyles. There is a label on the plugs in the house detailing their electricity use. The cd player: "9 watts (playing)/7 watts (not playing) 3 watts (standby). Their dedication to their ecological footprint is both inspiring and challenging (a quota of two long haul flights for the rest of my life? gee.) I do feel at home when I discover they don't flush their pee, for water conservation reasons.

It's not all serious. Tonight Reevsie and I are making Willa Wonka sweets.

Large things in large town

My days in London settle into a vague pattern. Mornings are leisurely, evenings are social, afternoons I usually bus into the city, and experience the first traffic jams of my life. I go with vague errands (buying a phone/tent/harmonica, unrewarding illegitimate busking) but mostly my time in central London is spent walking around and staring at old things: surprisingly low stone builidings; commerative statues and arches of all descriptions; plaques, portraits and palaces. I’m equally attracted and repulsed by the monuments. A giant statue of Achilles made with cannon won in the battle of Waterloo? Bellicose jingoism. More difficult for me is the oft-present glorification of the era of British imperialism.

The injustices of British relations with other ethnicities are still sorely relevant for many. A man waves an Ulster flag among the massive Union Jacks along the Mall. Later I meet a pan-African crowd outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. An impromptu protest has sprung up in the aftermath of activist Toyin Agbetu being released without charge after his pronouncements during the Abolition 200 (ending of slavery) service in Westminster Abbey back in March. Agbetu was arrested while declaiming what he has called the commemoration’s “myopic eurocentrism”. For the interested, here's a news piece on the March event.
The protest today involves a lot of drumming and pretty soon the National Gallery closes their main doors. Sympathetic and curiousI asked one of the protestors why they chose this spot. The protest started at the police station, and ended here partly by chance. My guy thought it was as appropriate a place as any. He gestures around Trafalgar Square. “Slaves built all of this” he says. I talk with him a bit, explain the phrase "kia kaha", (he hears kia kara), then move off to book my tickets for the Globe theatre.

Namvula encourages me to go to the British Museum – to “see all the stuff we stole” I do. The wizened and strangely shiny mummified Egyptian is very memorable. But it is looking at the exhibit of Viking doohickies that something hits me. The complexity of this island’s history. I present a list, familiar to most of you, but important nonetheless:

Invaders/colonisers of Great Britain
????? (Neolithic stuff)
Romans
Anglo-saxons
Vikings
Normans

Then a few centuries later, the mongrel inhabitants of this damp flat island spread an Empire to the antipodes. Bizarre. That’s what I think of when I see Nelson’s column.

Next time I write I will have tales of cycling through the Midlands.

Travellers congregate

(Written mainly on Monday 27 May.)

Temperature on arrival: twenty-six degrees celsius. Temperature today: ten.

What, dear readers, can I say about London? Many of you, I imagine will have been here at some point (bless our middle class cotton socks) for longer than me. I have been here for four days. At the moment I’m missing the wilderness, so let me tell you about birds and stuff.

Twice I’ve walked along the canal towards Paddington – the birdlife in the canal is impressive. Canada Geese calmly patrol the area. Most unusual are the moorhens. They have these amazing feet, with a series of round pads along the massive toes. This allows them, I suppose, to patter along lilypads and sneak through rushes. (I have to practice sneaking through rushes myself, to handle Regent Street. Ha!) By flailing their wings and pushing with these considerable paddles they can almost completely lift themselves out of the water while remaining stationary. Impressive. These dark, vocal birds are bullies: they chase birds twice their size from their very visible nests. They must do the same with predators.

Another highlight was seeing the pukekos. Yes, pukekos are found all over the world (so are sparrows. Hong Kong had a skinny, sweeter singing, territorial sparrow.) The pukekos here are much smaller, about the size of a bantam hen. They aren't of course called pukekos here. Wikipedia lists the names of this bird as: Purple Swamphen, Porphyrio porphyrio, African Purple Swamphen, Purple Moorhen, Purple Gallinule. My favourite is "Sultana Bird" - from the French - talève sultane. Porphyrio porphyrio here have more dark grey and less blue plumage, but they are unmistakably pukekos. They strut and flick their white arse like ours do.

Less similar to the antipodean version are the magpies. Here they are graceful, like large cuckoos, with a long tail. Namvula greets a magpie if it is solitary: ‘good morning magpie, how are your wife and kids?’. Not to do so brings on calamity. The crows are a bit of a favourite. Totally black, it’s as if you are always seeing them in silhouette.

Like most cities, there is not one, but thousands of Londons. Geographically, mine has centered around Ladbroke Grove where I am staying with my cousin Namvula. It is a suburb both refined and quirky. Trees, mainly plane trees, line almost every street (streets with names like Oxford Gardens) My first evening here I saw children practicing cartwheels on the pavement and a man biking with seven dogs on seven leads. Like the rest of London, he had no cycle helmet – hurrah! It makes cyclists seem much more human, much less freakish. I see posters advertising the health benefits of cycling on bus shelters. Good.

My London also has had an African side to it. Namvula’s mother is Zambian and many of her friends I have heritage in that continent. Ore, a Nigerian boy I met liked my beatboxing and we performed together at a talent quest in a South London school. I've heard a South African soul singer, Morrocan gnawa-jazz fusion, and 'Mama Africa' Miriam Makeba. This is a city of many possibilities, a city where it seems no-one is a true foreigner.