Back on the road again...

Perhaps it is the final step on the road to normality. I am sitting in the Westin Grand Hotel in Bogenhausen, Munich, eight floors up suddenly aware that what I thought were clouds on the distant horizon are actually the Alps. How suddenly they jut out of the otherwise flat land! They are some distance away so their stature is evident in the fact they are visible. Somehow their presence suddenly lends a different complexion to my stay. From being a business trip, I have a sudden tinge of "Holiday" feeling intrude momentarily as this exotic location in the distance becomes part of my landscape.
I have a headache. It's the same headache at the back of the head that I was so familiar with during my stay in hospital in March and in the following month or two. It's a strange back-of-the-head headache which was what grew to a pulsing crescendo on the dance floor that fateful night. I am not happy that it reappears, but when I asked the neurosurgeon about it, he waved away my concerns telling me it is "just a migraine". That may well be so, but it's presence still unnerves me.

But I probably deserve this headache. I did after all consume three half-litres of beer last night. About three pints: Not an amount I would normally associate with a hangover. But these are not normal times. Beer allows the confusion. I expect to be mildly confused after beer. It's a pleasant, familiar confusion that males all other recent experiences of confusion seem comfortable and unthreatening. But I wish it didn't give me that particular headache.

I was concerned about how I would cope on this trip. I am still somewhat vague where information is concerned and I get tired between my temples when two conversations are present in my field of hearing. Usually this requires me to go and have a lie down but I have been sufficing with escaping to somewhere quieter and breathing deeply. It works up to a point.

So, I managed the driving, the chaos of Heathrow and Munich airports. Getting to the hotel was easy and my presentation went quite well to a roomful of attentive people. I heard my own faltering voice explaining things and realised that I am not quite "there" yet, but given how I felt even two months ago, i am astonished to be back in circulation.

It's hard to work out what it all means. Oh, I m not one for undue symbolism, but I feel different. I saunter through the airport terminals feeling that I have had an experience that renders the petty tribulations of everyday travel somehow far less significant. It feels like a freedom to accept (or reject) expectations on my own terms. I feel I can just walk up to people with a smile and say "Hello! I am Pete. Who are you? What's that you are doing? Will you be my friend" because a whole new frontier of existence has been reached and in it, I am innocent and ignorant of convention: Many older conventions seem redundant now.
I said it was hard to explain.

But here I am, back in Germany, doing what I always did and this seems both familiar but new. I don't really know what to make of it all. I am sure it will all fall into place at some point.
But for now, my grumbling tum bids me head down for breakfast.

Being here now

So, I am sat in my hotel room six floors up in the Arosa Hotel in Paderborn. Far below me the city stretches away in the January rain, looking like the town in the 1971 version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", where the great glass elevator breaks through the roof of the factory and travels out above a very Teutonic looking city. White houses, each with its red tiled roof, give way in the dismal distance to white industrial building and in between, two enormous churches punctuate the view, towering above more mundane looking office and municipal buildings.
It is not a picturesque view particularly, but it is one with which I am partly familiar, having been here so very many times over the last 18 years or so.

But it is a vista that is different to my everyday outlook in Bristol and its surroundings.
Now I look out of the window and I am "here". There is enough strangeness about what I see to render it "foreign" because, although I know many of the streets very well by now, they differ in architecture and construction in ways subtle but significant from those I know as "home".

What is strange though, and this feeling has haunted my experience ever since I was self-aware, is the feeling of "not really being there". This sensation is rather pervasive and intrudes almost as much as the view of my nose used to when I was five and first looking at blackboards for a significant proportion of my days. Wherever I looked, there it was, obscuring objects and getting in the way of seeing properly. Annoying, isnt it.
But i grew to accept this triangular intrusion into my field of vision, I have not similarly accepted this nagging voice asking me "how do KNOW you are where you are? When you aren't there any more, how will you know you didnt imagine being there?"
Its a reasonable question. I remember visiting a factory in Italy about 16 years ago. It was my first trip to Italy and frankly, I was a bit surprised that providence had placed me in a position where I would be travelling to places I once considered exotic and unreachable. To prove to myself I was actually there, or rather, to attempt to gain information from another, more trustworth sensory source, I touched the walls of the building as we walked back to the office area. I ran my hands along the masonry in an attempt to touch something, literally, concrete in this strange, unfamiliar environment.

And yet, it still didnt really work. A few days later, at home, back in familiar surroundings, it was as if I had looked up suddenly and the images in my memory, the sensations of my "minds hands" could as well have been memories I created from imagination. I knew I had been there because there were witnesses and a ticket stub from my flight. But the quality of the information stored in my mind seemed as if it could have been planted there without the experience actually having ever taken place.

Sitting here looking out of this window, I know that in a few days' time, i will similarly look up and I will have a memory of having been here, but I will be elsewhere. So, how then do i make this particular "here & now" real for myself? Given that my meandering mind often takes me to places in my memory or imagination, where i can see every turn of the road, every detail of a room, how can I convince myself that I am present in a room in a hotel in Westfalia?

And this brings me to a further thought: If I can illustrate an example of the fallability of memory, I will do so here. When i lived in the dingy fug of my great-grandfather's house, which we left when I was four, I remember sitting in an armchair in my pyjamas. I suppose I would have been about three. I remember clearly the feel of the material on my bare feet. I remember the space between the arms of the chair in which I sheltered. But oddly, I also remember the door opening and a face peeping round. It was the face of a frog on a man's body. I remember the man, in a suit, with a the head of a frog such as one might see in a cartoon, or like Kiki in Hector's House for those of you familiar with this childrens' program of the early 70's. I wasn't alarmed or scared. The world was still somewhere that held all manner of inexplicable and confusing things and this was just another example of something I had not yet encountered.

I remember this as an event. Now obviously, there wasn't a man with a frog's head in Tenniscourt Road in 1968. I have obviously conflated a dream and a memory. But the memory feels real and plenty of research shows how easily memories can be created of events that demonstrably did not happen (Reference: Search, If you wish, on "Elizabeth Loftus". "False memory". Eye-witness testimony will never again be something you place implicit confidence in)

Since I seem to be unable to distinguish the quality of the memory from things I possibly imagined, perhaps, I can make a shortcut to experiences that it would be dangerous or inadvisable to have. If I eat a Mars Bar, a huge amount of nasties like sugar and fat are released in a rush into my bloodstream. This endocrine disaster is probably not a good thing, though arguably once in a while causes no harm.
However, after having eaten it, apart from feeling sick and having slightly more tooth decay, the main artifact of its consumption will be a memory of having eaten it.
Why then, can I not short-circuit the act of eating it and imagine the whole experience, thus saving myself from nutritional misfortune but still having the enjoyment in hindsight?
I shall stop at this example but it has implications for other daydreams that would surely get me in a lot of trouble were I to act them out.

Ok, we all know it doesnt work like that. It was merely a thought experiment to illustrate a point.
So, the experience seems to be the thing, perhaps not even the memory of the experience, which we know can be fallible and flawed. maybe the key to it is that hackneyed old stalwart of New Agers everywhere: "Being in the moment."

Perhaps if I relax a bit and just sit looking out of the window and stop trying so hard to "BE here!", I will allow the here-ness and now-ness to just permeate my consciousness and all will be smooth mellow spiritual creaminess.

Though, looking out at Paderborn in the rain, perhaps I might be better advised to daydream somewhere sunnier, warmer and more amenable.

exploration and clinging to the familiar

I am writing this from Cyprus. We have a small villa in the town of Kato Paphos. This seems to be the maritime area of the larger town of paphos, conurbated by higgledy-piggledy developments of houses, kiosks and seemingly waste ground populated by old dead trucks (with not a spot of rust despite their obviously hard working life).
Mostly, it seems the people are local. But also one sees the odd leathery retired British ex-pat couple in their white hats, ill-fitting shorts, shoes and socks. Attesting to the presence of a sizeable population of British ex-pats, there is a Bingo hall where one can play every night if one so chooses.
Delightedly, we found 200m along seemingly the longest road without traffic lights (as indicated by the souped up corsas and clios that are finally freed to enjoy their whole range of revs, despite the pedestrians who amble across the road without a care), a supermarket which in upper case greek letters is a “Eurofruitaria” (I failed to find the Greek font here on this new laptop.). Within its delicious air-conditioned confines, locals crowd to buy the best quality and variety of fruit and vegetables I have ever seen: Even better than those provincial markets one finds in France.
It was whilst contemplating a water melon bigger than any human head I have ever seen, indeed, the size perhaps of a horse’s head, that I was approached by a verging-on-obese ex-midlands pensioner, who said in her staunchly retained black country accent “You should go to the the OTHER supermarket, the one by Debenhams on the sea front!” (yes, there is a Debenhams, selling standard middle-of-the-road British fashions for those who want to maintain their suburban look in the mediterranean sun.) with eyes closed as she volunteered her monologue, whe continued:
“Yeah, down there they are MUCH cheaper and you can buy all the proper food like Iceland frozen meals.” And on she went, following me doggedly around the shop explaining the cornucopia of crap that she found so comfortingly available in the town.
Given her rotund physique, this was obviously her chosen diet.
I was frozen into complete speechlessness (rare, I know) by the unfolding tale of utter lack of life of the imagination. I found myself only able to grin in what must have seemed like vague agreement, though since she continued to harangue me with her eyes closed (why do people do that??), she would not have assumed such.

Finally escaping her uninvited monologue, the way one shakes an amourous terrier from one’s ankle, I fled behind a stand of local oranges and tomatoes. This abundance of beautiful food seemed to have escaped her attention, or rather, was perhaps too troublesome and unappetising to contemplate.
In my smug middle class way, I bought olives, garlic, fresh dates, aubergines and all manner of vegetables, and some fresh whole fish, the name of which I shall proably never know. This made a fine dinner that evening as the air cooled to a temperature my northern European metabolism could now cope with.
But a question had formed in my mind: Here in this sunshine near-paradise (though a bit barren in places due to the low rainfall), people come to live. They accept the climate, and who wouldn’t when considering the grey, cold British summers of later years. They have enough adventure to leave and come here, but then that seems to be the extent of it. Sunshine and warmth is enough of a draw.
And yet, that seems to be where the acceptance ends. So, whereas some see novel foods, vegetables and fruits as something to explore and experience, others seem mildly intimidated and shun such foreign muck in favour of Sunday roast, full English breakfast and steak and chips. Why? And to what other aspects of the culture does it apply?

It is not class: My father was brought up in a very poor family where nobody had ever owned a car or even books. There was almost no education, even at primary level as his parents didn’t really care.
He remained working class to the end, working as a truck driver and later in a rubbish dump. And yet when I persuaded him to overcome his fear of the actual organisation of a foreign holiday, and we got him to Brittany, he absolutely came alive. He enthusiastically wandered markets marvelling at the quality of the shallots, bought armfulls of veg by bartering wordlessly but animatedly with toothless farmers in the fields and cooked up the most gorgeous meals in the back of his van every night, washing it down with rather more local wine than was healthy.
So, if a rubbish-tip attendant from Bristol can embrace foreign culture, why not retired site managers from Solihull?

Perhaps there is a divergence in people. Maybe there are explorers and settlers; people who seek new and interesting experiences and then there are those who cling to the familiar. Perhaps this is genetic as it would appear not to be cultural. Walking along the sea front promenade, the stereotypes are sadly fulfilled: The lobster coloured Brits with beer bellies, shaven heads and tattoos, the lithe Cypriot youths and their rather more portly elders, the pale haired Dutch, long of limb and seemingly healthier than the anglo-saxons who left to settle in England 1400 years ago to ultimately invent chips.
All of this might sound a little judgmental and snobby and I guess to some extent it is. But at the heart of it is the earnest question of what makes people approach experience differently.
We had a cat once called Possum. Possum was a very intelligent silver tabby and inevitably got impregnated whilst our vigilance faltered one Summer’s evening in the late 80s. She had three kittens that after some observation we tentatively named “Ugly”, “Explorer” and “Wimp”.
From birth, wimp, hid and would not wander far from his mother, mewling pitifully if he found himself alone and separated from the familiar. Ugly was just a bit of a blob really and though large and affable, didn’t really seem to care much at all as long as he was fed. But Explorer was always wandering off and getting into things. (She was taken off secretly by Possum for extra feeds by Possum who knew where her genetic investment was best placed).
These character traits persisted into adulthood, indeed, Explorer, renamed “Poppy” once hitched a lift in a stranger’s car to a town ten miles away, but found her way back.
And maybe people are the same. Some will be Wimps and some will be Explorers. And so the market for Iceland frozen bubble and squeak will always exist alongside that for magnificent vegetables.
And now all this typing in the hot Cypriot sun has exhausted me, time for a cold Carling, straight from the fridge!

I love my van

I love my van
I am sitting at kemble Airfield where the boy bids me to bring him in order to race his RC car. An assemblage of characters, all male and aged anywhere seemingly between 14 and 65, are watching intently as scale models of fast-looking cars are zipping around a small track. There is serious intensity of concentration as levers are twiddled and either near-silent, or irate-bee-sounding cars career in their miniature competition. Electric motors or nitro-methanol (internal combustion engines that would fit in your hand: Beautiful pieces of engineering) send these tiny objects of expenditure and devotion at outrageous speeds, into bends and along straits. I wonder at the enthusiasm. I remember toy cars as a boy; Imagining the tiny drivers in their adventures as I sent them to places only existing in my own mind.

But this is something different; A possibly almost exclusively male fascination with specific area of human endeavour.
And being bitterly cold, snow still clinging to the northern sides of the trees, I sit in my van, where it is warm and I can make tea and eat ghastly noodles from the Chinese supermarket, quickly reconstituted in a bowl.

I love my van. It used to belong to my father and I bought it off him for £1000 when his alcoholism made it no longer possible for him to drive. I have two photos of him on the wall in here, in homage to him not because I am a great ancestor worshipper or sentimentalist although there is a part of that, I grudgingly admit. No, mostly, it because I am grateful to him for his handiwork.
For it was he who took a standard 1992 semi-hi-top long wheelbase ford transit, and saw its potential. And using materials, mostly stolen, sometimes gathered and when no alternative means of sourcing was possible, bought, he turned it into the most significant form of escape ever.

The walls are of tongue and groove pine, covering the sides and the ceiling and giving the feel somewhere between a sauna and a cabin in a 19th century passenger ship. There are two beds in which all the means to live an indefinitely comfortable nomadic existence can be stored. They can be arranged as two single or a double bed and the bedding - a king sized duvet, sheets, covers and pillows, all sourced from my favourite german surprise emporium - lives permanently under one. Two mattresses purloined from a certain west-country budget holiday camp years ago, grace the tops. They are very comfortable and regularly hoovered, scrupulously cleaned and freshened with fabreze.

And here is where i shelter from the biting North wind, with the sun streaming through the windowns, thoughtfully fitted at quite some expenditure. A newly purchased leisure battery and an inverter provides my 240VAC for this laptop and could even power hair straighteners, a telly (god forbid!) or a soldering iron for those little home-improvement jobs needed from time to time.

Thus equipped, it is always ready for a getaway. Indeed, in 2006, i arrived home one evening and said to the family "C'mon! Pack! we are going to Cornwall!" And off we went, bikes on the back, boats on the roof, to Bossinney where we stayed for two and a half weeks of glorious carefree unplanned holiday. Whilst other campers sat in their tents and boiled up quick-cook rice and pasta with jars of sauce, I pulled out my big cooking pot from under the bed and made beef stew with beer, puy lentils and chorizo cassoulet and lamb korma.

On a day when there is surf, I look at eyeball surf-check to see the North Devon webcams and if I am so inclined, off I go with any rare friends brave enough, to Putsborough or Saunton to catch some waves. The kayaks, boards, wetsuits, all the other paraphernalia, goes into the back or on the roof, and within hours we are in the sea, and later, blue and thawing drinking steaming mugs of hot, sweet tea in the comfort of my van, looking at the breakers and feeling the wind rock the bodywork, we sit snug and mellow inside.

Or when the boys have a race for Greenpower (www.greenpower.co.uk) we put the racing car in the back and off we go to Goodwood or Darley Moor or Castle Combe where the team use the van as a base for tea, bacon sandwiches or a quick snooze, or as a workshop to affect mechanical repairs to our racing car.

And always, I am looking at my old dad's crap carpentry and reminded of how his lovable just-good-enough pragmatism left his character clearly displayed for anyone who knew him to see and smile at: Crooked lines of screws, poorly hammered and bent-over nails, wonky shelves full of mugs. Sometimes, when it is raining, I go outside and sit in my van, under the guise of repairing something, and I just listen to the rain, and I talk to my old dad and tell him what's been happening. Then I can hear his wry laugh and his almost-useless but well-meant advice and I can feel like he is there again.

But still, with probably only a year or so of life left in my van,i look to improve and refine the design of this mobile toy box. My addition of the rear seats, folding table, cargo nets on the ceiling for clothes, the big framed poster of the sea, these are all things that, in the original spirit of its construction, go to make this portable living space more comfortable. Thoughts occur on planes, in traffic, on aeroplanes. Improvements are always suggesting themselves. Such improvements give me an inordinate and possibly disproportionate sense of self-satisfaction on a deep existentialist level. My indescribable sense of a source-of-potential (which I shall paradoxically attempt to describe more fully at a later date) is invoked.

The wonderful and empowering thing is that in my mind, I always know that if the corporate life grinds me down just that little bit too far, i can come home and just go, for a day, a weekend, two weeks, or maybe for an odyssey across the world.
And that feels good.

Some have their RC cars, some do train spotting, and I have my van. And when it fails its last MOT, i shall get another one.
We all need our escapes.
And now I shall put the kettle on.