Dining alone

This is a photo of a common situation for me. A lack of dinner companions can make eating a solitary affair. Dining alone is still uncomfortable to me even after all these years, such is the social nature of eating a meal.

I have calculated that I spend between 25 and 30 days a year eating and sleeping alone in foreign hotels. Every year for nearly the last twenty, I have travelled on approximately fifty aeroplanes a year. My conscience is relatively clear as most of my other journeys when I am home are by bicycle. I probably travel of 5000 miles a year on my bike.

But a month a year of solitary eating and sleeping! I had never looked at it in those terms before.
I like my job. It is an interesting job with just the right amount of technical content and the chance to meet and work with people all over the world. Some would see it as a nice little number and indeed, I do realise how fortunate I am to even have a job, let alone one which I generally enjoy.

But I do get tired of the business travel. It really is not exciting. Oh, I make time to see the places I visit, though some are rather too familiar to me to hold any allure after all this time.
My solution to the loneliness used to be to go to the bar and get drunk. But its not a healthy way to spend a month a year. And talking to people in hotel bars when on business seems not to be the Done Thing. Indeed, I have got myself in some very unexpected scrapes in hotel bars from a seeming overfamiliarity. Having unsolicited feels of one's biceps by a small hopeful chap resembling Zebedee from the magic roundabout, in response to what I perceived to be just normal sociable conversation, is not an experience I would describe as comfortable. I explained his mistake and he looked rather crestfallen and lessons were learned by both of us.No, I keep myself to myself these days and rarely make eye contact or conversation.

And so one diverts one's attention: I write letters sometimes. Actual letters. With paper. And a pen. But I never send them. Perhaps I should.
One memorable letter I wrote to myself described an evening in Cork where the bar initially only contained two solemn looking catholic priests in deep discussion of matters scriptural. As the evening wore on, more arrived until the whole bar was full of serious priestly fellows and ecumenical matters. At about ten, the whisky and Guinness kicked in. Then very suddenly there was much cackling, back-slapping and telling of dirty jokes. It really was all rather surreal. So, there are lighter moments.

But it is a soulless, lonely existence and despite the stimulus provided by new landscapes, it does make you a bit tired of travel. Holidays therefore do not seem particularly appealing, especially if air travel is involved. I am far happier in old clothes, driving my post-industrial van to the sea and sitting looking at the waves, or driving up to Dartmoor and hearing the murmur of the wind through the granite of the Tors.And indeed, when I close my eyes in my hotel room, this is where I go to. Then, the phone rings and it's a customer in reception come to take me to a meeting. And so, into character, straighten my tie, and off I go into the Real World to be respectable, credible, assimmilated.

The Frozen North

I am in Helsinki. It's a long story. A three hour, incredibly cramped flight from Heathrow and I emerged into bitterly cold air, a long way North of where I started. Strangely, the short, dapper, alert man who sat next to me on the plane was at breakfast this morning in the hotel and I briefly wondered if I am being tailed. I caught his eye as I wandered past with my perfectly boiled egg and nodded to him, but I didn't smile because I didn't want to be construed as trying to pick him up. One needs to be careful with signals, I find. Ambiguity can be so embarrassing.

The bus from the airport was warm and efficient. It arrived at the stops exactly when the timetable said it would. En route, the piles of snow bigger than a car showed just how much snow they have here. A lot, it would appear. Snowploughs had pushed such piles aside such that every street was lined with them.

Walking down to the restaurant last night, I was the coldest I have ever been in my life. It was only -7 when I left at dusk, and [probably -10C when I walked back, but the cold was intrusive in a way I have never encountered before. I am told its because the sea is close and the cold is a damp, humid cold unlike what one normally gets inland around here. I can attest that, whatever the reason, Winter in this part of Finland seems disproportionately cold and I wonder at what possessed people to think it was a good idea to migrate here originally. I think they must have been here a long time.

I had an interesting dinner: Fried perch. I thought originally it was the fish, but after eating it, I think it may well have been the one a parrot spends its days upon. It gave me quite unpleasant heartburn but at least I can say I have eaten perch now. (I took a photo but I seem to have lost the cable for my phone. I didn't think I would own it for long. I am notoriously forgetful. Perhaps I can email it. Aha! Yes!).Actually, I do it a disservice. As fish goes, it was a bit bland and tough, but was edible and probably quite good for me.

I like Helsinki. I find the people here to be unpretentious, unconcerned with the opinions of others with respect to how they dress or have their hair. As a result, it feels a rather liberated place. So unlike home, where prissy judgment based upon appearance seems to be the norm.
As an external observer, that was my impression, but putting that view to a local resulted in a small snort of wry laughter, followed by a pensive pause: "That may be how it seems to you. To us it's very different. Look at this weather! Would you live here if you didn't have to?"A point well made, I suppose.

So, I am sitting in my hotel room, which is much like all the others thus far depicted on this blog, wondering what to do. I really ought to rouse myself to go and find some dinner. But looking out of the window, I see the snow is still falling heavily and the streets are barely passable. A convoy of snowploughs has just gone by, scraping the streets and flinging a trail of sparks as the metal from the blades chips bits off the tarmac. It doesn't look very inviting out there. People are kind of hurrying past.
Perhaps I shall just pop across the road to the kebab house.
Travel broadens the mind they say.

Surf and chillblains

I have never had chillblains before. I generally have very good circulation and my northern-European physiology copes admirably with the cold, what with its inefficient mitochondria and robust size to conserve heat. I have chillblains today. And they are a reminder of a marvellous day.

As I have mentioned before, I have a penchant for the possibly insane passtime of kayaking in the sea when the waves look like they might be fun. I look at a forecast on a website called magicseaweed.com which shows me with a star rating from one to five, how good the surf is likely to be, along with wind direction, strength, swell and air temperature. It is not terribly accurate but gives some idea of whether it is worth the two-hour drive to North Devon to get in the sea.Well, on Sunday, I looked at magicseaweed and saw it promised five stars and six-foot waves for Wednesday. This is too good to be missed! I had to go! Life has only so many days in it and a lot of those have no waves in them. Carpe diem, I thought!

So, i contacted a friend of mine and after briefly discussing that the water was 8C and the air temperature merely zero with a windchill of -2 to -4, we decided the potential discomfort from the cold was easily worth it for the thrill of six foot clean waves.
So, in my van we went, loaded up with surfboards, kayaks and wetsuits. Off down the M5 to Devon. My companion is a learned chap with much experience of interesting things, like his first job in movie special effects and the science and practical application of modern materials. Conversation was brisk and the traffic light for the whole journey.

But crikey it was cold!
Upon arriving at Saunton, we struggled into our wetsuits and gloves and wetshoes. Every piece of skin, apart from our faces, was covered with a 4 or 5mm layer of neoprene to keep out the cold. This is one technology which never fails to impress me. To be immersed in the sea, at 8C for two and a half hours and not really get cold, is utterly amazing. Without a wetsuit like this, you would be dead from hypothermia in minutes. And yet a suit of synthetic rubber and it is only your tolerance for numb extremities and the limit of your metabolic fuel that limits your immersion time. Imagine being up to your neck in icy water and not really feeling anything but a coolness around you. Thank science for neoprene!

Well, it was not entirely as magiseaweed predicted. It wasn't "clean" for a start. The waves were breaking upon us in walls of merciless white water, hitting us like giant cricket bats of aquatic force.
My shoulders burned with the exertion of paddling out through them, being knocked back twenty feet with each one and making up the distance with strenuous strokes of my paddle.
And yet, even this onslaught of freezing force, driving ice-cold water into my face and down my neck was not really daunting. A resolve to get "out back" past the white, broken waves to the big green clean ones kept me driving forward.
And my reward: Sitting with my back to the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and looking over my shoulder, I saw a strip of water change colour as its angle reflected the sky differently to the rest of the water. Instinctively, I knew this was going to be a big one. The strip of sea rose into a long parallel ridge moving towards me and shaping itself into a wave and I paddled to where I knew I would need to be to catch it in order for its force to propel me along its top and down its face.

I paddled furiously to match the speed of the approaching wave and felt the back of the kayak begin to rise. I was moving forward but it seemed to be getting away from me! It was too fast! But oh! It was the perfect shape and I was reluctant to let it pass. With a hurculean effort I dug the paddle in and forced myself over its crest and success: Now I was on the front of it, traveling along it, downwards and to the right.

Suddenly, the Universe aligned into a Moment of Perfection: Riding fast, diagonally along and down a perfect half-sinusoid, the wave was breaking behind me, nipping at the back end of the boat and driving me along. To my right, I had the perfect wave, clean, six feet high and with the most beautiful smooth form of moving water. Suddenly, all I could hear was the sound of the boat across the water, like the noise a spoon makes when scooping out sorbet.

In that moment of perfection, I needed to do nothing to control my trajectory. In the tranquility of that instant, I had the freedom to look around me, first at the unbroken wave to my right, and then to the wild white spray on my left. The bright sunshine shone through it and created a breathtaking series of rainbows. This was a peak of existence and to me, nothing on Earth can surpass such perfection.

Before the break reached the whole length of the wave, I decided it was time to get off. I dipped in the paddle and, turning right, hopped over the back of the wave ready to paddle out to the next one.
And thus went the afternoon: Cold, glorious and exhilarating.

After what felt like just under an hour, my hands rebelled and would no longer control the paddle. Given that I was now merely a passive passenger on any wave that chanced to catch me, I decided it was time to go in. I could no longer feel my hands, though my feet seemed still to be my own.
I scooted in on a baby wave and lay spent on the sand and soon, my friend had also had enough.
We walked back to the van with our various toys for a cup of tea and a bowl of chilli. We had been out two and half hours, which had passed like mere minutes. The sea does that to you. In the constant momentary thoughts of "Is this the one? Where should Ibe to catch it?" and "Am I going to stay on here or be tossed about like a ragdoll?", all other thoughts recede. Only the immediate is possible and all else must be pushed out of mind. This is, I believe, why it is so good for you: Thoughts of work and financial woes have no space and must be left at the shore for that period of time. You have a small holiday from worry because every moment, every bit of mental resource is occupied in the task in hand.

It may seem insane when it is so cold to voluntarily immerse oneself in cold water, and perhaps it is a bit eccentric. But it is every bit worth it to experience the highs that nature can provide just by the interaction of fluid mechanics, tide and wind.
And strangely, the cold is part of it. The flooding of the briny water over your face is like a kind of baptism, washing away all the cares of the world which accumilate in one's everyday existence. When you come out of the sea, the hills are pin-sharp, the grass and sky vibrant in colour and gorse bushes on the headland so yellow you can almost taste them.

And so catharsis is attained. Until the serenity is filled with the usual static of modern living. And then, i shall go back and do it all again.

Emotion and reason

It is said that before the emergence of reason, the kind of logic that we do not instictively use but which says things like "if A=B and B=C, then A must equal C", there was a more primitive way of doing things. The original form of reasoning was emotional.

For millions of years of evolution, we relied of how something made us feel to decide what we did and mostly this was a visceral instinctual response rather than a considered one.
And this made sense. When you were a stone age child and your thrown toy spear went into the bushes, if fear of leopards decreed you left it there and did not pursue it, it stayed there. Unless of course someone bigger, braver or more capable decided to retrieve it.
Emotions, in the form of instinct, kept us safe, or rather kept those ancestors who survived to ultimately produce us safe. It kind of works, up to a point.

But then, about 10,000 years ago came civilisation and with it, a whole set of new ways to live. Forests were cut down and the darkness of their gloom banished along with the creatures who inhabited them. Less often did we have to fear the sharp teeth of bitey things and the pouncing of predators.
But the emotions remained. Look into a wood late at night and see what ancient warnings they still issue. This system is still perfectly functioning within us.

And then came trade and organised labour and all those constructs that made us such a successful species, but which required a way of thinking that evaluated our situations with regard to other parameters beyond those of survival. We learned to reason more systematically regarding the use of resource and its deployment. And as a result, ultimately, we have civilisation as we know it today, which is based almost entirely on the fruits of that pinnacle of reason: The Scientific Method. It gives us our food, our transport, our health, and regardless of individual opinions on it, our survival as an abundant species far beyond the Malthusian bounds which should limit our numbers.

But we are still very poor at reasoning. Flaws such as availability error, fundamental attribution error and the sunk cost fallacy all plague our daily decisions. It seems that the older version of decision making, emotions, still dominate since they have helped us through millions of years of tricky evolution and been honed by the process to be the best we could do under non-optimal conditions.
And we have this upstart Reason which has been around in its current form for probably about ten thousand years, though it appears it may have been in operation long before, perhaps when we were a small band of homo sapiens eking out a living in East Africa some 65000 years ago or so. Somebody must have said "Oh look! It's getting really crowded round here and there just isn't enough antelope and tubers to go round. How about some of us head off that way over the horizon? There's bound to be more food over there!" And they did and now there's us.

It is a very useful approach but still contains many flaws that evolution has not had time to iron out (partly because rationality has itself subverted evolution thereby removing many of the pressures that would have seen it refined by ruthless removal of flawed approaches)
So, since reason is new-ish, it hasn't had the bugs ironed out yet, we still "allow" emotions to dominate proceedings even when we are trying to be rational or when they are inappropriate to the modern day with its laws and strictures upon behaviour.

Mostly, I don't have a problem with this (apart from on Saturday nights when aggression given vent by alcohol is rather too revalent around here). Some of my most enjoyable outcomes have been as the result of emotional reasoning. It makes sense to buy this bike as the spec is higher, but I like this other one more so I will buy that. And I did and it was a bloody lovely bike.
But also some of my most stupid and regrettable actions were emotional and in those cases a bit of rational thought could have prevented a significant amount of grief all round. But we are human and this happens.

What strikes me most about emotions, however, is their sheer unpredictability. We cannot know how they will behave under certain situations. It seems that since the process of prediction is predicated upon logical projection of factors in situations, we cannot apply the process to emotions.

For instance: When my father died, we had a lot of warning. As an alcoholic, his downward spiral was only ever going to end one way. We knew this and it took time enough for us to be able regard the outcome with some degree of contemplation. In that time, I often thought about how I would feel when he finally went. I thought I had some idea and that it would be the usual feelings of loss, sadness and bereavement.
However, when it happened, there were a whole load of hitherto unexpected emotions (which I wont go into now since they are somewhat personal and irelevent to the point I am attempting to make). I was astonished at how I felt. Astonishment also was unexpected. It turned out that my predictions of what I would feel were largely wrong. But my emotions seemed to act rather well in my best interest and the blow was softened somewhat by how I felt.

This is one example of a situation where projection of events failed to give an accurate prediction of subsequent emotions. There are more but I think the point does not require further illustration.

But it was a lesson I learned which has not been entirely helpful except to teach me not to try to anticipate how I will feel under certain circumstances, because my expectations will most likely be wrong.

Emotions will do as they will. They had their way for millions of years and will not yield to our bidding now. And, frankly, in general, I am glad they do not. I rather enjoy their rebellious and absolute refusal to be coralled and controlled. It keeps life interesting, as long as we have the wit to acknowledge them and to be wary of their demands on occasion.

Breakfast in Bavaria

Hotel breakfast-room toasters are always inadequate. I have made a study of this all over the world and it is universally true that bread inserted and exposed to their elements for any amount of time will remain resolutely untoasted. This disappoints me more that the tea which is increasingly available in hotels on mainland Europe. The improvements are, presumably as a result of customer complaints, in provision of tea, hot(-enough) water and milk which doesn't taste artificial. A almost-decent cup of tea is now a possibility which I find deeply satisfying.

I am in the Munich Airport Sheraton, where I have been for a few days whilst I conduct some meetings in Augsburg. As hotels go, it does make you feel that it takes you by the ankles and shakes the very money from your pockets. Its not that nice and its quite expensive. But then there is the 14 euro for parking every night and the 20 euro for breakfast. It feels a bit skinflinty to me.

But I am not here to write a hotel review, though I am probably rather well placed to do so, no. Breakfast made me very pensive and I feel the urge to clarify my thoughts here in writing.

Breakfast rooms in hotels always provide much food for thought, as well as the other kind. There is always a variable array of plates, jars and bowls, accompanied by elaborate devices with containers that keep sausages hot, make bacon sweaty and turn scrambled egg to a kind of durable polymer of which shoe soles could possibly be fashioned. I stand at these things still bewildered after several decades of travel, and I still never really know what to have.
At home, I might have porridge most days, done in the microwave and sufficing until my 10:30 sandwich relieves my cycling-induced hunger. But here, faced with such a cornucopia, confusion is induced. As human beings, we really are rather baffled by too much choice, regardless of how desirable a state various economic theories might believe it to be.

So, leaving aside the tedium of what I generally do choose (and its not scrambled egg because not even a hyena's robust digestion could break that down), I turn to the behaviour.

I am sitting at my table, squeezing a small silk tea bag in some tepid water, whilst my toast undergoes its slow transformation to hard, warm bread. A small bald man in business attire, about late thirties, strides in and immediately heads for the cereal. He prepares a bowl of muesli, with milk, 1% Fett and takes it to his table, then he stomps over to the toaster and without pause, pulls my two pieces of pale toast from its slots and casts them carelessly to one side, WITH HIS BARE HANDS! Now, my mother taught me to wash my hands after I go to the toilet, but I know that not everyone had such enlightened parents and I was horrified momentarily that this man has arrogantly exposed me to his germs.
He stands waiting for his "toast" with a air of aggressive possession. I momentarily consider striding over and looming over him to pointedly take my toast. I can loom rather well, I have to admit. There is quite a lot of me. But no, I think, I shall put aside such petty thoughts.

But then he barks a couple of demands at the lovely waitresses and my ire is raised, my goat got.
I decide that either he is a nice man having a bad day, which is always possible, or that he really as unpleasant as my judgmental first impression had decided.
Anyway, I decide to ignore the little shit and get on with my breakfast. I take my toast, butter it, cut it into soldiers as any self-respecting Englishman would and dip one into my quite perfect soft-boiled egg.

The waitress comes over to me to ask for a signiture and beams at me with a lovely genuine smile. She asks inheavily accented Bayrisch-flavoured Deutsch if I have all I need and I reply that I am very satisfied, thank you.

And I wonder suddenly why some people are lovely to those they encounter every day, and some are unpleasant and intolerant. I am aware of the the G B Shaw quote about all progress being made by the unreasonable man, but I am prepared to forego a little progress for politeness sake.
The waitress sweeps away gracefully and I confess I give in to an urge to appraise the cut of her uniform as she walks to the desk. But even in this, her sunny disposition is apparent and contrasting to our little Napoleon with his scowl and bad grace.

It seems to me that being polite, pleasant, "nice", is a much better way to approach the world. Ok, we all have days that bring us circumstances that we would prefer to be otherwise and sometimes this is aggravating. But when we talk respectfully to people, ask them in a civilised manner for those things we want from them and generally go through the world noticing the happy things and responding accordingly, the World seems generally well-disposed to us.
And I wonder that some don't see this connection, this cause-and-effect, and continue to be curmudgeonly and critical with every comment and every interaction. Its better for your immune system (due to the production of nasty cortisol that results from aggravation) and in general just a better way to be.

So, with this in mind, I tidy up my hotel room prior to leaving, such that the cleanig staff have a minimum of work to do to rectify the chaos of my stay.

And I bid you all a sincere and heartfelt Good Day!

Except for our little Napoleon who I hope gets painfully egg-bound as punishment for his grumpiness.

...And then suddenly, Home Again!

After nearly twelve hours of recuperative sleep, I seem to have some brain function back again. You can't really sleep on an aeroplane as the noise tends to keep those circuits in your brain that remain vigilant to threat, permanently on-guard. Sleep works in cycles of about four hours and any period of sleep shorter than that does not see you complete the full, necessary cycle of stages.
So, when I arrived at my hotel, this was the view:
And when I awoke next morning, this is what was revealed when the curtains were drawn back.I cannot express how glorious this view was. The camera really cannot do it justice. The distant Rocky Mountains shining in the morning sunlight were utterly breathtaking (though so was walking up stairs in that thin air). Their jagged ruggedness was softened to pink by the sunrise. It really was quite spectacular and imprinted itself upon my memory almost as vividly as on the CCD of the camera.
However, I would rather forget. The road journey up to Boulder...

And now I am home. And it is still somehow in my head. A day or so later I reflect upon this odd modern phenomenon of long-haul travel, making a journey of months into a tedious but relatively short "hop" across the World.

It seems in hindsight like the vastness of distance through which I traveled to get home from Denver was crossed in an instant. The mind is a bit like that: It tends to shorten times in which little happened (if you can call flying 5000 miles "little" but in truth, little took place in those ten hours or so.).
But in reality, it was a rather uncomfortable and tedious time spent mostly in a huge aluminium cyclinder.
Another idiosyncrasy is the clarity with which the view in front of my eyes at this time 36 hours ago can be called to mind as clearly as if I could walk to the curtains now, pull them aside and gaze out upon the mountains again. Probably this will fade in time, but for now I am grateful to retain this vista in my head, maintaining the horizon in my head the way a pair of boot-stretchers keep your footwear open sufficiently to still get your feet in after a time of neglect.

Today, I look out upon the soft, gentle scarp of the South Gloucestershire Cotswolds and very beautiful it is too. It is a reminder that beauty comes in different forms and familiarity seems to be the arbiter in general of which one we consider the most beautiful at any particular moment.
A useful thought if ever I bumped into one early on a Saturday morning.

Reprise: A Hot Night In Dusseldorf

I was sure this blog entry was still posted but I was reminded of it last night whilst unable to ignore the sounds of passion in an adjacent room in this hotel. It put me in mind of a similar experience I had whilst in Dusseldorf a few years ago, which I shall now recount, since the original post seems to have disappeared.

I was in Dusseldorf in a small hotel down a quiet and pleasant backstreet. My room was minimalist: chrome-steel, glass, white walls, poster pictures of poppies.
I hadn't done very much that evening. I had mooched down by the river, had a couple of beers in the biergarten and eaten a passable steak.

And now it was bedtime. Amazingly, it was warm and I had to open the window to let in some fresh air. The scents of early summer wafted in and kindled a myriad of interesting and exciting atmospheres inside me in various places. My limbic system was havign a field day on the unconscious recognition of links to childhood summers, adolescent tumblings and the excitement of exploration of adult holidays.

I read my book. It was an interesting book about various complicated relationships but mostly about a troubled young man and his father. I prefer books about relationships, especially when the author is perceptive enough of feelings to set out the nuances of interplay between people or within themselves. It is so much more interesting to read than exciting plots or action sequences. Tension can be built from emotions as well as from events.

And so, after a few chapters, I started feeling sleepy. So, I put my book down and turned off the light. Thats when it started:
"Ohhh.. Gott! Ohhhhh!!!" A female voice from next door.
"Hmm.." I thought "A lucky couple on this summer's night! I quite empathise with the feeling!" Warm summer weather does have the effect of kindling the passions I find.
I felt suddenly very alone, restless and incredibly envious of them in their intimacy.

And so it went on, noisily and passionately from the room next door. And on.. and on...
And I thought "Crikey! That bloke has some stamina! That must be over an hour now!"
Then it subsided. For a while. Until: "Ohhh!! Jaaaaa!!"

Another hour or so....
I wondered what manner of superman was in the next room! I tried to picture him. Was he some kind of Ron Jeremy, all hugely endowed and moustachioed? Was is some cool young stud, muscular, lithe and smiling smugly whilst in complete control of the situation?

This was impossible! No man could go on pleasuring a woman that long! Its physically unfeasable! And she must surely be wearing thin after these hours!
My mind skirted away, vaguely intimidated by what it pictured and eventually I fell asleep to the groans and moans and hyena-like howls.

In the morning, bleary eyed, I dressed and went down to breakfast. The girl was coming out of her room with not a shred of embarrassment, but a lightness of step (I thought she must surely be walking like John Wayne after that!) and a huge smile. No hint of tiredness could be perceived in her expression.
She shot me a confident but perfunctory "Morgen" before turning and walking down the corridor. She looked cute, about 25, jeans, white linen shirt. No sex goddess but certainly very comfortable in her own skin.

At breakfast, she sat on the other side of the room from me and I waited eagerly to see who would accompany her. Obviously, whoever it was deservedly, was having a lie-in.
And then her partner appeared.

I was struck firstly by the statuesque nature of the breasts as she entered the room. She saw her lover and beamed. Over she went to the elfin girl and sat down . They kissed a short but affectionate kiss.
And that is when, for a moment, I decided:
It must be good to be a woman.