Madeira

In a bid to find quick relaxation from two busy jobs we have been to Malta/Gozo a lot over the last twenty years. It didn't have to be there but it became somewhere we knew. We didn't have to work too hard to chill, if you understand me. Since we retired, holiday is probably better described simply as time away.

Which also means that time away doesn't have to be relaxing any more. We both love reading books outdoors near water so that wasn't likely to be abandoned. And we like the warmth of the sun. But a little exploring might be OK, mightn't it?

Many people had spoken highly of Madeira over the years so we decided to check it out for ourselves and have just returned from a very pleasant visit.

Picture 1: tunnels and flyovers

If your first thought on arrival is why the airport is stuck out on the edge of the eastern coast where it is always windy wait until you see the rest of the island and work out where you would have put it. Apparently the runway used to be a lot shorter too. Very hairy.

Some amazing engineering projects have made the journey from the airport to the major city, Funchal, just 30 minutes. See first image.

It's a tough job to find a bad meal in Madeira. The ones included as part of day trips are a bit ordinary but otherwise all was good. Most little restaurants do good things with fish, especially the scabbard fish (dorada) although they serve it with banana if you don't look out. A trip to the Funchal fish market (commended) early doors will show you how ugly the sea things that taste lovely are.

One little sea front restaurant was a decent walk along the coast for us but we did it twice. Doca do Cavacos at Sao Martinho was our favourite place. Grilled squid, sardines and tuna were delicious. Or you can risk grilled catch of the day on a skewer. Probably not worth asking for a dessert anywhere. They aren't good at them and are liberal with cheap chocolate sauce which devastated an almost pleasant tiramisu. Have a starter and you'll not need a pudding. Cheap café pizza and beer is easy and the local bread (bolo do caco) is good (watch out for garlic and spring onions you didn't order). If asked whether you want bread in a restaurant you are agreeing to pay for it when you say yes. It is rarely complimentary. Likewise water.

If you want a Michelin standard meal then book well before you set off. All were full. We didn't go to the famous old colonial establishments but the buzz was that they had lost their way a bit. Lá Ao Fundo in Funchal is a Mozambique/Portuguese fusion restaurant (we were told) which they achieved by offering some  dishes from each country. Not that fused and a bit average, apart from the desserts which were actually great. My crème brûlée was blowtorched at the table, smoking out the neighbours.

Picture 2: maturing Madeira wine

Madeira is famous for cake and fortified wine. On Madeira cake everyone seems to have the guaranteed original recipe (like the way Bakewellians compete about the recipe for the one true pudding/tart). All are OK but don't keep well. Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata) are pretty common in the UK coffee shops now. Several people will tell you where to get the best ones but in our experience they were all pretty similar. Coffee is very strong. Have a glass of water alongside.

There are a couple of good wineries where you can be guided through the fortified process to produce Madeira. We went to Blandy's in Funchal where the smell of 700,000 litres of maturing wine was overwhelming (image 2). I'm out of picture in the corner, smelling the pillars soaked with wine vapour for 200 years. Blandy's Madeira is available at Waitrose.

Sugar cane juice rum is distilled on the island. I enjoyed a tasting very much and had a snooze on the journey back while my passengers screamed in terror (© Bob Monkhouse).

Picture 3: sculpture

Sightseeing is easy and we commend island day trips in a minibus. For Є50 you get a tour of the west or east of the island including a lunch with decent stopovers for coffee, swim, photos or a short walk. 

There are many nice gardens. The one at
Monte, accessed best by cable car from Funchal, is good. It currently includes an exhibition of Zimbabwean and Malawian sculpture (image 3). The Madeira National Botanical Gardens is better known but there are several better gardens in the UK, just not so far up a mountain. Best bits were the view points. We took a taxi up (Є12) and walked back down which made our calf muscles ready for lunch.

Maderia is hugely popular with walkers. Levadas are human-made water channels for irrigation. We did one short walk to a terrifying view/drop. The paths are alongside the water ditches. Farmers pay for the water by the hour and sluice gates are opened to release the mountain stream water. Vines, sugar, bananas and other crops are grown on flattened terraces 

Picture 4: dockside art

on the south facing hills.

At the top of one of the highest points, accessible by car, we were 'entertained' by Peruvian panpipers. The view was better than the vibe. Quiet would have been best.

A stroll round Funchal involves dodging the bar and café owners who want your custom. It is a buzzy cosmopolitan place. There is great street art on the doorways in east town but many of these become restaurants and the art vanishes behind the open doors. Visit early or late to enjoy. The dockside has a mural dedicated to every boat that has moored up (image 4).

Churches and cathedrals are ornate, colourful and often surrounded by beggars. The Jesuit church in Funchal is exceptionally fine. Nearby is a Museum of Sacred Art but we've seen a lot of that so we avoided. The next door café is cracking and does craft ale.

The Museum of Modern Art (MAMMA) to the west of Funchal has a massive 14 room installation on the theme of life's journey. 300 plus pieces are crammed together leaving the thought of whether we find life so over-stimulating we miss the big questions. Є10 for a provocative hour or so.

We were there a fortnight and had a great time. There were enough things we didn't do to want to revisit. I also read seven books.

Warwickshire

I was born in Warwickshire. Some time during my early years I found myself in the West Midlands without moving house. I was given a post-code - B29 7HW. But I've always been a child of Warwickshire in my own eyes. I now live in Worcestershire but Warwickshire is 400 metres down the road. If I look poorly I've asked to be carried across the border.

I think, even by my standards, that reviewing a book published in 1936 is leaving it a bit late. But Warwickshire, in The King's England series merits a chat. I'm glad to have it because it feels like the sort of book that ends up on a pub bookshelf as decoration when the place gets post-modernised. Now it's a £3 investment in my rescue library.

This was a book I found in the wonderful Malvern Bookshop and, although I won't be reading it cover to cover, I will make a point of looking up every local place I visit. Why? Well a few examples will help but first let us see how it ended up in my house because it bears the evidence of having been a library book.

The proprietor told me that she often bought up collections so closed-down libraries were a key source. She was such a book buff that she kept behind the counter a book full of lovely sketch illustrations of dogs, 'I will only sell it to someone who promises not to remove the pictures and sell them separately', she told me. I don't know what the staining is on the inside cover page of my book and will not be finding out.

The copy I have is a 1950 reprint. I don't know if you can, offhand, think of anything that made a substantial difference to the appearance of Warwickshire towns and cities between 1936 and 1950 but the author could. Then chose to ignore it. Which, to be fair, is what makes the text zing. Every visit to a Luftwaffe drop-zone with this text reminds you of what the place used to look like. 

Let us head to Coventry. Or maybe the wonders of the clean air and dust-free buildings turn your thoughts to the Med? Did I say buildings? What buildings? It wasn't desirable to note that they are now missing.

But I am a child of Selly Oak. (My mother now pipes up from the grave reminding us, because she was a dreadful snob about this sort of thing, that I came from Selly Park, not Selly Oak.) Whatever, I have to say I failed to notice that I was in '...one of the wonderful intellectual centres of England.' I had to walk half a mile into Edgbaston to get to one of the best schools in the country. And Selly Oak library warrants an illustration, although it is not of the building I remember which was black (from coal dust, probably), austere and next to a railway bridge.

The discussion of Selly Oak Colleges goes on the suggest that there is a possibility of a drinking vessel used at the last Supper being there. This interesting argument is slightly skewered by the inscription of the words of Jesus at that event on the goblet. Indiana Jones not heading our way.

My late Aunty Brenda was fond of saying 'I'm just going up the village' when she left the house to go to Selly Oak. It strikes me as a folk memory from a time before Birmingham came out and swallowed it, moving on in pursuit of Northfield, Rednal and Rubery

Although my favourite hard-to-visualise is the comparison of Sutton Coldfield's Parade with the famous Richmond in Surrey. Famous for being on-Thames I recall. Sutton what are you like? You misplaced the river.

I will be returning for further volumes.

Silbury Hill

I like to read a local book when staying away from home. It's a habit I began about twenty years ago when I happened to read Captain Corelli's Mandolin on a Mediterranean island and, even though it was the wrong island, the book came alive.

We've been staying a few miles down the road from home, in Castle Combe; proof positive that you don't have to get away far to get away. In a bookshop in nearby Corsham I asked the friendly proprietor what to read. I wanted something that wasn't a guide book but was good writing, evocative of the area. She gave me a fine selection but On Silbury Hill by Adam Thorpe stood out. It has been an amazing companion; a metaphysical, biographical introduction to the area known as the Wiltshire Downlands covering six millennia of history from Neolithic times.

We went to Avebury and Silbury Hill. As Adam Thorpe (almost the same age as me) recalls his Marlborough College school-days so I recalled my own, not least because in about 1967 I came there on a school trip.

To be fair I can remember only one incident clearly from the trip. Walking from what was probably then the coach park to the hill we were approaching a gate and Max Oates ran at it and cleared it in, what I later found out was actually called, a gate-vault. Max arrived at King Edwards (a place that gave an experience not unlike Marlborough but was not a boarding school and thus reduced the bullying hours somewhat) as a highly proficient gymnast and diver. My reaction, as one who had been convinced that getting into King Edwards was a verdict on my all-round genius, was 'Why can't I do that?' It was one of the first of many steps to realising that in order to really get on you have to be more than a smart kid. I grew up in a big old house but it was rundown and we had little money for much of my school-days.  I got a free place through the entry examination. But I hadn't had gym classes, diving lessons or the pushy parents to lead me to young specialism. Indeed I spent my secondary school days trying out every new opportunity and moving on. Fives, squash, hockey, rugby, cricket, tennis - I never settled, always looking wistfully over my shoulder at the sacrifice of going to a school that thought rugby football was the only type of football worth playing. I also had undiagnosed asthma, which meant my shortness of breath when running was treatable (and eventually was, aged 24) but I merely thought I wasn't very good at it and kept trying harder.

Silbury Hill is an enigma. The conclusion of most experts, after two to three hundred years of modern archaeology, is that they don't know what it is. It is a thirty metre high mound in the middle of a huge natural downland amphitheatre. It is the largest human-made mound in the world and is near the largest standing stone circle in the world. The secret it has revealed is that it was human-made over a couple of  hundred years and has at least twelve cycles of layering. It reminds me of a a cairn where every newcomer places a stone. Except that generations have placed huge layers of chalk, turf and sandstone without, or at least without us being able to tell, if of any of them had the first idea of what the point was.

So today it just sits there, next to a busy road. Visitors are not allowed to climb because of erosion although we saw two do so during our brief visit. They would have had to squeeze through a gap, ignore two notices and climb a fence so I guess they knew what they were doing. Walking a mile away to West Kennet Long Barrow the Silbury Hill becomes small - looks like a spoil heap in the wrong place.

The Standing Stones, Barrow and Hill are accessible without paying. It has managed to resist becoming the downlands visitor experience although there is some of that in the museum and nearby Avebury Manor and Gardens (National Trust). Otherwise local agriculture simply lives and works alongside.

On a grey February day the place conjured up all sorts of alternative thoughts. It's not what some theologians call a 'thin place'. I felt it was a full place. When we don't know what something means everyone has a go at defining it. It's become somewhere with too much meaning - none of it that helpful. It's a reminder of people keeping their eyes on something bigger, grander and out there. A striving for meaning. A desire that the point of all this be something other than my own self-actualisation. Which is, at the very minimum, what the Christian Gospel does; it anchors the truth elsewhere.

Avebury and Silbury change your vision by looking at the work of people who bothered to change their horizon. The lack of clarity about why they did it leaves their work as the record of a universal question.

The book is a knowledegable friend on the same journey.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol an hour ago:

One of the ideas most commonly used by members of the Christian community for their experience is that of a journey.

I am here. And I want to get there.

I was looking for something and I found it.

We have just celebrated Easter, the culmination of Jesus' journey and the promise of resurrection. A final destination if ever there was one.

It is true, of course, that at the time the Bible was written, journeys were complicated. The fastest you could get anywhere was on the back of an animal. A trip of ten miles needed planning. If it required walking then there and back took a day.

Today we can get Chinese food to take away and vaccines to cure illnesses - all in the seeming blink of an eye. Isn't it interesting that so many of our stories on the show this morning are about journeying? Taxis to get home from the railway station. Bus or rail links to the airport. And yet those we call 'travellers' find themselves with a bad reputation.

What can we conclude?

Well when I was a child I was impatient. 'Are we nearly there yet?' the rear-passenger chorus line.

When I was a young adult I thought I had arrived and knew everything.

Now I'm getting on I realise that I probably won't change the world but I can make a difference and I don't have to rush.

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was right when he said 'Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.'

Which is me finished and left with a day's journey to two school assemblies in an hour's time. Isn't progress great?

Jonathan Raban

A recent interview in the Guardian told me something that I had feared - Jonathan Raban has been ill. In fact the piece chronicles his recovery from a very serious stroke in 2011.

I have taken my time reading through the Raban catalogue. Part of this may be that the idea of reaching a point where there will be no more Raban to read fills me with pain.

Some people are universally acknowledged as great authors; they often receive awards and prizes. Raban has had his share of such.

My connection started with a review. The review in a newspaper in 1999 was so enthusiastic I felt I had to order it at once in hardback. I did and read half of it over the next few nights, before sleep. Then I decided it was too good to read that way. It needed to be finished uninterrupted and not tired - preferably sitting by the sea. I did that.

Passage to Juneau is a travel book, the story of Raban repeating a yacht journey from Seattle to Juneau in Alaska, reading and reflecting on the works and diaries about the journey along the way and encountering people as he sought harbour. It was also a commentary on where he was with his relationships and a marriage coming to an end. But mostly, it was a series of sentences every one of which was better than any sentence I have ever managed. It was a writer's book. A book for people who like to write. In the company of writers I can read about almost anything. Even boats and travel.

I discovered the huge back catalogue of Raban's writings from the jacket. It was a 'Why did nobody tell me?' moment.

I chose a work of fiction next - Surveillance. Again it was an experience of great writing. It was a giant metaphor for the way, in post 9/11 USA, everybody was watching each other suspiciously. It was still relatively early in the days when prospective dates googled each other.

It was a story about journalism, secrets and relationships. I loved it.

And currently I am reading Driving Home, which is a collection of Raban's journalism in newspaper and magazine. It includes reviews of books, people and places.

You mean that's it? Indeed. So why am I writing about an author of whom I have read two and a half books? Well, it's so you get to start earlier than me. And also because of a sentence in Driving Home. Some context.

I have never heard of, nor read anything by, William Gaddis. And, in effect, the piece Raban wrote for the New York Review of Books called At Home in Babel in 1994 tells me not to bother. Speaking of two Gaddis novels Raban says:

'Scaling The Recognitions and JR, one keeps coming on the remains of earlier readers who lost their footing and perished in the assent.'

Gaddis is going to be tough going. And with other authors this sentence is cruel. In Raban's hands it is an invitation. He goes on to extract the juice from the best of Gaddis' work in such a way as to leave the Raban reader thinking they might dare become a Gaddis reader. Because Raban is, and I think this is the point, a generous writer. He writes to find the good, the best, in people, places, journeys and books. If Jonathan Raban will hold my hand I, not much of a traveller, can journey.

So even though I am new to him and inexperienced I hope he lives long enough to write so much more that, if I read slowly enough I will never run out. I think that's a prayer.

Ribble Valley

We found ourselves in the very beautiful Ribble Valley. Sorry, that sounded like an accident. We meant to go there. It is a part of the country we don't know very well.

In the past we've done North Yorkshire Moors, Teesdale, Weardale, Lake District, Lancashire coast and many major northern towns and cities. It feels like we have got this part of the world surrounded without ever having entered. I did do a few training events at Whalley (pronounced Warley) over the years but never explored.

We were just down the road from Clitheroe. The Aspinall Arms at Great Mitton became a firm favourite. The Tolkien walk around the rivers Calder, Hodder and Ribble, passing Stonyhurst College, was excellent. Allegedly JRR worked on the Rings Trilogy here and named/described some places he knew locally. We got to know Booths supermarket. Their bags were the product of an excellent slogan-writer's mind - Cumbria not Umbria; Wuthering Bites.

Further afield we visited to the north of Morecambe Bay - Arnside and Silverdale - from where I took the panorama photo here.

Lovely autumn colours and not too cold yet. Great break.

Brain Malfunctions

Memes. Brain-wiring. All very fascinating. Slightly tragic too as I watch my Mum's dementia-affected brain become unwired but, as avid readers of #mumwatch will testify, not without its amusing interludes.

It can, of course be annoying. Only slightly so when, for instance, you turn to put away a piece of kitchen equipment in the place where it lived in a former house. You chuckle, say 'durr' and get on with life.

Talking of former houses, I lived in Leamington Spa for fourteen years. File this away, it will be helpful. It was ten years ago mind. I should be used to my new home.

Last Friday I visited an old friend in London. It was a lovely time. One of those occasions when you carry on as if nothing has happened even though you have not seen each other for ten years or so. I was glad to have done it and, travelling back, looked forward to an evening at home on the sofa. (I got this. There is no unhappy ending here. Relax.)

My friends live on the Bakerloo Line. Sitting in the carriage I looked up at the routeboard and counted the number of stops to my destination. Nine. I got my book out. After eight I put my book down, got my stuff together, did up my coat and alighted.

I followed the network rail signs and found myself at the mainline station but, looking up at the departure board, could not see the 4.30 to the West Country. Weird. Come to think of it I didn't recognise the station as the one I had been at that morning.

Because it wasn't.

So what had gone wrong? Let's go back to, 'Sitting in the carriage I looked up at the routeboard and counted the number of stops to my destination. Nine.'

My eyes had failed to get beyond the ninth stop because it was Marylebone. Marylebone, the station I used for fourteen years to get home from London when I lived in, you guessed it, Leamington Spa. Trains to Nailsea depart from Paddington. Which was eleven not nine.

Now you may find it helpful to know that if you allow a little extra time for a journey because of STUFF THAT HAPPENS, then it will still be 22 minutes before your train departs from two further stops up the Bakerloo line and this is plenty of time to buy another ticket, catch the tube and get off at the right stop. I caught the 4.30 from Paddington with time to spare. I could probably have walked between the stations in that time too.

But it is amazing how easily we can misdirect ourselves. Head-space. It's all smoke and mirrors in there.

Counties

I'm a sucker for a travel book about my own country. Having a great pride at being English, yet basically no idea what that means, has left me an enthusiastic explorer and reader.

My essential reading list, avoiding weighty tomes and text book feel, would be:

Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea (1983)
Bill Bryson - Notes from a Small Island (1995)
Jeremy Paxman - The English (1998)
Simon Jenkins - A Short History of England (2012)

To which I now add my current enjoyment, pictured, as Matthew Engel offers a chapter on each of the English counties. I was born in Warwickshire but then found out I lived in the West Midlands, without moving house. Annoying. Still irritated.

It has started a little head game which you might like to join in with. What is the first word that comes into your head when you hear each county name? Some of them just don't bring anything to mind. Many are food. For what it is worth here is my list:

Bedfordshire Luton
Berkshire downs
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire university
Cheshire cats
Cornwall pasty
Cumberland sausage
Derbyshire dales
Devon cream
Dorset blue
Durham town
Essex girls
Gloucestershire old spot
Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire accidents hardly ever happen
Kentish man
Lancashire hotpot
Leicestershire Tigers
Lincolnshire poacher
Middlesex Lords
Norfolk broads
Northamptonshire cobblers
Oxfordshire dons
Shropshire blue
Somerset brie
Staffordshire bull terrier
Suffolk punch
Surrey trees
Sussex
Warwickshire
Wiltshire
Worcestershire sauce
Yorkshire pudding

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

From a very early age I can recall having a profound sense of gratitude that I lived in England. I meet, and respect, people with the travel bug - but I don't have it. I like it here and have to be dragged abroad for holidays where insects bite and the sun burns.

England's not too hot and not too cold so the colour of the landscape is green and pleasant. Not too frozen; not too scorched.

It's not too high and not too low so most of it is habitable and little of it floods. Yes Somerset, I know some of it does.

That temperature again means we have few dangerous critters or wild animals that try to kill, poison or infect you.

And we have good management of potential health hazards. It's a sanitary country.

Natural disasters are few and far between - hurricanes, tornadoes, becoming snowbound or forest fires are all pretty unusual.

Last night I was listening to the candidates for election to Parliament in my constituency set out their arguments. I remind myself that democracy is not a privilege all enjoy. I can disagree with the authorities without being jailed for dissent.

We celebrate food heroes because many of us live with a choice of meal.

So a respectful moment's thought, and perhaps a prayer, for those who have lost their homes, or friends, in earthquakes. For those who are threatened with death if they don't change their faith. For those who have no choice about their leaders.

We are lucky. Some might say blessed. And along with that comes a God-given duty to share. We should respond in gratitude. When you have a chance to give to relieve suffering, try and be generous.

Thought for the Day

As delivered today at BBC Radio Bristol, a day when the six month anniversary of an eloping to Syria was being remembered and also the engineering work on utilising the hot springs under Bath to heat the Abbey was being discussed:

Have you ever felt a compulsion to travel? An inner voice you could not ignore?

My Bible is full of people who heard a voice which they identified as God-inspired to go places. Amos from Judah to Israel. Philip to the Gaza desert road; Paul and Luke to Macedonia. There are other examples.

It may depend how you respond to foreign news? Are they the pages of the newspaper you skip? When BBC Radio Bristol talks about Syria how do you feel?

It is perfectly possible to be interested in the rest of the world without wanting to leave home. But clearly some people have the travel bug and some don't.

My younger son and his girlfriend have it. They see their working lives as a way of funding their journeys. India, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam and Japan - all done. Yesterday they returned from Morocco.

These days almost all news from around the world is with us in an instant. Terrorism relies on that. It makes me a nervous father when they are away.

So, on hearing stories of ISIS, of Ebola, of famine or strife, some feel a compulsion to go and help or join in; others to stay and pray; still others turn to the sports pages.

On a day when we discuss the application of progress to the work of some heating engineers who travelled over from Rome to Bath a couple of millennia ago, maybe we should stop and think.

Our world is very much more joined-up than it used to be. Which gives us the opportunity of caring about what happens to people we may never meet. Do you?

Stress

I get pretty stressed about train travel. It is meant to be relaxing but I find a drive along the motorway with Radio on incredibly relaxing.

Today, having gone through the rigmarole of booking online and collecting tickets from the station in order to pop over to Paddington to have lunch with my boys, I found that my train was nine minutes late 'Due to the sheer number of passengers.' A Friday in December off-peak. Who could have predicted?

Then I found that two of us had been reserved the same seat, and as the other person had got on at Exeter I lost. I told the guard whose reaction,'It's computerised, that shouldn't happen' didn't even come close to an apology.

Fifteen minutes late for a short enough time with family as it was and then the Circle Line train I needed was cancelled without explanation.

This relaxing privilege cost £80. My car would have cost about £25 plus tube or four hours Central London parking and congestion charge.

On the way back the train was punctual and packed.

No-one checked my outward ticket at all. I needed the return to get through the barrier at Paddington but it was not checked on the train or on alighting.

Lunch and Tate Britain with my sons was good however.

Day Off in Poshland

It is quite a long time since I found myself in a library at a different town using a strange computer to access the internet. I think internet cafes may be consigned to history soon, replaced by wi-fi and personal devices. Hard to believe I am feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for the internet cafe.

Witney is a strange little town. It is quite prosperous, although you might expect this for the Prime Minister's constituency. Away from the market town main street there are a couple of shopping centres, both clone town specials but one Crew/Monsoon/M&S and a showcase type cinema next to a Franky and Bennys, the other Robert Dyas, W.H Smiths and Cargo.

Found a belting little cafe for a full English breakfast and coffee. Bit pricey but atmosphere bang on right down to the 1980s Dire Straits, Z Z Top and Depeche Mode sound-track.

Have bought three books and three T-shirts and now, by the wonders of social media, may be meeting an old friend for a drink at lunch-time.

I had forgotten what a good thing it is to get out of town on my day off. It is also cheaper, although involving an early start, if I join my wife on a jaunt to wherever she is going. This is what I have done today and can enjoy being a complete stranger in town wandering about a bit.

The staff at the library have been very welcoming to a stranger and have logged me on easily, free and without question. I love my country sometimes.

Tonight we are meeting up with other friends from around the country, this time in Oxford, to have a meal and a drink and then see Milton Jones at the New Theatre. Hoping for a bit of amusement to start my holiday week.

I don't know quite why it is but I often seem to find that my phone, looking alive and healthy first thing in the morning, often turns out to need re-charging on a day when I am out and about without a charger. This is one of those days. I have a spare charger in my car and two in my study. None with me and not my car today either.

I found an M and Co (previously Mackays) who sell T-shirts I like. They were priced at £7 but on a display saying reduced to £5. When I came to pay there was 20% off making the bill £12. It is not the first time this has happened at this store. They need a policy, a bit like selling travel, of working out how much people are prepared to pay and taking that off them. I like these T-shirts and would probably have paid £25 for three.

Still, I then bought three books at about £8 each and it seems to me that books are worth twice as much as T-shirts so that is a bit of a result for small town economics.

My breakfast was massive and continues to satisfy me so it could be a no lunch just a pint day. Brilliant.

To err is human but to really get on your tits it takes Network Rail

So I had to take my little black VW Polo hire car back to Enterprise. Good firm, good car and good service by the way. Rather than have someone follow me the easiest thing to do was to drop the car off at 10.00 and take a gentle stroll to Parson Street Station to catch the 10.29 to Nailsea. It is an unstaffed station with no announcements or computer screens although you can press a button to hear news.

The 10.29 was a no show. Button pressing gave us (the four potential passengers) the information that it was 18 minutes late. It didn't show at 10.47 so we pressed again. 28 minutes late was the news this time, not bad for a ten minute journey.

Someone phoned the helpline to be told the next train was the 11.29. The 10.29 had now been cancelled. I made a few calls to ascertain the phone numbers of the people I needed to call to say I was going to be late. This included my builders who had managed, during the short time I was away, to lock themselves out of the house. I told them to get a key from the neighbour, which they did, so if you want to break into my house just ask my neighbour for the key. I think my builders have become well known in my street this last three weeks since few of my co-residents have had their lives undisrupted.

I relaxed to read the paper when a train arrived at 11.02. I asked the conductor if it was going to stop at Nailsea and she replied in the affirmative. I got on and then phoned all the people I had rearranged appointments with to re-rearrange them.

My day is back on schedule, my car quota is down to one, my builders are building in the sun and God is in his heaven. Thank you. I feel better now.

Adventures on a Train

I've been between cars for a week now and the public transport thing has been doing me good. Today I had to get to Abingdon for noon. Abingdon is one of the bigger towns not to have its own station so I opted for Didcot Parkway and a bus.

At Nailsea and Backwell I was in good time and able to help a couple of women who were totally baffled by the ticket machine. They were articulate, intelligent and infrequent travellers. The stumbling blocks were:

1. How to buy more than one ticket. They couldn't find the button although they were probably not looking for the words 'additional passengers.'

2. How to pay. They failed to notice that the card reader has its own screen.

Still, we all survived and the train was punctual. The women alighted at Bath, a place Great Western Rail still calls Bath Spa, and I got to my change at Swindon as expected. The 1056 to Didcot Parkway was showing as 'on time' so all was well. At 1055 the departure board changed to 'delayed' and an announcer slurred his way through the news that there had been a power failure west of Swindon and he would keep us informed. My bus journey to Abingdon had to become a taxi ride.

We were told that the power failure was massive. Someone mentioned a landslide (I love rumours) and another a cable theft. This latter turned out to be true. We were never told how long the delay would be but at 1130ish were informed that a train on Platform 1 would be going to Paddington and stopping at Didcot so a load of us crossed over.

An announcement then told us not to get on the train at Platform 1 because it was out of service and the next train would be in as soon as that one had been moved. Then we were told our train was approaching Platform 3 after all and we all headed back (quite a crowd by now) ending up face-to-face with those who had only slowly responded to the news to change from 3 to 1.

Eventually we all got on and arrived in Didcot only 40 minutes late. A taxi made up some time. Only fifteen minutes late for my appointment.

Apparently it was a wire theft at Wootton Bassett.

I've had a good run of trains recently but my last two journeys have been dreadful.

A Nomadic People

I write a regular piece for Urban Saints as part of their excellent Energize material for youth and children's groups. If you haven't come across it I do commend it to you.

The particular thing I do is to produce a study based on an item in the news. Although you will need to subscribe to get the full benefit, you can browse the site. Recent studies have been on riots, Libya, Egypt, that Royal wedding and the Japanese tsunami. Topical stuff.

Last week they asked me to do some thinking on the Dale Farm eviction. That is the slightly surreal story of the travellers who want to stay where they are.

I do not want to steal my own thunder but just to say that the biblical material was fascinating. What right have any of us got, if we place our citizenship in heaven, to say we have arrived anywhere? We are all nomads. We have been ever since Abram heard God tell him to go somewhere else. We are a pilgrim people descended from a pilgrim people. So although from time to time some settle down and stay put others continue on missionary journeys.

Some members of the Dale Farm community have probably broken some laws, or done somethings without formal permission. Basildon Council doesn't exactly come out of the affair smelling of roses though.

The fewer travellers there are the rarer the land, in a densely populated country, on which they might make their temporary home. There's the rub.

Hymn to Newport

Absolutely love this video. Thanks Richard for the link.

Japanese Traditional Theatre

Nothing quite prepares you for kabuki, one of the three styles of Japanese traditional theatre. I imagine in the same way that nothing would quite prepare a foreigner for pantomime. We did have the benefit of an English commentary (not translation) via an ear-piece but it was still one of the most inaccessible things I have ever experienced. And strangely, hauntingly, beautiful.

These images are of the theatre in Ginza. We had tickets for an afternoon performance. Performances last for up to five hours but the audience tend to come and go, pop off for something to eat or bring their own feast. This is not considered rude. In Japan I was, at five foot ten, somewhat of a giant and so the 90 minutes we did, with my knees almost touching my jaw, were plenty long enough.

In kabuki there are a number of standard works, a bit like the classical theatre canon in the UK. The play we saw was about a samurai being stirred from retirement to go and take revenge for a friend's death.

Costumes are elaborate and expensive. Movements are deliberate and slow. Black clad stage assistants run on from time to time to move props or help with the action. When one of the actors had to drop a child an assistant was standing behind to take the infant and lower it slowly to the floor. All parts are played by men. The language is an ancient text, difficult to follow even for those familiar with the tongue. Our Japanese-speaking hosts could only pick out a few words. The play also has a narrator who sings atonally against the contra-clash of a stringed, lute-like instrument. I am running out of language here. The audience appreciate the way certain movements are carried out and some lines delivered. At the entrances of the more famous stars they yell out that person's stage name as an appreciation.

I'm glad I can say I have experienced it.

Transport in Japan

It's hard to be fully prepared for the east-meets-west experience of Japan. You can read about it but it's so much more.

In this first shot we were sitting in a Costa-like coffee shop in central Tokyo, watching the western-dressed, ethnically mixed passers by, the flashing neon signs mainly in English and the cars driving on the left. We could have been in Regent Street. Go into one of the shops and the quality of the greeting, the tidiness of the place and the appearance of the staff leave you in no doubt this is another world. And that's before anyone opens their mouths to thank you for visiting.

Despite the press suggestion, not everyone wears a face mask in urban Tokyo. About one in twenty do, I'd say. This is less to do with the air quality and more to do with avoiding hay-fever (bad at blossom time). It is also about not spreading germs if you have a cold. It is a courtesy. One of many.

Cars drive on the left because the first batch of Fords delivered to Japan were from the UK not the USA and thus right-hand drive. The sign in this next picture says TOKYO MARATHON 2009.3.22. It is the course Jon and Carys ran.

Public transport is excellent and so there are few cars in the suburbs. Most people get the train or cycle.

Trains are crowded at rush hour and people board them by flinging themselves through closing doors and settling to the floor like retiring stage-divers. Everyone is too polite to criticise and simply shuffles around until there is space. In Japan personal space is smaller than in the UK so two people having a conversation will have their faces much closer together than we are used to. That said, few people talk on trains. Using a mobile phone is frowned upon. Many simply feign sleep. Most passengers had very clean shoes, I noticed. Pride again. Look at how clean this station entrance lobby is.

The announce-ments on an underground train are in crystal-clear American English. For instance 'The next station will be Oji the doors on the right hand side of the train will open.' A computer display over each door tells you the names of the next seven stations or so and the exact time of arrival.

Trains are very punctual and stop exactly so that the doors are alongside platform-marked boarding places. At one point we boarded the 1232 from Kyoto to Tokyo in error when we should have caught the 1229. We were asked, politely, to leave it at the next station and board the correct train. This meant waiting at a station 250 miles down the track for 12 minutes while the slightly slower train we should have boarded caught up with us. Two trains going one 400 mile journey at slightly different paces leaving within three minutes of each other. Both pretty full. Journey time, including change, was 2 hours 45 minutes. Brilliant.

At the mainline stations, armies of immaculately-uniformed cleaning staff come on board and take away litter. At the front of one of the underground trains for one journey I noticed through the glass panelling of the cab that it was incredibly clean and tidy and the driver wore white gloves. No half-eaten pasty or rolled up Sun here.

There was an amazing contrast between the efficiency and tidiness of Narita Airport and Heathrow. On the outward journey our plane failed a security check because a can of drink was found which had not been brought on board by any of the passengers. We all had to disembark again. Delay of one hour and a half. Despite this the service at Narita was perfect. Baggage handlers and maintenance staff were positioned in line at various points around the plane's final resting place to get on with their work. We taxied straight into position despite arriving at a non-scheduled time. A long queue for passport checks was dealt with efficiently and fairly - no guessing which queue would go down quickest here. We were in a single queue at the end of which we were escorted personally to the next free position of six or seven. We were finger-printed and photographed and our bags were on the carousel waiting for us by the time we reached it.

Returning to Heathrow we left Narita on time but on arrival had to wait because our stand wasn't free. The queue for passport control was unfair, the checker chewed gum at us (this would appear very rude to a Japanese visitor), the carpets were held together with tape and a coach driver called Scott on the Heathrow to Reading shuttle was extraordinarily rude to a bunch of Americans (first experience of the country? Sorry guys) and then drove like an idiot.

As a contrast to long-haul flights and bullet trains one touristy thing to be done, especially by the natives, is to be made up like a geisha and pulled through the streets on a rickshaw. These two girls in Kyoto were clearly having a ball doing so.

And when you finally shuffle off this mortal eastern coil? Here's the hearse. Some style.

We probably walked more miles in our eleven days than we usually do but they had a zen-like quality as we observed our surroundings. Buses were pretty good too.

Back in the UK a train manager on the reading to Bristol service took some time out to show two bored children a card trick, then phoned ahead on behalf of a stressed customer to find out the platform number for the connection they were going to find it tight to make. We spoke to strangers on the train. It felt good to be home.

By the way there is a lot of Siberia. I looked out every half hour for ten hours and it was still there.

Food in Japan

So it's our first night in Japan and we pop out to a local restaurant in Urawa. There is a menu, held by Carys in this photo, and a hand-held, table-top device in front of Jon. I chose the photo of Carys and Jon. There exists one of Liz and I, who thought we were doing quite well after being awake for over 24 hours but the picture suggests our eyes were only open by a millimetre. You have done nothing to deserve seeing it.

We order our food by intranet. A selection of waiters and waitresses bring the meal to our table, delivering it with a sing-song Japanese speech which we don't hear anywhere except restaurants the whole of our trip. Jon and Carys tell us there is a formal, almost oldie-worldie, style of speech in a restaurant, not used elsewhere and especially in traditional Japanese restaurants, so the staff are saying something such as, 'Kindly bless us with the joy of consuming our delectable food.' We did. It was lovely. Small portions of several fish, vegetable and tofu dishes to share.

In a sectioned-off area of a large department store these children were being taught to cook. I'd guess they were aged about 5 to 7. They sat perfectly still and attended to their teacher as we watched through the glass. Love the chefs' hats. They seemed so proud to be wearing them. Pride in performance is a theme we noticed again and again. Whatever people were doing they did it with pride, as if it were the most important task in the world.

There is as much space given to tofu and other bean-curd products in a Japanese food store as a medium Tescos in England would allocate to cheese. Most of it is delicious. My experience of tofu is that it depends very much on the flavour of its accompaniments. In fact there is more subtlety and complexity than that.

That said, bean curd did provide us with the one 'won't swallow' moment of our holiday, although we did taste.

The white, central bowl in this illustration contains natto. Natto achieves something quite remarkable. It is a dish that is unpleasant to all five of the senses. It looks disgusting, like regurgitated porridge with green pesto. It smells ghastly. As you remove a spoonful of it from the bowl a squelchy noise can be heard not unlike pulling a wellie out of mud. To the tongue it feels like wallpaper paste with tadpoles in it (you may be getting an idea here and you'd be right). It tastes of very little with added salt. Best avoided. It was available as one of the options at breakfast in our two hotels. Then again so was pasta with meat sauce and an unimaginable attempt at a British sausage.

One style of restaurant, a bit Indonesian, is to griddle your own pancake from selected ingredients, although it turns out they don't trust westerners with such a task and bring it to you in aluminium foil and simply use the griddle in the centre of the table as a hotplate. Here I try to get hold of a piece of egg, fried cabbage, prawns and a sort of barbecue sauce. Mayo was an option but we all turned it down. It was a bit sickly but a fun time. Note the extreme concentration of the inexperienced pancake quarterer.

Food at simple, station-based outlets is marvellous. I have already mentioned I had a wonderful, avocado and shrimp hot sandwich which I will remember until my dying day.

The presentation of packaged food in a food-court or supermarket is brilliant. Here is a bento box - a packed lunch of sushi if you like - the sort you can buy at a station before a journey. The bullet train is so smooth you can eat this safely, with chopsticks, at 220 mph. The major distinction between this and a British version is that the rice is several times more sticky and gorgeous and the fish is immaculately fresh. Oh and the wasabi (Japanese horseradish) takes a wire brush to your sinuses. To compensate, you can drink the water from the taps in most places.

On our final day we visited Asakusa - a shrine with a bustling hinterland of shops, restaurants, take-away food stands and market stalls. We watched this guy making buckwheat noodles in a restaurant window. He started with a huge ball of dough and then, constantly changing up to the next size of rolling pin, produced a single, thin sheet which he folded and cut by hand. Brilliant dexterity. We had to go in and eat and the food was lovely. I had my noodles in a duck broth. My companions suggested that the paste in a jar in the centre of the table was black-bean sauce. It was black and it was sauce. I should have been more guarded as the bowl was small and the spoon tiny. One taste took the plaster off the walls of my previously wasabi-brushed sinuses. The paste contains delayed action chillies. An hour later and I had a lovely sorbet-style blackcurrant ice cream which I could feel heating up inside me as it went down. The only joy is that I digested whatever it was entirely and felt no ill effects as it came out the other end. Either that or it has been inside me for a fortnight and is biding its time.

Our conclusion would be that, as ever, the key to great cooking is great shopping. Simple ingredients. Fresh ingredients. Not very many ingredients. The Japanese get a lot of this right. In fact they only get it wrong with attempts to placate western stomachs in hotels. And with natto.

I've noticed this week that I've put fewer herbs and spices in my cooking and let the ingredients speak for themselves. Why bother to get a fresh, organic veggie box delivered every week if you're going to keep things in the fridge for ages then disguise the flavour?

Going Up

I'm not sure what strange, inner compulsion persuades people to go to one of the most earth-tremor ravaged countries on earth and climb a high building with the durability of a pick-a-stick but hey, that's tourism for you. So we spent two nights in the Kyoto Tower Hotel, an ordinary, western-style hotel with a tower on the top. Part of our booking gave us a free trip to the viewing platform which is the orange and white sticking-out bit.

It is modelled on a lighthouse, supposedly looking out over land-locked Kyoto. Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan until someone with dyslexia in government accidentally wrote Tokyo.

I'm not sure why they feel the need to illuminate the name Kyoto Tower Hotel. In St-world the sign would say 'Take a wild guess.'

Another express-lift ride and then a wonderful view of the region at dusk. The platform publicity boasted that it recently hosted a conference for all thirty Japanese towers. I guess they meant the managers. Now that's what I call a niche-market venue.

The telescopes on the platform are very high-powered. We noticed you could not only see to the mountains and the sea but also into the coffee shops at ground level in the station opposite. Espionage possibilities were endless. Cosmo you'd love it but we'd be able to tell what you were reading.

One of the reasons why trains in Japan are so efficient (more on this later) is that the railways own the malls around the stations. These are not like the small range of shops we tend to have at British stations but galleries of designer stores, food outlets and specialist shops. One of my favourite meals on our trip was a lunchtime shrimp and avocado hot sandwich from a station shop (more on food later). The efficiency of the trains (which apparently make little money) generates the footfall to get people shopping.

The view from our hotel window (a mere eight floors up) was of this illuminated Hitachi sign. I wondered if the word 'generation' continued round the corner. It didn't. Inspire the next what? Answers on a comment.

The soundtrack to all this was of the pedestrian crossing at street level which, from 7.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m., sounded like someone trying to shoot a cuckoo with a laser gun. You don't mess about on Japanese pedestrian crossings. For starters the journey is long and you need to make good progress to make it in time. For some of the central Tokyo ones I'd advise taking refreshments. Secondly, it is an offence to walk unless the green sign is illuminated. You can be arrested for this.

Having been listening to David Mitchell's Radio 4 programme The Unbelievable Truth I smuggled one lie into this piece. Did you spot it?