1998 UK Safari

UK Safari – 1998 Edited August 1999

Preamble
23 April -3 July 1998
Blank sheet of paper. Feel a definite reluctance to write again, after the loss of words with lost computer in India. I’d plenty of time to think about those lost words, on the 36 hour train journey to Goa, and then I’d thought good riddance! What rubbish I waste time writing, lightweight, what focus, what point? I’ve never resolved this issue, just driven to write on still….

Title: UK Safari

Apparatus: car, sleeping bag, tent. Bag of clothes, (spring/winter yellow and black) swiss army knife, meditation cushion, garden secaters and gloves
Bibliography: Guide to who’s buried where, Rough Guide to Britain, Introduction to Buddhism, Barbara Vine thriller
Objective: a. Visit friends and family not seen these many years (India and procrastination); b. get feet and spirit back into Britain, c. break from Bob, consider words like selfish or self development.

Thursday New Hall, Pleshy (Essex) 23 April

Motoring along the A12. Nothing very familiar, all roads widened into anonymous dual carriageway, with towns by-passed. See a small sign to Maldon. Familiar ring to it. Ah yes, it’s on the way to Hoe Mill, I’m early, let’s take it. This is what my adventure is all about, go with the wind Rachel.

At Woodham Walter, I pulled up and parked by the triangle of grass announcing to us that know the hidden Hoe Mill house. Walked up the drive-way to the proud Georgian house, and knocked at the door. A housekeeper came out.

• Sorry to disturb you. I used to live here, grew up here. I was just passing.
  It’s not quite the truth, but easier to say. This was the house of my God-father, John Little, who took my mother and I under his protective wing after my father died, paid for my 10 years schooling at New Hall, and opened his heart and house to us every Christmas, and countless weekends exits from New Hall.
• Could I just look round the gardens?
• Yes, the owners are not here, but they wouldn’t mind. They both work you see. When were you here? What is your name?
• Oh about 20 years ago I was last here. The name’s Little
• We still get post for Little. Would you like to see inside the house?
  Three enormous dobermans lay in the hall.
• This one’s famous – he was in 1001 Dalmatians. They will not harm you.
  Dalmatians and Dobermans? As always with a memory of a place, everywhere seemed smaller, and I haven’t grown that much. Flock wall paper contrasted with the plain rich red that existed in my day. Flouncey curtains, floral every thing. A sad story of a recent spate of deaths unfolded as we went from room to room. Their son aged 47 died suddenly of a heart attack, and her parent’s who lived in the granny flat within a week of each other. All this one year ago. I cut out to the gardens. Across the abandoned tennis court, stood under the old mulberry tree that always gave rich fruit and attracted the wasps. I imagined John coming out with bucks fiz, wearing Izingari cricket tie; he never walked fast, slow and deliberate.
  Walked down past the stables, over the pond, to the double weir, splitting the Chemler canal to form the Island. This was the magic area of my childhood. Away from grown ups, with danger all around, Zandy, the housekeeper’s son, and I used to build damns and hide-outs. Fast flowing water, my childhood dreams of fear were of falling into the weir, and being smashed by the current.

As I climbed back into my car, Eleanor Rigby blasted out the gardener’s cottage. As if time was playing a trick, that was the music of my time here.

New Hall, Boreham, Chelmsford, Essex, England, UK, the World, The Universe. That’s what we used to write at the top of our letters – a childs attempt to get a perspective. Post Codes came later, CM3 3HT – see how I still remember it. I drove slowly down the avenue of trees. I’d walked this avenue often enough, to the White Heart out of school bounds, for a swift rebellion. Now I was willingly going back. After 25 years. This building did not seem smaller. It was as grand as I remembered. Tudor home of Anne Bolyns family, and sold by Oliver Cromwell for half a crown. Brief historic patter. Two great Cedar of Lebanon’s spanned across it’s 10 great Tudor bay windows, accentuating its magnificence.

Sister Stephanie gave good welcome hug. Itinerary sorted. Food for spirit and body first in order. There were 5 of us in the nun’s stalls, for the mid-day evangelis. I could hardly believe this diminution of supporters. At lunch it expanded only to 8. There were over 40 nuns in my day. What’s happened? Lots of died (Joseph, Teresa, Ignatious), and some dying (Andrew)

• S Andrew’s rather ill Rachel
• I’m sorry. What’s wrong?
• She’s very ill. Eyes down.
  Angela pips up.
• She’s dying, Rachel. Cancer
  Thank God for Angela!
  And then there’s the bolters. First must have been Mary Mark and Francis, both fled together soon after I’d left under a cloud of lesbian rumours, John soon after, Dismiss under another cloud of attempted rape and breakdown. There appears to be a breakaway group of three who live independently in a house in Ongar (Catherine, Teresa and Mary Rose). So who’s left?
  Magdalene, the Infirmary nun, Therese, organist, Stephanie, my ex house mistress, Angela, now in charge of the Barn, Stephen, the artist, Anne Marie now head mistress, Gabrielle, Reverend Mother, and the unchanging, Christopher ex Reverend Mother.

Over lunch I asked what future for the dwindling community, obviously not drawing new recruits. Stephanie was vague, I felt a dull dead end to this conversation.

Christopher was the surprise antidote. She dressed the same as in my day, unlike the rest who had modernised to show a bit of leg, Christopher revealed nothing but her sparkling green grey eyes. Eric used to say she had snake eyes – that’s rather cruel I think now. She inspired me throughout lunch with talk of India. I’d dressed Indian, purple kurta, legins and turban, and was introduced by Stephanie as “Rachel-just-come-back-from-India.” Christopher had been born in India, left aged 7, but had some romantic memory. They’re trying to get me to write a piece for the New Hall magazine.

I toured the old school with Stephanie. Unlike our first meeting in London, we went through the list of what ever happened to… , as we went into our old classrooms, dormitories and remembered what it was in our day. Up and down the East and West wing (where I first met Father Eric), nostalgia as well as the new buildings (as ever built by Frederick J French builders-by-appointment-to-New-Hall – they seem to have improved in style and imagination over the years).

Tea in the nuns quarters, thank fully saved by the ravages of experimental modernisation by Frederick J French, polished wide floor boards, made for quiet saddled nuns feet, not my new modern ankle boots with heal. Christopher came with her book of Old Fishes, names and addresses, to give me the ones requested, Becky and Dismiss.

As I drove away I noticed a new dimension to the landscape since I was there, strips of yellow rape fields patch worked the otherwise green winter wheat.

Wonderfully warm welcome from Tinks. She’d been the same on the phone.

• When are you coming up?
• Soon. This Thursday if it’s alright
• Great. What time? Really looking forward to seeing you.

Friday Pleshy Gardening
Tinks and I tackled Clive’s farmhouse garden. His wife had certainly packed it with plants

• No need to ever visit a garden centre for new stock, I said
  We did the front bed, shrubs, cutting out the dead wood, giving fresh light and space for new spring growth. Like cutting hair from the bottom up. Loved it. The uncertainty of building and life direction stories came out during the day. Clive has made his settlement to his wife, which has made uncertain the future of the farm – he’s wisely decided to make no immediate decision, but taken out a massive loan for two years. Various scenarios: Tinks could sell her house, move into Clive’s, putting money into the house, reducing the loan. They could sell up both houses and farm and start again somewhere else. They’ve rather sensibly decided to look round at other farms, to see if there’s a future or by contrasting establish what they’ve got is good. Tinks so wise.

Relationship with Clive seems to be going well. He’s no intellectual, but what does that matter? She can get her intellectual talk of books from her friends. Their sex is good, and so is their friendship. He cares for her deeply, and that is surely worth 1000’s of intellectual books and conversations. And he’s with her for what ever she needs, unlike Stuart ever was. She’s ‘talking up’ the relationship – a new perspective. Yes, it’s a good point. To talk something up.

In October, Tinks found a lump under her arm – the first since her double mastectomy last year. Desperately frightening time. It took until December to get it diagnosed as slightly cancerous and they prescribed radiotherapy treatment. Every day for one month she drove to Chelmsford for the treatment, in between delivering and collecting the kids from school. What a life – there is no life, just a reaction for weeks on end. She said of that time, that she looked at her life, as one does I suppose before a potential death, and by surprise considered her life fine, that she had achieved all she wanted to, did not regret. She talked up her life.
(Tombstone in Norfolk church: Eleanor, worshiped here for 30 years before her death’, – why not 30 years of her life?). She’d been asked to help with counselling of other breast cancer women, and in particular a 3rd lump woman.

• I said no, I could not do that – I on a 2nd was enough to deal with. Is that bad of me Rachel?
  Christ, understandable.

Cooked them a stir-fry for dinner. Conversation, Ask a farmer, and I tried the Monsanto story, avoiding derogatory toxics, but the result of changing a farmer to a Monsanto administrator. Clive agreed. But our conversation is rarely followed through, children distract with their needs.

As Tinks put kids to bed, I threw out my present spiritual exploration to Clive.

• I’ve given up my Christian god, I said.
• Well, I agree with you to a point. I’ve never enjoyed going to Church, and all the parochial politics that involves. But I suppose I do believe in a God. I’d find that hard to give up. Although I’ve never discussed it with the local rector. He’s never asked me, let’s put it that way. And I did not want to upset his apple cart.
• Yes it is hard. Hard not to think of the grand conductor out there, somehow putting a strange order to our chaos, making sense of it all. But it’s also very exciting. It’s all inside you, it’s all there, to be explored, understood. People say, why did that happen to that person, why was her son run over, her husband killed, her house burnt? What did she do to bring all this on? She was not a bad person? Where does God fit into this.
  And at this point I got a bit muddled in an exploration of karma. Not something I understand.
  But got on firmer ground with spirit within us, and Stephanie’s difficulty.
• Stephanie said something interesting. She said God offered a perfect role model for us, something to attain, a perfection, a goodness. We mere mortals, so full of mistake could not be such a role model. But why not I thought? Say there was a potential for both good and bad within us. Say we were in a group of collectively good people, then the spirit of good would be strong, and equally for bad. For example Nazi movement, the momentum of a collection of bad spirited people.
  It was an enjoyable exploration, and I liked Clive’s questions, input.
• It certainly makes more sense of the haphazardness of our evolution, he said.
  Finally got into a reincarnation discussion. If it were species to species, how did the population grow? Never thought of that mathematical problem!

Saturday rain

As we walked in the rain – gardening forsaken – farmer Clive made sense of a local expression: Oak before Ash, a splash; Ash before Oak a soak. Both in an out of bud, and it splashed and soaked.

Thinking of our conversation yesterday, I asked Tinks if there was anything she still craved to do, like read Proust. No she said, I have no desire to read Proust. I’d like to take my kids to Africa. Then she thought a while. No what I want above all is to see my children grow up.

Essex dinner party. New money. Immaculate house. Invitations sent on printed cards for 6 people. Tinks gave me a character assassination before we arrived.
Ever Ready Eddi, a local builder, recently shacked up with divorced, hard Margo, who has recently taken her husband to the cleaners over their divorce.

• They play parlour games, Rachel. Strip poker. And then there’s Alex and his wife, who I play tennis with. I’ve struggled with Alex, and sorry to have to say, but I find him incredibly boring, and (she added with a giggle), rather ugly!
  Guess who I was cornered by?
• So what’s your work Alex?
  And we talked about his tunnelling work. Use of plastics or concrete, tunnelling for drainage – amazing the questions one can find about tunnels. I finally recommended he read Birdsong, about the World War II tunnellers.
• He’d never read that book, says Tink’s in the car afterwards.

Drinks served on a floral drinks tray. Sweet white wine. Over done chicken, and a gaudy Pavlova all the men loved. The surprise of the evening was the establishment of Tinks as the only truly Essex girl present – she was born within the Essex boundaries, Ongar. Clive of course, goes back to the C16th! Conversation switched again to talking about An Evil Cradling, and torture. As they talked, “Imagine being blindfolded, chained….”, I thought we were winding up for one of the Essex parlour games.

All conversations ended in a cliché, and I wondered how many good and stimulating friends Tinks had here in Essex. Oh purist Rachel, wanting to pursue each thought to its end. Why not go for an evening with a good laugh, rock the belly of compassion.

Sunday Pleshy-> Norfolk

I walked with Tinks over Essex fields, piecing together the terrible jigsaw of her past 2 years of life. More details of Elspeths death. How she rallied. In and out of the hospice – nothing like the gentle Prucilla Bacon my mother and had the privilege of experiencing. Strict visiting times only to visit the dying. And the Stuart jigsaw – I had no idea how little he did for the struggling Tinks, and how tied up in his own life he continues to be. Tinks says forgivingly he acts out of hurt and anger.
Clive bought us lunch at the local pub, before disappearing for Stuart to arrive for child collection.

I left for the old school drive back to Norfolk. Avoided the by-passes, motored through Long Melford, looking grander than I remembered still packed to the gunnells with antique shops. Tried to find the tomb of Edmund Blunden, but failed. Maybe another church. Slept outside a field of rape. Fields opening up into flatter Norfolk landscape. Less rape, more wheat and beat. Pam gave good welcome with much talk of dogs and Holly.

• And everyone loves her, Rachel.
  Talking up the dog.

Monday
Pam ritual established. Boil hen food, feed, collect eggs, walk dog, shop, cook lunch, eat, garden, pick asparagus (first of season last night), tea, more gardening, mix gins, drink them, watch full volume TV, early supper, early bed. Exhausted!

Pam does not like me writing at my computer. She comes over my shoulder and asks for the 101st time

• What are you doing? (as if I was doing something extraordinary). What about another drink?’
  A thinly disguised attempt to encourage her to have another. So I must wait for her to go to bed before I write.

Tuesday
Lunch with my broker. (Sounds grand) How does one measure these stocks and shares? I consider as I arrived empty handed in Norwich. Against a flow of inflation? Against an investment of a flat in London? I’ve just let things flow. Probably not lost or gained much. He talks using a vocabulary showing his expertise, comforting me that he knows this business. It amazes me how little I know, and I let him expand his thesis, as I let him buy me a humble sandwich for lunch.

• If I look at my life’s achievement (I think of Tinks), I’ve made little impact. The nature of my work means I deal mainly with rich old ladies, who do not want to deal directly with their money, and entrust me to do it for them, and I win their trust, I’m a solid honest fellow. If I have a sin, its of conservativeness, and that’s not harmful. So I suppose you could say I’ve kept these mean old ladies rich. But little else.
  (His direct honesty is quite shocking amidst the hedged stock and share vocabulary).

I remembered the church with a skeleton inside. Eric and I had visited it once, on our city wonderings. I found the church. Converted into a museum.

• Is there a skeleton in this church? I asked the curator
• There was, he said. There certainly was. But its been taken away. Re buried.
• Why?
• There were that many complaints, he said.
  Naught so queer as folk.

Bridge at Swaffam. Lenny still playing. Dread the time when I do not see him there and have to ask, and hear he’s dead. More whiskers than ever on his chin, halitosis alive and kicking. Pam left me in a part game of 2 spades after I opened 2 clubs. She’s loosing it. Made 5 spades. Whisky and ginger and post-mortam.

• Well you should have opened 2 spades, them I would have definitely said 3.
  Too contrary to debate! I love her rallying defensiveness, guess she had good practice with Leslie. I treasure these precious moments with Pam. Perfick.
  Bed with a new Ruth Rendle someone must have left behind (Finished Barbara Vine).

Thursday
Rainy day today. Took John Fountain out to lunch. He’s had 2 major operations done on his legs “before gangreen set in and they were taken from me”. On good albeit slow walking form, talking about our lost empire. How great was General Dyer. The landlord of the Victoria at Holkam was chuckling in the back room!
Slow walk to see the sea – and the tide was in. So rare to see the water up in the day time. Never worked out why it should be odd.

Talked farming, heavy mud of Essex soil.
-Yes, I found out the hard way that Essex is mans farming; if you don’t plough the soil by December, you’ve had it for the whole year. Essex man’s farming, and Norfolk boys farming. Light soil.
I remember Normal Pertwee, turning his vegetable patch in December, just one turn, the frost did the rest of the breaking up. Loved that lesson of using nature to do the heavy work for you.

Saturday
Pretended to Pam I was off to Bungay to see Becky, and avoided playing bridge with the ladies, instead got on with Quebec Road garden. Heart not in it. Estate agents sent round 3 people to view, so good job I was there. Did the sales patter (3 occupants since built – the equivalent of single lady driver – best road in Dereham, etc – talking up the house).

Sunday Becky in Bungay
Becky at New Hall. She used to lift up her red skirt to show her childs thin legs and white knickers. That was her trick, to disarm you. She had words then, turns of phrases, the baby voice that she put on was a red herring to her intelligence. She was always brighter than me. We were bound by being Norfolk girls together, travelled up on the train to Norwich, her mother sometimes forgetting and not meeting the train, to my mothers horror. “How could she forget?”
And here she was, three kids, one boy two girls, talking to them as adults, unphased by their smallness. She will be a fascinating mother for them.

Stephanie could not remember the name of the degenerative illness Becky has, and I forget the name, perhaps Lupas, like French loup, wolf. Anyhow a disease that attacks the immune system. It is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Her first symptoms in retrospect came after the birth of Ben her first child when she sometimes dropped him, but she was only diagnosed in the last two years. Months in bed, not able to clasp the duvet material on her bed to bring up to her. After a course of chemo and now on steroids, she looked fine, face a bit puffy that’s all. The disease attacks bone and organs, both appear to be able to repair, but the fear is the attack on kidneys, which cannot repair. Lungs now back from 40% to 65% capacity.

We managed a few conversations before her family arrived for Sunday lunch. Talked shop, New Hall.

I must say, Annie T was great when I was ill. We’d seen each other a bit before, but she leads such a different life – you know she’s married a very rich and older man – and I found it difficult to accept invitations to things well out of my own bounds. And when I got ill, Rachel, do you know what I thought? A terrible thing, I thought.
“Why is it me, and not Annie T?” I tell you this so you know I’m not harbouring a terrible secret. (I love the way she follows a thought) I tell everyone, I even told Annie T. I told her mother, Mrs Eyston, and you know what she said to me? She said Annie T wouldn’t have been able to cope with it, as I have. And in a way, I think she’s right, and Annie T likes to help me, do something for me, and these days, I don’t mind taking from her any more, knowing I cannot repay or reciprocate.”

The family arrived, Charlotte, plus one of her three, and Tom with his New Zealand girlfriend. Nice woman, great with kids. I’d met Charlotte and Tom before. Found Charlotte extraordinary, she seemed incapable of talking about anything but herself and her family. The eccentricity of Julian her husband (dealt in fish), how Mungo (son) was voted ugliest boy at Ampleforth. And it seemed, endless conversations about the terrible fate on her friends families. Three sisters, one son died aged three in swimming pool, one son died inhaling own vomit after drugs, one sister dead with breast cancer, other sister, just diagnosed with breast cancer. Becky rallied to all, enjoying the story, the words used, the descriptions. Stephen, urbane and quiet, cooked and served lunch, Becky’s joking criticisms like water off a ducks back. He’s stopped flying since Becky got ill, taken up Bob slaying. Delicious lunch of immaculately cooked organic ham with orange sauce. House in chaotic order.

And here’s the 8th bedroom. We don’t have 8 bed rooms in this house, but in our last we did and that was where we put everything that we didn’t know what to do with, so this rooms called the 8th bed room. That house Rachel, nearly killed me. It was the kind of house that when anyone came they’d say “What a perfect house”. My heart sank. Tudor dark, you know, never any light. And I had to keep it up. When I got ill, and couldn’t do anything, I just watched it fall apart. And you know, the new people have pulled up all those box hedges I planted. £900 on bloody hedges. Never again!

You should write, I suggested to Becky in a quiet moment.

What about, urban life in Bungay? Never been anything worth writing about!
Some story of how Tom had once got hold of her diary, learnt it off by heart, and began reciting it to her family. No one but Becky understood it, but she felt such deep humiliation that she never wrote again. Her words fresh as a mountain spring. Just like at New Hall, I was once again in awe of her.

Drove back to Pams, and forced myself to eat a supper Pam had prepared. Feel like a foi gras goose. Stuffed.

Sunday Norfolk -> Saffron Waldon
Good talk with Bob, suggesting cutting across UK to Ireland for diversion trip to see spring in the Burren, with Libby and Fergus. Chewing on it. Talked about Mary Bell, Bob following the exploding story. She’d murdered two children when she was a child, served time (20 years?) released and given new identity, and had a kid of her own. A book has been written about her by Gita Sereny, of which she receives proceeds of £15,000, for the 2 years research. The press and high moral ground public are up in arms at a murderer receiving money. Not only that the press have found out where she lives and camped out-side – so her innocent child now presumably knows about her mothers past. We both agreed, the arrogance and filth of the press. Bob tells me the flames are being fanned by Labour politicians, including Blair.

Up to the coast to look at cottage at Salthouse for sale. Two other people looking. 92,000 for a swing a cat cottage, right on the busy coast road, can’t even see the sea. Forget it. Norfolk looking good though, and explored the lanes around Sherringham, near where Becky grew up, Matlask. Watched the snooker finals with Pam in the afternoon.

Set off with returning holiday traffic for M11. Listened to Buddhist tape, story of life of Buddha, so was uninterested in traffic queues, and chugged along.

I’d left my walking boots at Tinks’. “Just like the Kelletts” she’d said – and it was. So Stuart had collected them from Tinks and I was to collect from him, and see his new house. It was a great house in the centre of the well preserved town, once an old pub still with a substantial cellar, cleanly decorated in National Trust colours.

The hurt of Stuart. The wine loosened the tongue. Red Chilean Merlot. Interesting exercise to listen to a man, so hurt and adamant in his right (and so wrong). I remembered my Buddhist tape of the young Buddha listening to the arrogant Brahmins, and tried to find the right questions and curb my own hasty judgements. He talked up family values. The sanctity of marriage. If these things aren’t important then what is, he said desperately.

I told Stuart of a conversation I’d had with Tinks. After she’d found the 2nd lump, she’d appraised her life, and thought it’s not so bad, I have achieved all I wanted to. Talking up her life. Stuart came back fast and furious.

• She threw away her profession; she broke up her husband and her children; and precipitated her fathers death. And she’s content with all that? She’s achieved all she wanted to? Her head is in the sand, she is in denial without question.
  Wow. Let’s take one at a time. We never got to the first.
• Are you saying she killed her father?
• Well not directly. But these are the facts. I know her father was deeply disturbed by our impending break-up the week before he died, he was in tears on the telephone to me, and John was not given to tears. He was about to disinherit her. (I looked suitably shocked). You can ask the Turners, for they talked to him about it, although I doubt they will want to talk about it to you.

“Now look what you’ve done”. That’s what Stuart had said to Tinks when he heard that John had died. When Tinks told me this, walking the Essex fields, how I hated Stuart. But now I hear a little of what he’s referencing. What could I to say now? Yes, as Tinks said, it was Stuarts own hurt speaking, ‘Now look what you’ve done’. But who was Stuart to put this guilt trip on Tinks, whose own life was so fragile? Who was he to hit out with the ‘sword of truth’? Was it truth? It was John’s own take on Tink’s behaviour that so destroyed him – whose fault is that? In my mind I was torn between a truth and protection, and what in this case was the point of truth? Suppose she did precipitate his death, so what would she gain by acknowledging, except great guilt that she could do nothing about.

I saw Stuart as an angry and hurt man, wanting vindication. I could envisage him talking with John telling him of his hurt, grasping at their common denominators, the importance of family values, fearful of loosing John’s friendship himself, wanting John to talk Tinks round. Appealing to the controller of John.

• Ah John, he always wanted to control, he could not let go of something out of his volition, that he should have left well alone.
  I couldn’t find any questions. I turned to Tink’s motives.
• What influence did her cancer have on the break up of the family? Did you ever wonder without the cancer if the affair would have just been an affair? That the cancer somehow focused a different expectation different desire out of life, or what there was left?
• The affair began before the cancer was diagnosed. But yes I’ve often thought of that. And in a way, I’d expected affairs in our marriage, I knew what Tinks was like. I’d had an opportunity once, – well many times, what with travelling as I do, away from home, in exotic places. But I’d turned it down, and I’m very glad I did. (He said this in a very deliberate way, as if rehearsed, as if said before) I thought either I’ll like it in which case I’ll do it more, or I’ll not like it, in which case why do it. But in retrospect, I’m very glad to say I was faithful to Tinks throughout the marriage. (Oh you self-righteous prig, I am thinking! And what about Tinks, that was the question….). I saw all the signs of the affair, I’d given plenty of warning, three in fact, but she kept returning. And I don’t think she loves the man, she’s never said she does, and why hasn’t she moved in with him? I just don’t know really why she broke it all up.
• Have you asked her?
• Yes on and one. And I have all my letters, photocopied, and hers. She says things like you were never here. But that could have been changed. I get the feeling there is something more she is not telling me. I think she’s in deep denial.
• Why would she not tell you?
• I think it’s because she does not want to hurt me. So it could be terrible sex, or something like that, but nothing is said. And now I know I cannot go on asking.
• Does it matter that you do not know?
• Desperately. I’ve needed to know to heal myself. The hurt is enormous, and I go over and over in my mind the reasons it could be. I see Clive as just a weak man. I know he is there for her, much more than I was. But I offered her stimulus, I talked art and literature with her, music – she can’t get any of that in Pleshy – you’ve seen it, you described the Essex dinner party. (I presume these are more family values).
• And her cancer, Stuart. Doesn’t this give her a different perspective on life, different from how we, who have not been challenged in this way, can imagine.
  I told Stuart that when I’d asked Tinks what she wanted now out of her newly appraised life, and she simply said to see the children grow up. – This wonderful simple desire, I’m sure is something we’d all want, but not realise it as poignantly as she did.
• You know my biggest hurt was having the children taken away from me. Not being with them in the mornings, brushing teeth. Mundane things. Once Alex saw me crying. I tried not to let them see, but he did. And you know what he said? He said, “Don’t cry Daddy, she’s not worth it”, that’s what he said.
• Wow. Where did he get that expression from. Its an adults expression.
  Stuart is aghast. He took at face value. His son showing him a loyalty.
• Yes, yes of course he’s showing you a loyalty, and that’s lovely that he did. But how can a son aged 10 know the meaning of the word worth? Understand all to make that judgement? He does not sleep with Tinks, for example……It’s impossible him to know.

After a cigar in the garden, he said it was good to talk, and I asked more neutrally, who Stuart turned to other than Tinks to explore and work out.

• Elspeth once asked me. “Now how are you Stuart?”, and I just started to tell her and she said “Oh Stuart, don’t go on about it”! (Wonderful Elspeth! I’d heard this story before, and it always makes me giggle.) It’s been very difficult to get support at this time. In particular, and interestingly, from my local church. I am appalled by their lack of understanding. You would expect a church particularly to be sympathetic.
• Who are your friends round here?
• I suppose a friend is someone you talk to once a month?
  It is a question. A measure of a length of time in between contacts. Time for bed.
  This man is off the wall!

While Stuart was cooking (meat of course) I looked up old flames in the Cambridgeshire telephone directory. One Curry, no reply. First I. Sinclair, got the voice I remembered.

• Hello Iain, this is a voice from the past calling. Rachel. Rachel Kellett.
  Silence
• I can’t remember but go on.
• I’m trying to contact Chris Curry, I’m in Cambridge for a few days, and wanted to look him up.
• I remember now. Sorry.
• That’s ok. It’s a bit of a surprise.
• I saw Debbi McGovern yesterday at a party of Cris Keetly.
• Ah Debbi, how is she. Do you have her number?
  He gave me her number, and suggested meeting up tomorrow if I’d got through to her. I did get through to Debbi and we arranged to meet up tomorrow.

Tuesday Saffron Waldon -> Cambridge
Debbie McGovern, the introducer of the to Cambridge set. I’d little in common with Debbie at the time, but she was a gateway to the innovative and new dimensions of the burgeoning computer wiz kids of Cambridge. She’d left London for Cambridge to work at Acorn computers, headed by Herman Hauzer and Chris Curry, and I visited her, mercenarily, for a glimpse of this life, and fell head long into it. I must have met Iain first, started seeing him when he came to London. I was living in Barnes at the time, and he slept with me in my French wood single bed in Elm Bank Gardens. I can’t remember making love with him, but I can remember longing for his telephone calls. He took me round to meet his famous brother, Clive Sinclair. As we drove towards Chelsea in his Toyota Corolla, I’d asked if we should bring a bottle of wine, and Iain laughed. “He’s the richest man in England”. And afterwards I’d thought this was no answer, but took it at the time. It was a terrible evening for me. There were these strange glamorous girls, who did not seem to know anyone, but were extrovert and languid. In retrospect I suppose they could have been hired for the evening. I was introvert and small, with nothing to say. I think the only contribution I made to the evening was ‘Men always like chocolate’ – a comment on the desert. (Ugh, how embarrassing remembering!)
We were having a coffee in a French patisserie shop off Kensington Church Street, when Iain told me he was married with 2 children. I didn’t believe him. He had to show me photographs of his children. I was stunned. It suddenly all made sense to my oh too innocent mind. That was why he did not give me his phone number, why always he had to call. He gave me a lapis lazuli ring that I still have, and I left him.

Above all I was angry for my own foolishness. And this anger spurred me to take action. I called Debbi, went up to Cambridge, and welcomed her introduction to Chris Curry. After an evening meal, I drove him home to Streatham, – he’d been banned from driving. (I thought Stretham was a street in Cambridge, not 20 miles north to Ely). It was a ramshackle house on the Ely marshes; kitchen with mice and thick old wooden tables, large unrenovated rooms. We listening to Faust, all the way through. Full volume, only the marshes to hear, lying on the floor, walking out into the fields. As dawn broke, her put on Neilson’s Inextinguishable symphony – it was the wildest music I had ever heard. And them of course, we went to bed.

That was the beginning of our affair. The end was another women, Australian race horse owner’s daughter, at a party in a garden in St John’s Woods. I was devastated, tearful, embarrassing (once again). Although over time we met again, slept with each other occasionally. He always disturbed me, make my tummy giggle. We all wanted to change him, yet attracted him as he was, with fault.

Debbie had just moved, to a modern house in Argyle street (the Camden area of Cambridge, Debbie said “Its very rentable”, she explained) She’d not unpacked the stuff of life in boxes that lay around the floor. She was at a change in life, still working in Personnel, but looking to get out into alternative medical treatments, reducing overheads, freeing up.

We ate a delicious dinner of raw salad and nuts, a welcome relief after all the meat. I chewed my way through it, as we did our decade of news. Chris it appears is unchanged. He, his long suffering wife Leslie, and two kids rent a farm house outside Cambridge, once again unrenovated, once again with mice in the kitchen. She told me of the end game of Croxton – the village he bought at the height of Acorn. It was repossessed in the most brusk manner: Chris had said nothing of his financial difficulties, and his mother returned one day to see the Bailiffs clearing out her house. He’s got a new business, GIS, but it’s not Acron, and seemingly not enough to secure another house, hence the renting. The most positive news was from Iain; his work – designing high tech stuff – going well, his kids are going places, and his wife, Carol, doing her best sculpture work ever. I’d never known she was an artist.

Wednesday Cambridge
Iain did not call, and I was surprisingly disappointed. I would have liked to share his news, hear of his success. Decided to stay on, and try and call him in the evening. Debbi’s paper thin walls, echoing all upstairs movements in sock and shoe feet, did not appeal, and I consulted the Rough Guide and booked into a cheep Hamilton hotel on busy main road and roundabout. Not the best decision. After a spring shower, started to walk round Cambridge.

On my way to Kettles yard I checked out the Oxfam and second hand shops – an eye opener in Cambridge – racks of ‘Designer Labels’ – never seen this in my years of Oxfam shoping. I felt ball gowns made of synthetic material, bright colours, for high parties, that come and go. Bought a mans silk shirt, good silk, far too large. Over Magdalene Bridge towards Peter House, where my father as a young sapper studied.

Called into a coffee shop – the chain of Café Rouge, to read The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, bought in one of the many book shops. It is an extra-ordinary book that stays with me over this time. The words are written by a successful editor of Elle, who had a massive stroke and over night becomes a paraplegic with ‘locked in syndrome’ – he can move nothing except an eye lash and dictates this book through it’s wink. “In my head I churn over every sentence, 10 times, delete a word, add an adjective, learn my text by heart, paragraph by paragraph” before his transcriber arrives to take down the winks. They made him a display of the alphabet to wink at. “This is no ordinary alphabet, but a hit parade in which each letter is placed according to the frequency of its use in the French language”. He devotes one of his chapters (never more than 3 pages) to it. He calls it the ESA alphabet, the first most common letters. “and haughty J – which begins so many sentences in French is amazed to find itself so near the rear of the pack… the tender components of ‘tu’, rejoice that they have not been separated”.

Tour of colleges. I am a tourist. I follow the Tourist signs. I rather enjoy this outsider status. Saint Johns. Started by John Fisher and Lady Margaret Beaufort. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VIII, is a name to be reckoned with here. Being a Richard III supporter, I’ve never liked Henry VIII (Welsh propagandist). Her logo was the grey hound, and his the Welsh dragon – the coat of arms in the New Hall chapel. I moved through the courts – so ecclesiastical, obvious of course, over the Bridge of Sighs into the grounds, the ‘backs’, as they are called in that English understatement. I saw how all the colleges were linked by this water system, green grass, willow trees, unchanging quality.

Kings – paid £3 for the chapel. Eaves dropped on a tour guide describing the remarkable stone work – the fan-vaulted ceiling is a bit breathtaking. Wish I was an engineer to appreciate its structure more, cannot imagine how they did it. Stresses and angles, and what about scaffolding? Loads of Port Cullis (haven’t heard that word in a long time), rather like the Tudor logo (as the guide explained).
I think of the book I am reading in here. Aware of how I fire off words, uncaring, quick to form sentences, desire to get there, rather than enjoying or celebrating the process.

Lunch at Browns. Finished The Diving Bell, and bought new book, Bombay Ice, an Indian thriller, at Waterstones – God how all our high streets are now all the same. Cafés, bookshops, teddybear shops, and patisseries – had enough of them all. Back to the hotel, and read, read, read (and a good hair pull). Phoned Iain, Carol answered, left message, but no call back. Forget it.

Thursday Cambridge -> Nottingham
Took the fast A1, up to Stamford, before dropping pace and meandering. Drove up to Burghly, recognised it as having been visited once before. Finished Bomay Ice, ate Cambridge chocolate brownie. Is chocolate a depressive? Stamford was evidently the first English town to have a preservation order in 1960’s – its neatness reminded me of the preservation of Saffron Waldon. I feel outside these places, remote from them, and their order.

Cross-country to Oakham, Melton Mowbray, Nottingham.
Rape abounds. Two thoughts strike me: what did we do before rape? And what’s it all used for? Men in fields, women executives in flash cars, all working, while I? I try and find a metaphor adjective to describe the invasion of rape.

Chinese restaurant in Oakham: Wok this way.
Melton Mowbray – the home of the famous pork pie. The Rough Guide is rather rough on it: “An unaccountably popular English snack made of compressed balls of meat and gristle encased in wobbly jelly and thick pastry.” I was in hunting territory. Found Dickinson and Morris, pork pies by appointment in the pedestiranised town centre. Making them since 1851, postcards and various point-of-sale gadgets in ye olde shoppe window. Evidently the pies contained no more preservative other than salt and pepper (special blend of course). New sausage shop opened next door – a celebration of pork – wonder how they’ve done in mad cows days. Bought a pie for Simon and postcard for Bob. Visited the more normal Oxfam shops – just to remind myself how odd Cambridge Oxfam was.

Took a detour cross country to Bevoir house (helpfully, The Rough Guide tell me how to pronounce the name, Beaver). The countryside around was all new to me, gently rolling pasture, escarpments looking down across rich fertile land, the same rape patched winter wheat, big fields, well tended hedges and ditches, an occasional copse, proud houses and large farms. Yes, we’re in the huntin’ shootin’ farmin’ land, Belvoir, Cottesmore and Quorn. Reminded of Sassoon, and wonder if he came from these parts.

Parked and paid my buck. Forget-me-nots carpeted the woodland floor to the house, high proud on a hill, commanding this rich land. The high wind outside makes me cut into house for whistle stop walk through, but I unexpectedly slowed to loitering, surprisingly over the Queens Royal Lancers Museum – probably because of its oddity to my life. From American Independence, Waterloo, 1st World War – all on horse back. Remembered Sassoon’s description of the futility of horse back as a carriage of war in his memoirs. A Lancers division was evidently posted to India for 22 years as they sided with Queen Caroline against King George. Recognised the names of some of the Indian events. Latterly Gulf War with horses changed to MIG’s. The rest of the house was a celebration of obvious and faded grandeur. Sitting room Cartland pink, with gold leaf on French designed chairs. The son and heir is called the Marquis of Granby. That name rings a bell or two.

The selfishness of Rachel. Shit. I telephoned Simon to say on my way. He’d been expecting me from 1.00, had had to cancel work as I’d not arrived by 3.00 and now it was coming up to 4.00 – while I was having my hedonistic adventure. Eat humble pie, girl.

Nottingham, with Simon

(Background: Simon Kellett, son of Gerald Kellett, my father’s brother. Married to Angela Fitzgerald, one daughter, Kate, at present in America)
It’s a bit of a shock to see Angela, her hair has lost is bounce and hangs straight lifeless round her expanded by steroids face. Simon talks on as I remember, and my eyes glaze over, as I remember. I must not loose my cool. Angela is just back from hospital 2 days, having had the transplanted kidney removed and is back on dialysis. She looks weak.

It took us both by surprise. We thought the kidney transplant would be for life, not 10 years.

Are you back on the waiting list? I asked hopefully

Yes, but what with Angela’s age, and MS, we know we will not be a priority.
Oh to be part of a system, out of your control, waiting.

Friday Nottingham Gardening
I get straight into gardening. I have a strimmer to play with, cutting the hay in the front and back. Hardly know where to start. The place is overgrown. Everything needs attention.

Evening: A science fiction film comes on.

• Science fiction, such a waste of time. So unintelligent. Says Angela.
  Yes, I remember she has opinions. And they are not often mine.
  It’s settled, we’ll watch Miss Marple. It’s their favourite. (They’ve got all 12 of them). Simon quotes from it ‘Pheasant and marron glace’ – sometimes I think he was born in the wrong century. What’s it like to watch a video again and again?
  But I am growing in respect for Simon, his acceptance of this situation. I could never have done it. Except for a couple of hours a day, he waits on Angela, moving her leg, fetching food, drink, shopping. In the evening he bathes her and puts her to bed before he gets in beside her. He is openly affectionate with her, kissing her on his departure or arrival. For 2 hours everyday he delivers prescriptions for a local chemist earning £50 a week – a figure he must not exceed to be entitled for the income support. From my bedroom up stairs, I hear Angela cry out
• Oh damn. Simon, Simon, the damn thing is not working, it’s too far away
  She’s on the toilet.
• It’s all right dear…… I’ll wipe it up….. we’ll get it moved.

Saturday Gardening
I decide to stay this extra day in order to get the garden done. Telephone cousin Richard, in Sheffield, next port of call. Linda answers. She gives warm welcome. Then oddly says, “Richard and I do not sleep together, you see. We found out where all the babies were coming from and stopped it. So you’ve got my bed.” She made me laugh amid this sad house.

Go shopping with Simon. I observe his talking. It is non-stop. I play a game. I say nothing, and see where he gets to without prompting. He’s telling me the names on the Estate Agents board, saying how odd it is these are for rent. His world is small. It suddenly strikes me as being like the Archers. I’ve only just noticed, after 20 years of listening to it, that they never talk of anything outside Borcetshire – did they mention Diana’s death? I’ve never heard them discuss Ireland, India or Uzbeckistan. Have you ever heard them say ‘I’ve just read this great book’? And Simon’s life is the same – kept within the small confines of his house, local shops, and supermarkets. I stop the game. It is too cruel.

• What is Angela’s prognosis?
• What do you mean?
• Well now she is on dialysis, what stages are there of MS? Her sight is clearly very bad now, and you say they can do nothing about it. What about other parts of her system? I notice she is finding it difficult to swallow, for example.
• Yes, well, we haven’t really talked about this. And no-one really knows about MS. Certainly the difficulty in swallowing is a new thing, and I’m not sure what will happen when she cannot swallow. I suppose she will be drip fed, I don’t know.
  Oh who am I to disturb heads in the sand. Let it happen as it happens.

The sun comes out. Simon puts on grey shorts, brown ankle socks and lace-up black shoes. Is this a relation of mine?

We have a bonfire in the evening. It was an impressive fire, with old wood Simon cut down from the laurel, and new clippings from the hedges. We’re both pyromaniacs, and thoroughly enjoy giving attention to the fire, with glass of wine in hand.

• Would Angela like to come and see?
• No. She will be content to know we’ve done it.

Later Simon stayed in the kitchen listening to the radio, while Angela watched the broken television (sound not picture). I saw that this was their normal life, often separated in space, Simon in the broken down kitchen, now arranged for a bachelor.

Sunday Nottingham -> Sheffield (Woodsets), Richard and Linda

Drove up through Sherwood Forest along the A614 to Worksop, entering a strange sounding place, called the Duckeries. How long since I saw cousin Richard? Last time was with Foxy, 5 years ago, visiting his parents in Sheffield, we’d called in for tea. Linda had just recovered from ‘one of her turns’ as they say in our northern family. Aunt Ursula was coaching her on religion, and Linda was torn between accepting and rejecting, there was a kind of panic in her eyes that I did not want to trouble myself with at the time (with budding boyfriend), but it interested me. Richard was in Forgemasters Steel works – presumably the one he is director of now – they’d just weathered the gun for Iran scandal. A slim memory of a meeting in London, Richard driving a red MG, and a stronger memory of us being taken as young kids to Italy with Clare, my mothers sister, as tour leader and always on the look out for a Michaelangelo angel. I hated him. Long, blond, lanky, uncouth, and damnably popular with the Italians. He had the cheek to put his arm around me on an Italian roof one romantic night, and Oh how I wished he was a real man, and not my lanky cousin. The holiday was well known for our ‘not getting on together’. What a painful unsporting child I must have been – where was my imagination?

Richard tall as ever came out to welcome. The 2nd kiss-on-side-of-cheek was a bit uncommon to him. Damn it, should have known. Lots of kids. Linda gave me a legend to work out which ones were theirs – a set of school photographs. Tried to memorise names. Ben, David, Emma-Jane, and Lucy (in age order).

Woodsets house was an old vicarage – large, in grounds, and quintessentially Victorian. Having assured them I had an interest in gardening and was not just being polite, I was put to work. Formal garden, with definite beds, grass edged, and planted by someone who had a grand idea of trees, especially conifers. Not quite a projecting Capability Brown, they now crowded in on each other, and some drastic thinning would benefit. But hey, I was just the temporary garden help, and I digged.

I found myself accompanying Richard to the garden centre, and being the chief plant chooser. It began to rain, I choose quickly.

• Plant in odd numbers, three, five etc. Scabious, quintessential Victorian, three of those. You want shrubs? Ever green? OK lets take Mexican Orange. Good shape, dark leaf, white flower, easy maintenance. Yes, that’s what you want easy maintenance. Ah spirea, one of my favourites – and looking nice now. And what a bout a couple of wigglies? Wigelia I think they’re called. And a heebie or two. Ceonothes blue, yes it’s very pretty – suffers in frost though… oh let’s get it, we’ll find somewhere. And what about some un-shurbs, delphiniums, why have they only got bloody miniatures of everything (‘Most people have small gardens, Rachel’, said cousin Richard). But not us, I want height, damn it. Oh well, we’ll settle for delphinium, second best. Got a credit card with you?
  (‘I didn’t know you were into plants, cousin Rachel. You’ve gone up in my estimation a thousand fold’.)
  Lucy the youngest (7?) was with us.
• Why not create a garden for Lucy? Which ones do you like? No we can’t get azalea, they need special soil. What’s your favourite colour? Pink? Then pink it is. That one’s a bit red, never mind, we’ll get it. And orange? Why not. Blue? Yes it will go with pink. Now let’s find some really pink ones…. Yes, that’s it, Barbara Cartland Pink.

Sunday supper, 6.00 we’re all sitting round the table: Richard, Linda, 4 kids and me. A leg of lamb and Yorkshire pudding. I’m made to talk and entertain. The camel story went down well.

• How tall is your camel?
• How much does it eat?
• How do you get off it?
• How much is a camel?

Then the family man, Richard, got down the family toy, a macano steam machine with a double turbine. Water in the system. Meths and flame to heat it. Water heated, steam produced, pressure built up, finally released into system. Round it went. Kids in awe, and I bursting with questions, like how.

While Richard crashed in front of TV, Linda and I talked God. It was on her mind. I threw out my gauntlet – ‘I’ve given up on God’, and listened to her.
Yes, Good and Evil. We both agreed. Linda explained. Human beings are the centre of Linda’s world, and God is the grand conductor. The man (yes) who loves us no matter what we do, and yes, we are terrible sinners.

• He loves me, no matter what, and I need that. And God needs me to love him. (That’s an interesting take). Listen, Rachel, if there is no God, how do you explain this? When Peter, the little boy of my great friend, the boy who died, well just as he was dying I’d been to see him, and I came home and lit a candle, and went to sleep. At 3.00 in the morning I woke up, saw the candle flicker and go out. That was the time he died. If that’s not God what is?
• Why could it not be the spirit of Peter?

And sandwiched between this talk of God, was Linda’s story. Her surprisingly unhappy childhood – bought up in this idyllic Woodsets house – finding her mother in the midst of her affairs, father a work-aholic successful surgeon. Linda wanting attention, security, acceptance. Not matching up to her successful parents, didn’t do well at school. Married Richard, a solid stalwart figure in her life, her fathers best friend. Four kids, felt inadequate not working like all her contemporaries, had breakdown, one suicide attempt. Now on pills, which she will be on for the rest of her life. Getting better, but best friend died of cancer 2 years ago, got involved in her death, another breakdown but not so dramatic.

• I want you to accept me, Rachel, and I know that’s my own insecurity.

I sleep in Linda’s room, a little front room, with a bookcase of books. Spend over an hour going through them, before settling for Of Human Bondage.
So much stuff going through my mind, I find sleep difficult. I’m talking too much.

Monday Gardening / Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Perfect drizzly weather for planting. Put them out, smoked morning cigarette, moved them around. Decided to consult Keith, who uses Richards’s greenhouse for his small business of supplying pubs with flowers. It was a good move, he was clearly delighted to be consulted. He’d seen the new plants arrived. He’d be the type of person to laugh at where I’d put them. He agreed with most. Added to my knowledge of lavender – needs well drained soil, preferably sand based. Got me inspired to suggest a row of lavender – yes, very Victorian. (This knowledge of Victorian gardens is purely from restoring Gallery George’s Victorian paintings of ladies in gardens, with titles like ‘The Letter’).

Late in the morning Linda and I set out for Yorkshire Sculpture park. The overcast but light greyish sky gave a vibrant hue to the green of the new trees and fresh cut grass. No doubt Bob would say, perfect light for photographs – it was a perfect light to see. Looked first at some Rodin and figurative pieces around a small copse. I’ve always loved Rodin. Those big hands and feet, that confidence in sculpting and leaving. But for me it was the Henry Moore that was the most impressive. I gather he came from around here, Castleford, and was instigative in getting this park together.

“Sculpture should always at first sight have some obscurities, and further meaning. People should want to go on looking and thinking; it should never tell all about itself immediately. Initially both sculpture and painting must need effort to be fully appreciated, or else it is just an empty immediacy like a poster, which is designed to be read by the people on top of a bus in half a second. In fact all art should have some more mystery and meaning to it than is apparent to the quick observer. In my sculpture, explanations often come afterwards”

And that’s how it was. In a separate park at the bottom through a gate way to a field on a slope, spread the great sculptured Moore pieces. The slope went down to a lake, and beyond a stunning rise of another set of folds of hills. It was a perfect setting. We walked up hill to the figures, gaining expectation. Reclining nudes. Meditation on a form. First I tried to find the familiar form. The head and back were the easiest to see, arms, torso legs fragmented, over and under. We had some fun together piecing it together, saying which angle we liked best, what surprised us, bemused us, and were delighted to recognise one torso made of vertebra like pieces.

The explanation came afterwards as I was thinking about the shapes and realised that the spaces between were as important as the form itself. What was left undescribed. Just like writing. What does Bob say of my writing? It’s ponderous, it explains too much. Leave it. Be unexplicit, leave it to grow of it’s own volition.

I got the plants in the ground for the night. Cooked supper for kids (unpopular pasta), and food for adults: pasta pesto, with red and yellow backed peppers stuffed with tomato and anchovy, washed down with Chilean red. Reg, Linda’s father, had just returned from a sailing trip in Cornwall. Reg’s story: As well as being one of the leading repair joint surgeons of this country, he is also an accomplished musician, and the house is packed with organs and pianos, a pianolla and an HMV record player.
The book’s in my bedroom were Reg’s. For example:
The Organ: Evolution and Principles
Swiss Family Robinson
Churchill Life and Times
Railway Lovers Companion
Jeffery Archer, Gorkey Park, Len Deighton, Dickens (in spades)
The Indoor Boy
Becoming a man

I’d wondered about the last two modern additions. Linda explained unprompted.

• Well you know I’d told you my mother was continually having affairs? Well now, since she left, a year ago, Reg is questioning his own sexuality.

Tuesday Sheffield
On the M roads, driving into Sheffield with Linda:

• Rachel, just a thought. You know what you said about wanting an asparagus bed?
  I’d laid my cards on the table to Linda about not having kids and that sadness, like missing the creation and upkeep of an asparagus bed.
• Well you’ve got a camel in Rajasthan, what about an asparagus bed in Woodsets? I mean it. I’d tend it for you.

Kelham Island Museum. Linda’s idea. A good one. Above all I needed to find out what steel was made of before I visited Richard’s Steel works at 5.00 that afternoon, for the guided tour. At Kelham Island they’d turned an old steel mill, River Don Steel works, employing no doubt 1000’s of men in its time, into a museum of the past. And they’d done it well. I certainly got a taste of industrial Sheffield.

Sheffield’s natural sandstone was used for making grinding stones for edge tools, and cutlery knives. There was a ready supply of water for power, steam in particular. I found out that the secret to stainless steel was an addition of chromium. Richard told me later, it was discovered by accident. Harry Brearly left a piece out in the yard and seeing it did not rust, analysed later it was found to have a high proportion of chrome. Steel + nickel + chrome. Usually described as 18/8, nickel to chrome.

The most impressive thing was the River Don Engine, built in 1905. They turned it on for us. It reminded me of the great cranks on the Humber boats we used to cross on from Barton to Hull, in the days before the bridge. I always went down to the engine room to watch them pound around in their greased joints, steam hissing. After the demonstration, Linda and I accosted the man who turned the engine on, and pummelled him with questions. Once again, I say, for the first time (now aged 40) I understand the basics of the carbine engine. It had to have three carbines and pistons to make it start. They formed the important Y structure of angles for gravity to help the movement. Steam pressure accumulating, pressing one piston down, the other up. The River Don engine was used to drive a massive armour plat rolling mill, capable of rolling up to 16” thick and 50 tonnes in weight. The patient explainer was a man who’d worked in River Don Steel works since the age of 15. Now he turned the engine for us genteel visitors.

Linda left me to discover Sheffield on my own, kill a few hours before the factory tour. Bought an A-Z of Sheffield. Found the Crucible, and thought of Pam as we’d watched the snooker together from here last week. It was a terrible building. Out of keeping with its surroundings. Inside garish and non-sensical arrow based pattern. Oh Sheffield, where is the steel that makes you famous? Why build plastic stairs, crap wood doors. The only salute to steel I found was in Sheffield town centre – some rather dry large flower pots of steel, plonked in a precinct.

Took Sheffield’s famous white elephant, the tram up to City Road Cemetery. Thought I’d find some clues to the past, like the Necropolis at Glasgow. No such luck. Rows of the repeated Victorian slabs. No money wasted in glorification of the dead here. No stories on the stones to gather. A row of terraces, called Verdun Villas, made me chuckle. Down at heal place, ugly brick, terrible windows.

Tour of ALLVAC-SMP Limited – An Allegheny Teledyne Company.
“The magic of steel manufacturing is the management of the arrangement of atoms, through the mixes, and the treatments.”, Richard Wright, May 1998

Iron Ore (mined from Australia, Sweden etc)

Blast Furnace

Pig Iron

Arc Furnace and secondary steel making, AOD, VOD

Pure Iron/mild Steel (bought mainly from Germany)

All above stages completed outside ALLVAC, now for the tour. Turban off, helmet on.

Vacuum Induction melting

Room 1: The mixing bowl processes, where, depending on the final requirements of the matrix (ie strength, rust, etc) a cocktail of stuff is added to the mild steel. For example, nickel, cobalt, titanium, tungsten, magnesium…..

Electrode (rods)

1. Vacuum Arc re-melting
2. Electro Slag re-melting
Both processes are purifying processes, so you don’t get a centre untreated, or shit on outside. Process is done in massive copper crucibles. Crucibles – interesting word.

Ingot

Forging
This process refines the structure further. Process not seen.

Bar

1. sell
2. Ringroll Hardened at higher temperatures, then quenched in oil or water
   Tempered and quenched
3. Re-roll (into smaller bar) Process not seen

Machined
Into the shape required
For example cylinders, shafts for aerospace, BMW, RR, Prat and Whitney.

Costs: Electricity one of highest. Water not particularly high – closed loop.
Materials: Nickel: £5,000 tonne; Pig iron £160 tonne

Torn between taking photographs and just seeing. Damn cameras. It was the bigness of the machines, the massive hocks, links, cranes, furnaces, that most awed me. A surprising amount was done unmechanised. Richard explained because it was not a production line, no order was big enough for that, each had it’s on speciality. ALLVAC were after all a speciality steel manufactures – not a run of the mill (Ahhhh!). The most action I saw was at the end, Ringroll processing, hardening by heating and tempering. I saw four great steel bars being lifted from the oven, and swung over to the vat of oil to be quenched, flames rising high. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall, stayed, and watched on.

I asked Richard on the way back, why did Sheffield not celebrate it’s steel in its city centre architecture.

• Well it’s past has not always so clean. The working conditions were terrible, death at under 30 common, through the dreaded lung disease caused by dust.
  I remembered the willow throwers. At the Kelham Island museum we saw photographs of men working furnaces. They were throwing soaked willow onto the freshly heated rolls of steel, its purpose was to quickly cool to remove the iron oxide. Just water would have evaporated; the willow hardened the oxide, for it to be scraped latter. It often spat at the throwers, particles of molten steel flying down shirts burning skin, very common.

Wednesday Sheffield
Driving to Sheffield for Linda’s bible class, I was rambling on about crucibles, wasn’t the chalice at communion called a crucible? The Sheffield Crucible, Arthur Millar’s Crucible. She pulled over, stopped the car:

• Rachel, please don’t take this as being heavy. I don’t mean it that way. But I’m all tangled up in side, all knotted. All I know is a surge of love for you, you are so different, so interesting. I suppose I don’t know anyone else who would talk like you. (Pause) Ah I feel better now I’ve explained it. Knots going. Hope you don’t mind me being so honest?
• No. Just lost for words… Good that you say it. Why not? I’m rather touched.

Sheffield City Museum (while Linda does Bible class).
I’d wanted to come here yesterday, as they had an exhibition of cutlery. It’s a perfect end-game, after Kelham, (old days, and background) ALLVAC, (today processes) now Cutlery (end-use of steel). That’s it, spell it out Rachel!

Watched a video, with the old craftsmen talking, and showing how they made knives, forks and spoons. There are about 6 craftsman today in Sheffield who hand make cutlery, mainly for wealthy clients like IBM. The exhibition showed a linear display through the ages:
Early Tudor, made of Pewter. Knives and spoons only.
1630 first two pronged fork appeared
1800 three pronged fork
Today designers, David Mellor.
End of display – bloody plastic!

And for the lid on the case, we called into a cutlery shop, Don Alexander, where I bought two 18/10 (nickel/chrome of course) knives, to eventually chose between the two styles for a set. I chose the C17th pistol handled knives. Two days before I wouldn’t have understood this shop from Adam.

Had delicious bean soup with a friend of Linda’s who loved my two beloved countries, Africa and India. Her husbands family had been missionaries in India, and she talked of their return pilgrimage, the feted welcome they got, a march passed by the boys brigade, dressed in crazy western clothes over their Indian bodies, blowing western music, when their own was so much more powerful and appropriate. She was the inspirer of Linda to take up religion.

Finished the garden. Swept up the heaps of weeds and dead roses, great killer that I am. Pruned the aleagnus, cutting back to new spring growth, making shape, cutting out the week branches. The ground gave easily to pull out the bindweed, ivy and thistles growing underneath. Finally planted row of ballerinas, aqualigia. As I worked, people came and went; Liz, the sister from next door, her grandmother aged 92 with her grand-child, and as schools closed the children walked through with their mates. You see everything in a garden. I suggested to Linda a glass of wine to toast the garden and as we drank we were a magnet to the kids, who played near by us. Gave up our own conversation and I got them doing hand and head stands. Loads of earthy belly laughter.

Richard was out for a RR business dinner, so just the kids, Reg and Linda and I. The kids told Reg I’d bought a camel, and he reciprocated with a story of how he bought a taxi driver a car. (£700). After dinner Linda asked for a meditation demonstration, which I whipped through. It’s clear to me she is imitating a lot of what I do. Even smoking cigarettes.

Knock on bed room door.

• Rachel, can I come in? I need to ask something of you. I’ve got my knots back. Can I have a cuddle?
  So she climbed into bed, and I held her head under my arm. We lay still. I did not know what her expectation was. I just said, breathe deep.
• I feel I can say and do anything with you. I feel free. How do you find me?
• I find you very honest. (I am lost for words). I find you like on an edge.
• What do you mean an edge?
• I don’t know. Just that.
• But what does the edge mean?
• I don’t know. An edge, not thee edge. I don’t know.

Lucy interrupted us, came into the bedroom, tired sleep in her eyes, woken from a bad dream. I thought of Linda when she was a child, catching her mother making love to her lovers, and wondered what Lucy would make of her mother in bed with another woman. Linda left to put Lucy to bed. I was relieved to be left with my book!

Crucible:
a. a vessel in which substances heated to a high temperature
b. hearth at the bottom of a metallurgical furnace in which the metal collects
c. a sever trial or test
Thursday Sheffield -> Hull
But first of all some planting and a picnic. I’d bought some gladioli in Dereham market, and at last found a good home for them. They were a little mouldy, but had two chances, so made a back boarder of the proud elegant flowers, while Linda made a picnic.

Just before Roche, Linda pulled the car over, to stop.

• Don’t panic, I’m not going to get heavy, just taking off my coat!
  Sun now getting through.

Roche Abbey, perfectly nestled in a hidden valley, was a closed Cistercian Order for 400 years. The gateway provided the secular administrative section, with the self-sufficient farming around and inner part for the contemplation. Wild garlic abounded along the river bank. Latrine block at the end, built directly over the river, with the current of the river taking the shit away. Well organised. We sat on a bench and ate our picnic.

• If you had turned to kiss me last night, I would have responded. But it was fine just to be quiet. It wasn’t sexual, and least I don’t think it was. Although I do find you attractive. I’ve thought about what you said about edge, and I think I know what you mean. Before I met Richard, I was with a woman, and when I re-met up with Richard, we went to the Maldives, and I got pregnant, I realised it was God’s way of showing me which way to go. It’s not that I don’t have good sex with Richard, we do. But I could never talk to him, be with him gently as I am with you. Do you understand?
  For the first time in a week, the sun broke through the clouds, and warmed our backs.
  I gave Linda a strong hug, and left for the drive to Hull.

I’d planed the journey on my road map through what looked like an interesting unpopulated are called the Moors – no more moor than I am a catholic. Now all well reclaimed and cultivated farm land, mainly wheat. But old straight roads, just like some my mother and I used to travel on, a bit bumpy. Best straight was to Sandtoft. Took pictures of pylons as they converged at Scunthorpe. Over the Trent, and up to the Humber, and over the bridge. It’s only my 2nd or 3rd time across this remarkable piece of engineering. I parked, and walked down to its base. Old men walking and looking. I wonder if they, like my mother, when they were kids had to write an imaginative English essay: Hull life with a Bridge.

Ursula in the kitchen (some things never change) when I arrived. Cup of tea and talk. I’m determined to keep my cool and calm with Ursula. Not to let her ways exasperate me, unnerve me, drive me round the bend. It’s just for a week. Be kind, be gentle, she’s an old woman, living alone. Wonderful gift waiting from Bob: tobacco, Drum Mild Shag from Amsterdam – and I was just running out. He’s a brick!

Friday Cottingham
Shopping – a very important event. Upgraded the ingredients, balsamic vinegar, sweet basil. Introduced to the Lt Colonel, who had evidently known Gerald Kellett (fathers brother).

• Yes, I met Gerald first in London
• What was he doing? What army work?
• Oh you wouldn’t understand what we got up to there.
  I am exasperated, but smile meekly.
• Something to do with fuses, his wife put in
• And then again in Washington, we were both posted there
• Washington? Why there?
• Oh my dear, you wouldn’t understand the machinations of a Military Attaché. I had a big office but hardly got to spend time in it.

Tea with Joan and Mark. No film in my camera to take the wonderful wrinkles on Joan’s face. Always the same is Joan. Terrible food. Chicken macerated into a sausage with sauce, tined peas and carrots. But the best tea in the world, served in delicate porcelain cups.

Watch the video of Hilda’s 100th Birthday. Saw my mother moving and talking. Dressed like a schoolgirl. Oh wicked thought, I am glad she is no longer here. That I am free of her restrictions, her narrowness, her insecurity, so obvious in this social gathering. I am uneventful in the video, albeit rather attractive, flirting with Hubert, the good looking French man son of Michael who Hilda taught in France.

Frank Sinatra died today: Gore Videl said: “Half the population of us over 40 were conceived while our parents where listening to his records”.

Saturday Langdale End David
Picked up Monica in Beverly, and after this no quiet. Chatter chatter the whole way. Luckily only Ursula was meant to respond. As soon as Monica got in the car, all the potential difficulties of the drive are discussed. Where we stop for a pee and coffee – very difficult to find, then the turning to Langdale. We did find the pee stop near Saxton; here the land rises and divides between chalk on Humber side and limestone on the north riding side.

• An alluvial plain, says Monica, and her use of this wonderful sounding word brakes all my criticisms of her.

David’s house is wooden, at the end of a small terrace of 8 on the rise of a hill overlooking the north riding forest land he tended for all his working life.

• How many trees did you plant, David?
• Millions. And I cut as well
• More than you planted?
• No. Only towards the end I cut more. Now they cut with machines, even on these hills. A man does not need to touch the wood these days. Cut, branched, picked up, segmented, and moved, all my machine.

Lunch at Langdale hotel, where David immediately got into an argument with a Badger Preserver. He was describing the badger baiters who came up at night to his old house, and scared Jo. A woman next door piped up.

• Excuse me for overhearing, but you know there is a local organisation near you who should have come out and caught them. I’m a member of the Badger Protection Society, and we are all around the UK.
• I’ve not no time for badgers – they’ve eaten all m’ vegetables, dug up my beds, and grass. I’ve tried everything. They should be culled not baited. That’s all I’ll agree to.
• Oh dear. You know there’s an organisation that’ll help you with keeping them out of your garden. They suggest concrete.
• Concrete? D’y think I’m going to build a concrete wall all around my garden? Where do you come from?
  Monica changed the subject.

Tea on the badger lawn, and talk of India. David had been there 1942-6, Monica 1970, and myself 1996.
Paul’s ashes:
Monica: – Yes, they were scattered in India
Ursula: – I thought they were scattered in the Humber?
M: Yes, we put them in both places, hedging our bets you could say
U: Both places? But how will he get together on the last day?

David: We were in Dolally
R: Where?
D: Dolally. That were a transit camp, just outside Bombay
R: You mean an actual place?
D: Yes, it were where we all let our hair down and went dolally before going to where ever we were going.

Must get Last Train to Pakistan for Monica and David. I loved David. His joking, his warmth, earthy, unsided. As he gave me Wild Swans to read, he said I was welcome to come up here when ever I wanted.

• You know I think I’ll take you up on that, I said. Oh to escape Ursula for this!

Watched the Sheffield film, the Full Monty on video. I’d cleared it with Ursula before watching it.

• I hear the language is a bit rich
• Oh I don’t mind rich language, she’d said. Everyone’s telling me about it – I’d like to see it.
  My eyes were weeping from laughing at the end, as Ursula said:
• Very working class (pronounced without the are)
• What do you mean Ursula? Didn’t you enjoy it?
• Well it was very sad they had no work, I suppose, and had to steel.
• What do you mean? They didn’t get away with taking the steel pipe at the beginning – and had to turn to honest work – it’s a good moral.
• But they took shirts from a shop and ran out. They glorified and made funny steeling. It’s right to make steeling into something funny. No. Steeling’s not funny. No.”

Sunday/Monday
Got through to camel driver. He’s been in Jodhpur taking his young nephew to the doctors, with a still uncured stomach problem. This is the lot of an unmarried man, who must take care of the women (4) and their children (12). It’s getting hot in Rajasthan. He will be working in the heat, as a stone cutter or labourer for Rs30 a day (50p) waiting for the tourist season to begin again in November. Six long months.

Kowtow, another dolally – leant from Wild Swans. To pay homage.
Invited Barbara, next door, round for dinner. She had let it be known in a blunt Yorkshire manner that she hated cooking. I introduced Ursula to roasted peppers and anchovy. Barbara talked. I watched the clock until 9.00, when I suddenly became like my grandmother, and said “Its time for the TV news”.

• I slept this afternoon, avoiding having time on my hands for thinking. I’d do anything to stop thinking.

Tuesday
Took stock of mounting bad health and increasing tummy and went for 20 minute jog in park, with a bit of yoga. Good to be back. Eliot came for evening entertainment and Barbara for more charitable food. The two chatterboxes got on like a house on fire. Ursula and I even got the washing up done. Eliot is a Yorkshire Jew, chairman of the Jewish Christian Society and has just completed video on Synagogues of Hull. We cook kosha. He has two main subjects, Jewishness and Education (taught mathematics for years). Of India, he said he knew a lot, having watched the film Gandhi.

• So what’s Greenpeace been doing in India?
• Mainly toxic work. Trying to stop the import of toxic waste from northern countries, and questioning the paradigm of northern development, in particular some toxic plastics.
• Excuse me, but aren’t there more important issues than this in India, like too many children?
  I chew.
• That’s not an issue for Greenpeace. It’s more an issue for the Indians themselves to resolve.
• Yes, but isn’t it the route of all their problems?
• No not in my opinion. (Glossed over)
• And what about all those cows in the street?
• What about them?
• Well it’s unhealthy, I mean imagine cows walking up King Street in Cottingham…
• They cause no harm. In fact they’re rather useful.
• But what about when they defecate (pipes in Ursula) – that’s filthy in the streets…..
• Why dirty? Cows are very clean. They eat up the street rubbish. And their shit is collected up by the local women, dried in the sun, and used as fuel for cooking. Nothing is wasted.
  All too much for Ursula the fanatic bleach user. The washer of hands after every job, the cleaner of melon seeds to feed the birds…..

Thursday
As arranged (and cannot get out of) we visit Elliot to see his video, Synagogues In Hull. He has two chairs out in front of the TV, with RESERVED, URSULA and the same for Rachel. It’s an event.
We watch the rambling video – mixed with English and Jewish history never sure on dates, with an odd synagogue thrown in, and eat a partly frozen apple pie. He invites us to lunch, and I tell him our plan to go to the old part of Hull. He’ll come. Another lonely man, delighted to have this unexpected distraction – is old age full of these longings out of the mundane?

My cup is full, my last day with Ursula, I will make it a good adventure, and throw aside their collective worries about finding somewhere to park. We park (easily) by the old pier. Here my mother and I disembarked from the Humber ferry. I used to be petrified. Below the cracks in the flimsy wooden slats, the murky Humber roared and sloshed round the pillars, drawing me down, nothing but a thin railing on our left and right, and a nervous mother at a steering wheel of a mini minor. It’s been turned into a pedestrian walking place now and looked fine in the sunshine still full of nostalgia. Where the old dry dock used to be they’ve made a Marina, converted some of the old warehouses (not quite Catherine Dock style) and built the modern entertainment draw, a shopping centre. We ate in a pub (no smoking section). I propped myself at the bar for a roll-up much to Elliot’s chagrin. Excellent fresh haddock, and half of Guinness. Walked around, discussing how it all was in our olden days.

Ursula and I visited the graveyard, where Clare and the Wrights are buried. They’re all there in ordinary white stone graves. Names and dates, no stories. Long ages: Hilda 103, Clarice 96, and the other youngsters in their 80’s.

• What arrangements have you made Ursula, I ask in a practical way.
• Oh I’ll be buried here. At least I think buried. I can’t make up my mind between cremation and burial. If I’m buried, I might disturb Claire’s ashes.
• Are you looking forward to the next world?
• Well, I suppose so. I hope I’ll have been good enough. I pray I will.

UK Safari 2 – edited August 1999
Friday Hull -> Northumberland
Over the wold, (where Monica described her friend taking her last journey to the crematorium) listening to Philip Larkin read by Allan Bennet (thank you Bob). Lovely words, gentle mockery of the its and bits of life – I’m so enjoying it I decide to give Castle Howard a miss. Malton, Helmsley, across Helmsley Moor, and the Cleaveland Hills to Osmotherley. Loads of Larkin on the lonely moor land road, rattling over cattle grids.

Back into organised fields and towns cross country Northallerton, Scotch Corner, up Roman Road to Barnard Castle and Raby. This house I’d planed to visit was unfortunately closed, and it looked magnificent castle in a deer park. Another time. At Middleton-in-Teesdale I stop at a tourist shop to ask about camping, but it’s all very organised, unattractive to me, loads of well equipped elderly walkers eating kendle mint cake. Try at the various suggestions, but I’m told I’m on ‘no-camping, no-caravan’ country of Lord Barnard, and am advised to drive 20 or so miles out of this restricted territory.

At Carrigill the pub is open and when I ask sheepishly if there is anywhere to camp, the landlord says straight away the green by the stream is free for camping. It’s an excellent spot, and there’s a flat piece of land just under the bridge, by the stream. Land prospected, I go for my first walk along the Pennine way across Alston Moor to Cross Fell (893). Rouse my first grouse, ‘go-back, go-back’ it barks as it lands, above me curlew call. On the way down a retired farmer engages me in gentle conversation, knowing what I’ve heard up there.

I pitch the tent and after the Archers hit local pub. A lady from Swaziland entertains me (unwittingly) along with her local guests on my table. As she quizzes a pair of newly weds I notice there is no space in the conversation for any doubts to creep in. The King of Swaziland has 6 wives (I am wondering where Swaziland is on the map, only faint recollections of rather exotic stamps). Over excellent pub grub, I feel the familiar pains deep inside of a period coming, and it grows with vengeance, until I am regretting this camping lark. Work out simple strategy of getting to car, finding disprine and curling up into sleeping bag. It works like a dream, and no sooner am I sung in my bag, relaxed, than I start laughing at the thought I had ever regretted camping. Listen to a Buddhist tape, before living in here and now and turning off to noises of the outside, mainly the river water hitting rocks – the same tones, I notice, of a vibrant conversation, or an untuned television.

Saturday Carrigill -> Otterburn
Woke to hear distinctive noise of snoring. Head of out tent, nothing to be seen. However as I pack up the tent and follow the noise, over a wall there’s a new tent, surrounded by sheep – should be an interesting awakening for the occupant.

Glorious 6.00 start. Yoghurt in a lay-by beside Hadrians wall. Not the best time to see it – in deep mist, it rather looses it’s vantage positioned architecture. Walk a little way along it, but am rather concerned with leaving the car – having been warned by locals to lock and hide all stuff in car as this is a well known spot for the rough boys to come and get a days takings.

I continue drive along the B6318, the ultimate straight roman road, and up to Otterburn where I checked into the Percy Arms. I’d booked it from Hull rather romantically thinking of Harry Percy. Disappointing at first, situated on a busy main road and my room faced front. But the room was fine, bed linen crisp, and afternoon nap inviting. But first a walk, and another part of Pennine way. From Byrness through forested land to Windy craig. Signposts disappeared, as tracks multiplied, so never sure if I was on the right track, but I enjoyed the walk on mossy ground through planted conifer forest, all ominously silent bird song absent.

Soup and nap. At 3.30 I drove up a desolate road off B634 to Makendon and into the Cheviot hills. Like desert dunes, these gentle often flat-toped hills overlapped my way along the valley. Signposts saying Danger Military Zone, gave spice to the journey. Finally parked and walked the gentle ridge amongst the sheep up to the Pennine Way. When gentle rain increased to slanting water, I made my way back. A shepherd on a modern herder (mini-tractor) stopped his motor to pass a few minutes, and gave good information. He was a tenant farmer to the Military landlords, who he described as good compared to some of the other local landlords. He was driving the sheep from this sweet pasture, which if they had their freedom they would eat dry, to higher land. He spoke of the land with admiration, pointing to the near hill showing me the old lines of previous farming when crops were grown up here in more temperate times. It had been a good laming season, with 20% twins, and plenty of grass. Most sheep problems I understood from him come from surfeit or lack of minerals in grass, mainly magnesium and calcium.

Four noble truths: Not I think therefore I am, but there is thinking and no thinker to be found. The four truths analogous to medical process: illness and suffering, diagnosis, can I be cured? And cure. Chewing on this.

I am on the wrong side of the bar at Percy Arms; next door the locals are roaring with laugher, while we tourists are carefully segregated, in a spiritless room of tables. Terrible food. Great bed.

Sunday: Carrigill-> Kirk Yeltham (Scotland!)
Started the day full of indecisions, whether to press on or walk again in the Cheviot Hills. After yesterdays walk I felt drawn to their gentle remote ways, and wanted more. I stopped, the sun came out, I put on my new white shorts (from Cottingham Oxfam), and I went for the beginning of the Pennine Way. Quickly I threw all doubt behind me down the hill as I walked up. It was glorious. Getting into a rhythm of walking up, two steps to each breath, remembering John Rivers talking endlessly on counting breaths to steps in his Kilimanjaro book, and as I recalled so I re-lived some of my African mountains. Four ups and three downs to get there – to the Cheviot (815). A final tough ascent, one step one breath. Met two bicyclists walking their bikes down, and two noisy motor bikes reving their way up the well trod tracks. Young Northumberland ruddy faces – these would have been the cattle hustlers of another time, in the historic skirmishes between the Percy’s and Roxbourghs. Floors castle is owned by the 10th Duke of Roxborough, ‘whose arrogant features can be seen in variety of paintings’ (Rough Guide) – and the two contending families fought.

A couple of locals relayed behind and in front of me throughout the day, and on one such pass established it was my first adventure in these hills and displayed the pride of Africans in their country.

• Where are you from? They asked.
  I was totally perplexed at this question.
• I don’t know, I said and because I did not want to pursue, said deflecting
• India. Where are you from?
• You didn’t come from India yesterday.
  Of course, why didn’t I take it that way, all they wanted to know was where I had come from yesterday. But back to the larger quandary, why not say London or Norfolk? Because at this time I did not feel part of either, nor for that matter India.

At the top I sat behind a rock to smoke a congratulatory roll-up. The view of course was magnificent, with the Cheviot hills overlapping round to where I was walking yesterday. The two locals came up behind me, and having told me the names of the places below, I asked if they knew of anywhere I could camp. They didn’t, went their way, then turned round saying they had a pleasant back garden (just cut the grass) I could use. Why not? They continued on across the duck boards to get the view across the other side, while I descended a lovely descent round a different track through a gorge and emerald green plateau. A good 6 hour trek, legs tired at the end. Bathed feet in stream, washed face, sat back in car catching last of suns rays. Listened to a bbq starting up, car door open, Oasis music blasting out – good clean fun. I thought what is Norfolk by comparison? I watched a grandfather and grandson go up the hill, son like a dog running walking, getting smaller dots on a hillside.

Tonight’s landlords returned, and accepted my offer of a lift for the remaining 2 miles of road into Yeltam town. Nice piece of lawn – never had it so flat for a camp. Slightly concerned about night peeing. Offered to buy them a pint for their trouble, and they ended up paying for my ministronie soup. Warm no stuff and nonsense local pub. Our skins gently buzzing from the new sun, we fell into easy conversation. They were going to Africa in two weeks, to climb Meru and Kili. Amazing – there I was just re-living those experiences. After an animated talk of these two mountains, and promises of local addresses and tips later, I veered the conversation to the locality. They were both working for social services, he as local head and she in VAT.

• You’ll never believe it but I love it.
  As they ate their steak and chips they told me of a programme to educate Scottish people into healthy eating. Comparison between shopping at Bewick (England) and Hoek (Scotland) – no vegetables in Scotland but row upon row of cakes. But old habits die hard here, as the famous story of Hoek illustrated. I of course had not heard it. The local festival in Hoek involves riding horseback round the town; last year a women turned up to this bastion of men, and it created such anger and rivalry, it was reported in the national press and still families are not talking to one another.
• Why, I asked. Why harbour, why no forgetting? Same as Ireland? People staying generation upon generation, farming the same land, passing down stories of rivalries generation to generation, roots (all the things that I would love but will never have).
• Yes, it’s ironic really as the women used to be the wealthiest people here. They were the wood spinners, and kept the purse strings. But times have changed in that respect. They have an expression here, It’s aya been. And its used to punctuate every conversation of unresolve. A loathing to change anything of the past. They have 4 different methods of calculating VAT used in this one county – one could and should be used, but no-one will change, because its aya been.

And over a wee dram or two back home, we talked of Africa, as I made marks on their itinerary of what to be weary of, what to avoid, as well as the positives – gave them Ole’s address in Moshi. A thoroughly enjoyable evening.
Colin and Jane Johnson
Lyon Cottage, High Street, Town Yeltam, Kelso TD5 8RF

Monday Yeltam -> Edinburgh
What do I know about Scotland? Three previous visits: Edinburgh, Glasgow and more distant, 20 years ago, Sky.
James 1st and Vth – Highlanders – clans and clearances – whisky – malts – neat Edinburgh gardens with clothes lines – best graveyards in Britain (Edinburgh/Glasgow) – George Renne McKinstosh and Blackie – tartan material – Walkers shortbread – Ben Nevis – smoked salmon – pipes – rhodi’s and heather – hills and lochs – nationalism (SNP) – Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora McDonald – midges – Sky colours of brown and blue – the Cullins.

Clouded by the unusual quantity and quality of drink, the drive over Melrose Galashiels and Peebles was perfunctory, except for a very pleasant couple of stops at Sir Water Scot house and burial place. Had a kip at Dryborough as I’d arrived before opening – nice quiet place to sleep. Dryborough is a ruined abbey, in well manicured lawns, ah I’m in well kempt Scotland. Excellent choice of venue for burial, Scot and son lie along with his biographer, Lockheart (I used to know his descendants, the Bruce-Lockhearts, father taught at Greshams, and son shared a house with Guy in the south of France). Haig, the butcher of the first WW also selected this spot for burial with inscription “Live as one about to live hereafter” – such firm belief. Mrs Haigs poppy appeal for limbless war veterens gathering moss near by. Other Haigs buried beside, blood lines I’ll not be part of, I’m the full stop of my family trees.

Sir Walter Scots home was rather eccentric, with a smoking corridor of armour and guns. Very romantic, wild, head strong looking face, and wife, French, small boned and attractive. In most rooms a sweet smelling plant, jasmine, azalea, etc and outside formal gardens toperied box hedges, and a blaze of rhodi’s

Found Edinburgh so easy to negotiate I went straight through the centre passing neatly trimmed ladies with sensible shoes and well turned ankles and found East Fettes Avenue with ease. Alou gave unflustered welcome, and within seconds I was shown around her new house with pride and joy. Odd to see familiar furniture from my child hood days with John and Elsbeth now in different situ. This stuff is new to her, and much time is spent discussing what to do with it, how to handle it. As we walked along the canal banks down to Stockbridge we launched into an immediate discussion on Stuart and Tinks. My anger of Stuart took me by surprise, and I apologised for it afterwards – it must have been brewing. Andy (Alou’s partner whose house we called in at) put the counter balance argument, that Tinks withheld information, and did not therefore give Stuart a chance to reform.

Tuesday
As I did e-mails, Alou filled out her grant application for her final year of art school. There’s some dichotomy here: she’s just inherited a million and is still eligible for a grant and fees paid. In a light Edinburgh rain I dug her garden, made a new bed for plants. I cooked the evening meal – (roasted peppers and anchovy, with pesto pasta), very successful. Andy came round, Megan (aged 13 going on 20) ignored him. It’s been a 7 year campaign she’s run, stubbornly refusing to talk to him or acknowledge him. I get the impression she’s as tired of it as anybody, but cannot see a way out without loosing face – and face she has a lot of.

Wednesday
Edinburgh shopping along Princes Street, Waterstones of course, catching up on the best sellers – it’s been a boost (I sheepishly admit) to know where ever one is there will be a Waterstones with the best seller section. Met Alou at the Waverly centre, a sad modern undercover shopping centre development, proud horrid architecture, brash and peeling, people eating chips, piped musak, Ugh. We repaired for coffee to an art centre and found a Yoko Ono exhibition – very enjoyable, full of gentle fun and side ways look at life. A ‘Wish Tree’ inviting people to write down their wishes and cover it’s branches – so many were ‘I wish I was something I’m not’. At 6.00 I left for south Edinburgh and Katy Bartlet.

Katy, daughter of Penelope, has had rheumatoid arthritis for all her life. I have memories of her with callipers on to straighten her little legs. Now 30, trained as a doctor, presently at Edinburgh Hospital on a research post working in psychiatry, she’s a still a spirited woman. We discussed the influence of her life long illness on her spirit as we walked up to town to eat vegetarian. She told me of a time travelling through China, having been so ill and joints in pain, the relief of arriving, and of having done it. We talked Jimmy Boyle and Mary Bell, of criminals turning writers and those terrible words, ‘making money’ out of their bad pasts. Paedophiles, psychopaths they can change, she said, they cannot change their innate desires, but they can go out without a knife, they can channel their desires into less harmful activities, yes, she said, they can change. But otherwise she was rather disillusioned and pessimistic. Her patients all came from the same prototype background of broken family, sexually abused, and she doubted any treatment would alter that course of their lives, meshed in that same family, repeating patterns, not strong enough in themselves to make the revolution. After Alou it was a real and interesting evening. Conversation followed through, no talk of stuff. With Katy I realised how self-centred Alou was and always will be, and how she always manoeuvred our conversation back to herself.

Thursday Edinburgh-> Morray, Ballytruan
I’ve been lucky with my ad hoc arrangements, calling Katy the night before, and Malcolm last night, both saying welcome. So I made my way unexpectedly further north, into the Highlands of Scotland, to the county of Moray, and Malcolm McGarvin. (40 something, single, environmentalist, Greenpeace contractor, fisheries expert).

Easy drive up the A9, skirting Perth, up Glen Garry. At Avimore, I turned off the main road and started being where I was at the edge of the famous Cairngorm mountains, along the B970 following the Spey. Soup at Nethy Bridge, and fantastic ride from Grantown over Bridge of Brown, in wild stark rust-brown heather. I found Malcolm’s house, Ballytruen, in light drizzle on the banks of River Avon (pronounced Arne). Over tea Malcolm held forth about how dire his circumstances were. I’d shopped at Safeway Edinburgh for food that night, so could at least offer this small contribution, however we needed essentials like Olive Oil, so went the 50 miles to his nearest supermarket in Elgin. The trip allowed him to introduce this landscape to me.

The direness was caused by various non-payments, mainly from Greenpeace. He was now working for the G11, assessing Government environmental reports in particular marine based but they were 30 day payers. The telephone may be soon cut off, (Bob had settled his previous telephone bill); the heating had only just been restored (with payment for oil); he is living off £17 per week for food for himself and animals. One of his plans to make money is a book he is writing. (Of course, I am impressed). As he talks about it – all taking place around here drawing on the ancient Pictish history of this landscape – he inspires me into this time and place. On the journey back we call in at my first Highland cemetery where he showed me some Pictish stones (St Peters, Inveravon). Rough cut images of half moons with broken arrows through, combs, mirrors and a Pictish animal. I’m hocked. Other graves mainly of the Grant family. We stop by an old bridge (industrial archaeology) and I see close up the particular trees and shrubs – the weeping birch and flowering Bird Cherry.

He asks how long I propose to stay, and after supper (you guessed it, roasted peppers, anchovy, pesto pasta and salad), I say a few days. I know I want to get my teeth into this remarkable place, and Malcolm is a knowledgeable inductor.

• Remind me, Malcolm of your Scottish antecedence, with your name McGarvin
• None, he replies, the name McGarvin does not exist in Scotland. He is smiling, enjoying the joke against himself.
• My father was Polish and was given this name when he worked for British Intelligence during the war. I don’t know very much about my father, he only talked once of his past, one Christmas after a few drinks. My mother knows even less than I do. From what I can piece together, he learnt how to fly in the German army, he said in order to escape, but I don’t know how true that reason was, or if he just turned coat one day and came over to the other side – England. One reason for doubt is he was a very bigoted and anti-Semitic man. No, I did not like him. After he married my mother he never worked again – she became the breadwinner, working as a teacher – so from 1950 to 5 years ago when he died, he hardly ventured out of the house. He read a lot, he was a bright man, but I did not like a lot of what he thought.
• Why do you think he never talked about his previous life, never wanted to return to Poland?
• Because he was frightened. After he came to England, his entire family would have been killed in retribution, and after the war, he was in danger of being tracked down and revenged by his previous masters. Yes, I can understand why he never talked about it.

Friday Pictish settlements around Ballytruan, Speyside walk.
As Malcolm did his VAT I went Pictish searching. First up the Avon to where it meets the Livit, a plateau of land Malcolm pointed out to me yesterday, on which a flat toped mound sits at one end, with a stone circle and a pinnacle mound on top. As I sat in the grey of the day on fecund sap green grass, I got a strong feeling of a different time, years and years ago. Yes surely this was an ancient settlement, water being so important, this was where the two river ways met. And high up enough to see down the valleys, with good vantage. I remembered a book I’d read in Sheffield, by Daphne du Maurier, set in Cornwall, about a scientist who’d developed an hallucinatory drug, that took the scientist and his friend back in time, to medieval ages. The idea was off the wall, but oddly compelling as it wove the names of present day farms to old villages and landscapes unchanged and changing. This land surely has changed the least in Britain; only gravel pits will have altered the shape of some of the hills, tree plantations the vestments of the curves, the body will be the same. Telegraph and electric pylons stride you into the C20th.

Just beyond the Bridge of Avon, I cut up a track and across a field too a gathering of standing stones and a chamber stone. In walking boots, my feet got soaked before I’d arrived. I sat on the chamber stone and rolled a cigarette, and once again, felt a strong pull of another ancient time.

Followed by a 4 hour walk along the torn up railway track that follows the River Spey, to Knockando Distillery, and the smell of Wheetabix – nothing to do with whisky, but the by-product of used oats prepared for animal fodder. Past their ancient and unusual water recycling plant, water dripping into 6 octagonal boxes filled with rock, and filtered down to remove BOD and COD.

Evening walk along the Avon with Malcolm and his dog, an Irish Water Spaniel called Solo. What a dog, so full of humour, he curls me up in laughter as he plays. Odd mixture of bear, poodle, retriever, he’s a strong swimmer, particularly good at retrieving birch logs from the Avon rapids. The evening and morning walk is through juniper bushes to the just greening and unfolding gentle shimmering leaves of alder and birch by the river. Malcolm gives me the first dose of river plant names – he will have to repeat them at least 3 times before they sink into my dull brain: Water Avon, Sweet Chervil or Sweet Cecile (tastes like Aniseed – part of the Umbrella family of cow parsley, hemlock, carrot, fennel.)

I go to bed with his book – at least the first 4 chapters, all written so far.

Saturday Malcolm’s tour of stones and graveyards
I drive.
a. General Wades bridge. He evidently built a lot round here.
b. Ardclach bell tower and church. Bell tower a tiny square keep of two storeys. Chimney with initials MGB carved over, may be Margaret Grant Brodie. Its high on a hillock overlooking hills and down on church for vantage point. Slit windows for shooting at any trouble coming. Graveyard with married to Grants, and (Farmer). A John Smith from Carolina
c. Clava Cairns. Three impressive round cairns, each surrounded by a ring of standing stones, two open passage graves. Little found in excavation 1953 except cremated remains. Some stones with ‘cup marks’. We really have no idea why or what. Probably 2000 years old.
d. Road down to Loch Ness. Malcolm presented this with great glee, a fun descent on grass in the middle old track with very sharp hair pin turns.
e. Boleskine cemetery. Big graves to the Frazers. Great position, over looking Loch Ness I have a distant feeling of having been here before.
f. Sueno’s Pictish Stone. Seven headless men – 7 a magic number evidently
g. Waterfall walk with dog.

Admired the pylons marching across the heather land on way back to Malcolm’s chagrin – he hates them.

After the evening meal we talk of books, his and others, and the poetry of war. Malcolm reads Owen’s Spring Offensive. As he reaches the 2nd part, there are tears in his eyes, and he can barely finish. I am astounded by his depth of feeling for the words. He has an understanding of the words I never had. Hr understood the of a shame of hiding behind one that fell.

Sunday
Overcast again, we decide on local adventures, starting with graveyard and pub followed by a good dog walk.

Local graveyard at Tomintal. Many well preserved C18th, with beautiful scripting, more Grants and McGreggors. A stone to the family who lived in Ballytruan, Malcolm’s house. A gamekeeper who accidentally shot himself loading a gun. Studied patterns of lichens – presumed due to difference of stone type, but also slant to land. Followed by excellent venison in local pub.

Nature walk up the Arn. One lone orchid – Malcolm was the person who introduced me to orchids in Ireland, before which I’d never taken a 2nd glance at one before. Does their name and scarcity matter? Before I knew its name did I look at this delicate flower and say, how fine, passing by, but now I know it’s name, I linger, and know how precious it is. It reminds me of the Little Prince and how he tendered his rose, but on his travels he comes across a field of roses and realises his rose is one in a million. It is an C18th landscape of delicate birches on emerald green (limestone) pasture. Malcolm curses at a march of electric pylons, placed in the last two years to source a hunting lodge in the hills beyond.

• At least they are wooden, I say sheepishly
• Grrrrrrr, he replies
• Who was your nature mentor, Malcolm? Who did you listen to describe the plants and the lay of the land?
• Books, he said. Books have been my mentors.
  We turned at a farmed deer park – 100’s of their little white bottoms turned and fled through the trees as Solo made half hearted attempt to chase. I picked up 2 well preserved deer skulls, there were many around, strange only their heads and no other bones. Walked back on an old stone grass track once used by the local tacksman, a man of magical powers, revered and respected in these parts. The landscape would have been exactly the same as he walked.

Malcolm’s given me Culloden to read. When food was scarce, the Highlanders bled their cattle by the throat mixing blood with oat cakes. Duke of Cumberland: Described the lack of cannonade in a battle as a dance without the music. It was a massacre. Of the much debated retrospective reasons for the Highland failure, I put down no food for 2 days as crucial – imagine this sharp north east wind and slanting rain (of today), boggy heather land, on an empty stomach? Impossible.

Monday
Woke up with a dream still fresh in my body. I was being carried by my lover, a red jacket (English) army deserter. Wounded himself, and just approaching a group of kids listening to a puppet show of the battle, I said: ‘Pick me up and carry me, pretend I am pregnant and ill, they will let you pass’. It worked. Sometime later I am standing in heather. All seems normal, then as I walk I see the bodies, and body parts hidden in the thicket of the heather beneath me.

Left Malcolm to work and set off in the car.
As soon as the gentle tourist information woman said

• Well it’s rather dangerous
  I wanted to go. In a sub-conscious somewhere else in my head I thought ‘Culloden couldn’t have reached this far by now, could it?’. The ruined castle, which was ‘rather dangerous’, was Auchindoun south of Dufftown. A C15th great craggy ruin on a hill top, burnt in 1592 to revenge the murder of the Bonnie Earl of Moray. Disregarding ‘Danger do not enter’ and ‘Falling Masonry’ I entered and wondered around. I took some snaps of views through windows, and the cross section of the ruin displaying its three stories, including a grand vaulted room and principle bedroom. Some burnt out logs in the cellar was evidence of a recent fire of someone seeking shelter.

Mortlack graveyard. Ate fudge for lunch as I wondered round the graves. Getting rather fed up with the lack of detail beyond the names, dates and place died – not even profession mentioned here.

Whisky distillery tour of Glenfiddich. Found myself in room full of Germans, odd after all the empty roads to suddenly discover the profitable market of tourism – they packed into the shop at the end, dying to spend their money on this overcast rainy day. A charming Italian showed us round, I only got myself lost once. The compulsory tasting of whisky afterwards left me drowsy, and I forced myself up the valley further to a kirkyard near Buckie – the land towards the sea becomes to tame for my liking. Enough of minimal information graveyards.

Cooked Belgian Stumph for dinner, and having stuffed ourselves, we went for good evening walk along river. Loads of Alder. Malcolm tells of how a chemical like haemoglobin has been found in their roots, no doubt to help them uptake oxygen from water.

• Do plants need oxygen? I thought they took in carbon dioxide and neatly gave of oxygen
• Yes they need both, but they give off more oxygen than they take in.
  I laughed at my ignorance, elaborating how I was educated by Catholic nuns for whom science was presented in the context of the wonder of God, and humans at the centre of any universe and chain of events – all nature masterly working for our benefit.

Tuesday
Morning walk up Balytruan, the hill outside after which the house is named. Gentle rain, and low cloud. So from the top the usual, how it would be if the sun was out, potential views of the Caingorms etc. Tough walking up the heather – of course I’m thinking of Culloden. Saw the greenpatches in the heather on a further hill, where the ancient farmers once collected stones to clear the land, and heather will not grow there now. A farmed forest of dark Douglas Fir spotted with light green birch, Malcolm tells me this is beautifying the landscape forestry.

Finally got down to writing some old log and downloading, as the day held no promise of cloud lifting.

We drove 70 miles for dinner. It’s like saying let’s go to Brighton for a drink. Great evening light of sun breaking through the dark foreboding clouds. Malcolm had booked us into Pennan, a place he loved and had not been for many months due to financial problems. I was to buy him dinner. It was where they’d filmed Local Hero – I must see it when I get back. The food matched Malcolm’s drawling description of it on the way there. We had a huge hunk of beef in various sauces – mine peppers whisky and red wine. I’d not eaten beef like this since France. It was freezing outside, the waves smashing onto the promontory, the line of houses washed away in 1977 (?) now an area for a cross hatch of Scottish clothes lines, and the new houses built right into the rock 10 yards back. We repaired to the bar for a brief chatter with the locals, Unis, Zandar and odd names.

• Where are you from? They asked. Shit that question again. Some laughter at my lack of answer then they extrapolated
• Or you’re not an alien with a funny thumb?
• Well yes, as it happens I do have a double jointed thumb. And I show it.
  They roared with laughter, and Zander showed his double joint in sympathy.
  I would have liked to pass the time longer, with their swift talk and quick banter, but Malcolm’s glass of Beaune-Village was emptied and I was not drinking.
  We’d had a thought provoking conversation which continued in the long car journey back.
• What is your take on power? I’d asked Malcolm
• I see the evolution as not a desperate need to create and find more sources of power, as a revolution away from physical chemistry, needing a lot of power, to computer analytical chemistry, movements of atoms, changing of structures, needing relatively little power. As for transport, I see us needing to travel less and less as more electronics enables facilities to come to where we live.
• How interesting. Yes I can see your take. But doesn’t that sophistication enable a removal from the man in the streets of an understanding? For examples computers and decision making. I see us living now in an extraordinary time where we have the knowledge of how things work, some of us can even mend a car, we understand the principles of where our water and heat come from etc. But take cars; now they are being developed with such intricate computer components, your local garage man no longer has the knowledge to maintain, and servicing has to be done either by a computer or someone at main office who understands it. Even today some kids don’t know where milk comes from.

The capabilities of computers. Flying an aeroplane, does it have a survival instinct? All our historic mistakes, can a computer correct through the sum of many knowledge-bases, not just one human fallible one? Following a train of thought. I don’t know enough of our historic patterns of mistakes, but one thing can be sure, we have certainly increased our knowledge of ourselves and our surroundings.

• But does this make us happier people?
• Yes surely. Surely greater knowledge increases our happiness, as we achieve understanding…. I’m failing fast.
• Have you read the Bone People?
• No
• It’s about people of a different time, who did not want for food, so all their time was spent in hedonistic pursuits. Only a need for food and shelter makes us strive for better and better, until now a days we become neurotic about it……

We talked of truth. Does truth matter? Does a rock now truth? Yes truth does matter. But truth is not necessarily permanent, in fact better if acknowledged to be transitory. For now I know God does not exist. That is my truth. But it may change. Not sitting on a fence, hedging bets for I believe in that truth. But must always be open to question, never assume.

We talked of industry versus environmentalists. Not just a big bad name but people. Take tobacco companies; they knew in the 1930’s of the addictiveness of tobacco, of the carcinogenic properties and heath risk. How can their directors, decision-makers live a life and say, this is what I have done? Caused millions of peoples death?

A wee dram of Dallas Due when we got back – with the after taste back of mouth of bitter chocolate.

Wednesday
Malcolm leaves to give a talk on marine futures in Aberdeen, and I’m in charge of walking the dog – a delightful delegation, I throw sticks into the Avon, run and play. In the field on the way back I find bloated dead sheep – return with camera to take photographs. A day of light rain, and of writing up the log.

edited august 1999

UK Safari 3 Scotland / Wales
Thursday Ballytruan -> Dunnet
Culluden – it’s conveniently on the way, and I’ve just finished John Preeble’s book.
The old battlefield is now cut in half by an inconsiderate road that divides the western section of the divisions, granted fairly on both sides. However it’s marked out well, and all trees that had since grown have been felled, leaving the lie of the land easy to see over the gorse scrub.

Most noticeably there is hardly a 100 meters of land between the two sides line-up. Engraved wooden posts describe where each regiment stood on either side, clan names, the Duke of so-and-so names along with some rough cut stones erected later to mark where the Scottish hero’s fell. Like Waterloo, and no doubt thousands of other battle-fields discussed in retrospect, this choice of this land made by the Scots had a decisive influence on the outcome of the battle. Why did they choose a land with a known tendency to mud and swamp? A fault exacerbated no doubt by the slanting rain – hard to imagine on this warm spring day. Back in 1947, there was a strong east wind, rain and sleet, and all they had was an oat cake and water for breakfast. In a reconstructed hut, two people recreated a 20 minute drama, as an English surgeon and a Highlander woman his nursing assistant – nice touch. Culluden must have been one of the shortest decisive battles in history – 40 minutes. I remembered Clan Chatten – of the 23 officers only 3 survived the charge, brave and fearless, most fell 20 yards before the English line. And the long drawn out death of Keppoch, head of MacDonnald clan.

Gorse lined the way up the east coast A9 road. It gave a smell of coconut, a smart of yellow. I missed Whaligoe distracted by a purchase of cheese and a Jacobs fleece. Oil platforms floated out in the North sea, they evidently move from day to day, like transitory sea decoration.

Does truth matter? John o’Groats is not the northernmost point, although the predominant architecture (a giant car park and ticky tack shops) proclaims it so. It was a most unattractive place, despite the clear northern evening light and after giving it half a beer in local pub. The one redeeming feature about John O’Groats, I thought as I left, is its gateway to the Orkney’s. I drove to the truth, Dunnet and walked to its tip, unproclaimed wilderness, sprinkled with orchids. Nearby I found an excellent camp site right on the beach. Kedgeree in pub (Do you want chips, love?) followed by constitutional round next door graveyard – lots of Sinclairs and some skulls and hourglasses. Snuggled up with Bill Bryson (‘borrowed’ from Alou) Notes from a Small Island, and was soon chuckling away at his John O’Groats experience. I went to sleep to the sound of sea birds and some ‘Fuck off’ football played by local lads on the beach. Tied scarf over eyes to imitate dark, in this land of white nights.

Friday Dunnet -> Ullapool
Thurso for the Royal Bank of Scotland – useful to have this account up here, otherwise a quick £3.00 to cash English cheques. Oxfam astounded me. Here of all places, where wind sweeps unhindered by hills or trees, there would surely be a good stock of woollen jumpers – to my horror they were all synthetic mix, except some thin M&S ones. I’d read last night Bill Bryson describing the big event for local girls was catching the train to M&S at Inverness, so here was the resultant turned round product. Poor buggers, they must freeze.

Dounraey: It’s been in the news, some plutonium’s gone missing, which they defended as accounting problems. When I asked the curator to remind me why Dounraey had been in the press he laughed and said ‘For everything’! It was perfect timing, as it’s the first day this year the visitors centre is open to the public. Giant golf-ball on the horizon, aeroplane run-way up to base, with fences and notices in red and black announcing sponsors and keep out. The story: Built in 1950-80 this was to be the cutting edge of nuclear technology, the prototypes of nuclear reprocessing technology. The Dounraey Fast Reactor (DER) was the first to be built, and next the Prototype Fast Reactor (PER) (1967). After the latter was shown to work 1974, Thatcher, inexplicably closed it down in 1994. Inexplicable to the curator, mumbling something about privatisation plans. So what now? It began specialising in ‘decommissioning’, dealing in radioactive waste. Having experience of it’s own, they started taking waste from abroad, (eg Georgia) much to jingoistic chagrin of press and readers – We don’t want their filthy waste. An extraordinary fact: There is still no resolution how to deal with intermediate or high level nuclear waste, so it’s stored in canisters on campus, waiting for science to come up with a solution. Isn’t it topsy turvey to develop something with no idea how to dispose of it, or is this my limited unscientific brain? A tenant that science will always eventually come up with a solution, like a cure of a disease? In the 1960’s they built a giant shaft down into the rock beneath to put all medium level physical contaminated objects. At the time it was considered safe, now with improved scientific analysis and information it’s not. They’ve got to empty it out and decontaminate it. It will cost in the region of £300m. Wow – hozat for expensive waste! The good news is it will give employment for the locals well into the next century. After that a blank sheet of paper. I wondered what it must be like working for something decommissioning, winding down, dead-ending.

Heather clawing to the hillside, big landscapes, no trees (difficult to find a place to pee), and disappointingly no giant pylons as Malcolm promised me. Kept a look out for Clearance Villages, where potato patches were still the greenest, after an excellent visit to Strathnaver Museum. It was a fine museum and the story of the clearances described by the local school children had me gripped. Upstairs a room dedicated the Clan McKay. Of course, I had to buy The Highland Clearances written by same author as Culloden, John Prebble.

So I turned, beyond Tongue, and came down the west coast. The gorse is still with me, but now there’s an occasional pink rhodi, and the heather does not clinging so fearfully. I’m coming into the feel of the gulf stream.

Ullapool. I immediately liked this funky little fishing town despite the many tourists, and decided to stay. Ate the best fish and chips (haddock) ever as I wondered round the active port, while watching ferry boats arriving and sailors untangle fishing nets. Chatted up the fisherman, “Come back in July for herring” they said. “Fancy a beer in the local?” I said surprised at my own forwardness.
‘Too busy working’ came their winking reply. Watched a container load of prawns loading up for Spain.
Fish 2.95 / Tent 7.00 / Beer 2.00 / Total 12.00
Terrible diet of fudge and battered fish!

Ullapool graveyard:

• Gone but not forgotten
• Thy will be done
• For when we were yet without strength
• In due time Christ died for the ungodly
• Until the day break
• Then are they glad because they be quiet
  So he bringeth them into their desired haven
• When Zion by the mighty word, Built up again shall be
• Until the day break, and shadows flee away
• Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking
• Morn the toll, nor might of waking

Sinclair Urquart, McDonnald, Cambell, McKenzie.

Saturday Ullapool -> Applecross
The pub regulars of last night walk the early morning day and greet me as if I were no longer a stranger. I’d like to return to Ullapool. Excellent coffee.

Inverew. Famous garden. First thing that strikes are the sweet smells of spring pollen. Inherited by Osgood Mackenzie (aged 20) he built up the barren peninsular with earth from Ireland, planted a wind break of Scots pine, and began to roost his life long collection of plants from around the world. Across the bay is the handy ‘before look’, barren and stark. An intricate set of paths weave through the rhodhi’s, herbaceous boarders, pounds and trees guaranteed to get you lost – Americans wondering round with name tags asked me directions throughout the morning. Most impressive was the Gunnera Nanicata from Brazil (1867) – first seen in Ireland. A giant rhubarb like plant inviting photographs through its big leaves. Enjoyed the Euphorbia xmartini and of course, famous Mecanopsis Sheldonii.

Moved out of caravan towing roads to Triumph Imps and Kars – the serious climbers territory of the Torridon. Silent parked cars indicated the routes up these big hills. Niggling feeling began, getting desperate to feel the earth, but i was too late for anything serious so parked and climbed into the Beinn Alligin valley. Felt the new earth and saw the red Torridonian sand stone and peak topped with Quartzite. Billberry and a new eucalyptus smelling plant (bog myrtle). Forgot water – always something! Rain forced an early return.

At Sheildaig I turned into the Applecross peninsular. The first views of Sky were magical. Why? Romantic images, memory, light, mist, island? Water so still like glass as they say. The land was barren and I wondered how Applecross would be, but as I turned into the cove a possy of beech trees appeared along with sudden unexpected fertile land, brightened with wild yellow irises. The campsite was excellent, high up on a hill overlooking the water. Middle-class English accents in the local pub. After generous slices of smoked salmon, balanced out with sticky toffee pudding, I took gentle stroll up the road to the point, wildly happy.

Sunday Applecross
Woke to the sound of bleating sheep and gentle rain on tent, delicious. Still with deep happy feeling unable to pin point why. Showered before breakfasted in the Flower Tunnel, an enterprise of good taste and comfort – discovered the story later. It was started by a man and wife from the Midlands, giving up what ever it was that stressed them out, and they’ve never worked harder. The woman is the gardener and built up the Flower tunnel, a hoop of a conservatory wallpapered by sweet smelling jasmine etc and 10 or so tables (PVC). The man bakes fresh bread each morning – I even found the pecan and maple syrup variety tasted first in Nottingham. Why leave such a place? Decided to hang loose. Continued on the ablutions: happy little camper, did clothes washing, progressing to car interior. Cloud apparently lifting, rain stopped, it was difficult to suspend the motion of last few days, so drove to the end of the road, and walked on to a high point. Like Irish land, sun dew insect eating plants, burnt regenerating heather. I sat for a while and watched a sail boat tack round a rock. Magic.

The mystery of the great beeches in Applecross needed solving – there was obviously a story to this place – so I asked the Flower tunnel man. The land was originally land owned by MacKenzies, owners of Applecross house with walled garden. It was sold in 1928 to MacWilliams who work it as an estate (whatever that means). Five of the houses along the main street had lights on this winter – the rest are holiday homes – over 60 in this valley – and tourism has dropped by 18% in Scotland. What hope? The only transport left is for tourists, none to get locals to Inverness or London as there used to be.

Smoked Salmon again and just as I was contemplating a repeat of toffee pudding, a man from Colorado engaged me in conversation (requesting a photograph). He’d come to the land of his ancestors.

• Ah, when was that? I ask with my up to the moment knowledge of Clearances.
• 1870
  Damn – I’ve only got to 1850 in my book. However we talked Clearances, moved on more generally to consider what motivates master slave treatment, quickly referenced Hitler. The Colorado man was a carpenter, and mountain climber. Gave up the climbing when too many of his friends died, and took up dancing instead. Presently into New Israeli and Hungarian folk dancing. Suggested quick constitutional before he headed back for Glencoe, and he parted with gift of a tape of folk music. The kindness of strangers.

Monday Applecross -> Glairlochy
A huge westerly wind blew all night, its energy alerting any sleep, listening to it whirl in crescendos around my little tent.

A day of roads – Malcolm would have enjoyed them. The Bealach na Ba pass (‘Cattle pass’) is famous – the highest road in Scotland and popular cycling piste. I started at 6.00 in the morning, met nothing on the way and had the road and it’s magic to myself, watched by, in picture postcard fashion, some hefty looking stag. After a gentle climb to 800m, there was a sudden view down to the sea, over hair pin swish back bends – great fun.

Back on caravan roads I drove down passed the popular Five Sisters of Kintail (parked climbers cars), and turned into the top of the Knoidart valley, with no particular thought. Passing the Tomduon hotel, I was inspired to stop and book here for Bob’s arrival. The large salmon (dead) near the wheel of a Landrover gave a clue as to the nature of this hotel – hunting shooting and fishing. Booking accomplished, I had my now regular afternoon snooze by the side of the road.

Seeking a quick injection of something sweet, I met a fountain of local knowledge in local Invergarry shop. The shop owner who spoke poetically of Knoidart, and I am captured by his recommendations (including the Tomdun). Took off for lower Knoidart road, bordering Loch Arkaig. A lonely road, with obvious fishing dominance – numbers fishing places, little huts and caravans to escape the midges. The days 2nd extraordinary road, perhaps a Destitution Road. Built with no arrogance into the landscape, but rather going with the natural gullies and bends, it was like a road of a hundred hump back bridges. The down was not always in the direction of the hump, so to avoid a sudden Loch entry I had to turn the wheel smart on the crests.

I was thinking of the rout of Culloden, Lord George Sackville (a thin-nosed man of harsh aristocratic contempt, a London dandy) burning and killing his way across Keppoch country. As now, there were no roads so his men marched over Knoidart hills – with the Prince in hiding above watching. There is a touching description from Ranald aged 7, one of Macdonnald’s sons, who describes in practical detail the continuous escaping from safe house to forest: “We made little houses where we put our milk and curds, for we made cheese when we were not travelling.” Recollections of a child.

I parked at the end of the tarmac road. Smooth bare hills with a velvet look to them, like nothing I’d seen before. Silence all around. Extraordinary place. There was a helpful little booklet, published by the estate with a map giving foot path instructions (to preserve the land and deer). Considered a gentle walk around the valley, but found myself climbing, and 2 hours later I neared the top of Sgurr Mho. Little windmills dotted here and there – can’t think what for, as no cables apparent. Had good chat to myself on the way down as the heavens opened and got soaked. Thoroughly happy.

Got the car heater going to dry out and took the road back slowly. Decided to take what ever came first, b&b or camping, and promised myself not to be indecisive, or think there might be a better one just round the corner. As soon as I saw the garden, I knew what the inside would be like. Spotless, disinfected, and no smoking. Just that. Furniture stuffed in like birds in their glass boxes, memorabilia, plates, antlers…. and piping hot water.

I offered a lift to the local pub to 2 other walkers also staying – a young man and wife, walking the canal way. She was the dumb blond:
‘What’s the prettiest part of our walk?’ She would ask inanely in the car. They asked nothing about India, or it’s hills and mountains – odd for walkers. He worked for the water board, sang it’s praises, watershed protection, excellent environmental policy etc. Tried but could not believe him, he protested too much.

Tuesday Fort William (Bob arrives)
Rain forecasted, rain arrives. Fort William. Bill Bryson would have a field day of negativity. Modern concrete shops.

Bob arrives.

‘Thin little kisses’. Impatient to tell all, I can feel it bursting out, and later tonight we will sit in silence all gone, he will read the menu or a paper, and I will stare out. He’s put on weight, his face is fatter and ruddy. I’m determined not to mention it. At least for a few days. Big thighs on the bed in Tomdun, reading the paper, waiting for me to end a bath and may be a chance of a fuck. I loiter.

He brings new news of football and a big match tomorrow. It’s all very strange, like a new language.

We take a flat walk round Tomdoun and Glen Garry, crossing the river into pine forest and back through bog land.

Wednesday Tomdoun
Rain looks set in. We decided to do computer work, and stay another day before setting off for Knoidart. We get Bob’s India report sketched out, and at last my report to Gary Cohen, hanging over me, sent off on e-mail.

Thursday Tomdoun -> Barrisdale
Bob in shorts for the beach-side walk to Barrisdale. Tent and food on our backs, the 10 miles flat walk turns out to have hills and dips and rises along Loch Horne. Rain petered out to sun, north wind and high clouds, very auspicious.

“This mountainous peninsula between the sea-lochs Nevis and Hourn (heaven and hell) is one of the most inaccessible corners of the land, and the wild, rocky and inhospitable nature of much of the terrain well earns for itself the title The Rough Bounds of Knoydart” (SMC)

We arrived along a dirt track (there is a tractor her, no cars), to an open sward of grassland, surrounded by handsome mountains. Three other tents were pitched, and we added ours.

An evening walk. An argument that had been brewing with Bob. He’s after answers – after 3 months surely you’ve got some resolution, what about babies? Where shall we live? What about South America? Get off my back! I scream. Poor bugger, he gets nothing from me. No, I don’t have any answers, I’ve been living in the here and now.

• Your head is in the sand, Rachel.
  Finding all the old fault lines.

Stir fry and joint. Bob chats up the local stalker. Thoughts resting on single objects, like bird song and shapes of landscapes. I can hear the distant laughter of Bob and the Stalker, and I’m glad for him, for I know I have given him no laughter.

Friday Ladhar Bheinn
We took an early start for this mountain. (Hoof or claw mountain). We’re doing the classic traverse, from Coire Dhorrcail, up the stalkers path along the east ridge. It was a gentle easy climb, to Stob. There’s been some talk of this little blip, a notice on the hut wall says it’s dangerous if wet, and Bob is clearly nervous of the inevitable scrambling. We try an ascent. Bob scrambles up first, and I follow. He’s going fast, as if nervous. The rock is slippery. I look down, and think – it may be fine up but what about the descent – far more difficult and I feel nervous of Bob’s fear. So I say, let’s walk round. It’s a long way, but we eventually join the ridge, walking up a steep grass bank. It’s a great ridge walk, looking down into the coire. We go up and down the 4 ‘bumps’ (rather untechnical term) before the final ascent, easy and magnificent.

At the top Bob suggests we make love.I knew he would.

There is a tongue of ridge out to a further 2 points which we easily walk. Clear blue sky, perfect views of this rugged remote Knoidart landscape, the two encasing lochs of heaven and hell, Loch Horne and Loch Nevis. And beyond still to the Cuillins on Sky and Ben Nevis in land (still with patches of snow), the Sisters of Kintail, the Highlands of Scotland.

The descent and ridge walk down was surprisingly hairy. I concentrated on steps, and wondered if I would I do this on my own. On the final grass ridge I made my own way down, always longer than it looks to the valley below. Bob is nowhere, and after calling for 20 minutes I begin to worry. At last I see a small pin prick of a figure in the massive corrie. He is gently angry that I did not wait for him, and I too relieved to find him.

The SMC advises 6 hours. We took 12. Another joint and evening chat with the Stalker, who tells Bob about the odd windmills and solar panels we see around – they are to power boosters for mobile telephones. Bob negotiated a lift to our car for next day. Pressing on. No time for loitering.

Saturday Sky
We took the early morning boat with the Stalker and the paying climbers, avoiding payment and the 10 mile hike with tent etc on our backs. Drove on to Sky.

‘It was 20 years ago today.’ My mother used to start sentences like this. Yes 20 years ago I came to Sky, with Jonathan, and another man (name forgotten) to house sit a hut by the Cuillins one Easter. One month of cloud on the Cuillins, dead sheep littered the landscape, and I first noticed the colours of blue and brown in the rock. I suppose it was my first experience of wilderness.

We crossed on new Sky bridge, the anger of the local people (£5.00). It is an Island of bed and breakfasts. We are optimistic about the weather, and head north to the Quiriang – the Cuillins will keep. Check into the luxury hotel Bob’s been recommended, Hotel Flodigarry, Edwardian style. While Bob takes an afternoon nap, I explore.

The landscape is extraordinary. ADD I feel an immediate relief of being on my own. I resolve to enjoy this time with Bob, give and not close up, although my doubts are strong, and I know, by end of walk, it is going now where and I must end it. The decision lifts a burden, and I return light hearted and warm to him.

We eat salmon in the Moorish styled bar. A joint displaces me, I forget where I am, perhaps in Ireland, – it’s the same vegetation, interest in food, country houses. Read Prince of Darkness from Sunday papers, a damning interpretation on Prince Charles, dating his downfall from the choice he made at Trinity to reject his peers and go for older mentors of Mountbatten etc. Bob with maps marking No on them. (Post Stob!).

Sunday Quiriang
We’ve got the only sunshine in Britain – London’s raining! Opt for the high walk, up across the ridge, then down to where Bob has marked No, and into the Quiriang itself. Piccadilly down there. Day trippers, with gymshoes. Very different from the Knoydart clientele. Evening meal in posh hotel restaurant, and blow £70 on mediocre food. Crazy.

Monday Cuillins
Decided to cut out of Quiriang and take this rare opportunity of seeing the tops of the Cuillins. Drove round the island, buying some pottery from same place as I’d been to 20 years ago. As we turned, the prickly peaks of the Cuillins appeared on the horizon. With the sun against them their holly peaks sparked out against the sky. We skirted their roots following Glen Brittle, driving slowly as if in reverence of these great hills, pasted the cottage where I’d stayed with Jonathan, onto a great campsite by the sea.

Pitched tent and set off for introduction walk up into foothills of mountains. It turned out to be the same walk I’d done 20 years ago, then in wellington boots, up to the Coire Lagan and a pool of water. Same aqua marine colour as I’d remembered, pure, unpolluted, freezing cold. Watched the real climbers through our bins hock on rocks, and others come ski-ing down the skree.

Shopped (with Bob compulsory) in the little shop I’d bought Camp coffee all those years ago. As the north wind kept away the midges, I cooked excellent food, watching the camping climbers watching the mountains, gesturing occasionally to describe routes.

Tuesday Cuillins Fionn Choire, Bruach na Frithe
“The Cuillin are carved from a large basic and ultrabasic igneous complex some 12 kilometres in diameter. Gabbro is a coarsely crystalline rock that weathers to give a very rough surface with superb frictional properties. This makes it excellent to climb on, but at the same time causes rapid wear on boots, ropes and fingers.” SMC

We’ve opted for our first Cuillin munro. We’ve read our books, and found what is described as the easiest climb: “Fionn Choire’s carpet of grass and flowers make it the greenest corrie in the Cuillin and also the easiest walking.” There was a two mile hike in to the base, then up the grassy ridge. When we came to the rock, I was surprised to find I did not feel fear on this mountain. The rock with texture of quartzite gave good grip, the way down did not seem so far – perhaps just practice and familiarity. Bob stopped before the top still a little nervous and I continued, ‘just 5 minutes more’. Exhilarated to find mountain goat legs, just one more pass, just one more, aware of Bob waiting now more than 20 minutes. At last the concrete triangulation point. The clouds were circling round the black peaks, hinting at their grandeur, and ruggedness. I took a quick photograph for the memory, then fast down to Bob. He was walking down when I caught up, rather sheepish at his giving up. I stayed close for the descent. My legs are strong, and I fill my rucksack with rocks and flowers.

Humour returned as we do the ‘OAP walk of waterfalls’. Discussion of the word holiday – it is banned. This time is no more a holiday than the origin of the name is no longer true. These concepts of work and holiday must be banished, I say, and in their place, Bob coins a new phrase, a time for self-improvement, PDP, Personal Development Plan.

A pint in the Carbust pub, everyone watching Scotland V Norway (1,1). Bob taught me pool.

I shall remember this time for the light through, the sunlight through cotton grass, through buttercup yellow, through the spring green ferns in clearance village. I’ve taken some photo’s, but know they’ll never give the translucency of the light.

Wednesday Ardpatrick
As we break camp, the clouds arrive; they cling to the Cuillins, like shit to a blanket, as Bob would say. We know we have climbed in a good window.

Time for Bob’s memory, Ardpatrick. Time was he came up here frequently and got involved with the Kneil family, three brothers, and 100 acres of land, until they split him and spat him out. We are staying with the outcaste brother, Edan. The father (American, Lazards) and mother (Scottish) bought this magical peninsular piece of land on Ardpartick in the 1950’s. On their father’s death the land and buildings were left in trust to the three sons, not to be sold or broken up. When she was alive, the firm arm of their mother kept it together, but with her death 10 years ago the family began their irreconcilable fights.

The land is certainly magical. We drove through the estate gates, passed the estate houses, to Edens house, covered in roses, welcoming and idyllic. Eden arrives 10 minutes after us, driving a beat up van out of which he and 3 ebullient girls disembark. Eden and the three women: Jane, his 21 year old philosophy (1st) graduate from London girlfriend, daughter of his step-brothers wife; Indian Guinness, father ship broker in Bombay; Torni, (short for Antoinette) 35, just ended 13 year relationship with wealthy older man, and Jane’s best mate. They exude energy and fun. They’ve been swimming at the loch, eating magic mushrooms, dancing, and talking. We had tea in the garden, where the grass and wild flowers are left to grow wild, except a haphazard path cut by a lawn mower, Gentle talk to piece together the jigsaws of our lives.

A delicious supper of wild duck, prepared as he talked easily by Eden. We hear the family story. Endlessly. I consider the root for all these red herrings, these terrible distractions, diluters of life, is to do with ownership, in this case ownership of land. He clearly enjoys the telling. Does the telling get anywhere? I ask. Yes, it can be said to exist as a good dinner time story now, he says. Sometimes someone says something that makes a direction clearer, “but then perhaps I listen because that’s what I want to hear”. And talk of belonging. “Didn’t Knoydart belong to you when you were there?” Eden asked. I am raking through the ownership puzzle. “No not belong. It was me….I was it….gone….finished. Belonging is possessive, needing. Not that.”
Then talk of India, where Eden has 2 projects one in Rajesthan and another Bihar.

A telling game of ping pong. Jane is the caller. We all play as we are: I with skill but no killer instinct, (she easily wins); Bob, blind and physically clumsy, tries sly tricks, but she sees his blindness and goes for it; Eden attacks her ego, but she is not distracted.

Thursday
We walk up to the point and along the coast to Edens beach hut – his summer retreat. It’s a paradise here. The girls laughing, talking, endlessly finding talk. Torni, so sexy, in her movements, in her way. Kingdon Ward – did he take a man called Balfour on his expedition? Send to Eden.

My period started, so I curled up with Glencoe, (the third of the John Prebble stories) before the vods and tons arrive and girls together chat begins and circles. We talk of families. Wild Salmon for dinner. And a bit of Charlie for desert.

Friday Ardpatrick -> Dunure
Libby and Calum (“Calum’s got Bobs dress sense”) gave good welcome, very warm, open and kind. As Bob rested, I listened to Libby. On and on. I felt a sadness. Reminded Of Human Bondage. Her fear of the mist on Mull, of the earth. She’d never camp alone. Why not teaching? She never wanted be called Ms Brodie. No projection, no follow through. The obstacles in her path are so strange to me.
Saturday Dunure-> Rusland
Morning walk to promised ancient graveyard. Not disappointing – it had the most interesting relief on it of scissors.

Lowlands, boring roads, into organised England, fenced off, described, owned. Bob drives, I doze.

Dinky do Lakes. Towns packed with tourists – I’ve never been here in high season. Warm welcome from Nigel. He was playing away that night so Bob and I ate in the local pub. Nothing of substance to say, he started reading local newsletter. Chips for the umpteenth last time. Forget it. Notice in pub car park: “Patrons car parking only, others CLAMPED”.

Sunday Rusland
Sat up reading Bobs report until mid-night and continued the next day. Felt very discouraged by it. All over the place. Tore into it, scratching pencil across paragraphs with ‘irrelevant’ comments. Got Bob very pissed off. Considered feature format for herrings that so distracted from main story. Nigel returned, passing men’s talk on the stairs:

• How was the HD? (Hot Date, not Hard Disk)
• Oh ok. She tried too hard though.

Bob smoked a joint, and I drove him to the station. The buzz of the joint took away our emptiness and otherwise silence. Lovely oldy worldy station. Phew.

Cooked lemon chicken for Nigel (makes a change from roasted peppers!). For our evening constitutional a surprise adventure to the local Buddhist centre near by holding some convention. ‘Private, not open to Public’ signs did not dissuade, and we drove in. It soon became apparent that the conference had ended, so we took a walk in the grounds, passing conference hangers-on. We smiled openly meeting their honest faces without guilt. Through a Buddhist car park to the sea.

Dusk walk to a circle of stones, in line with 2 churches and Nigel’s house. Stone walls, with the middle stone through for strength. The direction of the slant of the top stone indicates the walls owner.
Monday Selafield
Heavy sleep.
Selafield. The two old piles, called Pile 1 and Pile 2, or Windscale, built in the 1940’s are now closed. The changing of names, such an obvious PR job, strongly indicates a deception – although the visitors showroom meets environmental factors head on. (Exactly what I’d do if in charge of the nuclear industry’s image, so emotional and clouded in fear and ignorance – particle physics is difficult for most of us to grasp.) Calder Hall, opened in 1956 was the world’s first commercial-sized nuclear power station, pumping 26% of UK energy into the grid (compared to 56% coal, 2% renewable, 2% hydro, 6% gas, 8% oil) And that famous word again ‘decommissioning’ is another major money earner.

The environmental issue is introduced on entry – a gloomy earie depiction of the end of the world chaos. No it’s not a result of a nuclear war – the overall message is that life’s a risk, let’s minimise it. All power gives waste products, and there’s loads of natural radioactivity. Interesting quote from Richard Doll, saying: “Detailed studies have shown that radiation from nuclear industry cannot be the cause of leukaemia clusters near nuclear plants. The most likely reason is it’s due to chance.” The May press release headed, “Greenpeace Sampling: Greenpeace are currently collecting marine samples from the sea in the vicinity of the discharge pipeline.” Let’s be open, they’re saying. A Fuel to Ashes glossy brochure describing how effective the reprocessing of waste is, has backdrop of ballet dancers in arabesque.

The education was thoroughly enjoyable. A commedia del arte show of the famous men involved in the discovery, from Democritus, (atoms) Rutherford, (split) Chadwick (?) and Fermi (built first reactor, Chicago Pile). Games to play to test your knowledge; multiple choice questions: What is a nuclear reactor? An angry MP….. What is fusion? A new way of making tea…… What is e=mc2? Washing machine instructions…..).

Miscellaneous facts: Nuclear fuel lasts 4 years before spent. Intermediate level radioactive liquid 100 days in the ponds. Plutonium, Uranium.

Outside it’s a sultry day. Foxgloves brighten the full on green of quintessential England. Odd to have arrived full blast in full summer here. For mid-summers day, another night time walk, over the moor to hug a standing stone in thick grass.

Tuesday Inside, Log
Rain on mid-summer day. Collecting Nigel’s car from the top of the hill left last night was my only exercise. Finished reading Glencoe, did washing, stayed in, typed up log.

Dusk walk to local pub. Nigel had a bet on how many locals would be there, after the ash-tray episode. A local had asked for pint gone closing time, the Philippine wife of landlord had refused, words were exchanged and an ashtray thrown (who threw it depends on who tells the story, Philippine or local). All locals are now boycotting the pub, left only for tourists. In fact there were three locals propping up the bar. A local fish and game distributor who never ate either fish or game – ‘Now give me a gammon or a joint of beef’, and talk of Down in London they are eating scorpion. Crazy folk. Beside him a gentle man called Bonzo, Nigel tells me afterwards, he’s retired from developing nuclear missiles, and his wife designs tutus in Islington. Missed a good story there…

Wednesday Rusland -> Liverpool
Gather together Liverpool knowledge: Beetles, Aintree, Liverbirds, ports and ship building, Irish immigration, football, Bishop of Liverpool, Toxteth riots…..

I circled and came in from the west, along the Mersey and beside the giant old ports to the old Atlantic and present Belfast. Roads called Atlantic Way. Massive old warehouses, warm red stone, crying with black rain runs, broken windows. Rough Guide: End of ports 3 factors: cheep air fares saw off lucrative liner business; trade with dwindling Empire declined while European traffic boosted southern ports of Tilbury, Harwich and Southampton; and containerisation meant reduced demand for handling and warehousing.
Stop and take photograph of big tobacco warehouse, rain pours down. As I’m cutting up into town, steam rises from the bonnet of my car. Panic. Park car, walk to garage, they’ll take a look. It’s a corroded pipe, no problem, and they’ll get it fixed by this afternoon. Relief.

Persuaded by both Bob and Nigel, I go extravagant and check into the main hotel in Liverpool, the Adelphi. On the steps I read the Rough Guide and discover I’ve got 10 minutes to get to Albert Dock and the 2.20 Magical Mystery Tour. Forget reading guide books, this is for real. A jiving singing woman – Beetles generation – perfect Liverpool accent, knows all the words, entertains us for 2 hours. She’d lived then, danced then, screamed then, hero worshiped to this day. It was a story of birth, childhood, fame and flight. Quarry grammar school, Penny Lane, Strawberry fields. Boys from nowhere, and Epsein, from the immigrant Jewish furniture family, who took the boys to London.

Return to the garage, the car will take longer, cost more, but the mechanics are direct and straight and earthy. Take a beer in a designer bar, called Baa, and recall Nigel’s words:

• Don’t be afraid of going into a pub on your own, Liverpool has a great tradition of women on their own. It’s a city with a heart and soul.
  He’s right on both counts. I warm to this place.

Check into Adelphi. Finnish Glencoe in sudded bath. The withering fading out of the lives, Hills, Breadlebanes, Master of Stair. The Glencoe men never made as much of the massacre as the publicists – used as they were to this brutal life style. No doubt done it themselves. But the trust?

Philamonic pub, old stain glass, polished deco handles, rooms off. Followed by Bistro for excellent value food. These are English people, talking a language I can understand, but somehow they are strangers to me. Smoking country. ‘More people killed by Spanish flu after WW1 than in the war itself’ eavesdropped from next door table – one of those frequently quoted facts.

I wondered round the Adelphi chandeliered rooms. The place is like a massive ocean liner – appropriately. Noises off to a big banquet going on. In a contrasting empty bar I asked the lady serving about the ‘fly on wall’ TV programme, mentioned by our Magical Mystery Tour compare. (“We all know what goes on in the Adelphi now, after the ‘fly on the wall’ or was it the bird in the bush?”) And I wondered if it was the same programme I’d caught one night switching channels after India – a tantalising eruption between the two egos of a cook and a manager. Yes it was the same, they all still work here. She spoke fondly of the chef, and tells the story of one little porter always late in the series, now a local hero and girls come in asking for his autograph. It’s been great PR, she says – loads of people come just to check it out, see if it’s like the TV.
Over an orange juice (and background musaque of terrible piped Beetles Yesterday) I read ‘Your wedding day at the Adelphi’ brochure. (Odd the things I will never be part of). The price (not mentioned) includes: Cake stand and knife, VAT – details and practicalities. Planning the Perfect Day, Wedding Etiquette (who pays for what).

Thursday Liverpool -> Treflach (Offa’s Dyke)
In rain I found the camp site at the local pub, but it abated for the tent stitching together, and I repaired to pub. Within minutes, I’d unearthed the local gossip. Man in wellington boots propping up bar, rolling his own, I asked him for some cigarette papers.

• I guess you’re a farmer?
• Well of sorts – horse’s mainly, but anything that’s going, transporting them around for the local people. It’s horse country round here.
• Ah horses. Well I don’t know much about horses, but I’ve got a camel
• A camel? Not here?
• No Rajasthan, India.
  And I describe the importance of teeth to a camel, how it’s valued and dies because of them.
• Now that’s interesting. Teeth are important to a horse for their value. Now a horse has 6 main teeth and two back molars. And the molars, they keep growing, so you can age a horse on its molars. Mind you, you can cheat.
• Cheat? I prompt
• Shave them down, see. You’ve got to know what to look for, mind, they’re done quite professional like these days. (And he looks around for the absent landlord) Now take the landlords horse. (soto vocci) He asked me to look her over before they bought her, and I said she’s not eight years old, more like 18 – teeth have been shaved. He didn’t believe me, and they bought it. But he apologised after, yes he found out, 18 years old that mare is.
  The landlord returned, and we talked more general pub spun philosophy.
• Take these wind farms. They’re everywhere these days. And you know where they put them? On the very top of hills – so every one can see. Now if they planted a few trees around that would be an improvement. But they’re just out there, in your face. And you know what? Some daft people, they go and take photographs of them. Crazy.
  “Born free, taxed to death”

Phone call to Bob. He’s already planning a reunion. Panic.

Friday Wales Llanybydder
Light but substantial rain, it must be Wales. Great day for travelling, singing along to Sgt Peppers, and I wanna hold you hand – ah such innocence. Empty roads.

What do I know of Wales: Owen Glendower, house burning in the north, leeks, Welsh language, like a West Indian/Indian lilt, Welsh lamb, rugby, the church and prohibition of alcohol, rain, Snowdonia, Brecon Beacons, Anglesey.

Sally’s barn: Cefn Percin Barn, Ty Mawr, Llanybydder, near Lampeter. Sally, daughter of Michael, now 35, no kids and loads of cat substitutes. Their soft padder padder on wooden floor boards. I miss the demonstrativeness of a dog! She and Steve (partner) have done a great conversion job (Steve’s an ex builder – now running a more lucrative local video shop). They ought the barn 4 years ago, now very spacious gothic large rooms, and 4 acres of garden etc. They go out to eat, Emma arrives from London, and we eat pasta together. Early bed.

Saturday (Gardening)
The garden has been inherited from a man waiting for planning permission who tinkered in the garden while he waited, making stone steps, ponds, and planted trees. Good foundation. Two official garden beds, so I attacked them weed-killing, to get feel of earth and first major problem, couch grass. How to deal with it without Roundup? The local garden centre suggested black polly bags were the only way. I bought them 2 substantial plants, a Gunnera (remember Inverew?) and a slug repellent plant, both for the pond.

It’s a garden of trees, and throughout the day I am engrossed in them; finding endless Ash saplings and weeding them out; taking a cigarette stroll looking at the shape of the mature trees – there’s a particularly fine copper beach.

Sally talks a lot of Michael, and his influence on her life. How she’s selected a steady relationship – the only thing steady in Michael’s life was his flow of girl friends, and I was one. We’ve always talked well, Sally and I, and I once again enjoy her brightness, and desire to furrow, ask direct questions.

In the early evening I walked with Sally round the grounds, saying: these are just words, thrown out, take them, leave them, this is what I think you should do about your trees: give the good mature ones the space and light they need, and cut back the challengers. If you’re feeling guilt for chopping down trees, plant up your saplings into an arboretum.
A cat went missing, the inevitable nervous search. Downloaded warm e-mail from Malcolm giving names of Sky flowers.

Monday Machynlleth, Powys
Sgt Peppers blasting out over Devils Bridge. Coffee and delicious lemon cake in CAT Whole Food shop in town. Pin board alive and kicking with alternatives: Shiatsu courses, aromotheropy treatments, homeopath, relfexologist, DYED green trading board, courses in permiculture 01654 711 655 July 26-Aug 6th Chris Dixon, Quaker meetings, girls in Indian clothes, one shop like walking into Anjuna market, Goa.
Church yard:
We loved then yes, no tongue can tell
How deep how dearly and how well.
Christ loved them too, and thought it best
To take them home with him to rest.
(Aged 8 months and 12 years, 1918)

My days are like a shadow that declineth and I am withered like the grass

CAT. Great entrance (that alone worth the £5 entrance), of water balanced cliff railway. Two carriages are connected by cable via a winding-drum at the top; water is run into a tank beneath the upper carriage until it s just heavier than the lower carriage and its passengers; then the parking brakes are released and gravity does the rest.

Principles of PV: Made of silicon (2nd most abundant element after oxygen) Two silicon wafers, (P&N) separated by a junction. Daylight hits the cell, excites electrons in silicon causing them to jump from one wafer to the other. They cannot jump back the same way so must travel through the load (eg light the bulb or TV), causing electrical current to flow. Individual cells are joined together by metal strip to connect continues circuit.

The language of the instruction has been written by a scientist with sense of humour.
Two blocks of wood to lift for answer to following questions:
What causes most environmental damage?
What is the latest in pollution technology?
(Both reveal mirrors of self)

Great waste section with over 40 different compost bins and mechanisms. Work Energy and Power – house with implements to use and conserve electricity/power.
100 w light bulb takes 10 hours to use 1kw of power . What is it about our middle class culture that bought us up to believe power was something magic and free, use as much as you want, do not question where it comes from, someone elses back yard. Amazed at my own innocence.

Half way round I met up with Steve Jones and talked about Goa – where last year we met up with Gerado the architect trying to organise a very similar enterprise. He made some good suggestions and I must follow through.

Pitched camp in near by field, and called Bob who warned me of a death in waiting. I called Berenice.

• I’m so glad you’ve called. I wanted to talk to someone who knew him as he was. He’s so different now, so frail, no words.
  Physical withering. Suggested she get down there quickly.

Tuesday St David’s/ St Govens
Checked out someone’s camp-site solar panels, used to keep their fridge cool. Sgt Peppers for long road down – seemed like 10 minutes.
St Davids. Little England. Smallest city. A perplexing place so full of people but what is there for them to do, except visit the old and now cathedral? Looked at Pembrokshire coastal path, and decided to leave it for retirement – a gentle easy path to enjoy in later years.

Cathedral graveyard: This place was deposited, that which was mortal of Anne Mary Rees.

Great arrogant tomb inside Cathedral of Lady Maidstone. She was not from these parts, but a frequent visitor and more importantly, a serious benefactor. The story goes she oversaw the building of her magnificent tomb. The sculpture didn’t like her, and put her face on her dog. Alabaster, passing the light through.

All thoughts dominated by Edmund, Berenice, Dominic and Ushi. Lay in sand and sun and considered, recalled. Gentle platitude conversations of families drift in and out. Buckets and spades, nothing really said.

St Govans Chapel. No one knows who he was. He made a chapel cut into the giant imposing carboniferous limestone cliffs, simple, dark and rather mystical. Great boulders to jump over and along, with rock pools full of things to spend hours looking at. Along the way some serious rock climbers stretched their limbs up the daunting cliff faces.

I found an ad hoc camp site in farmers field, and repaired to the local pub. It was decorated with nerve racking photographs of rock climbers and demure understated captions:

• Steve romping up the John Wayne
• John enjoying Home on the Run for the 5th time
• Peter considering the Hot Ready and Panting, before the Wall of Newts ascent
• Pete springing up the Loud Proud and Well Endowed.

Terrible soup, the only vegetarian dish on a seriously meat menu should have signalled me. The rest eating Vindalou and Chips, watching football – England loose to Argentina.

Wednesday Temby/Caldey/Laugharne/Rhossili
Arrived at the only civilised time in Tenby, before 9.30, and found place to park. It had all the signs of a serious tourist centre about to burst in to action. Cut out by boat to Caldey Island. As soon as we landed I knew this was a magic little place, with a very unusual feel to it. I followed the boat people up the road, and after brief hesitation, rather sheepishly into the shop (just to get a map, honest gov). Left the first boat load in the shop as I wondered up and into St Illtuds church – the oldest RC church in the UK, C11th. Pebbles on the floor, patched so perfectly by contemplative monks with care and prayer. Simple lancet windows. Inside the Ogham stone C6th. Ogham lettering dates from the C4th, and consists of strokes and notches forming about 20 letters. Much debate as to what it actually says.

Interesting facts about Caldey:

• North side is composed of grey carboniferous limestone, while the south is red sandstone.
• Lived on by Monks for 1,500 years. Benedictines gave it away to the present order of Reformed Cistercians (1929). 17 live and work the island today.
• The highly successful perfume industry developed by the monks arose out of monastery’s severe financial problems post war. 1953 the lavender water business grew in strength, followed by gorse. Polish pharmacist came to advise 1959 and introduced lemon verbena.
• Make delicious dark and milk chocolate.
• As a private island it remains largely outside local government control.

Inside the shop (yes, did it again) found interesting facsimile of Ancient Map of Great Britain from Bodlian Library Oxford 1325-50. Printed 1935, reprinted 1973. Post Office doubled as local museum, with this information: At the end of the Carboniferous period (c290 million years ago), Pembrokshire plate collided with the south plate. Both plates rocks lifted, folded and faulted. Early excavations of the local burial ground (off public paths) revealed skeleton evidence out of scale with the then population. Probably due to popularity of island burial – even before Christianity – as ghosts did not cross water.

Returned to Tenby and cut straight out, it was heaving.

Laugharne, by comparison had an immediate feeling of a gentle backwater. The bookshop was the first place that caught my attention. A three story once grand high street house, it now had that intriguing air of nothing done since the 1950’s, peeling paint, inside the front window a mix of dust coated antiquarian books, and the latest Dylan Thomas – with a title to draw me in ‘The Death of Dylan Thomas’. Inside an interesting bookish woman I would have liked to have explored, but instead just parted with £18, having ascertained the book was published 1997, and written by the local Dylan Thomas historian.

I walked along the empty snicket down to the graveyard where Thomas is buried. It looked over a great tongue of sand and stretch of water. Thomas’s writing shed has been left as if he’d just nipped round the corner for a swift pint, paper scrumpled on the floor, two empty bottles, postcards of Picasso and Mattise pinned onto a shelf of books, a Van Gough like broken chair. Clearly not a house proud man. But a man that must have enjoyed the looking out – its wooden windows gave out to the water. His family house, the Boat House, was 100 yards further up. A perfect setting, for anyone, snug down in the cliffs below the road, with unobstructed view of the Laugharne Sands, out to sea. I sat and watched a video of his life while a Thomas student asks questions down stairs.

The Crown was the obvious next stop – Dylan’s famous drinking hole.

• Half a Guinness, I ask for
• Make sure he fills it up, says one of the two men propping up the bar.
• Thank you for your concern and instruction, I return. The ice is broken.
• Are you passing through? The more inquisitive 2nd man, a fisherman asks.
  And the landlord and I talk India – he was stationed there in a state whose name I do not recognise – it must have been changed. As the 2nd Guinness is settling, I read the story of the bed from the local paper, laminated on the pin board. The publican, under instructions from Thomas’s widow cleared out what ever was left from the boat house, including a bed, back in the 1960’s. He makes hay out of the bed now – renting the room with it in to inquisitive tourists. The daughter now wants the bed back, words were exchanged on her return this year.
  – She’s got the spirit of her mother, there’s no stopping her, one of the bar proppers puts in. The Thomas student enters as I am asking the landlord.
• So you’ve still got the bed? She buts in (American) and I tell her gently to read the story to understand the conversation. Returning she is determined to continue the talk of Thomas.
• His writing was crap, says the bar propper.
  It’s a big thing to say in his home town, and to an American.
• What have you read, the student wisely asks.
• I haven’t read anything, the fisherman forwards
• I’ve read a bit, says the propper, didn’t understand a word of it. It’s a load of crap.
  There’s little to say to this. A silence descends, and I turn to the fisherman and ask about his trade. Terrible since the Milford Haven oil spillage two years ago, he says. We weren’t allowed to fish until 4 months ago. Yes, they gave us compensation, but it all has to be declared, you see, and taxed. It’s not so much the oil, as the chemicals they used to clear it up – no-one knows what they were.
• So why did you come here, he asks.
• I know a man who’s buying a house here, and I came to see it.
• Which one? The pub is suddenly all ears. As if I’ve deceived them, not shown my hand till now. As if I am no longer a stranger, but some one with links into the community.
• I don’t know which one. His name is Tim. Tim I do not know what. I just know him as Tim the Gerka.
  They don’t believe me, – You’ve got the wrong place. We know everyone here.
  I telephone and after 2 attempts get through to Tim, who tell’s me it’s called The Great House.
• It’s the Great House, I say returning.
• Ah Jimmy Coates’s house. Silence. So he’s selling to a Gerka. They are all listening. Now have nothing to say. I have overstayed my welcome, that was once open as a stranger. And no doubt blown Tim’s reputation into the bargain!

The nearby campsite is noisy and uninviting and I decide to drive on for a couple of hours to the sea, and Rhossili, where Thomas used to walk as an outing from Swansea.

Easy drive to a lands end, and a perfect camping site, at Llangennith behind the dunes of a sword of white sand beach. Evening walk up to Burry Holms, a sea island, uncovered at low tide. I mark a line in the sand to see which way the tide is going, and climb up to the island. From the top I see my line is just disappearing. The silent threat of the advancing tied gives excitement and stimulus to the climb on, but I descend with plenty of scope, I did not push to a limit, I would not have been marooned. Back to the tent with The Death of Dylan Thomas.

Thursday Rhossili / Chepstow
I had the day to kill, before I was due at Chepstow for 6.00. Early morning walk to Rhossili, where I indulged in an excellent full English breakfast, watching the car tourists arrive, and walking back along the sand alone. I made a comfortable sculptured bed in a sand dune, and continued with the reading. Delicious.

Swansea, Promenard des Anglais without the trees. Industry big, proud, everywhere, like a giant chemistry experiment, puffing steam or whatever.

Turned off the A48 10 miles before Chepstow, to Llanvair Discoed, grass in middle of roads, long mile road up to Cribau Mill. Home of Andrew and Sophie James and family of 3 young ones now 2 years out of the smoke. It’s a hidden valley, green, and quintessential – Bob would love it. Andrew took me off almost immediately for a local historical meeting, a tour of an iron age fort just around the corner. Nice introduction to the neighbourhood. Lot’s of fun supposition – how did they get water, what was the Annex used for? Would there have been trees? How far did the Severn come up? Fort for protection or announcement of wealth?

Sophie apologised for the parochialness of her life, compared to my travelling lot, which I rubbished. (She has a fertility I will never have!) – she is the quintessential English rose, clear skin, long legs, English guts stuff and nonsense, hard working, easy cooking.

Friday Chepstow London
Morning walk up the valley to the high point. Hazy summer day, nothing to be seen very far away, but a patchwork of organised fields down in the plains, ownership defined.

Prepared for next stop, Bristol and Gloucestershire. I’d telephoned John the week before and heard that Alison was in hospital these past 5 weeks. She’d had to have an operation on the tumour that had rendered her a hemiplegic for 15 years – they had new technology now enabling it. She had responded well, was getting better, and I could see her in Bristol Frenchay hospital. So as planned I called this Friday morning. John-T, their son, told me the news before passing me on to John. Alison died 3 days ago. I put down the phone, went outside to have a cigarette, to mull on things and remember Alison. I’d better get on to Oxford immediately I thought. Phoned Edmund my Uncle in Oxford. Dominic answered the phone.

• Hello Dom, its Rachel. How are you?
• Oh Ok, you know, in the circumstances.
  And I thought, yes the processes of dying.
• Anyhow I’m glad you’ve called, (he said) because we’d like you to read at the cremation.
• Ah. You mean he’s dead?
• Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you didn’t know. He began to cry.
  I telephoned Bob (very much alive), and immediately understood I must return to London immediately. It took 2 hours on the fast M4.

July 1998
August 1999