“For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed, A fairer Paradise is founded now” [John M]
I’m not sure that England could be called a “seat of earthly bliss” before the pandemic, the Ukraine war and the disastrous “mini budget but Sarasota is definitely the nearest to a”Paradise Regained” that any of us could reach within a day’s travelling from Cambridge.
Our planned “escape” to Sarasota in Florida was to be 12 December 2023. But that was the day Cambridge experienced its biggest snowfall for some time. The week before our planned “escape”, Cambridge had freezing temperatures and bright sunny days so it was easy for the snow to settle on top of the ice during the night before our departure.
We checked our train on the Cambridge station Departures board and found that not only had OUR train to London been cancelled but every train to London for a few hours had been cancelled except for a train at 5.20am.
We rang Panther taxis and changed our taxi time to 4.50am. True to form as always, their top driver appeared on time in his large Mercedes. After cruising around Ninewells rather than risking a three point turn on the snow covered ice we set off towards the entrance to our estate.
The exit on to the Babraham Road is on a gentle slope which at first caused our car to gently slide sideways down from the exit. So our driver Roger tried a few more times to ascend the slope. It was only on the third subsequent try with a very gentle acceleration that he managed to reach the main road.
The rest of the journey was equally cautious but uneventful, thank goodness. It was with a grateful thanks that we bade farewell to Roger our trusty Panther driver hoping that we would not need him again that morning.
Anxiously eyeing the Departures board, we noted that our one train to London was still shown as “On Time”. However, after waiting until the departure time on platform 2, it was evident that it would NOT be “on time”. Even more frustrating was that the train was sitting by platform 2 showing no signs of cranking up to depart.
It turned out that our train driver had been unable to reach the station so they were looking for somebody else to drive the train. As none of us appeared to be qualified drivers we had wait until a “substitute train driver” appeared. On his arrival, we all cheered but he looked at us and simply scowled, obviously annoyed at having been woken at such an early hour.
We set off at last in a completely unheated train. The snow laying in our carriage showed no signs of melting during the whole bumpy journey so it must have been zero degrees or very near.
Thank goodness for the Elizabeth Line which now runs between Liverpool Street Station and Heathrow without a break.
Our next problem was obtaining official boarding passes for our “super super special” tickets we had obtained for our flight. “Go upstairs! Go upstairs!”, yelled an extremely excited man directing a very long line waiting at the American Airlines desks.
Our departure day, December 12, was the only day in the month without strikes so we assumed the large crowds were simply trying escape England before everything came to a standstill. However, after a few minutes observing the puzzled faces of the American Airways staff, we finally received our boarding passes for the two flights that were to transport us to Sarasota.
Of course, next comes the dreaded TSA examination where we have to expose ourselves to all sorts of humiliation. With my metal knee, I always “beep” the detector so I am exposed to a different machine plus I am felt all over in case I am carrying any more metal objects on my body. Of course, because I have removed my belt, my trousers tend to fall down. Then I was instructed to remove my boots. Then a nice man appeared and, feeling sorry for me, said, “He doesn’t have to remove his boots”. I felt good about that until later when the man feeling me down ordered me to remove my boots. I mentioned gently, so as not to annoy him, that the other man had said I could keep my boots on. He insisted and actually disappeared with my boots to Xray them which seemed very impressive at the time.
Emerging from TSA myself with snow boots in hand and trousers falling down, we were at last on our way, but realising that those of us with titanium knees are forever condemned to be frisked and examined fully for the rest of our lives.
After a delicious coffee and cheese sandwich, we were at last squeezed into a friendly American Airways 777 tube and were on our way. My partner called out as we departed that it was exactly 12 seconds past the 12th minute past 12 o’clock on the 12th day of the 12th month of the year. So we were certain that THIS 777 was not going to get lost.
We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the vegan meal and I was happy with the number of G & Ts that were served with the meal.
Unfortunately my pleasure was severely truncated by border control on arrival. I had spent a considerably amount of time and money being cleared for security firstly by the UK government then by the US government to enable me to check in using just one passport recognition machine. As I had not actually received my pass, I approached border control with the paperwork they had sent me. It said I had only to check in with security to receive my “Global Entry” pass.
No such luck as I was met by border control who seemed almost angry at me on behalf of their government. “You do NOT qualify”, I was told. “You must line up over there and wait for some time like everyone else. Your pass has been revoked by the government ”
I explained that I had been refused a visa because I overstayed the six months because there were no flights out of the USA during the initial stages of the pandemic. But Homeland Security had relented a teeny weeny bit and issued me with a one year visa which I was now using.
I kept on talking, glancing at the “normal” huge line of USA arrivals on the other side of the hall, explaining my situation until I was given a blank sheet of paper with squiggle on it. This was enough to get me into the dear old US of A, thank goodness. I was back!
Changing flights in Charlotte was difficult in comparison to our other route via Atlanta. In Atlanta, the internal flights leave from the same security area as the international flights. In Charlotte, the two areas are separate despite there being no apparent reason for them to be separate. Luckily we had plenty of time so, boots and belt in hand, we took our time completing the security requirements yet again.
After a very pleasant introduction to the local dark herb beer, we boarded our 737 which spent about half an hour in the queue before being able to take off. It’s not a very long flight from Charlotte to Sarasota and the approach to the airport over our favourite route 41 was very pleasant. But the ultimate pleasure after landing was feeling the waft of warm balmy air over us as we left the plane.
Another pleasure awaiting us as we left the airport building. The 99 bus driver spotted us coming her way so she stopped and waited for us to board her bus. This friendly smiling driver transported us down our route 41 then up the Boulevard of the Arts to the bus stop just outside our door.
The following day we were at last back on our beloved beach. Half of the beach has actually disappeared as a result of Hurricane Ian. Many of the trees are “bent down” and a few of the palms are shredded but everything else seems back to normal.
Our English “earthly bliss” may be failed at the moment but our “fairer Paradise” in Sarasota is still living up to its reputation even after hurricane Ian.
“For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed, A fairer Paradise is founded now”
“For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed, A fairer Paradise is founded now” [John M]
I’m not sure that England could be called a “seat of earthly bliss” before the pandemic, the Ukraine war and the disastrous “mini budget but Sarasota is definitely the nearest to a”Paradise Regained” that any of us could reach within a day’s travelling from Cambridge.
Our planned “escape” to Sarasota in Florida was to be 12 December 2023. But that was the day Cambridge experienced its biggest snowfall for some time. The week before our planned “escape”, Cambridge had freezing temperatures and bright sunny days so it was easy for the snow to settle on top of the ice during the night before our departure.
We checked our train on the Cambridge station Departures board and found that not only had OUR train to London been cancelled but every train to London for a few hours had been cancelled except for a train at 5.20am.
We rang Panther taxis and changed our taxi time to 4.50am. True to form as always, their top driver appeared on time in his large Mercedes. After cruising around Ninewells rather than risking a three point turn on the snow covered ice we set off towards the entrance to our estate.
The exit on to the Babraham Road is on a gentle slope which at first caused our car to gently slide sideways down from the exit. So our driver Roger tried a few more times to ascend the slope. It was only on the third subsequent try with a very gentle acceleration that he managed to reach the main road.
The rest of the journey was equally cautious but uneventful, thank goodness. It was with a grateful thanks that we bade farewell to Roger our trusty Panther driver hoping that we would not need him again that morning.
Anxiously eyeing the Departures board, we noted that our one train to London was still shown as “On Time”. However, after waiting until the departure time on platform 2, it was evident that it would NOT be “on time”. Even more frustrating was that the train was sitting by platform 2 showing no signs of cranking up to depart.
It turned out that our train driver had been unable to reach the station so they were looking for somebody else to drive the train. As none of us appeared to be qualified drivers we had wait until a “substitute train driver” appeared. On his arrival, we all cheered but he looked at us and simply scowled, obviously annoyed at having been woken at such an early hour.
We set off at last in a completely unheated train. The snow laying in our carriage showed no signs of melting during the whole bumpy journey so it must have been zero degrees or very near.
Thank goodness for the Elizabeth Line which now runs between Liverpool Street Station and Heathrow without a break.
Our next problem was obtaining official boarding passes for our “super super special” tickets we had obtained for our flight. “Go upstairs! Go upstairs!”, yelled an extremely excited man directing a very long line waiting at the American Airlines desks.
Our departure day, December 12, was the only day in the month without strikes so we assumed the large crowds were simply trying escape England before everything came to a standstill. However, after a few minutes observing the puzzled faces of the American Airways staff, we finally received our boarding passes for the two flights that were to transport us to Sarasota.
Of course, next comes the dreaded TSA examination where we have to expose ourselves to all sorts of humiliation. With my metal knee, I always “beep” the detector so I am exposed to a different machine plus I am felt all over in case I am carrying any more metal objects on my body. Of course, because I have removed my belt, my trousers tend to fall down. Then I was instructed to remove my boots. Then a nice man appeared and, feeling sorry for me, said, “He doesn’t have to remove his boots”. I felt good about that until later when the man feeling me down ordered me to remove my boots. I mentioned gently, so as not to annoy him, that the other man had said I could keep my boots on. He insisted and actually disappeared with my boots to Xray them which seemed very impressive at the time.
Emerging from TSA myself with snow boots in hand and trousers falling down, we were at last on our way, but realising that those of us with titanium knees are forever condemned to be frisked and examined fully for the rest of our lives.
After a delicious coffee and cheese sandwich, we were at last squeezed into a friendly American Airways 777 tube and were on our way. My partner called out as we departed that it was exactly 12 seconds past the 12th minute past 12 o’clock on the 12th day of the 12th month of the year. So we were certain that THIS 777 was not going to get lost.
We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the vegan meal and I was happy with the number of G & Ts that were served with the meal.
Unfortunately my pleasure was severely truncated by border control on arrival. I had spent a considerably amount of time and money being cleared for security firstly by the UK government then by the US government to enable me to check in using just one passport recognition machine. As I had not actually received my pass, I approached border control with the paperwork they had sent me. It said I had only to check in with security to receive my “Global Entry” pass.
No such luck as I was met by border control who seemed almost angry at me on behalf of their government. “You do NOT qualify”, I was told. “You must line up over there and wait for some time like everyone else. Your pass has been revoked by the government ”
I explained that I had been refused a visa because I overstayed the six months because there were no flights out of the USA during the initial stages of the pandemic. But Homeland Security had relented a teeny weeny bit and issued me with a one year visa which I was now using.
I kept on talking, glancing at the “normal” huge line of USA arrivals on the other side of the hall, explaining my situation until I was given a blank sheet of paper with squiggle on it. This was enough to get me into the dear old US of A, thank goodness. I was back!
Changing flights in Charlotte was difficult in comparison to our other route via Atlanta. In Atlanta, the internal flights leave from the same security area as the international flights. In Charlotte, the two areas are separate despite there being no apparent reason for them to be separate. Luckily we had plenty of time so, boots and belt in hand, we took our time completing the security requirements yet again.
After a very pleasant introduction to the local dark herb beer, we boarded our 737 which spent about half an hour in the queue before being able to take off. It’s not a very long flight from Charlotte to Sarasota and the approach to the airport over our favourite route 41 was very pleasant. But the ultimate pleasure after landing was feeling the waft of warm balmy air over us as we left the plane.
Another pleasure awaiting us as we left the airport building. The 99 bus driver spotted us coming her way so she stopped and waited for us to board her bus. This friendly smiling driver transported us down our route 41 then up the Boulevard of the Arts to the bus stop just outside our door.
The following day we were at last back on our beloved beach. Half of the beach has actually disappeared as a result of Hurricane Ian. Many of the trees are “bent down” and a few of the palms are shredded but everything else seems back to normal.
Our English “earthly bliss” may be failed at the moment but our “fairer Paradise” in Sarasota is still living up to its reputation even after hurricane Ian.
“For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed, A fairer Paradise is founded now”
My strange memory of the Queen recalls ten o’clock one morning on Hyde Park Corner. I know it was ten o’clock because that was the time I always turned up for work at 105 Piccadilly. We normally “worked” until ten o’clock at night so we allowed for this by missing the Rush Hour on the Piccadilly Line.
I made my way up the escalator then up the stairs to emerge just by the gates into Hyde Park opposite the Duke of Wellington’s house.
The whole of Hyde Park Corner was empty! I could see nobody when I looked across to Constitution Hill. I was alone in a place which was normally full of noisy cars and buses at this time of a morning.
I was about to step over the road to the Duke of Wellington’s House when I espied something across the road approaching me up Constitution Hill. It was a line of cars driving fairly fast across Hyde Park Corner towards my position by the gate into Hyde Park.
It was a sunny warm day so most of the cars were open to the sun. But what surprised me most was, in one of the cars was the Queen accompanied by a number of other people whom I didn’t recognise. The other cars were of no concern to me but what should “one” do when faced by my Queen?
The problem was solved by Her. She looked my way and waved!
So I lifted my hand and managed a fairly pathetic answer to her very assured Royal wave as her car swept by.
And then they were gone heading towards the Household Cavalry Barracks leaving me with my Queen memory.
One day, when I was about ten years old and one of my sisters was about seven, my father gave us a sack and a little money with the request, “Go out into the country and fetch me a sack full of sheep manure”. I should perhaps add that sheep poo is regarded as an excellent fertiliser for chrysanthemums or dahlias – I can’t remember which – perhaps it is for both? It’s apparently also good for other plants.
At the bottom of our road was a number of bus stops, one of which was for the Green Line buses. The Green Line buses used to travel from one green area into London then out the other side to another green area on the other side of London. So we waited for the bus and , when it came, I asked the driver to stop when we came to a farm with a lot sheep poo in the fields.
When the bus driver spotted a decent haul, he stopped and let us off with a wistful gaze, hoping I suspect that we weren’t going to catch HIS bus on the way back.
We walked into the field and started collecting, watched by a bunch of surprisingly inquisitive sheep. “What are you doing with our poo?”, they seemed to be saying. The question that we had NOT asked was whether we should collect the fresh smelly gleaming poo or the dried up older stuff. Being a brilliant decision maker, even at that age, I decided that we would collect some of each. I can’t remember seeing the farmer but I’m sure he had a good laugh if he did chance to see us.
When we had finished filling the sack until it was almost to heavy to lift, we hailed the next bus and were taken back to our bus stop in Sudbury Town. I should add that we had always longed to travel on those fast single decker buses so this trip was really very exciting to us, travelling on a green line bus out into the countryside!!!
I used to love visiting the South Kensington museums. Here I would pay my respects to the enormous whale in the Natural History Museum
then go downstairs in the Science Museum where we could play with various devices and later perhaps attend one of the lectures.
For these visits, I would buy a “half ticket”. The man in the ticket office would take the ticket for South Kensington and ceremoniously snip it at exactly 45 degrees in half. He handed me one half and I have no idea what he did with the other half.
When I was about nine, I was a junior exhibitioner at Trinity college. This meant that every Saturday I would walk down to Wembley Central station and take the train to Baker street with my precious half return ticket. I would then enjoy walking through the lanes of Marylebone to Mandeville Place and back again later in the day.
In the Summer, we would sometimes take another type of train from Sudbury which would take us to Ruislip Lido for the day. One day we walked to Regents Park and got into the London Zoo by digging hole under the fence. But it was by underground train that we travelled back to Wembley. The network of different types of trains which ran through Wembley and Sudbury was amazing. we could travel anywhere for very little.
Later, when I lived in Chiswick, things were even better. Granted I could walk to the Polytechnic Harriers running track and the Boat Club by Chiswick Bridge. (It’s SO nice to row down the Thames in an eight when you are NOT racing!!!) I could even cycle to the the Bank of England Sports place by Richmond Park with a banker friend. But when I needed to go anywhere else in London, I would go from Chiswick Park on the “tube”or from another station for a curious Cross London line. For the South Bank concert halls, the Film Insitute(with that creepy voice doing the translations!) or the Hayward, I would take the direct District Line to Charing Cross and walk across the railway bridge with hundreds of others. For the Charing Cross Road bookshops or the Covent Garden Opera, I would change to the Piccadilly Line at Hammersmith. For Mornington Crescent BBC, I would change to the Northern Line. It was SO easy, as long as you avoided the Rush Hours!!!
But the most exciting journey we ever took was to Liverpool Street station where we caught the train to the Essex Coast. We were incredibly excited to be travelling to the seaside! Later, I found that you could drink Guiness in the pub on the platform while you waited for the train.
Even in car country USA there is public transport. For example, there are two trains into Seattle from Everett in the morning and two trains back from Seattle in the evening. Bus transit stations are mushrooming all over the outskirts of the city with already full carparks and the centre is well served by all forms of transport including the famous monorail constructed initially for the 1966 exhibition. Then there are the famous ferries which run regularly and reliably from very early in the morning until late at night. All this is nothing compared with the amazing road system. It has always been evident to me that just stealing one lane from the major freeways would give any city in the USA another wonderful rail network. San Francisco has some railways in the middle of the road. At the moment car pooling is encouraged by HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lanes which can only be used by vehicles carrying two (sometimes three) or more people. Unfortunately I have often seen buses running along these freeways in off-peak times with no passengers. I suspect that this may soon change.
I can remember when London and Sheffield had excellent tram services. These were changed to bus services. In London, they even got rid of our favourite 662 trolley bus line into Paddington from Sudbury Triangle. Now they are coming back in Sheffield with their “superTram” – really just the same old trams.
Ten years ago, when I was living in Florence, the city was building tram tracks. It was heartening to see the care with which the cobble stones were being replaced between the rails. Two years later I returned and was pleased to see that one route was already in operation. The city has a decent bus service and small electric buses for the back streets of the Old City.
The city rail services of Paris, Chicago and New York are well known from the many films made around them. When I see trams running down the streets of the old DDR at dusk, I immediately remember the spy stories that I have read about the East Germany. And then there are those amazing street cars of San Francisco; many of them retired trams from Melbourne Australia.
We all know the vaporetti and gondolas of Venice which often appear in movies but did you know that you can take a traghetto (public gondola) across the Grand canal for 50 cents? I used to take a traghetto from Cannaregio to the Rialto when I felt a little lazy. So public transport can be an evocative experience.
It’s difficult to assess the cities which have the best transport system for travellers without cars. On a recent trip to London I found the District and Piccadilly line trains to have plenty of seats at off-peak times. Arriving at Heathrow airport, it is still a good idea to travel into London by tube rather than by any other means of transport. But you need an oyster card. The oyster cards enable travellers to prepay fares and operate the automatic gates leading to the trains. They can be recharged almost anywhere!!!
Australian cities have excellent public transport. Melbourne still has its trams and the suburban trains. Sydney also has excellent services and Brisbane also has a similar system using trains and buses.
From my house in Brisbane, I have a variety of choices if I want to use public transport to get into the city. At one end of the street is a bus service which runs every ten minutes during the day. At the other end of the street is a “glider bus” service also running into the town on a very tight schedule. “Glider” buses only take “goCards”. Like an oyster card, you wave the card in front of a machine as you enter and your fare is deducted from the card when you wave it again as you leave the bus. The whole idea is to speed up the buses.
If I walk down the road, I can catch the CityCAT into town. This catamaran uses the same fare zone system as the buses and travels very fast. It’s probably the most pleasant way to reach the city.
Another way they speed up the Brisbane bus services is to build “busways” through Brisbane. They go under buildings and over other roads to move buses quickly towards the suburbs. Buses travel along these busways at a good clip and the stops on the busways look like normal train stations.
One thing I like about the Brisbane system is that buses and trains coordinate quite well. A website will give you several options when asked how to get from one place to another at a certain time. When travelling from Brisbane to Noosa, a distance of over a hundred miles, the Noosa bus will actually meet the train at Nambour.
Of all the places I have visited,Vienna seems to have the best inner city public transport system. Trams run everywhere and nobody has told the city that underground trains simply do NOT have to go that fast!! There is another train system altogether which runs into the surrounding countryside and also services the airport. If you travel from the airport on THIS system, it will cost a fraction of the cost of the highly publicised “Airport Train”. There is also an equally large bus system, as if that wasn’t already enough. There is an amazing network of cycle tracks alongside the roads with their own traffic lights. Yes, we really have to treat cycling as a form of public transport when it is organised SO well!!!They also have carriages drawn by two horses taking tourists around the old city.
One day, we tasted some wine in BILLA which purported to come from North of Vienna. Determined to find these vineyards, we jumped on a tram and stayed on until it reached the terminus. We walked up the valley looking for the vineyards and, seeing nothing, began our walk down on the other side of the valley. THEN we looked up!!! A huge hillside vista opened up above us and there were the vineyards. There’s wine in them hills!!! I suppose we should call that tram a Green Line tram?
One day, when I was about ten years old and one of my sisters was about seven, my father gave us a sack and a little money with the request, “Go out into the country and fetch me a sack full of sheep manure”. I should perhaps add that sheep poo is regarded as an excellent fertiliser for chrysanthemums or dahlias – I can’t remember which – perhaps it is for both? It’s apparently also good for other plants.
At the bottom of our road was a number of bus stops, one of which was for the Green Line buses. The Green Line buses used to travel from one green area into London then out the other side to another green area on the other side of London. So we waited for the bus and , when it came, I asked the driver to stop when we came to a farm with a lot sheep poo in the fields.
When the bus driver spotted a decent haul, he stopped and let us off with a wistful gaze, hoping I suspect that we weren’t going to catch HIS bus on the way back.
We walked into the field and started collecting, watched by a bunch of surprisingly inquisitive sheep. “What are you doing with our poo?”, they seemed to be saying. The question that we had NOT asked was whether we should collect the fresh smelly gleaming poo or the dried up older stuff. Being a brilliant decision maker, even at that age, I decided that we would collect some of each. I can’t remember seeing the farmer but I’m sure he had a good laugh if he did chance to see us.
When we had finished filling the sack until it was almost to heavy to lift, we hailed the next bus and were taken back to our bus stop in Sudbury Town. I should add that we had always longed to travel on those fast single decker buses so this trip was really very exciting to us, travelling on a green line bus out into the countryside!!!
I used to love visiting the South Kensington museums. Here I would pay my respects to the enormous whale in the Natural History Museum
then go downstairs in the Science Museum where we could play with various devices and later perhaps attend one of the lectures.
For these visits, I would buy a “half ticket”. The man in the ticket office would take the ticket for South Kensington and ceremoniously snip it at exactly 45 degrees in half. He handed me one half and I have no idea what he did with the other half.
When I was about nine, I was a junior exhibitioner at Trinity college. This meant that every Saturday I would walk down to Wembley Central station and take the train to Baker street with my precious half return ticket. I would then enjoy walking through the lanes of Marylebone to Mandeville Place and back again later in the day.
In the Summer, we would sometimes take another type of train from Sudbury which would take us to Ruislip Lido for the day. One day we walked to Regents Park and got into the London Zoo by digging hole under the fence. But it was by underground train that we travelled back to Wembley. The network of different types of trains which ran through Wembley and Sudbury was amazing. we could travel anywhere for very little.
Later, when I lived in Chiswick, things were even better. Granted I could walk to the Polytechnic Harriers running track and the Boat Club by Chiswick Bridge. (It’s SO nice to row down the Thames in an eight when you are NOT racing!!!) I could even cycle to the the Bank of England Sports place by Richmond Park with a banker friend. But when I needed to go anywhere else in London, I would go from Chiswick Park on the “tube”or from another station for a curious Cross London line. For the South Bank concert halls, the Film Insitute(with that creepy voice doing the translations!) or the Hayward, I would take the direct District Line to Charing Cross and walk across the railway bridge with hundreds of others. For the Charing Cross Road bookshops or the Covent Garden Opera, I would change to the Piccadilly Line at Hammersmith. For Mornington Crescent BBC, I would change to the Northern Line. It was SO easy, as long as you avoided the Rush Hours!!!
But the most exciting journey we ever took was to Liverpool Street station where we caught the train to the Essex Coast. We were incredibly excited to be travelling to the seaside! Later, I found that you could drink Guiness in the pub on the platform while you waited for the train.
Even in car country USA there is public transport. For example, there are two trains into Seattle from Everett in the morning and two trains back from Seattle in the evening. Bus transit stations are mushrooming all over the outskirts of the city with already full carparks and the centre is well served by all forms of transport including the famous monorail constructed initially for the 1966 exhibition. Then there are the famous ferries which run regularly and reliably from very early in the morning until late at night. All this is nothing compared with the amazing road system. It has always been evident to me that just stealing one lane from the major freeways would give any city in the USA another wonderful rail network. San Francisco has some railways in the middle of the road. At the moment car pooling is encouraged by HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lanes which can only be used by vehicles carrying two (sometimes three) or more people. Unfortunately I have often seen buses running along these freeways in off-peak times with no passengers. I suspect that this may soon change.
I can remember when London and Sheffield had excellent tram services. These were changed to bus services. In London, they even got rid of our favourite 662 trolley bus line into Paddington from Sudbury Triangle. Now they are coming back in Sheffield with their “superTram” – really just the same old trams.
When he was City of London Mayor, Boris often cycled into work, he wanted “bendy buses” for London and also wanted to reinstate the OLD double deckers instead of the “very safe” buses that replaced the iconic Route-masters but not trams at that stage.. Buses even run throughout the night. But Boris also introduced bikes throughout the city, organised the Olympic Games, helped set up a thriving IT industry, and met the 2014 ’Tour de France’ when it arrived in London.
Ten years ago, when I was living in Florence, the city was building tram tracks. It was heartening to see the care with which the cobble stones were being replaced between the rails. Two years later I returned and was pleased to see that one route was already in operation. The city has a decent bus service and small electric buses for the back streets of the Old City.
The city rail services of Paris, Chicago and New York are well known from the many films made around them. When I see trams running down the streets of the old DDR at dusk, I immediately remember the spy stories that I have read about the East Germany. And then there are those amazing street cars of San Francisco; many of them retired trams from Melbourne Australia.
We all know the vaporetti and gondolas of Venice which often appear in movies but did you know that you can take a traghetto (public gondola) across the Grand canal for 50 cents? I used to take a traghetto from Cannaregio to the Rialto when I felt a little lazy. So public transport can be an evocative experience.
It’s difficult to assess the cities which have the best transport system for travellers without cars. On a recent trip to London I found the District and Piccadilly line trains to have plenty of seats at off-peak times. Arriving at Heathrow airport, it is still a good idea to travel into London by tube rather than by any other means of transport. But you need an oyster card. The oyster cards enable travellers to prepay fares and operate the automatic gates leading to the trains. They can be recharged almost anywhere!!!
Australian cities have excellent public transport. Melbourne still has its trams and the suburban trains. Sydney also has excellent services and Brisbane also has a similar system using trains and buses.
From my house in Brisbane, I have a variety of choices if I want to use public transport to get into the city. At one end of the street is a bus service which runs every ten minutes during the day. At the other end of the street is a “glider bus” service also running into the town on a very tight schedule. “Glider” buses only take “goCards”. Like an oyster card, you wave the card in front of a machine as you enter and your fare is deducted from the card when you wave it again as you leave the bus. The whole idea is to speed up the buses.
If I walk down the road, I can catch the CityCAT into town. This catamaran uses the same fare zone system as the buses and travels very fast. It’s probably the most pleasant way to reach the city.
Another way they speed up the Brisbane bus services is to build “busways” through Brisbane. They go under buildings and over other roads to move buses quickly towards the suburbs. Buses travel along these busways at a good clip and the stops on the busways look like normal train stations.
One thing I like about the Brisbane system is that buses and trains coordinate quite well. A website will give you several options when asked how to get from one place to another at a certain time. When travelling from Brisbane to Noosa, a distance of over a hundred miles, the Noosa bus will actually meet the train at Nambour.
Of all the places I have visited,Vienna seems to have the best inner city public transport system. Trams run everywhere and nobody has told the city that underground trains simply do NOT have to go that fast!! There is another train system altogether which runs into the surrounding countryside and also services the airport. If you travel from the airport on THIS system, it will cost a fraction of the cost of the highly publicised “Airport Train”. There is also an equally large bus system, as if that wasn’t already enough. There is an amazing network of cycle tracks alongside the roads with their own traffic lights. Yes, we really have to treat cycling as a form of public transport when it is organised SO well!!!They also have carriages drawn by two horses taking tourists around the old city.
One day, we tasted some wine in BILLA which purported to come from North of Vienna. Determined to find these vineyards, we jumped on a tram and stayed on until it reached the terminus. We walked up the valley looking for the vineyards and, seeing nothing, began our walk down on the other side of the valley. THEN we looked up!!! A huge hillside vista opened up above us and there were the vineyards. There’s wine in them hills!!! I suppose we should call that tram a Green Line tram?
Sometimes, people just have to travel despite warnings from everyone not to go anywhere. Such was the case recently when I felt I just had to leave the USA where I had been illegal for over eight months. I’m sure the USA authorities will understand my reasons when I apply to travel back to the USA in the future. The flights that I booked on my favorite airline during 2020 had all been cancelled but, as the vaccines began to kick in during 2021, it became easier to return to England.
We normally take a non-stop flight from Tampa to Gatwick but our favorite airline had cancelled all their flights from there and everywhere else as it happened. Surprisingly, none of the airlines running transAtlantic routes were running non-stop flights from Tampa so I had to look for the best flight from SRQ Sarasota airport to connect with an airport from where I could fly directly to London.
By May 2021, there were a number of direct flights from different airports but, to cut a long series of deliberations short, I settled on Atlanta. The first reason for this choice was the fact that Virgin Atlantic ran flights from Atlanta on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The second reason was the fact that they used the 787 Dreamliner, my favorite plane. The third reason was that they are in cahoots with DELTA which has always had frequent flights from SRQ Sarasota Airport to Atlanta.
That’s the easy bit! Now for the PANDEMIC rules.
First requirement: I had to be tested in the USA clear of COVID-90 three days before arrival in England. This would be difficult because they take up to FOUR days to send the result after the sample being couriered to a laboratory.
The second requirement was that I had to book two tests the second and the eight day after arrival in England. The company I chose would send me a secret code for myself alone.
The third requirement was that I had to fill in a long three page interrogation for Border Control in London. This would include the secret code for my two tests in England.
Tempted, as I was to give up any ideas about travel back to Blighty, I soldiered on with plans. I booked an afternoon flight to Atlanta then the Virgin Atlantic’s late night crossing to Heathrow London.
First came the PCR test for COVID-19. This was the first test that the Longboat CVS ran on Tuesday morning. It was very efficiently supervised and the result came by email on Thursday. I had overcome the first hurdle – or so I thought.
I was very happy with the masks we had been wearing because they were military combat N-99 masks with exit valves. They protect the USER whereas the normal N-95 masks merely protect people FROM the user. Some people have the idiotic notion that it is “manly” NOT to wear a mask. This is nonsense because these “manly” people are simply scattering their breathe all over everybody and this travels easily through a N95 mask. The problem with the N99 mask is that it ONLY protects the wearer as a valve lets the air the wearer breathes out into the environment. But the masks come with little round stickers to block this exhaust valve.
“We don’t allow masks with valves on our planes” was the greeting I had from the lady at the DELTA desk at SRQ. She shook her head when I said there was a provision for blocking the valve. So I decided to wear an N95 mask which protects my fellow passengers on top of my valved N99 mask which protects ME. I did not announce my decision but it was obviously an efficient way to solve the problem.
SRQ is a tiny airport. Driving past on the road, we used to see one, two or even three planes at the terminal. But recently this has all changed. More and more airlines are flying from airports all over the USA and Canada especially during the pandemic when nobody is able to take International flights.
So I was amazed to see how congested SRQ was. The flight to Atlanta was fully booked! I was also disappointed to see so many of the “ultra thin”, “sit up straight” seats packed into a very nice “brand new” airbus. It’s only a short flight fromSRQ to ATL so I had no problems with my N95 over my N99. In fact, I was surprised how comfortable it was to wear two masks.
We arrived in the domestic terminal at Atlanta which seemed quite remote from the International Terminal. It was a long walk past all the domestic gates but the destinations on the gates were magic to me. I still remember my first trip around the states in a car. I had played a tune from almost every city we passed. So I enjoyed seeing destinations like “St Louis” from the blues we all know,Kamsas of “Kansas City Stomp”, “Chattanooga”, Chicago of course, and many others.
I eventually found Gate F2 in the International Terminal after quite a long train ride. I bought a strange drink and made myself comfortable eating my tea and watching planes landing and taking off while waiting for the gate to open.
After waiting for a time, a nice man from the Virgin Atlantic desk came over and informed me that I had to have my documents checked at the desk before I would be cleared to travel to UK. So I showed my three pages of Border control questionnaire, my booking and secret code for the two tests I had booked in England then my CVS COVID test taken three days earlier.
Slightly terrified, I watched him survey the date of the test.. The problem was that I had taken the test three days before I travelled. I subsequently discovered that the rules prescribed a test taken three days before the arrival in London. Taking a look at the date then taking a look at me, I was passed as eligible to board the flight.
The Virgin Atlantic flight was half full so we were spaced apart in a satisfactory manner unlike the jammed full DELTA flight from SRQ to ATL. I hardly drink alcohol but I needed the bottle of red after sampling the vegetarian chili. But the service was meticulous and caring which seems to typify Virgin Atlantic flights, I understand.
The flight was fine especially with my new birthday present noise-cancelling headphones. The problem was that you can see the cabin crew talking but you cannot hear anything that they say until you take off the headphones. But to be free of those low frequency engine sounds makes such a difference.
All that customer service ceased immediately after our arrival in London Heathrow. As usual, we all sprinted to the Border control only be confronted by a huge queue of hundreds in front of us. Only three people were servicing the queue, and one of them went to lunch while we waited. It took two hours for us to reach the front of the queue.
One again, I was interrogated and my documents inspected. When the Border control Office reached the date of my pre-flight test, he stopped and turned to me with roughly the same look that I received in Atlanta. But he waved me through and I was back in England after the normal computer recognition comparison with my passport.
When I finally emerged from the “ARRIVAL” corridor, there was my taxi driver still waiting after over an hour and a half. We did a quick negotiation to pay for the extra wait then we went to his car.
I had requested a small comfortable car but the taxi company couldn’t really come up with one. I had no luggage so it was a case of “the smaller the better” and “comfortable”. They eventually said that that they would charge me for their cheapest car but send a “nice car”.
I was completely unprepared for the huge MERCEDES which greeted me in the parking lot. I asked the driver if I could sit in the front seat as the back seat was so far away from him. But this was not to be the case for reasons which I not quite aware – something like COVID-19, insurance, smell of disinfectant . . . . .
But this huge Mercedes went FAST! I often like to meander through country lanes and backroads but . . . . . NONE OF THAN . . . .main roads all the way. The M25 was not too full of traffic so we were through that in a blurrrrrrr. . . . and I was home before I even knew where we were.
Finally home! I saw sixteen months of mail sitting in the kitchen. These would take me four days to deal with as I sincerely believed sixteen months before that the COVID-19 would die out if we all followed the guidelines. Unfortunately, as we all know, that did NOT happen!
I had organized a grocery delivery for an hour after my arrival. Sure enough it arrived and I was looking at fresh vegetables grown just down the road, fish caught in Cornwall, kippers and porridge from Scotland. Even the “Moroccan Cous Cous” was made in England. I love eating British food when I am in UK and US food when I am in the USA.
But my ordeal was not yet over. UK Border Control still held my future in their hands. Two of the items delivered on the day I arrived were PCR test kits to be used on day 2 and day 8 after my arrival. So, on day 2, I trudged off to the nearest “Priority Post Box” about a mile away to deliver my sample taken just before I left.
I’ve always had a “fairly” neat garden but I had difficulty getting stuff to grow. NOW, after doing absolutely NOTHING in the garden for one and a half years, the place looked like a forest! How on earth am I going to deal with that! My intelligent decision was just to “leave it for later”.
To file my tax return, I need a mobile number to capture the code that HMRC sends before I log in. I had previously contacted EE customer service to see whether they could keep the number for me when I returned from the USA. They explained that not using my phone number for six months could mean the loss of my number. BUT, when I emailed them on the day after my return, they cheerfully offered my old number back. This would mean that I could deal with any security issues by using my mobile number. But, in particular, it meant that the very first aspect of HMRC security could be tackled.
A few days later, after checking all my income, I was ready to file my tax return. I logged on as usual and received my code on my mobile . . . BUT . . . they wanted more. On what date did I start my credit card . . . . On what date did I start my mobile phone contract . . . . They asked for my passport number which was easy but I simply didn’t have access to all the other stuff. In desperation, I rang HMRC. There was the usual long wait but eventually a very helpful person came on the line.
“Just because you have YOUR mobile and you are phoning from YOUR number does NOT mean You are YOU!”, the nice HMRC person explained. I desperately asked for help but there seemed no way to prove my identity. Apparently there are companies which will somehow tell HMRC that you ARE YOU but that sounded worse than the predicament I was already in.
So I returned to the security questionnaire and attempted to answer more questions until SUDDENLY I was accepted as ME! I wonder whether that nice HMRC person had anything to do with it?
At last I cold file my tax return and even pay the 2019-2020 tax.
I had a lot of jobs to do in the house and the garden but only one more to do besides staying in “quarantine” for a few more days.
That was the “day 8” test. I faithfully followed instructions and dropped the sample in the Priority Postbox the other side of Addenbrookes hospital. The area is a Biomedical City full of institutes and hospitals for various diseases. It will also house the World Headquarters of Astrozenica which has combined with Oxford University, the UK government and other ethical medical companies to produce a world vaccine at no profit.
Only two more days of quarantine remained after this. Curiously it took THREE days to get the result of my day 8 test. By that time I had ended my quarantine taking my first trip into Cambridge. I noticed that the bus route into town had changed. After reaching the station and passing the Apple headquarters it left the main street and followed a circuitous route to end up by the side of the John Lewis store. I noticed that other routes had also changed to avoid the terrible congestion around the bus station. Cambridge obviously needs a new large enough bus station to deal with the fact that it is now an all-the-year-round important market town, a hub for research and education, and a major tourist destination on every visitor’s “ bucket list”.
At this time of year, the town is usually very busy with tourists and students. The most obvious groups missing were tourists but generally the town centre was very quiet.
In the sixteen months I had been away in the USA, the bank had almost lost all their humans. It had only one customer as I arrived and just two employees. One was greeting customers and the other was supervising the automatic teller machines. I needed help feeding my cheque into the machine. “You’ve put it in the wrong way” said the supervisor but approved of everything else I did. Bank business done, I had no need to stay as all my needs at home were being delivered.
I noticed our favorite number 7 bus waiting across the road and, making sure I was wearing my two masks jumped on.
The word “Armageddon” crops up from time to time in various contexts where some sort of doom is inferred. In fact it’s a place on Palestine’s route 65 perched on a hill to the left as you travel towards Nazareth just half an hour away. You’ll find it on the map as “Megiddo”.
Jews call it “ הַר מְגִדּוֹ “. Moslems call it “ الملحمة الكبرى “. Christians call it “ Ἁρμαγεδών “ and many other religeous sects ascribe different significance to this place but they all seem to ascribe this hill as the meeting place before the final solution, whatever that may be. There are plenty of references to this place nowadays on the world wide web.
With all that we have read or watched in religious and non-religious settings, seeing the actual site is a surprise. It occupies a commanding position over the valley through which route 65 runs which explains the past history of this heap of ruins. But the significance of Armageddon lives with us all even in this twenty-first century.
Continuing along route 65 and 60, we reach Nazareth, which a friendly Jewish bus driver told me, makes the best falafels in Palestine. I was this bus driver’s only passenger one evening traveling from Tel Aviv-Yafo to Jerusalem so I sat next to him and sang Jewish songs all along the route. I wasn’t aware that I knew so many Jewish songs! At the end of the journey, honesty got the better of him and he admitted that Palestinians made better falafels than Jews and the best were made in Nazareth. But I must admit that I have always been very happy with the small falafel stand just at the edge of Jerusalem modern city next to the old city which the local police use. I can still see the smile in the crowd and on the vendor’s face as he heaped stuff on to my portion saying, “ I hope you’re hungry!” Nice people!
Nazareth is the place where Jesus learned his trade as a carpenter and where the Virgin Mary was first informed of her future. You can even see the site of Jeseph’s workshop. It is interesting that, despite the fact that Nazareth is within the land which Israel claims, the old town is clearly still a Palestinian town.
It must have been hard for the people of Nazareth to find their mate Jesus, with whom they had been playing backgammon and drinking wine in the local tavern, suddenly shooting his mouth off in their local synagogue. After being run out of town a number of times and almost killed by the residents once, Jesus decided to move permanently to Caperneum just nine hours walk from Nazareth. It now takes under an hour by car and around two hours by bus.
The Bible tells us many stories of Jesus in and around Caperneum but it is interesting to see a path leading around the lake to Magdela where Jesus’s female friend lived. It’s a good six mile walk but people thought nothing of a walk of that length in those days. We may not need to know the exact type of relationship they had, but it is clear that Mary of Magdela stayed with Jesus for the rest of his life. In fact, Mary of Magdela carried the Good News to the disciples.
A Jewish friend in Caperneum pointed out a carving showing what purports to be the Ark of the Covenant being carried on a cart. We can easily say that cannot be true as the Bible quotes, “And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry the ark by them. (Exodus 25:14 )” However, the carving might refer to when the Phillistines returned the Ark after their unhappy experiences during its possession.“ Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home, away from them. Samuel 6:7” On the other hand, it could simply be a portable temple built to transport the Torah into the centre of the town during festivals.
Galilee is the centre of most ~85% of Jesus’s ministry. The international trade route Via Maris ran through this area past Megidoo, Gallilee, and Caperneum so Jesus would have had many international followers as a result of his teachings in this area.
His first miracle took place in a place now called Khirbet Qana, 7 miles north of Nazareth where he turned water into wine. There were others in Caperneum and around the area as we know. Religious groups will visit most of these miracle sites. I like the fact that two of them involved fish and fishing which reflected the occupations of his disciples. Although I am no longer a meat eater, I still eat fish although I prefer water to wine.
Just south of the exit of the Jordon from Lake Gallilee is a popular tourist site advertising “Baptism in the Jordon”. Never slow to attend to people’s needs, the Israelis have given the kibbutz ירדנית the right to provide a baptism site in the River Jordon for pilgrims. It is not the actual site where Jesus was baptized but it is a very peaceful place where people can rent robes and be immersed in the waters of the Jordon. Although not approved of by many ministers, it is perhaps a peaceful to end any tour of this magical area before taking the dusty road home.
I have recently undertaken what appears to be an impossible task. It involves composing with Vito Frazzi’s “Scala Alternata”. This comes after some research into linear harmony which produced diminished chords from this scale. The story about this “Scala alternata” goes back to the year 1961. But before this comes a little background.
I arrived at University after too long at a terrible military school which happily seems to have improved considerably since I was there. They now all wear “dressups” in gorgeous uniforms and, for some reason, the drum major even wears a bearskin! Here’s Prince Harry visiting the place.
I escaped some of the awfulness by joining the chapel choir which enabled me to miss church parades then I joined the band which meant that I could march up and down the parade ground enjoying playing music while the rest of the school stood still for about an hour during the weekly Trooping of the colour ceremony. This could be difficult on occasions. For example, we once marched up and down, playing the same Sousa march for over an hour non-stop, while the rest of the school marched in a huge circle after the RSM told the school that we all looked like a “shower”!
I remember arriving at College. Having to share a room during the first year, before having a room in hall, seemed a hardship for many students but, for me, it was a luxury having shared a dormitory room for so many years with 19 other school kids while I was at school.
It was SO delightful in that shared room that I smashed a fresh egg on the wall above my bed. I then announced to the astonished company, “THAT is my past life!” I was determined to appreciate the fact that I was in such a civilised environment at last! It seems crazy now but I remember that it remained there for the whole of my first year. It was reported to my moral tutor who must have understood where I was coming from. In fact, that “moral tutor” always sent me his best wishes when he ran the Royal Institution. Chancellor Merkel, a fellow physicist, flew over to Cambridge for his 80th birthday after he was Master of Peterhouse in Cambridge.
But it was the ability to enjoy music and talk to fellow students about music which made me happy. I made some extra cash by becoming a lay clerk in the cathedral, playing in the local jazz club and in a 16 piece big band later. My rough “military” clarinet playing earned me a place in the College orchestra, but it was even more pleasing to be invited by a friend who was a genuine Music student to accompany him to a course at the Academia Chigiana in Siena.
We shared a room in the student hall and had our own tavaglioli slots in the student Mensa. My friend was studying composition and I signed on to study Italian in the university and the conducting class with Celibidache. That is where we both learned of the “Scala Alternata” from Vito Frazzi who was in charge of the Composition Course.
Although Vito Frazzi had taught Dallapiccola, it seemed to us that composition using this “Scala Alternata” was almost impossible so it didn’t take much thought to enable my friend to leave the Vito Frazzi’s music composition course and join the Film Music Composition course run by a rather innovative man called Angelo Francesco Lavagnino.
Then the film music course moved down to Cine Cittá as Lavagnino had booked the sound stage for a film and that could not be cancelled. So the film music course moved to Rome with him. I also left Celibidache for a while and travelled with my friend to Cine Cittá.
It was a revelation seeing the way that Lavagnino worked. Besides more conventional instruments, he used a number of prepared keyboard instruments and percussion in a very approachable manner. We had been used to these instruments being employed in avant grade environments but here they were being used in a very descriptive manner blending with other more conventional instruments and voices in the film music.
After sessions in Cine Cittá we drove down to some beautiful places south of Rome like Casino and Caserta but passing through Naples as quickly as possible to the place on the present “Amalfi Drive” where Nietzsche is said have spoken to his superman Wagner for the last time after announcing that he had decided to compose a religious opera. We stayed in a hostel nearby.
We then travelled up the coast stopping at some interesting places; for example Cumae where Aeneas consulted the Sybil in book 6 of the Aeneid. It was while we were driving too fast down a lane from Cumae that a miracle happened. We turned a corner to find a car approaching us far too fast. (It must have been the wine!) We both tried desperately to avoid a collision driving to the LEFT of each other instinctively. Amazingly, the oncoming driver was English! Had the oncoming driver been Italian, there would have been a very bad collision. After that shock, we continued very steadily up the coast then past Rome to travel along the hill roads back to Siena. So I returned to Celibidache to learn how to make the basses play pianissimos using just one hair of the bow and join in his reorchestration of Schumann symphonies.
My subsequent slight knowledge of Italian enabled me to get the job of translator for the British delegation attending the “Italia Sessantuno” that year. After the student Mensa, it was good to be eating well in the top hotels around Torino before returning to Physics in the UK.
It is rather strange that I only heard the term “bucket list” less than ten years ago. Now that I have heard it muttered by a number of people, I have learned to respect the truths surrounding it.
It is a habit in Australia to drive around the whole “island” normally starting in the Winter season which makes Queensland and the Northern Territory a little more friendly with regard to climate.
Listening to two German immigrants talking to one another about their recent travels, I heard them express disappointment that they had missed out a couple of important towns a little inland from the coast road that they had traveled. “I’ll have to do the trip again”, said one to the other. This was a remarkable statement because he could simply have flown to a nearby airport and hired a car. Instead of doing this, he was about to do a “perfect trip” including absolutely all the important places just off the route.
Yes, there are places we simply must visit before we die. For myself, I definitely do not agree with this. I watch these wonderful BBC documentary films and thank my lucky stars that I now do not have to visit the places which are shown and described so well in those films.
Rick Steves in Seattle is someone who has created a career for himself doing exactly what he loves to do; travel around Europe. Not only does he make television films and write books about his beloved Europe. He also runs small group tours around Europe where Americans meet the locals in the “bucket list” towns of their choice. I cannot think of a better way of doing this if you want to travel with a group of like-minded folks. He has also visited other places to the east of Western Europe.
But Rick Steves advises those who visit Oxford, not to bother with visiting Cambridge. They are so similar that you probably would not know which place you were in. This is difficult if your bucket list includes both places.
I have always loved maps especially the ordinance survey maps which have been changed into tourist maps by colouring in the contours. I can enjoy hill walking even when it is misty and rainy without leaving the house.
But we now have books full of overhead images which are even more attractive. We can peer into those huge estates which seem so forbidding from the road as we drive past. The BBC even uses drones to give us views on video of large buildings and fortresses around the country. If these places are on your “bucket list”, you will see more of them in a BBC film than you will ever see walking around the perimeter.
But, even for me, there are exceptions. I had never even dreamed of visiting Jerusalem but, when the opportunity presented itself, I seized it. After all, my motto is “Carpe Diem” and this, in retrospect, should include legendary places.
To stand where David put together the psalms which are sung every day in the Anglican Church was an amazing experience. Then, not far away, is the place where Zadok the priest and Nathan anointed Solomon. I visited Nazareth where Jesus learned his craft and other places I had read about for many years. These places surely must be visited as well as watching any number of television documentaries about them. If I ever thought of having a “bucket list”, perhaps this should have been on it.
I remember living in Florence when the tourists began to arrive. I simply escaped as far South as I could go. I first went to South Crete and then to Gavdos, the southernmost place in Europe. Florence is definitely on the tourist “bucket list” but Gavdos is not there yet thank goodness.
Sometimes it is puzzling to know why particular places are on some tourists’ “bucket lists”. In Florence, I lived next door to the Duomo and Giotto’s Bell tower. One morning, I was walking behind a couple of tourists when we came into the square where the Duomo dominates the surroundings. One of the two exclaimed, “What’s that?”. The other said, I’d better look it up in our guide.
This seemed to indicate to me that people put places on their “bucket lists” without really knowing why. It is understandable that people certainly do not place Florence on their bucket list because of the Duomo but surely they should be prepared to enjoy all the assets of each place on their list?
Cambridge seems to be on a number of “bucket lists”. The town has problems with tourists because the roads and pathways are so narrow. The town council has even requested that parties as large a hundred should split into smaller groups. I have never seen a group of a hundred but groups as large as thirty can be annoying if they occupy the whole width of the path.
How do you assemble a bucket list? If I ever had a list, it would have begun by including all the pleasant coastal towns of Italy and Greece. The democratic problems of Greece was not a deterrent but they seemed to deter me from Spain.
Later, I would choose places because of their history. This is why I recently chose Florence, Venice and Vienna as places in which to live and Prague, Leipzig, Siena and similar cities as places to visit.
Sadly, Siena, where I was a student for a short while, has changed beyond belief. There were hardly any places to stay when I was there. We would watch coaches arrive in the morning, knowing that they would be gone by the evening. It’s now a busy tourist destination on many people’s bucket list. I presume it was in one of those books with a title like “100 PLACES YOU MUST VISIT BEFORE YOU DIE”.
I’ve noticed an unusually large number of people on our beach near Sarasota recently. Perhaps our beach is in one of those bucket lists. If it is, I suppose we’ll have to move.
We recently paid a visit to a new hotel which has just opened near us in Sarasota. It costs around $300 to stay there, about half the Ritz Carlton rate and twice the rate you might pay to stay in hotels down the road.
We were there to complain about the fact that the hotel was playing music from loudspeakers outside the main entrance to the hotel. In fact, the loudspeaker installers had made a mistake. It the wiring to one of the exterior speakers had been installed incorrectly so it was playing at a much higher volume than was planned thereby keeping residents awake just across the road.
We were welcomed by the Manager and his Assistant and they explained the louder sounds during previous nights. They also added that they also played music inside the hotel as well as outside.
When I asked why they played music at all, they explained that “it is to improve the clients experience of staying in our hotel”. When they asked me in the entrance hall if I could hear the interior music, I had to admit that I could not hear any music at all because it was being masked by some very loud machine noises coming from behind the wall in the restaurant. The manager said he could not hear the machine noises.
We were then shown round this “boutique hotel” as we called it. It attracts clients by saying, “ELEVATED MINDS DESERVE A HIGHER STANDARD OF HOTEL.” and I have to admit that the standard of design deserves that sort of statement. Even the cheapest rooms have small touches of design which distinguishes themselves above many others in which we have stayed around the world. After the Manager had shouted us drinks in the bar, we were definitely impressed by the standard of service.
I hate this type of “background music”. I can live my life quite happily without it. The “background music” I hate most are those carols they play in supermarkets as Christmas approaches. I love these tunes so I feel I must join in and sing. This annoys me as this behaviour is obviously not appropriate for a supermarket.
The real problem, as I explained to the Manager of our “boutique hotel” is that any experience as a musician leads you to listen to sounds more carefully than most people. Your brain hears musical sounds and often asks, “what melody is that?”, “Yuck, the harmony is all wrong”, ”I hate those GM sounds” and so on. It’s simply not necessarily a pleasant “client experience” for a musician.
I remember after lunch with a professional musician and a composer, we decided to listen carefully to all the sounds we encountered on the way to my studio. The route was along a fairly busy street across a very busy street then across a park to my studio in a large building by a fairly quiet road.
We started along the road with no difficulty then, as we progressed towards the main road, our brains became engulfed with very unpleasant feelings. We crossed the main road at last and expected this unpleasant feeling to disappear as we crossed the park. It did not disappear. In fact it became worse as we began to discover all sorts of sounds which we had not noticed before. As we approached the university building, we almost broke into a run as the sounds seemed to engulf our whole brains. We had a small anechoic chamber next to my studio but gradually we managed to expunge the cacophony from our heads and continue with our work.
I would not advise any musician to try this. Normally we all seem to manage to mask our brains from unwanted sound. I’m sure that even musicians can do it.
For example, it is possible to fall asleep whilst listening to sound or even watching a film. Children can fall asleep while listening to their favourite story. Perhaps, concentrating on a story can mask the myriad of worries accumulated during the day. I find that I can often fall asleep listening to words but not whilst listening to music.
I hate the noise in most “pubs” and bars. People start by talking fairly quietly but, as others also begin talking, they have to raise their voices to be heard by their friends. Eventually everybody has to shout to be heard. This could be minimised by using sound absorbing materials in the construction of restaurants and bars. Unfortunately, economy restricts the amount of money that can be spent on this aspect of a building.
To our aid comes the “cocktail party effect” which enables our brains to hear our friends through the background cacophony. We usually need good hearing in both ears to best appreciate this effect as some degree of sound localisation seems to help. It is remarkable that it is possible at all to hear our friends in such a noisy environment. Personally, I find a noisy restaurant to be totally unacceptable although I presume that the “cocktail party effect” would help me to inform my friends to hear my “Let’s get out of here!” cries of anguish. Any “background music” would be of little help.
It’s difficult for some younger people to realise that it is only during the last sixty years that we have all taken to flying anywhere in large numbers. In the last few years, we have seen signs on the side of buses advertising flights to desirable places for extremely low cost.
Nowadays we all squeeze into a large tube with wings and sit there for hours until we emerge from holes in the tube at our destination.
My first flight was in a small propellor plane which the orchestral manager had chartered to fly us across the channel instead of taking the ferry. It was a revelation to me. The push of the acceleration against my back was exhilarating as we rose into the air. And it was over so quickly compared with the boring ferry that seemed to take ages to cross the channel.
I claimed my next flight when I was working for the Arts Council of Great Britain. I asked whether I could fly up to Scotland for some work I had to do there instead of taking the usual train. It needed special permission but this was granted by a slightly mystified Chief Accountant. Once again I was able to see England from a propellor plane as it flew over the countryside at fairly low altitude.
I used to take the train on my yearly trips to the French and Italian coasts but the first year I decided to go to Athens and Crete, I took the bus. It also coincided with the year that Greece and Turkey almost went to war so, because of the emergency, I was stranded for about a month before I could get a ride home. Although we had an overnight in Graz, the journey was so long and boring that, from that day on, I travelled only by plane.
Charter flights were then in their infancy so initially I flew to Athens and took the night boat to Crete. As time went on,I managed to get direct charter flights to Iraklion and later to Hania. In those days, seating in the plane was not as cramped as it is now and the Crete airports were almost deserted.
I travelled to Iran one Christmas by way of Amman Jordon using Jordanian Airways. It was interesting to do the “fly down” the runway before doing an 180 degree turn to land. The Iran Air plane was the latest 727 with wonderful Iranian cuisine even for economy class me.
I am not a trusting man. In Amman on my return journey, I managed to force myself next to the exit in the bus taking us to the Jordanian plane. When the bus doors opened I rushed up the steps to get one of the last few seats available. The rest of the prospective passengers were left in Amman to await the next flight to London. The King had decided to take a trip to London so he had almost completely filled the plane with his henchmen and his household. We understood that he was actually flying the plane.
My first transatlantic flight was to Chicago. It was also my first boring flight. Up until then, I had been excited to fly and watch the countryside below. In one trip to Crete, the pilot had called us up to the cabin to point out some migrating birds not far below our height. It had seemed so personal and exciting. The new era of mass transport was making it less enjoyable. We even went on our first ski charter where we were packed so tightly into the aircraft that it was almost impossible to breathe. The modern era of mass air transport had almost arrived.
I say “almost arrived” because, around that time, I took a flight to Paris from the then tiny airport at Stansted for a conference in Beaubourg’s IRCAM beneath the Pompidou Centre. The plane looked like a box suspended from a pair of wings. The pilot greeted us on board while he drank from his thermos of coffee. There was one cabin staff who kept us supplied with alcohol to alleviate effects of the rough flight at low altitude.
Shortly after our arrival, the French announced a strike of all airport staff including flight controllers. One amusing result of this was a conference of musicologists into which I popped, after the IRCAM conference had finished, for a while. There were only five academics in the conference and one of them fell asleep. They then had a vote on whether they should wake him up or not. They decided unanimously to let him sleep.
We were on the last plane to leave CDG airport before everything closed down. Actually I had the impression that everything closed down before we left. But we were guided home by the English traffic controllers so everything worked out fine.
I have travelled on only one propellor plane since then. It was a Berlin Air flight into Stansted. The interesting feature of the plane was that I once again felt the pressure as I was pushed back into my seat when the aircraft climbed rapidly into the sky, very different from a jet aircraft.
When my family had emigrated to Australia, they had travelled on the Canberra cruise ship. When we travelled to Australia, we travelled by air of course. However, we could not fly on to Australia because of a strike of Air Traffic Controllers so we were stranded in the best hotel in Singapore completely paid for by Qantas. They even paid for bus tours around the area. We tried every cuisine in the hotel restaurants. Escargot and frogs legs were not normally on my menu but we tried everything.
On arrival at Sydney airport, we changed planes as we were headed for Melbourne. Having been on the first plane into the airport, we were now on the first plane out of the airport. We then had our first example of the typical Aussi “Sang froid”. As we headed down the runway, the plane seemed to slip on the surface until it seemed to start sliding sideways. The pilot managed to stop the plane and turn it round, saying, “We’ll try that again, shall we?”. Needly to say, the second attempt was successful.
From Australia, we managed to circle the earth a number of times, every four years in fact. We normally had a couple of stops when crossing the Pacific at Fiji and Hawaii and just one or two stops in Singapore or Hong Kong and Dubai flying the Eastern part of the journey. There was a change when we flew in the new short Jumbo Jet across the Pacific non stop. The jet seemed to have difficulty actually getting off the ground.
Another time, we took a French airline back from Paris on our way to Sydney. The cabin crew seemed surprised to see us and we were even more surprised to discover that the plane was full of soldiers on their way to quell a rebellion on one of “their” islands North of Australia. Our surprise was augmented by the fact that some of them were smoking.
We obviously complained only to be told that we should not have been allowed on this flight at all. But one of the cabin crew returned soon after and told us that we would be welcome on the upper deck of the plane. We ascended the steps and found a half empty area where the Minister of Defence was holding court amongst what seemed to be a group of very important people. The Minister welcomed us and invited us to take a seat and enjoy the excellent cuisine and wines served by the cabin crew. After that, the flight was very enjoyable.
After many more RTW flights, I found myself in living in Florence being invaded by hordes of tourists as the Summer season approached. Remembering my journeys of many years earlier, I jumped on a “red eye” flight to Athens and caught the dawn flight to Chania.
This is a lovely short flight. Heading out from a busy Athens, the plane seems to fly low over the sea until the island of Crete appears ahead. The little airport was deserted on that trip and I was able to revisit some of my old haunts on the island.
It was in a hotel in Sfakia that I met an Israeli couple who told me about a charter flight they had travelled on to Iraklion from Tel Aviv. They encouraged me to go to Israel so I found the airline and booked a flight for a week later.
It turned out that the flight was by an airline which was the charter part of El Al, the national airline of Israel. What I was not prepared for was a long interrogation from the security service before I boarded the plane.
“Why did you only book this flight last week?” “How did you find out about this flight?” “Why did you choose this airline?”
I was happy to comply with their wishes for me to answer these questions. After all, their security had served them well and was in the process of serving me. The questions kept coming, “Are the people who told you about this flight here now?” Then they left me standing while three of them, including one who I guessed was the person in charge, just looked at me for over ten minutes. Finally they let me go after putting my luggage through their Xray machines a few times. I was 90 minutes late for the plane but it waited for me. I was very happy with that airline so, after my sojourn in Palestine, I used it to travel to Paris.
By this time, there were numerous cheap airlines available to get us anywhere we wanted. I flew from Budapest to Manchester, Manchester to London then London to Seattle where we lived on an island near where Boeing constructed their planes. As we crossed to the island on a ferry, we would usually see one or two brand new planes flying low over the water to land on their air strip.
Flying from Seattle to Sarasota was interesting. Boeing has designed special thin seats for their short haul planes and our flight from Seattle to San José was in a new 737. But our flight from St José to Atlanta was in a very old plane with comfortable seats and large spaces between each row. The flight from Atlanta to Sarasota was in a plane only 20 years old but it still had the same degree of “old fashioned” comfort.
It seems that our new age of mass air travel has sacrificed a lot of comfort for the joy of being able to reach our holiday destinations cheaply. In Cambridge we see advertisements for flights to our favourite places for prices as low as £29.99. Our local airport Stansted, which used to be small, is now a major departure point for travellers and the other London airports are at full capacity.
We were happy to find a cheap airline which flew new 787s to Orlando from Gatwick. Now the same airline flies to Tampa not far from our home in Sarasota. So we are even happier. It would be nice to have another way of travelling to England for the hurricane season but the repositioning cruise from Tampa to Rotterdam takes 14 days compared to flying in a large tube for nine hors. I suppose that’s why we like flying.
My first flight was in a small propellor plane which the orchestral manager had chartered to fly us across the channel instead of taking the ferry. It was a revelation to me. The push of the acceleration against my back was exhilarating as we rose into the air. And it was over so quickly compared with the boring ferry that seemed to take ages to cross the channel.
I claimed my next flight when I was working for the Arts Council of Great Britain. I asked whether I could fly up to Scotland for some work I had to do there instead of taking the usual train. It needed special permission but this was granted by a slightly mystified Chief Accountant. Once again I was able to see England from a propellor plane as it flew over the countryside at fairly low altitude. I was met by my friend Will Matthias who was also mystified by my decision to fly.
I used to take the train on my yearly trips to the French and Italian coasts but the first year I decided to go to Athens and Crete, I took the bus. It also coincided with the year that Greece and Turkey almost went to war so, because of the emergency, I was stranded for about a month before I could get a ride home. Although we had an overnight in Graz, the journey was so long and boring that, from that day on, I travelled only by plane.
Charter flights were then in their infancy so initially I flew to Athens and took the night boat to Crete. As time went on,I managed to get direct charter flights to Iraklion and later to Hania. In those days, seating in the plane was not as cramped as it is now and the Crete airports were almost deserted.
I travelled to Iran one Christmas by way of Amman Jordon using Jordanian Airways. It was interesting to do the “fly down” the runway before doing an 180 degree turn to land. The Iran Air plane was the latest 727 with wonderful Iranian cuisine even for economy class me.
I am not a trusting man. In Amman on my return journey, I managed to force myself next to the exit in the bus taking us to the Jordanian plane. When the bus doors opened I rushed up the steps to get one of the last few seats available. The rest of the prospective passengers were left in Amman to await the next flight to London. The King had decided to take a trip to London so he had almost completely filled the plane with his henchmen and his household. We understood that he was actually flying the plane.
My first transatlantic flight was to Chicago. It was also my first boring flight. Up until then, I had been excited to fly and watch the countryside below. In one trip to Crete, the pilot had called us up to the cabin to point out some migrating birds not far below our height. It had seemed so personal and exciting. The new era of mass transport was making it less enjoyable. We even went on our first ski charter where we were packed so tightly into the aircraft that it was almost impossible to breathe. The modern era of mass air transport had almost arrived.
I say “almost arrived” because, around that time, I took a flight to Paris from the then tiny airport at Stansted for a conference in Beaubourg’s IRCAM beneath the Pompidou Centre. The plane looked like a box suspended from a pair of wings. The pilot greeted us on board while he drank from his thermos of coffee. There was one cabin staff who kept us supplied with alcohol to alleviate effects of the rough flight at low altitude.
Shortly after our arrival, the French announced a strike of all airport staff including flight controllers. One amusing result of this was a conference of musicologists into which I popped, after the IRCAM conference had finished, for a while. There were only five academics in the conference and one of them fell asleep. They then had a vote on whether they should wake him up or not. They decided unanimously to let him sleep.
We were on the last plane to leave CDG airport before everything closed down. Actually I had the impression that everything closed down before we left. But we were guided home by the English traffic controllers so everything worked out fine.
I have travelled on only one propellor plane since then. It was a Berlin Air flight into Stansted. The interesting feature of the plane was that I once again felt the pressure as I was pushed back into my seat when the aircraft climbed rapidly into the sky, very different from a jet aircraft.
When my family had emigrated to Australia, they had travelled on the Canberra cruise ship. When we travelled to Australia, we travelled by air of course. However, we could not fly on to Australia because of a strike of Air Traffic Controllers so we were stranded in the best hotel in Singapore completely paid for by Qantas. They even paid for bus tours around the area. We tried every cuisine in the hotel restaurants. Escargot and frogs legs were not normally on my menu but we tried everything.
On arrival at Sydney airport, we changed planes as we were headed for Melbourne. Having been on the first plane into the airport, we were now on the first plane out of the airport. We then had our first example of the typical Aussi “Sang froid”. As we headed down the runway, the plane seemed to slip on the surface until it seemed to start sliding sideways. The pilot managed to stop the plane and turn it round, saying, “We’ll try that again, shall we?”. Needly to say, the second attempt was successful.
From Australia, we managed to circle the earth a number of times, every four years in fact. We normally had a couple of stops when crossing the Pacific at Fiji and Hawaii and just one or two stops in Singapore or Hong Kong and Dubai flying the Eastern part of the journey. There was a change when we flew in the new short Jumbo Jet across the Pacific non stop. The jet seemed to have difficulty actually getting off the ground.
Another time, we took a French airline back from Paris on our way to Sydney. The cabin crew seemed surprised to see us and we were even more surprised to discover that the plane was full of soldiers on their way to quell a rebellion on one of “their” islands North of Australia. Our surprise was augmented by the fact that some of them were smoking.
We obviously complained only to be told that we should not have been allowed on this flight at all. But one of the cabin crew returned soon after and told us that we would be welcome on the upper deck of the plane. We ascended the steps and found a half empty area where the Minister of Defence was holding court amongst what seemed to be a group of very important people. The Minister welcomed us and invited us to take a seat and enjoy the excellent cuisine and wines served by the cabin crew. After that, the flight was very enjoyable.
After many more RTW flights, I found myself in living in Florence being invaded by hordes of tourists as the Summer season approached. Remembering my journeys of many years earlier, I jumped on a “red eye” flight to Athens and caught the dawn flight to Chania.
This is a lovely short flight. Heading out from a busy Athens, the plane seems to fly low over the sea until the island of Crete appears ahead. The little airport was deserted on that trip and I was able to revisit some of my old haunts on the island.
It was in a hotel in Sfakia that I met an Israeli couple who told me about a charter flight they had travelled on to Iraklion from Tel Aviv. They encouraged me to go to Israel so I found the airline and booked a flight for a week later.
It turned out that the flight was by an airline which was the charter part of El Al, the national airline of Israel. What I was not prepared for was a long interrogation from the security service before I boarded the plane.
“Why did you only book this flight last week?” “How did you find out about this flight?” “Why did you choose this airline?”
I was happy to comply with their wishes for me to answer these questions. After all, their security had served them well and was in the process of serving me. The questions kept coming, “Are the people who told you about this flight here now?” Then they left me standing while three of them, including one who I guessed was the person in charge, just looked at me for over ten minutes. Finally they let me go after putting my luggage through their Xray machines a few times. I was 90 minutes late for the plane but it waited for me. I was very happy with that airline so, after my sojourn in Palestine, I used it to travel to Paris.
By this time, there were numerous cheap airlines available to get us anywhere we wanted. I flew from Budapest to Manchester, Manchester to London then London to Seattle where we lived on an island near where Boeing constructed their planes. As we crossed to the island on a ferry, we would usually see one or two brand new planes flying low over the water to land on their air strip.
Flying from Seattle to Sarasota was interesting. Boeing has designed special thin seats for their short haul planes and our flight from Seattle to San José was in a new 737. But our flight from St José to Atlanta was in a very old plane with comfortable seats and large spaces between each row. The flight from Atlanta to Sarasota was in a plane only 20 years old but it still had the same degree of “old fashioned” comfort.
It seems that our new age of mass air travel has sacrificed a lot of comfort for the joy of being able to reach our holiday destinations cheaply. In Cambridge we see advertisements for flights to our favourite places for prices as low as £29.99. Our local airport Stansted, which used to be small, is now a major departure point for travellers and the other London airports are at full capacity.
We were happy to find a cheap airline which flew new 787s to Orlando from Gatwick. Now the same airline flies to Tampa not far from our home in Sarasota. So we are even happier. It would be nice to have another way of travelling to England for the hurricane season but the repositioning cruise from Tampa to Rotterdam takes 14 days compared to flying in a large tube for nine hors. I suppose that’s why we like flying.
Neither Xenophon or Iris Murdoch can do justice to the feelings we have about the sea. There’s something magic about the way it feels when you look at it. If you sail on it, you always respect its behaviour.
I was not born by the sea and we only live half our time by the sea at the moment but both my parents came from the East coast of England. This was where I spent much of my early years. I can remember my first fishing trip out to sea watching lines being thrown over and then hauled in and getting very wet whilst all the fishermen grinned at me. I have no idea why I was there as I must have been about four years old. It must have been a family ritual introducing me to Poseidon.
Other memories of the Essex coast were watching “doodle bugs”, as we called the “Vengeance 1” V1 rockets, pass over the coast on their way to London where we lived. In London it was terrifying to hear the motors of these things stop before diving towards the ground and exploding. We were glad to be staying on the coast which was not a target at the time.
I loved the backwaters more than the seafront. They were a network of winding waterways through which we would travel to places like Stone Point where we ruffled the wet sand for cockles. Of course, it was a haven for bird watchers although my family were more interested in shooting them for food than watching them.
We had an unlimited supply of large fresh eggs while we were on the coast as the family kept chickens. If my grandfather visited us in London, he would arrive with a brace of wild birds, which he had shot. We hoped that nobody had to sit next to him on the train. In London, like most other families, we kept rabbits which formed the majority of our ration-free meat supply.
My grandfather was coxswain of the lifeboat and I remember him receiving details by ‘phone when the lifeboat had to go to the aid of a vessel in distress. The coastguard would then fire off the maroon and members of the crew would “run for the boat” from wherever they were at the time. Some fishermen would take other jobs during the cold season. When enough of the crew had arrived they would jump into a small boat and head for the lifeboat that was anchored someway off the pier.
My uncle Franck was a fisherman and I can remember him as bowman bouncing up and down on the very buoyant lifeboat bow as he handled the mooring before the boat set off on its rescue. He later became coxswain himself and, like his father, received many commendations for bravery and of course seamanship.
The seas off the Essex coast can get rough. Each time the weather worsened, we knew that somewhere a boat or ship would sometimes run into difficulties and the coastguard would receive a distress call. After hearing the maroon, people would assemble on the sea front to see off the crew as the lifeboat bounced like a cork on its way to the rescue. Here is a history of the Walton lifeboat in photographs showing the brave men who served on it. There is one picture of my grandfather and two including my Uncle Frank.
Later on, I crewed for my Uncle Frank and I can remember the bitter cold just before dawn when I had the job of starting the Lister diesel by hand with a large flywheel. We caught lobsters using an ancient method apparently only employed on the Essex coast. We would motor out from the backwaters until we were a few miles from the coast and then lay a line of round baited hoops with nets below on one of the North Sea banks. Lobsters on these banks, which were seldom fished, would immediately scramble for the baits until we came round and yanked the cable hard so they fell into the bottom of the net. We had to continue pulling in the cable very fast to prevent the lobsters from escaping. Other fishermen would simply lay inshore lobster pots which needed a slow very hard haul to get them into the boat so that the lobsters could be taken out and the pot rebaited.
Besides fishing I managed the local amusement arcade on the pier and sold toffee popcorn on the prom. I also took a blue jacket job at Butlins Holiday Camp down the coast in Clacton. This was a strange job because I simply had to supervise the food going between the kitchen and the waitresses. I had a pleasant surprise when I worked there as the waitresses handed me huge amounts of money at the end of each week. When I enquired how this could be, a friend informed me quietly that the waitresses offered extra services to the husbands on their family tables and they could blackmail them into giving extremely large tips which they shared with me.
I was also amused by the man with whom I shared a Butlin’s hut. On my arrival, I knocked on the door and before he opened the door he shouted out, “Do you like Stan Getz?”. I obviously shouted back, “Yes!” To which he answered, “You’re not worthy to like Stan Getz!” This love of Stan Getz was echoed later on when I met George Martin, producer of some of the best innovative pop recordings with The Beatles, in his brand new studio above Oxford Circus. His very first recording session in his very own studio was not a pop recording; it was a recording of Stan Getz. He was definitely worthy to like Stan Getz.
After working through the Summer, I often took a few weeks off touring the Mediterranean Sea coast. I can still remember getting off the train on my first visit to the French Riviera and climbing the hill to the hostel. The view was amazing but, after my first dip into that warm sea, I resolved never to endure the cold waters of the North Sea again.
Year after year I travelled the whole coast of Italy down to Sicily’s Palermo and Agrigento then I did the same around the coast of Crete and Gavdos then the Cyclades travelling by night from island to island.
In England, I seemed to have spent more time by the coast than in London. However, we were always excited as the train left Frinton before arriving at Walton. “The Sea! The Sea!” we would shout as the train ran along the clifftops before approaching Walton station.
My school was also by the sea on top of the White Cliffs of Dover. Sometimes I could look out of a window during a class and see Calais across the channel. At weekends, we would explore the cliffs and sometimes play the organ in Dover Castle chapel. We never actually enjoyed the sea except for some beach landings as part of army exercises.
But I was most happy when I was able to go to a university that not only had mountains but was also by the sea. I was even able to take up rowing on the sea. In fact we rowed fours on the sea and eights in the river heads and regattas.
My first permanent job was to a city on the sea and my second was to a city on Port Phillip Bay Australia. There we even joined the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron and spent every weekend sailing in the bay or out into the Bass Strait. I also competed in the Wednesday races with a sailmaker so we sailed a different boat each week. Members would sit in the bar busily drinking beer until the barman called “Workboat”, at which time everybody would stagger down the steps to be transported to their boats. It seemed a miracle to me that their boats usually managed to avoid each other assuming that they managed to find the race start in the first place.
Moving back to England, we enjoyed the Devon and Cornwall coast from Topsham, our base near Exeter. Here, our house even had its own mooring. It was from here that some of the ships left to face the Spanish Armada but its attraction for us were the birds on the estuary mud and the surrounding fields. The coastal areas of the West of England were very attractive and their history was fascinating.
We also spent a lot of time in St Joseph Michigan, USA. This was not on the sea but on one of the Great Lakes. One year we spent time in Montecito a very exclusive enclave full of film stars we thought were dead near Santa Barbara for the Summer. This is where we first discovered that the sea in California is even colder than Britain’s North Sea.
Our next residence was in a beach house in Noosa Queensland Australia. It was on one of a number of islands in an offshoot of the Noosa River. This area is well known for its lack of high rise buildings and its National Park with spectacular beaches. Although the entrance to the Noosa River was routinely dredged, the depth was maintained at a sufficiently shallow level to deter cruising yachts from visiting the town. This meant that fishing groups returning to port would all have stand on the bow to enable the propellor to clear the bar. The river ran through a couple of lakes and the area beyond was called the Noosa Everglades in an effort to attract tourists. There are no alligators in Australia and crocodiles do not come as far south as Noosa yet.
My next residence was in an ancient flat built into the roof of a chapel in the centre of Florence. This was nowhere near the sea so my next port of call was Venice which is at least surrounded by water. Once again, we were in an ancient dwelling which was, I discovered, an outbuilding of the palace where Richard Wagner died. Venetians preferred more contemporary interiors so estate agents were very reluctant to even show this type of primitive residence to us. We never took the expensive gondolas but often took the traghetto over the Grand Canal.
Our next residence was on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, USA. The views of mountains East and West were spectacular and the coast around the island was very attractive. Many people living there were happy to be far from the busy streets of Seattle and the excellent freeways around the area. There was an efficient ferry which allowed easy access to the parts people were apparently trying to avoid. But the water was extremely cold. Another feature of the island was that Boeing based nearby would test each of its new planes by flying them round the island. I even met a qualified pilot who flew each new plane around the island and told me he had never flown anywhere else. That was difficult to believe.
Our next move was to deal with the deficiencies of Whidbey, beautiful as it was. We needed a warmer climate and a warmer sea temperature. We both knew of a very civilised city in Florida called Sarasota so we moved down there and managed to find a beautiful townhouse a few hundred yards from the bay. Travelling to and from orchestral concerts in Seattle from Whidbey Island had taken hours but we could walk to the Sarasota concert hall in five minutes. The opera house was a ten minute walk away. Most important was the fact that Gulf beaches on Lido Key were a mere three miles away. Perfect!
In England, we moved to Cambridge, physically a tiny town. It doesn’t have a decent concert hall like Sarasota but has had a vast influence on the hi-tec and biotec advances in the world. There are many beautiful walks along the Cam River which quickly take us out of the town. You can walk East West across the town from green fields to green fields on the other side in a couple of hours although the town is expanding in a southerly direction.
Like Sarasota, we have a townhouse on the outskirts of Cambridge. Not being very near the coast, we take trips to my boyhood haunts in Walton and Frinton on the Essex coast and Aldburgh on the Suffolk coast. The sea still draws us to the coast.
But when our car approaches Walton or Aldeburgh, I still feel like shouting out, “The Sea! The Sea!”.
Many people love to talk about “the good old days” when we were happy simply to survive. The problem is that they were not that good, in fact they were relatively awful if the truth be told. We were so happy simply to be alive after WW2; a feeling that is rarely encountered today.
Just a few examples: in 1945 after the war the cooking fat ration was one ounce a week, bacon ration was 3 ounces while bread and potatoes were not not rationed until 1946 and 1947 respectively. We were encouraged to eat ration-free whale meat and even yummy reindeer meat. It was not until 1954 that all food came off rationing although clothes and tea had come off before then. I was bought up being told “It was the Conservative party that took sweets off ration in 1953, a year before food” so I have been forever grateful for that gesture.
A nation that feels happy just to survive found a bankrupt Britain a pleasure in which to live. In fact, it has been found that British people were more healthy at the beginning of the 1950s than they have ever been since. We were all thin and hardly any of us had cars.
Britain was having difficulty paying her WW2 debts to the USA and many of us wondered which country actually won WW2 as Germany seemed to be receiving a considerable amount of aid while our cities still lay in ruins.
In 1946, Winston Churchill, who had been thrown out of office as Prime Minister, gave a speech in Zurich where he advocated the formation of the “United States of Europe”, the very words that Margaret Thatcher later used to criticise the EU. Churchill was even called “The father of Europe”
But he never said that Britain should actually join these United States of Europe. Instead, he suggested that Great Britain, the USA and USSR, should be “friends and sponsors of the project.”
We can echo his words today. “We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked but not comprised”.
Taking Churchill’s words to heart, the government refused to join Europe at the time of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. But later, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan changed the minds of the Conservative party and applied to join. The answer was a resonant “Non” from the President of France de Gaulle.
France was keen on the United States of Europe because it would hopefully prevent Germany from leading Europe from the Ruhr but this plan did not succeed.
When Britain tried again later in 1973, we were treated to a visit from a very sophisticated German who persuaded us to join what we called “The Common Market”. We did not vote to join “The United States of Europe”, now called the EU or European Union with a huge bureaucracy and associated costs of membership. If we had been presented with such an annual membership fee that we have today, Britain would certainly not have voted to join.
We used to love the day each year that apples arrived from Tasmania. They were delicious. It may have just been coincidence but, a few days after we had joined “The Common Market”, there appeared in the shops some very green French apples which claimed to be “Golden Delicious” but were not golden and were certainly not delicious.
Our decision was made after a visit from the Prime Minister of Australia who said that he did not want to trade with Britain any more. Australia was going to trade mainly with Asia. Another remark he made was a critical look at the prices of Australian dried fruit in England which were cheaper than in Australia. But he did some good things for Australia before being dismissed by the Governor General.
I thought we might be joining an organisation like the old Hansa League which concentrated only on trade. Instead we had Margaret Thatcher using Churchill’s appellation for the Common Market as an insult to the Brussels bureaucracy and luckily refusing to join the euro and forsake the pound.
Once the euro was in place, it seemed as though Germany was happy to keep the crises in the Mediterranean countries simmering and sometimes boiling over now and again. This kept the euro low so that Germany could sell more of their excellent cars.
Europeans seem to like Britain so much that apparently 3.2 million have taken up residence here. People who criticise the British health service never seem to take this into account. I don’t know how many extra doctors we need to cope with this number but it seems a little unfair to criticise a service hit by so many extra clients. But I do know that the government is doing its best, requesting Cambridge University to almost double the number of medical students they take. It seems doubtful that this increase can actually be handled without severe problems.
“Playing for money” is a strange term for professional musicians to use. But I remember, playing in a 17 piece big band that, if we did not play as if “we meant it”, the band leader would stop us and say, “It sounds as though we’re playing for money!”
For me. Money is definitely not the “root of all evil”.
It allows a path to a better way of life and I have never shirked from doing all sorts of things to earn it. I have made radio sets, been a statistician, forecasted the weather, sold toffee popcorn, run amusement arcades, worn a coloured jacket at Butlins and even remained a marksman, the only way that I could earn money at school.
But how about playing for money?
The first time I earned money was by forming a jazz band and doing local gigs at school. Unfortunately, we spent all the money we earned on music. My only reward was returning a few years later and being hailed as ”the founder of our jazz band”.
But a couple of us managed to escape some evenings and play in pubs in the locality. We didn’t get much money but we scored a lot of beer. But the word went around and I managed to get into an established jazz band in the area. After the gigs, the band would push me through a window into my dorm after driving me to my house. This was well before any sort of security surrounded the place.
When I went to university, some people approached me to play in a local jazz club. I was very reluctant to accept their rather lucrative fee which seemed to increase each week I refused their offer. In the end, I accepted and actually enjoyed my evenings playing. Unfortunately, I am not a gifted jazz performer but I could play anything faster and higher than anyone else. They had a good rhythm section which hammered the chords through our heads so it was impossible to play anything really awful but I was never really satisfied with my playing although a few drink seemed to allay that feeling.
But I still continued to play music for love elsewhere. I even joined an orchestra which toured the French Riviera but hardly paid us more than out accommodation. We were entertained royally everywhere we went. The most devastating entertainment was by the Major of Nice who persuaded us all to drink champagne until we were all totally drunk. When we said we could drink no more, he produced freshly squeezed fruit juice and mixed it with the champagne.
Eventually we emerged totally “out of it” and wondered how we could possibly give a concert that evening.
Then back came my memories of travelling around the Mediterranean at minimal cost. I used to meet a lot of sons of American servicemen travelling around from base to base which cut their costs of travel. One of their ports of call was the USO where curiously a lot of very nice English ladies speaking French with a very upper class English accent would serve food to any American sailors who ventured in. Of course not many Americans bothered to come after weeks at sea. But they were always very happy to supply me with as much food and drink as I wanted.
So I said to our drunk gathering, “I know where we can go to sober up! Follow me!” And I led the whole orchestra along the road and into the USO where slightly amazed nice ladies plied us with strong coffee in a desperate attempt to make us suitable to play our instruments. I have no memory of that concert except of our rugby playing viola player tackling a concerto with apparent great success.
I normally used to play for operatic societies for no fee but, when my finances became more scarce, I announced that I would need to charge for my services. Strangely, this resulted in a slight change in my relationship with the conductor. I arrived and was treated with some sort of respect and my parts were fully marked up by the conductor with every change of tempo marked with a large eye so I had no need for rehearsal which I never had time to attend anyway.
I learned a lot by playing next to a friendly bassoon player who had a long history as a gigster. When the orchestra was in the middle of a very loud furious finale, I heard him playing fast scales and arpeggios. I asked him, “What the hell are you doing?” He replied, “This is when the pros do their practice!”
At another gig he said, “Watch the conductor’s face” as we played the last chord in a piece. He then played the same note an octave below quietly at first gradually becoming louder towards the final seconds of the that final chord. The face of the conductor was a picture of contentment. Small things can give pleasure to a tired conductor.
My biggest money earner was in a big band playing sax. But the way in which I acquired this job was, as many things are, an example of good luck more than design.
I was working in theoretical physics late one night when a porter came round the building checking security. We had a chat and I discovered that he had a job in a big band in the evenings playing in a large ballroom. When he learned that I played the clarinet, he said that he would bring a couple of his saxophones with him the following night.
Sure enough, he arrived and we jammed a bit and enjoyed ourselves. He was obviously not devoted to his work to any great extent. I told him of a possible way to increase his income in a rather exotic occupation. I suggested he apply to one of the bands of the Queen’s household brigade; the cream of the army’s bands. He was still young and could easily survive basic training before changing the guard at Buck House. In fact this was my “Plan B” if I was ever to face conscription.
He seemed interested so he attended an audition and was invited to join a Guards Band on clarinet as I expected. He had a council house in the university town so was able to do a house exchange with a family in London. He was able to do gigs there in the evening and increase his basic salary and pension. A happy move.
Meanwhile, he suggested that I take over his job in the big band. I then bought a sax and joined the band. I was what was known as a “reader” so I had no problem with the music much to my surprise as there was a lot syncopation which I had thought would be difficult to read.
We played many contemporary types of arrangements which the manager simply did not like. “I can’t hear the tune!” he used to say as he dumped a pile of “Lallys” on the stage. “Lallys” were the most simple arrangements available. They could also be played by any combination of instruments which made them useful for small bands but not for big professional bands as Miles Kingston makes clear in this article.
My biggest fee was when the Conservative Party conference was held in the town. Union fees took account of the hours for which we played. Extra hours were paid at a higher rate and we could make a fortune playing for late extra hours. True to form, we waited for hours for the participants to emerge from their dinner with speeches and drinking until the early morning. At last, the few that were still able to stand emerged blinking at us playing music for them. Some even managed to dance.
Now I was a sax player, I grabbed what gigs I could when I didn’t have work with the big band. One day, I had a call from a band who needed a sax but wanted me to be ready in the afternoon. I assumed that the gig started early but, as soon as I got in the car, it turned out that the gig was ninety miles away through the mountains of Wales. Such was life for a gigster.
But I enjoyed life in the band. In the interval, the band used to go to the bar and drink “to cope with the back pressure” the brass used to say. I would then eat almost all the dinner which was provided by the management while our place was taken by a Liverpool pop group.
It was usually during the first number of the second half that the playing, especially of the brass, seemed to lack any sense of purpose. This is when the band leader would look at us and say, “Sounds as though we’re playing for money!”
Every night we rest so comfortably on our memory foam mattress that bring back many good memories. But we can easily forget the places where we have slept in more primitive conditions.
My first sleeping memories are accompanied by the sounds of bombs dropping all around. It was such a usual sound each night and I was so young that the terror that it caused most people did not occur to me. I also have a very strange vague memory of other people sleeping on platforms in the tube stations of Central London. That was a very strange sight to behold as the train moved through the station.
We had a small house so I had to sleep on a bunk bed in a shed in the garden. Unfortunately, the heater caught fire and smoked us out of the shed one night so we afterwards had to fit somehow into the house.
So I was sent to a military school where we slept 20 to a room on very uncomfortable beds with heavy blankets and hard linen sheets which felt as though they had been starched. Fortunately, we were so tired at the end of the day that we could have slept in anything, so that wasn’t a worry.
On our trips to Germany, to ride around Luneburg Heath on tanks, we had to cross the North Sea sleeping in the bow of the ship which bucked around very vigorously. We were young so it didn’t bother us. We bunked in at the barracks with a cavalry band and slept on the ground after eating wonderful food next to the tanks when we were on the move.
Managing to escape to the mountains on “survival exercises” was a real treat. Firstly, we were given full commando rations so that we could gorge ourselves on the mountain tops. To test my initiative, somebody took the tent poles from our packs. No worries, as we were using wonderful lightweight pack carriers made of aluminium which we rigged rather low instead of tent poles.
It always seemed to rain in the mountains and the old tents were not waterproof like they are now. The drill was to take off the wet clothes after we had erected the tent then put them on again in the cold of the early morning. But this enabled us to sleep as dry as possible in our second set of clothes that were always dry. But in the morning we often had to squeeze out the water which had managed to dampened the ends of the sleeping bags.
Before we managed to gain accommodation into the main College Hall in first year university, we had to live in smaller buildings where we slept four to a room. For most students, this was awful but, after 20 to a room, this was luxury to me. When I finally made it into the main hall in the second and third years, at last I had a room all to myself. Sheer contentment was mine!
I still enjoyed the mountains. In the Alps, I would sleep in Matratzenlager with people whose socks usually smelt worse than mine. There were often groups in the larger huts and the guides would often pick up one of the guitars on the wall and sing. I also loved the German groups who would sing a song together before setting off before dawn on the hard snow to climb their mountain.
In the summer, I would take a summer job from June until the beginning of September after which I would use extremely cheap student transport to travel most years around Italy. I understood that, due to the strong socialist feeling in Italy after WW2, towns had given over some of their best buildings to be used as hostels for us. For example the Castello di Ruffo di Scilla was a hostel with the best view in Europe.
Later, after touring around Italy each year, I travelled to Greece. Arriving in Athens for the first time, I was so overcome by the number of tourists that, after a couple of days, I went down to the harbour and caught an overnight boat to Crete sleeping on the deck. It was beautiful.
In Athens, we had slept on hotel roofs. It was probably preferable to sleeping in rooms and we were happy to sleep on the hard concrete in the warm air. My first night in Crete was spent sleeping on a bench but thereafter I slept on soft sandy beaches. In fact I slept on almost every beach on Crete.
Touring the islands was very pleasant. We travelled by night sleeping on the boat deck. Sleeping on the beaches of Thira was not pleasant as they were black and uncomfortable. The people were nice sometimes stopping to give us huge bunches of grapes and wishing us well. Islands infested with tourists were not so pleasant. Most of us liked Ios which had a hill where we all gathered to watch the sunset.
Sleeping on the best beaches in Crete or the islands was a treat. You only had to move around a little and the fine sand adjusted to your body, better than any mattress available at the time. Sometimes the wind was strong but we then built a little wall of stones to protect us.
Much later, for some time, I lived in Florence sleeping on a very ancient bed in an abandoned garret built into the side of a chapel in the centre of the old town. Any discomfort was made up by the view from the window to the Duomo.
Living in Venice for a time, I rented an equally ancient outbuilding of a palace where Wagner had died.It was huge with even more ancient beds. I loved it.
We first came across memory foam in an Australian ALDI store on our way back from Brisbane to Noosa. They were selling off solid memory foam mattresses for $50, Australian dollars. Elsewhere, they were way out of our buying ability at over ten times that amount. We bought one and stuffed it into the back of our car.
It was wonderful so it was no surprise to find them all sold when we returned to buy another.
Since that moment we have become more demanding. No more bouncy spring mattresses for us. Each night we sink into a bed of welcoming memory foam which brings back memories of those fine sandy beaches of Southern Crete and Gavdos. Good memories.
I have had a very mixed relationship with dahlias.
One day when I was returning to school, I was given some small plants which were apparently called “dahlias”. They were for the housekeeper of my house who definitely deserved some sort of reward for the ordeal she went through with us.
My last instruction was, “don’t forget to disbud them!”
I hadn’t the faintest idea of what this meant.
I handed over the plants and then watched them grow over the next few months. One day, I noticed that some buds had formed so I boldly went out into the garden and removed all the buds. Surely that is what “disbudding” means.
Much later, I noticed a rather puzzled housekeeper looking at the plants.
It was only many years later that I discovered that “disbudding” did not mean removing all the buds. It means sacrificing some buds to enable larger buds to produce large flowers . . .
Gardening is not my favourite pastime, in fact I hate it as a pastime. But I love plants when they produce beautiful flowers. I also love seeing the bumble bees, butterflies and birds enjoying the flowers.
The biggest garden we ever had was about five acres of water meadow, forest and steeply sloping grass. I couldn’t imagine doing enough gardening to improve such a large area.
Then it came to me. Dahlias!
Dahlias not only produce profusions of buds, they also make a lot of tubas after they have bloomed.
I therefore went out and bought some dahlias and planted them in an area near some old trees which I had just chopped down.
They bloomed very happily without my doing anything for them. I then dug them up and stored the tubas in a shed for the Winter. Each dahlia had grown about twenty tubas around the original tuba. This yielded about fifteen tubas with eyes that could sprout the next season.
With each dahlia producing fifteen tubas, my original twenty dahlias produced three hundred dahlias in the second season and 4,500 dahlias in the third season. I simply dug a trench and threw them in both succeeding years. The third season need several very long series of trenches.
I cannot say what happened in the fourth season as we sold the house when the dahlias were in full bloom. Our buyers were very pleased.
In our present house, we had no plans to grow dahlias. They are not hardy plants so it requires some time spent gardening in Autumn and Spring.
One day in early June I found some dahlia seeds. I had never seen or used dahlia seeds so I brought some home and managed to get two of them going in small pots. Later I planted them in a small space in the centre of one of our flower beds.
To our amazement, these two plants took over the flower bed and grew to over five feet in height. They dominated the garden.
In November, I lifted them and counted twenty tubas on each stem which will probably give me thirty next year.
Now I am looking at our small garden and thinking 2. 30. 450. 6750.
101,250 . . . . . . . . . Maybe we ought to move house in a few years time?
I hate having to deal with gardens. One of our present next door neighbours has simply paved his whole garden and converted it into an “outdoor room”, to use a contemporary description.
We were almost as clever. We paved over half of our garden and used an algorithm with simple rules to design planting patterns in the pavers. The patterns were beautiful and could never have been designed in the normal way. Our “half area” garden is doing very well as it requires only half the normal time to take care of it.
Our first house in Chiswick, London did not initially have a bathroom or a toilet. The toilet was in the garden and there was a small bath in the kitchen. It was a tiny thin terraced artisan’s cottage so the garden was also tiny and thin. We spent hours on freezing cold evenings listening to advice on what plants could survive in our small shaded garden. Some of them even survived so that we could listen to birds on the weekend.
Our second house was in Australia. It was on a steep slope with two trees on the front lawn and two enormous trees entirely filling the back garden.
After a car “driven” by drunk teenagers almost careered down the front lawn into the lounge where we were sitting, we decided to leave the trees on the front lawn for safety reasons.
The back garden was another story. Not prepared to put up with living in the shade of those trees, we decided to have them taken out and replaced by a large swimming pool. We planted some shrubs around the pool and grew tomatoes at the very bottom of the garden. We were able to keep our gardening to a minimum, although we were stuck with mowing the lawn in the front garden under our protective trees.
Our next house in England once again was much larger. It was on a steeper slope than our previous house. It even had a small ballroom with a sprung floor which we used as a lounge from which to observe the valley below.
On a lower level was a swimming pool covered by vegetation. Below that was a section of woodland. Finally the lowest level was a water meadow adjacent to the River Clyst in which we had a mooring.
The first problem was to clear the pool which had been entirely covered by a creeper known as “mile a minute”. As its name suggests, the pool was difficult to clear but the forester we hired, managed to kill it all very successfully. We then fixed the filtration system and enjoyed some swimming in the Summer. As it faced South, the water was quite warm by English standards. Our neighbour, who regularly swam in the sea at Budleigh Salterton, refused to swim in it saying, “Its too hot”.
We managed to clear a pathway through the thick woods below the pool where we tried to imagine an Australian rainforest.
Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do about the sloping lawn so we were forced to keep and mow it using a rotary hover mower. The only gardening I did was grow hordes of multiplying dahlias on either side. Using wood formwork, we constructed a base on which I mounted a satellite dish from which to receive signals from around the world. We also discovered and with great difficulty, cleaned out a fish pond by the house. Although we installed a filter system and enjoyed many hours gazing at our carp, we would never contemplate having a fish pond again.
Our next house was again in Australia in the beautiful waterways of Noosa in Queensland. The garden was full of nice cycads with a few palm trees, some of which were annoyingly huge. A lawn surrounded the house. Our only real problem was a stretch of shrubs beloved of redback spiders about which we could do very little.
We had our own stretch of beach from which emerged roots of mangrove from time to time. We dug these up immediately before they became too big to deal with legally. We hired a nice man from Glasgow to mow our front lawn and I covered the lawn surrounding the house with commercial farm weed cloth and river pebbles before adding some very nice stepping stones. Aloe vera grows like a weed in Noosa so we let it grow in the more difficult places.
It was now Tim to “Get smaller” so we moved back to England and bought an apartment overlooking the River Cam in Cambridge. “Overlooking” is not quite the correct word because we could just see the heads of rowers as they passed the apartment. If we opened our windows, we could also hear the loud encouragement of the cox as he spoke not through the old traditional megaphone but using some type of amplifier and speaker.
It was here that we were introduced to the concept of the “HOA”, the house owners association, which collects money from owners to pay for gardening, cleaning and general management of the building. Here, I suppose it was the “AOA”.
Our apartment not only looked over the river to the trees opposite but the back windows looked at a bank with trees at the top and sometimes flowers at the bottom.
Of course, there was no gardening to do ourselves but we were able to enjoy the pleasant surrounding of the building and the river in front of it without doing anything.
Our most recent abode is a new terraced townhouse, definitely a step up from an apartment, on the southern border of Cambridge facing the Gog Magog hills and the legendary Nine Wells or nine springs which supplied water to Cambridge many years ago.
It has a tiny back garden with just a lawn. We hate lawns. Therefore, the first action we took was to get rid of the lawn. After the lawn had been removed, we were annoyed to find clay with some building debris above it on which the grass had been growing with little evidence of soil anywhere. The builders had simply laid the turf over the clay and debris.
Not deterred, we hired a nice man Dave to lay some pavers in a mathematically determined pattern over the clay and debris. Our algorithm, based on some rules regarding planting patterns, eventually produced a very satisfying result. Dave laid the pavers using our pattern and then moved the pavers near the fences to more centre positions.
The next step was more tortuous as he removed the debris and clay from between the pavers and replaced it with soil. He also dug down next to the fence to accommodate some large fruit trees.
Next came the planting of the fruit trees just in front of the fences on either side. We then took over and planted a selection of perennials and four Japanese maples.
The most satisfying aspect of the garden in its first year was watching the bumble bees on some lavender which we had planted near the kitchen window. Every day they would come and spend time on each flower. Of course, this prompted us to plant some more lavender in any spaces left in the garden.
Apple trees should not allowed to make fruit in their first two years but we allowed one tree to make a few apples.
As a friendly offering, we took four of these apples and presented them to our neighbours who had the “outdoor room”. We were so pleased when they said they tasted nice. It helped a little to thank them for inviting us to so many of their barbecues. But it also marked the completion of our “half garden”!
We named our boat “Fidelio” for only one reason. Although it was our favourite opera, the meaning of the opera included most of our feelings about the world.
For many people, this opera is the story of the woman Leonora who, dressed as a man Fidelio, is prepared to lose her own life to save her husband. So “Fidelio” is actually female and a suitable name for our boat.
If there is just one section of opera that we should all see, it must be the second Act of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” which starts in the deepest depths of despair and ends with rejoicing and an ecstatic cry for freedom. It is the music which speaks to us with all these feelings.
Beethoven must have been a very messy person because he lived in at least 60 recorded lodgings before the new owner of the Theater an der Wien gave him a place to live in the theatre itself so he could write this, his only opera. The first two longer versions of “Fidelio” were performed here before he shortened it to the final version.
I have lived next door to this theatre and each day would walk past the old entrance Papagenotor where the first owner celebrated the source of his wealth with statues of Papageno and the three boys, characters from the opera “The Magic Flute” which made him wealthy.
One day, I asked people in the office if they knew that Beethoven actually lived in the theatre while he was composing “Fidelio”. Looking a little puzzled, one replied “We do have the Beethoven Room upstairs”.
The first act shows what appear to be nice people living a normal life looking after a prison. Fidelio has managed to get a job there so that she can find her husband. Discovering what an awful time the prisoners are having in the dark dungeons, she manages to get permission for them to came up and get some fresh air. Unfortunately her husband does not appear with the other prisoners.
Audiences just love the chorus the prisoners sing when they are hit by the light after being in darkness for so long. Unfortunately, they have to go back after they have sung their beautiful chorus.
This chorus normally begins with the prisoners singing so softly and beautifully as they emerge. They gradually increase the volume even more beautifully. Audiences love this chorus. But the audience at a recent Vienna production was shocked when the prisoners immediately sang loudly as they were hit by the bright light. The director was sacrificing artistic “beauty” for narrative integrity.
The comparison of this first act, where nice people go on enjoying their life while someone below awaits his death, with real life world events is too horrifying to consider.
Before the Second Act begins, we normally hear the best of four overtures that Beethoven wrote for this opera. In fact, this overture tells the story of the second act with a distant trumpet call announcing the forthcoming rescue of the good hero and heroine.
The Second Act begins by showing the horror of the political prisoner Florestan awaiting his death. Later, a trumpet announces the approach of the good rescuers before the people celebrate the rescue of Florestan and other political prisoners.
For me, the story is in the music. Wagner, the master of music drama himself, declared about his experience at a performance of “Fidelio”, “When I look back across my entire life, I find no event to place beside this in the impression it produced on me.”
I always refer to that final chorus as a “yell of freedom” in contrast to the depths of despair with which the Second Act begins. The music has its darkness and its light throughout but finishes with Beethoven’s hope for the world in that final chorus.
Christmas makes us remember the “three wise men who came from the East”. They probably set out from somewhere near Yazd, the oldest city in present day Iran.
So it was with some excitement that we managed to reach Yazd a few days after Christmas. Night had fallen and it was difficult to see anything even in the centre. We were directed to an inn but were refused a room apparently because we were not dressed well enough or because we looked like backpackers.
It can be cold in Yazd so we were delighted to hear a friendly voice calling through the dark from somewhere up the road. “Follow me” said the voice. We followed and our helpful friend led us to a building not far away. “Go in there”, said the voice.
A caravanserai is an inn essentially designed for travellers with camels. They look like motels but with the rooms grouped around a central space where the camels can be hitched. Our caravanserai had our room at a level above the central space presumably to make unloading easier. The room was heated by the traditional Aladdin stove.
Travelling by bus was very easy in Iran. They often travelled overnight from place to place and I loved drinking steaming mugs of milk in the early morning on our arrival in a new city. The drivers treated their buses like camels, driving them into river beds and using what water was available to keep them in an immaculate state.
Accepting lifts in cars from friendly Persians can be scary. We accepted a lift from an instructor after spending a day skiing in the mountains above Tehran. Such was his faith in God that this ski instructor drove at breakneck speed along totally iced up roads down the mountain all the way to Tehran. We were very happy to arrive home.
Starting our Christmas bus trip was very different. As we approached our bus, the people parted and let us board the bus first. This was a little strange but we ascribed this to the usual Iranian friendliness. We were given the water jug first but they were not surprised when we simply pulled out our bottles of Coca Cola – the only liquid that was safe to drink for westerners – and drank those instead. Bottles of spring water were often refilled with ordinary well water.
For most tourists, Persepolis is their main destination and we were no exception. Staying in Shiraz, we were delighted to meet the man with the “friendly voice” from Yazd. A friendly greeting and he was gone.
Hotels were a little dangerous sometimes. In Shiraz, we had a shower with the light switch actually in the shower cubicle. I bound it up with the “duct tape” with which we travelled but using the shower seemed a little risky.
Another time we found some beetles in our bed. We reported this to the manager and actually put the beetles on his desk. A little later he arrived in our room together with most of the staff. He then opened a large box and poured dozens of beetles on to our table. They all looked at us and laughed. We never really understood their humour.
As we travelled around the country to various cities, this man with the “friendly voice” would appear briefly, greet us with a wonderful smile and simply leave us. As you can imagine, we began to have our suspicions about him.
Despite all this, it was always a delight to eat the local food. Iranian food is a lot more than just Chelo-Kabab. Rich pomegranate sauces really were almost too much for me but I always loved sitting down on a rug with a pile of delicious bread dipping it into a selection of yummy dishes. However, I usually found a raw onion difficult to eat with such nice food.
I remember one Sufi shrine where we were welcomed by some children. We had met children before in the streets going into their schools where the girls would take off their chadors as they entered the government school where head coverings were not permitted. If they spoke to us, they would shout, “They speak Farsi!” Evidently not many Westerners managed to learn even a little of the language.
The chador was a garment which was normally black and covered most of the head but could be stretched to cover all of the head and stretches almost to the ground.
When we asked to photograph the children in the shrine, the boys refused to be photographed with the girls so we took their photos first. When it came to photograph the girls, they paused and asked us if we were ready to take the photograph. We said yes. They then took off their chadors and smiled into the camera for the photograph. I had the impression from this that they did not feel that their personality was fully expressed when they were covered up.
After we had photographed the children, the guardians of the shrine invited us into their house. They were smoking something which looked like opium which they said was allowed for older people like themselves. We declined the offer of a pipe.
Almost but not quite the finale of the performance by our “friendly voice” was our meeting in Bam. We usually met him walking in the opposite direction to our own. In Bam, we were walking down the street and there he was walking up the street towards us. This time, it was different. He was surrounded by a family.
“This is my family”, he said. We greeted them all with a little disbelief based on our previous meetings in cities like Kerman and Isfahan.
But the greatest performance by our “friendly voice” took place at a very isolated café some distance from the Holy city of QOM.
We were travelling North in a bus which had stopped for refreshments in this desert spot. About ten minutes after our arrival came another bus coming FROM the north. Out of this bus stepped our man with the “friendly voice”.
What a magnificent performance. How on earth did he do that?
Obviously, we had been followed by the security forces of Iran. But the way in which they carried out their task was remarkable. I have spoken to diplomats who have had this sort of experience but none of them have experienced such a wonderful performance. Not only did our followers manage to remind us that we were being watched but they also were prepared to give us help when we needed it.
When we think of interviews, we think of a situation where someone has fancied a particular job and has applied for it.
How about an interview for a job you have never applied for and you don’t even know what the job is?
This was the situation in which I found myself after having been requested to attend a meeting with some rather important looking gentlemen who spoke with, what seemed to me, extremely exaggerated upper class accents.
There were four of them. They announced the fact that they were from the government. They simply wanted to meet me and chat about the things I did. Any hopes of a relaxed chat went out of the window as they pounded me with all sorts of questions about what I was interested in apart from Theoretical Physics.
I loved climbing mountains but I had abandoned this in favour of rowing for the college in heads and regattas which also seemed fun to me. My climbing partner later lost his life on the North face of the Eiger. But then the questions went on to my life before this.
Let’s face it. I was what, we now call, a nerd at school. But, as I could run fast and jump further than anyone else, I was the school athletics captain but not very committed to competition. One afternoon, I met our commandant who asked me why I was not competing in our match with another school that day. Very alarmed, I said that I had appointed some younger athletes to take my place as they were so keen to take part. Much to my amazement, he simply said, “Such leadership!”. Later on, my report pronounced me a “leader of men” but he was a real leader.
I even won the Wavell prize for initiative, much to the annoyance of the Sandhurst set, but my “initiative” included joining the choir to avoid church parade and joining the band to avoid marching into meals and standing still for over an hour during the Saturday Trooping the Colour. I can remember joining a rugby team playing a nice Canterbury public school where a fellow nerd showed me round their wonderful facilities for music. I even led survival courses simply to escape the boredom of school and eat enormous SAS rations on top of a mountain somewhere. I also became a marksman because the school actually paid me money for this!
It was amazing that I managed to maintain some sort of intellectual intercourse with these four men for almost two hours. I was slightly acquainted with their accents as they were similar to some officers including the adjutant, headmaster and commandant at school. In fact I rather enjoyed talking about nothing for such a long time.
What happened next was not so nice. I only learned what was going on from my doctor in London. He was a Jewish doctor, also with our surname Winter, who had escaped from Germany. My mother had looked after his family while he qualified again in Edinburgh. He was incredibly grateful for this help and showed it for the rest of his life. He became a very well known private practitioner with a large Rolls Royce car, wearing a beautiful morning suit complete with a fresh rose in his button hole each day. If I or my sisters had the slightest cough or sign of illness, he would appear immediately with presents for us all and give advice and treatment. We loved him.
He had told my mother about some men who had approached him one day and started asking questions about me. I explained that I had given nobody permission to do this and had never even mentioned anybody as a reference. He said that he had told them “I am happy to help the government in any way” because he was so grateful to have been given refuge at the most desperate time of his life. He described the men as looking a little mysterious wearing trench coats. Although they said they were from the government, they gave him no evidence of their real identity.
Incidentally, it is interesting that, because my mother’s side of the family had a very well known Jewish surname, many people in Israel were convinced that I was Jewish. In the light of my regard for my wonderful doctor, I was very happy about that.
Back at the ranch, I was surprised to receive another visit from a mysterious four. But there was a difference. One of them had an accent similar to my own.
Unfortunately I was rather sensitive about my accent which upper class accented Monty Python would, with their usual utter disdain of the working class, refer to it as a “West of Neasden” accent.
In fact, my only real rebellion against authority at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School was when I walked out of a class where we were being taught how to “speak proper English”. I can even remember the astonished look of the teacher and the actual word we were being taught to pronounce. It was “sand” which we were supposed to pronounce as “send”. In retrospect, it seems a pretty silly action but it does illustrate my sensitivity. My favourite accent is still the old Essex accent which was spoken by my mothers side of the family.
As usual, I had no idea what this person with my accent sitting some way from the middle of the table actually did. He told me how much he was enjoying working for the “service” but he did not give any details of exactly what this “service” actually was. The head honcho did clarify things a little by indicating that it was something like the “foreign service”. This really scared me because I was really terrible when it came to remembering foreign and classical languages. Although I had taken a Italian course run by the university in Siena and acted as an interpreter for the British contribution to the “Italia Sessantuno”, I had almost immediately forgotten everything soon afterwards.
The only explanation I was able to elucidate from this illustrious gathering was a comment blurted out by my similarly accented friend, “There’s opera in Japan!”
Did this mean that they already had an assignment for me? That was improbable. I assumed that this person was already working in Japan. Unfortunately I was definitely not a person who could sit through a whole performance of kabuki, so his comment was not any incentive for me.
Seeing that I was not particularly enthralled by the “foreign” service, they even mentioned positions available in other services where I could start by being an assistant to a minister. I simply did not understand this although I later learned a little of government from watching “Yes, Minister”.
I never really understood what these meetings were about although, many years later, I began to guess what was going on back then. When I started my Theoretical Physics research, I began to receive Russian Atmospheric Physics papers, which I never really understood, to comment on. I was even directed to a safe house in the middle of the Welsh mountains where I was able to discuss with a very frightened Russian the meaning of a single word used in the middle of some mathematics in one of the papers. My friend, who gave me a lift on the back of his motor bike, even remembers the word to this day!
So, always faithful and patriotic, I did my best to serve in my way. Perhaps I even helped the USA a tiny bit in the “space race”?
I have paid off two mortgages by writing for money. “Writing for money” indicates that there was no particular love for the art form which we call criticism. My second mortgage was paid off by writing for a Murdoch newspaper in Australia which did not employ writers who were as expert in Musicology as the critics I had known in London. When I asked one of the critics on another Australian newspaper why he did it, the answer was, “Because of the perquisites”. I never did find out exactly why these perquisites were so attractive although meeting some the world’s greatest touring musicians was certainly a treat.
Music criticism can be difficult. The average string player in an orchestra needs to practise for hours each day for at least ten years but usually more just to get into College. Then come the auditions before scraping away on a back desk in an orchestra. So a string section of an orchestra playing Brahms will usually have over eight thousand hours of practice under its belt. How can we criticise such dedication?
So a critic will normally concentrate on the interpretation of the work by the conductor who has spent even more time studying before standing before a decent orchestra.
Perhaps there is a parallel here with literary criticism. Some criticism of contemporary writing is carried out by other writers. I imagine that a practising author can offer a guide for us through a book in a way that a critic who is not a practitioner could never do. For example when A N Wilson, whose biography of Tolstoy has long been acknowledged as the greatest account of his life, hailed Rosamund Barlett’s “Tolstoy, a Russian Life” as better than his own, we are completely convinced of the truth of this criticism. In a similar way, Mozart enjoyed the work of Michael Haydn and his influence is even noticeable in some of Mozart’s compositions.
But how does any of this apply to a critic who is in the business “for the perquisites”? My simple answer is that it does not have any application at all.
Surely such a critic must have a mission?
My mission was simply to persuade people to attend concerts that I was enjoying. After one performance of a symphony when only the slow movement had a passable performance, I wrote passionately about this slow movement. Surely this was wrong? Another piece where two instrumentalists fumbled a couple of solos, I simply did not discuss it at all in my article. This would not be appropriate for a London performance.
Before I wrote to pay off a mortgage at the high rates we had in the distant past, I was required to write private criticism for an Arts Organisation which awarded money to orchestras. In actual fact, my comments were unlikely to have much influence so I could write anything I wanted. One time, I was most enthusiastic about the Sunday concerts of one of the great London orchestras which had managed to get a hefty grant from a well known cigarette manufacturer.
Like Stockovski, I loved a good bass sound. The acoustics of the Festival Hall were still a rather dry at the time so the orchestra spent the “tobacco money” on extra Double bass players. The resulting sound was magnificent. In the end, perhaps the best critics of a performance can be the players themselves?
The Bass Strait Australia has a bad reputation; even being referred to as the “The Bass Strait Triangle” because of the number of ships that have been lost there.
Funnily enough, this had not even registered with me before we set out on our journey to Queensland from Melbourne. I had installed jiffy reefing on our rather basic Herreshoff H28 sloop as a normal precaution for the type of weather that Melbourne suffers and we had used this on a number of occasions so I was happy as we awaited slack tide at the exit of Port Phillip Bay. Just getting through the “rip” is a trial in itself!
My companion Greg was a ship’s carpenter who fitted out and renovated Melbourne yachts to a very high standard, After he found out that I had imported a New Zealand boat and made a 100% profit on it without any of his improvements, he asked me how he should invest his money. I asked him what he knew most about. “Wood, just wood!” was his answer. “Then you must invest in wood”, I replied.
As it happened, a ship had just arrived in Melbourne with a load of teak of questionable origin. Greg built a large shed and filled it completely with teak: a wood which he used for almost all his work. So, as a result, he was prepared to accompany me through the Bass strait up to Queensland.
After passing through the “rip”, we enjoyed a few hours of pleasant sailing until I noticed an approaching ruffle on the sea surface some distance away. Quickly we reefed right down to a tiny triangle before the storm hit us. We were prepared but the force was so strong that we needed all our concentration to keep the boat on course. Luckily we were south enough to round Wilson’s Prom we THOUGHT but actually achieving it was another thing.
The next few hours were sheer hell. New hazards appeared one after another but we somehow managed to round the Prom despite a wicked southerly gale. When we finally espied a tiny light through the rain, we couldn’t believe that we had finally made it round to a Refuge Bay; a refuge indeed!
Waking up next morning after a short sleep was a dream. The southerly, from which we were sheltered in the cove’ was still blowing so we had to leave immediately to make our next harbour the following day.
The journey was through the Bass Strait with the so-called Ninety Mile Beach to the north. We needed to gain some South distance to prevent being blown on to this beach. This meant us sailing close to oil wells which occupy territory forbidden to yachts. The conditions were critical so we were forced to travel through this dangerous area; dangerous because of bouys and other gear in the water around the oil wells.
We had suffered a little damage in the storm but we managed to make a little south and lose sight of land during the day. The weather was quite pleasant during the night but it was made even more pleasant by the appearance of a large albatross to starboard. In the dark, it seemed almost like a ghost. Maybe it was a good portent of the journey to come. But, as soon as daylight came, it disappeared. Maybe it was the sight of land on the distant horizon which caused it to leave us?
Our problem now was to keep clear of the ninety mile beach on which many boats had foundered in the past. We worked the boat to windward as much as possible but we lost ground steadily during the morning.
Another problem appeared as securings that bound the foot of the sail to the boom began to break one by one. This was probably a result of the hammering the small reefed sail had taken during the night. People speak of being able to hear the sound of the surf breaking on to the Ninety Mile Beach before being wrecked but, thank goodness, we never heard it as we used up the little diesel we had to help our progress to windward or lessen our progress towards Ninety Mile Beach.
We only approached the beach as we neared its end. It was with considerable relief that we rounded the land to be driven by the wind past Mallacoota to Eden where we managed to get someone to repair the boat.
That evening we went into the Fishermen’s club to get the most marvellous fish and chips I have ever had. The fish was cooked “on the bone”. As any fisherman will tell you “that is the only way to cook it”. Not only that but they left the tails on the fish sticking out from the batter as it emerged from the deep fat.
Eden is a curious place. It was a whaling centre which used a killer whale “Old Tom” and his pod to tell them about whales off the coast. The local museum still has the skeleton of “Old Tom”.
It was while we were waiting for repairs to be carried out that Greg told me a sad story. He and his wife had decided, as many Australians do, to spend a year cruising around Australia. They had set out from Melbourne and had actually been wrecked on Wilson’s Prom. Lucky to survive, they had to abandon all their plans for that year. He was obviously a brave man to make the journey with me. We felt lucky to survive that journey. We can attempt to ascribe our survival to seamanship, but REALLY in the end, it can ultimately only be luck that by sailing too close to the Prom rocks due to that southerly, that we saw the tiny light indicating the entrance to Refuge bay.
We left Eden with somewhat raised spirits. Although the distance to Brisbane was still just over 900 miles, we had to contend with a constant north to south current which can impede progress.
The only answer for a sailing boat with a tiny diesel motor is to sail into every bay and rely on reflected current created by the southern shape of the bay to cancel out the main sea current. In those days, there was no gps and the expensive Decca equipment carried by larger vessels was a little OTT for our small boat. We relied on our depth meter, compass and our knowledge of local tides to optimise our progress north.
Stopping at some small ports for a night now and then was a pleasant way to break up the journey. It was also a chance to eat fish in the local co-op and stock up on fresh supplies.
Sailing across the entrance to Sydney harbour at dawn was a sight for sore eyes! One day, we also saw a water spout in the far distance. The most spectacular sight I have ever seen was when we were surrounded by what seemed like thousands of dolphins on both sides of the boat. Of course, dolphins are very common off the East coast of Australia and they loved accompanying us wherever we went but seeing such a huge gathering was beyond anything I had ever experienced.
Sailing at night can sometimes be a little dangerous as fishing boats sometimes left their lights off although they should not have done this. But they always put their lights on as we approached. However, this was NOT the case when I managed to steer clear of a racing yacht heading straight for us returning from the Sydney to Brisbane yacht race. The only clue was a cigarette being smoked by a drunk helmsman who did not change course on our approach. Again, it was only luck that I managed to see this as my eyesight is not very good.
Getting in and out of a port can also be hazardous. Although nothing like the Port Phillip “rip”, standing waves can build up at narrow entrances so it is best tackle these at speed. Boats are normally most anxious to enter ports at the advent of bad weather when these narrow entrances have a very confused sea at the entrance.
Fishermen on this coast have boats with extremely powerful engines so they can nip out of port to do their fishing then return fast on the approach of bad weather such as the proverbial East Australian “southerly buster”.
We had travelled the distance between Melbourne and Brisbane many times in our combi van so I recognised many of the places where we had camped on the way to and from Brisbane. One place in particular we loved, not because of the amenities it offered but because of its position. It was the “Big Banana” by Coffs Harbour.
North of the “Big Banana” is the warmth of Northern New South Wales and Queensland. South of the “Big Banana” are the busy cities of Sydney and Melbourne with their awful weather. Many immigrants from the southern part of Australia – we Queenslanders call them “Mexicans” – swear never to return south of the Big Banana as long as they live. And “happily ever after” they usually are!
Travelling north was a relief as we had obviously covered most of our journey. We could still see the Great Dividing Range very clearly from which we could determine our position.
It should be mentioned that, at this time, we depended on “Sailing Directions” to a large extent.
Many years ago when sailing ships were first exploring coasts around the world, they would draw pictures of the coast as seen from a fairly large distance away. I understood that some of these original beautiful drawings were still in our sailing directions whilst I assumed that some had been improved a little. The explorers would often give names to the heights they observed. At any rate, it was possible to find the positions of these heights on our charts as we passed them. All we had to do was take a couple of back bearings to find our position at any time. At the time, this was very useful, to say the least.
At last we passed a place which looked very much like Miami Beach but called Surfers’ Paradise south of Brisbane. There are a number of islands between this point and Brisbane so we took the Northern entrance to Moreton Bay as we were headed to Redcliffe peninsula.
We decided to head directly across the Bay to Redcliffe so we had to watch the depths very closely. It was only when we approached an anchorage that we had any trouble with shallow mud. This was easily dealt with by pulling ourselves off using an anchor thrown into the deeper water.
You can imagine the gratitude I felt for Greg before he caught the plane back to Melbourne. He had conquered his fear of Wilson’s Prom with a force 10 vengeance. We learned that a number of boats had been lost that night when we were in the area. People were really worried for us until we phoned from Eden to let them know we had survived the storm.
But perhaps my confidence in our survival had something to do with the name I gave to our boat FIDELIO. The “o” at the end of the name signifies that it is masculine. But when anybody enquired why my boat had a masculine instead of the usual feminine name, I would tell them of Leonora who, dressed as the man Fidelio in Beethoven’s opera, was prepared to sacrifice her life for her husband.
Much of my musical information came initially from my two composition teachers at University, R and W.
R told us that the first music was made by early people grunting in caves. He also told us that to compose OUR music, we had to HATE all other music. As if to illustrate this point, as a critic, he wrote of the first performance of one of my favourite Stravinsky pieces, “Neither St Marks, Venice or I have ever heard such an awful sound” or something like that. But he also had a wicked sense of humour.
On the other hand, we always knew the sort of piece W was writing. If every string quartet in the library suddenly disappeared, we knew he was writing a string quartet, . When he had finished, they would all be returned. The resulting work was nothing like any of them.
We notice a similar contrast in approach when it come to a conductor’s interpretation of musical compositions.
A recent performance by the Cleveland Orchestra had their conductor controlling every single gesture in the music. It was magnificent.
A week later, we heard the same work performed by a different conductor and a different orchestra in a manner which seemed to allow a lot of freedom to the orchestra. That performance was also very satisfying.
I remember some time ago Celibidache rehearsing the London Symphony Orchestra which, at that time, had a superb wind section.
The orchestra was puzzled when, during one of the sections dominated by the wind, he stopped conducting. The players continued for a while then stopped and asked why he had stopped conducting. He simply answered, “You are playing ensemble SO well. You listen to each other as well as to my wishes. You do not need a conductor.” But I noticed that he DID appear to lead the orchestra through that section of the music at the performance. But earlier in Siena, he wanted us to help him re-orchestrate some Schumann orchestral works. Not really being in tune with this particular activity, I peeled off and joined a group going to Cinecittá with the film composer Lavagnino.
It seems that there is plenty of room for differences in the music world.
One day some years ago, I was attending a parents’ evening for a Prep class in a school with a fine reputation. As often happens I imagine, the class was being taught by a young teacher new to the school in her very first year in the teaching profession.
She was explaining how she taught numbers by writing 1, then 2, then 3 and so on. TO her annoyance and the evident disapproval of the other parents, I suggested that perhaps a zero might be a useful start to her list of number. When she counted stones on the desk, one, two, three etc. . . , she might also leave a space for “no stones”. If we start from the number one each time when we are reading a map, it might look as though it takes just a two mile walk to reach the three mile post instead of a three mile walk.
Of course, this is easily rectified later on in Maths classes but children in the USA have a similar problem when they encounter elevators in stores and multi storey apartments. The ground floor is called the “first floor” and the floor above is known as the “second floor”. This can be very confusing for visitors from Britain.
In Britain, the ground floor is NOT called the “first floor”. I would love it to be called “Floor Zero” but most lifts simply designate it as “Floor G”. The floor ABOVE is known as the “FIRST floor” and the one above is known as the “SECOND floor”. To my simple mind, this illustrates the fact that “ONE” is not the first floor we encounter. We START our journey on level ZERO.
Another useful concept is provided by the many places which have underground car parks. These levels are often designated as “-1” and “-2” beside the buttons which we are required to press, so, in addition to thinking about zero, this immediately acquaints people with negative numbers and their common usage.
When I suggested this a teacher in the USA, she agreed that the concept is certainly useful but only after the ground floor had been labelled “zero” and the floor above it labelled “floor one”.
Yes, the relation between the USA and the UK is a little puzzling. Although I now spend time in Sarasota during the cold British months, I have visited almost all of the states of the USA and lived for short periods, even over cold Christmas periods, in East Michigan and Seattle.
With all the problems that are besetting the USA and Britain, I was rather taken aback on my entry to Boston this year to be asked by my immigration department official what I thought of Donald Trump. Momentarily stunned I altered the direction of the conversation. “We have our Boris!”. “I know of his wife” was the answer from the official. “Trump is shaking up the White House”.
Again, a little puzzled now, I answered, “That is not for me to comment on”. Just in case this was relevant, I opened my old passport containing my visa and poured all my boarding passes for the last eight years on to the counter. Having completed all the official stuff, the officer handed back my stuff and smiling commented, “You sound like a secret service guy to me”.
Of course, this banter was purely an interrogation into whether I was a fit person to enter the USA but it did emphasise the feeling of change in the air.
Boris had the privilege of being born in the USA so, if he doesn’t become Britain’s Prime minister for a while, he could technically stand for President of the USA. I suspect that both Nigel Farage and Donald Trump would welcome that eventuality in six year’s time.
The USA is VERY DIFFERENT from England. The voltage is different so our kettle takes twice as long to boil here in Sarasota than it does in Cambridge England. People drive on the right hand side of the road in the USA. We still drive on the left. Some people in the USA collect all sorts of guns although most others do not have any. Gardening is probably a hobby in which many English people indulge. English people drink tea whilst coffee is still a drink of the USA. I can travel free on buses in England but I must wait until I am 80 before getting free pass in Sarasota. But gradually, many of the habits of one nation are creeping into the other.
I am old enough to appreciate the fact that the USA saved a WW2 Europe which Britain would have been forced to leave to the Russians. And WW2 would never even have happened if President Wilson had been able to apply his 14 points at the end of WW1. Even with the protests of Maynard Keynes, who later helped rescue the US economy, the French imposed impossible conditions on Germany.
Many people judge the USA by the actions of people in Washington DC. But, when DC charged Britain the reparations for WW2, the PEOPLE of the USA sent us food parcels – a gesture I will never forget.
Three years ago, we lived in a Cambridge apartment where the person renting above us was a pilot patrolling the borders of the Baltic borders, a feature of NATO not appreciated by the EU. But the US defence forces stationed in England during the last 73 years tell me in Sarasota that they enjoyed their stay despite protests over the “nukes”. But 70 years ago, their sacrifice was truly appreciated. 9,000 of them are remembered or buried in a Cambridge cemetery
There are many other examples of good relations between the USA and Britain despite the fact that we only finished paying the WW2 reparations of today’s equivalence of about 850 billion pounds in December 2006. Britain’s final payment was 45.5 million pounds.
Many people are puzzled at the extreme goodwill that exists between Britain and the USA. The overseas activities of the USA have not always been in accord with the feelings of the people of Britain but Britain has always been in the coalition of the “willing”.
There seems to be a difference between the antics of DC and the rest of the USA. Some people in the States say that “there is too much government” but states such as Texas have never gone to the extent of Scotland’s referendum on whether to stay in the”united” kingdom of Britain. It is illegal anyway. People in these different areas of the USA have retained their individuality but have never made serious threats to leave the union.
So it looks as though we cannot judge the people of the USA by the activities of DC. On the other hand, Donald Trump has obviously struck a chord with working people who, like us in Britain, are puzzled why almost everything they buy is manufactured in the Far East, most of it coming from China. The USA even imports coal. The rational reason for Trump’s accession to the Presidency was probably people’s dissatisfaction with the policies of DC.
All this does nothing to prevent the people of the USA, outside DC, from being the most friendly in the world.
I returned to England a few years ago after an absence of 13 years. I had been living in Australia, Firenze, Crete, Jerusalem, Vienna, and Venezia. My first port of call was Sheffield. I can remember walking in a straight line across a square and hearing “Sorry”, “Sorry”, “Sorry” from either side as I made my way across. We English are overwhelmingly polite.
But there is a code. We English do not always say outright exactly what we need to say. In the USA, people are equally polite but thereafter will converse almost without any limitation and often with breathtaking openness. Very un-English!
But, in the end, we are all very similar. People in the USA may be more forthcoming than we English but underneath it all, we all share similar feelings about life.
The first simple definition of noise I encountered many years ago was “Unwanted Sound”. And this is the definition I will maintain for the length of this page.
Having been a physicist, chartered engineer and musician in the past, means that I know many more technical definitions. However, it is the “unwanted” sound that annoys me.
“Unwanted sounds” don’t have to be awful. I can remember the conductor André Previn arriving in London after a particularly turbulent flight saying that they played classical music as they flew through the turbulence. This music annoyed him more than the turbulence.
Other apparently nice “unwanted sounds” are the carols they play in supermarkets as Christmas approaches. This is an awful distraction as I am almost tempted to join in and sing while I am shopping.
Other really awful sources of “unwanted sound” include our favorite furniture store which insists on playing some sort of music through terrible speakers high up in the roof. The is VERY poor quality “unwanted sound”.
If you are unfortunate enough to have worked in any part of the Music business, it is difficult to ignore any sounds. Even active noise reducing headphones will cause our ears to listen even more acutely to the sound environment.
The acoustical engineer who designed the Albert Hall “flying saucers” told me that his previous job had been designing “acoustic perfume” for cruise ships. He simply supplied sound through speakers in the cabins to mask the sound of the ship’s engine. He was using “noise”, as defined by scientists, to mask “unwanted sound” from the engines.
The URL above describes some of the scientific standard types of noise but we can create an unlimited number of noise types. “Acoustic perfume” would be one of these bespoke types of noise.
So far, we have considered only relatively harmless “unwanted sounds”.
It seems to me that the whole world has been growing increasingly loud. There is more traffic on the roads and some road users seem to enjoy making their engines louder.
Most annoying is the fact that I do not see much attention being paid to the acoustics of restaurants and public places. The materials used in construction and flooring can make a place quieter at very little cost. If this is not done, we hear people shouting to be heard above the background sound. Then we ourselves have to shout to be heard. The result is a very high sound level but not usually permanently injurious.
Probably the highest level sounds people will ever experience without ear protection are at pop concerts and gigs. The musicians at these events have their own small monitor speakers but the sound in various parts of the listening area can actually cause permanent harm to human ears.
I can remember an occasion when, MANY years ago, I volunteered to help with the Noosa Jazz Festival in Australia.
This is a wonderful opportunity to get up close with some remarkable musicians. I enjoyed every moment of it in the various cafés and restaurants around Noosa.
The last night was a concert in the main auditorium under an open tent. But the sound level was so high that I could not approach nearer than about a hundred yards from the auditorium without feeling pain in my ears. I was very disappointed with this but I was VERY happy about the rest of the festival.
Years ago we dreamed of a system that could eliminate sounds that we did not like. Now that computing systems are so fast, some attempts have been made to do this with a remarkable degree of success.
Simply put, a sound is composed of varying air pressures above and below our normal soundless air pressure. If we can simultaneously produce another sound which has the opposite pressures, going down when the original sound pressure goes above the normal pressure and goes up when the original sound goes below the normal pressure, we should completely cancel out the original sound.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the manufactured sound designed to cancel out the original sound will arrive a little late as the active system must use some clever but well-known mathematics to produce it. But already these systems are proving relatively successful in providing a useful reduction in the sound that a user experiences. Over-the-ear snug headphones are needed to experience this sound reduction.
There is no doubt that specially designed fast processors will provide an increased degree of active noise cancellation so that annoying “unwanted sound” can be reduced to a level of relative comfort with a pair of comfortable headphones. Carpe Diem!
We often take our visitors on a trip down Longboat Key to St Armand’s circle. This is a very pleasant trip spoiled only by a rat-infested huge expanse of run-down real estate on the beach side of the road.
This is the site of the famous upscale elite “Colony Beach Resort” where President Bush stayed on the night of September 10, 2001.
On the following morning “a van filled with Middle Eastern Men” posing as journalists attempted to gain access to the President. They were obviously turned away by the extra security detail on duty that morning.
These men then returned to Sarasota on a road running beside the golf course where, just a short distance away, the President was taking his morning walk at that very time.
This incident was dismissed as a “coincidence.
Every morning, when we walk on Lido Key beach not far from that golf course, we pass the Holiday Inn where the men who flew planes into the World trade Centre met after one of them had drunk rum and coke, paying with a twenty dollar bill. They dined “Surf and Turf” in the hotel restaurant which has a wonderful view of Lido Key Beach.
They had both taken flying lessons in Sarasota and Venice, Sarasota County and rented a house for $650 a month in West Laurel Road, N0komis, also in Sarasota County.
They had attended meetings in a house at 4224 Escondito Circle in Sarasota’s Prestancia Golf Course Estate where their car had been photographed on entry. Surprisingly, the Saudi occupants of the house left suddenly just over a week before September 11 leaving everything – cars, clothes, TVs, furniture, a computer, food, children’ toys, and other items.
So on September 11, President Bush, knowing none of these goings on, had breakfast followed by an intelligence briefing at 8:00 then drove through St Armand’s Circle and over the bridge to Route 41 on his way to the school which he was to visit as part of his celebration of the passing of the Education Bill.
Meanwhile at 8:46 am, the man, whom we know was partial to rum and coke, crashed a plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre. Then, 17 minutes later, the South Tower was hit.
President Bush reached the school at 9:03 and joined students in one of the classrooms despite having been informed of the first plane cash.
At 9:05, President Bush preceded to read a story called “The Pet Goat”. When interrupted by his chief of staff with the news that the second tower had been hit, he chose NOT to flee the classroom but to calmly finish the story so as not to alarm the children.
When he eventually emerged at 9:14, he was briefed by the Secret Service and staff members. After that, he talked to Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
He then addressed an audience of 200 teachers and students stating that he would immediately be returning to Washington DC. “Today, we’ve had a national tragedy,” he said before leading a moment of silence.
At 9:35, the President’s motorcade set off for SRQ Sarasota Airport a couple of miles away.
Meanwhile Airforce One had been sitting at the end of SRQ Sarasota Airport expecting the President to board at 10:45.
At 9:03, everything changed. The pilot Mark Tillman, after noting that the 42 secure phones on the plane were all ringing, suggested an immediate takeoff to protect the plane until the President arrived. Even though it was felt that Airforce One was a target, the President insisted that everything be done as calmly as possible so Tillman had to wait at the end of the runway in readiness for his arrival.
The Secret Service did, after an initial refusal, at least manage to get Kevin Kennedy of the Sarasota Sheriff’s office to overfly the airport in a helicopter.
At last the President arrived at 9:55 and Airforce One could begin moving down the runway. Suddenly the plane changed the direction of takeoff because of what seemed to be a man holding a gun at the end of the runway. It then took off at 9:57 with an almost vertical climb to cruising altitude. Luckily the apparent “gun” was only a camera.
Airforce One then circled for about 40 minutes before deciding on Bossier City Louisiana as its initial stop. From here we heard, “Freedom itself was attacked this morning . . . . .” before heading to Bellevue Nebraska and finally reaching the White House.
With the departure of Airforce One from SRQ Sarasota Airport, the action moved elsewhere. The rest is world history, not just Sarasota history.
The first concert of the Sarasota Orchestra 2018-2019 season included a performance of the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto. Much to our surprise, the audience insisted on sustained clapping and cheering at the end of the first movement before the piece had actually finished.
Why was this? It was difficult for the more knowledgeable of us to remain silent, as the playing and conducting had been so brilliant. Perhaps the form of the movement has something to do with it?
Briefly put, in a first movement, a composer first plays you his stuff. He then mutilates it, sometimes beyond recognition, so he has to bring his original stuff back before getting to the end. However, we only reach the end after a brilliant section played by the soloist and a very exciting climax. No wonder we want to clap!
On the other hand, many last moments hit the ground running with a composer’s theme rather like an express trains heading somewhere but stopping now and then to observe musical vistas on either side of the tracks. Of course, we hear very exciting stuff from the orchestra and soloist before hitting the buffers at the end.
If we need to do something to persuade Sarasota audiences NOT to clap the first movement of a concerto, it looks as though we have a few choices.
The first choice might be to play the last movement first and finish with the first movement. Historians would object to this choice.
The second choice might be to persuade the orchestra to become quieter towards the end of the first movement, ending with a whimper of a final sound. The brass section would probably object to this choice.
So it looks to me that we have only one choice. We must persuade the Music Police to give a special dispensation to Sarasota audiences to clap first movements whoever they feel like it. We in Sarasota are a special case.
Clap without guilt! Clap without that particular look of slight annoyance from the conductor and that nice smile from the soloist. And of course, the orchestra can have another tuning session. Everybody will be happy!
Just a phone call announces the arrival of an important visitor accompanied by our very own secret service! He has not a single minder in sight. Why is he here? I entertain the notion that he has come to meet our very own private coven of Leninists whom I prefer to call Bolsheviks.
I am left in the dark. The secret service people just tell me, “Whatever you do, don’t ask him about Rostropovich” Then they disappear pointing down the stairs.
Walking up the stairs – perhaps he doesn’t trust elevators – comes the great man. He stares into space but greets me with a gentle smile and says nothing.
I don’t feel like asking him why he is here. He’s a very senior icon in the Russian establishment – lucky to survive the purges and criticism of the Stalin years.
I’d heard a number of really bad performances of the Manfred symphony during the past year so I managed to frame a question without mentioning the current political situation.
“Do you think only a Russian can conduct the Manfred?” In fact I mention a particular Russian who was particularly partial to the music of Shostakovitch.
Slowly turning to me and showing a more serious face, he answers in a very assertive fashion.
“Yes!”
Rather obviously I now sympathetically say to him, “I’m very sorry to hear about Rostropovich”.
Contrary to my warning from the very secret service people, he contemplates my question and eventually shrugs his shoulders and says, “And I sent extra coal to his dacha”.
We reach my study and I sit him down on the chair next to my bike. He looks a little weary after all those stairs.
“Our staff and student composers would like to play you some of their compositions”.
He must have known the extent of the ordeal he was about to undergo but still he maintains a philosophical approach saying, “That will be good”.
Among our coterie of staff and student composers, only two – one staff member and one graduate student – composes notes that are related to any more than themselves. (Interestingly this particular graduate student obtained more commissions than the rest of the staff put together).
During the session, some of the students mentioned one composer who seemed to be writing fairly progressive music. The great man simply said, “Oh, he is restricted to the limits of his home town so you will not be hearing much from him in the future”.
It isn’t the substance of this statement which shocks the group. It’s the way it’s spoken. We have the impression that is what naturally happens when anybody tries to compose anything new. We don’t even discover exactly who has exacted this edict. The great man for a time had himself been banished to the regions for a similar approach to music.
At the end of the session, one of the more provocative students asked him, “Could our music be performed in Moscow?”
“Yes. It could be performed but I don’t think they would like it”
Having travelled in great discomfort a journey in a Boeing 737-900 from Tampa to Seattle the previous year, we were not looking forward to a journey in another 737-900 this year. As the Wall Street Journal had stated two years ago . . . . . .
Skinnier Seats on More Crowded Planes
Slimmed-Down Seating Can Feel More Like a Park Bench, Especially on Longer Flights
This year we were determined to avoid being trapped in a 737-900 for a six hour journey so we had planned to travel to Sarasota airport instead of Tampa. This entailed stops in San José and Atlanta. It took longer but arriving in the local very pleasant Sarasota-Bradenton airport instead of the busy Tampa airport we thought would make the extra journey time worthwhile.
The early start entailed a hotel stay where the staff were not keen on serving breakfast a mere fifteen minutes before the official starting time. But we were able to partake of a very pleasant Wendy’s repast before boarding our flight.
The short flight to San José was fine even abroad the immovably thin seated 737-900. It was even pleasant taking off from a runway not far from the factory where our plane was born.
Arriving in San José, we had plenty of time to cover the distance to our gate for our flight to Atlanta. Here we boarded a rather ancient 737-800. This took us back to the days when a few tiny screens came down from the ceiling and we all strained our eyes upwards to see a faint image of the very latest film. Unfortunately we hadn’t the faintest idea which film they were showing.
But here came our first surprise. This ancient plane had the old seating with copious amounts of space between each seat. The seats were thick and comfortable unlike the latest thin seats specially designed for the 737-900. So the flight from San Jose to Atlanta was more comfortable than we expected save for some clear air turbulence then storm clouds during the last hour of the flight.
We only had a half hour to get to our next flight but we knew exactly what to do thanks to the very friendly cabin crew. Atlanta airport has the usual small train between different areas of the terminal so we were soon joining the line for the flight.
There are apparently six flights a day from Atlanta to Sarasota and they are very popular. They use the old MD88 aircraft which feels to me more like a rocket than a plane. We were seated almost on the back row of seats parallel with the engines and the wings so there was no doubt about the efficiency of this arrangement. But once again we had thick comfortable seat spaced apart for old fashioned comfort and a full plane of happy Sarasotian’s returning to civilisation and sensible weather.
By now it was dark and Atlanta was surrounded by black storm clouds but the only effects we felt was a sudden blast sideways as we ascended to cruising height. It sounded as though the captain was a Sarasota man as he announced that we were on our way to “Sarasot” flying over St Petes beach.
It didn’t take long before we were over the Gulf – that warm sea – heading down beside route 41 to land in the little Sarasota airport.
Although it was dark when we landed, here is a daylight landing of an MD88.
As we left, I asked the captain how about the age of the plane. He disappeared into the cabin and returned saying, “It was built in 1992. That’s 24 years old.”
Today we travel to Orlando from wet and cold Cambridge. Of course, today is the first day we have seen a completely blue sky first thing in the morning. It’s as though Cambridge were saying, “See, I can do it when you’re about to leave!!”
Travel from Cambridge to London is fast. In fact it is scarily fast when going over points or the more difficult sections of track. This morning it actually takes less than the normal fifty minutes to reach Kings Cross station.
Just across the concourse is St Pancras station where, below the surface near the Harry Potter platform, runs a rather slow direct train to Gatwick Airport. However, this slow meandering train through the bowels of the City of London more than makes up for the inconvenience of the tube to the Gatwick Express which runs from busy Victoria Station.
Today are travelling in a brand new 787 “dreamliner” flown by one of the most successful new budget airlines.
First we have to obtain boarding passes. The machine does not work. As usual, a helpful Polish gentleman appears to help us. It doesn’t work for him either. So we retire to his office where he manages to get us our passes. Then he tries to print luggage labels for us on another check in machine and that doesn’t work either. Back to his office and at last we are fully equipped to check in our bags. I am delighted to see that my bag weighs 19.7 kg; just under the 20 kg maximum so my small bottle of brandy can travel with us to Orlando.
There’s a certain ritual associated with budget airlines and some shops in the terminal have adapted their stock to take advantage of this. Boots sells their normal “main plus side plus drink” lunch for almost a duty free price and we notice that even Smiths has included a similar selection of food between their books and magazines. We buy a couple of wraps in Boots (I choose the falafel wrap and Theobo takes a chilli wrap) plus drinks and crisps. Although we had ordered and paid extra for a meal, we were now equipped to deal with any prandial crisis.
Boarding this flight is very ordered and serious as befits an efficient budget airline. Sitting at the front of the budget section of the aircraft – the “first class” section in front of us is tiny – we board last. During the melée of passengers stowing oversize carry-ons, I hear an announcement by somebody but his comments were wasted because of the cabin activity. After we have all settled down, we and the serious cabin staff sit there in silence for twenty minutes before the plane starts to move and takes off.
The first thing we notice is that the wonderful “dreamliner” in-flight individual entertainment systems aren’t working. Then the screens at the front of the cabin also black out. After take off, we see the youngest member of the cabin crew looking very busy as he tries to get the screens working. He manages to get the screens going at the front of the cabin but it is some time before he emerges smiling to our applause as our individual screens come into action.
Of course, the star of the show is the aircraft.
It is a magnificent feat of engineering; the delivery time only held up by the Japanese-built wings arriving over three years late. Boeing engineers had told me that lawyers were calculating compensation for late delivery “plane by plane” so this outsourcing cost Boeing a great deal. We used to see Boeing’s Everett field surrounded by 787s before they were accepted by airlines. So we were attracted by this airline which uses these planes on long haul flights between USA and Europe.
We fly a great circle route south of Greenland to Canada and then bump our way down the East coast of the USA to Orlando. Extraordinarily, the skies are clear over Orlando but the landing and the sickening collision with the runway is one of the most awful we have ever experienced. It did bring to mind the profile of one of the pilots, published in the onboard airline magazine, who had been driving taxis just three years ago.
The plane taxis off the runway towards the gate. We passengers all remain silent after the shock of landing so violently. But we are happy to have arrived safely.
Our happiness is short-lived. The plane sits in the correct place but nothing happens. After about fifteen minutes, the engines are switched off. Another ten minutes later, the lights go out and the air conditioning stops. There is still silence in the main cabin. Thankfully the lights come on again but not the air-conditioning.
I make the remark, “There are no Australians or Americans here.” Most of the passengers are from the UK. This polite English reaction to the situation is overwhelming. We question the cabin crew member sitting in front of us. He knows nothing. But he picks up his phone and reports that there is a technical problem with the airbridge.
We are now becoming worried that there is no fresh air reaching most of the passengers. I wonder whether those little oxygen masks will fall down when the carbon dioxide level reaches dangerous levels if the plane is only using emergency lighting.
We question the cabin staff member sitting in front of us and find that his name is David. He speaks fluent Russian and Polish. He has been in the job for just two months. He makes another phone call and informs us that they are still having problems with the airbridge. It will soon be fixed as they have called a technician.
Another ten minutes pass and suddenly David looks up to see the airbridge reaching over to the plane. Instead of being happy, he becomes concerned. He rushes over to the other side of the plane. We see him typing things into a computer then returning with four sheets of printout.
He approaches the door and examines it carefully whilst consulting his sheets of paper. My friend Theobo jumps up and helps him by holding sheets in front of him whilst he works out what to do. Eventually he decides to move a huge handle with an enormous arrow pointing counter clockwise. It also has “OPEN” written above it in letters about one foot high.
The door opens to reveal a group of smiling people welcoming us to Florida. Even the balmy air of Florida feels welcoming. We have arrived!!!
As usual, I am fingerprinted and photographed by the immigration person who again warns me not to overstay my time in the USA. “You were in the plane that long without air con?” he says in amazement.
As usual, our checked luggage is last to arrive. After extensive legal negotiations we pick up our hire car and drive to Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club arriving just after eleven o’clock. We remark that there were no signs or lights helping us to find the Club. The lobby staff tell us that “We like it that way”.
Apparently Arnold is due here in a few days time.
We have a room overlooking the tenth green where greenskeepers are moving the pins on the greens ready for next days play by clients of Bay Hill. Others are doing routine maintenance. All this is being done in the dark so they all have lighting on their vehicles. By morning every inch of the fairways has been mown. Every micron of the green has been coiffured. All the features have been manicured. Yes folks, we’re in the US of A!!!!!
Having recently endured a five hour ballet gala in Vienna, I approached the recent Seattle Opera Gala with no lack of trepidation. The Vienna ballet gala, held at the end of the season, did not just include favourites of the audience but also the favourites of the individual artists. In particular, the piece danced by the boss of the outfit, who had recently been the star of the Paris ballet, was the hit of the evening.
The Seattle gala was not to celebrate anything like the end of a season. This gala celebrated the activities of an extraordinary man who had headed the Seattle Opera since 1982. Like most small opera companies, they are crazy about Wagner.
But I LIKE crazy so I am sympathetic to the aims of this brave person who stages the Ring and somehow gets away with it!! But I suppose that Seattle is definitely a Nordic outpost so it’s OK to celebrate the fact.
The evening was a sort of “love in” for the departing General Director Speight Jenkins. The artists had all given their services free for the evening. This was remarkable as Seattle is in the extreme North West of the USA and they must have made sacrifices of some of their gigs along the line to get here.
The only problem about the evening was just getting there. The traffic around the McCaw Hall car park is impossible. It takes about 45 minutes waiting on the roads around the place before you get in. Thankfully the performance started immediately we reached our places on the very first row of the theatre.
And it started with – you’ve guessed it – something from our favourite Wagner opera ’Valküre’ – Act 2 Scene 1.
I was expecting a wizened venerable personage to lead the Speight adulation from the stage, Thank goodness we had a real live opera singer Joyce Castle inebriated with love for Speight in the first half and with what seemed like some other stuff in the later second half. She was funny, fresh and Texan!!! What more can you ask for? She popped out on to the stage from time to time reminding us of the achievements of a Director who had managed to lure her and her colleagues all the way out to the rain washed northwest.
The came one of my favourite singers of the evening, Stephanie Blythe – a big woman with an enormous voice who gives us everything she’s got. Wow!!! She had fun singing part of Offenbach’s ‘La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein’ with the male chorus. It looked to me as though she could have the whole lot for breakfast! Here she is singing at the Met’.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,000 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 17 trips to carry that many people.
We live near the Boeing Factory in Everett north of Seattle. From time to time I have toured the place looking at their planes under construction. The strangest recent discovery was that they still make 747s there. But the big newcomer is the 787 and the 7879 which starred in the 2014 Farnborough commercial Air Show. Almost every day we drive past the Boeing Air Field strewn around with gleaming new planes just out of the paint hangar.
BUT I have heard through the grape vine that a Spitfire will be flying today. I have to see this so we drive around the huge area which Boeing leases from Snohomish County until we see a sign advertising some type of exhibition. We follow directions until we find ourselves in a car park for this exhibition.
On one side of the car park we see some enthusiastic volunteers supervising shuttle buses to the exhibition. They assure me that there will certainly be a Spitfire flying today so we board the bus.
Now we meet our first group of people obsessed with old aircraft. When they hear that I am English, one of them tells me, “You are not allowed to shed any tears when you see the Spitfire!” I reply that I am certainly NOT going to comply with THAT order!
We arrive at the line for the ticket office and now we are surrounded by old plane enthusiasts. They know EVERYTHING about planes. I ask a few silly questions and receive very detailed replies. Google or Wikipedia have nothing on these people!
The first sound we hear is a World War 2 style big band playing tunes I know very well. They have a full complement of trombones and trumpets and make a good sound although I am puzzled about the fact that they have a baritone and five other saxes whereas I have only played in big bands with five saxes.
Nearby is an anti-aircraft gun which insists on firing now and then. The commentator warns everybody to cover their ears but it doesn’t stop the annoyance. Then there’s a tank which dashes around showing how manoeuvrable it is. We also see the great little Jeep and other miscellaneous WW2 stuff.
The exhibition seems to assume that, if you are interested in fighter planes and bombers, you MUST be interested in anything else that kills people. The permanent exhibition here includes a good collection of planes and even has a V2 rocket designed by Von Braun who eventually helped get Americans to the moon. But I can remember the devastation that this rocket and land mines did to London towards the end of WW2.
I discover that we can now actually view the planes that are to fly later. The flying collection includes a couple of spotter planes, a larger number of fighters and a good selection of bombers. We look at each plane in turn making sure that we have one of those knowledgable aircraft enthusiasts with us to explain exactly how many were made, how many versions there were, the power of the engines, their range, in which theatre of war they operated, . . . . . . . the details they give us are endlessly fascinating. You learn a lot standing next to people like that.
Of course, one of the fighters is the Spitfire. I gaze at that little plane and shed not a tear. I just marvel at the young people who jumped into them to defeat the might of the Nazi onslaught. I think of the designer R J Mitchell and the women who flew the planes to the units who used them. But for the airmen who sacrificed their lives in each of these planes we say . . . . .
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.
. .. . . . . . .and we can watch the film about Mitchell again at . .
Eventually we filter out through the hundreds lining up to buy wurst, hamburgers and some delicious Mexican food to the Air Field. I fancy that many of the people who have reserved the best places are already sunburnt on this unusually hot day – for Seattle anyway!
There are two runways in front of us. The barriers are a few feet from Boeing’s main runway. On the other side of the main runway is the runway which the smaller planes use and from which the exhibition planes will take off and land.
We all take our places except for the people waiting for their wurst, hamburgers and their delicious Mexican food. Even during the show itself the lines seem ridiculously long – that food must be GOOD!!! . We all wait for the show with bated breath.
But then comes a surprise. The Dream Lifter descends from the East of the airport and lands directly on the main runway just a few feet from us. This is a very peculiar 747 adapted to transport bits of outsourced 787 to Boeing for assembly.
Then comes another surprise. The latest 787 takes off into the East for a proving flight. (Boeing engineers tell me that they simply challenge each command in the cockpit trying to make the aircraft fail in some respect. They SAY they enjoy doing this but I find that hard to believe!) I even met a Boeing Test Pilot who told me he had only flown passenger jets around Whidbey Island every day and had never flown anywhere else!!! I found it difficult to believe that!!!
Being SO close to these aircraft taking off and landing is the highlight of my day! Seeing the weird DreamLifter then that beautiful 787 is an extraordinary experience.
But back at the ranch the pair of aircraft being demonstrated first taxi down the main runway then turn to starboard twice and take off from the far runway. Each aircraft would do its thing then both would fly down the main runway in close formation as a sort of finale. They then land and slowly proceed back up the runway waving at us, acknowledging our adoration. This goes on all afternoon while we listen to the comments of our neighbours who, as usual, know so much more than we need to know about the planes.
Many of the planes swoop down to fly just over our heads. On the other hand, some others tend to stay high well out of harm’s way. Our knowledgable neighbours tell us that these higher planes are owned by Paul Allen who gives explicit instructions to his pilots to stay high during air shows like this.
Last of all comes the Spitfire accompanied by a propellor Messerschmitt. The Spitfire’s climb at the end of the runway reminds me of that display in the film “The First of the Few” made with very limited resources in 1942. We leave with a happy crowd of aircraft enthusiasts. “We come every year!”, they tell us.
I’m glad that there are people here who care about these old planes. We need to preserve the artefacts of our history and touch them from time to time. We need to remind ourselves that it really happened. Perhaps that may help us deal with things that are still happening?
The USA is a big country. No matter what you may think about the central government in DC, the people must be the friendliest on the planet. I do not suggest taking this tour yourselves but I am recording just a few observations during our trip covering 25,000 miles in just six months.
Starting in Seattle we head South past Vancouver across the river into Portland, a large city in the beautiful state of Oregan. It’s a nice drive going south through the countryside but it is a big surprise to reach high ground only about 7,500 feet covered by snow and ice as late in the year as May. We carefully navigate the hill down into California and head south past Sacramento.
I know this area quite well. I have made a pilgrimage to Capertino and circled Infinity Loop. I have made a few visits to Yosemite . I’ve driven the Big Sur. I’ve driven over the Rockies from here. But we simply stay in Fresno and gaze at the signs pointing towards Yosemite.
I cannot recognise Fresno. It has grown so much since I was last here. But there is a Whole Foods and we find it using our SatNav so we are happy.
After Bakersfield, things get more interesting. Having begun our journey in Geeksville, Washington and already passed Geeksville, Silicon Valley, we drive through Mojave; surely the place where the future of flight is being determined. Here’s Virgin Galactica’s SpaceShip performing it’s first reentry by “feathering”. Isn’t this the most beautiful flight you have ever seen?
With SpaceShip Two, Virgin Galactic will soon be operating 62 miles above Mojave in preparation for tours in the future.
We all remember the X planes flown from Edwards Airforce Base. But now it is at the Mojave Air and Space Port, that we see contemporary advances in aviation. For example there’s the Orbital Science’s Stargazer Jet designed to release a Pagasus rocket, the XCOR Aerospace Lynx Rocket Plane, Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch and many other smaller projects. Unfortunately, these projects will shift to other centres when commercial operations begin; virgin Galactica to New Mexico and XCOR to midland, Texas, thanks to financial incentives of those states.
Meanwhile the sight that greets you when you arrive at the Mojave Air and Space Port is the vast number of wind turbines lined up on all the most exposed hillsides around.
Continuing on, we encounter the old Route 66. This road was built to transport people to the West from the MidWest starting in Chicago. There’s even a song about it. Here’s a rather cool rendition by Diana Krall and Natalie Cole.
The lyrics describe the whole trip twice . . . .
Well if you ever plan to motor west Just take my way that’s the highway that’s the best Get your kicks on Route 66 Well it winds from Chicago to L.A. More than 2000 miles all the way Get your kicks on Route 66 Well it goes from St Louis, Joplin, Missouri Oklahoma City looks ooh so pretty You’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico Flagstaff, Arizona don’t forget Winona Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino
Would you get hip to this kindly tip And go take that California trip Get your kicks on Route 66
We were travelling from West to East and joined Route 66 at Barstow where we enjoyed delicious burgers and beer. Then on through Kingman to Flagstaff where we spent the night.
I’ve driven Route 66 a few times before but always visited the Grand Canyon North and Sedona South from Flagstaff. This time we went straight on to Gallup then Amarillo where we witnessd a nice lady destroying the hotel waffle iron at breakfast.
Some of the old Route 66 has been used for the modern highway. On other sections, it runs alongside the highway. In some places you can drive off the highway into deserted settlements complete with deserted shops and filling stations. It seems a shame that these gems of history have not been valued enough to preserve more of these places. The US of A is mostly a car country with little public transport compared to Europe. Route 66 is a historic step towards the long distance use of the motor car and is therefore a very important relic of history. Here’s Billy Connolly fulfilling his dream.
After Oklahoma City, we leave Route 66 and continue East, stopping at Fort Smith for the night, then swiftly onwards to Atlanta where we feast in a gigantic diner with a friend. The we go south to Tallahasse where we stop for the night before continuing on next day to our destination Sarasota.
The country on the route is beautiful but it is very noticeable that the Indian reservations are particularly attractive and well cared for. We have stopped at various places where battles have taken place and noted that the Confederate flag is still flying in many places on the way. It is difficult for foreigners to really understand the Civil War. However, the information centres are very helpful about the battles.
Sarasota is a dream land. The beaches of the Keys must be the best in the world, just perfect for walks with feet in the water. The inner city is tiny but has a Whole Foods and bus services to all the beaches.
I know the Atlantic coast of Florida and I have spent too long in the amusement centres of Orlando. We decide to explore the coast to the South and North of Sarasota. We even spend time on Fort Myers Beach where I have spent some holiday time some years ago.
Sarasota is ideal in Winter but rather too humid and hot during the Summer months. The “snowbirds” who inhabit Sarasota during the Winter left for their Boston nests some time ago. We also decide to head north.
Our first stop is Savannah on the Atlantic coast. It’s a historic town with beautiful old buildings. Being summer, there are too many tourists around for comfort. So next day we head across country in a NNW direction first to Nashville which has even more history to which we can more easily relate to. Then onwards through beautiful West Virginia eventually reaching Niagara Falls, a place I have never visited before.
We stay on the Canadian side of the falls but we do not take any of the trips on the water or walk under the falls. We just gaze at that marvellous spectacle. So much water going over the falls!! I don’t believe in “bucket lists” but, if I did, Niagara Falls would have been on it!
From Niagara, we drive around Lake Ontario on the Canadian side. We would probably have been better off driving East along the Southern side of the lake. The traffic through Toronto is fairly horrific but we finally reach the end of the lake and drive East past Ottawa then North to a hotel which has been advertising specials. The hotel calls itself a “chateau” so we expect something really special.
The hotel is awful!!! We complain and are told that we have our awful room because we have come on their reduced price special. After spending some hours arguing with the management, we do get a different room which is not much better. We decide to make the best of the situation.
There is a golf course attached to the hotel and I have promised my friend that I will make my first attempt at golf if we stop here. So, keeping my promise, we drive down the track to the club house and I prepare to hit my first ball on the first golf course I have ever been faced with.
We walk from the club house to the first tee and I recoil with astonishment. The first hole is across a wide raging torrent! I immediately decide that I will walk across the bridge and drop my ball on the other side. It’s the only sensible thing to do if I am a complete beginner.
The Pro sees what is going on and emerges from his shop with a ball with a maple leaf printed on it. He says, “Hit this into the river for me” and hands me the colourful ball.
What can I do? I reluctantly place the beautiful ball on a tee and make my first drive on my very first golf course. Realising that I must satisfy the wish of the pro, I give the ball the biggest ‘wack’ I can muster. It flies high in the air over the raging torrent and lands on the green in the far distance. All that practice on the driving range has been worthwhile!!! Or was it that maple leave pained on the ball? So I completed my very first round of golf but later nowhere near the excellence of my very first drive!!
We soon escape from the “chateau” and make our way to Quebec. Quebec is an important part British history and it is difficult to find any evidence of this in the city. We eventually do find a statue of General James Wolfe which has evidently destroyed a number of times and trace the paths the British took before capturing Quebec city. People I speak to assure me that they would prefer to be part of France rather than part of Canada. They feel French and some even refuse to speak English to us.
We continue our journey even more West until we meet the Atlantic at Sydney on Cape Brenton Island. We make some trips around the area and enjoy the spectacular scenery and the bridges which cross some of the rivers and valleys.
Then we head for Prince Edward Island. The bridge over to this island is 13 kilometres long. Many tourists are drawn to PEI to visit the home of Lucy Maud Montgomery who wrote “Anne of Green Gables” in Cavandish on the North coast. Of course, we follow the crowds and drive past the small house and gaze at the resort which has developed because of the influx of tourists who love this book which has sold 50 million copies. We also visit a wind farm on the Western end of the island and come across some Welsh immigrants who are growing organic vegetables near the Wind farm.
The most noticeable feature of the island is the fact that potatoes are growing everywhere. It must be the potato capital of the world. There is even a Potato Museum!!
Prince Edward Island is also the only place where I have seen potatoes on sale properly presented hidden under a cover to prevent light reaching them.
From PEI we head down to Fredericton where we stay in a new Casino hotel with a lovely swimming pool. Fredericton is an Acadian town and the whole history of the Acadians is sad. Many Acadians were deported from Prince Edward Island and other parts of Eastern Canada in the eighteenth century and some ended up in Louisiana where they formed the Cajun culture. Some retuned later and still maintain their Acadian character.
Next we head south to Bangor in Maine, USA. We stay here then head to Bar Harbour where we eat lobsters, freshly cooked outside in huge boilers and served in a huge can. I can’t say that I am impressed by this primitive approach but I am told it is “quaint” and everybody loves it.
We move on to Stonington, a charming village which has a tiny ‘opera house’. The coast here is beautiful but the sea temperature is very cold. We stay in a nearby hotel and are shown into a room whose floor has a slope of over ten degrees. The manager is surprised when we do not appreciate the room. “It is SO quaint!” she says but does find us another room with a fairly horizontal floor.
We enjoy a picturesque run along the coast of Maine and stop for a while in Portland. Then we head south again to Boston and enjoy a look around this great city. We even pass the Berklee School of Music which was started as Schillinger House named after Joseph Schillinger by one of his students Lawrence Berk then later named the Berklee School after Berk’s son Lee Berk. Graduates of Berklee have won almost 300 grammys in recent years.
Our next objective is DC. Here we make our biggest mistake. We set our SatNav to avoid roadworks in progress. Normally this would be a sensible idea but, in a state where almost all of whose roads seem to be under repair, it is a very bad idea. Our SatNav did indeed avoid the road works but directed us into the suburbs of New York and even through Harlem. Then we had to line up and wait two hours to cross a bridge held up by two cherry pickers!! Thankfully, we managed to get across to Newark where we reset the SatNav to take the most direct route.
After DC we charge down the I95 with an escort of “snowbirds”. These are people who leave their comfortable houses in New York and Boston and use their exquisite residences in Florida for the duration of the Winter. Sensible people!!! We reach Jacksonville then branch West to Sarasota where we stay again for a while to enjoy the beaches. The opera, ballet, concert and recital season is just beginning and the weather is again beginning to be perfect.
Sarasota has a young but usually well-rehearsed orchestra. They have an enthusiasm which is quite infectious.
When Julian Schwartz plays a ‘cello concerto in the first part of a concert, he joins them on the second ‘cello desk for the second part. Hed’s a “team player” and that speaks well for him and the orchestra. Members of the orchestra also arrange chamber music concerts when they are not otherwise engaged with concerts, operas or ballets.
I enjoy ‘Madama Butterfly’ and other music in the small Sarasota Opera House,
but I am extremely pleased by the Sarasota Ballet performing some of Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’ and ‘Les Deux Pigeons’. The performances are superb and they have a fine group of male dancers, some of whom come from Australia. Recently they have even evoked the spirit of the fabulous Sarasota Ringling Art Museum and Circus in one of their new ballets.
After a while, we decide that it is time to return to Seattle. (We miss the rain!!!) The route will be different from before so we head first to New Orleans, still suffering a little from the hurricane tragedy. We are surprised to find people who are smiling everywhere. We take the usual horse carriage trip around the French Quarter and it sounds as though they have already forgotten those terrible times.
We’re taking the most southerly route so our next stop is San Antonio where we pay homage to the heroes of the Alamo who include Jim Bowie and David Crockett.
Here’s the Davy Crockett song we all knew when we were kids. In this video, they sing the penultimate verse which many performers leave out.
Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
greenest state in the land of the free
raised in the woods so he knew ev’ry tree
kilt him a b’ar when he was only three
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
In eighteen thirteen the Creeks uprose
addin’ redskin arrows to the country’s woes
Now, Injun fightin’ is somethin’ he knows,
so he shoulders his rifle an’ off he goes
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don’t know fear!
Off through the woods he’s a marchin’ along
makin’ up yarns an’ a singin’ a song
itchin’ fer fightin’ an’ rightin’ a wrong
he’s ringy as a b’ar an’ twict as strong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the buckskin buccaneer!
Andy Jackson is our gen’ral’s name
his reg’lar soldiers we’ll put to shame
Them redskin varmints us Volunteers’ll tame
’cause we got the guns with the sure-fire aim
Davy, Davy Crockett, the champion of us all!~
Headed back to war from the ol’ home place
but Red Stick was leadin’ a merry chase
fightin’ an’ burnin’ at a devil’s pace
south to the swamps on the Florida Trace
Davy, Davy Crockett, trackin’ the redskins down!
Fought single-handed through the Injun War
till the Creeks was whipped an’ peace was in store
An’ while he was handlin’ this risky chore
made hisself a legend for evermore
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
He give his word an’ he give his hand
that his Injun friends could keep their land
An’ the rest of his life he took the stand
that justice was due every redskin band
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin’ his promise dear!
Home fer the winter with his family
happy as squirrels in the ol’ gum tree
bein’ the father he wanted to be
close to his boys as the pod an’ the pea
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin’ his young’uns dear!
But the ice went out an’ the warm winds came
an’ the meltin’ snow showed tracks of game
An’ the flowers of Spring filled the woods with flame
an’ all of a sudden life got too tame
Davy, Davy Crockett, headin’ on West again!
Off through the woods we’re ridin’ along
makin’ up yarns an’ singin’ a song
He’s ringy as a b’ar an’ twict as strong
an’ knows he’s right ’cause he ain’ often wrong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don’t know fear!
Lookin’ fer a place where the air smells clean
where the trees is tall an’ the grass is green
where the fish is fat in an untouched stream
an’ the teemin’ woods is a hunter’s dream
Davy, Davy Crockett, lookin’ fer Paradise!
Now he’s lost his love an’ his grief was gall
in his heart he wanted to leave it all
an’ lose himself in the forests tall
but he answered instead his country’s call
Davy, Davy Crockett, beginnin’ his campaign!
Needin’ his help they didn’t vote blind
They put in Davy ’cause he was their kind
sent up to Nashville the best they could find
a fightin’ spirit an’ a thinkin’ mind
Davy, Davy Crockett, choice of the whole frontier!
The votes were counted an’ he won hands down
so they sent him off to Washin’ton town
with his best dress suit still his buckskins brown
a livin’ legend of growin’ renown
Davy, Davy Crockett, the Canebrake Congressman!
He went off to Congress an’ served a spell
fixin’ up the Govern’ments an’ laws as well
took over Washin’ton so we heered tell
an’ patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell
Davy, Davy Crockett, seein’ his duty clear!
Him an’ his jokes travelled all through the land
an’ his speeches made him friends to beat the band
His politickin’ was their favorite brand
an’ everyone wanted to shake his hand
Davy, Davy Crockett, helpin’ his legend grow!
He knew when he spoke he sounded the knell
of his hopes for White House an’ fame as well
But he spoke out strong so hist’ry books tell
an’ patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell
Davy, Davy Crockett, seein’ his duty clear!
When he come home his politickin’ done
the western march had just begun
So he packed his gear an’ his trusty gun
an’ lit out grinnin’ to follow the sun
Davy, Davy Crockett, leadin’ the pioneer!
He heard of Houston an’ Austin so
to the Texas plains he jest had to go
Where freedom was fightin’ another foe
an’ they needed him at the Alamo
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don’t know fear!
His land is biggest an’ his land is best
from grassy plains to the mountain crest
He’s ahead of us all meetin’ the test
followin’ his legend into the West
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
Our next port of call is El Paso. Just over the border is considered the murder capital of the world while the drug wars continue. Even hospitals are not safe as gang members chase their victims into ER departments. We have heard that some hospitals have been reluctant to treat gunshot victims for this reason. (I have actually read that they refuse to treat gunshot wounds).
We manage to drive alongside the Rio Grande for a little distance where it forms the border between Texas and Mexico. After all I have heard about this great river, what I see now is a big disappointment. I can hardly see any flow of water. I only see part of North American history.
But we now drive through an area even more important historically; the place where the nuclear age branched irrevocably into weaponry. The great Leó Szilárd and Enrico Fermi had achieved the first chain reaction in the middle of Chicago in 1942 but, thanks to a letter written by Szilárd and Einstein to the President in 1939, the Manhattan Project was set up based in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The first nuclear explosion took place in Alamogordo, White Sands Proving grounds on 16 July 1945.
Subsequently the USA dropped two different kinds of nuclear bomb on Japan. Whatever people think now, this saved an estimated 180,000 wounded and up to 46,000 deaths of USA soldiers.
Leaving New Mexico we pass through Tucson and Phoenix on our way to Palm Springs. Then we drive North to Oakland where we again spend the night. From there we head up into Oregon passing the heights where we had previously encountered snow and ice the previous May. Surprisingly the road is perfectly clear even though it is now early November.
We now retrace our drive six months ago through Medford, Eugene and Portland before entering the state of Washington. We reach Seattle and finally Mill Creek in the county of Snohomish. We are home again!!!
I first heard it in an assembly in my school at the age of five – Barham School in Sudbury, Wembley(Keith Moon of the WHO went there later). We were told how people could sometimes see dogfights high above them which are perfectly described in William Walton’s music. The music was written for a film about the designer of the Spitfire R.J.Mitchell
I obviously LOVE this film!! The sound in the above video is not of the best quality, to say the least, but it has just enough emotion to satisfy most people’s love for this beautiful aeroplane.
The first concert I managed to get into was in the Albert Hall where Moiseiwitsch played Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’. I still remember the vigour with which he attacked the final movement – vigour that hid the sophistication of the music completely from me at that age. He really ‘swung’ the music like a celebration waltz in that final movement.
Somehow I DID manage to see an opera thanks to a member of the Covent Garden Orchestra giving us a couple of tickets to the Grand Tier. Can you imagine the effect of hearing this introduction
and such musical action on a child? It was devastating!! Even at that early age, I realised that there was no substitute for LIVE music. However, the standard of sound received through radios and record players at the time made this very obvious!
I began to sing in a local choir and actually managed to become a Junior Exhibitioner at Trinity college. But parental intervention saw me end up at a military school. I was NOT cut out for a military school. However, any survival instincts made me join the choir in order to miss church parades. We actually did a broadcast on the old ‘Home Service’ of the BBC singing Beethoven’s Creation Hymn. There’s no decent YouTube recording of this piece so here’s a version by a great singer.
As soon as I discovered how long we had to stand still during trooping the colour, I naturally joined the band. At this school we didn’t just wander into meals. We had to form up outside our houses and march in. At lunch we had the luxury of a band playing although it was hard to hear it when we started marching. But, in the band, I had no need to march at all. We played the march and wandered straight into lunch. So began my love of marches.
Sousa is the greatest march writer of all time. I remember a march called “High School Cadets” because we had to march up and down playing ONLY this march for over an hour because one morning the RSM thought we were a “shower”, whatever that means.
I remember Kenneth Alford’s “Army of the Nile” was the march we always seemed to march off Trooping rehearsals to in the Summer Term. I used to love the sound we made when we marched between the school building and the Headmaster’s house. The sound of the Trio bounced backwards and forwards between the two houses.
Why do I remember these last four pieces? I think it is because they are pop music of a bygone age. They can be played by anybody and are intellectually undemanding – just pure music.
The band did gigs now and then. We did the traditional ‘Beating the Retreat’. Here’s the sort f thing we did.
I staged a sort of musical revolution by forming a jazz band playing mainly dixieland arrangements which were in vogue then. An obvious start was a jazz arrangement of the old New Orleans march “High Society”. The clarinet traditionally plays the old piccolo obligato and this is the only solo I ever played from memory. It was the tradition and we all respected the old New Orleans.
I managed to get to the ‘100 Club’ in Oxford Street now and again. I loved the band of Humphrey Lyttleton or “Humph” as we knew him. The “100 club” has completely changed its character nowadays but people are still aware that Louis Armstrong played there and the other greats that inhabited its earlier days,
Here is Humph’s band playing “Ce Messieu Qui Parle”. I never saw Humph playing clarinet but here he is paying tribute to the composer of this tune the great Sidney Bechet
In my early years, I loved walking into London from my home in Sudbury Town, Wembley. I must have walked every inch of London while much of it was in ruins. I seem to have done a lot of jobs – Making glass radio fronts – Selling silk in Oxford Street – Blue Coating in Butlins – Running an Amusement Arcade – Making and Selling Toffee Popcorn -Teaching Film Studies – tutoring anything else – Acoustics Lecturing – Peripatetic woodwind teaching – Cathedral Lay Clerking – Playing in a Mecca Big Band – Gigging on saxophone and clarinet – Playing operatics – Guiding French people around London (and losing them!!!) and anything else that would earn money.
Unfortunately, I wasted my teenage years learning military things although I admit that I did enjoy riding around Germany on a tank with British soldiers – doing impossible rock climbs – leading survival courses – gigging around with my Jazz band – doing personal gigs where the band would push me up into the dorm window after midnight. I even won the ‘Wavell Prize’ for “Initiative” after I wrote up all my escapist activities!!
Eventually I studied Physics and Mathematics and briefly became a Theoretical Physicist. Then I saw the light of day and did another degree course – this time in Music Composition.
With a desperate need to actually earn some money, instead of doing music research, I had to take a job with the Arts Council of Great Britain, then Cardiff University followed by a music job in Australia and a Mathematics job in England.
Then, after the most terrible part of my life “so far”, I was unfortunately set free to travel . . . . .
Why, you ask, should anyone call their blog page “Corno di Bassetto”?
Well, the truth is that all the other other more mundane instruments of the orchestra had been taken. I was surprised to find that the “Corno di Bassetto” name was still not claimed in this corner of the world wide web.
Most of us only know the Corno di Bassetto from that sad opening to Mozart’s Requiem. Why did Mozart choose these instruments? The obvious answer is that their sounds can be truly “sad” and I think most conductors draw this feature out in performance.
But I like to think that, if Mozart had any premonition of his own eventual death, he would anticipate missing his friends including Anton Stadler for whom he had written this Corno di Bassetto obligato in Titus, “La Clemenza di Tito”.
After writing this obligato, Mozart completed a concerto for Anton Stadler which was also originally begun as a concerto for Corno di Bassetto.
Mozart changed this to a Concerto for Bassett Clarinet, in which form we have only recently had the privilege of hearing it. But of course, he also wrote a wonderful Bassett Clarinet obligato in ‘La Clemenza di Tito’. Here we see Claudio conducting
Cecilia Bartoli in the aria “Parto, Parto, Ma Tu Ben Mio” featuring the Bassett Clarinet playing of Sabine Meyer. I should add that, when I first heard this in the Estates Theatre in Prague where Anton Stadler first performed this obligato conducted by Mozart, the clarinet came though very clearly against the voice. (With recordings, we are alas subject to the wiles of the sound engineer!!)
So why not hear the Slow Movement and the Rondo for Bassett clarinet which Mozart also wrote for Anton Stadler? You can see here how much longer is Sabine Mayer’s Bassett Clarinet compared with the length of the A Clarinet we have been used to seeing in the concert hall for this concerto.
As a musician and erstwhile music critic, I was very aware that the name ‘Corno di Bassetto’ had been used by George Bernard Shaw. Apart from his often strange controversial and weird utterances, some of his more piercing observations live with us today.
Would you believe that I have actually trod the boards once in my life with a very small part in “St Joan”? It was Graham Green who prepared the screen version of Shaw’s play. . . .
Another film from a Shaw stage play is ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’ . . . .
We have all probably heard of ‘Pygmalion’ later known in another adaption as “My Fair Lady”
Other works by GBS include ‘Man and Superman’
‘Candida’
. . . . and ‘The Arms and the Man’
This is why anyone using the name ‘Corno di Bassetto’ must pay homage to GBS.
My first love was the Spitfire. There is music about the Spitfire.
I first heard it in an assembly in my school at the age of five – Barham School in Sudbury, Wembley(Keith Moon of the WHO went there later). We were told how people could sometimes see dogfights high above them which are perfectly described in William Walton’s music. The music was written for a film about the designer of the Spitfire R.J.Mitchell
I obviously LOVE this film!! The sound in the above video is not of the best quality, to say the least, but it has just enough emotion to satisfy most people’s love for this beautiful aeroplane.
The first concert I managed to get into was in the Albert Hall where Moiseiwitsch played Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’. I still remember the vigour with which he attacked the final movement – vigour that hid the sophistication of the music completely from me at that age. He really ‘swung’ the music like a celebration waltz in that final movement.
Somehow I DID manage to see an opera thanks to a member of the Covent Garden Orchestra giving us a couple of tickets to the Grand Tier. Can you imagine the effect of hearing this introduction then watching the curtain go up to reveal such a bright scene
and such musical action on a child? It was devastating!! Even at that early age, I realised that there was no substitute for LIVE music. However, the standard of sound received through radios and record players at the time made this very obvious!
I began to sing in a local choir and actually managed to become a Junior Exhibitioner at Trinity college. But parental intervention saw me end up at a military school. I was NOT cut out for a military school. However, any survival instincts made me join the choir in order to miss church parades. We actually did a broadcast on the old ‘Home Service’ of the BBC singing Beethoven’s Creation Hymn. There’s no decent YouTube recording of this piece so here’s a version by a great singer.
In the same broadcast, the school band played ‘The Standard of St George’, a great march by Kenneth Alford the greatest English equivalent of Sousa.
As soon as I discovered how long we had to stand still during trooping the colour, I naturally joined the band. At this school we didn’t just wander into meals. We had to form up outside our houses and march in. At lunch we had the luxury of a band playing although it was hard to hear it when we started marching. But, in the band, I had no need to march at all. We played the march and wandered straight into lunch. So began my love of marches.
Sousa is the greatest march writer of all time. I remember a march called “High School Cadets” because we had to march up and down playing ONLY this march for over an hour because one morning the RSM thought we were a “shower”, whatever that means.
I remember Kenneth Alford’s “Army of the Nile” was the march we always seemed to march off Trooping rehearsals to in the Summer Term. I used to love the sound we made when we marched between the school building and the Headmaster’s house. The sound of the Trio bounced backwards and forwards between the two houses.
Of course we had to play music for the “inspections”. When the temperature went below zero we always seemed to play Juventino Rosas’s “Sobre las Olas”
I liked the slightly unusual marches such as “Washington Grays”.
and the great continental marches such as Carl Teike’s “Alte Kameraden”
and that great march by Louis Ganne “La Marche Lorraine”
But I enjoyed playing orchestral pieces arranged for band such as Hérold’s “Zampa” overture.
but I particularly enjoyed playing the clarinet solos in pieces like Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld”
At garden parties we play stuff like Gabriel Marie’s “La Cinqantaine”
or “The Grasshopper’s Dance”
and longer pieces like Albert Ketelby’s “Bells Across the Meadow”
A Ketelby winner was always “In a Monastery Garden” which even received a performance one year at the Last night of the Proms.
Why do I remember these last four pieces? I think it is because they are pop music of a bygone age. They can be played by anybody and are intellectually undemanding – just pure music.
The band did gigs now and then. We did the traditional ‘Beating the Retreat’. Here’s the sort f thing we did.
and sometimes played for march pasts to celebrate various occasions. i enjoyed all these gigs as it got us out of the boredom of school.
I did manage to play in the Kent Symphony Orchestra. I can only remember Mendelssohn’s “Italian symphony”
and the Wagner “Siegfried idyll”
On the other hand, I remember with great pleasure torturing the whole school by playing the Hindemith Clarinet Sonata!
I staged a sort of musical revolution by forming a jazz band playing mainly dixieland arrangements which were in vogue then. An obvious start was a jazz arrangement of the old New Orleans march “High Society”. The clarinet traditionally plays the old piccolo obligato and this is the only solo I ever played from memory. It was the tradition and we all respected the old New Orleans.
Another march is “South Rampart Street Parade”
I managed to get to the ‘100 Club’ in Oxford Street now and again. I loved the band of Humphrey Lyttleton or “Humph” as we knew him. The “100 club” has completely changed its character nowadays but people are still aware that Louis Armstrong played there and the other greats that inhabited its earlier days,
Here is Humph’s band playing “Ce Messieu Qui Parle”. I never saw Humph playing clarinet but here he is paying tribute to the composer of this tune the great Sidney Bechet
Here he is performing with his band on a gig in Barnes
and his farourite “pop” tune.
For many later years many people associated Humph with the BBC’s “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” Here he is at the age of 87.
and the items therein.
I arranged some Gilbert and Sullivan orchestral scores for band so we could perform the operas in the school with instrumental accompaniment.
But, in the end, I have these two marches engraved in my memory
It’s the first day of July and the Vienna Opera and Ballet has shut down for the Summer. Time to leave Vienna to the tourists!!
The problem with flying Lufthansa from Vienna to Seattle is that you have to leave Vienna very early to catch the one flight they have from Frankfurt to Seattle. It leaves at 0615 in the morning!!! So I have to leave my comfortable apartment in the Secession to stay at the NH Airport Hotel the night before I leave.
The journey to Vienna Airport can be a little puzzling. The simplest seems tho be the Airport Bus which leaves from Westbahnhof and stops at various points on the way costing 8 euros. This is the most comfortable way if you are near a stop.
The second way is to catch the Ubahn to Wien Mitte and catch the CAT airport train. This costs about 2.20 euros to Mitte and 14 euros on the direct train taking 20 minutes to the airport. When you arrive at Mitte, you must walk through a shopping centre following an excellent series of signs to find the ‘CAT’. The trains run every half hour.
My method is to travel to Mitte and catch the normal train to the airport which costs a total of 4.40 euros. Ticketing can be puzzling because you simply buy TWO Ubahn tickets and cancel them BOTH before you travel. Changing trains at Mitte is simple as you simply walk down the tunnel which joins to the other railway ignoring the excellent signs trying to persuade you to take the CAT instead! The trains stop at stations on the way so the journey takes over half an hour. The trains run every half hour.
I arrive in the hotel and report to the desk, only to be told, “I must see the manager about THIS!” After the receptionist returns, she explains that I have obtained a very low price for my room, so low that they are all surprised.
In fact, I had used my usual tactics of booking an optimum number of days before my stay. I had then “registered” as an NH member on the NH site then placed a booking and noted the price. I then tried booking WITHOUT using my registration and suddenly a far cheaper price appeared!!! It didn’t make sense to me. I presume their algorithm had failed. I obviously booked the lower price.
Having arrived, I take the opportunity to collect my boarding passes over the way in the main airport. Austrian Airlines handles all the ticketing for Lufthansa and there are plenty of desks handling everything very efficiently. I use the opportunity to change my seat to one of the best in the economy class for the flight from Frankfurt and also book my meals.
The following morning was very straightforward. Not too many travellers were about early in the mooring so checking luggage and passing through TSA was simpler than usual. The old A320 zoomed us quickly to cruising altitude and, after a flight with hardly any bumps, we were in Frankfurt.
Arriving in Frankfurt, there was very little explanation of how to get to our places for the next flights. What is the difference between the “A” gates and the “Z” gates? Another problem to look out for its that the boarding pass only gives the time when the gates CLOSE not the time when the flight DEPARTS. The display boards only show the departure times of course.
Annoyingly we are bussed out to our A340 airbus instead of the A330 which I had on my way from Seattle. (I hope it saves Lufthansa money which they can deduct from the fare prices.) I rejoice in the fact that I have a wonderful seat in the aisle at the bulkhead where I can stretch my legs out – the perfect seat for me!!!
My elation is suddenly dampened by a very nice cabin crew lady who asked me whether I would give up my seat to a lady with a baby. Of course, I agree. She says, “That is VERY kind of you!” and I, in my best English way, say, “No, it is very kind of YOU because you are doing your job!”
But I wonder how Lufthansa can so easily overlook the needs of a lady travelling with a baby? Surely that should have been picked up earlier?
Of course, I do not really understand how kind I am until I attempt to squeeze myself into the seat I have been given!!! I have difficulty squeezing into most airline seats but I have the impression that A320 seats on the Vienna to Frankfurt flight allowed me more room than the A340 I am in now.
The flight is uneventful and, even on the section over Greenland, we experience very little turbulence. Now and then I unwedge myself from my seat and walk around and I notice many other passengers doing the same. It’s only a ten hour flight but I can never sleep much on trips like this so it seems longer.
Just before we land, the nice cabin crew lady come to me and says, “I hope this makes up for your seat move. It’s what we serve in the first class cabin”. She gives me a bottle of wine. I imagine that I have been given a classic wine of great character. When I arrive home in Seattle, we find that it is a Merlot from Brazil!!! Germany 7 – Brazil 1. Thank you, Lufthansa!!!
I’ve heard a lot about EasyJet. It is apparently a larger airline than British Airways and it has a direct cheap flight from London to Vienna. There was even a long series about them on television some time ago.
So I think it is about time I tried them out.
The flights to Vienna leave from Gatwick Airport South of London so my first part of the journey is from Ely to London, Kings Cross. The train is very comfortable and smooth running and doesn’t rattle too much as many other trains. It takes us twenty minutes got reach Cambridge then another fifty minutes before we arrive in Kings Cross.
Kings Cross is a magnificent station.
Just next to it across a beautiful concourse is St Pancras station.
Years ago I would have needed to take the tube to Victoria station then catch the train South to Gatwick. Nowadays, there is a direct train from St Pancras to Gatwick Airport. The train does take a strange route through London but it saves a lot of trouble especially when the tube is extremely busy.
The Gatwick Airport railway stain is under the concourse of the North terminal of Gatwick Airport so it takes hardly any time before I am being turned over by TSA. EasyJet sends you the boarding pass after checking in online so there is no delay unless you choose to check luggage for which you pay extra.
My flight boards at the gate which is the very furthest from the centre. It is a very long walk but I finally get there to hear a very authoritative voice telling us exactly what we have to do. As a result, we are soon sitting down awaiting a takeoff which is on time.
This is a “no frills” airline so I notice experienced EasyJet flyers opening their sandwiches and some people appeared to have prepared lunch boxes which I assume they bought in the terminal after passing through TSA. Everything anyone might want WAS available but at a price based on the “user pays” principle rather than, as many other airlines, charging everybody for services they might not want.
The plane is the usual small airbus which zooms up to cruising height and makes light of the journey to Vienna.
Arriving at the entrance to the airport I take the coach to Westbahnhof near to the apartment where I am staying for the next few days. This costs 8 euros whereas the tourist CAT train into Vienna will cost a total of 16 euros. The normal train which I usually take would have cost 4.40 euros.
Back in Vienna I enjoy performances of ’Tosca’ (that ALWAYS seems to be on when I am here!!!), a’ charming production of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen’, and an extremely long five hour Ballet Gala with all the ‘pops’ which everybody enjoys. After all, the Staatsoper is closed for July and August.
But I DID enjoy the last two operas of Wagner’s ‘Ring’. I missed ‘Valkyrie’ but I was glad of this because Siegmund actually lost his voice and had to mime with a singer at the the side of the stage!!!
But our Siegfried in ’Siegfried’
and ‘Götterdämmerung’ did NOT let us down and a magnificent Brunehilde screamed her way magnificently to her fiery end.
10 hours of great wonderful sound and a story of a simpleton who talks to birds, slays a dragon, finds his soul mate then gives her away only to be stabbed in the back for his pains. To be honest, it is worth the ten hours just to hear ‘tunes’ played by those magnificent eight horns!!! What a sound!!!
After all that, I am ready to spend the Summer in Seattle. Al Jarreau has booked the Staatsoper for the first week in July!!
With all the news of a takeover of London by foreign billionaires, I have been reluctant to venture into Central London. But, determined to bite the contemporary bullet, I am going forth into areas I knew well as a child when many of the city’s buildings were still in ruins.
Arriving in Victoria station, I walk up the familiar Buckingham Palace Road to “Buck’ House”. (It isn’t REALLY a palace the REAL Palace is across the road as St James Palace but, as the Queen sometimes lives there, I suppose we must call ‘Buck House’ a palace also.)
It is fairly early so the road in front of Buckingham ‘ Palace’ is almost deserted. So is Birdcage Walk in front of Wellington Barracks. The lack of people in St James’s Park is wonderful. Having stretches of this lovely park to myself is a great way to spend Sunday morning.
After enjoying the lake, I cross the Mall, along which the stage 3 of the ‘Tour de France’ has recently finished, and then come up to Green Park. It seems as though NOTHING had changed there. Not many people and it seems very peaceful.
There are a three police horses under a tree with kids stroking them. I have a chat to the rather older lady on one of them and she says this job is the answer to a dream. She has been on front line policing for the last ten years and NOW she is very happy on a horse!!! (She had been a “horsey girl” since she was a baby!!) But, although this seems like a ‘easy’ number for a police person, it is VERY serious work these days. A police person on a horse probably has a better view of a terrorist than a helicopter and, of course, a terrorist has a good view of the police horse person.
I walk through Green Park then up Constitution hill and across Hyde park Corner into Hyde Park.
This brings back an old memory when I was working in Piccadilly. I used to go to work late morning as I was always at performances in the evening. I arrived at my tube stop which was Hyde Park Corner and walked up the stairs into the sunlight by the gates into Hyde Park. The gates were open but the whole of Hyde Park Corner seemed deserted. Anyone who knows London will realise that this could only happen if the world had ended!!
Coming up constitution Hill I spied a number of cars travelling quite fast. They drove across the area heading for my gate. They seemed full of very official people and they were in open cars. As they reached me, I saw the Queen was in the third car.
What do you do if the Queen looks at you wondering why you are there? Nervously I raised my hand. Her response was a very professional slight movement of her hand. Then they were gone followed by more cars full of even more extremely official people.
After recalling this horrifying memory I walk into Hyde Park. There’s a long road just inside the park along which the Horse Guards trot to mount the guard just inside Whitehall. Half way to the Household Cavalry Barracks is a monument to the time when the IRA blew up the procession and killed a number of men and horses.
An old school friend became the Director of Music of one of the Horse Guards. He had to spend a lot of time learning to ride a horse. He told me that the procession would stop by the memorial in order to remember their dead comrades. On his very first day, his horse stopped as usual but slowly slid its legs out either side until its stomach was resting on the ground.
My friend was naturally very alarmed and called back to the NCO in charge of the band. “what do I do?” The band sergeant called back, “just hang on for a bit!”. Slowly bit by bit the old horse stirred and gradually got up, blood coming from its wounds. eventually the horse regained its stance and the procession continued. The old horse completed the morning’s guard mounting and was immediately retired.
The replacement horse was another problem because it insisted on crossing its legs when standing still in front of the band. During part of Trooping, this meant standing opposite the Queen, one of the best judges of horses in the world. As she probably selected this horse for the Household Brigade, I’m sure she had second thoughts about that second replacement horse!!!
Walking past the Household Cavalry barracks I see the names of the horses which have served the regiments in recent years on the walls surrounding the barracks. It is difficult to understand the enthusiasm of these soldiers who return from Afghanistan to ride to the standard required of them to mount guard on horseback.
Probably the most useful memorial to Queen Victoria’s beloved husband Albert is the Albert Hall just along from Hyde Park opposite Kensington Gardens.
But just opposite in the Gardens themselves is the Albert Memorial. We used to regard this as the ugliest and most OTT memorial in London but perhaps things have changed? It is certainly a very positive Victorian statement, as well it might be!!!
I walk across the road to the Albert Hall. They often have concerts at three o’clock on Sunday afternoons but I am glad they don’t have one today as I would be tempted to stay here for a concert and see those ‘flying saucers’ which I helped put up 46 years ago.
I walk down the steps to the RCM then left past Imperial and turn right into Exhibition Road to reach the Science Museum. This is still FANTASTIC!!! You need a few days to appreciate that place but I stay to see two people get a huge steam engine going with a HUGE flywheel about 20 feet across!!! An amazing museum!!! SO exciting. It hasn’t changed its approach.
I now rather reluctantly leave the Science Museum and venture next door to the Natural History Museum. Whereas the Science Museum is rather thinly populated, the Natural History Museum is filled with people mostly seeking out the dinosaur skeleton collection.
When I was a kid I would spend most of my time in the Science Museum sometimes attending a few lectures. Before I did this, I always paid my respects to the Blue Whale. Every time I looked at this huge animal, it reminded me of how small we humans really are. Squeezing my way through crowds of kids enjoying the dinosaurs, I once more see my blue whale. It still amazes me.
After the Natural History Museum, my next stop is the Victoria and Albert Museum. Only a brief visit this time. I notice that a lot of ladies are attracted by the special exhibition of wedding dresses.
I exit through the front door on to Brompton Road and walk along to Brompton Oratory, a very famous Catholic centre for religious music. I manage to hear some singing at the end of the last Mass of the day then some wonderful organ music.
Walking further along the street, I come to some rather famous shops with crowds of mainly Middle Eastern visitors issuing from them. Further along the road I return to Hyde Park Corner and, instead of walking along Constitution Hill again, I take the direct road back to Victoria past rows of imposing but slightly seedy old buildings. One of them contains the headquarters of the Tata group.
There’s too much traffic on the main roads but, on my walking route, there has been very little traffic for most of the way. There were very few people around until I reached the sports areas of Hyde Park. Plenty of visitors in the Science Museum but the only crowded areas were around the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum.
At last I reach Victoria and catch the train home after a walk which which has not taken very long. It seems longer because it has stirred many of my childhood memories – Guard mounting at Buck House – feeding the ducks in St James’s Park – listening to the band in Green Park – walking around and rowing on the Serpentine – wandering in Kensington Gardens – working and listening in the Albert Hall – Sitting in the orchestra for conducting exams in the RCM and visiting Tristram Cary’s studio – SO many visits to that treasure house of science, the Science Museum – the Blue whale – the V & A museum where we all saw a copy of the complete Bayeux tapestry – the tunnel from South Kensington station to the museums . . . . . . . .
A child can have a LOT of fun and learn a lot of things in Central London!!!! OK, I missed a lot of places where I went elsewhere in London but THOSE childhood memories around Kensington are SO precious!!!
I’ve heard a lot about EasyJet. It is apparently a larger airline than British Airways and it has a direct cheap flight from London to Vienna. There was even a long series about them on television some time ago.
So I think it is about time I tried them out.
The flights to Vienna leave from Gatwick Airport South of London so my first part of the journey is from Ely to London, Kings Cross. The train is very comfortable and smooth running and doesn’t rattle too much as many other trains. It takes us twenty minutes got reach Cambridge then another fifty minutes before we arrive in Kings Cross.
Kings Cross is a magnificent station.
Just next to it across a beautiful concourse is St Pancras station.
Years ago I would have needed to take the tube to Victoria station then catch the train South to Gatwick. Nowadays, there is a direct train from St Pancras to Gatwick Airport. The train does take a strange route through London but it saves a lot of trouble especially when the tube is extremely busy.
The Gatwick Airport railway stain is under the concourse of the North terminal of Gatwick Airport so it takes hardly any time before I am being turned over by TSA. EasyJet sends you the boarding pass after checking in online so there is no delay unless you choose to check luggage for which you pay extra.
My flight boards at the gate which is the very furthest from the centre. It is a very long walk but I finally get there to hear a very authoritative voice telling us exactly what we have to do. As a result, we are soon sitting down awaiting a takeoff which is on time.
This is a “no frills” airline so I notice experienced EasyJet flyers opening their sandwiches and some people appeared to have prepared lunch boxes which I assume they bought in the terminal after passing through TSA. Everything anyone might want WAS available but at a price based on the “user pays” principle rather than, as many other airlines, charging everybody for services they might not want.
The plane is the usual small airbus which zooms up to cruising height and makes light of the journey to Vienna.
Arriving at the entrance to the airport I take the coach to Westbahnhof near to the apartment where I am staying for the next few days. This costs 8 euros whereas the tourist CAT train into Vienna will cost a total of 16 euros. The normal train which I usually take would have cost 4.40 euros.
Back in Vienna I enjoy performances of ’Tosca’ (that ALWAYS seems to be on when I am here!!!), a’ charming production of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen’, and an extremely long five hour Ballet Gala with all the ‘pops’ which everybody enjoys. After all, the Staatsoper is closed for July and August.
But I DID enjoy the last two operas of Wagner’s ‘Ring’. I missed ‘Valkyrie’ but I was glad of this because Siegmund actually lost his voice and had to mime with a singer at the the side of the stage!!!
But our Siegfried in ’Siegfried’
and ‘Götterdämmerung’ did NOT let us down and a magnificent Brunehilde screamed her way magnificently to her fiery end.
10 hours of great wonderful sound and a story of a simpleton who talks to birds, slays a dragon, finds his soul mate then gives her away only to be stabbed in the back for his pains. To be honest, it is worth the ten hours just to hear ‘tunes’ played by those magnificent eight horns!!! What a sound!!!
After all that, I am ready to spend the Summer in Seattle. Al Jarreau has booked the Staatsoper for the first week in July!!
I’ve flown all over Europe with Air Berlin. They are similar to many of the other point-to- point airlines but they also allow 23 kilos of checked luggage without having to pay extra.
As with others, you can check in online. This seems to be important in this day and age. So I dutifully check in for the first leg of my journey online but I fail to check in for the second part. This means that I will have the ordeal of carrying out the whole operation in Vienna Airport.
After turning up at Vienna Airport, I manage to find the Air Berlin desks and I see a long line for one of the desks. When I get closer, I see that this desk is for people who have checked in online!! The other desk for people like me has nobody waiting!!! So my details are processed immediately while the other more considerate clients are left waiting. I’m sure that my desk could have dealt with that line of considerate online checkers.
The plane arrives on time so there is no delay in boarding. My seat is in front of the wing so I am not disturbed by the slight turbulence on the way to my first stop in Dusseldorf. I order my usual drink of tea plus fizzy water but I pocket the sandwich given out to eat for lunch later on as I have neglected to bring any euro small currency.
We are soon bumping down through cloud to Dusseldorf airport. Being on time means that I have a fairly long wait for my flight to Stansted. I still remember my last journey along this route when we arrived at a time well after the departure time of the Stansted flight. We were all taken personally to the aircraft waiting for us. I was very impressed by the way we were treated then so I am looking forward to this Stansted flight.
But this is not to be. We are shepherded on to a bus and taken for a long trip along lines of planes until we reach . . . . . a wind-up propeller plane!!!! My last trip on this route was by a small airbus. It was a short flight but with the degree of comfort which we have all become accustomed.
Instead of the adjustable seats we had on the airbus, this plane has fixed seats. I cannot see why the comfort within such a plane should be so limited just because it is not an airbus.
We take off and don’t have too much turbulence at all. One lady, who seems to have some ‘help’ somewhere elsewhere seems to be doing everything except fly the plane. She literally runs up and down the plane to collect stuff for our quick drink and munch. Somehow we are all watered and fed by the time we arrive at Stansted.
Stansted is a good airport at which to arrive in England. Heathrow is not pleasant these days. Getting through passport control and customs takes very little time and the checked luggage also seems to arrive very swiftly indeed.
The next advantage of Stansted is that it has a mainline station just below the arrivals hall. In no time, I am on the train to Ely via Cambridge. It’s countryside all the way until we reach Cambridge where commuters come aboard on their way home. They tell me that the train is cheaper than driving and more restful.
The train continues on its way through fens; a type of country similar to Holland on the other side of the North Sea. Before the fens were drained, Cambridge used to be a port. Now the River Cam is a very unimpressive stretch of water used by ‘bumping’ oars and punts.
We soon reach Ely after a very pleasant run through more fenland. I see a smiling face in the front of a taxi outside the station and I dump my heavy case in the back of her van. We drive towards the amazingly huge Ely Cathedral and I am dropped very near at my new abode.
My first call is to ALDI just opposite. Then I make my way into the Cathedral for Evensong; a service completely sung every evening, In Ely, they still sing the office hymns which have been sung here for over a thousand years. The sound in the quire is wonderful. It may not be Vienna but I am happy.
Traveling by train in Switzerland is a dream most of the time. One of my favorite train journeys is from St Moritz over the pass into Italy.
It is possible to have a very enjoyable holiday simply traveling on railways throughout Switzerland.
The only problem with Switzerland is the Swiss!!! OK, There are lots of lovely Swiss people especially when you rent their lovely chalets and apartments in places with incredible views but I would just like to give just one example where a Swiss gentleman did his job in an extraordinarily exemplary fashion.
We were staying Wengen and decided to take a gentle ridge walk which, I have to confess, we took the cable car up to the ridge. I know it is good practice to walk up the hill but the weather was beautiful – the scenery was beautiful and we felt beautiful as a result. But not strong enough to manage the ascent unaided.
The cable car ride was beautiful and the gentle ridge walk was just what was needed after the spending the day before traveling across the country and up the short section of mountain railway to Wengen where we simply walked around until we found somewhere to stay.
The arrangement then was, if you bought a return cable car ticket, you could return by the mountain railway. Standing on the ridge we spied a railway station. We realized that this was the ideal way to return to Wengen.
We rested in the local hostelry and awaited the arrival of the train. Somewhat refreshed, we boarded the train and began to enjoy the descent into Wengen.
Until . . . a very smart uniformed man appeared in front of us and demanded to see our tickets. The demand seemed more like a military order than a request from a servant of the railway company.
We dutifully proffered our tickets. The uniformed man lent forward as if to inspect our tickets to see whether they needed fumigation.
“And where did you get these?”, he snapped in his most formal voice.
We replied that we had bought the return ticket which allowed to return using the mountain railway.
“You can NOT use these on THIS railway!!!”, he spluttered in what seems to be the ultimate level of astonishment.
We explained our understanding of what the tickets said but he just stood shaking his head in what appeared to be disbelief.
“No, No, No, No, . . . . . “, he kept muttering to himself. “I will keep an eye on you until we arrive. Then I will take you to the inspector!!!”
I think we were supposed to be terrified by all this. For the whole journey, this very correct man stood in front of us seemingly restraining us from any thoughts of escape we might contrive.
At last, we arrived.
“Follow me!!!”, our officer snapped.
Of course, we followed him until we were confronted by an even more important official. He looked us up and down then had a private consultation with his junior.
All four of us then trooped into the ticket hall and the very important man took our tickets from his junior then reached into the window and produced two different tickets. He then handed these to his junior and gave a parting judgemental gaze to us all.
The three of us then went on to the platform and we looked at this man who had made our journey down the mountain so terrifying.
“These are the CORRECT tickets!!
With an extremely professional flourish, he held the two tickets up in front of him, drew his clipper from his holster and clipped the tickets presumably in order to cancel them.
With one smooth even more professional gesture, he enabled the tickets to drop straight into the rubbish bin on the platform.
For the first since our ordeal had begun, he gave us a wry smile then, with a wave, departed on the train.
Choosing an airline to fly from Seattle to Vienna should not be difficult. You can fly from a number of USA and Canadian cities direct to Vienna but Seattle does not share this convenience. London is still the biggest hub from which to travel to most European destinations but the conditions in the extended waiting areas of Heathrow are terribly congested and unpleasant sometimes. Our friend Boris, Mayor of London, has proposed many solutions to this problem including a new airport in the Thames Estuary. In my opinion this is the only logical way in which London can remain an important hub for Europe but I suspect that it is already too late for it to remain THE main hub for Europe. One suggested ‘band aid’ solution to the “slot” time problem is to build a third runway for Heathrow but I suspect that this would only make transit problems worse. However, London Heathrow Airport is still the best place from which to enter London as the Piccadilly Line “tube” actually starts its journey into the heart of the metropolis from there.
British Airways runs a daily service between London Heathrow and Seattle using ancient 747 400 series planes in the Winter and sleek 777 Boeings during the Summer. I have travelled on both planes but it is the transit area of London Heathrow which persuades me to look elsewhere for a route.
Perchance to dream, my eye alights on the Lufthansa site wherein I see a nice airbus which runs between Seattle and Frankfurt each day. It leaves early in the afternoon and arrives in Frankfurt around nine o’clock next morning. This allows a relaxed transit to the Vienna connection which arrives at a decent time of day in Vienna. I book this route allowing plenty of time between my arrival in Frankfurt and the departure time of the Vienna flight.
Lufthansa only allow 23 kilos of checked luggage and mine comes to 22.6 kilos, thanks to a portable luggage scale which I discover is thankfully very accurate. But later, when we are waiting in the boarding area, a Lufthansa lady comes round and attempts to lift passengers’ hand luggage. The hand luggage of a nearby passenger weighs 16 kilos!!! Instead of charging a massive amount, the nice Lufthansa lady tells everybody that overweight or oversize hand luggage MUST be checked in but Lufthansa will charge NOTHING for this privilege. Very different from other airlines which we will not mention.
But before this comes the dreaded TSA. As I have arrived very early, I decide to refuse to be checked by a machine, even if the radiation level is very low. The TSA people are very polite and ask me to step aside and they will get a “specialist” to check me over. For this, I do not have to remove my belt or other appurtenances but I do have to take off my boots as usual. I am frisked very efficiently with no problems or embarrassment then the gloves worn are tested for drugs using the machine we have all seen on a television programme called “Border Protection” or something like that.
Next comes my contact with Homeland Security which is very important to me after the awful warning I received in Hawaii on my arrival, “Make sure you do not overstay this time or we will hound you for the rest of your life!” I somehow find the USA Customs in the bowels of the Airport Building and question a friendly officer on my status. He is appalled at the “hound you for the rest of your life” warning and assures me that, because I have stayed four months and a day in Seattle, they will definitely welcome me back in four months and a day’s time. This is good news because I have already booked my ticket!
The flight from Frankfurt has arrived on time
so, having completed my pre-flight duties, I relax and wait until my flight is called. On my way into the plane, I see piles of almost every German newspaper plus a number of English language newspapers including the FT. As I enter the aircraft I hear all the announcement being made in German!!! For various reasons this has a very emotional effect on me. We are ALREADY in Germany!!! I LIKE this. The aircraft looks brand new and very comfortable. I have reserved a centre aisle seat, knowing that nobody will book the two centre seats.
For some reason, Lufthansa cabin crew love to do the Seattle run. A couple of them told us that they must put their names down up to a year in advance to get this run. Of course we met them at the Seattle outlets where I buy most of my stuff at an average discount of 95% at least. A European visiting the outlets on just one day can save an amount equalling the airfare to the USA. But they also seem to like the city and perhaps the clean air which comes in from the Pacific. But it does mean that they are as sorry to be leaving as I am.
A self defence regime which many of us use on international flights is to order the vegetarian option on the menu. You get served first. But before this come the drinks. I am determined to sleep on this flight so I have three plastic tumblers full of red wine with my delicious huge meal . After the meal, I am offered a nice liquor but I choose to have a large brandy. That should really help, I think. The cabin crew keep plying us with drinks all through the night and even force us to devour delicious chocolates which they hand out in packets of three.
As usual, I hardly sleep at all. As usual I use the latest hi-tech video system to watch the route being followed by the plane. This system uses something like Google Earth prompted by the global position of the plane. This means we get a beautifully clear picture of the land below even when it is completely obscured by cloud. I notice that the pilot is not taking us by the normal route over South Greenland near Iceland but a longer route far South of this. In fact this looks like a straight line on out normal map projection instead of the grand circle route with which we are familiar. This results in a very smooth ride with hardly any turbulence and a picturesque ride over the Irish, Welsh and South England countryside before encountering the European mainland. Breakfast is yet another huge incredible meal – more like a dinner than a breakfast but of course in Seattle it IS dinner time.
In contrast to London’s Heathrow, Frankfurt is a vast expanse of countryside. I love it because it has a main DB station through which all the main trains run. You simply walk out from the customs hall down a corridor into the station. It’s that easy. But this time, I am changing on to another flight. I take the precaution of asking an attendant about my flight and he tells me that the departure gate has been changed.
The Vienna flight is fully booked and another nice Lufthansa person is rounding up all those naughty passengers who have exceeded their carry-on allowance but again checking them in with no charge. Passengers have the use of a rather nice coffee machine which makes coffee of various types directly instead of using capsules. I have a few hot chocolates as I wait for the flight to board.
I have travelled on the small 320 airbuses all over Europe and for some reason I love them. We shoot up to cruising height and have a very smooth ride into Vienna. I talk to a group from Texas who work in the IT business. I thought I had escaped from these sorts of people when I left Seattle.
I find my luggage and mosey down to the suburban rail link into the city. You need to know about this line because it is the only train which connects directly with the Vienna underground trains. It’s also a third of the price of the “Airport Train” which is advertised all over the place. You also cannot buy tickets before actually arriving on the platform. Luckily, more and more tourists are discovery that this train is actually more convenient, not just cheaper, than the “Airport Train”, thanks to the internet. I change at ‘Mitte’ on to the city underground system and must go two stops to Karlsplatz where my apartment is situated.
I dump my stuff and immediately rush to the nearby ALDI for supplies. (ALDI here has taken the name of the great Austrian hero HOFER – his name has been used and misused so much over the centuries – now he is a shop!!!!)
But my real arrival in Vienna comes a little later. I find that the Vienna Ballet is doing ‘Dornröschen’ tonight. They are doing the Peter Wright version of the great Marius Petipa masterpiece. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of seeing the older Ronald Hynd version of this classic
(some spiele)
(some dance)
also completely based on the Petipa choreography. Peter Wright had a very different entry into ballet from that of Ronald Hynd, who had a more traditional background. I will be truly rewarded by also seeing the Peter Wright version here in Vienna.
I also discover that my favourite baritone is singing ‘Wozzeck’ later in the month.
and there are also three performances of Евге́ний Оне́гин ((Yevgeniy Onegin as Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский’s grand niece taught me to say!!) which should also be marvellous.
I drink two cups of coffee and discover that the performance starts in thirty minutes. Enlivened by the coffee, I take the five minute walk to the Staatsoper. I approach the ‘secret’ side box office and pay my three euros. The box office man grins at me and says, “You’ve got the last one!!”. I reach my seat over the orchestra just in time to hear the beginning of this great work. Now and then I wander to the centre and actually stand to watch the whole stage. I’m home!!!
One day, when I was about ten years old and one of my sisters was about seven, my father gave us a sack and a little money with the request, “Go out into the country and fetch me a sack full of sheep manure”. I should perhaps add that sheep poo is regarded as an excellent fertiliser for chrysanthemums or dahlias – I can’t remember which – perhaps it is for both? It’s apparently also good for other plants.
At the bottom of our road was a number of bus stops, one of which was for the Green Line buses. The Green Line buses used to travel from one green area into London then out the other side to another green area on the other side of London. So we waited for the bus and , when it came, I asked the driver to stop when we came to a farm with a lot sheep poo in the fields.
When the bus driver spotted a decent haul, he stopped and let us off with a wistful gaze, hoping I suspect that we weren’t going to catch HIS bus on the way back.
We walked into the field and started collecting, watched by a bunch of surprisingly inquisitive sheep. “What are you doing with our poo?”, they seemed to be saying. The question that we had NOT asked was whether we should collect the fresh smelly gleaming poo or the dried up older stuff. Being a brilliant decision maker, even at that age, I decided that we would collect some of each. I can’t remember seeing the farmer but I’m sure he had a good laugh if he did chance to see us.
When we had finished filling the sack until it was almost to heavy to lift, we hailed the next bus and were taken back to our bus stop in Sudbury Town. I should add that we had always longed to travel on those fast single decker buses so this trip was really very exciting to us, travelling on a green line bus out into the countryside!!!
I used to love visiting the South Kensington museums. Here I would pay my respects to the enormous whale in the Natural History Museum
then go downstairs in the Science Museum where we could play with various devices and later perhaps attend one of the lectures.
For these visits, I would buy a “half ticket”. The man in the ticket office would take the ticket for South Kensington and ceremoniously snip it at exactly 45 degrees in half. He handed me one half and I have no idea what he did with the other half.
When I was about nine, I was a junior exhibitioner at Trinity college. This meant that every Saturday I would walk down to Wembley Central station and take the train to Baker street with my precious half return ticket. I would then enjoy walking through the lanes of Marylebone to Mandeville Place and back again later in the day.
In the Summer, we would sometimes take another type of train from Sudbury which would take us to Ruislip Lido for the day. One day we walked to Regents Park and got into the London Zoo by digging hole under the fence. But it was by underground train that we travelled back to Wembley. The network of different types of trains which ran through Wembley and Sudbury was amazing. we could travel anywhere for very little.
Later, when I lived in Chiswick, things were even better. Granted I could walk to the Polytechnic Harriers running track and the Boat Club by Chiswick Bridge. (It’s SO nice to row down the Thames in an eight when you are NOT racing!!!) I could even cycle to the the Bank of England Sports place by Richmond Park with a banker friend. But when I needed to go anywhere else in London, I would go from Chiswick Park on the “tube”or from another station for a curious Cross London line. For the South Bank concert halls, the Film Insitute(with that creepy voice doing the translations!) or the Hayward, I would take the direct District Line to Charing Cross and walk across the railway bridge with hundreds of others. For the Charing Cross Road bookshops or the Covent Garden Opera, I would change to the Piccadilly Line at Hammersmith. For Mornington Crescent BBC, I would change to the Northern Line. It was SO easy, as long as you avoided the Rush Hours!!!
But the most exciting journey we ever took was to Liverpool Street station where we caught the train to the Essex Coast. We were incredibly excited to be travelling to the seaside! Later, I found that you could drink Guiness in the pub’on the platform while you waited for the train.
Even in car country USA there is public transport. For example, there are two trains into Seattle from Everett in the morning and two trains back from Seattle in the evening. Bus transit stations are mushrooming all over the outskirts of the city with already full carparks and the centre is well served by all forms of transport including the famous monorail constructed initially for the 1966 exhibition. Then there are the famous ferries which run regularly and reliably from very early in the morning until late at night. All this is nothing compared with the amazing road system. It has always been evident to me that just stealing one lane from the major freeways would give any city in the USA another wonderful rail network. San Francisco has some railways in the middle of the road. At the moment car pooling is encouraged by HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lanes which can only be used by vehicles carrying two (sometimes three) or more people. Unfortunately I have often seen buses running along these freeways in off-peak times with no passengers. I suspect that this may soon change.
I can remember when London and Sheffield had excellent tram services. These were changed to bus services. In London, they even got rid of our favourite 662 trolley bus line into Paddington from Sudbury Triangle. Now they are coming back in Sheffield with their “superTram” – really just the same old trams.
City of London Mayor Boris, who often cycles into work, wants “bendy buses” for London and also wants to reinstate the OLD double deckers instead of the “very safe” buses that replaced the iconic Route-masters but not trams at this stage.. Buses even run throughout the night. But Boris has also introduced bikes throughout his city, has organised the Olympic Games, helped set up a thriving IT industry, and no doubt will be meeting the 2014 ’Tour de France’ when it arrives in London.
He has even managed to get Arnie’ on a bike!!
Boris is a REAL character whom many people feel would be a colourful Prime Minister if his old school mates at Eton and Oxford would let him. His reference to the present Prime Minister’s Oxford degree “PPE” is to a degree which has soupçons of Politics, Philosophy and Economics whereas Boris is a REAL scholar!! Look at the bewilderment on the face of his interviewer!!
Five years ago, when I was living in Florence, the city was building tram tracks. It was heartening to see the care with which the cobble stones were being replaced between the rails. Two years later I returned and was pleased to see that one route was already in operation. The city has a decent bus service and small electric buses for the back streets of the Old City.
The city rail services of Paris, Chicago and New York are well known from the many films made around them. When I see trams running down the streets of the old DDR at dusk, I immediately remember the spy stories that I have read about the East Germany. And then there are those amazing street cars of San Francisco; many of them retired trams from Melbourne Australia.
We all know the vaporetti and gondolas of Venice which often appear in movies but did you know that you can take a traghetto (public gondola) across the Grand canal for 50 cents? I used to take a traghetto from Cannaregio to the Rialto when I felt a little lazy. So public transport can be an evocative experience.
It’s difficult to assess the cities which have the best transport system for travellers without cars. On a recent trip to London I found the District and Piccadilly line trains to have plenty of seats at off-peak times. Arriving at Heathrow airport, it is still a good idea to travel into London by tube rather than by any other means of transport. But you will soon need an oyster card as many ticket offices are closing. The oyster cards enable travellers to prepay fares and operate the automatic gates leading to the trains. They can be recharged anywhere the ticket offices have been closed!!!
Australian cities have excellent public transport. Melbourne still has its trams and the suburban trains. Sydney also has excellent services and Brisbane also has a similar system using trains and buses.
From my house in Brisbane, I have a variety of choices if I want to use public transport to get into the city. At one end of the street is a bus service which runs every ten minutes during the day. At the other end of the street is a “glider bus” service also running into the town on a very tight schedule. “Glider” buses only take “goCards”. Like an oyster card, you wave the card in front of a machine as you enter and your fare is deducted from the card when you wave it again as you leave the bus. The whole idea is to speed up the buses.
If I walk down the road, I can catch the CityCAT into town. This catamaran uses the same fare zone system as the buses and travels very fast. It’s probably the most pleasant way to reach the city.
Another way they speed up the Brisbane bus services is to build “busways” through Brisbane. They go under buildings and over other roads to move buses quickly towards the suburbs. Buses travel along these busways at a good clip and the stops on the busways look like normal train stations.
One thing I like about the Brisbane system is that buses and trains coordinate quite well. A website will give you several options when asked how to get from one place to another at a certain time. When travelling from Brisbane to Noosa, a distance of over a hundred miles, the Noosa bus will actually meet the train at Nambour.
Of all the places I have visited,Vienna seems to have the best best inner city public transport system. Trams run everywhere and nobody has told the city that underground trains simply do NOT have to go that fast!! There is another train system altogether which runs into the surrounding countryside and also services the airport. If you travel from the airport on THIS system, it will cost a fraction of the cost of the highly publicised “Airport Train”. There is also an equally large bus system, as if that wasn’t already enough. There is an amazing network of cycle tracks alongside the roads with their own traffic lights. Yes, we really have to treat cycling as a form of public transport when it is organised SO well!!!They also have carriages drawn by two horses taking tourists around the old city.
One day, we tasted some wine in BILLA which purported to come from North of Vienna. Determined to find these vineyards, we jumped on a tram and stayed on until it reached the terminus. We walked up the valley looking for the vineyards and, seeing nothing, began our walk down on the other side of the valley. THEN we looked up!!! A huge hillside vista opened up above us and there were the vineyards. There’s wine in them hills!!! I suppose we should call that tram a Green Line tram?
Train travel has it’s poets. For me, it also has its composers. In one of my favourite films, ’Sun Valley Serenade’ with the actual Glenn Miller band performing, we hear them rehearsing my favourite railway song “Chattanooga Choo Choo”.
One of the first musique concrete pieces I ever heard was Pierre Schaeffer’s “Etude aux Chemins de Fer” based on railways sounds.
A very popular piece by a train addict and composer Arthur Honegger, who was heard to say, “”I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses”, wrote a piece which sounded so much like a train that he changed the title to ‘Pacific 231’. That title helped the piece attain considerable popularity
Music in a different genre describes this journey on Canadian Pacific
And this describes a journey from Vancouver to Whistler.
Judging from these songs, people seem to like Canadian trains. Looking at the scenery in this video makes me want to travel to Canada immediately!
There are many folk songs about the railways and the people who built them, for example, ‘Paddy Works on the Railway’.
This is Cumbrian folksong about the Settle To Carlisle Railway. Many people died building those great railways.
I have it on excellent authority that this is an Indian Independence Day song dedicated to Indian Railways.
Many great authors and poets have written about the railways. Here’s Walt Whitman’s “To a Locomotive in Winter”
and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “From a Railway Carriage”
Even T S Elliot – Yes, the chap who wrote “Four Quartets” and “The Wasteland” !!! – has contributed some of his verse to railways in the form of -“Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat”
They even have poetry competitions about the railways. Here’s a very young poet.
Here’s an older competition winner – if you can hear her above the railway noise!!
But here is a poem in words and pictures from East Lancashire.
One of the earliest innovative use of poetry, music and film was produced by the British GPO (General Post Office) in 1936. It’s interesting that the Post Office felt the need to employ film directors, poets, composers and actors to inform the public about the night mail from London to Scotland. The poet is W H Auden and the music was written by Benjamin Britten.
“Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong”
It is difficult to visualise a world where the only modes of travel were trains, water transport and horse drawn vehicles. Railway travel was by far the most comfortable means of travel until the advent of the modern design of car.
One of the greatest British contemporary poets of the railways was John Betjeman. Some of his observations about the habits and demeanours of the English can be seen in this BBC documentary which is based on his poetry. (Only the BBC dare make a film like this!!!)
He was largely responsible for preventing the demolition of St Pancras railway station. Until he began speaking of its beauty, we all thought that all those Victorian monstrosities should be pulled down. But he touched on one aspect of travel which affected me personally.
The London “tube” trains did not just run underground in the centre of London. They ran out into the suburbs and beyond to the green countryside North of London. For example, here’s the line from Rickmansworth to Amersham.
We lived in Sudbury, part of Wembley town, where the 1948 “Austerity Olympics” were held. The other side of our road was green where we used to catch newts which flourished in the numerous bomb craters. When we wanted to travel further into the countryside, we would take the Piccadilly, Bakerloo or Metropolitan Line “tube trains”.
This idea of building a “tube” line into the open countryside entranced John Betjeman. Of course, this invited people to move out into settlements near the line as this ‘Metropolitan Line’ ran directly through London into the city of London where bankers and stockbrokers worked. So Betjaman wrote about ‘Metroland’ – Ruislip, where we used to catch the train for Ruislip Lido – Rayners Lane and all stations North in a Middlesex which was mainly countryside when he wrote this poetry. “London Wall” and “Farringdon” are in the city of London and “Oxford Street” is in the City of Westminster, renowned for the post Christmas sales. Here they meet at “Bakers Street Station” – not mentioned in this section of the poem – and catch the Met’ Line whose first stop is “Willesden” and a subsequent stop at “Rayners Lane” in the county of “Middlesex”. He buys a dozen plants for their Ruislip home before meeting that “evening at six-fifteen” under the platform indicator.
And all that day in murky London Wall
The thought of Ruislip kept him warm inside
At Farringdon that lunch hour at a stall
He bought a dozen plants of London Pride;
While she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift,
Soared through the sales by safe hydraulic lift.
Early Electric! Maybe even here
They met that evening at six-fifteen
Beneath the hearts of this electrolier
And caught the first non-stop to Willesden Green,
Then out and on, through rural Rayner’s Lane
To autumn-scented Middlesex again.
Below he describes a journey INTO London from the “leafy lanes of Pinner”, wherein is “Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines”. The train passes “Harrow” and “Preston” stations where green fields can still be seen but “Neasden” is where the metropolis of London really makes itself evident.
Early Electric! With what radiant hope
Men formed this many-branched electrolier,
Twisted the flex around the iron rope
And let the dazzling vacuum globes hang clear,
And then with hearts the rich contrivance fill’d
Of copper, beaten by the Bromsgrove Guild.
Early Electric! Sit you down and see,
‘Mid this fine woodwork and a smell of dinner,
A stained-glass windmill and a pot of tea,
And sepia views of leafy lanes in Pinner –
Then visualize, far down the shining lines,
Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines.
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road,
They saw the last green fields and misty sky,
At Neasden watched a workmen’s train unload,
And, with the morning villas sliding by,
They felt so sure on their electric trip
That Youth and Progress were in partnership.
I must admit that it is pleasing to read poetry about my home town of Wembley even though it is now largely a Hindu settlement with probably the funniest show on television “The Kumars at No. 42”
(Cliff Richard)
(Elis Costello mentions the song he wrote about the Hoover factory in Hangar Lane, Perivale)
(Alan Alda)
(Jennifer Saunders)
and a magnificent temple in Alperton, on the site of one of my sister’s high school, which would be on everybody’s “bucket list” if it were in India.
I used to love walking around the old stadium built for the 1924 Exhibition. There were various amazing buildings with great statues which had been converted for use by various companies. But apparently they have all now been destroyed. Here is the last building, the Palace of Industry, biting the dust.
The Met’ Line station for Wembley Stadium is “Wembley Park” and other ’stopping’ trains also serve the same station.
WHEN melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the Stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary’s filling
With the sea.
The next section of poetry mentions “Harrow-on-the-Hill”, another favourite walk of mine. The “constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing” talks about the trolley bus route which started in Sudbury and ran into the town at Paddington. They had very large tyres and the power supply cables made the sounds he describes. He mentions other localities such as “Wealdstone” and “Perivale” where the old Hoover Factory stood.
(I can remember doing a New Year’s gig at the old Hoover factory. Elvis Costello even wrote a song about it)
Benjemann is probably comparing the sea off his favourite Cornwall coast with the suburbs of London, about which he was writing at that moment. (By the way, there is a school on top of Harrow Hill!)
Then Harrow-on-the-Hill’s a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailors’ graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level to the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather up for plunging
Into caves.
There’s a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton,
There’s a line of harbour lights at Perivale,
Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire
The little fleet of trawlers under sail?
Can those boats be only roof tops
As they stream along the skyline
In a race for port and Padstow
With the gale?
Here we see a commuter arriving home by train to her house in Ruislip. “With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s”. English people are usually extremely polite. If someone steps on your foot, it is ‘de rigour’ to say “Sorry” or “Pardon”. A polite reply might invite a “Ta” or “Thank you!”. But this area really WAS “our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again”, a delight to come home to! A small suburban house with a garden was a dream realised by many people at that time. And television was improving enough to occupy people for much of the evening.
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt’s edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.
Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Drene;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden – father’s hobby –
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.
It’s SO nice to read Betjeman waxing lyrical about Wembley and the River Brent. Here he talks about many other areas around the Metropolitan Line. I once saw an aircraft sitting on top of a house in Northolt. He compares the city places like “Kensal Green and Highgate”, where Karl Marx in buried, “silent under soot and stone” with Perivale, “Parish of enormous hayfields” and “Greenford scent of mayfields”. This is how it was. But times have changed. We have some beautiful parks in this area of London but Middlesex is no longer the county that Betjeman knew.
Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.
Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone
Although he seemed to love a “tube” line, which still runs from the London Stock Exchange into the countryside North of London, he chose to be buried in his beloved Cornwall. (‘Port Isaac’ shown in part of this video is the setting for our favourite TV series “Doc Martin”)
For the last few weeks, we have seen the number “12” all over Seattle. Now and then we see cars with flags on their radio aerials and “Go Hawks” has been plastered on every available surface. Here’s the mayor of Isaquah telling us all about it!
The city has been football mad for a long time. The “Seattle Sound” is all about “Go Hawks!!!” today.
In the USA, this is NOT unusual. On my very first visit to the USA, I was on my way to the Music Department of a university when I saw a massive structure before me. “What on earth is that?”, I asked. “That’s the football stadium” was the answer. Coming from England, I could not understand how such an enormous structure could be dedicated to university sport!
Again, when passing a school near San Francisco which had produced at least a few students who had changed the world ‘as we knew it’, I was surprised to see a large board facing the road with the name of the school followed by “Home of the Bears!”. It seemed incredible to me that the most important activity going on in that school was football! This even continues on to university. This excessve dedication to sport in educational institutions has always puzzled me but it does result in some very spectacular professional sport which is followed with incredible passion by the supporters of the teams. Seattle is no exception to this.
At the ballet two nights ago, there seemed to be large amounts of green and blue dancing around the stage. At the Seattle Symphony’s Shostakovich concert last night, the orchestral manager just couldn’t resist announcing “Go Seahawks!!!” at the beginning of the concert and the audience roared with delight. The European conductor and pianist looked a little puzzled! EVERYBODY here is football mad at the moment!!!
But wait a minute – this is Seattle, the geek capital of the world!!! When we are at a concert. everybody we speak to seems to be a software engineer or airplane designer; in fact the last concert was actually paid for by Microsoft. (and coffee supplied by Starbucks!!) Many software engineers seem to prefer Soccer as a game rather than American football but, this week, our favourite sports bar which normally shows soccer for their computer clientele has been showing football on the screens! But looking at this video shows that the 49ers should have won the semi-final. Before the game starts, Paul Allen, joint founder of Microsaoft and owner of the Seahawks, hoists the “12” flag to invoke the supporters’ part in the victory!
Seattle is the original home of Boeing, which has two huge manufacturing facilities north and south of the city. It’s the home of Amazon which is planning to deliver goods by drone. Starbucks has its headquarters and started here and Microsoft has constructed what seems like a complete town in Redmond on the outskirts of the city and is spreading all over the place The list of companies which started here and are based here is enormous. Computer people will have heard of CRAY. Others include Eddie Bauer, Expedia, T-mobile, Group Health Cooperative, Zillow, Bartell Drugs, Nordstrom, Tommy Bahama, Holland America Line, Costco, Nintemdo, REI, and a lot more. It’s a very busy city!
Everybody is with the Seahawks!!
Even some of the Chinese have “12 Go Seahawks!” outside their houses and on their cars. Some go even further with the young generation.
Many Chinese were attracted to Seattle by films like ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ but nowadays they are coming because a film called ‘From Beijing to Seattle’ has recently become a blockbuster in China. To these Chinese, Seattle comes over as a “dreamy rain-scape full of lovelorn young people pining in coffee shops.”
So why are all these geeks running around with the number “12”?
Why are they wearing Seattle Seahawks outfits?
Seattle Seahawks are off to the Superbowl!!!
To celebrate this year’s achievement of geekdom’s football team and instead of having a high profile pop’ star singing the National Anthem, they have one of the world’s most amazing opera singers, Renée Fleming.
It is difficult to understand the attachment of Seattle to the “12th man” concept as it was originally conceived at Texas A & M.
It then caught on in Seattle, so much so that the Seattle Seahawks paid Texas A & M $100,000 compensation in order to continue using it. But Seattle maintains that their ’12th man’ is louder than any other!
Boeing even put “Go Hawks” and “12” on one of their planes!
and flew a “12” route.
(We often hear Boeing planes being tested above us in North Seattle but they normally fly around Whidbey Island. Test pilots MUST be keen fans to fly this “12” route!!)
EPILOGUE
Of course, the Hawks won. Even riding their beautiful horse across the field before the game didn’t help the Denver Broncos. They were thrashed by Seattle Seahawks 43-8!!! It just goes to show that all those “Go Hawks” signs all over town (and in the Shostakovich concert!!) and the invocation of the “12” DOES work!! Never doubt the power of geekdom!!
Perhaps Renée Fleming’s National Anthem helped? This must be the greatest tune of any National Anthem and here is the greatest singer rendering it!!!!
We all celebrate Seattle’s victory in our own way!!!)
I LOVE trains!! When I was very young in London, we all wanted to be train drivers of locomotives like this . . .
We stood by the lines and watched trains go by. We even donned anoraks and stood on railway station platforms.
(This video shows one of my favourites – the Kyle of Lochalsh line which starts at 47.47.)
The most popular short film on television was a very fast journey by (boring electric) train from London to Brighton. The BBC even used it for “intervals” between programmes instead of a kitten playing with a ball of wool.
Trains give you freedom of movement to a degree that no other form of transport allows. You can enjoy the countryside as it flashes by and normally arrive in the centre of the city or town to which you are travelling.
There’s a fascination about train travel. When we travelled from Chicago to Los Angeles some time ago, each day we were served the best Prime Rib I have ever tasted! Travelling with us for part of the route was a couple who told us that they lived “over there!” pointing out of the window in a northerly direction. They explained, “We have a farm which borders the railway. We promised ourselves that one day WE would travel on one of those trains! So here we are!!!”
On the way to Denver, there was a terrible BUMP and it felt as though the train was about to leave the rails. The train stopped and we all got out, looking for what could possibly have caused the bump. We found nothing.
The main city railways stations in the USA have always looked magnificent to me – temples of travel – so it is sad to see the decline of some of the long distance routes they serve. The good news is that Warren Buffet has been buying into US railways in recent years. Perhaps he sees a future for these enormous lengths of real estate?
Australia has few large cities but they are far apart. There are railways between cities but they can never rival flying as a means of travel. Now and then, plans emerge to build high speed rail links, but it may be some time before they eventuate due to the enormous costs involved.
It is in Europe that trains really rival air transport, thanks to TSA waiting times, the weather and volcanoes in Iceland. It eliminates the travel between city centres and airports, although Frankfurt has a main line station actually in the airport. Europe offers all sorts of “specials” and advance purchase deals, too numerous to describe, allowing unlimited travel in a variety of countries.
I began my European travels using “autostop” but, as soon as I started earning money in my vacations, I would leave a few weeks in September free to travel by train in Europe using a student rail pass through France to Italy where the sea was warm, unlike England. I stayed in youth hostels like the castle in Scilla, Calabria and the huge palace in Florence. It was wonderful to meet the people on the journeys by train and confront Italian history through the wonderful sites all over the country.
Later on, we used the Eurail pass to travel, a first class advance purchase deal. The seats could extend from one side of the carriage to the other, allowing us to sleep only three to a compartment at night. I remember one journey from Holland where a great flute player played us into sleep when he discovered that I knew the people with whom he had been performing in the Hague Festival. We slept well!! On that particular trip, we travelled down to Verona for the opera but later we travelled north to Norway and south as far as Sicily.
It is in Switzerland that railways REALLY come into their own. We spent much of our time in Switzerland simply enjoying the scenery from the many amazing rail lines throughout the country. My favourite train journey is from Tirano in Italy to St Moritz in Switzerland and I have used this route many times. It takes much longer than any other route but I LOVE that journey and, of course, the route onwards from St Moritz initially to Chur. and then there are the mountain railways with spectacular views
Travel around Europe can be very cheap. To make travel even cheaper, I have the Itralian Carta d’Argento, the Deutsche Bahn BahnCard and the ÖBB Vorteilscard. These give discounts of up to 50% in their home country and a “rail plus” discount in all other EU countries.
I like to take the ICE trains in Germany, the Railjet trains in Austria and the equivalent high speed trains in other parts of Europe. German Railways has a wonderful website with which to plan journeys. Other countries have equivalent sites but I have often found it easier to plan journeys in these other countries using the DB site deutschebahn.com.
Some aspects of travel cannot be totally planned. I remember waiting on the Munich train station with some other people for the train to Venice. The train carriages were pushed into the station and the condition of the carriages was terrible. The last carriage actually had the doors tied on with string!!! Believe it or not, we actually got in the train and had a good laugh together on the way over the alps!!! Train travel can be fun if not always perfect!!!
British rail travellers to Europe are lucky as there is an excellent website called “The man in seat 61”. For example, here’s his video on the ‘special’ from 45 GBP starting in London or anywhere in East Anglia to anywhere in Holland.
And here is his video showing you how to take my favourite train route between Italy and Switzerland.
There are plenty of videos on the internet produced by people who love trains or love travelling by train. But Michael Portillo, besides his very serious ‘Moral Maze’ programmes, has made it his business to make a large number of television programmes on train travel often quoting from the Bradshaw guides of 1913 and earlier. Many of us may not have been impressed by his activities whilst in the British Government but he is certainly in the right groove when exploring the railways of Britain and Europe. I’m putting selection of his videos in the page in the sidebar but here’s an example first of his programmes on Britain.
And here is one of his programmes on Europe.
If I ever visit India, it will be by train that I will travel. But meanwhile I can do this part of my ‘bucket list’ completely by means of internet videos!! Thank you to all those people who have taken the trouble to film all those wonderful journeys!!
The reasons why we all seem to ‘up and go’ when we have time must, needs be, remain personal. Therefore I can only discuss these reasons from a very personal point of view. But there must be extremely good reasons why we are prepared to squeeze ourselves into metal tubes for long periods of time and be transported to places far, only to return some time later.
The philosopher Alain de Botton has attempted to analyse why people travel in his book ‘The Art of Travel’. He observes that few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains but I cannot believe that this compensates for the discomfort of travel these days? He also thinks that few things are as exciting as the idea of travelling somewhere else. Of course, when you get back showing your videos or photos, there is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.” But I wonder how many people agree with him when he writes, “The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” Mindset is MORE important than the destination? But it must be important, if not the most important factor affecting the way we enjoy other cultures.
I should also add that, although I have never been on a cruise and never intend to go on a cruise, I know many people who do enjoy cruises, unlike Alain de Botton.
Here in Seattle we have our own travel guru – Rick Steves one of the USA’s most active travel enthusiasts. In Edmonds not far from here, he runs classes on travel not directly connected to his commercial activities of running tours and writing guide books.
Rick Steves has concentrated almost entirely on European travel in his business activities. Recently, he has widened his personal activities and has also taken an interest in the purpose of travel.
Although he terms one purpose as “A Political Act”, I feel that he is talking more about international relations and global communication than politics.
But he is repeating his mantra on the value of travel. He runs travel groups which are small enough to enjoy the culture of the countries they visit.
On the other hand, personally I only recently discovered what “bucket list” tourism actually is and the effect it has had on various places on that “bucket list”. But who could argue with the theme of this film?
Apart from this, I couldn’t believe that people were prepared to travel to distant places just for the purpose of actually having been there. But who can see anything terribly wrong with these aspirations?
I presume that, for some people, there is an element of “keeping up with the Jones’s” but I DO know that some people simply enjoy travelling to places with different cultures and traditions. These people, I DO respect. They are not “bucket list” tourists, although they may have an agenda which looks very similar to a ‘bucket list’.
I remember walking behind an American couple in Florence. As we approached the Duomo, I heard one of them gasp and say, “Wow!! what’s that?” The other said “I have no idea!! I’d better look in the guide.” I had the impression that, not only did they not know anything about Florence, but they had no idea in which city they were walking.
Where do I fit into this?
I find that any ‘bucket list’ I have is quite adequately serviced by watching television programmes and excellent videos on YouTube. These are the videos which sell those huge flat screens in shops. I remember flying over the Grand Canyon in a Disneyland cinema many years ago before we had flat screen televisions
and diving deep in the ocean with Jaques Cousteau. The great thing about this type of documentary is that I simply don’t need to do this myself!
But there will be some who have been ‘turned on’ by these early programmes. Some will spend the whole of their vacation time under the water somewhere in the world. Others will hike all the great trails of the world. An introduction to an activity through video can lead to a very satisfying life.
In Europe, climate drives people south, although I am rather puzzled that this now happens mainly in the summer when temperatures in places like Italy, Spain and Greece can be excessively high. In Australia also, people will travel North towards the equator but this avoids the extremes of temperature well over 40 Celsius which can occur in cities in the South like Melbourne. In times past, the English, rich enough to travel, went south also in the Winter to places like the French Riviera.
This still happens in the USA where the “snowbirds” from the North will travel South in the Winter. Some of the best ballet performances I have seen in recent years were in Sarasota.
These “snowbirds” put their money where their passions lie! They also support a fine enthusiastic orchestra which makes up for the fact that they are not in New York or Boston for the Winter.
My interests are history and music history. But I have travelled to other places without being driven by these interests. I can remember being invited to smoke opium with the guardians of a sufi shrine in Iran – being one of only six people who managed to get on our flight from Jordan after the King had decided to fly the plane to London together with his entourage – surviving a force ten gale in the Bass Strait – camping on the Plage de Pampelonne St Tropez for several summers –
– ski mountaineering with the Austrian Alpine club (The Zuckerhütl (3.507 m) in den Stubaier Alpen is an up – down – up job but a lovely ski down)
– hiking the Rosengarten with a German group who wanted the Sud Tyrol ceded back to Austria(!!!) –
– spending a whole summer on Sweetwater beach in South Crete and other such memories, the sort of which we all treasure.
When I was first able to travel for unlimited times, I chose Florence as my first port of call for a period of three months, despite having hated Florence many years before when I had spent the summer in a very quiet Siena. I chose Florence because I regarded the history of Florence as MY history. Everything that went on in Florence years ago has affected my life directly and indirectly. In a similar way, I found that Jerusalem was not only part of my history because of my Christian experience. I found that standing in the City of David where the psalms were put together was an amazing experience as I had chanted and sung those psalms so many times.
Even standing where Zadok anointed Solomon was almost as amazing because of the British Coronation anthem.
Here’s the Coronation anthem.
All these modern associations convinced me that the history of Jerusalem and Palestine was also my history.
I must confess that, when the Summer tourist season approached, I simply ran away to South Crete where there were fewer tourists. My ultimate escape was to Gavdos, the southernmost point of Europe in the Libyan sea, with a tiny resident population of less than 30 but a larger number of enterprising visitors.
Of course Gavdos has its own history. St Paul was wrecked there on his way to Rome and it is probably the island called Ogygia where Kalypso kept Odysseus a prisoner. (Who could be so unfortunate?)
After most of the tourists have returned to their lairs, it is time to return to the centre of Europe. Vienna is a no-brainer for musicians and people interested in Music History. It’s the birth place of both Classical Music beginning with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and Modern Music beginning with Schönberg, Webern and Berg. As we know, there’s also other history. For example, there was a street called ‘Blutgasse’ a few metres from my first room in Vienna.
Most people have heard of Salzburg, the birth place of Mozart, and the setting for ‘A Sound of Music’. It’s also the place where Michael Haydn produced most of his masterpieces. You can view the actual rooms where Mozart was born and the larger premises which the family later occupied. But it does not have the feeling of Vienna. When I walked round Vienna, it still had the feeling that it was the centre of Europe.
Leipzig is the centre of the world for Bach lovers. The choir Bach worked with still sings Motets on Fridays and Saturdays. The legendary Gewandhaus orchestra still occupies pride of place on the European music scene and you can visit Mendelssohn’s house which he occupied as the first real Music Director of any orchestra.
It was no surprise to me that, after hearing the great Masses of the first Viennese school in Vienna, St Marks was performing music of the great age of Venetian music with the customary polyphonic layout of the choir.
La Fenice has been rebuilt in the old horseshoe shape so we were still not able to see the whole stage anywhere but in the centre of the auditorium but I suppose the old story of the new theatre rising from the ashes of the old was fulfilled.
These are obvious places to which a person fascinated by music and history can go to meditate. I have enjoyed music in many other European cities including Prague, Budapest and Köln to say nothing about many years in London. I still hate TSA and squeezing into a metal (or carbon fibre if you are lucky enough to travel in a 787) tube for up to 14 hours – in fact I can thoroughly recommend the European express trains as I then pack all my Eurogear plus printer into my heavy duty wheelie and stretch my feet out!!!
In fact I HATE travelling but it’s SO nice when you get there and stay for a LONG time!!!
It was during one Summer long ago that I first attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. I attended the conducting course run by Sergiu Celibidache and actually took the Italian course run by Siena University.
The conducting course was held in the town theatre.
Celibidache had been conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic before Karajan. Incidentally, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic after Karajan was Claudio Abbado, who had attended Celibidache’s class in Siena.Other people who had been in Siena included Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim.
Celibidache was into Zen Buddhism and would rise early each morning to meditate before classes. He believed that hearing music live can induce a transcendental experience in those present – something I also believe. He therefore reckoned that recordings that did not induce this experience were worthless.
Later, I was present at one of the first rehearsals he did with the London Symphony Orchestra. At the time, the wind section of the LSO was the finest in the world, including Barry Tuckwell on the horn, Gervese de Peyer on clarinet, Anthony Camden on oboe. In one section where the wind section was playing on its own as a group, he stopped conducting. The orchestra played on then stopped looking very puzzled. Anthony Camden asked, “Why did you stop conducting?” The maestro replied, “You were playing so well – you didn’t need me to conduct you”. This reminded me that the best instrumental performers are usually the best listeners. He seemed to get on well with the LSO.
The Accademia Musicale Chigiana was set up by Count Chigi of Saracini. The story went that Count Chigi had no heirs and was devoting his fortune to music. There were scholarships and the fees were tiny. I also believe that the fees for the hostel room in which we stayed were also subsidised by the Count. The teachers were great performers like Segovia on guitar, Fernando Germani on organ, Nicanor Zabaleta on harp plus many others.
Arriving at the hostel was interesting as pianos were being hauled up the stairs for students to use during the course. I was amazed that one man would carry a piano all on his own up the stairs to the room.
Coming from uncultured Britain, we needed a little tutoring in Italian manners. The first lesson in manners was in the student mensa. We were each given a serviette (table napkin or tovagliolo) with a ring and assigned a pigeon hole in which to keep it. They were changed each day. “Only barbarians eat without cloth serviettes!”, said our server. Amongst other useful skills, I learned the correct way to approach a plate of pasta lunga!!! We found out that we could have a really nice shower in a petrol station at the bottom of the hill on which Siena is built. We also learned that the real Italian, as promoted originally by Dante, has only ever been spoken in Siena. (They sure don’t speak it in Firenze!!!)
If the days were stimulating with very individual views on music from Celibidache, the evenings were amazing treats. Count Chigi brought in some of the finest performers in the world who gave concerts in his palace. One interesting feature of the performances was that, at the end of each piece, they would bow to the Count before acknowledging our applause. We had no worries about that. We were so grateful to be able to hear these great players. The only slight annoyance was that the flunky on the door insisted that we were “dressed appropriately” which could be hot in the rather warm Siena Summer evenings.
The funniest feature of living in the hostel was the “eight o’clock chord”. Students were allowed to practice their instruments in the rooms but only after eight o’clock in the morning. So, at exactly eight o’clock, every instrumentalist in the hostel would play an enormous chord or note and we would rush out to buy fresh rolls for breakfast.
We were in a room next to a student learning the Shostakovitch first cello concerto. So, every morning at eight o’clock, we heard those four notes which begin that piece. And we heard the rest again and again more often that we wanted! When we attended a concert recently with Pieter Wispelwey playing this Shostakovitch concerto, I realised that the solo part was still engraved in my memory!!
Life in Siena back then was a dream. There were hardly any hotels around the city at that time, in fact there were none that I knew of, so any buses which pulled into the campo at lunch would leave before the end of the day. The only time that the city became busy was during the ‘Palio’ times.
Here is a better view of the actual race.
There were many distinguished teachers around. I ‘hung around’ Alfred Cortot’s class one day. This must have been almost his last utterance and I didn’t understand a word but it was Alfred Cortot!!! We heard talk of Pablo Casals still arguing with Gaspar Cassadó despite Yehudi Menuhin persuading Casals to “forgive” Cassadó some years earlier. John Williams, a student in the Guitar class around that time, has recently been very critical of Segovia’s approach to teaching so all was not smooth in the interaction between students and tutors.
The composition course was run by Vito Frazzi whose “scala alternate” represented a considerable musical mountain to scale before students could compose much music. But the film music course was run by Angelo Lavagnino, a much more colourful composer, to say the least.
One day Lavagnino announced to students that the next meeting would be in Cinecittá Studios in Rome where he had a gig in two days time. I immediately changed from the Conducting Course and travelled down to Rome on the back of my friend’s motorbike to the studios where we saw music being added to what seemed to be a slightly risqué film. We also took the opportunity to go down to Casino. Caserta, Amalfi, Cumae, Sperlonga and other places on the way back to Siena.
Cumae was a great experience because of the acropolis under which the famous Sibyl was said to have resided. Virgil describes the place where the Sibyl prophesied the future and it is possible to work out, from book 6 of the Aenied, where she sat.
Riding away from Cumae, the most strange thing happened. As we rounded a corner, there was a car facing us travelling quite fast. To avoid collision, we went to one side – the LEFT side!! Much to our amazement, the approaching car ALSO went to their left side. The people in the car were also British so had instinctively gone to the left. The sibyl was obviously looking after us all!
Palio week was very busy and it was said that the Count produced sufficiently large bribes to enable our contrada to win the horse race. This meant that there was loud ringing from a huge bell just outside our hostel window for a couple of days.
When the course finished, I sat and watched Celibidache rehearse a single symphony for almost a whole week. He knew exactly what he wanted and the orchestra loved him despite the frequent very direct comments. I do remember one piece of ‘tongue in the cheek’advice to students. “If you stop the orchestra and do not know what to say, just say the second oboe is flat – the second oboe is ALWAYS flat”
If you are in Tuscany, you just have to visit Siena. Unfortunately this message has reached the whole world and the place has changed in response. It’s contemporary “bucket list” tourism!!
If you do take the trip, you’ll probably feel a different person because ley lines meet there and there are fresh breezes on top of the hill. However, the most important thing to do on a hot day is to take that hill into account. That’s why we take the bus there so we can be transported to the top.
I visited Siena a number of times during the sixties. I even took an Italian language course at the university and attended courses in the Accademia Musicale Chigiana. It was worth it just for the concerts in the evening held in Count Chigi’s palace. The downside was the fact that we had to ‘dress appropriately’ even in the hot summer weather. The list of performers was amazing. Count Chigi had no heirs so he was spending all his wealth on musicians, or so the story went. The quaint thing about the concerts was that performers, when they took a bow, would bow to the side of the stage where the Count had his seat and virtually ignore us. But that is so long ago!! What would the place be like now?
We take the ‘express’ bus to Siena. It takes ages just to squeeze the bus through narrow streets and escape from Florence into the country outside. When at last we reach the autostrada, we find a very bumpy road, desperately needing a complete rebuild as far as I could see. It’s a relief to climb the hill and arrive at the Siena bus station at last.
The outskirts of the city have changed beyond belief in the last forty years. Suburbia surrounds the city. I remember my last visit to Aspen which has been affected in a similar way. As we walk towards the campo. we see clumps of tourists in similar numbers to those you would find around the Palazzo Pitti or Santa Croce in Florence. At least it has not yet reached the numbers that Florence experiences around the Duomo.
We order coffees and sit undercover gazing at the campo as people are supposed to do. The campo has an oval saucer-like shape designed so that, if you stand anywhere within it, you can see every other part. This comes in useful during the palio when the whole place is packed full of people trying to watch the horserace around the perimeter. I like the idea of this horserace because it is the first horse with or without jockey that wins.
I walk down the street where the student hostel used to be and recognise some of the shops which used to sell very strange bits and pieces for dead people. Instrumental practice was allowed in the hostel during the day but not until eight o’clock in the morning.
There weren’t many tourists around in the sixties. We would see the odd bus drive into the campo, knowing that it would soon leave because there were no hotels in the centre of the city. That’s changed. Some buildings even within the old city have been converted into very swish hotels. They run tours around Count Chigi’s palace but we resist the temptation to join one. The lanes of Siena seem a tiny bit more spacious than in Florence but that campo is still amazing.
We had planned to have a gourmet lunch but we see a buffet full of about twenty to thirty antipasti and primis in a restaurant just near the Duomo. This looks too good to ignore. But I do warn you not to go to this lunch unless you forego breakfast!!
The MD is a jovial man who rushes off to get our wine only to return immediately saying, “Sorry but we don’t have your choice. How about one of these?” I see St Gimignano on one of the labels and I say, “Our friend Tony Blair lives there!”
“What a coincidence!”, he says. This is made by a friend of mine who is also a good friend of Tony Blair!!” Obviously, if you come across a good local wine, you immediately befriend the chap who makes it!!
We have recently discovered a good selection of decent but cheap whites from this area. and, of course, I have tasted some good reds as well two weeks ago. So we have no hesitation in ordering a bottle of the Tony Blair. As expected, it is a beautiful delicate white wine which goes down well with the enormous selection of goodies on the centre table.
After another afternoon walk we decide to head for the station. I remember it as a simple downhill walk but the route is now a winding road which seems to take for ever to arrive at the station. We just manage to catch the train by running across the tracks.(No worries!! It’s Italy!) and at last enjoy the delights of an extremely smooth air-conditioned ride back to Florence. Take the train – it’s a more comfortable ride.
My conclusion? The world has changed. I’m now glad that I chose Florence in which to settle rather than any other place in Tuscany!
Well, I have decided to learn to play golf properly under expert supervision. I have paid several visits to the driving range down the road and I have even visited a local course to practise chipping. My success rate of actually hitting the ball is already good. I used to make one almost decent hit in ten but I am now up to about five in ten with certain clubs. For some very peculiar reason I seem to be able to chip better than this. Maybe one day I will graduate to a real golf course.
Up until now I have been somewhat diffident about golf. In a conference I attended many moons ago, we were subjected to a TQM management film where we saw ‘Larry’ waving his clubs in the air boasting that HE is playing golf because “back there, my people are using TQM!!!” Also we have become used to the fact that much business is actually conducted ON the golf course. This could have created the impression in many people’s minds that golf is a game for the professional classes and, in special cases, for the ‘rich and famous’. But even my oldest friend has taken up golf saying, “My only regret is that I didn’t take it up earlier.
My first contact with golf was at Graves Park in Sheffield. We paid a few (old) pence and were given a putter and a thing called a mashie. The mashie, I have since found out, is an ancient club between a modern 5 and 6 iron.
This has been revived recently with the same name.
I’ve just looked up the present fees in Graves Park and found that they are now 2.35 British pounds for an adult and 1.15 for a junior – that’s about US$3.65 for an adult and about US$1.75 for a junior. The Horsenden Hill golf course, which I know from my childhood but never ventured to do anything but walk around it, costs five British Pounds to play 18 holes today – under US$8. Other public golf courses I have looked up still have similar fees. Both the above golf courses are in urban areas; the second in London so it doesn’t look as though golf is an extremely exclusive sport in certain circumstances.
At university, I had friend who was an extremely enthusiastic golfer. He persuaded me to come with him on some golf courses. He kindly gave me an iron with which to hit the ball. I could hit balls a long way, sometimes further than my friend, but I seldom did it in the direction I wanted. To deal with this problem I used to buy a load of balls in the Club House – balls which I have since discovered are probably meant to be used on the driving range.
My friend’s father was a doctor and a passionate golfer who lived in Cemaes Bay, Anglesey. In his youth, he had always dreamed of becoming an actor; an ambition not normally approved of by parents. He also told me that he found his wife by waiting outside ‘Le Cordon Blue’ Cooking School and choosing the nicest looking lady who came out. Having enjoyed her cooking, I can heartily approve of this strategy.
But back to golf. Because he was so interested in drama, he got to know a lot of actors. Because he was a doctor, these actors talked to him about their medical problems especially their heart problems. We have to be sympathetic with the plight of these actors. They lead a life similar to musicians. Although rehearsals can take place during the day, most performances take place in the evenings or sometimes afternoons leaving a lot of daytime free. Some social activities can be rather unhealthy involving sitting around, eating, drinking and so on. One musician told me that, to avoid too much boredom “I get up slowly . . . I switch the radio on slowly . . . I drink my coffee slowly . . . I shave slowly . . . I eat breakfast slowly etc. etc. . so, before I know it, it’s afternoon!!!”
Determined to do something about this, he persuaded many of these actors to take up golf. Not only did this help them with their London jobs and their “resting” periods, it also helped even more when they were on tour in the provinces. All those desperately boring hours walking around town looking into shop windows were replaced by time on the golf course doing healthy exercise which helped their hearts. American actors have always followed this healthy tradition
and Bob Hope’s obsession with the game was well known.
Of course we have heard the definition of golf as “a good walk ruined” but many people seem to enjoy the game so much that they even watch it on television. The startling thing about watching a television broadcast is listening to the extremely learned observations of the commentators who are obviously great golfers or were great golfers themselves. Whenever a player hits a ball off the fairway, they get a real drubbing. Golfers are expected to be perfect. They must get their ball on to the green without getting into a sand trap and you just have to hear that moan from the crowd as the leader misses a putt. But then, it’s good to know that even Tiger is human.
So with all that good stuff, I have been slowly learning about golf . My favourite film is ‘Caddyshack’ so that was a good start.
But I also had to watch films like ‘Tin Cup’,
‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’,
‘The Greatest Game Ever played’ (“Golf is a game played by gentlemen; Not for the likes of you!!!”),
“A Gentleman’s Game”,
“Bobby Jones Stroke of Genius”,
and ‘Happy Gilmore’?.
They convinced me – I think! – that golf was obviously a gentleman’s game but I have yet to see a good golf movie where a golf playing protagonist is a woman unless you count the golf played by Katharine Hepburn herself in ‘Pat and Mike’.
To cut a long story short, I started practising on a small 9 hole course on an island called Whidbey Island. (The film ‘Practical Magic’ was filmed there). I sometimes actually managed to hit the ball. Unfortunately I then spent most of my time looking for the ball I had just hit! But, to my surprise, I didn’t only find my ball, Each time I went searching the hedgerows, I found another ten balls as well as mine. This was great because I could afford to lose a few dozen balls into the water hazard.
My weirdest experience was in Canada in the forests north of Montreal. The “chateau” where we were staying had a golf course nearby. This was far enough away from civilisation for me to dare a try at playing the course. We made our way to the first tee and I was astonished to see a very wide wild river flowing between the tee and the green. I naturally said, “I’ll take a drop’ in as experienced manner as I could muster. I was then interrupted by the Pro who handed me a ball with a red maple leaf on it saying,”Hit this into the water!!”. So I hit it. To my amazement, the ball flew over the river to land on the green. It then rolled steadily towards the hole and stopped just six inches short of the hole. Strange things can happen. Wow!!!
“Ah!!! The Outlets!!!”, many of us might say. Things are a little different in the USA from many other countries but this style of shopping has been with us for some time. Here’s a “haul” from the Prada Outlet in Florence . . . .
First there are the Shopping Malls which have spread everywhere. Is this really a video advertising Portland Mall?
In Seattle, there are outlet shops of various types selling stuff which has failed to catch on in the major stores. Nordstrom even has its own outlet called “The Rack” which sells at down to a third of the original price; lower when the stock doesn’t move.
Here’s a good “haul” from “The rack”
Admittedly, the original Nordstrom prices can be somewhat confronting but the main store in Seattle and others has a pianist playing at the bottom of the escalators and sometimes even its own choir at Christmas!!!
For the largest range of bargains, you have to go outside the main city to ‘The Outlets’. Our nearest is the ‘Seattle Premium Outlets at Tulalip’. This centre is regularly invaded by Canadians and there is even a direct bus from Vancouver hotels and the airport.
The number of stores here is enormous as can be seen from the following list. I only quote the URL because the list is so long.
So what do you do when faced with so many discount stores?
The first thing is to bone up on your arithmetic. One of the most amusing discount signs I have seen is . . .
EVERYTHING IN STORE REDUCED 70% THEN TAKE OFF A FURTHER 30%
I hope that most people will realise that something starting off at $100 will be reduced initially to $30 and the further reduction of 30% will reduce the price by $9 giving a sales price of $21. It’s NOT free – only a total discount of 79%.
As you enter each store, you are surrounded by signs advertising myriads of discounts. In some stores, if you message the store while you are actually in it, you will receive a 10% discount on the bill you are about to pay. On Tuesdays, seniors receive an additional 10%. If you join the club connected to the store, you get a further 20%. The “club” will also email discounts up to 40% and sometime details of amazing “flash sales”. The offers are never ending!!! I can remember one of my first purchases in Calvin Klein, made of the softest material I had ever felt, being marked down with various discounts – because it was one of my first buys – until the price was four dollars. Unbelievable!!
For the male buyer, things are fairly simple. You enter the store and head for the clearance racks at the back. They usually say “80% off the lowest advertised price” or “70% off” so you might end up paying less than one tenth the of the original outlet price or less. In the Burberry store I found a reduction to one ninth of the outlet price even though the item was in the window. In Hilfiger some time ago, they even hid their most incredible reductions – some around $5 or so – in the changing room corridor which was very confusing.
Here you can view somebody exhibiting their “haul” to all and sundry . . .
The disquieting side of all this is that it looks as though the Outlets represent a significant sector of the retail clothes trade. Not only are Amani, Burbery and Tommy Bahama represented in this sector but almost all our favourites are there. Only distance separates the retail shops from their outlets and, as mentioned above, Nordstrom has already changed that aspect. From the the European, British and Australian perspective, visits to the Outlets can actually pay for the air fare to the USA.
At a recent International Dentists Conference in Seattle, the spouses were not to be found at the Space Needle. They were in the Outlets. One German dentist’s wife had bought two enormous white fluffy bathrobes. When I asked why she couldn’t buy them in Germany, she answered, “These have the Ralph Lauren emblem on them. They are a steal here – probably a fifth of their cost in Germany.”
But it is only by visiting the Outlets once every few weeks and buying only the items you need and only when they are priced at about 90% discount that you can accumulate a decent “haul”. The stock changes all the time and the item you dearly desire will eventually appear at incredible discount. Luckily, I live not too far from the Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip so I can actually do this. Now I need a larger closet!!!
“I’d like you to go over to the Albert Hall. There’s a party on this evening for Stokovsky, who’s in town at the moment. We have a problem there.”
This sounded curious as I had no idea exactly what the problem was. As far as I was concerned, the Albert hall was privately owned and could not therefore receive public money unless it turned itself into a charity.
It turned out that the party was also concerned with the acoustics of the hall which possessed a rather prominent echo and a long reverberation time. I gathered second-hand at the party that Stokovsky had proposed hanging up the flags of all nations from the front of the gallery to defeat the notorious echo and promote world peace.. I also learned a lot about the hall including the fact that even the rooms under the arena were designed along the lines of the colosseum in Rome.
The volume of a hall is one of the main parameters which determine the reverberation time. Simply put, that’s the time taken for the sound to die away. The other main London concert venue was the Festival Hall which – again simply put – had a volume which was too small. The solution to that hall was to provide assisted resonance using a series of amplifiers and speakers which each treated a tiny range of frequencies.
The problem in the Albert Hall was that the volume was very large and there was an echo mainly due to the dome which enabled certain sections of the audience to hear each note twice!
But there was hope. A young acoustician who lived in a basement flat near the Victoria and Albert Museum appeared with a simple solution. When I asked him what he had been doing recently, he told me he had been working on “Acoustic Perfume” for cabins in ships using bands of noise to mask the background engine sounds.
But when he explained his ideas, they were beautiful in their simplicity. He would hang a number of “flying saucers” from the dome which would provide reflection on the undersides and absorption on any reflected sound from the dome on their topsides.
This blew me away – it was SO simple! It takes a certain type of genius to come up with a truly simple solution to a complex problem. Later, when explaining his plan back at the ranch, I described it as a “half ceiling” to the hall cutting off half the sound from reaching the dome. We couldn’t build a whole ceiling – that would not have pleased English Heritage! – but we might get away with a half ceiling in the form of a number of flying saucers.
The private ownership was a problem but, as the hall was used for a number of BBC broadcasts including the Proms, it seemed to be in the public interest to provide public money to help pay for any improvement which resulted in acoustic benefits to the public.
Of course we sent a sample to the Government Building Research people and they came back with a result which said that the saucers would reduce the reflection by 3dB – a result not understood by any of the big cheeses. But the comment from the Director sealed the project when he said he wished he had come up with this solution, making his admiration for that young acoustician very clear.
So the flying saucers were hung and the measurements showed that there was a definite improvement in the reverberation frequency response but curiously there was an increase in the low frequency reverberation time – an improvement very desirable for Stokovsky. It turned out that this improvement was due to work which had been done on the floor of the hall for boxing matches. But Stokovsky would be pleased anyway. In fact, he said at the time “The echo – which is different from the reverberation period – is much less intense than it used to be, and the reverberation period is definitely shorter but I think there is more that could be done.”
I don’t think musicians ever really trust scientists’ tests on halls. So the hall had to tested by a real orchestra. I remember very clearly sitting with that heroic acoustician listening to the LSO playing the Bruckner Eighth and saying, “They’re playing this just for us!!!”
We were the only people in that huge old hall.
Four years later, Stokovsky gave his last concert in the Albert Hall.
Keith!!!! Keith!!! Keith!!! I hear across the street one Summer evening. Looking over the road I see Wendy with whom I had done a scratch orchestral tour of the Côte d’Azur a few years earlier.
I cross the road to confront a a slightly distraught Wendy.
“Would you mind page turning for me . . . Please?”
“OK. when?”, I reply.
“Now!”, says Wendy as she drags me into the stage door of the Wigmore Hall.
With only the slightest pause, we make our way on to the stage of the Wigmore Hall. Imagine my amazement when I see an audience almost filling the hall!! I make myself as invisible as possible as we set off through a sonata whose piano part looks like wallpaper. Somehow Wendy nods me through each page turn and the performance seems to be successful judging by the applause at the end and the subsequent encores.
The only event I remember about that Côte d’Azur tour – if “remembering” is the correct word! – is the reception given to the orchestra by the Mayor of Nice. H seemed very keen to get us to drink as much champagne as possible and then produced orange juice plus other additives to encourage us to drink even more. Inevitably everybody became drunk and we had a problem – how to sober up.
In my travels, I had often used the Nice USO as a place to have a free afternoon snack and coffee. Strangely, the people running it included a number of very elegant English ladies who spoke French with a very ‘English’ accent.
“I know somewhere we can sober up!”, I announced to the orchestra.
It must have been a strange vision to onlookers as a whole orchestra wended its way to the USO. The nice ladies assessed the situation correctly and produced mugs of coffee for us all to drink, almost saving the evening concert. I don’t remember much about the concert except that we ditched the Mendelssohn Violin Concert for the Telemann Concerto performed by a rugby-playing viola man who could consume vast quantities of alcohol with no apparent ill effects, unlike the rest of us.
Ah, back to page turning!
I suppose the first requirement of a page turner is the ability to read music. This is only really necessary because you need to know when to nonchalantly rise and lean forward to turn the page. As the pianist approaches the end of the page of music you receive a deep nod and the page must then be turned. You do not usually have to wait until the end of the page. There’s something a little creepy about a person hiding next to a pianist and only emerging every now and then to turn the page. There’s even an excellent film called “The Page Turner . . . . . .
Here you can see Martha Argerich using a page turner . . . .
All in all, the presence of a page turner on the stage is a necessary evil which visually distracts us from the music. I have always tried my best to avoid being a page turner.
However I remember one ocassion when I had booked a seat on the front row of one of the few concert halls where I can stretch my feet out. It was a programme of violin sonatas.
The two performers walked on to the stage, bowed to acknowledge applause, said a few words to each other, then , to the astonishment of the audience, mysteriously walked off the stage. Shortly after this, the Stage Manager appeared and approached me.
“The performers would like to speak with you”, he whispered.
I followed him backstage where I was asked whether I would turn pages for the pianist. I reluctantly agreed and we all trooped back on to the stage and did the concert.
But I really lucked out with this duo. Many musicians are excellent gourmet cooks and these two were no exception. They insisted that I come back to their apartment where they cooked me an amazing meal! So page turning can sometimes be a rewarding experience!!
“Your car has arrived”, I am extremely surprised to be told during a rather slow board meeting which had degenerated into listening to Hans Keller pointing out how many notes in the score we were considering could not be played by the bass clarinet.
As one who always travels by tube, this announcement is obviously nonsense but, compared to looking for mistakes in complex dodecaphonic scores, any distraction seems attractive.
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Well, he seems pretty sure!!!”
Intrigued by the impossibility of a lift to the South Bank, I make my farewells and descend the stairs to Exhibition Road, South Kensington. Parked by the side of the road I see a smart combi van.
“Get in!!!’ I hear a rather gruff Bronx voice say.
I naturally get in the front passenger seat and away we go through the back streets of North London.
“I’m Harvey Matusow”, says my kidnapper. “I need some advice and people tell me you are the man to see. But first, we eat!!!”
Harvey drives rather erratical as though being chased by aliens. But we eventually end up at the Falafel House somewhere near Hampstead. There, sitting around a large table, are members of “his” group, many of whom I know. Their attitude to Harvey is rather puzzling, as though overwhelmed by his forcefulness. I am certainly overwhelmed. But, of course, I have never been kidnapped before. So we eat.
After eating and some agitated conversation, we depart.
“Where are we going?”
“You’re coming back to our house in Ingatestone.”
Eventually we arrive at the Ingatestone house where Harvey shares a farm house with his wife Anna.
We eat and drink together then retire to Harvey’s office where I am immediately given honorary membership of the ’Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines’. In return, I give Harvey some advice concerning some of his plans for a Festival. He then shows me his ‘Presidential Pardon’ framed on his wall
and recounts his stories about being chased by the FBI and having to take a job as a clown in a travelling religious circus to avoid them.
Harvey then takes his “Tincture of Cannabis” explaining how he is so overactive that he needs this to ‘slow himself down’. Judging from his behaviour over the last few hours, I vigorously concur with this statement.
They have converted a stable into a very comfortable apartment in which I spend the night. I sleep well without the need for TOC.
I awake next morning to the sound of piano ‘playing’ in the garden. I see a number of pianos apparently slowly sinking into the mud of the wet garden soil. Anna is going to each piano and recording the sounds each piano makes as it “dies” – although it sounds as though most of them are half dead already.
Breakfast is broken up by telephone calls from various sections of the media. Harvey explains that he is willing to give his opinions on anything futuristic to the media or anybody else for that matter. It crosses my mind that perhaps his opinions are garnered by ‘kidnapping’ other relevant people.
Eventually and admittedly reluctantly I have to leave as I have an important meeting later that morning. Harvey also has a television interview later in the day so he runs me to Ingatestone station and I return to the metropolis.
Epilogue
Later in the day my sister who lives in Chelmsford is given the job of carting a celebrity to the television studios for an interview. It turns out that the celebrity is Harvey!! She turns up at his Ingatestone house and sees pianos sinking into the mud of the front garden. Harvey jumps into the back of the car and, knowing that one of my specialities is “Weird Art” asks, “Do you know my brother?”
I later ask Hugh, a member of the group, about the situation with Harvey. He explains that Harvey has managed to get the Royal Engineers to give them equipment and even make items for their performances. The group is amazed that he can do things like that.
Much later, I maintain an email correspondence with Harvey. He seems to be as overactive as ever. He answers each email immediately within a few hours with an incredibly chatty monologue. He is intending to write his life story using contributions from people with whom he has made contact over the years. He tells me that his marriage to Anna broke down some time ago and she is now living in New York.
Harvey died in 2002. The outline of his book is in the page entitled “Zappy Harvey’s Book”. The “Zappy” has been added to put the page at the end of the list in the sidebar.
Have you ever booed a stage production or walked out of the performance altogether? Here in Seattle, I am told that audiences award each performance a standing ovation then quickly scuttle home. (Fair play to them, most people who rush out are trying to catch a late night ferry home.) I myself tend towards a binary approach – I either enjoy it or not then scuttle home.
But there are stirrings amongst opera audiences. Are they becoming as demonstrative as football supporters? Or are they still politely applauding opera stage production they simply do not enjoy?
My limit was reached when I saw a hideous production of Götterdämmerung in Florence some time ago.
Anticipating an awful production, I had booked a box seat above the orchestra from which I could hear that great sound and see Zubin Mehta leaning back against the pit wall conducting his orchestra in his inimitable way. But I was puzzled by the fact that there was a video monitor hanging at my level. All was revealed when three enormous glass tanks appeared suspended above the stage at my level containing the Rheintöchtern. They looked at us from under the water and rose above the surface to sing their parts!
At the time I was more concerned at the cruelty inflicted on these young singers than the quality of the production. I’m OK with naked Rheintöchtern or Rheintöchtern flying on wires behind a gauze but underwater goes too far in my opinion. But when Siegfried appeared walking along the top of the set, I was concerned about the safety of the whole cast. If animals were required to do anything like this, the show would be immediately banned.
When the performance ended with all sorts of antics including a sort of cirque de soleil and segways running around everywhere I threw up my hands and shut my eyes. I did open them to applaud a great Brünnhilde who had put up with being carted around on a forklift truck during the performance.
Then there are those slightly weird productions. The ‘Lohengrin I heard some time ago in Munich probably qualifies as one of those. But with Kent Nagano at the helm and local Jonas Kaufmann singing Lohengrin, the audience was very happy. It was the first time I had heard Kaufmann so I was also very happy!! This production is actually on Youtube so we can all make a judgement about the extent of the weirdness and the magic of the performance. Here they are busy building a house in the first act 29 minutes into this video . . . .
. . . . . . and here is the finished half house. Lohengrin is dressed Amish-style but this probably indicates the quality of his character . . . .
Magic as the music may be, I could not help wondering why they began building with hebel blocks and ended with a wooden Halbhaus.
I have tended to block out from my memory the most awful productions I have seen in recent years. I have tried to enjoy the great music alone. However, I have to admit that production does affect my feelings at the end of an opera evening. I feel particularly sorry for critics who have to attend these performances. Having paid off a mortgage by moonlighting as a music critic, I have always felt a need to support musicians and singers, many of whom have trained for up to twenty years before getting their first appointment.
I can easily sympathise with a particular critic who neglected to mention in his review three years ago that performances of the L.A. “Ring”, particularly the final “Götterdämmerung”, had been booed. In fact one other critic had written . . . . . .
“I have never heard anything close to the amount, volume, and ferocity of the booing following the April 3 premiere of Los Angeles Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,”
This sort of observation was justified by my own editor who suggested that critics are journalists who should “say something about the whole performance”. Surely, the audience reaction is part of the “whole performance”?
Another observation by a critic in L.A. . . . . .
The director “jauntily jogged right to the front of the stage, smiling, as if to challenge both booers and the rising rival chorus of bravos . . . . . . The boo’s won.”
It is sad to read that Zeffirelli is recorded as saying “I belong to a generation where being faithful to the authors was the automatic rule. Now you have to be unfaithful to be interesting.”
One argument that favours the “weird” is the televising of operas which often gives a more favourable view of an “unfaithful” approach. The audience, on the other hand is looking at a wide stage. Even the ‘Lohengrin’ mentioned above looks rather scruffy during “In fernem Land”. The few shots of the whole stage in the video actually show this, although I obviously did not worry about it at the time!
Even a short search on the internet will reveal many occasions where audiences have become more intolerant of extremely “unfaithful” productions. For example, it is not surprising that the Met audience did not appreciate a scene in the 2009 production of ’Tosca’ “where the villain tries to become intimate with a statue of the Virgin Mary.”
There were many reactions from the press ranging from Bloomberg’s “How did this dopey show get on the stage?” to The New Yorker’s “Fiasco!!” The director was subsequently effectively sacked and his proposed production of Rigoletto was rejected in favour of a new director whose . . . . .
“ transformation of Verdi’s tragic opera from the ducal palace in Mantua, circa 1600, to a Las Vegas casino, circa 1960, is no less spectacular (or eye-rolling, depending on one’s tolerance for the unorthodox) . . . . . but once one adjusts to the myriad flashing neon signs in the opening act, including a bare-bottomed stripper and a bubbling champagne glass, the music of one of Verdi’s most popular operas takes over.”
Once again, faithfulness, the musicians and singers have won the day!
Last year, a Covent Garden audience felt their evening watching ‘Rusalka’ had been ruined by the fact that director had set the opera in a brothel. They booed the director and felt that perhaps, like the Met’, the management should notice their reaction?
So what has happened as a reaction to this booing?
Let’s look at the good stuff first. Two months ago, I read about the Pittsburgh Opera where . . . . .
“The Triumphal Scene featured many extra elements, including two horses ridden by members of the Allegheny Country Police Mounted Patrol, a python, a hawk, and four greyhounds with their handlers.”
But they also brought figures from the USA’s iconic sport which must help to bring opera to the people without any unfaithfulness or cruelty to sopranos. I personally love this!!
“Former Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch was the “Champion of Champions” on Saturday. He comported himself with dignity and exchanged salutes with Radames. Bob Friend, Franco Harris and Phil Bourge will take this silent role at subsequent performances.”
However this year in Bayreuth, known for its imaginative productions, ‘Götterdämmerung’ was booed for 15 minutes. Maybe Shirley Apthorp’s description explains why . . .
“This is Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, where two giant crocodiles lumber past overflowing rubbish bins during Siegfried’s love duet with Brünnhilde. One of them swallows the Waldvogel – her high heels can be seen kicking feebly between its teeth as the two sing on. Earlier, when Siegfried blasted Mime full of holes with a machine gun, a member of the public collapsed. Hagen and Günter run a kebab stand in a forgotten corner of East Berlin. . . . . . . For these and a thousand other petty provocations, the Bayreuth audience rewarded the stage director with more than 15 minutes of solid booing when he appeared for his curtain call”.
This was the bicentenary performance of the ‘Ring’, no less!! It was noted that
“The director seemed determined to stick it out, standing on stage for a good 10 minutes, bowing graciously and making thumbs-up gestures. He even returned for a second helping and appeared to be revelling in the scandal, pointing at his watch to suggest he had time to listen to it.”
But there’s even more distasteful stuff. The “thousand other petty provocations” included. the scene where
“Two disheveled gods, Wotan and Erda, eat pasta and tomato sauce and indulge in joyless” indescribable acts . . . and . . . “Brünnhilde goes to sleep in Baku, Azerbaijan, and awakes in a socialist utopia Mount Rushmore with the faces of Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Mao carved into the rock.”
Two months ago in Paris, audiences booed the production of ‘Aida’. How on earth can anyone boo ‘Aida’? Perhaps the appearance of gypsies, military police, tanks and Gestapo officers with machine guns in the Italian Risorgimento had something to do with it?
What next?
Having just witnessed the Seahawks defeat the Giants away from home 23 to zip in New Jersey – poetry in motion, especially slow motion!! (I was watching in a bar eating an enormous prime rib sandwich and drinking a pint of Guiness), I would suggest that opera companies go even further than Pittsburgh and hire Pete Caroll to direct their next productions.
Satte Rabatte -25% Rabatt Sammler bis zu -20% auf Wein, Schaumwein und Spirituosen
This is the heading of my latest email from Vienna this morning about a “Special” running “Am Freitag, 13. Dezember und Samstag , 14. Dezember 2013”. Unfortunately, I am in Seattle at the moment so I cannot take advantage of this weekend’s offer from BILLA to stock up on wine and spirits before Christmas. I should add that, as I am a member of BILLA, I could even take advantage of the additional reduction of 20%.
In addition, BILLA has tasting sessions on Saturday – another reason that I would definitely be there today if I were in Vienna! This time last year a nice man offered me a full glass of ‘Blue Label’ whisky. “Nobody wants to try it!”, he explained. I later found out that a bottle plus the high EU VAT came to over two hundred US dollars!!
My first purchase in post-Christmas sales in London was a beautiful Crombie overcoat which was stolen by a “snatch and run” artist in the first restaurant in which I hung it up. Before this, I also had a vacation job in Selfridges selling silk so I knew the way these sales were organised. The seconds crockery sale was particularly successful. Selfridges had the lion’s share of the seconds because it sold so much full price crockery during the year.
I notice that Vienna shops will simply reduce prices on all their entire stock (at least the stock they are prepared to leave in the shop during the sales period) by as much as 70%. People stream into Vienna especially to Mariahilfer Straße to get these specials. In London these days, they tend to import special stock to sell during the sales period. But there are still good deals to be found by those who are early shoppers. In the USA on the day following Thanksgiving, the “Black Friday” sales offer what seems to be extraordinary value; so extraordinary that people camp overnight outside certain shops in sub-zero temperatures.
Two weeks ago on ‘Black Friday’ and the following weekend. Wal Mart was selling the very latest model of the iPhone for $45 with a cash back of $75!!! When I investigated this offer at 8am on ‘Black Friday’, it turned out that this generous ‘cash back’ had to be spent on a year’s subscription to Verizon.
I always try to take advantage of such sales. Probably the best “Outdoor” shop in Brisbane Australia – similar to REI in the USA – is Kathmandu where I bought my wonderful Rumanian mountaineering boots. But I bought them in December when they sell everything at 50% off the normal price. After Christmas, they increase this reduction to 60%. The following year I bought my heavy duty travel gear during December. Why buy at any other time? REI does things a little differently, giving dividends to their customers and sometimes a free gift with certain purchases.
ALDI does things in completely different manner. They offer specials each week starting on a certain days. They are usually have a different theme each week. In Noosa Heads, Australia the best specials are gone within five minutes of the opening time after people have sometimes been in line for up to an hour. The Brisbane stores specials last a little longer so I now have an Australian kitchen completely equipped with specials from ALDI. In Vienna, I bought all my warm clothes from ALDI including snow boots which cost one sixth of the price in nearby shops.
As in the example above, BILLA is different again. If you sign up with BILLA, they give you specials varying from item to item all the time. But each week on certain days they offer 25% on a certain range of stock. This week BILLA members will get a huge 40% off wine and spirits as mentioned at the beginning. This is particularly good if we go to the two signature stores in the centre of Vienna and near the Opera where they have an great range of plonk. In Italy, BILLA does incredibly low piece specials on chunks of Reggione cheese. They also do give-away prices on Gorganzola in Venice but, if you look as though you are about to buy it, a local Venetian will immediately tell you “High Cholesterol!! don’t buy that!!”.
Nowadays, specials are everywhere. When I was in Colchester, England recently I found that buying a rail ticket needed some negotiation skills. I managed to get the ticket price down to one third of the initial price then said, “Surely you can do better than that?” to which the ticket seller replied, “I can’t do better than that but, if you go to the other ticket office, you may get a better price”. I did go to the other ticket office and I did get a better price! I should mention that I was negotiating a ticket price for a later date. If you want to buy on the day of travel, you usually have to pay full price.
Talking of rail travel reminds me of buying a ticket in Leipzig. I had taken the precaution of searching the really fine DB website for the particular ticket I needed. I found an incredibly low price for the ticket I needed. I went to the ticket office and was given a price far above the one I had found. I protested and gave the ticket seller instructions on how to find the price I wanted. “Ah!! There it is!!!” he said and I walked away a very happy camper!!
There are now many internet brokers for travel and accommodation and some like ‘Travelzoo’ will simply point you towards the best deals in each country. This saves a lot of time searching for specials.
One Travelzoo special I took up was for the executive floor of a five star hotel in Budapest. This had all sorts of hot baths and orchestras were playing each evening. A group of English security experts had also taken up this offer. They managed to drink the hotel completely out of Hungarian beer and had to start on the (better in my opinion) Czech beer. when I asked them if there were actually security cameras on every London street, they cheered and shouted, “We hope so!!!”.
There are also many good deals to be had in the area of entertainment. For example, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra has recently been advertising very good “deals” for some of their tickets including a number of offers through Travelzoo. I have also seen a number of offers of cheap tickets to concerts given by the Brisbane based Queensland Symphony Orchestra. But these were made to members of the RACQ, the equivalent of the AAA in the USA. Papering a theatre is also a very serious business so often free tickets are available at short notice to certain people.
Of course, I haven’t even started to work through the pile of discount vouchers in the kitchen and discount emails which have arrived today. Specials are everywhere!!!
Leaving behind the sad farewells, I endure the terrors of TSA before enjoying the pleasures of the overpriced duty free area. As usual, my plane is late and I have plenty of time to convert my remaining Australian change into US dollars before boarding my 767 flight to Hawaii.
We have been told that the plane is “full” but the forward cabin of economy has empty seats . We all move around and I end up with a aisle seat plus the window seat. The larger rear cabin is full of people joining a relocation cruise in Hawaii which goes via Tahiti and other exotic islands en route to Sydney
The engines sound a little labored as we take off but they settle down as soon as we are cruising around 33,000 feet. The plane is old and rather primitive without any of the luxuries normal on a flight heading to Europe. The sound channels do not work very well and we cannot hear any of the announcements from the crew; even on the cabin speaker system.
I have some tablets from my doctor “to help me sleep”. The airline has supplied us with earplugs. I have been informed by “a reliable source” that these tablets work best after a glass of wine so I make sure I have two beakers full of wine with my meal which consists of chicken and rice, a piece of cheese with a cracker and – the grand finale . . . . a tim tam!!!!
I take the tablet and I don’t experience the slightest hint of drowsiness. So I take another one. That doesn’t seem to make any better either. No worries!!! I just sit there for nine and a half hours. I try sleeping on my side using both seats but that isn’t any better. Being in the forward cabin means that the continual slight turbulence doesn’t bother me – or is it the magic pills? – but, as usual, I hardly get any sleep.
I am SO happy when the plane begins its descent into Honolulu. Our “breakfast” was a bag full of goodies given to us by the cabin crew who did manage to rustle up a fairly decent cup of tea, thank goodness.
My interview with Homeland Security is NOT pleasant. I am given a stern warning before having my photograph taken. “If you overstay your visit by even one day, WE will hound you for the rest of your life!!!” Two years ago the Canadian border control took the date card out of my passport and apparently did not send it to Homeland Security. When I tried to enter the USA again soon after, the Homeland Security man gave me a long lecture, saying that I must stay away for over a year before entering the USA again. I had been good and had stayed away the required year despite an incident which made me want to return during that time. I remember the comment by the Homeland Security before taking my photograph back then. “We have enough work to do with illegals without having to worry about YOU!!!!” But they are really a nice bunch of people trying their best to protect the USA giving me excellent advice and I DO appreciate it when he lets me in!!!!
Now I have a problem. During the journey, one of the cabin crew brought me a beaker of pineapple juice just before a turbulent bump which spilt juice all over my trousers. As the juice poured over on to me, I made efforts to escape from my seat but only succeeded on ripping one side of my trousers. The rip was over two feet long (OK about 600 mm or 0.6 metre for the rest of the world!) on my right hand side. I managed to get the cabin crew to give me a cleaning cloth but they did not possess any sewing skills or materials. I therefore approached the oldest and kindest looking lady in the airport bookshop for help. She had some sellotape which she used to tape the lengths of trouser together. Nice lady!!! I had bought the trousers from the Tommy Hilfiger Outlet two years ago for eight dollars but, as they had five pairs in my size, I bought the lot. So I now have one pair left in Brisbane and three pairs in Seattle. No worries about this pair!!!!
I had booked an aisle seat in the rear cabin for the flight from Hawaii to Seattle but, I manage to persuade a staff member to book me another middle seat in the forward cabin, hoping to grab any vacant places in front. He also gives me a little ticket which enables me to go through the TSA line where you do not have to take off your belts and shoes. The line for the normal TSA is about a hundred yards (We’re in the USA now!) long and the “quick ” line fills the departure hall and goes about fifty yards outside in the rather humid early morning air.
This time, it really IS a full flight. To get to the departure point we must all be scanned for vegetables and fruit!!! As I enter the plane, I ask if I can move to an aisle seat. Much to my amazement, they give me an aisle seat level with the back seats of the first class cabin. Fantastic!!! The short five and a half hour flight is not as awful as the previous nine and a half hour flight but the primitive “entertainment” is exactly the same as the first flight. First we see a film about Hawaii which seems to have been filmed in super-eight followed by “The Great Gatsby” and an episode of a TV soap. I really must try to see the Gatsby film again so I can find out what the characters are saying.
As we approach Seattle, the captain tells us to prepare for “turbulence just before we land due to a 120 knot jetstream”. As it is now over 20 hours since Brisbane and I am sitting almost at the front of the plane it bothers me little!! I breathe a sigh of relief as I greet the New World.
Keith of Ninewells 