travel – Alan Camrose

14 January 202214 January 2022

Lowlander

I am going somewhere steeped in mystery for our Summer hols this year, exotic, broooding and epic.

After the Lockdowns, that could of course mean a trip to the local cinema, but no: this is the real deal, and it’s not the Old Rectory in Aylesbury, fun as that was for a couple of years as our main holiday. We have to spread our wings (without flying for a while longer).

Scotland.

No Lochdowns.

I have had limited exposure to Scotland, including having gone to Glasgow in the late ’90s as part of a delegation from Hong Kong impressing the participants about the promised 50-years-unchanged-until-at-least-2047 Rule for Hong Kong and the stability that it would have after the Handover. How young I must have been to believe any of that, but that’s another story, right? My other visit to Scottishland was to Edinburgh with the Aged Ps, again a long time ago. All I can remember of that visit was me taking them to see Riverdance. I think the trauma for me has wiped my memory, all that line dancing, cavorting and chirpiness, and from the wrong country.

On with the proper Scottishness.

Fog settling in the glen, tartan, and Mel Gibson in heavy make-up. And of course whisky distilleries.

We are planning to take the sleeper up to Glasgow from London – giddy excitement and probably no sleep. But at least a safer bet than the Trans-Siberian, where a few years ago I was warned that, if I traveled on that journey, I should wedge damp towels in the cracks in the sleeper cabin door to head off any tear gas that might be used in an effort to flush us out and rob us. I’m not expecting the same treatment heading for Scotland, despite my being resolutely English.

A day excursion out of Glasgow, from Fort William – Lower Left of Scotland – to Mallaig. Further left.

The Jacobite.

On another train. A steam train! How exciting is that?!

Over the viaduct that leads to Hogwarts, doubling as the Hogwarts Express, past where they shot Highlander and Local Hero. Sadly, not past Balamory, so we won’t find out the story even though we would like to know; nor past where one of my favourite Wombles – Tobermory – lives, he’s on a different line. To arrive in the shadow of Ben Nevis. Epic.

Then a scoot back to Glasgow. After a proper mooch around, Edinburgh beckons.

In particular, the Scottish National Gallery. I want to see The Skating Minister, a bizarre creation attributed to Henry Raeburn in 1784 that is as mad as anything Dali would have produced using a clergyman on an iced-up lake as subject matter. The Reverend Robert Walker was the man captured skating on Duddingston Loch.

What was the Reverend thinking at the time and more puzzlingly how did he hold that pose for Raeburn long enough to paint him? A remarkable balancing feat. Dancing on Ice? Pah! The Rev is all 10s…

Hold still just a bit longer, please, Rev…

We have also booked The Witchery restaurant in Edinburgh, in the shadow of the Castle. “Opulent eccentricity”, according to The Observer. All red leather seats and oak panelling, like Game of Thrones, with better food, I hope. We must see if the Macbeths are available to join us for a cauldron roast.

Very much looking forward to our Summer hols.

We’ve had the joy of planning the trip, whatever happens…

I will report on the reality in due course…

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

28 August 202128 August 2021

It’s guano get ugly

The return of the Scarlet Pipistrelle

First night of our Summer hols. Couple of glasses of wine, nicely settled into the Old Rectory that we rented for a week. Blissful sleep.

Then it came.

Claws. Fangs. Leathery.

And that was just Offspring One, crashing into our bedroom at 2:00 am.

“There’s a bat in my bathroom! A bat!”

Still waking up, “How big?”

“What’s that got to do with it? There’s a bat in my bathroom!!”

Awkward. There’s a strict No Pets requirement for staying in the house. And it had been advertised as a B&B, not standing for Bed & Bat.

“I closed the door, maybe it’ll fly back out of the open window?’

Maybe.

Visions of a hulking leather-winged beast lurking in theshadows.

“Let’s keep your door shut,” I said, not wanting to turn this into a wildlife safari in the middle of the night.

I called Reception, “I know this is a bit odd but we have found a bath in my son’s batroom at the Rectory.. Sorry, it’s late. A bat in his bathroom.”

The man on Reception was unruffled, “There are six types of bat on the estate. They’re endangered species, you know.”

“My son’s feeling pretty endangered.”

“Do you know what type of bat?”

“An unwanted bat. Can you send someone over to catch it and let it out?”

I’m afraid not. No-one on the staff has a bat-catching licence.”

“A bat-catching licence?”

“Otherwise it’s illegal. They’re endangered , remember?”

“Ah yes. So what do we do?”

“If it doesn’t leave, we’ll have to call in the bat people.”

“Bat people?”

Uncontrolled, spitting, gasping mirth. Heroic effort to maintain the conversation. Dinnah-dinnah-dinnah-dinnah-dinnah-dinnah-dinnah-dinnah Bat-people. Does Robin come with them, too?

“We probably won’t need them. Don’t worry, sir, it will probably be gone by morning.” I could hear him smiling, “There’s no charge for an extra guest. This happens a fair bit. The poor thing probably got lost on the way to the belfry next door.’

I supposed it was like the bat looking for a new home. Maybe a TV series would be made about that.

They could call it Echo-Location, Echo-Location, Echo-Location.

The bat was nowhere to be seen in Offspring One’s room, even though we sought him here and sought him there, we damn well sought him everywhere. He had dutifully flitted off by the morning. No need for the Bat-phone., but since then I have noticed one thing:

The windows in the Rectory have never been so tightly shut.

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

With thanks to Johannes Giez and Igam Ogam for the bat pics.

4 August 20214 August 2021

Gallery view

Welcome to my Blog

You are very welcome to my Random Place, and thanks for stopping by.

This time, I take a trip around my Art Gallery to share with you…

Last time, I wrote about painting. Painting the fence in my back garden. I thought I would share with you a few items from when I used to play with thinner paint brushes. And pencils. They were done a while ago, but I guarantee that I had more fun with them than with the fence.

I enjoy the discipline of drawing and painting, and the danger of making the next mark on the canvas or drawing pad where it hangs in the balance whether that will spoil or enhance the offering.

I write books and this blog with a view to exercising my creative muscles, but I have over the years dallied with an easel rather than a keyboard.

I hope you enjoy my sojourn through my sketchbooks and folders.

First up is a self-portrait of me at the Hong Kong Sevens in the 1990s, concentrating on supping my beer with the pitch in the background. That would have been after the Bloody Marys for breakfast to wash down legions of sausage sandwiches, staving off the pain of watching Fiji and the All-Blacks yet again contesting the Final. That pain is reflected in the glowing colours of my pint.

More Asian influence comes from the Balinese puppet that I have included, a still life of the jointed figure bought in a street market. The crumpled form not only reflects the marionette’s posed form, but also chimes with how the day ended after those beers above…

Finally for now, I have included a picture of my junk in Hong Kong Harbour (Hong Kong means ‘Fragrant Harbour’ in Chinese – a tragic example of wishful thinking), on which I would have slept on the top deck as it meandered home:

That’s all for now…

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

14 July 202114 July 2021

Whoop! This is my 50th Post at my Random Place

I thought it would be a good moment to cast an eye back over my earlier posts to see just how random they are.

It got me to thinking about the purpose of my blog. It is like a diary, a snapshot of where I am in the particular week, an articulation of something that I feel it worthwhile articulating.

I’m not trying to sell anything with my blog, except my words. If you want to buy my books, then that’s great; if you want to buy me a cup of coffee then that’s great too, but I suppose I’m acting like an unstable lighthouse swirling words out into the void to try to connect with other – broadly like-minded – human beings. Not with bots or algorithms, phishers or exotic princes with a sad story to tell involving my bank account details. Just other human beings who may want to tarry for a moment in my lair to see what I have to say about things of hopefully mutual interest.

I’ve taken a look back over the past year’s posts to see any patterns in the randomness.

My posts include various broad categories:

Books and reviews – my posts on audio books, genre mashing, and Hemingway – topical with the new series from the BBC.

Food and drink, including posts on cheese, tomato sauce and – strangely fittingly – pizza and the wonders of a pizza oven. A special mention to the Claw of the Beast.

roast chicken at Hixters restaurant London

Sport, like the Euros, but I want to put that to one side for the moment. Too sad for the glorious defeat and angry at the minority of idiots who have over-shadowed what was a joyful ride for England supporters.

Charlie George Arsenal goal celebration 1971 FA Cup final vs Liverpool

Music is one of my great loves, ranging from the blues to my favourite country crossover song ever to our open air concert in Glyndebourne last year. My piece on Spooky Bob and his Crossroads date with the Devil is the first in my intended series of stuff about my favourite blues artists.

Posts on travel have kept me embracing the wider world at a time when we have been forced to look closer to home, leading mne back to trekking in Nepal and forward to British staycations in Cheshire and, er, Aylesbury. Don’t smirk, we’re going back to Aylesbury this Summer, too. Lily the unforgettable campervan, too.

And everyday stuff, like uni, diets and the fierce selection of board games to play during Lockdown.

Croquet, anyone? Games and outdoor activity.

And Jasper and Pagoda, our retriever and Burmese – absolutely not everyday stuff.

Some interlopers sneaked in…

That’s all for now. I look forward to the next 50, I hope you do too…

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

8 June 20218 June 2021

The Cheshire Riviera

Welcome to my Blog

You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…

This time, the pleasures of a staycation…

We have just returned from our hols. An exotic Summer holiday, in Cheshire. At Knutsford, just inside the city limits.

We went for a week, stayed in a cottage which has a hot tub in the garden, so we were able to recreate Footballers’ Wives, without the naff haircuts or the whining. The cottage had everything that we needed, and three bonus alpacas, called Tom, Dick and Harry, who provided serene audience for our antics. Not that there were many antics.

A special place in my heart for Harry’s mullet, a sneaky homage to the Beatles?

There were also three chickens, mysteriously un-named: they were the Chickens With No Name. We called them Nugget, Dansak and Run. They were shaped like ambient tea cosies. We don’t have pictures of them, for data privacy reasons. They periodically and loudly trumpeted their displeasure to the alpacas about periodically being treated like the balls for alpaca polo. Those chickens were pretty chukka. The introduction of a grey cat called Mitzi made it like a strange petting zoo where none of the creatures were available for or in the cat’s case amenable to petting.

Our Offspring did their usual trick of surfacing at a brisk 1 or 2 pm, ready for a nourishing breakfast of sausage rolls and cider. In the meantime, we loafed on the outdoor furniture and vied with the alpacas for the glory of the Loafing Award. They still won as a group entry, which was a surprise since we had fielded the Offspring. Their teamwork was immaculate, like the England back three but with more positional awareness and better footwork. They followed up by proving to be very adept at Statues, too, so something to bear in mind when Creature Statues takes over from Breakdancing in the 2028 Olympics.

We patronised an ice cream shop, a honey emporium and Tatton Park (very flowery, which is as far as my knowledge of botany takes me).

Red flowers
Gunnera?
Tatton Park gardens

We visited friends just outside Liverpool and had a pub lunch with draft beer. And then went to a family get-together in Liverpool and drank more beer. I was not the designated driver, so all good.

This was all in the sunshine and over 20 degrees, all in a very pleasant episode of Being Somewhere Else Away From Our House.

Based on this, I’ve formed the view that staycations have a lot going for them. No jet lag, no exhausting twenty hour journeys for long haul, no PPE gear. A contrast to our previous hols to all sorts of places in foreign climes, but with much to commend it. I think we may have uncovered something…

I suspect that Ryanair will not be re-tweeting this.

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

29 May 20217 July 2021

Taking a break

No proper post this week. On Summer hols in the Cheshire Riviera.

Back to business after I get back next weekend.

Until then, best from

Alan

Alan Camrose

19 May 202119 May 2021

Lily

Welcome to my Blog

You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…

This time, a trip down memory back roads in a work of art…

Lily is beautiful. She has a special place in my heart.

She has a swooping, V-shaped front, and gleaming green-and-white bodywork. And a pop-up roof. Marvelous.

We met many years ago when our Family trekked over to Pembrokeshire for an Escape to Nature in our version of the Mystery Machine. Camping. Board games. Rain. British holidays at their most alluring.

We collected Lily and got down to the serious business of grappling with a steering wheel the size of a dustbin lid and brakes which had a stopping distance of around two miles. Cornering required forward planning, The bed in the back looked comfortable., not that I was ever going to see it up close. The Boy and I were turfed out under canvas at the camp site, under the stick on awning that turned Lily into a caravan in the more exotic sense of the word. We forgot the Turkish delight and made do with Welsh cakes.

6:30 the next morning, the thrill of a night out under the stars was tempered by (a) the lack of stars all night because of the cloud cover; and (b) the detached edge of the awning wetly slapping me across the face as if flapped in the wind.

No matter.

We had conquered the challenges of sleeping in and next to a vehicle on a cliff-top. First-hand evidence demonstrated that the handbrake was well-made and functioning. After braving the hose-shower and the peculiarly unstable toilet tent provided by the site, we were done and ready for the next adventure.

Managed chaos and discomfort, the joy of the outdoors. Freedom.

And we will do it again, these days subject to there being three bars of Wi-Fi and a buffet, but Hell it’s the thought that counts while starting to emerge from our cocoons. For us, Lily was, unknowingly, good practice for Lockdown.

Let’s hope we can all make our way back to the open road soon…

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

26 March 20217 July 2021

French culinary delights – no “pain”, no gain

Welcome to my Blog

It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix. You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…

This time, some French food to tickle your taste buds…

I find myself looking out through the shutters of my study window at the dark skies and the whipping rain.

I’ve unsurprisingly taken a moment to pine for the delightful markets in Southern France, the friendly people, the blazing sunshine, and several bottles of regional wine with good friends. And the baguettes and the cheese and everything else. God’s larder.

Those times will come again, with a bit of patience and a lot of endurance.

For the moment, I want to share with you some glorious French food, wrenched from the clinging hands of local farmers near Montpellier in France a few summers ago. I came upon these images again today and they have made a wonderful end to my week. I hope they bring some much needed joy to you.

A glorious note to end on. Thanks, Marie!

Au revoir!

Alan

Alan Camrose

1 March 20211 March 2021

Bet out of Hell

Havana Good Time – Part Tres

Welcome to my Blog at The Lair Of The Camrose

It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix. You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…

This time, getting to the heart of six-word stories and the Bet Out Of Hell…

Ernest Hemingway, one lunchtime with friends, reputedly took on the seemingly crazy challenge of paring down his already wafer-thin prose to a six word story, no more, no less.

My slightly longer than six words story goes that he made that bet at a lunch, possibly in The Algonquin hotel in New York.

He famously wrote it on a napkin.

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.

He collected his winnings while his companions gladly paid up, knowing that something extraordinary had just happened. I cannot help thinking that, if this is indeed how it happened, there’s a faint whiff of him setting up his literary friends with something pre-prepared, possibly to fund his next dozen or so daiquiris at the Floridita bar in Havana.

Whether the bet took place, where it took place or anything else about it has become a matter of legend. Urban legend in this case. If it were in New York, that is one of the most urban settings imaginable.

In many respects it matters not whether the concept fought its way into the world on that day – whatever day it was – or whether it was a confidence trick on the part of Hemingway or a wily agent to highlight and publicise his Spartan writing method. Whether it was effectively copied or adapted from earlier newspaper stories or word-games does not matter either.
It is one of those stories, fictional or otherwise, that I want to be true, not to be taken away from me. Comfort can be taken from the fact that the six words differ from the earlier apparent sources and the least of it is that Hemingway perfected the form.

It is a clean and brutal format.

The Hemingway baby shoes story sets the scene, homes in and then tears your heart. The baby shoes on offer have never been worn. A clear and dramatic pointer to ultimate tragedy.
Interestingly, if the shoes had been a boy’s shoes and the expectant parents had, by a twist of fate, welcomed a daughter into the world, then the same words would have simply described a correction of an unfortunate mistake; there would have been no drama, simply the acquisition of pink shoes with the proceeds to replace the blue. No tragedy. More importantly, no story to speak of.

We are made complicit in accepting the presence of tragedy to ensure that the dramatic weight of the piece crashes home. In those syllables, some collaboration is required between Hemingway and the reader to arrive where he wanted to be.

With all of this in mind, I decided to have a go at creating some more of these fiendishly awkward one-liners. The rules are quite simple, unchanged over the decades:

Six words. No more. No less.

That’s it.

I have found a sense of poetry, seriousness and playfulness in this form of story which I hope you will share with me in my stories in Part Four.

Hasta La Vista, Baby!

Cheers!

Alan

Alan Camrose

20 February 202120 February 2021

Havana Good Time – Part Dos

Welcome to my Blog at The Lair Of The Camrose

It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix. You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…

This time, reflections on the sea and Cuban cats…

Last time, I looked at Hemingway’s house in Havana and his deep connection with the area over a long period.

Hemingway was inspired to write “The Old Man And The Sea” in that house, a short but perfectly formed masterpiece of the relentlessness of Nature, the triumph of carrying on, the acceptance of what has to be – and be reconciled with – and the critical importance of striving. Particularly heroic striving against insurmountable obstacles. The sweet taste of triumph: an enormous catch wrestled from the Deep. Followed by the realisation that the old man was on a small boat a long way from home. With sharks in close attendance.

The nearby town of Cojima, with its sweeping bay and crumbling fort, must have felt part of him as he wrote, the panoramic far horizon filled with different shades of blue would have offered the promise of adventure and fulfillment, but nonetheless a vista absolutely not to be taken for granted.

The book cries out the old fisherman’s love for the power of Nature and his love for the fish that he hunts, all part of the ongoing Circle of Life.

An aspect of that Circle was, for Hemingway, the allure of cats. He was a self-confessed ailurophile, owning over fifty of them during his time at the house. At the same time, not serially, a wave just as impossible to resist as the sea itself. Especially at feeding time.
He is “credited” with making six-toed cats – polydactyl cats – an important part of the feline population of Cuba. Six toes – one more with which to shred furniture. Hemingway would have hated the notorious times of the Special Period in Cuban history following the collapse of the Soviet Union when, amongst other signs of desperation, the population resorted to consuming cats for sustenance.

That is no longer needed, although the humans will need to trust in the feline population not keeping a group memory of those dark times and bearing a grudge. Not something to presume: cats play a long game. I’m reluctant to raise the subject with my cat.

There are no feline residents these days at Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s beloved Havana home. Purported descendants of Hemingway’s cats live at his other house and museum in Key West. Finca Vigia seems strangely empty without any.

Hemingway referred to his cats as “purr factories”, once saying that “one cat leads to another”. Happily he was too early to be referring to the Special Period.

All of this made me think about Hemingway, his relationship with Nature, reflected in his writing, the lean and mean – some might say cadaverous – quality of his writing, particularly of “The Old Man And The Sea”, and my mind wandered to his famous bet.

It’s his remarkable wager that I shall talk about in Part Tres.

Cheers, Papa!

Alan

Alan Camrose