Black Wheatears (Oenanthe leucura) nest in caves and on ledges on cliff faces in Spain and Morocco. As is the case for most bird species - and in contrast to mammals, which are typically polygamous - it requires two adults to successfully rear a clutch of chicks and so Black Wheatears are superficially monogamous, although a great deal of fooling around occurs behind the scenes.
The theory of evolution by natural selection is blissfully simple but it has many subtle consequences, which are still being worked out. One of these consequences results from the fact that the cost of sex is very different for males and females. Whereas males can, by and large, "fuck and forget", females are stuck with the baby until it is capable of defending itself. The standard evolutionary outcome of this conflict between the sexes is that females spend a lot of time choosing among potential suitors whereas males will, literally, shag a red spot on a stick (in the case of Herring Gulls). Sometimes, however, females have the last laugh. For reasons that are often lost in evolutionary history, choosy females prefer to mate with males that have a particularly extravagant variant of an arbitrary trait. The classic example is the peacock's tail, which is presumed to have evolved as a result of "runaway" selection. Runaway selection is one form of an evolutionary arms race. In the case of peacocks, males with larger and more elaborate tails left more offspring, which inherited the big tail genes and so on...until the tails became so big that their bearers couldn't fly any longer and were eaten before they could screw. So today there is an uneasy detente between male and female peacocks, with the most successful males having tails that are just big enough to lure a female but not so big as to be an insupportable handicap.
In the case of Black Wheatears, sexual selection has imposed a delicious cost on males. Although the females lay their eggs on bare rock and do not require a nest of any kind they do need a criterion by which to distinguish among the willing and wanton males. The criterion that natural selection latched onto is stone-carrying. Male Black Wheatears spend their summers carrying stones from the bottom of the cliff upon which their beloved wishes to nest to the top. A male Black Wheatear weighs about 35 grams and several times a day he carries to the nest stones that weigh about a tenth of that. This is the equivalent of a human male carrying small television sets up a mountain incessantly, every day for a month, using only his teeth. Would you do that for your girlfriend? A typical male Black Wheatear transports 3.5 kilograms, or 100 times his own weight, from the bottom of the hill to the top in a season. If he is lucky his partner will then consent to sex and, if he is even luckier, will not subsequently cuckold him. Think on this story, the next time you worry about your mortgage.
I learned about Black Wheatears this past weekend while driving though Monfrague National Park in Extremadura, Spain, with my old friend Rob. We had stopped at a famous viewpoint, from which you can look across the valley at a vast limestone outcrop, with massive strata wrenched into vertically aligned slabs by incomprehensible geological forces in the distant past. We didn't see Black Wheatears but there were Griffon and Egyptian vultures, Black Storks, four species of Hirundines and a pair of Blue Rock Thrushes to make up for it. Birding in the company of a genuine expert and enthusiast is a lot more fun than doing it on your own and I felt momentarily the tug of another obsession.
Rob did all the driving on this trip and so I was free to admire the passing scenery. While we drove, we talked. Conversations with Rob take some getting used to, because they are punctuated with irrelevant bird names. A typical conversation last weekend went something like this.
Tom: "D'you remember..."
Rob: "Woodchat Shrike"
Tom: "...when I stabbed your in the leg with a scalpel..."
Rob: "Booted Eagle. Yes. How could I...Golden Oriole...forget."
Tom: "I still laugh about that..."
Rob: "Hoopoe"
Tom: "...to this day."
Rob: "Ortolan Warbler."
Tom: "Oh, Elizabeth David says they are delicious."
Rob: "Rock Bunting."
After 25 years of traveling with Rob I am pretty much inured to his ornithological take on Tourette's Syndrome but I'm glad that there were no recording devices running last weekend.
From Madrid we drove west to the Sierra de Gredos, penetrating as far into the mountains as the road would permit. From the head of the road there is a broad path leading uphill that everyone follows. Leave the path and cut cross-country and you are suddenly, magically alone. Across the valley I spied a colony of Veratrum album, the plant that interests me more than any other, and while Rob waited on a rock, I struggled across the valley to the colony to take photographs. Higher up we found seed capsules from an unidentified daffodil and spent half an hour on hands and knees collecting them. It was a blisteringly hot day and higher still we swam in a stream that a month earlier would have been snowmelt and stood under a waterfall that pounded our shoulders like a Hungarian masseuse. That evening we sat on a stone slab in the garden of our hotel sharing a bottle of red wine and looked over the Rio Tormes to El Barco de Avila, Rob with his binoculars, me doing most of the sharing.
The following morning we headed south west through the Valle del Jerte through orchards of cherry trees laden with fruit and stopped in Jerte to buy a couple of kilos for a few Euros. The cherries were enormous, the size of small tomatoes, perfectly ripe and by far the finest I have ever eaten. We had lunch at a touristy restaurant on the the Plaza Major in Trujillo, a town built with conquistador gold. A vast statue of Pizarro, conqueror of the Incas, mounted on a warhorse dominates the square. Looking at the statue, it is not so hard to understand how this Extremaduran peasant and his band of scurvied followers struck such fear into Inca hearts that they gave him their nation and their very existence.
To reach Trujillo we had driven through the dehesa of Extremadura, an ancient managed landscape of scattered Cork Oaks and Holm Oaks, dissected by rivers and streams. It is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in Europe and owes its continued existence to three economically important components: Cork Oaks, pigs that eat the acorns and turn them into the world's finest ham and fighting bulls. With bull fighting on the wane and plastic corks and screwtops rapidly replacing the genuine article, the fate of the dehesa currently hangs in the balance. Only the (high) price of pata negra makes it worthwhile for landowners to continue managing the land in the traditional way. It was therefore with a sense of moral obligation, in no way influenced by gluttony, that we ordered and consumed a large plate of ham for lunch, along with various other tapas and a flask of cold red wine.
It was a fine way to spend a weekend. My flight home (Easyjet, obviously) was delayed by two hours and I finally crawled into bed at 2.15am on Monday morning. My descent into drug-induced oblivion was disturbed only by the knowledge that I'd have to be up at eight to take the kids to Legoland, more of which in another post.
Tuesday 28 June 2011
Wednesday 22 June 2011
Elastic, low cost airlines and the New Messiah
The prospect of a summer's day spent pounding the sandstone pavements of Bath, grimly crossing items off a shopping list seemingly more populous than the Great Oort Cloud, holds about as much appeal as pushing a pencil up my knob in pursuit of sexual gratification.
Other than trips to Waitrose to buy oven chips and curry, I go shopping only once or twice a year and try to compress the entire loathsome experience into as few hours as possible. This is essentially an exercise in logistics that requires a terabyte-crunching supercomputer or a human female to solve on any timescale measured in units shorter than aeons.
If the findings of evolutionary psychologists are to be believed, womens' brains (even those of identity feminists) are hard-wired to find and remember the location of tubers in the African savannas of human prehistory, whereas mens' brains are hard-wired to hunt giraffe. Women are therefore superbly adapted to negotiate unfazed the maze of a contemporary retail environment whereas men in the same situation are apt to deliquesce in a puddle of sweat and cortisol. I am currently bereft of a willing female accomplice and my Mac is on the blink (see below), so it was with a heavy heart that I parked my Land Rover under the new Southgate shopping centre and sallied forth with the following list in hand.
1. Take two broken laptops to the Apple Store for diagnosis.
2. Have photographs for flower show laminated.
3. Buy extra large sheet of pink cardboard, elastic, glue, glitter, poster paints and brushes.
4. Buy minibar, microwave and espresso machine.
5. Buy heavy duty bread knife with extra long blade.
6. Buy 25 scalpel blades (also extra long).
7. Buy jeans to replace pair with large split in crotch.
8. Buy boots to replace pair with soles largely detached from uppers.
9. Buy 250 plain wage envelopes, several notebooks and printer paper.
10. Buy ice-lolly making machine.
Unlike its equivalent on London's Regent Street, which is a stinking sump crawling with callow adolescents mistakenly convinced that an iPhone will make them cool, the Apple Store in Bath is a place of calmness and peace, which is why it was first on my list of destinations. I had made an appointment at the ingeniously named 'Genius Bar', where you go when the on button on your computer fails to elicit more than a quiet moan and then silence from the useless hunk of metal you paid a thousand quid for in the not very distant past. A helpful bloke with more piercings than limbs led me to the bar and, while we waited for the genius to show up, I mentioned that I was in the market for a large monitor on which to display and work on photographs, a task for which my laptop is not suited. There followed an eloquent disquisition on the 27 inch monitor, with particular reference to the thunderbolt port which allows I forget how many gigabytes per second of data to flow in both directions simultaneously to and from the monitor. I said I'd think about it.
While I'd been listening to the list of ways in which a 27 inch monitor would transform my life I had taken my two laptops from their cases and opened them up. "Oh," he said, glancing at the smaller and newer of the two machines, "that doesn't need much diagnosing." Since the screen is splintered into a jigsaw of barely coherent shards, this remark was strictly speaking redundant. "What's wrong with the other one?" he asked, referring to the old laptop that I had recently replaced. "It won't boot up. When I turn it on it just moans," I said. "Oh." He said. "That's not good." He speculated on possible explanations before confessing to a lack of expertise in the area of non-booting laptops. "I'm just an evangelist, really." He added, before disappearing in search of the missing genius.
When the maestro arrived I explained the issue with the splintered screen. Now, when it comes to rage against the machine, I have previous. Every home I have ever lived in has telephone-shaped holes in the walls, usually the result of some cretin in a call-centre in Cardiff pushing me across the sanity event horizon, from which reason can escape only in the form of Hawking radiation and flying phones. The holes were larger in the days before cordless telephones. On this occasion, however, I am blameless. What happened is that I had packed my laptop, in its case, in my hand luggage for a short trip to Spain. I was flying Easyjet and, not having purchased the "Speedy Boarding" option, which confers on its bearer the right to be at the front of the scrum before boarding begins, I was one of the last on board. "Sorry, we'll have to put that bag in the hold." I was told. Unlike the Spanish woman behind me, who engaged in a long, loud and totally futile argument, I shrugged, took out a book and handed over the bag. When I extracted my laptop at the end of my first day in Spain, the screen was in its current sorry state and I can only think that some wanker at Stansted gave my bag a friendly kick as he threw it into the hold. When I returned to Stansted a few days later, I thought that I should probably report the incident to Easyjet, not in the hope of getting an apology or a new laptop, but with an insurance claim in mind. There is, however, no Easyjet desk on the arrivals side at Stansted, because they have nothing to sell you when you are returning home, so I gave up.
The genius listened to this tale of woe sympathetically. "When did you buy this machine?" he asked. "I can't remember exactly - about three months ago." I replied. "I'll tell you what, as a goodwill gesture, we'll replace the screen free of charge." Now I found this absolutely amazing and still do, reflecting upon the experience several hours later. Not only was this guy offering to repair for nothing a fault for which Apple bore no responsibility whatsoever but he didn't have to defer to a superior before making the offer. "What's the problem with the other laptop?" He asked. I explained the issue. He pushed a few buttons, took the laptop away for a few minutes and came back with bad news. Unfortunately the mother board has failed, he told me, and it would cost about £600 to replace. Then he typed the serial number of my machine into his hand-held pad and brightened. "There's a known fault with the mother boards on these laptops, so we'll replace it for free. This is your lucky day."
Ever since I wrote my PhD thesis on a primitive communal Mac in the Cambridge Zoology Department, I have been a fan of Apple. My enthusiasm for the brand has grown over the years to the point where nothing you can say will convince me that a PC is anything other than a clunky piece of silicon shit in comparison with the lowliest Mac. Over lunch in the next door Pizza Express I mulled my conversation with Mr Piercings and realised that his choice of the term "evangelist" to describe his role was most apt. The adjective "messianic" is the first that pops into many minds when Apple CEO Steve Jobs' name is mentioned but while chewing my "Etna" pizza I understood for the first time how accurate this label is. Jobs has done something to me that no religion has achieved. He has made me a true believer, inured against contrary evidence, programmed to spread the message and, like the victims of any religion, ripe for exploitation. Good job, Jobs![1]
Next stop, the laminating shop, where I left my materials and pressed on to item 3 on the list. My daughter has set her heart on a set of fairy wings that she saw in a book and she asked me last weekend whether I would help her make them. Lest I leave the wrong impression here I should make it clear that I am in most respects an absolutely dreadful father and I am sure that Elsje will in the distant future waste a fortune on attempting to exorcise the ghost of my memory. For now, however, she loves me and I love her and I am prepared in her behalf to endure retail hell to obtain the materials for making fairy wings. What I didn't appreciate is that I would have to visit four separate shops, dispersed across at least a square mile of central Bath, to obtain these materials. The first shop was able to supply the large sheet of pink cardboard but nothing else. I soon discovered that cardboard in a breeze acts much like a sail and so I tacked rather than walked for the rest of the day.
Attempting to engage the logistical centre of my brain, I visited Gap en route from the cardboard shop to the glue shop. Although heterosexual men in the early 20th century are almost redundant, we are still called upon to "do something" when our wives have a puncture, which mine did yesterday evening. In the course of changing the tyre I was forced to assume various unnatural positions that eventually resulted in a rending sound and a welcome but surprising breeze around my genitals. Hence my visit to Gap. The jeans were neatly arranged, by waist size, starting at 28 inches. How it is possible to contain a full set of adult viscera in a torso that thin I cannot begin to explain. Ten inches to the right, the options stop, at 38 inches, two inches short of my girth, on a thin day. "Where do fat people buy their trousers in Bath?" I asked, a reasonable question that was met with (barely) polite laughter but nothing in the way of a helpful response. As I was leaving, I noticed a rack of shorts with elasticated waist bands, reduced in price to £7.99. I bought an extra large pair.
Several shops later I found myself in "Joules", whence I had been directed by a man in Jack Wills, who said that was where his dad bought his jeans. Same story. The biggest pair of trousers in the shop had been cut to fit snugly around a waist two inches shorter in circumference than mine. Again I deployed the "F" word. More, I am certain, out of embarrassment than honest appraisal the young shop assistant said "Come on! You're not that fat!", graciously omitting the implied "in comparison, say, with Dawn French." She pointed me in the direction of a jeans warehouse which, she assured me, catered for persons of my build. By the time I got there, it was closed.
Defeated and dehydrated, I stopped for a smoothie, an amazingly refreshing combination of pineapple, mint and ice. Feeling better, I tackled items 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 in a half hour blur that left my debit card smoking and my feet aching in a new pair of boots that I had found on special offer in Blacks. The bloke in the kitchen shop insisted on giving me a large plastic bag in which to carry my bread knife (destined to be used dividing perennial rootstocks, not slicing loaves of wholesome brown bread) and advised me that the receipt would probably be enough to convince the rozzers that it didn't constitute a concealed weapon.
It was 6pm and most of the shops were closing but I knew that Currys on the edge of town would be paying its dismal employees the minimum wage to wait aimlessly for customers until at least eight. Three wonderful women, Kerry, Penny and Rachel, help me maintain a semblance of order in my garden. I pay them a lot more than the minimum wage but still less than they are worth and I had decided that I should outfit the potting shed where they spend much of their time with a small fridge, a microwave and a really good coffee machine. The first cup of coffee in the morning is one of the highlights of my day and there is no longer any reason to endure the powdered filth pushed on us by Nestle now that Nespresso machines (made under license to Nestle) are relatively cheaply available.
My last stop was Sainsbury, where I bought a couple of cases of wine and some avocado pears. Also, on impulse, a bulb of fennel. I noticed that each bulb was individually labeled "fennel", presumably so that both customers and check-out staff can distinguish it from, say, artichokes. I was reminded of my first job, stacking shelves in the local supermarket to earn money to go traveling. As part of my induction program I was required to complete a questionnaire booklet that contained questions such as "Which of the following is a banana?", followed by line drawings of a bunch of grapes, an apple, a pineapple and a crescent shaped yellow fruit, the name of which I forget. Presumably such questions are regarded as too challenging for the GCSE generation, further evidence that the world ain't what it used to be.
I didn't do an MBA, which probably explains why I find it odd that companies which treat their customers like pond scum (Easyjet) or mannequins (Gap) and their employees like retards (Sainsbury) are surprised when both groups come to despise them. Apple - and here I am going to deploy a word that I'd thought I would never again find a use for - empowers its employees, who reward this trust by proselytising with genuine enthusiasm and treating the company's customers with respect.
1. Since I wrote and published the first draft of this piece a friend has drawn my attention to recent evidence that viewing the Apple logo causes in fans of the brand the same areas of the brain to light up as in people undergoing religious experience. See here.
Other than trips to Waitrose to buy oven chips and curry, I go shopping only once or twice a year and try to compress the entire loathsome experience into as few hours as possible. This is essentially an exercise in logistics that requires a terabyte-crunching supercomputer or a human female to solve on any timescale measured in units shorter than aeons.
If the findings of evolutionary psychologists are to be believed, womens' brains (even those of identity feminists) are hard-wired to find and remember the location of tubers in the African savannas of human prehistory, whereas mens' brains are hard-wired to hunt giraffe. Women are therefore superbly adapted to negotiate unfazed the maze of a contemporary retail environment whereas men in the same situation are apt to deliquesce in a puddle of sweat and cortisol. I am currently bereft of a willing female accomplice and my Mac is on the blink (see below), so it was with a heavy heart that I parked my Land Rover under the new Southgate shopping centre and sallied forth with the following list in hand.
1. Take two broken laptops to the Apple Store for diagnosis.
2. Have photographs for flower show laminated.
3. Buy extra large sheet of pink cardboard, elastic, glue, glitter, poster paints and brushes.
4. Buy minibar, microwave and espresso machine.
5. Buy heavy duty bread knife with extra long blade.
6. Buy 25 scalpel blades (also extra long).
7. Buy jeans to replace pair with large split in crotch.
8. Buy boots to replace pair with soles largely detached from uppers.
9. Buy 250 plain wage envelopes, several notebooks and printer paper.
10. Buy ice-lolly making machine.
Unlike its equivalent on London's Regent Street, which is a stinking sump crawling with callow adolescents mistakenly convinced that an iPhone will make them cool, the Apple Store in Bath is a place of calmness and peace, which is why it was first on my list of destinations. I had made an appointment at the ingeniously named 'Genius Bar', where you go when the on button on your computer fails to elicit more than a quiet moan and then silence from the useless hunk of metal you paid a thousand quid for in the not very distant past. A helpful bloke with more piercings than limbs led me to the bar and, while we waited for the genius to show up, I mentioned that I was in the market for a large monitor on which to display and work on photographs, a task for which my laptop is not suited. There followed an eloquent disquisition on the 27 inch monitor, with particular reference to the thunderbolt port which allows I forget how many gigabytes per second of data to flow in both directions simultaneously to and from the monitor. I said I'd think about it.
While I'd been listening to the list of ways in which a 27 inch monitor would transform my life I had taken my two laptops from their cases and opened them up. "Oh," he said, glancing at the smaller and newer of the two machines, "that doesn't need much diagnosing." Since the screen is splintered into a jigsaw of barely coherent shards, this remark was strictly speaking redundant. "What's wrong with the other one?" he asked, referring to the old laptop that I had recently replaced. "It won't boot up. When I turn it on it just moans," I said. "Oh." He said. "That's not good." He speculated on possible explanations before confessing to a lack of expertise in the area of non-booting laptops. "I'm just an evangelist, really." He added, before disappearing in search of the missing genius.
When the maestro arrived I explained the issue with the splintered screen. Now, when it comes to rage against the machine, I have previous. Every home I have ever lived in has telephone-shaped holes in the walls, usually the result of some cretin in a call-centre in Cardiff pushing me across the sanity event horizon, from which reason can escape only in the form of Hawking radiation and flying phones. The holes were larger in the days before cordless telephones. On this occasion, however, I am blameless. What happened is that I had packed my laptop, in its case, in my hand luggage for a short trip to Spain. I was flying Easyjet and, not having purchased the "Speedy Boarding" option, which confers on its bearer the right to be at the front of the scrum before boarding begins, I was one of the last on board. "Sorry, we'll have to put that bag in the hold." I was told. Unlike the Spanish woman behind me, who engaged in a long, loud and totally futile argument, I shrugged, took out a book and handed over the bag. When I extracted my laptop at the end of my first day in Spain, the screen was in its current sorry state and I can only think that some wanker at Stansted gave my bag a friendly kick as he threw it into the hold. When I returned to Stansted a few days later, I thought that I should probably report the incident to Easyjet, not in the hope of getting an apology or a new laptop, but with an insurance claim in mind. There is, however, no Easyjet desk on the arrivals side at Stansted, because they have nothing to sell you when you are returning home, so I gave up.
The genius listened to this tale of woe sympathetically. "When did you buy this machine?" he asked. "I can't remember exactly - about three months ago." I replied. "I'll tell you what, as a goodwill gesture, we'll replace the screen free of charge." Now I found this absolutely amazing and still do, reflecting upon the experience several hours later. Not only was this guy offering to repair for nothing a fault for which Apple bore no responsibility whatsoever but he didn't have to defer to a superior before making the offer. "What's the problem with the other laptop?" He asked. I explained the issue. He pushed a few buttons, took the laptop away for a few minutes and came back with bad news. Unfortunately the mother board has failed, he told me, and it would cost about £600 to replace. Then he typed the serial number of my machine into his hand-held pad and brightened. "There's a known fault with the mother boards on these laptops, so we'll replace it for free. This is your lucky day."
Ever since I wrote my PhD thesis on a primitive communal Mac in the Cambridge Zoology Department, I have been a fan of Apple. My enthusiasm for the brand has grown over the years to the point where nothing you can say will convince me that a PC is anything other than a clunky piece of silicon shit in comparison with the lowliest Mac. Over lunch in the next door Pizza Express I mulled my conversation with Mr Piercings and realised that his choice of the term "evangelist" to describe his role was most apt. The adjective "messianic" is the first that pops into many minds when Apple CEO Steve Jobs' name is mentioned but while chewing my "Etna" pizza I understood for the first time how accurate this label is. Jobs has done something to me that no religion has achieved. He has made me a true believer, inured against contrary evidence, programmed to spread the message and, like the victims of any religion, ripe for exploitation. Good job, Jobs![1]
Next stop, the laminating shop, where I left my materials and pressed on to item 3 on the list. My daughter has set her heart on a set of fairy wings that she saw in a book and she asked me last weekend whether I would help her make them. Lest I leave the wrong impression here I should make it clear that I am in most respects an absolutely dreadful father and I am sure that Elsje will in the distant future waste a fortune on attempting to exorcise the ghost of my memory. For now, however, she loves me and I love her and I am prepared in her behalf to endure retail hell to obtain the materials for making fairy wings. What I didn't appreciate is that I would have to visit four separate shops, dispersed across at least a square mile of central Bath, to obtain these materials. The first shop was able to supply the large sheet of pink cardboard but nothing else. I soon discovered that cardboard in a breeze acts much like a sail and so I tacked rather than walked for the rest of the day.
Attempting to engage the logistical centre of my brain, I visited Gap en route from the cardboard shop to the glue shop. Although heterosexual men in the early 20th century are almost redundant, we are still called upon to "do something" when our wives have a puncture, which mine did yesterday evening. In the course of changing the tyre I was forced to assume various unnatural positions that eventually resulted in a rending sound and a welcome but surprising breeze around my genitals. Hence my visit to Gap. The jeans were neatly arranged, by waist size, starting at 28 inches. How it is possible to contain a full set of adult viscera in a torso that thin I cannot begin to explain. Ten inches to the right, the options stop, at 38 inches, two inches short of my girth, on a thin day. "Where do fat people buy their trousers in Bath?" I asked, a reasonable question that was met with (barely) polite laughter but nothing in the way of a helpful response. As I was leaving, I noticed a rack of shorts with elasticated waist bands, reduced in price to £7.99. I bought an extra large pair.
Several shops later I found myself in "Joules", whence I had been directed by a man in Jack Wills, who said that was where his dad bought his jeans. Same story. The biggest pair of trousers in the shop had been cut to fit snugly around a waist two inches shorter in circumference than mine. Again I deployed the "F" word. More, I am certain, out of embarrassment than honest appraisal the young shop assistant said "Come on! You're not that fat!", graciously omitting the implied "in comparison, say, with Dawn French." She pointed me in the direction of a jeans warehouse which, she assured me, catered for persons of my build. By the time I got there, it was closed.
Defeated and dehydrated, I stopped for a smoothie, an amazingly refreshing combination of pineapple, mint and ice. Feeling better, I tackled items 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 in a half hour blur that left my debit card smoking and my feet aching in a new pair of boots that I had found on special offer in Blacks. The bloke in the kitchen shop insisted on giving me a large plastic bag in which to carry my bread knife (destined to be used dividing perennial rootstocks, not slicing loaves of wholesome brown bread) and advised me that the receipt would probably be enough to convince the rozzers that it didn't constitute a concealed weapon.
It was 6pm and most of the shops were closing but I knew that Currys on the edge of town would be paying its dismal employees the minimum wage to wait aimlessly for customers until at least eight. Three wonderful women, Kerry, Penny and Rachel, help me maintain a semblance of order in my garden. I pay them a lot more than the minimum wage but still less than they are worth and I had decided that I should outfit the potting shed where they spend much of their time with a small fridge, a microwave and a really good coffee machine. The first cup of coffee in the morning is one of the highlights of my day and there is no longer any reason to endure the powdered filth pushed on us by Nestle now that Nespresso machines (made under license to Nestle) are relatively cheaply available.
My last stop was Sainsbury, where I bought a couple of cases of wine and some avocado pears. Also, on impulse, a bulb of fennel. I noticed that each bulb was individually labeled "fennel", presumably so that both customers and check-out staff can distinguish it from, say, artichokes. I was reminded of my first job, stacking shelves in the local supermarket to earn money to go traveling. As part of my induction program I was required to complete a questionnaire booklet that contained questions such as "Which of the following is a banana?", followed by line drawings of a bunch of grapes, an apple, a pineapple and a crescent shaped yellow fruit, the name of which I forget. Presumably such questions are regarded as too challenging for the GCSE generation, further evidence that the world ain't what it used to be.
I didn't do an MBA, which probably explains why I find it odd that companies which treat their customers like pond scum (Easyjet) or mannequins (Gap) and their employees like retards (Sainsbury) are surprised when both groups come to despise them. Apple - and here I am going to deploy a word that I'd thought I would never again find a use for - empowers its employees, who reward this trust by proselytising with genuine enthusiasm and treating the company's customers with respect.
1. Since I wrote and published the first draft of this piece a friend has drawn my attention to recent evidence that viewing the Apple logo causes in fans of the brand the same areas of the brain to light up as in people undergoing religious experience. See here.
Thursday 16 June 2011
Tears and Loathing in Lower South Wraxall
 |
| Life in my sauce |
I first thought about killing myself when I was thirteen years old. Forced to attend a school I loathed, I repeatedly ran away or refused to get into the car in the morning and had to be dragged, literally kicking and screaming. My father’s solution was ruthless but effective. Having initially acquiesced to my demand to be a 'day boy' in an all-boarding school, he made me return in my second term as a boarder. Life in an English boarding school in the 1980s was far less brutal than it had been even a decade earlier. Older boys were still, however, given the authority to order younger children to take ice cold baths at seven o’clock in the morning for minor breaches of school rules and, until the end of my second year, 'fagging' was still de rigeur (the Wikipedia article on this subject is an adequate introduction, if you are not familiar with the practice, now largely extinct).
"It never did me any harm.” Was the refrain of adults who had been broken by the system or naïve men like my father, whose parents had been unable to afford an independent education for him, and who was determined that his children would enjoy that privilege. Of course, it did immense harm, as the few friends I retain from those days will universally attest. The theory of evolution saved my life. I had few talents but I excelled as a biologist, a subject I had loved since before I knew the word. Biology wasn’t taught in the first year at Sherborne, so when I graduated to the fourth form my pent-up enthusiasm was unleashed. In a rare stroke of luck I found myself assigned a teacher, Byron Henry, who responded to and nurtured my undisciplined fascination with nature through the rest of my school career. He taught me how to be a scientist, a gift beyond price. I don’t think I’ve ever recorded in writing the debt I owe him, an omission I am glad to rectify now.
I have been thinking about suicide on-and-off ever since that early-adolescence crisis. Generally these thoughts take the form of fantasies. I imagine myself, post-suicide, thumbing my nose at the world I have left behind. I cannot imagine being dead because it is impossible to get into the subjective perspective about the objective fact of being extinct, so my brain conjures up a sort of avatar that comments on the situation as my body dies. So far, I have remained sufficiently tethered to reality to grasp that death and, more pertinently, dying wouldn’t be that way. As the wheels of the train rolled over my brain, whatever memories, ideas and wisdom those cells had accumulated would be forever and instantly extinguished. So far, the idea of having my essence smeared across a few metres of the Chippenham to Paddington tracks has been less attractive than the alternative.
But not much. I have actually attempted suicide only once, as recorded elsewhere on this blog. It was a pretty feeble attempt, if truth be told. I have enough pills in my medicine bag to kill a rhinoceros and I took only sufficient to ensure that I slept soundly for a very long time. I was playing a coward’s version of Russian roulette. The only other occasion when I came close occurred a few days before my precipitous departure from the City. Driven mad by the monotony of the commute to a job that I hated with a passion so profound that words have not been coined to describe it, I went to a bar with the explicit intention of screwing up my courage to jump in front of a train. By the end of the first bottle, I reckoned that another bottle would do the trick. By the end of the second bottle, I found that the idea of a third seemed attractive and by the time that was empty, I had lost the will to die. In a way, therefore, booze saved my life. At least, it postponed the inevitable.
So here I am, more-or-less alive, thanks to Charles Darwin and ethanol. I’ve been reading a short book, How Sadness Survived by Paul Keedwell. It is a brave attempt to argue the positive case for depression. This isn’t anything like as crazy as it sounds. Life consists in a series of trade-offs among various awful alternatives and natural selection takes no account of human values when wielding her scythe. Sickle-cell anaemia is common in some parts of Africa because carriers of a single copy of the relevant gene are resistant to malaria. Unfortunate carriers of two copies die young but natural selection will keep the gene in circulation until malaria is eradicated. I once engaged in an online discussion with a Christian who could not understand how a gene detrimental to its carrier could spread (1). I gave the example of the gene(s) responsible for making beef taste delicious to humans. These genes are now more numerous than almost any other in mammals but that fact is presumably of scant comfort to the cow in the queue at the abattoir.
Keedwell produces evidence to suggest that depression is both ancient and a human universal, contrary to the stereotype that only the current, enfeebled generation of adults in the West is susceptible. If true, and if mood is influenced by genes, for which there is abundant evidence, this implies that some benefit associated with depression may be causing the relevant alleles to persist in human populations.
In a section with the Pythonesque title 'What has depression ever done for us?' the book proposes two main benefits and a host of positive side effects.
1. Depressive realism.
In a recent article in New Scientist (The Grand Delusion. 2011. 210: 2812, pp 35-41), Graham Lawton reviews some of the many ways in which most people deceive themselves.
"One study found that 74% of drivers believed themselves to be better than average behind the wheel [not statistically impossible but highly unlikely to be true]...if you ask most people to rate themselves on almost any positive trait - competence, intelligence, honesty, originality...most put themselves in the better-than-average category. Ask them similar questions about negative traits and they will rate themselves as less likely than average to possess them...We also inflate our opinions of loved ones. Around 95% of people rate their partner as smarter, more attractive, warmer and funnier than average...optimism bias [is] a well-established effect characterised by unrealistic expectations about the future. Most people expect to live longer, healthier and more successful lives than average while underestimating their chances of getting divorced, falling ill or having an accident...The fawning doesn't stop there...In an ironic twist, most people believe themselves to be more resistant than average to having an inflated opinion of themselves."
I love that last sentence. What a deliciously succinct put-down of the cup-half-full crowd.
It turns out that patients diagnosed with clinical depression do not suffer from these biases. We rate ourselves, the way we are perceived and the likely outcomes in our lives more accurately than non-sufferers. It is plausible (but remains to be rigorously tested) that depressive realism could confer real benefits in certain conditions, perhaps more so in the very dangerous ancestral environments in which the structure of our brains largely evolved. Keedwell quotes one of my favourite psychologists, Daniel Gilbert: "Depression stops us chasing rainbows." And possibly also saber-toothed tigers.
2. Reflection.
Several of the symptoms experienced during an episode of depression - social withdrawal, intense introspection, feelings of worthlessness - are conducive to encouraging reflection upon the sufferer's life, goals and ideals. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,..." said Robert Browning before spoiling this brilliant observation by adding "or what's a heaven for?" In less poetic language, we aspire too much. Almost none of us will achieve all that he (mistakenly) thinks he is capable of. Most depressions resolve spontaneously within a few weeks or months and there is plenty of case evidence that many people emerge from such periods having abandoned unrealistic goals, redefined their aims in life or having had some kind of epiphany regarding the mistakes they had been making.
Keedwell thinks that the similarity of the symptoms and typical duration of grief and depression is not an accident. The main 'goal' of grief, in an evolutionary sense, is acceptance. If we were not overcome with sadness on the death of a parent, child or lover, our feelings for them could not have been very intense. But unless we 'move on' fairly swiftly our own lives would soon be forfeit too. Enabling us to move on is the function of grief and the reason natural selection gave it to us.
Perhaps an analagous function exists for depression, at least in its commonest manifestations which, as noted, resolve quickly. Perhaps it is an evolved mechanism that allows us natural born losers eventually to let go of unrealistic but cherished plans and dreams and to accept our limitations.
3. Ancillary benefits.
A miscellany of hypothesised benefits is discussed, without much analysis, towards the end of How Sadness Survived. Keedwell argues that depression actually aids coping with suffering, enhances your ability to feel empathy and compassion, induces humility (by prompting feelings of worthlessness) and encourages creative thinking. He quotes another great poet with the first name Robert.
Speaking from my own experience, I find these claimed benefits only somewhat plausible (I am attracted for obvious reasons to the idea that clinically depressed persons are creative geniuses but, being a depressive realist, I immediately dismiss it). They do, however, suggest a research program.
Keedwell produces evidence to suggest that depression is both ancient and a human universal, contrary to the stereotype that only the current, enfeebled generation of adults in the West is susceptible. If true, and if mood is influenced by genes, for which there is abundant evidence, this implies that some benefit associated with depression may be causing the relevant alleles to persist in human populations.
In a section with the Pythonesque title 'What has depression ever done for us?' the book proposes two main benefits and a host of positive side effects.
1. Depressive realism.
In a recent article in New Scientist (The Grand Delusion. 2011. 210: 2812, pp 35-41), Graham Lawton reviews some of the many ways in which most people deceive themselves.
"One study found that 74% of drivers believed themselves to be better than average behind the wheel [not statistically impossible but highly unlikely to be true]...if you ask most people to rate themselves on almost any positive trait - competence, intelligence, honesty, originality...most put themselves in the better-than-average category. Ask them similar questions about negative traits and they will rate themselves as less likely than average to possess them...We also inflate our opinions of loved ones. Around 95% of people rate their partner as smarter, more attractive, warmer and funnier than average...optimism bias [is] a well-established effect characterised by unrealistic expectations about the future. Most people expect to live longer, healthier and more successful lives than average while underestimating their chances of getting divorced, falling ill or having an accident...The fawning doesn't stop there...In an ironic twist, most people believe themselves to be more resistant than average to having an inflated opinion of themselves."
I love that last sentence. What a deliciously succinct put-down of the cup-half-full crowd.
It turns out that patients diagnosed with clinical depression do not suffer from these biases. We rate ourselves, the way we are perceived and the likely outcomes in our lives more accurately than non-sufferers. It is plausible (but remains to be rigorously tested) that depressive realism could confer real benefits in certain conditions, perhaps more so in the very dangerous ancestral environments in which the structure of our brains largely evolved. Keedwell quotes one of my favourite psychologists, Daniel Gilbert: "Depression stops us chasing rainbows." And possibly also saber-toothed tigers.
2. Reflection.
Several of the symptoms experienced during an episode of depression - social withdrawal, intense introspection, feelings of worthlessness - are conducive to encouraging reflection upon the sufferer's life, goals and ideals. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,..." said Robert Browning before spoiling this brilliant observation by adding "or what's a heaven for?" In less poetic language, we aspire too much. Almost none of us will achieve all that he (mistakenly) thinks he is capable of. Most depressions resolve spontaneously within a few weeks or months and there is plenty of case evidence that many people emerge from such periods having abandoned unrealistic goals, redefined their aims in life or having had some kind of epiphany regarding the mistakes they had been making.
Keedwell thinks that the similarity of the symptoms and typical duration of grief and depression is not an accident. The main 'goal' of grief, in an evolutionary sense, is acceptance. If we were not overcome with sadness on the death of a parent, child or lover, our feelings for them could not have been very intense. But unless we 'move on' fairly swiftly our own lives would soon be forfeit too. Enabling us to move on is the function of grief and the reason natural selection gave it to us.
Perhaps an analagous function exists for depression, at least in its commonest manifestations which, as noted, resolve quickly. Perhaps it is an evolved mechanism that allows us natural born losers eventually to let go of unrealistic but cherished plans and dreams and to accept our limitations.
3. Ancillary benefits.
A miscellany of hypothesised benefits is discussed, without much analysis, towards the end of How Sadness Survived. Keedwell argues that depression actually aids coping with suffering, enhances your ability to feel empathy and compassion, induces humility (by prompting feelings of worthlessness) and encourages creative thinking. He quotes another great poet with the first name Robert.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Speaking from my own experience, I find these claimed benefits only somewhat plausible (I am attracted for obvious reasons to the idea that clinically depressed persons are creative geniuses but, being a depressive realist, I immediately dismiss it). They do, however, suggest a research program.
There are weaknesses in Keedwell's analysis. He is a clinician and is clearly biased by his compassion for patients. He argues, for example, that genes predisposing an individual to suicide could not spread because suicide is rare. This is, of course, nonsense. If a gene predisposing its carrier to take his own life is manifested sufficiently late in life then it will certainly spread in human societies living in marginal environments, where the sudden removal of a mouth to feed could tip the balance between the death or survival of that mouth's relatives. It is a good start, however, and should be seized upon by population geneticists and neuroscientists, who have the tools and skills necessary to identify the genes involved in mood control, track their distribution within and between populations and begin to understand how they affect the development and functioning of the brain.
Sadly, vested interests in the pharmaceutical and psychotherapy industries will probably kill any such research stone dead. The reason for this, if it not already obvious, is that typical depressions should probably not be treated, either with anti-depressants or psychotherapy (which is largely bunkum anyway). You would not 'treat' grief because it is not an illness. Rather it is a perfectly normal and helpful reaction to a deep loss. Why then would you treat depression, if Keedwell is on the right track?
Part II - Malignant sadness
Lewis Wolpert wrote a brave book, Malignant Sadness, about his own experience of depression. Wolpert is a physiologist and understands how anti-depressants work on a level that I can't reach. He's an enthusiast and attributes to their influence his survival of the experience of depression. Wolpert contrasts ordinary sadness - a normal, perhaps everyday experience for everyone - with depression, which he regards as a disease, a pathological variant of sadness.
Keedwell draws a distinction right at the beginning of his book between typical (he might say 'heatlhy' depression) and persistent or recalcitrant depression. His analysis addresses the former. I think he is right when he implies that lifelong or suicidal depressions are generally pathological and it is then appropriate to regard sufferers as having a disease and attempt to cure it, if the patient wishes to be cured. Like the ex-leper in The Life of Brian, not everyone wants to get better (see clip).
Based solely in my own experience, I think that Keedwell is closer to the mark here than Wolpert in where he draws the line. I'd wager a case of Champagne to a pint in the King's Arms that Keedwell's thesis is essentially correct. I also suspect (but cannot begin to prove) that there exist unlucky individuals who have inherited too many allelles of too many genes that predispose them to experience depression. These individuals - people like me - really are 'marked for death'.
Last night, as a result of a recommendation from my plumber (who else), I watched on iPlayer Choosing to Die, a documentary made by Terry Pratchett about assisted suicide. This subject is much on (what is left of) his mind because he has early stage Alzheimer's and will soon be unable to make for himself the decision to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and be given permission to die. He is clearly in turmoil as he wrestles with the terrible dilemma: die legally, before I want to or die at the right moment, when someone else will have to help, rendering them likely to be prosecuted for murder.
I think this is the most moving piece of television that I have ever watched (see it here). I was in floods of tears at the end, not for the two courageous men who's deaths were documented, but out of a strong feeling of solidarity with the family members and lovers who accompanied them to their bitter ends (apparently the killing drug tastes foul). In one case, a young, terminally ill man's mother accompanied him to Switzerland, so that he would not die alone. In the other, a wife of 40 years squeezed the hand of her husband as she watched him die.
Part III - Me
As I look back on my life, I see that it is a story full of loathing. Perhaps contempt is a better word. Contempt for my teachers and the arbitrary rules they unthinkingly enforced; contempt for my peers and their pathetic enthusiasms for sport, fashion and popular music; contempt for anyone less able intellectually; contempt for the adults too stupid to understand that the world was on the brink of environmental catastrophe and, later, contempt for the single-issue environmentalists too stupid to see that their obsessions aren't very useful. I am contemptuous of laws, lawmakers and law enforcers, of bureaucrats and the wage slaves who do their bidding. I despise the commuters who herd themselves like semi-autonomous sheep to and from contemptible jobs. I despise the system and also the spongers, like me, who parasitise it. I detest organised religion viscerally and feel physically sick when I contemplate the fact that my children are growing up immersed in its influence. I hate psychoanalysts and Supernanny and well-meaning friends who offer to pray for me.
Of course, above all, I loathe myself. The handful of people who read this blog are all kind enough to deny that I am a worthless sack of cells, with a decaying brain, a rotten heart and a rotting liver. I'm afraid, my friends, that I know better. I am, after all, a depressed realist.
Whatever happens next, it wasn't your fault.
1. Richard Dawkins, in one of the finest phrases he has ever coined, describes this sort of thinking as 'the argument from personal incredulity'.
Sadly, vested interests in the pharmaceutical and psychotherapy industries will probably kill any such research stone dead. The reason for this, if it not already obvious, is that typical depressions should probably not be treated, either with anti-depressants or psychotherapy (which is largely bunkum anyway). You would not 'treat' grief because it is not an illness. Rather it is a perfectly normal and helpful reaction to a deep loss. Why then would you treat depression, if Keedwell is on the right track?
Part II - Malignant sadness
Lewis Wolpert wrote a brave book, Malignant Sadness, about his own experience of depression. Wolpert is a physiologist and understands how anti-depressants work on a level that I can't reach. He's an enthusiast and attributes to their influence his survival of the experience of depression. Wolpert contrasts ordinary sadness - a normal, perhaps everyday experience for everyone - with depression, which he regards as a disease, a pathological variant of sadness.
Keedwell draws a distinction right at the beginning of his book between typical (he might say 'heatlhy' depression) and persistent or recalcitrant depression. His analysis addresses the former. I think he is right when he implies that lifelong or suicidal depressions are generally pathological and it is then appropriate to regard sufferers as having a disease and attempt to cure it, if the patient wishes to be cured. Like the ex-leper in The Life of Brian, not everyone wants to get better (see clip).
Based solely in my own experience, I think that Keedwell is closer to the mark here than Wolpert in where he draws the line. I'd wager a case of Champagne to a pint in the King's Arms that Keedwell's thesis is essentially correct. I also suspect (but cannot begin to prove) that there exist unlucky individuals who have inherited too many allelles of too many genes that predispose them to experience depression. These individuals - people like me - really are 'marked for death'.
Last night, as a result of a recommendation from my plumber (who else), I watched on iPlayer Choosing to Die, a documentary made by Terry Pratchett about assisted suicide. This subject is much on (what is left of) his mind because he has early stage Alzheimer's and will soon be unable to make for himself the decision to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and be given permission to die. He is clearly in turmoil as he wrestles with the terrible dilemma: die legally, before I want to or die at the right moment, when someone else will have to help, rendering them likely to be prosecuted for murder.
I think this is the most moving piece of television that I have ever watched (see it here). I was in floods of tears at the end, not for the two courageous men who's deaths were documented, but out of a strong feeling of solidarity with the family members and lovers who accompanied them to their bitter ends (apparently the killing drug tastes foul). In one case, a young, terminally ill man's mother accompanied him to Switzerland, so that he would not die alone. In the other, a wife of 40 years squeezed the hand of her husband as she watched him die.
Part III - Me
As I look back on my life, I see that it is a story full of loathing. Perhaps contempt is a better word. Contempt for my teachers and the arbitrary rules they unthinkingly enforced; contempt for my peers and their pathetic enthusiasms for sport, fashion and popular music; contempt for anyone less able intellectually; contempt for the adults too stupid to understand that the world was on the brink of environmental catastrophe and, later, contempt for the single-issue environmentalists too stupid to see that their obsessions aren't very useful. I am contemptuous of laws, lawmakers and law enforcers, of bureaucrats and the wage slaves who do their bidding. I despise the commuters who herd themselves like semi-autonomous sheep to and from contemptible jobs. I despise the system and also the spongers, like me, who parasitise it. I detest organised religion viscerally and feel physically sick when I contemplate the fact that my children are growing up immersed in its influence. I hate psychoanalysts and Supernanny and well-meaning friends who offer to pray for me.
Of course, above all, I loathe myself. The handful of people who read this blog are all kind enough to deny that I am a worthless sack of cells, with a decaying brain, a rotten heart and a rotting liver. I'm afraid, my friends, that I know better. I am, after all, a depressed realist.
Whatever happens next, it wasn't your fault.
1. Richard Dawkins, in one of the finest phrases he has ever coined, describes this sort of thinking as 'the argument from personal incredulity'.
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Life after death
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not counting on having much of a of a spiritual or intellectual life once my brain is rapidly liquefying worm food. As a scientist, however, I try to keep an open mind about these things and today I came across disturbingly plausible evidence that I may have been wrong all along.
I was collecting my son from his after school club and cut through the graveyard of the church from which his school - Christchurch Primary School - takes its name. I have taken this route often and never previously noticed anything remotely supernatural. But today, blow me down, I found incontrovertible evidence that one of the dead had risen. Perhaps it is time I repented my sins and started praying after all.
I was collecting my son from his after school club and cut through the graveyard of the church from which his school - Christchurch Primary School - takes its name. I have taken this route often and never previously noticed anything remotely supernatural. But today, blow me down, I found incontrovertible evidence that one of the dead had risen. Perhaps it is time I repented my sins and started praying after all.
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| Jesus of Trowbridge? |
Tuesday 14 June 2011
No man's land
"Take it easy, John. Life is too short."
Bobby Kennedy to his friend John Frankenheimer who drove the presidential candidate (too fast for his liking) to his appointment with death at the hands of an assassin on 5 June 1968.
Kosovo is perhaps the unhappiest reminder of the recent civil wars in Yugoslavia. A quasi-sovereign state, recognised by fewer than half the members of the United Nations, riven by internecine ethnic hatreds, with a president linked to drug trafficking and a landscape littered with landmines, it is Europe's Rwanda. I have never been there and don't suppose I shall ever pluck up the courage to cross the border.
Many years ago two galanthophiles, Joe Sharman and Alan Leslie found a colony of snowdrops near the Czakor Pass, which links present-day Montenegro and Kosovo. Bishop, Davis and Grimshaw (2001), in their monograph 'Snowdrops', describe this find as follows.
"In the late 1980s Joe Sharman and Alan Leslie collected a bizarre plant from the Czakor Gorge in Montenegro...It has four leaves per mature bulb, and applanate to weakly supervolute vernation. The margins of each leaf are subrevolute to slightly explicative...Further study is required to resolve the status of this intriguing snowdrop."
If this leaves you cold, you are not a galanthophile and I suggest you skip to the previous blog. When I first read this passage, however, I decided that I would have to see the colony for myself. Joe Sharman kindly gave me an accurate description of where it is and, armed with this information, I set off from Kolasin a few days ago to find it. The road over the Czakor Pass defies description. A bloke in a bar in Berane once told me that it is the highest made road in the Balkans. It is certainly the highest I have driven - the pass is at about 1800m. To the south the mountains of Albania are still snow-capped in June. To the west is Lake Plav, surrounded by a narrow belt of cultivated land and then beech woodland. The plants are extraordinary. I found and collected the loveliest Veratrum I have ever seen near the pass a few days ago and the meadows between patches of woodland contain Aconitum, Lilium and Thalictrum species that make me drool, alongside dozens of other I can't name.
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| Veratrum album on the Czakor Pass, Montenegro |
Anyway, I arrived at the Czakor Pass in the world-weary red Chevrolet to be met by a police roadblock. I opened the window and smiled ingratiatingly. The policeman politely but firmly indicated with a circling motion of his finger that I should turn back. I explained that I did not wish to enter Kosovo but merely to take some photographs and then return to Kolasin (a town in central Montenegro) where I was staying. After some discussion the men graciously let me proceed. Would this happen in the UK or the USA? I think not.
The road descended swiftly towards the valley bottom and the Kosovo border and soon I was at the site that Joe had described to me. I saw the snowdrops immediately and started to search for seed capsules (at this altitude - 1300m - mid-June is the ideal time to collect Galanthus seed). Very few of the plants had set any seed but I was slowly accumulating a small collection when I heard an approaching vehicle. Peering cautiously out from the undergrowth I saw that the policemen who had allowed me to pass had followed me down the mountain. I emerged sheepishly, holding my small bag of seeds before me, and announced myself. The policemen seemed to be genuinely nervous. Their machine guns were un-holstered and they were glancing around, as though expecting unfriendly fire. They told me sternly that is was very dangerous to be here and that I must go back. Fine, I replied, politely, I'll go back. Open the trunk, please, one of them said. Now, the trunk was full of recently dug Veratrum and I wasn't wild about opening it but I saw no alternative. All that ensued was a lively discussion between me and the cops about the local name for Veratrum. Once they had checked my papers I was free to go. They waved me off with a smile and a shouted "Good luck!" and my enthusiasm for the Balkans and its peoples ratcheted up another notch.
As I drove back up the mountain to the pass I was in an uncommonly good mood. I am obviously mad, bordering on insane, to risk my life for a snowdrop in the dangerous no-man's land between two fragile states that despise one another but surely life is too short not to take such risks.
Mad dogs and Englishmen
Until the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in Europe in the early 20th Century, Montenegro was on the front line between East and West. He who commands the limestone massif of Mount Orjen controls the strategically important Gulf of Kotor and its harbours, which Orjen overlooks. Abandoned forts bear silent witness to the vicious wars fought back and forth across this virtually uninhabitable (1) territory.
An extraordinary road punches through the karst from Risan on the coast to Crkvice, officially the wettest place in Europe, and west to Vrbanje before retuning to the sea at Herceg Novi. Only in the service of war could such a pointless endeavour have been contemplated, let alone undertaken and completed. The road has been rendered obsolete by a new highway that connects Risan with Niksic, in central Montenegro. It is now possible to drive between these two towns in an hour, a thought that would have boggled the minds of the men who laboured and died constructing the original road, a feat of engineering and audacity that leaves me breathless with admiration. Where the road traverses a deep depression in the karst, it is supported on foundations constructed of hand-cut blocks of stone, each of which must weigh a quarter of a tonne. The blocks fit together perfectly in a three-dimensional jigsaw reminiscent of the infinitely more famous Inca city of Machu Pichu.
I was first drawn to this road by a passage in Oleg Polunin's scholarly and magisterial 'Flowers of Greece and the Balkans'.
"Magnificent views spread out before one of bleached white limestone crags of the surrounding Dinaric ranges, up which scattered clumps of pine seem to cling precariously to any sheltered fold or gulley in the stark cliffs. Far below an occasional patch of bright green catches the eye where half a hectare or so of doline bottom is cultivated, contrasting vividly with the otherwise wild inhospitable landscape. A huge fallen limestone block prevented our progress over the pass but no doubt it has been cleared and one can continue along this wild road to Risan at the head of the Gulf of Kotor."
How could anyone with a soul read this passage and not immediately depart for Montenegro?
I am uncertain whether it is more appropriate to laugh or cry at the fact that Mount Orjen is these days a short Easyjet flight from Gatwick Airport followed by an hour's drive in a hire car. Putting that question aside, I booked my fight, reserved a small vehicle with Sixt, which happened to be offering the best deal at the time, and departed for Gatwick. When I arrived at Dubrovnik Airport, in Croatia, the Sixt franchise had run out of cars, so they offered to pass me on to a local rental agency for the same price. I signed the contract and headed north to Bosnia-Hercegovina. The rest of the day was a delight, not least because it ended with dinner outdoors in the warm, oleander-scented evening of my favourite town in the Mediterranean, Trebinje. The ancient central square is shaded by massive plane trees, red wine from the local monastery is the equal or superior of many Tuscan pretenders; the women are among the most beautiful on earth (and boy do they know it); the food is dreadful but who cares?
The following morning I crossed the border into Montenegro and made for Mount Orjen. I should say at this juncture that I have always regarded rules, customs and laws as purely advisory. Contracts with car rental companies are not to be taken seriously. In my time I have flouted not only the letter but also the spirit of every clause in a standard rental agreement and have usually gotten away with it. The fact that I was driving a brand new but underpowered bright red Chevrolet did not, therefore, put me off attempting to drive Polunin's 'wild' road. My excuse was that up there in the subalpine pastures of Orjen grows an iris, Iris orjenenii, a recently described endemic species that I badly want to possess.
I was too preoccupied with staying on the road (and alive) and on the extraordinary vegetation to take photographs, let alone video, but here (you need to go to the second video in the sequence to see what I mean) you can see a clip taken by the last nutter to go where I went. Other than the occasional sound of metal grinding against rock all went well until I was almost at the pass. Here half the road had collapsed into the adjacent doline, leaving an uneven causeway about six inches wider than a Chevrolet. Now at this point any sensible human being would have admitted defeat and turned back. I decided that the only way to tackle the problem was at speed. My hands didn't stop shaking for about a mile after the causeway and neither did the car.
Soon I arrived at the pass and it was here that I realised that I hadn't taken into account when starting my traverse of Mount Orjen that a car consumes a lot more fuel at 4,500 RPM in first gear than it does cruising on a motorway. The tank was almost empty. The list of qualities that I do not possess is long but prominent among them is grace under pressure. I surprised myself, therefore, by not panicking. I was floating on a high induced by the sight of Scilla litardierei in full flower two months later than I am accustomed to seeing it at lower altitudes. The prospect of freewheeling all the way to Herceg Novi didn't seem so bad. Until the engine cut out, numerous red lights appeared on the dashboard and a strong smell of petrol infiltrated the air conditioning system.
I stopped the car and investigated further. Now I am no mechanic (my first wife once lost the plot when I couldn't work out how to open the bonnet of our Mini Metro - "why can't you be a proper boy?", she stormed) but I do know that petrol running in a slow stream from what appears to be the tank is a bad sign. Mount Orjen is very steep and a Chevrolet has a lot of momentum in neutral, so I proceeded to freewheel through a long series of hairpin bends and relaxed enough to stop and collect cuttings of Rosa glauca about half way down. Eventually, just after I rejoined the metalled road at Vrbanje, I reached a flat section and the car inexorably ground to a halt.
I was considering my options (few, frankly) when a car approached from the opposite direction. I do not, of course, believe in luck. If I did, however, I would be obliged to say that this was one of the luckiest moments of my life. For in the driving seat of the car sat Oliveira. Over the next three or four hours she took command of the situation, waiting with me for the truck that the rental agency sent, sweet talking the driver of said truck, translating in the police station (more of which later) and giving me advice that I wish I had the wisdom to take. I shall long be in her debt.
The contract I had signed stipulated that in the event of an accident I should inform the police and call the rental agency. As previously noted, I couldn't give a monkeys what a rental contract stipulates until, that is, I need to make an insurance claim. I called the agency first, explained the situation (omitting any mention of off-road driving and Dukes-of-Hazard style traversing of chasms) and, after a stunned silence, the bloke on the other end of the line said "Oh my God. I'll call you back." After a while he called back to say that a truck was on its way and that my insurance didn't cover me. An argument ensued during the course of which he asked me why I hadn't called the police immediately.
"Because I'm up a fucking mountain in Montenegro, you moron." I replied.
It may be true that this guy has less frontal lobe activity than a two-week old cadaver but it is nevertheless a tactical error in the game of life to insult a Croatian who is bigger and stronger than you, has recent experience of actual warfare and in probably best mates with the Dubrovnik police chief. Unfortunately back-peddaling is another quality I lack, so I dug myself deeper, declaring that I would under no circumstances pay a single cent towards the cost of the repairs. "If you ever come back to Croatia, I will make big problems for you." He said, in a voice that Christopher Lee would envy.
I have long wanted to utter in earnest the line "Are you threatening me?", preferably followed by "Master Jedi", and here was my opportunity. Unfortunately, my usual deep and impressive baritone voice was replaced by a squeak and I fear I may have sounded ridiculous. "Yes." He said.
Oliveira and her friends waited with me in a local hostelry. They drank water and coffee. I drank beer. I tried to pay the bill but wasn't allowed to. They had come from Belgrade, where they all lived. Oliveira's friends had a property nearby, which they had come to stay in for a short holiday. We chatted about what I was doing in Montenegro and about Oliveira's work as an agronomist and businesswoman. After a while I remembered that I was supposed to report any accident to the local police and I asked her whether she would call them on my behalf. There followed a conversation in Serbian with her friends and it turned out that the son-in-law of one of them knew a local policeman. We were told to come to the station in Herceg Novi, where my statement would be taken. Eventually (an hour and a half after I had flagged down Oliveira and her friends) the rescue truck arrived. It turned out that the driver was an old friend of one of Oliveira's party. She drove me into Herceg Novi and to the police station (it was now about 9pm), following the truck. En route we dropped her friends off at their house. I apologised for interrupting their evening but they would have none of it.
Half an hour later, two copies of my statement in hand, we were back outside, where the truck driver was patiently waiting. Oliveira gently suggested that it might be an idea to call the rental agency and suggest that I have the car fixed locally and call it quits. I quailed at the thought of calling Mr "Yes I am planning to kill you" again. Whike we were discussing this, the truck driver was looking underneath the chassis by torchlight. "I can't see any damage" he said (Oliveira translating). I put my hand under the car and pointed to the place where I had seen the leak and, as I did so, I felt a fuel line that had obviously become disconnected from the petrol tank. I plugged it in again. Barely suppressed mirth rippled behind me.
We drove in convoy to a nearby petrol station and filled up. The truck driver led us to a local hotel, let my car down and started her up. It was now 10pm and Oliveira had spent four hours helping me, a total stranger, obviously deranged enough to have taken a hire car over Mount Orjen. I would like to be able to say that I would have done the same for her, had the situations been reversed but I just don't think I'm that nice. I bade her farewell, we exchanged email addresses and I said that I hoped I'd have the opportunity to return her extraordinary kindness one day. She shrugged this off, kindly.
Oliveira, I cannot thank you enough.
I never did find Iris orjenii. I shall have to go back, in a Unimog.
(1) Although Mount Orjen has the highest rainfall in Europe, at around 8 metres per annum, the exceptionally well-drained karst limestone ensures that virtually no accessible water exists at ground level. Storage tanks that collect snow melt or deep wells are necessary to sustain the few villages that remain on the mountain.
An extraordinary road punches through the karst from Risan on the coast to Crkvice, officially the wettest place in Europe, and west to Vrbanje before retuning to the sea at Herceg Novi. Only in the service of war could such a pointless endeavour have been contemplated, let alone undertaken and completed. The road has been rendered obsolete by a new highway that connects Risan with Niksic, in central Montenegro. It is now possible to drive between these two towns in an hour, a thought that would have boggled the minds of the men who laboured and died constructing the original road, a feat of engineering and audacity that leaves me breathless with admiration. Where the road traverses a deep depression in the karst, it is supported on foundations constructed of hand-cut blocks of stone, each of which must weigh a quarter of a tonne. The blocks fit together perfectly in a three-dimensional jigsaw reminiscent of the infinitely more famous Inca city of Machu Pichu.
I was first drawn to this road by a passage in Oleg Polunin's scholarly and magisterial 'Flowers of Greece and the Balkans'.
"Magnificent views spread out before one of bleached white limestone crags of the surrounding Dinaric ranges, up which scattered clumps of pine seem to cling precariously to any sheltered fold or gulley in the stark cliffs. Far below an occasional patch of bright green catches the eye where half a hectare or so of doline bottom is cultivated, contrasting vividly with the otherwise wild inhospitable landscape. A huge fallen limestone block prevented our progress over the pass but no doubt it has been cleared and one can continue along this wild road to Risan at the head of the Gulf of Kotor."
How could anyone with a soul read this passage and not immediately depart for Montenegro?
I am uncertain whether it is more appropriate to laugh or cry at the fact that Mount Orjen is these days a short Easyjet flight from Gatwick Airport followed by an hour's drive in a hire car. Putting that question aside, I booked my fight, reserved a small vehicle with Sixt, which happened to be offering the best deal at the time, and departed for Gatwick. When I arrived at Dubrovnik Airport, in Croatia, the Sixt franchise had run out of cars, so they offered to pass me on to a local rental agency for the same price. I signed the contract and headed north to Bosnia-Hercegovina. The rest of the day was a delight, not least because it ended with dinner outdoors in the warm, oleander-scented evening of my favourite town in the Mediterranean, Trebinje. The ancient central square is shaded by massive plane trees, red wine from the local monastery is the equal or superior of many Tuscan pretenders; the women are among the most beautiful on earth (and boy do they know it); the food is dreadful but who cares?
The following morning I crossed the border into Montenegro and made for Mount Orjen. I should say at this juncture that I have always regarded rules, customs and laws as purely advisory. Contracts with car rental companies are not to be taken seriously. In my time I have flouted not only the letter but also the spirit of every clause in a standard rental agreement and have usually gotten away with it. The fact that I was driving a brand new but underpowered bright red Chevrolet did not, therefore, put me off attempting to drive Polunin's 'wild' road. My excuse was that up there in the subalpine pastures of Orjen grows an iris, Iris orjenenii, a recently described endemic species that I badly want to possess.
I was too preoccupied with staying on the road (and alive) and on the extraordinary vegetation to take photographs, let alone video, but here (you need to go to the second video in the sequence to see what I mean) you can see a clip taken by the last nutter to go where I went. Other than the occasional sound of metal grinding against rock all went well until I was almost at the pass. Here half the road had collapsed into the adjacent doline, leaving an uneven causeway about six inches wider than a Chevrolet. Now at this point any sensible human being would have admitted defeat and turned back. I decided that the only way to tackle the problem was at speed. My hands didn't stop shaking for about a mile after the causeway and neither did the car.
Soon I arrived at the pass and it was here that I realised that I hadn't taken into account when starting my traverse of Mount Orjen that a car consumes a lot more fuel at 4,500 RPM in first gear than it does cruising on a motorway. The tank was almost empty. The list of qualities that I do not possess is long but prominent among them is grace under pressure. I surprised myself, therefore, by not panicking. I was floating on a high induced by the sight of Scilla litardierei in full flower two months later than I am accustomed to seeing it at lower altitudes. The prospect of freewheeling all the way to Herceg Novi didn't seem so bad. Until the engine cut out, numerous red lights appeared on the dashboard and a strong smell of petrol infiltrated the air conditioning system.
I stopped the car and investigated further. Now I am no mechanic (my first wife once lost the plot when I couldn't work out how to open the bonnet of our Mini Metro - "why can't you be a proper boy?", she stormed) but I do know that petrol running in a slow stream from what appears to be the tank is a bad sign. Mount Orjen is very steep and a Chevrolet has a lot of momentum in neutral, so I proceeded to freewheel through a long series of hairpin bends and relaxed enough to stop and collect cuttings of Rosa glauca about half way down. Eventually, just after I rejoined the metalled road at Vrbanje, I reached a flat section and the car inexorably ground to a halt.
I was considering my options (few, frankly) when a car approached from the opposite direction. I do not, of course, believe in luck. If I did, however, I would be obliged to say that this was one of the luckiest moments of my life. For in the driving seat of the car sat Oliveira. Over the next three or four hours she took command of the situation, waiting with me for the truck that the rental agency sent, sweet talking the driver of said truck, translating in the police station (more of which later) and giving me advice that I wish I had the wisdom to take. I shall long be in her debt.
The contract I had signed stipulated that in the event of an accident I should inform the police and call the rental agency. As previously noted, I couldn't give a monkeys what a rental contract stipulates until, that is, I need to make an insurance claim. I called the agency first, explained the situation (omitting any mention of off-road driving and Dukes-of-Hazard style traversing of chasms) and, after a stunned silence, the bloke on the other end of the line said "Oh my God. I'll call you back." After a while he called back to say that a truck was on its way and that my insurance didn't cover me. An argument ensued during the course of which he asked me why I hadn't called the police immediately.
"Because I'm up a fucking mountain in Montenegro, you moron." I replied.
It may be true that this guy has less frontal lobe activity than a two-week old cadaver but it is nevertheless a tactical error in the game of life to insult a Croatian who is bigger and stronger than you, has recent experience of actual warfare and in probably best mates with the Dubrovnik police chief. Unfortunately back-peddaling is another quality I lack, so I dug myself deeper, declaring that I would under no circumstances pay a single cent towards the cost of the repairs. "If you ever come back to Croatia, I will make big problems for you." He said, in a voice that Christopher Lee would envy.
I have long wanted to utter in earnest the line "Are you threatening me?", preferably followed by "Master Jedi", and here was my opportunity. Unfortunately, my usual deep and impressive baritone voice was replaced by a squeak and I fear I may have sounded ridiculous. "Yes." He said.
Oliveira and her friends waited with me in a local hostelry. They drank water and coffee. I drank beer. I tried to pay the bill but wasn't allowed to. They had come from Belgrade, where they all lived. Oliveira's friends had a property nearby, which they had come to stay in for a short holiday. We chatted about what I was doing in Montenegro and about Oliveira's work as an agronomist and businesswoman. After a while I remembered that I was supposed to report any accident to the local police and I asked her whether she would call them on my behalf. There followed a conversation in Serbian with her friends and it turned out that the son-in-law of one of them knew a local policeman. We were told to come to the station in Herceg Novi, where my statement would be taken. Eventually (an hour and a half after I had flagged down Oliveira and her friends) the rescue truck arrived. It turned out that the driver was an old friend of one of Oliveira's party. She drove me into Herceg Novi and to the police station (it was now about 9pm), following the truck. En route we dropped her friends off at their house. I apologised for interrupting their evening but they would have none of it.
Half an hour later, two copies of my statement in hand, we were back outside, where the truck driver was patiently waiting. Oliveira gently suggested that it might be an idea to call the rental agency and suggest that I have the car fixed locally and call it quits. I quailed at the thought of calling Mr "Yes I am planning to kill you" again. Whike we were discussing this, the truck driver was looking underneath the chassis by torchlight. "I can't see any damage" he said (Oliveira translating). I put my hand under the car and pointed to the place where I had seen the leak and, as I did so, I felt a fuel line that had obviously become disconnected from the petrol tank. I plugged it in again. Barely suppressed mirth rippled behind me.
We drove in convoy to a nearby petrol station and filled up. The truck driver led us to a local hotel, let my car down and started her up. It was now 10pm and Oliveira had spent four hours helping me, a total stranger, obviously deranged enough to have taken a hire car over Mount Orjen. I would like to be able to say that I would have done the same for her, had the situations been reversed but I just don't think I'm that nice. I bade her farewell, we exchanged email addresses and I said that I hoped I'd have the opportunity to return her extraordinary kindness one day. She shrugged this off, kindly.
Oliveira, I cannot thank you enough.
I never did find Iris orjenii. I shall have to go back, in a Unimog.
(1) Although Mount Orjen has the highest rainfall in Europe, at around 8 metres per annum, the exceptionally well-drained karst limestone ensures that virtually no accessible water exists at ground level. Storage tanks that collect snow melt or deep wells are necessary to sustain the few villages that remain on the mountain.
Saturday 11 June 2011
How to deal with Montenegrin policemen
I have just driven from Berane to Kolasin, in Montenegro. This is a journey of some fifty kilometres. It was late. I was tired. I encountered four speed traps, at which I was stopped at two, despite making every effort to see the buggers before they zapped me. I must have been stopped by a traffic cop a dozen times in my Balkan travels but I have been fined only once. Here is my recipe for getting away with it.
1. Be humble. Apologise (in English) for speaking only English. They all speak English.
2. You must be a football fan even if, like me, you despise the game.
3. You must support either Machester United or Chelsea.
4. It is helful, but not obligatory, to know the name of one player on each side. If necessary, invent one, ending in -vitch, e.g. Ivanovitch, Borisovitch, Slivovitch, etc...
5. Do not declare your allegiance until the other party has declared his. Then express amazement that you support the same team.
6. Exchange high fives with the cop.
7. Drive, slowly, away.
1. Be humble. Apologise (in English) for speaking only English. They all speak English.
2. You must be a football fan even if, like me, you despise the game.
3. You must support either Machester United or Chelsea.
4. It is helful, but not obligatory, to know the name of one player on each side. If necessary, invent one, ending in -vitch, e.g. Ivanovitch, Borisovitch, Slivovitch, etc...
5. Do not declare your allegiance until the other party has declared his. Then express amazement that you support the same team.
6. Exchange high fives with the cop.
7. Drive, slowly, away.
Sunday 5 June 2011
Crucifixes and pig's trotters
Returning to "Pudding Island" after a trip almost anywhere is a depressing experience, especially when it's a Sunday and the Stansted Express (From £8* to central London) is closed for engineering works. Fuck knows what the engineers do every Sunday - the trains only seem to get slower. Squeezing my fat arse into a coach seat apparently designed for Haitian children, I opened my copy of the Observer, bought just before boarding to pass the interminable journey to London Victoria. Since I last read a newspaper, The Observer seems to have transformed into a gossip column for lefties, with the same stock pictures of royalty the Daily Mail uses but with added snide comments. Desperate for something to read, I turned to the restaurant review in the magazine. Jay Rayner is a fine restaurant critic and here is an extract of the words of high praise he has for Tuddenham Mill, "a smart boutique hotel" in Suffolk.
"A starter of pork neck carpaccio brings thinly sliced piggy that has been marinated and spice-rubbed then cooked sous vide for most of a weekend...It's fautless...Roasted chicken wings join hands with tiny brown shrimps in a cross-cultural marriage that is astonishingly successful...A perfectly cooked tranche of hake is served on bright green tapioca flavoured with watercress foraged from the bank outside...None of this is cheap, but then each dish is so evolved and elaborate that it feels like good value." The price per head, including wine and service, was £60, which probably doesn't sound unreasonable.
I'm just back from three days in the Picos and the Pyrenees, collecting seeds. Last night as it was getting dark, exhausted and hungry, I found a hotel in a small town in the central Spanish Pyrenees. I dumped my bags and went straight to the dining room, which was full to capacity with families and couples. I waited only ten minutes in a comfortable leather armchair before being shown to a table in one corner of the wood-paneled room. The waitress (there was only one) brought a menu, which she patiently translated, enquired whether I'd like red or white wine, and bustled off to attend to another table.
I cannot read this menu (see below) without my salivary glands going into Pavlovian overdrive. What would you have ordered? Should I start with a salad of baby lettuces with anchovies and langoustines or with artichokes stuffed with mushrooms? After that should I have octopus stewed in its own ink, pig's trotters or peppers stuffed with hake and salt cod? The life of a traveling seed collector is full of such dilemmas. After much mulling, the edge of my hunger blunted by the first few mouthfuls of red wine, I ordered the artichokes followed by the pig's trotters. The waitress queried my order. Would I really eat the trotters - "only people from here eat them"? I assured her that I would.
The artichokes arrived, four of them, perfectly pared down to their pale green hearts. A few tender leaves had been left to contain a broth of fungus, the basis of which was morels. The only thing that I will hear said against a perfectly cooked artichoke is that it makes all wine taste metallic but even I can endure ten minutes without a sip of wine, while I eat artichokes.
Years ago I went to La Tante Claire, a celebrated restaurant on Royal Hospital Road in London. The signature dish of the chef, Pierre Koffman, was stuffed pig' trotters, which I duly ordered and ate. It was an extraordinary dish, not least because to make a pig's foot palatable there are days of steeping, simmering and surgically precise de-boning to be done. What was brought to my table yesterday evening cannot have taken the cook much less time to prepare than Koffman's masterpiece took him and it was what you would expect it to be - pig-flavoured gelatine. I sucked it up, every last fatty morsel, and wiped the plate clean with bread from the basket that had arrived with my wine, which, incidentally, was a very passable red from Navarre.
I'm not really a pudding man but I felt obliged, in the interests of preparing this report, to order the yogurt mousse with strawberries. You may imagine for yourselves how delicious this was.
While traveling alone I often have the opportunity to watch fellow diners surrepticiously. I am very often struck by the fact that many couples dining together seem to have run out of conversation. They stare into space, at their neighbours, at the congeling food on their plates, anywhere but at their companion. I often have cause to celebrate the fact that I have only a book for company. Last night, however, the room hummed with conversation and everyone seemed to be having a good time despite, or perhaps because, they were dining with their families and friends.
At the table adjacent to mine was such a party; a young couple, with two children and several grandparents. The young mother was attractive and it was hard not to stare, especially because between her ample (but not too ample) breasts - to all intents and purposes naked - hung a large, silver crucifix. It was impossible to admire the crucifix without ogling the breasts, and vice-versa.
The price, advertised on the menu, including wine and bread was eighteen Euros. Now that, Jay Rayner, is good value.
* If you happen to live in the arse end of Stratford or are prepared to spend fifty quid on a taxi to get to your actual destination.
"A starter of pork neck carpaccio brings thinly sliced piggy that has been marinated and spice-rubbed then cooked sous vide for most of a weekend...It's fautless...Roasted chicken wings join hands with tiny brown shrimps in a cross-cultural marriage that is astonishingly successful...A perfectly cooked tranche of hake is served on bright green tapioca flavoured with watercress foraged from the bank outside...None of this is cheap, but then each dish is so evolved and elaborate that it feels like good value." The price per head, including wine and service, was £60, which probably doesn't sound unreasonable.
I'm just back from three days in the Picos and the Pyrenees, collecting seeds. Last night as it was getting dark, exhausted and hungry, I found a hotel in a small town in the central Spanish Pyrenees. I dumped my bags and went straight to the dining room, which was full to capacity with families and couples. I waited only ten minutes in a comfortable leather armchair before being shown to a table in one corner of the wood-paneled room. The waitress (there was only one) brought a menu, which she patiently translated, enquired whether I'd like red or white wine, and bustled off to attend to another table.
I cannot read this menu (see below) without my salivary glands going into Pavlovian overdrive. What would you have ordered? Should I start with a salad of baby lettuces with anchovies and langoustines or with artichokes stuffed with mushrooms? After that should I have octopus stewed in its own ink, pig's trotters or peppers stuffed with hake and salt cod? The life of a traveling seed collector is full of such dilemmas. After much mulling, the edge of my hunger blunted by the first few mouthfuls of red wine, I ordered the artichokes followed by the pig's trotters. The waitress queried my order. Would I really eat the trotters - "only people from here eat them"? I assured her that I would.
The artichokes arrived, four of them, perfectly pared down to their pale green hearts. A few tender leaves had been left to contain a broth of fungus, the basis of which was morels. The only thing that I will hear said against a perfectly cooked artichoke is that it makes all wine taste metallic but even I can endure ten minutes without a sip of wine, while I eat artichokes.
Years ago I went to La Tante Claire, a celebrated restaurant on Royal Hospital Road in London. The signature dish of the chef, Pierre Koffman, was stuffed pig' trotters, which I duly ordered and ate. It was an extraordinary dish, not least because to make a pig's foot palatable there are days of steeping, simmering and surgically precise de-boning to be done. What was brought to my table yesterday evening cannot have taken the cook much less time to prepare than Koffman's masterpiece took him and it was what you would expect it to be - pig-flavoured gelatine. I sucked it up, every last fatty morsel, and wiped the plate clean with bread from the basket that had arrived with my wine, which, incidentally, was a very passable red from Navarre.
I'm not really a pudding man but I felt obliged, in the interests of preparing this report, to order the yogurt mousse with strawberries. You may imagine for yourselves how delicious this was.
While traveling alone I often have the opportunity to watch fellow diners surrepticiously. I am very often struck by the fact that many couples dining together seem to have run out of conversation. They stare into space, at their neighbours, at the congeling food on their plates, anywhere but at their companion. I often have cause to celebrate the fact that I have only a book for company. Last night, however, the room hummed with conversation and everyone seemed to be having a good time despite, or perhaps because, they were dining with their families and friends.
At the table adjacent to mine was such a party; a young couple, with two children and several grandparents. The young mother was attractive and it was hard not to stare, especially because between her ample (but not too ample) breasts - to all intents and purposes naked - hung a large, silver crucifix. It was impossible to admire the crucifix without ogling the breasts, and vice-versa.
The price, advertised on the menu, including wine and bread was eighteen Euros. Now that, Jay Rayner, is good value.
* If you happen to live in the arse end of Stratford or are prepared to spend fifty quid on a taxi to get to your actual destination.
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