Robobob

 

Robobob

True, I have mentioned my age before but I wouldn't want you to think I'm obsessed with it. I am still mildly shocked at my answer when I'm asked how old I am and I'm always slightly worried that when I fill in my year of birth online the list will not scroll down far enough. Otherwise I don't give age much thought. No I'm not obsessed with it ...but I am increasingly confronted by it and not just when I look in the mirror!

A while back as preparation for an operation I had an appointment at the hospital and, among other things, a nurse, reading from a list asked me a whole lot of standard questions. The answer to nearly all of them was no, until she asked “Have you fallen down recently” to which I replied that I had. That seemed to relieve the boredom a bit. She registered some interest and a little concern. “How?” She asked. I explained that I had fallen while riding my mountain bike. Her facial expression and tone of voice changed to a mixture of surprise and disapproval. “At your age!” she exclaimed then passed rapidly on to the next question.

I'm still not sure if I should have been pleased or annoyed by this reaction.

Shortly after that hospital visit, while the Covid restrictions were more relaxed, we took a bike trip visiting friends just over the border in Germany on the way. Almost our only footsteps, tyre tracks if you like, in a foreign country this year. Even the Belgium border just down the road has often been closed. For overnight accomodation we used Vrienden op de Fiets (Cycle Friends) an organisation where hosts offer members bed & breakfast for a reasonable and fixed price.       

The E- bike, a power assisted bicycle that runs on batteries, was popular before the Corona crisis but now that many indoor activities and team sports have at times been discouraged, restricted or forbidden, sales have rocketed, especially but not exclusively among the grey-haired fraternity.  We saw plenty of other cyclists during this tour, mostly pensioners eager to escape lockdown, they all had E-bikes! Our hosts, therefore, were more than a little surprised when we arrived on our exclusively muscle powered machines, unplugged as I like to say. “We have E- bikes” they told us almost apologetically “but”, they  added in their defence, “you are much younger than us”. There were birthday cards on display all around the room. They had obviously just celebrated a 70^th birthday.          

We decided not to disillusion them!

So, back to the operation I mentioned earlier. It was nothing special or dramatic, at least not for the surgeons. For me it was more than a bit scary but it was one more step on the road to becoming fully bionic!                                                      

Now I don't know the exact demographics of my readership. When I started writing these columns the most readers were either under thirty or more than sixty years old. That has changed, the age range is now far wider and varied but I'm fairly sure that few, if any, are older than me. However my left hip was replaced four years ago, my right hip two years ago and the lens in my right eye just last month.

In other words, although I'm not obsessed by age, I would like to point out that bits of me are a whole lot younger than all of you!!!

Tour de Prapic

TOUR DE PRAPIC

'These are unusual times' has to be the most overused phrase this year but, yes, these are unusual times and time, itself, has become distorted. Some days drag on while weeks and months flash by. Annual events, festivals, sports events and school holidays, our usual reference points, have either been cancelled or postponed. Without these markers my biological clock, or rather my biological calender, has become confused. Frequently during the various phases of lockdown and semi-lockdown I have woken up with no idea what day it is and even worse, what time of year it is! One of the reference points in the Dutch calender, maybe surprisingly, is the Tour de France. Not because The Netherlands is a land of bicycles but because, in a country where the summer holiday is almost a religion, the 'Tour' is closely associated with summer and the annual pilgramage to the sun. Nostalgic tales of summers past often involve caravans, campsites, and fathers bent over a portable radio trying to pick up Radio Tour de France. For the Dutch, whether they enjoy cycle racing, hate it or are totally disinterested, the Tour de France is July , July is summer and summer means VACATION!

The postponment of the Tour and other annual sporting events and bike rides I may well have taken part in, along with the cancellation of our planned trip or trips this year,  have seriouly affected my sense of time and seasons. Mentally and physically I'm still waiting for the summer to arrive and we're already a week into September. To confuse my biorythms even further the Tour de France has just started!

However, as a famous Dutch footballer once said, every disadvantage has it's advantage.

I will now be able to follow the whole three week race on TV, usually I miss most of it.

Glancing at the the race itinery I noticed that the route will pass several, for me, memorable places. At this very moment the riders are heading towards a finish on the Mount Aigoual, a mountain I have cycled many times, mosty while working as a tour leader in the Cevenne. Yesterday's stage ended with a climb to the ski resort Ocières – Merlette. The race turned left in Orcières but if you continue straight on for a couple of kilometres where the road ends you will have arrived at the village of Prapic. Prapic has a few houses, a church, a restaurant and a bus stop.  Oh yes, and there is a simple campsite. A gateway to the Parc National des Ecrins Prapic is a popular starting point for tough mountain hikes, leisurley walks or picnics. To prevent daytrippers from using, misusing or abusing the toilet facilities campers are issued with an impressively sized golden key on a red ribbon.

We were not in the best of spirits when we arrived. That year we had just a ten day holiday. We were used to being away for all or most of the summer. Our mood, however, soon changed. We had chosen well, the campsite was made to measure, during what we thought a short holiday we hiked two mountains and cycled up to the ski resort. I took my mountain bike by cable car further up the mountain and rode my one and only downhill. I made friends with a marmotte  but the friendship cooled when the sweet biscuits ran out and there was only dry bread left. 

The Tour de France passed close by, a bike ride and a hike took us to an ideal spot just before the top of the last climb of the toughest stage that year. Very close to witnessing one of the most memorable incidents in the race's recent history.

The film of Lance Armstrong riding into and across an alpine meadow after narrowly avoiding an accident is often repeated on TV. For the Spanish rider Beloki the crash marked the end of his career, at that time he was one of the few serious challengers to Armstrongs supremacy.

Despite, or maybe partly due to, our low expectations it was a thoroughly enjoyable break, sun, fun and never a dull moment. More memories surfaced when we found the photographs and, for the first time during this Corona period, I realised just how much I miss mountains, the great outdoors and brief encounters with marmottes....

I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates

“I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates...”

Well, no I haven't, in fact I've never had a pair of roller skates furthermore my one attempt at roller skating was about as successful as my one attempt at ice skating. No, this was just the line of a song by Melanie that I couldn't get off my mind last week.

Melanie was, as it happens, one of my favourite singers from the 1960's and 70's but this column is not about her. 

So, if it's not about roller skates or Melanie what is it about?

I've been writing these columns, or blogs if you prefer, since 2008. With no editor and no restrictions it's sometimes hard to resist the temptation to just let off steam and write an angry piece about something that particularly annoys or upsets me. Okay I did manage to write about Brexit, which made me at times very angry indeed, without using any bad language but it wasn't easy. Corona seems to have provided me with more humour, especially in the form of cartoons, than maybe it should. Nonetheless there are still plenty of things in the world to get angry about! The plight of millions of refugees. The rise of nationalism and populism. The polarisation of opinions. Racial and other inequalities in our societies, anti-Semitism, modern slavery, the needless destructions of natural habitats causing the extinction, or near extinction, of many wild animals and more. I have often, in my head,  formulated quite lengthy, angry but well argued articles on most of the above. So why haven't I published them? Well firstly because the articles in my head often turn out to be rambling, disjointed, too long and not well agrgued at all when transferred to print.

If my outrage has been caused by a particular event, by the time I get around to writing about it the the news will have moved on and my anger may well have subsided.

Also I really don't want to add to the stream of negativity that tends to result from 24/7 news coverage. There is always some natural or man made disaster taking place somewhere. Worldwide there are always demonstrations, war, crime waves, cruelty and injustices  happening somewhere. That doesn't mean they are happening all the time everywhere!

Yes I had planned a column on racial discrimination and anti-Semitism. On how I've never really been able to understand either. There are enough people I dislike but judging an individual by the race, colour, nationality or religion they belong to is for me both unthinkable and unacceptable and has been since I was really very young.

But there is another compelling reason for not delivering a bad tempered lecture on these or other topics. I think that most who choose to read these columns are like most of my friends: we can and will disagree on details, sometimes heatedly, but on the whole we have much the same opinions on most serious subjects.

I would, in effect, be shouting at the wrong people – preaching to the converted!

So what I've decided to tell you today is simply that I have a brand new bicycle.

Despite being a cyclist for years I haven't had many really new bikes.

I've had it for a week and I'm as happy as a child with a pair of roller skates!

Melanie 

https://youtu.be/lKcpodt0YCU

A Month of Sundays

A Month of Sundays

I'm often asked the meaning of English phrases or sayings, I sometimes get them wrong. I was slightly wrong about the title of this column.

I'd always thought that 'never in a month of Sundays' meant 'never ever' there being no such thing as a month of Sundays. However it apparently means a very long and probably dreary time and, to be honest, that's pretty much how Sundays felt when I was a child.

Not much happened Sundays, nothing was open and few events were organised.

In Britain we had Sunday newspapers, they were at least four times thicker than the daily editions and had endless extra supplements. My parents had two of them. Now I was fairly good at entertaining myself but hanging around while my parents read both newspapers was not a lot of fun. Then Sunday lunch had to be prepared which took considerable time, effort and sometimes argument even though it was the same every week. After lunch we might go for 'a drive'. This usually involved going by car into the nearby countryside and sitting somewhere. Just sitting is not something small boys are good at.

At some point my mother might point out that there was another little boy about my age that I could play with. Now, that was never going to happen, neither of us had a ball, we may well not like each other and even if we did find something vaguely enjoyable to do it would almost certainly get both of us into trouble!

Sometimes instead of a drive we would go for 'a walk', another thing that little boys are not very good at. Running, jumping, climbing up trees, okay, but just walking? Ah well, it kept the parents happy and it often involved ice cream. It could be worse: on the rare occasions we went visiting I was made to put on my 'Sunday Best'. This was close to being a prison sentence. Once dressed in these, neatly pressed, stiff and disliked clothes, reserved for special occasions, nothing, and I mean nothing, was allowed for fear damaging or dirtying them.

But at least we didn't have to go to church.

I can't really remember what my Sundays were like as a young teenager which is probably a good indication of just how exciting they were. Mornings were much the same, everything centred around the Sunday Lunch*. I think, sometime mid afternoon my friends and I would escape from our families and do nothing very much together for the rest of the day.

I left home, and all the Sunday rituals, when I was 18, but that didn't mean that Sundays were a lot more exciting, there was still not much to do besides recovering from Saturday nights. Even as a student it was hard to find any action, few fellow students showed their faces before the cathedral clock struck midday and the high point of many a Sunday was when Harry came around in the afternoon to sleep through Match of the Day, a football programme, on TV.

When visiting friends and family in the UK it is amazing to find that Sunday habits have not changed much. Getting up late. A lot of fuss about the Sunday lunch , maybe a short walk to the pub for a drink or two, back for food and then sit around watching football on TV. Some other activity may be suggested and if the walk to the pub had not overrun, the Sunday meal had not been delayed by some cooking disaster, the featured football match held no special interest, the kids could be bribed with the promise of ice cream and everybody could get their hats, boots, coats or whatever together before the sun went down, then ….

maybe then.....

Here in The Netherlands it is only comparatively recently that shops other than supermarkets have been allowed to open on Sundays and it's not so long ago that supermarkets were closed too. I've mostly filled my Sundays with sport, doing it in the mornings, watching it in the afternoons. For many though it was, and still is, a day when nothing much happens and then you visit grandma!

Who would ever want to live through a month of Sundays?

Who would ever have imagined that we would actually do it ...three times over?

Three months of Sundays. In many countries the shops have been closed all day and every day. Children and both parents have been at home. There has been little or no contact with friends or family. No outside entertainments. Not even sport on TV or a trip to granny to break the monotony. Here in The Netherlands, with a relatively relaxed lockdown, the days have been long and predictable not quite boring but far from exciting!

Now for better or worse, it looks like restrictions will be easing a little. Not back to normal but maybe we can at least move on to a month of Saturday afternoons!

* See: https://onlyalso.blogspot.com/2016/06/roast-beef-and-three-pinned-plugs.html

Cabin Fever

CABIN FEVER

Cabin Fever: distress, irritability, restlessness and/or claustrophobia resulting from prolonged periods in enclosed spaces or isolated places.

Yes, you're bored to the teeth with corona, apart from being stuck indoors for long periods, there is nothing much else going on. It's wall- to- wall corona on TV and almost everywhere else.

Well, sorry but here we go again. One fascinating aspects of this crisis is that we are all in it together, not equally it's true, but we are nearly all affected. The last time I heard there were only 17 countries claiming to have no infections, four of these nobody believes, leaving just 13, mainly small island nations in the Pacific Ocean, corona free. The rest of us are experiencing some form of lockdown and/or social distancing.

Anna and Fred (Greece) wonder if the cure will turn out to be worse than the disease? In the mountainous region on the mainland where they live the population is mostly elderly and is already living on or below poverty level. They fear that the damage to the fragile local economy will cause more hardship and death than the pandemic. Their small company provides hiking holidays -  they have spent the first lockdown weeks cancelling all the arrangements they had made for what promised to be a good season!

On the lighter side, they added, in their tiny village the authorities have fenced off the square to prevent the six inhabitatants, all elderly, from getting together to organise parties, festivals or demonstrations during lockdown !?

Lali and her family (Georgia) live in Ushguli the highest permanently inhabited village in Europe. “We're alright ” she said, conversations are not long due to the language difficulties. 

I have no doubt that the people of Ushguli will survive. They are strong, independant mountain people who are used to being cut-off from the rest of the world for long periods. In living memory travellers were advised to avoid this bandit infested area. Now tourist hand over their money willingly providing the villagers with a fair amount of extra income. Lali has recently extended her guesthouse, “ there are no corona cases in the area but we don't know when or if we will be opening for the summer season”? She added sadly.

Similarily the people of Breb, Romania, are used to a degree of isolation. “It's just like an extended winter” said Irena who together with Radu runs an open-air bar and restaurant next to the campsite where we have helped out the last few summers. Now Matthijs, Eveline and their children have the whole campground to themselves. Good place to be in a serious lockdown – not so good for business! The campsite, restaurant and other small scale tourist and hospitality initiatives are an important part of the village economy.

Cees and Sylvie (France) have discussions not about who has to do the shopping but who is allowed to do it. During the strict French lockdown a trip to the supermarket is an event!

Guliza (Germany) was running low on toilet paper but enjoying her work. Only the older members of staff were working from home. The younger ones, rightly or wrongly, are not too bothered about corona!

Luckily for Penelope (New Zealand) restrictions will soon be lifted otherwise, judging by the all the photos of delicious looking food she has been posting on social media, she would soon not be able to get out of the door.

Sjors (The Netherlands), a climber, mountainbiker and general outdoor person remarked after just a few weeks working at home: “I never thought I'd miss the office”!

Tibor and Saltanat (Germany) had a cat but it disappeared soon after the lockdown started...

...coincidentally Kees and Leny (The Netherlands) told me that cats are becoming stressed because they don't like humans hanging around in their houses the whole day. While dogs are getting sore feet from being taken out too often!

Marta (Poland)  eloquently summed up how most of us feel at this moment: “Lockdown sucks”! She said.

Too true, but Marta, there are some compensations. A big one being that I may have found the secret of eternal youth. Not in a swimming pool, like in the cult film Cocoon (1985), where a group of elderly people are rejuvenated after regular dips in a pool that has been charged with a 'life-force' by aliens. No, it's in a local supermarket! This store has, for the period of the lockdown, opened its doors an hour earlier exclusively for old people. I went on the very first day, it wasn't very busy, just a handful of silver haired customers shuffling their way around the shelves and shelf stackers. Three weeks later I revisited this over seventies shopping hour, I was surprised to find that the handful of fellow shoppers now looked a lot younger, they no longer had grey hair and they didn't shuffle! Clearly something extraordinary had happend. If, indeed, this supermarket has been invested with some sort of life-force then one lady must have been coming everyday, she looked no older than 35!

Well, okay, I don't blame you, you may not believe in miracles...

... but I'll be going back tomorrow just in case.... and maybe the day after.   

Three Weddings and a Funeral

Three Weddings and a Funeral

It's been a little longer than usual since my last column. 

Each time I started a new one it was out of date almost before I got to the second sentence. Ah well, at least the title has remained the same.

The funeral has already taken place, it was an emotional affair, there was a lot of kissing, hugging and hand-shaking going on.

That was when kissing, hugging and shaking hands was still allowed .

I was going to write about funeral rituals, gestures and symbolism but after a heated discussion on the subject, not for the first time, with my partner I decided not to. Of course, at such times, the subject cannot be completely avoided. It came up during a conversation with a dinner guest.

Do you remember dinner guests? We had one but it was way back in early March 2020 BC (BC = Before Corona).

Suddeny during a conversation involving different cultural attitudes to death, catholic symbolism, British reluctance to show feelings in public and some clichés like 'death being part of living', our visitor ask me “Are you afraid of dying”? 

I can't remember my answer but, yes, of course I am. That's why I take care crossing roads and wear a helmet when doing anything remotely dangerous.

I was intending to go on to share my views on marriage with you. That it's no business of the state, religion or the neighbours who you live with or sleep with, well, unless you are sleeping with one of the neighbours...

Sleeping with neighbours may well allowed but only if there is 1.5 metres of space between you.

...but after a heated disscussion on the subject, not for the first time, with my partner I decided not to.

However, the subject can't be avoided completly especially when the three weddings have very much influenced our travel plans for this year. It did come up, during a conversation with a dinner guest.

Yes, the same dinner guest, well there haven't been any since then. Locked down, locked in, locked out!

We noted that most cultures have some sort of marriage ritual which originally allowed young people to set up home together and start making babies. Well, making babies was not only allowed, it was expected and actively encouraged. Baby- making activities were not supposed to go on before the marriage ceremony. I proposed that, certainly in western society, people can and do, live, sleep and eat together, at least part-time, long before they get around to signing papers or making ritual promises. Therefore, I suggested, marriage is outdated. My companions argued, on the other hand, it is a good reason to give a party, there is romance involved and there can be good legal and financial reasons for getting married. Fair enough, I thought, and anyway I was outnumbered! It was time to move on to another subject but our guest added one more point: marriage, she stated, was desirable because, at least here in The Netherlands, divorce is so well regulated. Now I accept that some people get married for purely legal reasons, mostly to do with taxes and inheritance, but I really don't think any proposal ever went: “Darling, shall we get married it will make breaking up so much easier”!

It is advised against but you are allowed to have up to three guests in your home as long as they all keep the prescribed distance between them all the time!

Now that may just be possible if you live in a palace or mansion but pretty much impossible if you don't. It looks like it's going to be quite a while before we are again sitting around a table, with good friends, good food, maybe just too much wine, discussing birth, death, marriage, relationships, politics, sport, the best route from here to Poland, the best way peel an avocado or just exchanging tall stories.

* BC = Before Corona

It Could be Sarospatak or Anywhere...

It Could be Sarospatak or Anywhere...

A friend visited me recently, shortly before his visit I'd

collected my photos of trains, trams and stations into one file and on an impulse had shared it with him. During his visit he made it clear that he, and the members of his railway enthusiast club, had no interest in my 'holiday snapshots' whatsoever. 
It didn't surprise me. I'd  deliberately not provided any numbers, no names, dates, timetables, locomotive or rolling stock details.

It was clear that, despite a romantic connection with a recently retired train unit, his interest in railways ends pretty much where mine begins. 

I do like trains and station architecture, I was, as a boy, a trainspotter but public transport would not exist if there were no public to be transported. Trains, boats, planes and waiting rooms are  where stories happen. They have their own histories, they are an important part of our cultures but it's people who make history. Without a context a locomotive, 
or airplane, however well designed and engineered, is just a collection of metal and plastic.

Bus and train stations, air terminals, harbours and motorway service stations provide the stages for endless dramas. Trains, boats and planes are the tools that move the action along. This is the idea behind the Dutch television program 'Hallo, Goodbye'. At Schipol, Amsterdam's busy international airport, there is no shortage of stories. People are interviewed at the arrival or departure gates, it's all a bit too sentimental for my taste but nonetheless a simple and good concept. 

Far away from the chaos of busy international air terminals and TV cameras, on remote stations or all-night motorway cafés there are no explanations, the stories are therefore that much more mysterious, more intriguing. In desolate airport lounges or draughty waiting rooms you witness small slices of lives, excerpts with no beginnings and no endings, raising questions but no answers,  only speculation.  

Forget your own discomforts for a moment, the bleakness, the icy cold wind, the lack of coffee. Look around and let your imagination run free.

A grandmother and a small girl standing each side of a double bass.... an ideally unsuited backpacker couple, she dressed like a Barbie doll, he like a scarecrow.... an old man wearing bedroom slippers is reading a three day old newspaper... a younger man is either seriously ill or just returning from the mother of all stag nights...a family eating an improvised meal are dressed up in their finest Sunday clothes...a man looks so much like a spy he couldn't possibly be one... a beautiful young woman is sitting alone in a corner of the shabby waiting room looking like she could burst into tears at any moment...

or … the place is deserted. there's nobody around, not even staff. Has something happened? Is something about to happen? Does anything ever happen?

No facts, no figures but plenty of fuel for fiction and fantasy.

Oh - and don't worry - if you're not much of a traveller, a trip to obscure places with strange sounding names may not be neccessary.

Just a couple of years ago the central station in our town was reconstructed. The city council and the national railway company were obviously aware of the dramatic potential of the project. It cost millions but for that price the architect managed to provide the platforms and the adjoining bus station with just enough of a cold, windswept, bleak and dreary atmosphere to inspire any would be writer or storyteller. Or for the beginning of a 'feel bad' movie.