Articles published in October, 2026
In Buenos Aires an X-ray put my fears of lung cancer to rest; did some reconstruction work with a friend on the flying jacket which was worse for wear; and made friends with some students.
Friday October 11th
Yesterday had cholera and typhus jabs, in little clinic on the waterfront. Doctor entered the typhus on my card before I’d had it, so I had to have it. Man in suit (administrator?) said. don’t have typhoid jab because chloromycetin pills will cure it rapidly. Said I’d buy some. From there direct to Androgue to help Anniken finish the jacket. Sewing the thing together was difficult. I did nothing much myself but give moral support. She made a project of me and gave me gloves. Leather took time. Husband Dan O’Connellis 5 generations Argentine from railway workers. Have three daughters (in green school uniforms). He is sales manager for Dunlop. She is occupational therapist. Looks exactly like Twit [her brother in England who had a very pronounced aristocratic nose] which is disconcerting. But she is bright. Spent night there, then to Martinez to pack. Clinton and Stella have really become friendly. He was amused by the piece in El Pueblo in Villaguay, which said I was related to him. Gave him some books to take to hospital. [He was having a hip replacement.]
Raoul was on the phone, but I thought the weather not good enough to be worth the trouble of arranging to take him since he could go by car.
Hebe, one of my student friends, at the camp site in Mar del Plata
So I set off for Mar del Plata at 12. Got out of BA at 1.30. The road was very busy with weekend traffic all going my way. The people of BA treat the road to M de P as a racetrack 400 km long. They drive dangerously, to each other and specially to me. In the afternoon it began to get cold, and the last hour was freezing. I sang to take my mind off the cold. It worked. Got to M de P after dark but thought all I had to do was find Hebe’s flat. Got there to find a piece of paper stuck on the door saying they had gone to the Municipal Camping and giving confusing directions. I asked downstairs and was sent along the coast to the lighthouse. (Foro). After asking again I found it, but the camp site was big and full of people. I was lucky to find them (and to find the gloves which I dropped on the ground.)
In BA I went with Mercedes, Hebe, and Pacco to the Colon theatre for a concert. Claude Frank – Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 and a symphonic piece. Histrionic young conductor, placid orchestra, perfect acoustics, said to be second only to La Scala. Afterwards to dinner at Basque restaurant with a sooty tree growing up in glass cage. Then to fashionable café on big avenue where everything was still going on at 3.30 am.
Also to assado at country cottage, and round BA on a Sunday. Mercedes (M de Menendez) in early twenties, reddish hair, pale complexion, slim. Jorge Fernandez her boyfriend lean, dreamy, light brown hair, wispy beard, his brother Pacco willowy, slightly camp without meaning to be, features compressed and extruding. Hebe tall, pretty, dark, full lips with corners on them in profile, strange nose, very broad at the bridge. Raoul Guerrero dark, intense, passionate, His girl – pretty, commonsense, working. Mercedes was very complimentary, and said the others also felt very impressed by me. Her praise was most eloquent and so, later, was Raoul’s. I don’t think it’s the views I express, so much as my behaviour which impresses them. Often, now, when the sympathy has been established and I am tempted to put into words the feelings and ideas that underly my behaviour I feel myself losing my way in generalities and facile remarks. Better to say less. It’s a great consolation to me to feel that my presence can have much value to others – I must be conveying much more than I realise by my manner – and, I suppose, by my omissions, when I see what a vocabulary of involuntary affectations young people use to keep their limbs and features busy.
I’m tempted to add that people in BA made less of an impression than people in Rio. Perhaps that’s not a valid comparison.
The British Embassy in BA – new. Great blocks of concrete, iron bars, bullet-proof glass. God knows what built-in security measures. Chargé d’affaires drives around with bodyguards.
Glyn Evans [from the embassy] strangely effete girl, insulated against experience. Finds Argentines stuffy and boring. We go to dinner at a noisy trattoria by the docks (it’s traditional) with another Second Secretary at the embassy called ––––– ? who IS boring and pretentious.
Saturday 12th to Monday 14th
[The small group of Argentine students I had come to know wanted me to go camping with them on the way to Bahia Blanca which was on my route.]
Camping. Slept two nights in tent, one in hammock. Day and a half revising electrical system of Triumph. New batteries (Argentine) too big for holder. Short circuiting thro’ saddle. (funny idea – sitting on all that current). The heat in the earthing wires has split the cable bundles open like a fruit. Fiddle about for ages switching lights from left hand switch to right. Lucas switch is much more durable. Keep finding short circuits in the system which turn out not to e (i.e. through the rectifier and through the white leads inside the headlamp case.)
Electrical spaghetti – need I say more!
We were camped in two areas on either side of a broken barbed wire fence near the sea shore. The eating area was in the camp grounds, a clearing among low trees which grew in clumps. The tents however were technically on private ground and somebody said we didn’t have to pay for that reason – a “viveza criolla.”
[Conceptually, viveza criolla is a sort of cleverness, a cunning determination to defy authority and ignore rules, but do so sneakily, surreptitiously, and successfully. At its best, it is a playful deviousness, a tongue-in-cheek humour for all to enjoy; at its worst, it results in a complete lack of social responsibility, morality, and widespread corruption. A good description from an unattributed source.]
The weather was patchy – nothing much happened. Nice fires. Pleasant times. One night when I was sleeping they went on the beach and argued about politics until dawn. Mercedes says it was quite iolent, and the rumblngs continued next day. They all said rather sadly, that every Argentinian was determined to stick to his own personal opinion – the art, or purpose, of compromise escapes them.
Here’s Raoul, serving breakfast – these were not my most brilliant photographs.
On Sunday the weather got worse but Raul decided to stay with me. Jorge did too. Mercedes wanted to but didn’t dare. That evening I brought much “fiambre” (cooked meats) back to camp, to find that they had been out to buy exactly the same stuff. We ate well and slept out (I in the hammock). Weather gradually deteriorated, but I hoped it would improve.
On Monday we tried to swim but water was freezing. Soldiers were shooting at targets on the beach, and when I saw lots of black figures appearing out at sea over the breakers I thought they were practicing some sort of commando landing operation by frogmen. But they were seals, sitting out on the reef.
Next week: Along the coast and acrosss the Pampa – throttle trouble in a bus shelter, and a hasty but very lucky introduction.
I started my journey with two canvas bags slung across the tank. Apart from catching fire off the exhaust pipe, they could obviously be improved upon.
In Nairobi I got two leather boxes made – better, but still not great.
In my mind I designed bags that would really fit the contours of the tank and carry much more. Argentina seemed like a great place to have them made.
Thursday, September 26th
Weather was fine, Friday too. We went into Villaguay to buy things, to take Stella to the hairdresser and to see about leather bags. First leather shop was rather smart and formal looking, and I was quite glad when they said they couldn’t start for a fortnight. We went to another, called Quiroz, which was exactly what I had imagined. A workshop full of bits, straps, saddles, boots, scraps of leather, gaucho belts, all higgledy-piggledy. And old men with aprons and Dickensian faces surrounded by Dickensian machinery for stitching and punching.
Quiroz said he would do the tank bags in a minimum of 15 days. I knew it was foolish to involve myself in such a long wait, but I couldn’t refuse. He too my cardboard model and struggled with it My experience warned me that he would mess it up in my absence, but intuition made me feel safer with him than usual. He said he would probably charge 50,000 pesos. Or about £12.
On Saturday it was still fine and Clinton went in again with Babs to get more maize seed. But the weather was still fine, and Babs didn’t take her things with her.
On Saturday the storm started all over again.
We were cut off once more, this time for a full week, while about 4 inches of rain fell. One of Clinton’s bulls ws killed by lightening. (Last year a neighbour lost 32 cows all lined up against a wire fence and fried by the same thunderbolt. The whole village came out to carve them up). One of his pedigree bulls, the new one, developed a hernia. A milk cow gave birth far too young – still born, and possibly made cow sterile. Other minor irritations. Considering Clinton is going to have the top of his leg cut off as well, I think he puts on a good show. [I assume it was a hip replacement.]
We had some rousing discussions about “foreigners,” “communists,” “negroes,” good families and snobbery. Babs offered her creed in loud and no uncertain terms, continuing to the end whatever the interruptions and finishing up with a ringing “WHAT!” She is quite clear that anything disturbing politically is “the communists.” And anything else is the “parvenues,” like Armenian-Turks “who sell alcohol neat to Indians.”
The week is clouded for me because the irritation in my right lung persists unchanged despite having given up smoking. When I think about it, which is quite often, I cannot see why it shouldn’t be cancer and in consequence an early death. This is something so difficult to deal with at the conjectural stage that I shall write no more about it, but it is a heavy burden on me now.
Have been riding round the camp on “Negrita” – another dream come true. Second time much better than first, and I galloped. Picking mushrooms, opening and closing gates, watching the plovers defending their nests – divebombing, pretending injury, the full frontal frighteners, with red machine guns menacing from the crook of the wing. Name in Spanish is “Tero.”
Saturday, September 28th
Roads have dried out at last, but morning looks stormy again. So we all rush to Villaguay, me following after.
So begins a day of folly, gratification, pain and pleasure.
On the road out of camp I have my best bang to date. In a rut, going too fast, yawing left and right, then off, and the bike instead of sliding as usual, does a somersault and I can feel it going over me. I lie there thinking that this time I’ve really done it, in fact I say it out loud. “Christ, You’ve really done it,” in bitter distraction, sure that my leg must be broken. But I get up and the bones are intact. Not the muscles however, which are badly bruised. My belongings are all over the road, both boxes badly damaged, and emptied. Bike lies like an upended beetle, sputtering futilely. I switch it off and look at it. Lights destroyed, handlebars revolved through 90 degrees, but worst of all, the forks are twisted – rideable, but for how long. And there’s something odd about the cutch cable movement. Considering the havoc it doesn’t take too long to lash everything up so that I can go, cautiously, on to Villaguay.
There Clinton is waiting at the confiteria and starts immediately to tell me what’s on his mind about arrangements, not noticing the state of us until he sees me limping. We stand outside the coffee place for ages while he reads out letters that they’ve written (so kindly) to the porter, the maid, etc. [I will be staying at their flat in Buenos Aires for a bit.]
Quiroz, he says, is waiting for me at the shop – to try out the panniers. But I get a coffee after all and then go to Quiroz. He’s wonderful. I’ve made a mistake with legroom, but even so he says he’ll try to finish them by tomorrow. I have to go back at 2pm.
The afternoon was great. I got another piece of leather – the cow’s rump – which he says is particularly strong, and while Q was making the bags I made a new saddle cover, and finished it, with his help and advice, by 6pm. Marvellous. The hide cost 90,000 pesos (£2) and I still have half left.
Sunday September 29th
The idyll continues. Spent the whole working day with Q. He was actively encouraging me to make things. Gave me scrap canvas, more advice, and took me to his home for lunch. Wife is fat, youngish, Italian origin. She was a bit tipsy (on gin, I think) and had a mouth full of biscuit meal. She thinks that language difficulties can be overcome by getting very close and shouting. Has pretty daughter and handsome son-in-law, and doll-like grandson.
The sports reporter of the newspaper El Pueblo came into Q’s shop and gossiped knowledgably about ERP [The People’s Revolutionary Army attacking Argentina’s institutions] and how they were getting their arms and equipment into the country – including ist class medical stuff. Has myopic eyes, neat moustache, sports jacket, florid complexion, player running to seed.
Wanted to buy an entire cowhide for 70 pesos, but price turned out to be 70,000 pesos, or 700 new ones i.e. £15 – £20. Too bad. [I did buy one when I went back, 26 years later.]
At 4.30 Cinto’ arrived with Stella, only to give me a letter and my screwdriver and postcards.
The Plaza – church, post office, hotel, police station, restaurant, confiteria.
At 6.30pm police station unusually alert after the assassination at the hotel. Fat policemen in Khaki drill with sub-machine guns, standing to salute the flag as it’s lowered. At night the police whistle to each other across the square at half hour intervals.
Quiroz made the two boxes, still on the bike today, and I made the saddle cover.
Given my appearance and eccentric mode of travel, it was always uncertain how I would be viewed in a new destination, but more often than not I was received as a visiting dignitary. So it was in San Ignacio.
September 12th. San Ignacio.
Lunch at Auto Club hostel. Then taken to parish priest – “Der Farrer” – José Marx. German missionary of the Stegler Order. Blond – thinning hair carefully brushed across on top, calm outwardly. Sitting on chair in front of mural painted on the convex curve of the back wall, which must be the outer side of the altar. It depicts a conquistador and friar standing back to back. The C. is looking over the Iguacu Falls, and the friar is holding his cross up to an Indian couple working in a field.
He thought his being sent to San Ignacio very significant. “Es gibt kein Zufall,” [There is no coincidence.] He has been trying to set up industries for the indigent Indian population to run for themselves – i.e. the 20% that the Eldorado German [whom I met yesterday] thinks of as wastrels. Has started a cooperative for extracting essence from citronella – previously in Puerto Rico did something similar but was sent packing to Rome by local bishop who thought he was causing too much trouble. He returned to convince the same bishop that he was doing good.
Was in Mexico too for a five-year period, knows Ivan Illich [a controversial priest at that time] but has little respect for him – says he preaches simplicity, poverty, and lives rich – takes his jet to USA for holidays. Has language school in Cuernavaca, very expensive, where he also indoctrinates.
Marx wants to do ‘Son et Lumière’ in the ruins – and bring tourists from B.A. Has built a guest house – sleeps 12.
Walked around the ruins admiring them and enjoying the calm but could feel no special affinity. Had dinner at hotel again – with two Berlin students. No bill. Slept well.
September 13th
Spent an hour next day writing generalisations into Marx’s guest book. Don’t know why. Doesn’t seem like a very useful thing to do. Better to have sent him a letter. Still, it was an act of gratitude.
[A friend in London had an uncle, Clinton Poore, with an Estancia near Villaguay, where I would be welcomed. A letter would be waiting at the post office in Villaguay telling me how to get there.]
‘Uncle’ Clinton
Travelled on from San Ignacio to Posadas, Corrientes, Goya. Got first glimpse of really flat endless ranch land west of Posadas. Uninterrupted road – no villages, houses. Then, towards Corrientes more detailed landscape. Ran out of petrol one kilometre short of petrol station. Difficult to get lift. People afraid of being robbed (Cf. Clinton’s story about boy and girl dressed up to play tennis, who mugged driver.)
Decided that timing must be wrong. Stopped to change plate and plugs [I don’t understand this at all.]
Stayed overnight at Goya in “Sportsman’s Hotel.” Dinner at Colonial Restaurant. Prices about half of Brazil. More continental atmosphere. Tables and chairs to drink at, like café. Changed $10. Went on to Villaguay, by dirt road, but missed turning and rode around Bovril for a while looking for right road (No.6).
Arrived in Villaguay at 5.30. Letter was at post office waiting. Big military garrison with warnings about sentries shooting. Came out on dirt road to Estancia la Estella to arrive just before dark. Stella and Babs were there. Clinton was at farmer’s meeting.
Sunday 15th
Heavy cloud and rain. Roads impassable. All clay and greasy. Cooped up for three days, watching birds from windows. Cardinals with red faces, other birds like robins but most luminous red all over except wings. “Ben di vin” birds but bigger and called something else. [Pronounced Benjivin, the bird makes a sound like “welcome” in Portuguese.]
Wednesday 18th
Went out to shop on sulky. Cloud was beginning to break up a little. Cart is little more than a bench slung over the axle. One horse in the shafts. And another alongside on the left. Trotted all the way, 8 kilometres, over the black earth roads through silent fields with copses of gum trees to break up flat skyline. Big fields of cows at pasture, reaped maize, ploughed fields. Owls swooping around in daylight, wild guinea pigs in long grass beside road. My companion was young man with ten brothers and sisters. He was very smartly dressed in brown jacket and clean brown bombaços and gum boots. The horses knew the way. Slowed down where road narrowed to cross drainage ducts, and in boggy patches where other carts had driven deep ruts the two horses couldn’t trot side by side and the one on the left was pushed out slipping and sliding back into the ruts. Both seemed very willing and always began to trot again as soon as they could.
Ancient cars were favoured here because their big wheels do better in the mud.
The store had wooden fence set round it, and six horses were tied up, some with carts. In the shop it was very quiet. Some men sitting, a small bar on right of the door with tin sink to wash glasses. Men all wore hats of some sort and observed me curiously. Boy presented a list to storekeeper. I took a cognac. He drank Amargo, some sort of dark non-alcoholic drink.
The butcher was opposite. Beefy man with one eye. Knife and steel in sheath of kind all men carry. Cut down half a carcass of glistening red cow, and bundled meat into two sacks. Woman had a handsome face, and the little girl was pretty, as they all are. By the time we left the cloud had almost gone, lingering only on the horizon.
Next week, the birth of the ultimate leather tank bags.
