News from Ted
It’s not like me to have nothing to say.
I sit here at my computer and all sorts of disconnected ideas are flitting around like fish beneath the surface but they can’t break through, as though they were trapped under a sheet of ice.
Nothing seems worth saying when the two countries I am connected with by language and history are both now governed by flamboyant frauds, each one intent on bolstering his ego by leading his country to destruction.
And as if that weren’t bad enough one of them, Mr Trump, seems quite willing to risk universal extinction as well.
Still, for the time being, life does go on. After three years of waiting, some potential writers have taken note of my offer of hospitality and advice. At the beginning of the year I had Malcolm Dunkeld here for a few days. He was kind enough to say that my comments were ” extremely valuable.”
Christopher Lee is coming to visit next week with a view to spending more time here later. He says he’s determined to find a way to elevate his travel experiences so that they energise and excite others. Derek Mansfield plans to come at the end of the week with the same thing in mind. And Mark Holmes, who attempted to rejig his life by riding off on a Triumph Rocket, has sent me a book which he thinks could be improved.
So it’s beginning to look as though my purpose in buying this house with all its bedrooms may be tested. Meanwhile others come to visit. Catherine Germillac left this morning after a couple of nights here. She’s been in Corsica and Sardinia , still on her famous 125cc Desirée, which she rode all over the world years ago. Yesterday she went to see one of the great historic sites in this part of the world, the mediaeval village of St. Guilheme-le-Désert. The village itself was crowded with tourists, but high above it is a ruined castle which is supposed be out of bounds – so of course she scrambled up there. The panoramic view she captured on her phone was extraordinary. And I’m the stupid guy who forgot to ask her for the picture.
Instead, all I have to offer is a picture of our new shop. Yes, at last, we have our Epicerie again and it’s a great resource. So now Aspiran has it’s baker, it’s Café and it’s grocer. Some things get better.
You can just see the shop at the far end of my street. 
Ah, there it is.
It used to be the fire station
Here’s the boulangerie
And here’s the café / bar, but it’s shut on Mondays.
but you can buy soft drinks at the Tabac/post office
So you see, we’re a thriving little village (sort of)
For ten years now I’ve been going to Arizona in May to face sand-storms, mud, wind, rain, snow and even occasional good weather (I’m kidding: there was lots of good weather, but it’s the other stuff you remember). And the reason for taking such risks with my health and good humour is to be among several thousand other fools like me worshiping at the feet of Apollo, who must, I think, have been the God of Adventure.
It’s called the Overland Expo and it’s an assembly of all the daftest vehicles you’re likely to see, from millionaire multimogs to all-terrain strollers. I came to love the crew that runs the show, through all kinds of adversity. In particular the Land Rover guys, like Duncan and Andy and Graham and Chris, who thrive on mud and disaster. And I really admire Roseann and Jonathan Hansen who started the whole crazy thing.
Anyway, I go there to talk. That’s all I do. I used to do it with pictures like everybody else, but somehow instead of helping, the pictures just got in the way. For some reason people like listening to me. I don’t usually know what I’m going to say – one thing just leads to another – but this time I DO know. I’m going to talk about fear, and how to make it work for you.
The idea came to me when I took my bike out for a spin round my village today. It was only a short ride, but it was the first time this year and for me it was quite significant. The truth is that when I haven’t been on a bike for a while I begin to wonder whether I’ll ever get on one again. Every year it takes a little bit more courage to believe that I still belong on the back of this old warhorse. The problem is age, old age. Perhaps a few of you are already thinking about it. To stop or not to stop, that is the question.
I’ve just been visiting in England, meeting new people. It’s not long before they discover how old I am and sooner or later someone asks, very politely, “Are you still riding?”
Of course I say “Yes,” but I’m fudging it really, because that was last year.
I took that picture of my bike here in the garage under my house, where it’s been gathering dust for many months. It’s the same one that cost me a fortune and a friendship to bring to France, and I’ve hardly used it. I do a lot of work in my garage and the bike keeps staring at me. In two weeks I will be 88 years old. I’m very aware that many people would say a man my age has no business riding a motorcycle, so I have that to contend with as well.
“I’ll have to take it out soon,” I told myself, but I kept putting it off and I have to admit I was scared. I was afraid that when I got on it I wouldn’t feel safe, that I’d get the message, “It’s over”. For someone who spent many years on the road with nothing but a bike for company, that thought is ultimately depressing.
So today I took my fears out of the horror film category, and put them to use. I took the bike on the road and In no time at all I felt fine, and I’m good for another year.
You can’t seek adventure without taking a risk. And if there’s risk you’d be a fool if you didn’t have some fear. The trick is to make it work for you. I learned a lot about that during my four years around the world. We’ll have lots to talk about. I hope some of you can be there.
Nathan Millward, who is unquestionably one of my favourite characters, has been doing a gig at the motorcycle show in London for a number of years. It consists of putting people on a small stage at one end of this vast arena to tell stories about their travels. He’s run through most of the top attractions in the motorcycle world and this year was finally reduced to me. I played hard to get at first, but he said OK, piss off then, so I quickly changed my tune and bought the air tickets in a hurry, something I later came to regret.
Having called my bluff, Nate could have made me grovel but instead he couldn’t do enough for me. He fixed up a hotel right next to the show for three nights and got a mate of his, an IT wizard called Brian Goodbourn, to fetch me from the airport. He told me thrilling stories, all virtual of course, all the way into town. Here’s the picture he sent me to know him by.
The Motor Cycle News people who run the show believe in fruitful disruption, so they put our stage about 100 yards away from a live race-track, where small bikes roar around in circles at 9000 revs, and a commentator with a mike brings the races to a thundering conclusion about every fifteen minutes.
Of course, as seasoned travellers used to shouting at the natives, we easily rode above their interruptions. This obviously annoyed MCN so every now and again they would take a sports bike engine up to maximum revs right next to us at the McGuiness Bar, but nothing could dim the beauty of our tales.
However, things did begin to go strange. Our books were displayed on flimsy tables that were actually constructed from matchwood, and my books are heavy. I layed them out across the surface of the hardboard top to spread the load but eventually the inevitable happened. Somebody leaned on them, and the whole thing collapsed. Not a disaster, you might think, but I happened to have my hand under the table as it fell, and it took some little bits of finger with it, producing a liberal helping of blood.
The first aid station was a long way away – I would have called it second or third aid – but I am not squeamish. I soon found some paper napkins to mop up the blood and to wrap around my bleeding digits, but there was blood on the books and that did, at first annoy me. Then a realized that far from damaging the books, it might actually improve them.
Would not my most fervent fans be delighted to have a little bit of me along with the book, as a sort of sacred relic? When I announced from the stage that I had books marked with my own precious essence there were loud guffaws of mirth, but when I sat down again the bloody books were quickly snapped up.
My publisher, who happened to be visiting me at that moment was flabbergasted and gobsmacked. In all his years of marketing books he had never thought of offering the author’s blood as an inducement to buy. It will be the saving of many a small bookshop. There is no way Amazon can replicate it, and we can look forward to some bloodthirsty scenes at Waterstones and WHS.
Well things calmed down for while. About three weeks ago a fellow called Peter Ryder, who obviously also rydes, asked to buy a print of one of my pictures. I’ve never done this kind of thing in the past but I told him that if he cared to have a bunch of prints made at my expense he could have one of them for free, so now here comes Pete with a big cardboard envelope of gorgeous prints. I chose two pictures, printed A2 size – that’s 24” by 16”. This is the obvious one:
I did some smaller ones of this one too, at £8 a throw.
Then I had big prints made of this one as well.
To my astonishment, the one with me in it sold out quite quickly at £20, but I only sold two of the other one. Curious because I actually prefer the one of the bike, but that just shows what a shy and modest person I must be. Anyway, this seems to be something people like so I’m thinking of printing some more. Let me know if you’re interested.
So things went along merrily until the show closed. Then came the dénoument, and it was swift and deadly.
Nate and I were strolling to the exit. Contractors were tearing down their exhibits. Suddenly a shot rang out and I fell to the ground. Several people standing around, including Nate, were certain I’d been assassinated and looked around wildly for the shooter.
As for me, I hurt my knee quite badly on the concrete floor, so it took me a moment to get up and reassure everyone that I hadn’t been hit. We never knew where that explosive noise came from, but I have one more reason to be glad to be alive.
That wasn’t the end of my troubles. My knee really hurt, so I had to get a cab to the airport. Then more stupidity. That air ticket I rushed into? I got the month wrong on the return half, so I got stuck at Gatwick. So I hastily booked an airport hotel, and again got the day wrong and had to spend half an hour on the phone listening to jolly Butlins-style music to get my money back.
The moral of the story? I must be getting old. But my blood’s good.
I’m off to London tomorrow, to spend three days at the motorcycle show at ExCel. I’ve never been to one before, surprisingly, so I can’t tell you much about it, but I’m the guest of Nathan Millward who rode a postman’s bike from Australia to England a while back and is one of my favourite people in spite of himself.
I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a good time. I only have to talk for half an hour each day, and that’s answering questions, so I reckon I’ll hold out all right. I’ve got books to sell and this time, just as an experiment, some big posters that people seem to like putting up on their walls. This is one of them.
As Brexit looms over me like a dreadful curse, every visit to England seems more and more like the end of a golden era. Everyone’s fed up with it, but I can’t help thinking about it.
A few days ago I was asked to do a TEDx talk at Warwick and I chickened out – sort of – partly because it sounded like a lot of work, but mainly because I’ve never been any good at doing scripted speeches and I’m getting too old to fail.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering what I might have said. The theme was “Architects of Tomorrow”, and since I am not an architect (although I love designing and building my own stuff) I assume the larger meaning of those who might be designing a future world. Well, I wonder if it’s not a bit ridiculous asking an 87-year-old to divine the needs of a future generation. True, Buckminster Fuller was still at it when he was my age, although the resemblance ends there.
My first reaction to the title was that it was rather hubristic. If there is one thing we should have learned by now it is that you can’t create an environment for the next lot to occupy and expect them to appreciate it. Look at the record. Look at what happened to those brilliant, colourful tower blocks we put up in the fifties. Look at Chandighar, Le Corbusier’s famous celebration of concrete in India, which the inhabitants have done their absolute best to disguise as a tent city by covering it with fabrics, posters, and graffiti.
I am not saying that these endeavours were without merit. They certainly served a purpose, for a while at least, but they do show how impossible it is to anticipate what large numbers of people in the future will find amenable or inspiring.
However, assuming that the theme of these talks is meant more generally than in terms of bricks and mortar, the thought that we could today imagine and create a better future for the next generation seems quite foolish. We have only to observe, right now, in Europe and America, the extraordinary mess we are making for our own younger generation. The sad truth seems to be that the calibre of the people we have elected to prepare for the future is simply inadequate.
In our own case, in Britain, the imbalance between north and south (to put it at it’s crudest) has been obvious throughout my lifetime, and yet our politicians have never seriously tackled this dangerous instability until finally one of them, in an act of consummate folly, put a match to the powder keg. Much the same blind arrogance characterises affairs in the USA, and there are echoes of it everywhere, prompted by the very difficulties that require us to pull together rather than fly apart.
If we are to put our energy and creative talents into anything, it must be into improving ourselves. We need to be led and instructed by better people, better politicians, and of course by that I don’t mean people with better qualifications or more expensive educations. I mean people with a grasp of the diversity and complexity of the world we live in, who recognise the impossibility of separating ourselves off from its problems and the fact that we are all in it together.
The combination of population growth, drastic inequalities and the information revolution is already having lethal consequences, and in combination with climate change will quite possibly lead to our extinction unless somehow we fashion better people to show us how to resolve these tensions.
The British have always been great travellers and on all my big rides I’d say I encountered more Brits than people of other European nationalities. How can that be compatible with the sense of a creeping xenophobia we see in Britain today? I don’t think we’re generally afraid of foreigners, or find them distasteful. From what I’ve heard it might have more to do with large numbers of unskilled workers behaving badly because they are trafficked and exploited by criminal gangs. In which case policing the gangs might be better than closing our borders, but that is a quite uneducated opinion. What I want to see is a body of elected politicians and government officials with the will, the determination and the humility to sort these things out. Those are not the people I hear pontificating about Brexit.
All my emphasis in the second half of my life has been on the virtue of exploratory travel, as a means to finding some perspective on life and an appreciation of the beauty of the planet we inhabit.
It drastically tempers the desire to acquire stuff or to impose oneself on others. It greatly diminishes fear and anxiety, and powerfully reinforces the belief that people, for the most part, share common values and desires, and that it is generally safe and usually a pleasure to be amongst them.
If such an idea were not utterly absurd, I would wish everyone could travel as I did and discover in themselves their own natural compatibility with humanity. I have yet to meet travellers who do not report on the warmth and generosity they are offered by people everywhere, and always inversely proportional to their wealth.
Perhaps we should send our budding teachers and politicians out into the world with the modern equivalent of a begging bowl before we entrust them with our future and the future of our children.
They wouldn’t be so concerned with acquiring wealth, shoring up their self-importance and intriguing in the pursuit of power.
The architects of tomorrow need to do most of their work on themselves, to head off the catastrophes looming over us and ensure that there actually will be a tomorrow.
Considering how much I have always loved Christmas it amazes me how little I can remember of the eighty or more I must have enjoyed, the plethora of presents that have been showered on me, and the sumptuous feasts I have gorged on. Christmas for me is a license to indulge in all my worst characteristics, laziness, gluttony and greed. And therein, perhaps, lies the answer. After three days of unremitting consumption how could I be expected to keep track of all the handkerchiefs, socks, scarves, ties, Ronson lighters, cuff links and cigarette cases, that were shared out between us.
The first Christmas present I can actually remember getting was a banana, a rare and precious object in war-time Britain, when I was 12 years old. The next Christmas that left a trace was in Germany, probably in 1948, when my aunts and my grandmother lived in a hut outside Hamburg, having been bombed out of the city. My aunts were given to loud and joyful singing and there were many cakes and biscuits baked with honey.
The next one to leave an impression was my first Christmas in the RAF. There were no presents, but by tradition the Ossifers – sorry, Officers served us lowly AC Plonks with our roast beef, Yorkshire pud and two veg. After that there is a great chasm of forgetfulness until I set off on my bike in 1973. Heaven only knows how many people I am wounding with these careless words, how much careful thought was lavished on objects that I have dismissed from my memory. I no doubt deserve what’s coming to me, which is puzzling because so far what’s been coming has been pretty nice. But there was one awkward Christmas on my trip around the world, that I can remember pretty well.
In late December of 1974 the high road across the parched foot hills of the Argentine sierras was hotter than anything I could remember, hotter even than Sudan. The views were spectacular. Foxes and armadillos crossed my path. There were also police checkpoints everywhere , playing their part in the army’s dirty war against left-wing dissidents. My papers confused them but they gave me no trouble. Then I came down to the main road to Tucuman where the sky turned grey and it started to rain.
The road into town was slippery with mud from tractors hauling sugar cane to the refineries, and the drivers looked tired and drunk, and filthy from the mud sprayed by car tyres, which soon covered me too. A tourist office in the central plaza found me a cheap hotel. I parked the bike outside and wandered around in the night looking for somewhere to eat. An immense open hall beckoned – lurid lighting shone down on billiard tables ranged down the middle, men playing dominoes down the right and a short order bar on the left dishing out steaks. A clamour of voices and the slap of dominoes on plastic table-tops echoed down from the ceiling. To me it sounded mechanical and joyless, a reflection of my own spirits which had been deflated since leaving Santiago and Malú four days earlier. The parting was as traumatic as it was inevitable. She retreated into her upper-class refuge and pulled up the drawbridge, and that was that. After being in the thick of love and politics, I was adrift.
When I got back to the hotel in Tucuman they told me a car had knocked my bike over, and they had picked it up for me. The boxes were slightly disarranged – nothing serious, but it seemed to fit into a pattern – and I took the bike into the hotel lobby overnight. I was generally nervous about the bike. I was riding with a new cylinder block and pistons, installed in Santiago, and I was afraid I might have pushed them too hard climbing into the sierras.
Christmas was just two days off and I had promised myself some relief from my worries. A few months back in Villaguay an autocratic elderly lady of the Anglo-Argentine tribe had promised me respite with her daughter Judy who was married to a colonel in the Ejercito del Norte – the Army of the North. They were stationed in Salta, just a day’s ride further north on my way to Bolivia. I had only to present myself at the barracks, she said, to be warmly welcomed and plied with the good things of life. Surely I could look forward to a few days of pleasant, undemanding distraction.
In the morning as I rode north the rain gave way to sun and stifling heat. I got to Salta in early afternoon and found the barracks quite easily. Everyone in Salta, it seemed, was very aware of the army. However, as I inquired at the gates of the garrison about the colonel’s wife I saw faces assume that peculiar stiffness people put on to hide embarrassment, because it turned out that the colonel was now Judy’s ex-husband.
Probably I should have sensed that the signs were not auspicious, but I was too invested in my dream of a Merry Christmas to turn tail and run. Calls were made and Judy eventually appeared. She was a tall, handsome woman with a friendly handshake but a distracted manner. It should have been obvious to me from the start that I did not fit easily into her plans but I couldn’t just let go.
“I’d better take you to my place,” she said, so I followed her car some way out into the country. The house was in a nice setting, but in a state of total disorder. I soon found out why.
“Tomorrow I have to move out to an apartment in town. We’ll have to find somewhere else for you. Will you be all right? I have to go back into town now.” And off she went.
I was beginning to get the message, but tomorrow could take care of itself. There was work I wanted to do on the bike so I took it into the garden and unpacked all my stuff.
We did our best that night to make friends. The maid cooked some good food, and I had rather too much Old Smuggler whisky which caused me to sleep late. I woke at eleven to find a note with a sketchy map telling me how to get to some people called Lloyd Davies for lunch by twelve.
There was no time to pack again. I rode the naked bike about half a mile along a dirt road when suddenly and implacably it stopped dead. At that moment Judy drove up wondering where I was. She did a good job hiding her irritation as I pushed the bike laboriously back to the house. Then in her car we went to lunch with an elderly couple of Welsh extraction, with a grown up son and daughter, Jeremy and Anne.
Eventually it was decided that I should stay with them that night. Jeremy drove me to Judy’s house where I started looking for the problem with the bike and after an inconclusive hour or two Judy drove up again to take me back to the Welsh house and in the car asked me what I thought of Anne because, she said, she and Anne were rival lovers of the same important newspaper proprietor in Salta.
When we got to the Welsh house it turned out that the Christmas Eve dinner was at another house belonging to a crusty old man called Tansley, so Anne drove me there and, on the way, asked me what I thought of Judy. I began to wonder what role I was expected to play in this amorous tangle.
Tansley’s house was big and splendid, but everything was running down. His most fascinating possession was an enormous billiard table, built around one huge and immensely heavy sheet of Welsh slate which he said had crossed the Atlantic three times. One time too many, apparently, because the slate was “sagging” and no longer served. I took it as a symbol of the way the whole Anglo-Argentine community, which had been so prosperous, was losing its grip. Conversation was stilted and archaic, and the young man, Jeremy, seemed particularly rooted in the world of P.G.Wodehouse.
On Christmas morning the Lloyd Davies invited a small group of Anglican missionaries to offer a service. Beaming relentlessly and evangelical to the core, they arrived with a little portable harmonium and performed a clockwork service in which the word of God was driven home with a sledge hammer. It did me no good. I was now completely without will or direction – no transport, no connection with my things, I just fell into a torpor.
Christmas lunch came and went. Then dinner. I assumed that sooner or later someone would either invite me to stay or drive me away. The parents were slated to leave for Australia the next day and the mother began to make it obvious that she expected me to leave the house too. I don’t think she thought me a proper influence. The daughter, however, insisted on the side that I take no notice. My uneasiness continued. The following day also passed in total inaction as the family saw itself off at the airport. That evening Anne drove me to Judy’s house to collect my things. It was too late to tow the bike but next morning a servant took me to Judy’s house to fetch it.
We had a long tow rope, and I fed the free end loosely round the forks to the handle bar where I could easily let it go. Just before we got back a woman in a small red car, obviously befuddled, drove straight over the tow rope. I told Jeremy the story, thinking it was funny.
“Of course, what you should do when being towed,” he said. “is to pass the line round some suitable central part and out to the bars . . . . “
I finally located the electrical fault – burnt out connections, as was often the case – and with the bike running again my spirits revived. We did eventually find ways to enjoy ourselves. I found other interesting people in Salta, including a geologist with a gold mine ,but I never met the newspaper proprietor.
It was good of them all to put up with me. Christmas is what you make of it.
Thanks to all of you who commiserated with me on the shipwreck of my mother’s crockery. After all’s said and done there seems not much I can do about it, being so far away from the action, but I still hold a slender hope of some small relief. However, I’m getting over it. Christmas is coming.
Speaking of which, those who care for me have been chastising me for wasting the opportunities of the season. They say, and I’m forced to agree, that my books make scrumptious Christmas presents but my shop is in disarray. Now that I live in France all the postage prices are different and so far it has been beyond me to make the shop work. I’m just going to lay it all out here in simple language. Of course I will sign and dedicate the books – that after all would be the main reason for getting them from me.
So, here goes:
All the prices are in US dollars. If your currency is euros, divide the dollar price by 1.13. If your currency is pounds sterling, divide the dollar price by 1.3
Jupiter’s Travels costs $25
Riding High costs $20
Dreaming of Jupiter costs $25
Rolling through the Isles costs $20
Now for the shipping
If you live outside Europe (USA, Canada, Australia, etc):
The postage for one book is $30
The postage for two or three books is $40
The postage for all four books is $60
If you live in Europe but outside France:
The postage for one book is 15 euros
The postage for two or three books is 16.80 euros
The postage for all four books is 21.50 euros
The Camera book is a heavy picture book and costs $50. There aren’t many copies left and it is a beautiful book, though I say so myself (it wasn’t designed by me).
Outside Europe the postage is $40.
In Europe the postage is 16.8 euros
The CD, Jupiter Returns, which has the whole day-to-day record of my second journey round the world, is available for $15. Und die CD habe ich auch in Deutsch.
En plus, mon livre “Les Voyages de Jupiter” a été réédité en France, et si vous le voulez signé avec dédicace, ecrivez s.v.p.
Please email me with your orders and any questions you might have.
tsimon@mcn.org
The picture shows part of a table setting of china that got smashed on its way to Europe. The china was made by Spode, an old English company and the pattern is quite beautiful. It is also comparatively valuable, and was left to me by my mother. She never had much money but every now and then she would treat herself to something like this.
I was shipping it back to France in a large plywood crate, 4 X 4 X 3, which I built myself in Covelo, using screws everywhere. Everything in it was carefully packed in cartons with bubble wrap, and I drove the crate down to San Jose where the shippers, called LA-Dynamic, received it. That was in June.
The crate finally arrived at a car park near my house on October 3rd. The two drivers who brought it helped me unpack it. In fact, it was their job to do so. The crate had been taken off its pallet, and there was no way to get it off the truck without unpacking it first. Evidently it had been opened for inspection, because one side and the top had been taken off and nailed back on. I had put clear instructions to show which side of the crate should be removed first for inspection, but whoever did it ignored them.
When we took the top off the crate it was immediately obvious that something terrible had happened.The crate contained one very nice small piece of furniture, a glass cabinet, and the top of of the cabinet had been ripped off. The drivers took pictures and so did I. As we unloaded it, we could see that the back of the cabinet had also been ripped away, the legs were broken, and the whole thing was almost in pieces.
The cartons had been replaced in a disorderly fashion, and when I came to open them later at home, half the glass, china and pottery, was broken.
The shipper says the damage must have been done by the customs inspection which, they say, is not carried out by customs themselves, but by private sub-contractors. The contents were insured against total loss but the insurance company apparently refuses to consider it a total loss. After weeping crocodile tears the shipper evidently also refuses any responsibility, and all they have offered so far is an email address for US Customs and a promise to provide any documents I might need. Obviously what they hope is that I will just shut up and go away. What am I supposed to do with an email address?
So what I want to know is this: Is it actually possible that the shipper who took custody of my possessions and whom I paid to send them to France, can take no responsibility for what happens to them along the way? Is there a lawyer or a savvy businessman among you who can suggest a way for me to approach this? Isn’t there some basic principle which would over-ride any fine print I might have inadvertently signed?
I am in California for a few days but then I have to go to the OverlandExpo in Asheville and then to France. The total amount of damage is probably no more than three or four thousand dollars in market value, but the Spode is irreplaceable and of course it hurts to lose it.
Any ideas, anyone?
One of the people who once ate off my Spode and remarked how lovely he found it was a German professor of geography called Hans Bohle. We first met in India, in 1975, when I was riding my Triumph through Ootacamund.
He was a young scientist working with a volunteer organisation and trying, like so many young Germans, to wipe out the horrible recent history of his country. He said they were trying to show the Indians how to grow better vegetables and he was full of laughter at the contradictions that were always tripping them up. He said they had managed to increase the size of the cabbages they were growing by eight or nine times, but the whole crop of twenty pound cabbages were left to rot because the restaurant in Bombay that normally bought them refused to have anything to do with these giant brassicas.
Hans is dead now, but he visited me about ten years ago. He had the Chair of Geography at the University of Bonn, and of course climate played a vital part of his studies. He spent much of his time at conferences with other scientists around the globe. I asked him then how long it had been since his colleagues had known about climate change and he said for at least fifteen years it was broadly agreed that we were headed for the inferno if we didn’t do anything about it. So that’s twenty-five years ago from today.
There’s an election here in nine days time and it’s anybody’s guess which way it will go. Everybody knows how I feel about Trump and I am sure America will survive him, but only as long as the planet survives.
Thanks for listening.
These days every time I get on a bike it’s like a new lease of life. Always, before I hoist my leg over the saddle (and hoist is the right word) there is that small tremor of nervousness. Will it be OK? Will I still feel in command? And then the relief of finding that Yes, it feels good. I still belong here.
This time it happened in the streets of Bucharest, outside Mihai’s Pub. Who’s Mihai? It’s complicated. First there were Alex and his partner, Catalina, two incredibly nice young Romanians, who invited me and Elspeth Beard to a festival of adventure travel in the capital of Romania. I have been to Romania before when I was trying to find out where my grandfather once lived. That was a long story and you can read about it in The Gypsy in Me, but I never went to Bucharest. People said it’s not worth the trouble. There’s nothing left of the old city, they said. Ceausescu tore it all down. But here was an opportunity to see for myself, and when opportunity knocks I generally open the door. So here I am in Bucharest and it’s not true. There is still plenty of the old city left, and it’s easy to summon up the feeling of a city that was once compared with Paris, and was always at the crossroads of history, buffeted on all sides by Turks, Russians, Nazis, you name it.
Alex and Catalina – with fish on the Danube
We had a wonderful time at the festival. Alex and Catalina put a huge amount of time and energy into creating it. Elspeth gave them all a tremendous show, and I learned from her that it’s safer to ride as a woman than a man because, as she says, women can pretend to be men, but it’s hard for a man to pretend to be a woman. [I’M JOKING. RESTRAIN YOURSELVES].
So now I am in a big argument with Mihai who says old Bucharest has all gone. Mihai is a tall, very handsome, extremely likable man of Russian extraction who’s a friend of Alex and owns a pub. Actually Mihai is a press photographer and this used to be his office, but where there were once twenty newspapers in Bucharest there are now two, jobs were scarce and the man who owned the building wanted to sell it. So Mihai and his friend decided to buy it and turn it into a pub. I don’t know why. That’s how things happen. They were determined to make it as much like a London pub as possible, and Mihai was very anxious to get my opinion.
Mihai outside his pub. He rides a Ural with sidecar
“Do you have draft beer?” I asked, and went inside to look. Yes, he does, but it’s a newfangled steel tube affair foisted on him by Heinecken and you can’t look over the top of it. I frowned, and Mihai promised to get proper beer pumps on the counter as soon as possible. Otherwise I’d give it five stars. The counter looks very authentic, and has all the right gubbins above it. There’s a very pretty barmaid and, even better, there’s a London bus parked outside. Why, you may ask? Because, in a stroke of genius, they found one lurking in the streets of Bucharest. They brought it to the festival. and when the show was over a chosen few came back here in it. To get it here they had to hoist some power lines into the air, and the bus had to be driven in reverse. And so, after a lifetime with London buses, this is the first time I have ever been in one going backwards.
Here’s a bit of old Bucharest . . . .
We went back to the pub next day and across the street were parked two brand new BMWs, one for Elspeth and one for me Since age goes before beauty I got to choose first. There was a low boxer with a traditional tank, but it’s too cramped for me so I got on the keyless 700 GS with the fancy screen, and there was that little nervous twitch, but by the time I got to the end of the street I had that wonderful feeling again and was back on top of the world. We rode out to the country and I have to admit a lot of the city really is crap – monster Soviet style buildings with bits falling off them – but it’s all fascinating to a visitor. And once out of the city we’re on a lake in a great terraced restaurant with soup and fish and the lovely atmosphere of people enjoying themselves.
. . . and a fantastic sculpture in the centre
If there’s another festival next year I advise you to go. They have very good beer, and excellent wine of all sorts.The country offers quite amazing opportunities for riding and sight-seeing, from the Danube delta to the old haunts of Vlad the Impaler, the painted monasteries, and great mountain scenery. But the best thing about it is the people, and they all seem to speak English. If you’d like to know more send me an email and I’ll put you in touch with Alex.
. . . in luxury I dined.
My night at the Bike Shed was a revelation. It just goes to show what a cool, cosmopolitan lot we are. They’ve turned these railway arches into a very attractive place to meet and eat and relax. I would say, quite honestly, that it was one of the most pleasant and interesting conversions I’ve seen in a long time. There’s a lot of stuff about motorcycles, of course, and some very nice bikes on show in one of the arches, but it’s not shoved down your throat, and you can ignore it if you want.
They had us up a few steps in a sort of gallery, and there were ten of us at the Captain’s Table, which was laid with a black table cloth and dressed for a very nice dinner. Lively intelligent faces all around me asking interesting questions. I’m not saying that bikers aren’t intelligent but you really would never have guessed I was at a biker club. If there was a clue it would have been from Anton who sat on my right, an extremely civilised man of Russian origin with a remarkable display of steel rings on each finger of one hand – I think they were steel. Maybe they were platinum. I should have asked, but I’m almost certain they were purely decorative.
I’m no good with names so I can’t tell you who else was there, but some came from quite a way away. I was flattered, well fed and nicely lubricated.
If I’m in that area again I will certainly drop in. And there are other reasons to be around Hackney and Shoreditch. This is obviously an area that’s going through tumultuous changes. I once lived there, sixty years ago, when I got my first job on the Daily Express. That’s when I stumbled on a wonderful museum called the Geffrye. It’s on Kingsland road, quite close to the Shed, and it occupies a long row of old almshouses, each converted into a living space from a different time in British history – right back to the Dark Ages. I was fascinated by it. The atmosphere was tremendous. I went there again this time, but it was closed for renewal. Instead, laid out on the lovely enclosed grounds in front of it, was a pop-up garden of veggies and flowers, on straw bales, with little bars and tables.
I’m worried about the museum though. I’ve been back several times, and each time there were more signs, more graphic exhibits, more jazz, and it seemed to me they were losing the atmosphere. I hope very much, when I go again, that it hasn’t become sterile.
In an hour I will be driving to the airport at Montpellier, and by six this evening I should arrive at the Bike Shed in London’s Shoreditch. I’ve never been there before. Apparently it’s a super cool biker club, and every now and again they invite worthy people like me to sit at the Captain’s table and be interrogated – in a friendly way, I hope – by the members.
They’ve gone out of their way to make it a stress-free experience, so I hope to be on good form. I’ll tell you more about it afterwards, but I’m looking forward to a great visit.
