About Christmas

A long time ago in the dim and distant past, some time in December, our ancestors in Northern Europe had been observing with concern and despair how the days were getting shorter and how their great friend the sun on which they depended for their lives was gradually failing them, climbing ever lower in the sky. Then, around the 25th, they realized that the trend had definitely changed. They breathed a collective sigh of relief and decided to have a party, some say for twelve days: Yule was born.

When Christianity came along considerably later, it was handy for the Church to appropriate and subvert an existing festivity to mark the birth of Jesus. Indeed the symbolism of the resurgence of the sun is good for the coming of the Lord on Earth. (The timing of Easter too, by the way, also represents a hi-jacking of earlier celebrations of Spring, fertitity and returning life, chiming neatly with the idea of resurrection.)
I have no time for people who moan that the true Christian meaning of Christmas is lost, as Christmas, Yule or merely the Winter Solstice, is a heathen festivity far pre-dating Christianity itself. Indeed the modern popular celebration of Christmas, in its most obvious and omnipresent symbols, is deeply pagan.
In the Soviet union where Christmas was banned as a religious festival, they kept all the trappings (Christmas tree, gifts, Father Christmas as “Uncle Frost” etc) and used them at New Year.
I’m not denying the Christian element of Christmas, it’s there in residual form as indeed Christianity is in Western society and that is quite appropriate as it has informed the history of Western civilization, but it’s not actually what is on most people’s minds. How many people go to church even on Christmas Day in modern Europe ?

Christmas as we know it is the major feast of modern western consumer society: just consider the time it lasts (well in excess of twelve days today), the money spent on it, its inescapability on our streets, in shops and public buildings, on the television; the sheer volume of “traditional” rituals that it is compulsory to honour in order not to appear to be a latter-day unreformed Scrooge. Everybody has to “do” Christmas in a way that is true of no other feast in our society.
That’s fine with me: societies need great shared events for a communal out-pouring of emotion. And since the key-note of that emotion is a spirit of giving, good will and tolerance, then why not ?
It’s true though that like any other ritual or event on which many expectations ride, there is an initial weariness at having to go through it all again, which gradually subsides as you get into the swing after a few glasses and leads to an ultimate mellow feeling of gladness.
The truth is that without the fixed date and excuse for coming together, a lot of us might never get round to it. The family reunion with the shared meal, the office party, the effort of writing people cards to stay in touch are all extemely worthwhile activities for maintaining the bonds that keep us together.

I shall consider some aspects of Christmas as I experience them.

Christmas past:
The main thing I remember about Christmas as a child was the excitement about the impending visit of Father Christmas. I was a believer till quite an advanced age, when the terrible truth was revealed to me by my younger brother. We used to get up of course at some insanely early hour to open the presents. Later things got more relaxed. I was fond of the big Boxing Day family gathering with old-fashioned parlour games.
From student age onwards for about ten years I used to spend Christmas with Jon Day and other friends in the Southern French Alps, where it was truly white. We stayed in genuine moutain chalets at le Clot Raffin, without electricity, or les Rochas, without running water, both twenty minutes walk up hill from where we could park. After days out walking and skiing, we enjoyed long evenings of rustic camaraderie. We didn’t bother with the presents but manfully produced full scale dinner with the ceremony of the stuffing of the turkey and Nick’s pudding made numerous months before - with some pride he infomed our German vegetarian friends that it contained real beef suet. After there would be silly games and music making. They were some of the most hilarious Christmases I can remember. The last times we took more comfortable quarters to bring along partners and children, but it wasn’t quite the same.
Then we spent a few Christmases as a family with my parents at their wintering second home in Hermanus, South Africa (which they have sold now). That was fun and quite exotic to be plunged from the depths of grey Belgian winter into the height of the African summer. We once got ferocious sunburn just from flying a kite on the overcast beach on Christmas Day.
The last few years we’ve just stayed at home. That’s what our teenage children with their own social lives prefer. Actually when you’ve spent over 100 nights away from home over the year as I have and just feel generally tired after the long slog from September, it’s quite pleasant to drift around home with not much specific to do.

Christmas party:
At SCIC the English booth organizes a party for staff and freelance colleagues and partners etc in the run up to Christmas. Every year a group of us write and perform a pantomime with the compulsory elements of cross-dressing, bad jokes, musical numbers, work-related satire and under-rehearsing. We certainly enjoy putting it on as a shared activity that is really rather special, and judging from the laughs the audience seem to enjoy the show too. This year our Director General who was the butt of a lot of the jibes came along and took it in good spirit (as a version of Dicken’s “Christmas Carol” it had a happy ending after all). It was rather like a medieval Lord of Misrule celebration. I think that’s healthy.

Christmas tree:
I quite like getting a real Christmas tree, however environmentally unsound it might be. Plastic ones just don’t do it for me. I favour a Noordman fir, pricier but the needles stay on for the duration. Quite by coincidence, Clara and I probably saw ours growing during a walk in the Ardennes this autumn: we passed a small plantation of them and on closer inspection we found they had labels on them with the name of the nursery where I buy ours in Brussels. I quite like that, I know our tree had a happy life (can’t claim that with certainty for the turkey). We don’t have lights, just predominantly red and gold baubles. Our star has a socialist republic look that I find appealing. It’s fun to pile up the presents underneath it in anticipation.

Christmas cards:
I seem to send out my cards later every year. It’s nice to get them, so I suppose I had better send them. It’s perhaps an artifical way of keeping in touch, but it’s better than nothing. I prefer a brief personal note to a triumpant round robin. I toyed with the idea of giving everyone the address for this blog, but decided against it.

Christmas shopping:
Christmas shopping is of course ideally done gradually through the year as original opportunities to purchase novel personalized gifts present themselves. Or even better, one could make one’s own. Of course in practice it’s not like that and an intrinsic part of the Christmas experience is being forced to participate in the loathsome Christmas shopping rush where the sheer heaving hysteria is designed to provoke panic purchases as patience expires with long queues and naff music. They have a word for this in German “Kaufwut”, which sort of translates as “shopping frenzy” but is snappier. When I lived in Germany I traipsed into nearby Dortmund to brave the crowds and buy some things on a pre-Christmas Saturday when the shops had deigned to stay open in the afternoon for once and I was amused to see at the entrance to a big department store a machine for people to check their own blood pressure.
Worshipping at the temple of consumerism is one of the defining moments of the modern Christmas and the macro-economists will tell you just how important that is for our general well-being in making the economy go round.

Christmas gifts:
I actually enjoy trying to think of and find Christmas gifts for the family, perhaps more than receiving them. The surprise is definitely part of the fun. Some gifts are inevitably more successful than others, but as they say, it’s the thought that counts.

Christmas present:
Our usual routine is to get up late, do the presents, have brunch, go for a walk in the little daylight there is left and on returning get stuck into preparing the big meal, after which couching out to watch a film seems like a good idea.

Christmas dinner:
I’ve always been a sucker for the roast turkey, for which I assume responsibility. Thomas says “If it’s so good, why do we only have it once a year”. The answer is because it takes so long. It’s the Everest of cooking that has to be climbed because it’s there. I like to stuff it myself with the giblets, onion, chestnuts, sausage meat or whatever else is going, swathe it in smoky bacon and add chunky potatoes to roast in the juice during the last hour. After all that with two veg and assorted trimmings, I have reached the conclusion that Christmas pudding is a course too far; much to the relief of my family.

Christmas music:
Some great classical sacred music has been written in association with Christmas. I like to listen to Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” or Handel’s “Messiah” while working on the turkey. Christmas carols have some of the finest tunes in the hymn book and are great to belt out singing together in the right company. Sadly they are also served up in saccharine versions as muzak for shopping. There is a fine line to tread here and many an artiste has produced deeply horrible Christmas records. The one I do like is Lennon’s “Merry Christmas, War is over”” that retains a certain provocative ironic edge, the line “War is over, if you want it” reminiscent of Brecht’s one-liner “Stellt euch vor, es ist Krieg, und niemand geht hin” (Imagine there’s a war on, and nobody goes). For all the Christmas cheer, nastiness continues somewhere in this world.

However, for most of us in peaceful and prosperous surroundings, Christmas is there to serve as a feel-good moment and an occasion to forget the negative and concentrate on the positive, to renew our confidence in humanity and the values of being together. A tall order it may be, but worth having a go at.

Merry Christmas!

About my body

I weigh around 75 kg and am about 1m78 tall.

These are the two pieces of information (after a mug shot) that seem to be thought most useful by security services and others in order to identify someone, but it doesn’t really tell you very much other than that I am of average build for a Northern European.
When I saw Jon Day for the first time in ages last year, seeing we were both about to become fifty, he asked me if any bits had dropped off yet, and I was pleased to say no. My body is still in reasonable order, but inevitable signs of wear and tear are starting to show. However, unlike a car which you can change, I’m stuck with this one. So it’s worth looking after it. In this “about being here” I want to attempt to describe my body as dispassionately as I can.

I still have plenty of hair, originally a mousey brown colour but now greying at the temples. As a student I used to wear it quite long (as one did in those days), but since I started working I have kept it shortish, as we interpreters have to look respectable and it’s convenient not to have it over my ears for the headphones. I’ve had a beard since I was 18, which is also greying and I keep it short too. It’s much less hassle to trim it once a week that it would be to shave every day.

My eyes are sort of greyish but tend to reflect the dominant ambient colour so their colour is a bit hard to pin down. My eyesight was excellent until a couple of years ago and is still very good at a distance. Sadly though, I now have to resort to glasses in poor light for anything that is printed small, which includes maps, much to my frustration. Failing eyesight is one of the incontrovertible signs of getting older.
I am colour-blind and have difficulty distinguishing between brown and green ( a mild form of red/green colour-blindness). I remember at junior school being given the important task of painting Mary in the nativity scene and then being told off for doing her hair green. To this day I sometimes get people to check whether I’ve picked up the right colour when painting and drawing. I work on the basis of convention: wood is brown, grass is green.

My teeth have turned out to be fairly fragile, I’m forever having to go to the dentist because a bit has chipped off one or a filling fallen out. Recently a molar has been hurting which is probably heading for a root canal job; I’m not very good at putting up with pain.
When I was a kid my teeth stuck out and I had to have some fairly major orthodontic work when I was about eleven. They’re still not a pretty sight. My smile tends to be a bit nervous.
I must move my face a fair bit because it has become quite lined.

My fingers are quite knobbly and thin but good for playing the guitar and generally not bad at tasks requiring some dexterity. My little finger is crooked. I inherited it from my father: he says it’s for raking in the money. I’ve never done much hard manual work so apart from the guitar finger-tips my hands are fairly soft.
My arms are pretty weak generally and let me down after a while when climbing.

I’ve never been particularly strong physically but have a fair bit of stamina for things involving my legs.
My favourite forms of physical activity (I hesitate to use the word sport as they are not at all competitive) are walking, cycling, swimming and skiing. At a steady pace I can keep going for quite long periods.
My knees have always been potentially a weak point though and this year have started to hurt more often than in the past so I have had them examined. It turns out that my legs are not straight. Therefore, my weight does not pass through the centre of my knees as it should, so over the years the cartilage has worn out considerably on the inside of them. My most serious problem is walking back down a mountain (prolonged steep and uneven descent) which I really need a pair of sticks to do comfortably now. Cycling remains relatively problem-free, as also most flattish and uphill walking. The lack of certainty that my knees will behave over a longish outing places a question mark against my ability to continue to do certain things I enjoy. I don’t intend to stop, I’ll just have to find out as I go along. The medical advice anyway is to continue to exercise as much as possible to maintain muscle tone. Swimming is also something doctors recommend and that I enjoy, but I only really swim much in the summer as I’m not a great lover of indoor pools.
I like to get outside and be on the move whenever I can. I easily become fidgety on a wet day when I am free but feel compelled to stay indoors.

Another area where age seems to be catching up is my back which every now and again feels stiff particularly in the lumbar region. Bad backs are common for interpreters as ours is a sedentary and potentially stressful occupation. Mine’s not so bad as some people’s, but I do feel it’s not as lithe as it once was, so I generally take care when doing any lifting and keep well wrapped up when out cycling in the cold.
I find generally as I get older that I feel the cold more and like to stay warm, so I look on in amazement at how little some young people including my son wear.
Also I’ve always been prone to sore throats; so given that I work with my voice that is certainly a problem for me professionally and another good reason to kep warm.

They say in French “Quand l’appétit va, tout va”: usually I am a hearty eater, as you may have gathered from “About food”. The corollary of that is that I am also a pretty big producer at the other end and seem to spend rather a lot of time on the loo. At least that implies that my metabolism is effective.
I’ve always eaten a quite healthy diet and never smoked. My inner organs appear to be in good order.
I probably drink more wine and beer that I should. I was laid low by hepatitis ‘A’ for three months in 1989, but my liver recovered very well and it copes with what I throw at it. It’s relatively rare these days that I go so far as to have a full-on hangover the next day, but when I do, it takes me significantly longer to recover from it than when I was a student.
Once I was told that my cholestorol was too high. I did nothing about it and the next time I was told it was fine, so I am somewhat sceptical about such statements. Generally I feel fine, so I don’t worry about what I eat and drink.
Very occasionally, like anyone else, I fall victim to someone else’s kitchen’s bad hygeine and have a horrific night. In retrospect these occasions seem funny, but not at the time. Once, returning from Croatia, Clara and me had both eaten the same something iffy and after an emergency stop in the car had to leap out together and crouch in the dark by the side of the road. It was a strangely bonding experience which had the effect of making us forget a row we’d just been having.

Since I’ve touched on the life of our couple, no survey of the body would be complete without a mention of sex. But it will only be a mention, as sex is a private matter, and that is to say it is wonderful.

So all in all, my body continues to serve me well and any complaints are relatively minor. That very fact is in itself a wonder after so much time. We so easily take it for granted but our “soft machine” is nothing short of a miracle. Just take a moment to consider our hands or our eyes or any other part of it. We should always be alert to the needs of our body and we ignore them at our peril. Montaigne writes that man’s condition is eminently physical: you cannot have life without life of the body.

My body is fundamental to and an integral part of my human experience.

About Slovenia

I have just spent a week in Slovenia. Slovenia is a country I grow fonder of with each visit.

It is one of the most recent countries in Europe: it finally gained independence in 1991 having previously been part of Yugoslavia and before that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy and so on back through history.
Slovenia was the most prosperous of the Eastern European countries to join the European Union in 2004. It was the first of them to adopt the euro as its currency and to hold the presidency of the EU.
It’s also one of Europe’s smallest countries, some have called it “Europe in miniature” and indeed you can find at short distances from each other, Venetian towns on the coast like Piran, central European cities like Ljubljana and beautiful Alpine valleys like Bohinj. It’s a varied and beautiful country.

As an Alpine country Slovenia naturally attracts me. It even has a mountain on its flag, albeit in stylized form: Triglav, its highest peak (2864m), the “three-headed” mountain. Alex and I climbed Triglav this summer so we now qualify as honorary Slovenes. They all aspire to climb it one day and many have, even many times. This was the case of a Slovene we encountered with his twelve year old son on the summit. He initiated us. There is a little cylindrical metal tower on the summit with a door. On arriving for the first time you are to put your head inside while someone who has been up before you taps you on the bum with a climbing rope. It’s rather typical of the playful and outgoing nature of the people. Among our new Eastern European colleagues at work I find the Slovenes the most fun.

Slovenia starts just a few km from Monfalcone so I have often ventured into it on short trips from there. In 2006 I worked for a few days in Ljubljana, the capital. It’s a pleasant unhurried city where people like to stroll and sit out on terraces, especially along the pedestrianized willow bordered river embankments lined by old houses (picture). I have also to admit that it has one or two architectural monstrosities left over from the socialist period.
In 2007 I took my parents and brother on a four day highlights of Western Slovenia trip visiting Lipica, home of the famous Lipizaner horses that dance in Vienna; Mediterranean seaside Piran; the spectacular caves and underground canyon of Skocjian; the castle in a cave mouth at Predjama; delightful Ljubljana; pretty Lake Bled in the mountains; wilder fjord-like Lake Bohinj closer to Triglav; and the wine growing region of Gorska Brda which is like Italy’s neighbouring Collio.
This year I have spent three days in the Triglav National Park and last week five days in Ljubljana and two touring the East for the first time. I took a look at Maribor, the second city; the historic town and castle of Ptuj; the hilly wine-growing area around Jeruzalem, gorgeous with autumn leaves on the vines; the pilgrimage church with fine 15thC wood-carving at Ptujska Gora; the old spa town of Rogaska Slatina; the remote Alpine valley of Logarska Dolina (picture) where I went for an early morning hike up to the Rinka waterfall sighting two deer; and the pretty small town of Kamnik. On all these trips the ever-changing scenery in between these places and the quiet well kept roads make for enjoyable driving. You see Alpine foothills, meadows with cows, woods, rushing rivers, terraced vineyards, old farms, baroque churches, castles, central European small towns, Venetian small towns, with Italian influence in the South West and Austrian elsewhere.

You get that Austrian / Italian mix in the food too, especially in Ljubljana. You can go for pasta dishes, risottos and grilled fish; or alternatively meat in sauce, especially game, with dumplings, wild mushrooms and cabbage. After you can finish up with some serious strudel or cake, such as the amazing “gibinca” a layered pastry for those who can’t make up their mind between apple strudel, cheese-cake and poppy-seed cake as it seems to comprise all three. Follow that with a decent espresso.. The wine is good and so too the beer.

Slovene or Slovenian is a Slav language with the usual accompanying difficulties: six cases, three genders, singular, dual and plural - and that’s just the nouns; two infinitives for each verb and so on. The core vocabulary is very similar to other Slav languages (I have schoolboy Russian) so I can recognize words, even if I can’t put together a sentence. Slovene is big on consonant clusters and even has words without vowels: such as “vrh”, a hill, “vrt” a garden and Trst for Trieste. My favourite is "prsut", which is just a borrowing from the Italian “prosciutto”. I heard plenty of Slovene last week as I was working at the interpreting school, helping to train students.

They and their teachers were a nice group to work with, relaxed and friendly. I also spent an evening with students in Ptuj who invited me to a wine-tasting they were holding in the cellar of my hotel. I can’t remember ever having had a bad experience with the locals in Slovenia. They strike me as a generally happy people at ease in ther peaceful, prosperous and beautiful country.

It’s worth getting to know.Slovenia and the Slovenes.

About autumn

We’ve passed the equinox, the evenings are drawing in, it’s getting cool enough in the mornings to have the central heating on, the leaves have started to turn colour and fall from the trees. Autumn is here.
Some people, like Verlaine, find autumn depressing:

“Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone”

But I would tend rather to agree with Keats that it is the

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”

Perhaps it’s a question of whether you look ahead and see it as a prelude to winter, a phase of shrivelling and dying; or whether you look back and view it rather as the culmination and epilogue to summer. Indeed as autumn progresses towards winter and the trees become barer and the days shorter, our mood may change. To look at it though just in the present, a mild sunny autumn day is exquisite: gorgeous colours, beautiful light, still warm enough to sit outside and contemplate.
This weekend Clara and I went for a walk in the Ardennes. Driven out of one of our regular haunts near Lesse by hunters, who are one of the less attractive aspects of autumn, we moved on to nearby Our and the wooded valley of the river of the same name which was new to us. The low sunlight caught the golden leaves drifting down and made the rushing river water sparkle. The leaves were now deep on the track and their rustling as we trudged along competed with the gurgling water. The air was clear and mild with the faint peppery smell of autumn.
Autumn is a fine time of year, a season of Northern fruit, apples, pears, plums, quinces, nuts and in the woods wild mushrooms and game. It’s a great time for walking, enjoying the last decent days and longish daylight. Best of all though is the sheer spectacle of the autumn leaves.
I used to love late October holidays in the Cévennes in the South of France, an isolated rugged hilly area, yet with smiling valleys and endless chestnut trees, their leaves yellowing on the branch and strewn on the ground scattered with countless chestnuts for the picking.

At fifty I have inevitably to see the parallel between this season and my own life: by any reckoning, dividing life expectancy by four, I am in the third quarter, that is the autumn and I do indeed regard it as a season of mellow fruitfulness, past its youthful vigour but still very pleasant, garnering past achievements and experience.

It’s not part of my active vocabulary but I prefer the American word Fall to Autumn, as it is the mirror image of Spring; the season when the plants spring from the ground and the season when the leaves fall to earth. I gleaned from Michael Frayn’s amusing novel “Headlong” that Brueghel’s cycle of famous paintings of the seasons probably comprised six scenes (five known, one lost, the speculative subject of the novel). I have written in “About painting” of my love for “Hunters in the snow” which is Winter. One comes after it where the snow has melted and the landscape is all grey and brown in which the peasants are performing tasks such as pollarding trees. It is pre-Spring. Let us call this season Lent. I will make six seasons of two months for this country where I live and where Brueghel lived too, and give them all Germanic names. Winter: December and January; Lent: February and March; Spring: April and May; Summer: June and July; Harvest: August and September; Fall: October and November. Here we are in Fall and it is one of the prettiest. Keats’ Autumn is really the combination of Harvest and Fall: a celebration of the fullness of life while knowing it is on the wane.

Autumn is a time for taking stock, reflecting on the summer, in the evenings now spent inside in the cosiness of home. It is indeed the mellow season.

About cars

I’m not really that bothered about cars. As long as mine continues to work and gets me from A to B safely and in comfort, I’m happy. I didn’t actually own my first car till I was 35 and I’m only on my second. A car in my opinion is best bought new and kept for ten years.
Some people (men inevitably) like to pigeon-hole others according to what they drive. So here it goes: I drive a VW Sharan, that is a people-mover. I like a VW (my first car was a Passat estate and before than I drove Clara’s Golf) because they are solid and don’t break down on you, which is just as well as I haven’t a clue about what’s under the bonnet.
Actually the statement “I drive a VW” is misleading: I keep a VW Sharan in the garage and use it when I have to, mainly to move large amounts of stuff, cover long distances, or get to places which are not easily accessible by public transport. Most of the time, as you may know from “About cycling”, I use my bike to get around Brussels. However, there are times when I need the car. The car really comes into its own when we’re on holiday in the countryside, in the moutains, at the seaside, where it can get us where we want when we want.
In town though, using the car to get from A to B is not my default option. I find driving in Brussels particularly stressful and unpleasant given the behaviour of the average driver round here. The basic problem is that drivers have an unrealistic idea of how long it takes to get about the city. They rarely leave themselves enough time and they become impatient, are inconsiderate towards other road-users and take unnecessary risks. The worst thing is that this behaviour is contagious. What is it they tell learners ? “ you must fit in with the driving pattern”. I find I have to fight hard against turning from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde once I get behind the steering wheel in Brussels. I really don’t like what it does to me, so I’d rather be on my bike.

Out of town, it’s different: “Oh for the open road! “(Mr Toad).
I quite enjoy driving on an empty road, in the coutryside, especially in the mountains or along the coast. I learned to drive in Yorkshire which is full of hills and winding roads. So I like changing gears. It is nice to feel in charge of the vehicle, to make it do what I want. I find an automatic particularly un-nerving. When there’s not too much traffic I like to watch the changing landscape and see the world go by.
I wasn’t always that confident though. I was taught to drive by my father when I was 17. I failed my first test. I knew I was going to when I saw the examiner flinch as I took a bend a bit too wide into the path of an oncoming lorry. After passing it at the second attempt, I was a somewhat diffident driver. When I moved away from home and didn’t have regular access to a car, I gradually drove less and less until at some point I stopped driving altogether for several years, having lost the courage. I forced myself to take it up again when Julia was on the way and it was clear we were going to need more than one driver in the family.
Now in fact I do the lion’s share of the driving when we alternate on long trips. Most often is Brussels to Monfalcone. It’s a fairly tedious slog on the motorway: 1270 km that take at least 14 hours with the pauses. We keep promising ourselves to get out of the habit of doing it at one sitting, but never do. The best part is the Austrian section through the Alps, quiet and scenic. Having got used to driving on German Autobahnen which have no speed limit, I have an unfortunate habit of straying over the speed limit elsewhere, as the car cruises happily at 140 km/h. I’ve been fined three times over the years for doing so.
I enjoy discovering new countries by car and have organized two very successful road trip holidays in the US. I like the freedom to set my own timetable and to stop off as things catch my fancy.

Have you noticed how on adverts for cars, they’re always cruising around on open roads through big empty spaces or negotiating curiously empty city-scapes, sometimes even without a driver? It’s all totally mendacious. Most drivers, including myelf, spend most of their time at the wheel either in heavy urban traffic or on busy motorways.
The car is sold as a dream, but frequently it is the stuff of nightmares.
The car is sold as the key to freedom, but can soon end up being a cell on wheels.
The car is sold, sold and sold. It’s the biggest purchase we ever make apart from our house and has to be made again and again as it wears out. A glance at my accounts shows that my car costs me as much as food, even though I don’t use it every day. Cars make the Western economies go around and that’s not just good news for business which makes and sells them but also for government which taxes them. No one really has an interest in changing the situation and yet cars are the bane of urban life, congesting our cities and polluting them with exhaust gasses and noise. Many cities seem to be built around the car rather than around man. Some more enlightened town councils are moving away from that now and reclaiming their historic centres for people, always with beneficial results. The car is a major source of environmental damage generally. And yet the zealots will sooner tell you to stop flying, change your light-bulbs and install solar panels than to stop driving.
In fact our whole system is geared towards the car. Public transport is often inadequate, unreliable, infrequent, uncomfortable and expensive. Moreover, the economics of the car are skewed with its huge sunk costs so that it appears to be cheaper in marginal terms for individual journeys. Given that situation, people would be daft to stop using their cars. And they don’t. And I use mine, when I need to.

The narrative that bolsters the demand side of the economic equation is strong. The car symbolizes freedom when it is understood to be synonymous with mobility. It’s the freedom thing which makes Americans even more addicted to the car than we are. There are of course many other aspects to freedom than freedom of movement, but mobility is psychologically powerful as representing instant escape. “About being here” often argues that happiness involves coming to terms with being “here” rather than rushing off to “there”; escape should not be necessary. Mobility is not everything and yet it is essential in this dislocated society we have organized for ourselves where no one has all their points of focus, family, professional and leisure located within walking distance of each other. The car also symbolizes social status: the outer evidence of material success. There’s a whole snobbery that attaches to the vehicle we drive: I am what I drive, you are what you drive. The car for some is a weird extension of their persona and if you accidentally scratch it they get aggressive with you. Personally I’m not that bothered, I don’t even wash my car, apart from making sure I can see well out of the windows for safety reasons.

As you can see, I have mixed feelings about cars. Maybe the truth is I like my car but don’t like other people’s cars. The roads would be just fine, if it weren’t for other people’s cars. Not to mention lorries and those awful camping-cars and caravans. Once you get inside a car you cut yourself off from the outside world and start having some very funny thoughts. Cars can get obsessive. As the quintessence of individualism they promote selfishness. They are actually a reflection of the society in which we live. It’s good to get out of the car when you can.

About the seaside

As summer recedes and autumn sets in, I’d like to set down a few thoughts about the seaside.

For many, summer holidays are inconceivable without the seaside. This has always puzzled me as it seems to me there are plenty of other attractive destinations, not least in the mountains. Don’t get me wrong, in the right circumstances I enjoy the seaside, but not to the exclusion of everywhere else.

To state the obvious, the seaside is merely where the land meets the sea, and while the sea is mostly the same, the land varies considerably producing a great variety of seasides. In short, some seaside is town and some is country. As I live in a city, my idea of a holiday is to go to the country, so I like my seaside quiet and picturesque, not lined with high-rises and packed out. There are some fine old towns and ports on the coast which are a delight, but there are also plenty of purpose built modern resorts which I find a complete turn-off and whose ugliness and heaving crowds make me want to flee.

When I was a boy we used at first to go to Filey on the Yorkshire coast. There are some rather hilarious black and white photos in old family albums of us braving the chill air and chiller water and often looking quite miserable. My mother (who had grown up in the tropics) eventually decreed that that was enough of that and so we ventured South to the sunnier climes of.... Devon and Cornwall. It must have been sunnier as I can remember a horribly painful case of sunstroke one year. I did like the big sandy dunes though.
Then in the late sixties came the first package tours and we became adepts of the Balearics which I fondly remember as my first taste of “abroad”. What was good was that my parents liked to rent a Seat 500 and explore, looking for more isolated beaches away from the hotel strip. It wasn’t that hard to find them in those days.
When I was 18, Lari and I went on a six week back-packing and island-hopping holiday in Greece. The defining moment was ten days spent with our tent planted under some pines on Karpathos on the long and deserted beach about twenty minutes stroll from the main town. We would roll out of our sleeping bags and run down into the water, then return and sit on two beaten up beach chairs we had found and contemplate our next move. Life got very slow. There was one main ferry a week; after seven days it hove into sight three hours earlier than expected. After some deliberation we decided to miss it because we couldn’t be bothered to pack up quickly. We were quite happy where we were.
After that I didn’t go to the seaside much, apart from the odd day, for about ten years and I can’t say I particulalry missed it.
Clara, however, grew up near the sea, so once we were together the seaside again became a regular fixture in my summers.

I said earlier that the sea is mostly the same, but that’s not really true. There are two kinds of sea, typified in Europe by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean.
The ocean is the sea of endless breakers, the elemental roar of nature, big tidal movements, tangy ion-charged air, long sandy beaches. The Mediterranean is usually much tamer, more the placid blue backdrop.
It’s fabulous to stroll by the powerful ocean at any time of year and lose yourself in the presence of the steady force of nature, the constant movement of the waves, the surge of the surf. However, for me the main point of going to the seaside in the summer is to swim. Here I have a problem with the ocean which sometimes is just too dangerous to swim in. At the most you can have fun jumping up and down in the waves while being careful to stay with in your depth or fairly close to the shore so as not to be carried away by the current. So I prefer the Mediterranean when it is as flat as a millpond and you can swim out a long way without much risk, being caressed by the refreshing water and absorbing the rich colours and playing sunlight.

For many people sand is a must. Although I enjoy building sand-castles as much as the next man, I actually prefer a pebble beach to a sand beach. I don’t like the way sand just gets everywhere and sticks to your feet, ends up in your undies, in your sandwiches and even in your sheets at night scratching your sunburn. Give me the clean feel of pebbles or rock any time. Nor do I like the way sand churns up and makes the water murky; I like my sea water crystal clear and transparent. Also I can’t abide walking out miles only to still be waist-deep in the water.

My ideal beach is a Mediterranean pebbly cove with clear and calm water, with very few people about and shade at the back of it.
There are two places you will usually find me at a beach: in the water or in the shade. Having had my share of sunburn and even sunstroke, I take care not to over-expose my body to the sun. I really couldn’t care less what colour my body is, the only bits of it people are normally going to see are my face and forearms which are habitually tanned anyway from outdoor exposure from cycling and walking. In fact my favourite time at the beach is late afternoon: the water has warmed up, you're not going to get burned by the sun, it’s getting quieter as people leave and the evening light suffuses everything with glowing colour.

Beaches are often quite uncomfortable places and I am amused by the fact that fantasy photos of tropical beaches with coconut trees are so often touted as being paradise on earth. In reality beaches can easily get too hot without enough shade; or too windy for comfort; the sand can become an irritant; there may well be biting insects about; there are frequently the leavings of other less than civically minded beach users; they can get too crowded and noisy with someone else’s vile taste in music; the sea can get too rough or be dirtied by algae, floating plastic or worse oil; periodically there are invasions of jelly-fish and so on. In fact the same place can change radically from one day to the next, let alone from year to year. There’s a lot that can easily go wrong with a beach; so if you’ve found a nice one on the right day, it’s good to make the most of it while it lasts.

A beach I have particulalry enjoyed recently is the one pictured above at Dubovica on the Croatian island of Hvar. It’s a fifteen minute walk down a steep path from where you park, which keeps the numbers down. The setting is quite beautiful with a big old house dominating the rocks on one side and a cluster of small houses of a mainly abandoned hamlet, one of which serves as a modest eatery. There are few hundred metres of pebbly beach between two rocky promontories wih a few shady trees at the back. The swimming is to die for, wonderful clean and clear water with plenty of fish below the surface for those who like to snorkel (which I do only a little) and some interestingly shaped eroded rocks and even caves further out along the coast.. The view looking back to land is fine dominated by a large crag above the valley which ends at the beach. It all changes colour as the sun moves round. It’s a lovely spot which epitomizes what I like best about the seaside. It’s the kind of place I can happily spend a few days, mainly swimming, reading a bit in between or just contemplating the scene and maybe having a go at painting it. In the evening it’s time to enjoy some fish for dinner then go for a stroll in the old town by the harbour.

Yes, the seaside is not a bad place to be to relax in the summer.

About food

I enjoy my food. In fact I’m a little suspicious of people who don’t.

Of course I should preface what I’m about to write by recognizing that there are many people in this world confronted with starvation, so anything I say may sound flippant. However, “About being here” is about life as I experience it. As an affluent Westerner I am in the privileged position of being able to take the availability of food for granted. So for me food is a question not of survival but of choice.

I reached the view at quite a young age that the secret to enjoying life is first of all to enjoy the basic functions of life. First among these of course is eating. If you can arrange to eat well and enjoy your food, then that is an important step towards enjoying life. Most of the time I can choose what I eat, mainly because I eat most of my meals at home and when I eat out I’m usually somewhere where the food is good. In fact it’s quite rare that I feel I have eaten badly. Indeed I sometimes say, “Life is too short to eat crap”. I certainly spend no more than 10% of my income on food and drink, so there seems to be little point in skimping. That doesn’t mean that I am forever indulging expensive tastes, rather that I believe it’s worth paying a bit extra for better quality.

I would regard my diet as healthy. On the rare occasions I consume something to excess my body immediately demands that I compensate by being more frugal the next few days. If I have been taking a lot of exercise it demands a bigger intake. I just follow my natural instincts, I believe in neither forcing myself nor resisting my desires. I think my body is good at regulating itself, I am generally in good health and my weight remains stable. I am instinctively drawn to balanced food choices. It just happens to be what I like.
I frequently have a voracious appetite, which is viewed with envy by people who put on weight easily . But I don’t actually eat the same things that they eat. I do exercise a fair bit and I have also the following explanation as to why my body demands so much food: I once saw a BBC animal documentary that explained that an orang-utan expends 40% of its energy (and therefore food consumption) on merely keeping it’s brain running - so just think how much energy I need!

The business of food takes up quite a large part of our daily life. First of all there is the shopping, then the preparing, only then the eating together and finally the clearing up afterwards. Even if you eat out there is often the sitting about waiting. If you add it all up that’s quite a big chunk out of every day; so it better be good.

There are two very important aspects to eating. Perhaps even more important than the quality of the food itself, there is the sharing of food. I find few things sadder than eating alone, however good the food is. At home we have always insisted that the main meal of the day, usually in the evening, be taken together. This sharing of food is a fundamental moment in human society. Originally, in subsistence communities, it required joint work to produce and prepare food and the natural consequence was then to eat that food together. This is why Christianty, which has borrowed so many of its key images from the pagans before it, makes Communion so central to its rituals. The family meal is a natural moment of sharing and is at the heart of the human experience.

If truth be told, in our household Clara does more on the food front than I do. She does most of the shopping, but we do enjoy going to our local market together on Saturday morning if we have nothing else on. It has now moved back onto Place Flagey (now the works have finished) after several glorious years of being alongside the lakes, a much prettier venue in my opinion. I’ve always loved a real market. When I lived in Toulouse I did pretty well all my food shopping at the market which was held six days a week on the side of one of the boulevards. The sheer physicality of the food on display in a market is a joy - the sight, the smells, the touch (if they let you!). It’s great to follow the seasons and to compare stalls which is the true spirit of a market as used as a term in economics. Wherever I travel I like to visit a local food market (Barcelona, Riga, Istanbul have some good ones in recent memory).
We stroll down to ours on foot and buy mainly fruit and vegetables, but also anything else that catches our fancy, cheeses, bread, Italian specialities and more. I need to say at this point that we buy very little processed food and tend to cook ourselves from raw ingredients. The locally grown organic greens at the market are particularly good. I’m not an organic fanatic, I’ve worked in too many regulatory committee meetings on organic food to believe in paying unduly over the odds for all manner of fancily packaged goods at the supermarket just because they have a “bio” label. However, I like to buy naturally and locally grown stuff as it tastes objectively better and has a more satisfying texture.

I don’t cook as often as Clara does, but I do at least twice a week. We also have Mme Jacobs to do some meals. When I do cook, I like to shop for my own ingredients as that’s a large part of the fun and I may only decide on the menu in the light of what looks good. I usually take charge of the Sunday roast and the Friday evening fish. It also seems natural (as it appears to be a male thing) that I tend the barbecue in the summer. Having lived with an Italian for over two decades I knock out a pretty mean pasta too.
When I did youth camps I used to direct, from the chopping board and stove, cooking for forty people or more, so it’s not something I worry about. I find cooking, admittedly when not done too often, a therapeutic and relaxing manual activity which produces a result that can be enjoyed together. I have some loud-speakers rigged up in the kitchen to listen to music whilst at it. We have a basic rule in our household that the one who hasn’t prepared the meal clears up. I think the division of labour is reasonably fair.
I’m lucky in that Clara likes cooking and is good at it. She tends to experiment more than me. We have fairly similar tastes, inevitably so I suppose, having eaten together for so long. I guess you’d call the dominant style at home Italian/French. I mainly learned to cook by helping friends in their kitchens in France. Belgian cooking (that’s Mme Jacobs) is really a version of French. We favour a fairly simple approach, letting the ingredients speak for themselves.
Olive oil features fairly prominently. At present we have some on the go that we brought back from Croatia pressed the old way from the olives of our hosts on Hvar.
I went off too much butter and cream in cooking after I had hepatitis in 1989; my liver just didn’t feel like them any more. I actually have never liked milk by itself. I was put off it for life by the third pint bottles we were forced to drink at school as kids in England. In the winter the milk had ice flakes in it and in the summer rather nasty floaters. My friendship with Lari started in primary school because he would drink it for me. On the other hand I adore cheese in pretty well most forms.

The culinary landscape in England has changed radically since I was a boy. I get particularly annoyed with escpecially French people who continue to think that you can’t get a good meal in England. That’s just not true these days. However, back in the 60’s and 70s it was pretty dire. I was fortunate in that my mother only arrived in England from the East in her teens, so she never had much time for “traditional” English cooking. We always ate very well at home and visiting friends were sometimes shocked by the rather cosmopolitan dishes on offer. I don’t remember any coercion about eating, it was regarded as something to be enjoyed and as I got older I gradually progressed onto a wider range of tastes. My father never cooked (nor did I), but when he felt mum deserved a break he would take us out to a restaurant.
When I first moved away from home I lived in the countryside in the Gers in the South-West of France. The cooking there was wonderful and quite unpretentious. Here I first experienced meals that could last for up to four hours and long conversations at table about....food.
Afterwards, when a student, eating in Hall at Christ Church, despite the grand surroundings and great company, was from the point of view of the food itself truly abysmal, but I returned sufficiently often home and to France so as not to mind too much.
It was when living for a year in Germany that I got so fed up with the repetitive fare that I actually started to cook for myself in the light of what I had observed in France.
Since then I’ve really come to enjoy it and become gradually more proficient. The kitchen is the biggest and most important room in our house. It’s also where we eat, so those at the table are aware of the preparation of food.

Apart from when we’re on holiday, we don’t tend to go out to restaurants much, even if there’s no shortage of good ones in Brussels and plenty within walking distance. I guess we are happy to stay at home having been out at work most of the day. In the summer we eat outside on our terrace as often as possible (not that that counts for so many days in the year!). I also have to eat out at restaurants when away for work and at some meetings we are served the same food as those we work for (especially ministerial lunches where the wine tends to be good). It’s true that after a run of restaurant-style food it’s nice to have something simpler at home. Restaurants never serve enough vegetables and fresh fruit in my experience.
When we do eat out together it’s surprising how often Clara and I spontaneously choose the same dish. After we may agree to try two different things and swap half way through. The real interest in eating in a restarant is after all to try things that we don’t know how to make or can’t be bothered to go through the effort to prepare ourselves. That”s also the big interest of course in ethnic restaurants. When in another country I try to eat local, but admit in some countries to having been so bored with the food after a week, I’ve resorted to foreign restaurants.

I’ve always been unable to answer the question “what is your favourite dish?” or at least since I was about nine. It’s just too reductive. Variety is the spice of life. It’s great to eat different things and that is the key to a balanced diet.
Regards the other question: “is there any food you don’t like?” my habitual answer is “tripe”. I can’t think of anything more repulsive. I was last confronted with some in Spain a few years back when Jo, who is Flemish, had mistakenly heard “callo” as “gallo”. This was forgiveable given the thick accent of the dishevelled landlord in this seedy tapas bar in a real hick town in central Spain. Jo thought he was ordering chicken. But it was tripe. I valliantly tried to eat some. The first mouthful refused to go down and shot straight back out of my throat. Gross! - fortunately we were sitting outside.

So what do I eat?
I shall attempt to approach this scientifically in broad categories.
I believe anyone who does a reasonable amount of physical activity should eat lots of carbohydrates as that’s the basic fuel for the body. I eat plenty of bread, preferably brown but I enjoy a crispy fresh baguette. As in France and Italy there is always bread on our table and it is handy for finishing off a good sauce.
I eat a huge amount of pasta which can be prepared in an infinite number of ways (“pesto, matriciana, ragù, tonno, zucchini, salmone” to name the more common ones at home). Then there’s potatoes in their many forms: new ones in their skins, chopped small in with the roast and less often large baked ones or home-made mash - and of course chips, when out. I love rice and eat it every day without any problem when in Asia, but at home perhaps not so often, either in risotto or basmati. I don’t like maize so much and eat polenta under sufferance.

As for protein, I don’t eat vast quantities of meat and certainly don’t insist on it at every meal, but I do enjoy a good piece of red meat in roasts, steaks, and chops; liver; poultry (stuffed quail with grapes is one of my signature dishes); game in a good sauce; ham cooked and cured; sausages if not too fatty etc - all available from our excellent butcher round the corner at la Royale.
I eat fish at least twice a week and more often at the seaside. I’m particularly fond of it grilled or done in the oven, most often at home it’s bream or bass but sometimes other fish. Seafood is more of a treat, eaten less regularly. I love a lobster but can live without oysters. A generous fish stew, paella or pasta alla scogliera are among my favourites.
I’ve already mentioned I eat lots of cheese. As an Englishman I have an abiding liking for tangy mature cheddar and Wensleydale, but I also love goat’s cheese, feta, Roquefort, Morbier, Comté, Parmesan and many more - anything with a bit of taste really.

Vegetables should be present in generous quantities at any main meal and not cooked to death so they retain their texture (steaming and stir-frying are handy). Peppers, courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes (ratatouille and peperonata); carrots; beans (especially green), pulses generally (lentils, chick peas), brassica a bit less (broccoli is fine, cabbage ok stuffed); onions and garlic frequently when preparing dishes, leeks; fennel; leafy stuff, spinach, chicory (popular in Belgium as “chicons”) etc etc, There’s so much to enjoy (I don’t like beetroot though). Let us not forget the joy of raw veg in salads too, all the different kinds of lettuce and rocket. I should make a special mention of mushrooms which we like to pick wild in season (boletus mainly), then fry lightly in olive oil with garlic and parsley.

I also eat lots of fruit: apples and pears (fine with cheese); citrus (oranges, clementines, grapefruit - I even ate lemons as a child); prunus (peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums and especially cherries); berries (strawberries, raspberries, bilberries, blackberries); grapes (I remeber my first real grape in France - the intense perfume of muscat, quite unlike anything I’d experienced as a child in England); melons (cavaillon, honeydew, water); tropical fruit (pineapple, mangoes, bananas, papaya). Freshly made fruit salad is fine too. I think it’s good to respect the seasonality of fruit, if only because it simplifies the choice.
Fruit is especialy beautiful to look at with its bright colours and round forms. It’s not surprising that it’s a favourite choice for artists when painting still lives. That’s why I’ve chosen fruit to illustrate this piece.
Let’s not forget nuts here (just peanuts, but better pistacchios, cashews, wallnuts).

If it’s not just fruit then I enjoy simple home made cakes for desserts. I like to make crumbles myself. I always prefer a little vanilla ice cream on the side to real cream. I’m also quite partial to the Eastern Mediterranean baklava and the like (I always bring a box-full back with me from the countries where it is a speciality). Chocolate, a great Belgian institution must also be mentioned here (Godiva, Marcolini and just plain Cöte d’Or).

I always make a point of having a decent breakfast and a large one if there’s any risk of lunch not appearing till the middle of the afternoon (in Spain, up a mountain, in some meetings). I like to vary it but often it’s a combination of cereals, dairy product and fruit: toast, butter and jam; bread, feta and tomatoes; porridge made with milk (great in the winter or before climbing a mountain) flavoured with cinammon and honey and a freshly squeezed orange juice on the side; muesli with milk with some fresh fruit chopped into it. When away at a hotel with a good buffet breakfast, I enjoy having something of everything.
I tend to prefer my lunch light and usually cycle home to eat it. It may be just cheese or cold cuts with a salad, or a soup in winter. Sometimes there are left-overs from yesterday’s dinner. Incidentally, we’re great believers in recycling left-overs and not wasting anything - it’s somehow disrespectful to throw away food.. If I have too much at lunch I need a siesta, which is extremely pleasant and a feature of my holidays, but a bad plan if I have to work in the afternoon. If I don’t come home I often make do with just a sandwich.
Dinner is usually my main meal and one I like to take time over. I like to accompany it with wine. Unless we’re entertaining it’s usually a two course affair, a main, which could be for example meat or fish with a carbo and a veg, or a large pasta or risotto and a simple dessert, which could be just fruit. If I’m hungry I lay into the cheese before the dessert.

In short, I eat pretty well everything (apart from tripe) and seek variety, but expect my food to be well prepared from quality ingredients. In this way I enjoy my food and that helps me feel pretty good about life in general.

About mountains

I manage to spend about four weeks a year in the mountains, mainly in the Alps, two in the winter and spring for skiing and two in the summer for walking and climbing. Even without any physical activity to engage in, I just enjoy being in the mountains. I love the spectacular scenery, the peace and quiet, the clean air, the contact with nature. Just being there makes me feel good.
The mountains were for me a natural progression from the moors which were close to home in Ilkley and which I used to roam as a child and teenager. Real mountains were just bigger and better. When I was 18 and working at a school in the South West of France we went down to the Pyrenees on a couple of occasions and I started to discover the potential of mountains in a way I had not experienced merely riding up them in a funicular or cable-car as I had done once on a school trip to Switzerland.
What really hooked me was my first Alpine summit reached just on foot, the modest Morgon (2324m) above Lake Serre-Ponçon. It was 1981. I had been invited to the tiny romanesque Abbey of Boscodon by a friend, Didier Bonin, who I’d been working with on a youth camp that summer, to help out barrowing for an archeological dig. One morning before starting our chores we climbed the local mountain, Morgon, in time for sunrise. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Another day we got up early to help some shepherds move a large flock of sheep from the pastures on one side of a mountain over a pass to another. Aimé the local in his 60’s who had invited us to come along was going up and down much faster than us. At 11 o’clock he produced a bottle of red wine some bread and tough-looking raw ham to refresh us. As we could see maggots moving in the ham we settled for just the wine.

A few years later Jon Day and I began to organize our youth camps not far from there in the Queyras region in the Southern French Alps. Over the years we did seven camps round there, mainly at Brunissard, so I got to know the area quite well. The Queyras Alps are not very high, only occasionally reaching 3000m but they are blessed with many days of sunshine in a year. They are great for hiking that is technically not difficult but can be challenging and rewarding. I used to lead groups of teenagers over quite long routes sometimes camping wild at altitude by streams.
Jon Day and I also used to spend Christmas and New Year with other friends not far from here in two fairly primitive chalets near the Oisans, Clot Raffin (with the most fantastic view of la Meije) and les Rochas. One had no electricity, the other no running water, both were twenty minutes uphill from where we parked. Ostensibly there to do some skiing, we in fact spent most of our time just being in the mountains fending for ourselves. If there wasn’t much snow for skiing, walking was an equally welcome alternative. I remember going to fetch milk in the village of le Chazelet from the Mathonnet family who kept the key. to the chalet When you walked in the cows were immediately to the left of the entrance corridor, and to the right was the kitchen in which everything seemed to take place and where the grandfather had his bed. These are scenes from a previous age, sadly disappearing.


I also know the Queyras from ski de rando in springtime. I have described ski touring (as it can be called in English) in “About skiing”. Ski touring is a form of winter moutaineering. You climb the mountain without any infrastructure and you ski back down it without any “pistes”. In this way you are in full contact with the real mountain. The mountains actually are quite inhospitable in winter (and spring at altitude), but they can be stunningly beautiful covered in snow with crisp visibility and remarkable silence. It’s in the winter that you really appreciate the comfort of a hut. (Huts or refuges are a chapter in themselves, which I won’t write this time)..
For years I went in groups with guides organized by UCPA a French outdoor sports association. I have always had a great group experience when doing ski de rando. People of different ages, from different backgrounds and of different abilities, but sharing the same motivation and patience seem to gel effortlessly. That coming together through the shared activity, the relative safety in numbers when confronted with the vastness of nature, the grinning and bearing it together, the elation of achieving goals together, while at the same time feeling in a way humbled by the whole scale of it, all instill a very special and deeply human cameraderie - a quite non-intellectual intensity of being.
I also once did a basic mountaineering skills course with UCPA at Chamonix involving “schools” as the French put it of rock, snow and ice, learning about ropes, crampons and ice-axes. At the end of the week it was all then put into practice on l’Aiguille du Tour (3540m), which we climbed in crampons over the glacier and up the scrambly rock. It was in cloud. Fortunately for me I’d already been up it a year or two before on a blue sky day, having approached it on skis - a better option in my opinion, not least for getting back down to the valley. It was only much later that I returned to really high mountains in the summer with Alex who is rather partial to a glacier.


In the meantime, summer mountains were more a family holiday affair. Clara was keen that I should discover the Alps in Italy and suggested we go to the area where a friend of hers had once been a school-teacher: the Comelico around Santo Stefano di Cadore. So in 1999 we ended up staying in a hamlet called Gera in the house of Ave Sacco and have been going regularly ever since for a week or so in July. The Comelico is a holiday destination for Italian families from the North East (our case too) a couple of hours or so drive away from the often unbearble summer heat down on the plain. It has a nice, laid-back, uncommercial and very Italian feel to it. Gera itself is small and off the main road a few minutes up the valley from Santo Stefano. It is situated on a flat area at the confluence of two mountain rivers, the Padola and Digon, which are the noisiest things in this peaceful environment. It’s only at 1000m so it’s not at all harsh and pleasantly warm in the evenings. I’ve really come to love it as a spot and instantly feel relaxed on arriving.
Gera is well placed for everything from a gentle family stroll through picture postcard scenery to quite difficult high altitude hikes and ferrata routes, not to mention some good moutain-biking. On the west side of the valley rise the spectacular Sexten Dolomites and their forbidding tortuous rocky peaks, while on the east side towards the Austrian border there are gentler grassy summits that are easier to walk up .
It was great this summer after so many years to show the area to Jon Day and his family . Even better was then to go off for a day with Jon like old times, but also with Thomas, to do Punta Fiscalina (2675m) from Val Fiscalino (1450m) near the Tre Cime. After the summit we just made it to Locatelli hut as a colossal storm broke. We watched the lightning play and listened to the thunder roll for over an hour from the shelter of the terrace as we ate lunch and sat huddled close to keep warm. Once the storm had passed the clarity of the views, the beauty of the light, the freshness of the air, the relief it was over and we could start walking again, all combined into an almost ecstatic feeling, an intense joy at being alive and being where we were.
One of my all time favourite Alpine hikes is the tour of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. You cheat by driving up to over 2000m and then enjoy an unending spectacle during a moderate 4 hour walk.
As in many parts of the Italian Alps along the old border with Austria there are routes to explore round here made by soldiers in the Great War. Some of these are the original examples of the via ferrata where cables, metal rods and even ladders were placed to help soldiers over difficult passages to strategic positions and look-outs. The first ferrata route I ever did was with Thomas, as a side trip to the Tre Cime tour. It begins with a long staircase inside a tunnel (like something out of Lord of the Rings) emerging through a window in the rock onto a ledge from which departs a cable to clip onto for protection as you climb the rock towards the summit of Monte Paterno (2744m). We came back to do the summit on a second trip with proper equipment, the first time we continued a long a series of natural and man-made ledges below it back to the main walking route.




It was in 2000 flying back from the Nice summit that Alex noticed I was studying the Alps out of the window, looking for landmarks in the Queyras, and we got into conversation about mountains. Shortly after he asked me to go indoor climbing with him and so started a regular shared activity which led to our annual three to four day outings in the summer in the Alps, often on the border between Italy and Austria. We have climbed some pretty high summits but also we’ve done a fair bit of what Alex calls “pointless moutaineering” where we don’t actually get to the top of anything significant, as the initial project turns out to be too ambitious or the weather not good enough.
The spirit of these trips is epitomized by last year’s one to the Stubai Alps. As we were coming from Gera we walked up the Italian side; most people come up the shorter route from the Austrian side using a cable car. So starting at 1450m we had set ourselves a pointlessly long ascent which we split with a first night in a hut. By lunch on the second day we reached the Becherhütte at 3190m perched on top of a rocky outcrop surrounded by glaciers. It is nicknamed the Wolkenschloss or “cloud castle” and promptly lived up to its name as we disappeared into fog; it even started to hail. The best plan seemed to be to go to sleep which we did quite blissfully in our cozy little wooden bedroom. About 4pm we went back outside and saw that the nearby Wilder Freiger (3418m) was emerging from the cloud. It looked promising. Quickly we got ready and set off up the rocky ridge. As the sky steadily cleared we were rewarded with stunning views of the glaciers below and the peaks all around. It was a beautiful summit. No sooner had we got back to the hut after two hours out than the weather closed in again. The evening was enlivened by a group of young locals from the Südtirol who sang with great gusto and some humour.
The next day it was still cloudy so we decided to abandon our objective of Zuckerhüterl, which would have meant traversing a glacier in the fog, and set off back down. As we were in no particular hurry we made many pauses. It was fantastic to appreciate the gradually changing scenery as we descended over 1700m. Rocks snow and ice with vistas of glaciers and morraine lakes gradually started to give way to grass and roaring torrents. Later, as we dropped in stages into seemingly new valleys, there appeared the first cows and trees. Finally we were treated to a superb series of waterfalls in a wooded valley. At every hut and watering hole we met the jolly young crew from the previous evening who seemed to have adopted a similar leisurely pace to ourselves.
Alex and I share the same motivations and enjoy each other’s company. These little expeditions have really deepened our friendship.




This summer we went to Slovenia to do Triglav (2864m) the highest peak in the Julian Alps.
It’s only in the last few years that I have turned my attention to the Julians, which are a short drive from Monfalcone. The Julians lack the range of the high Alps and in parcticular the torrents as they are very dry. But being off the beaten track they have a satisfyingly wild appeal and boast some lovely corners such as the lakes at Fusini and the Grego hut. Since the valleys are low the ascents can be quite long.
The first summit I climbed there was Montasio (2750m). It took three attempts; The first time I was by myself and took the wrong route: having gone round a fairly exposed ledge I found myself at the bottom of a gulley requiring scrambling, and the top of which was in cloud. That seemed like a bad idea on my own and unequipped so I turned back, admiring a few ibex on the way back down. The second time I went with Thomas (still only 12 then) in late August but it had snowed in the night and as we got higher the snow got thicker and the terrain potentially slippier and our hands colder (we hadn’t taken gloves). So we gave up. The third time was late October but there was no snow and we finally made the summit. I mention this because it is important when climbing a mountain to know when to turn back if the conditions are not right, rather than to expose yourself and your companions to unnecessary risks. Mountains don’t go away, they will still be there on better days.
Thomas enjoys a challenging mountain climb and at sixteen he is now better than I am at many things in the moutains. This summer we climbed Canin (2568m) from the North using the ferrata Julia. There was a time that this would have required a crampon approach up a bit of glacier. Now the glacier has all but disappeared leaving a small snowfield to climb to the foot of the ferrata which has had to be extended by about 10m. below where it once started.
(Rapidly receeding glaciers in the Alps are a sure sign of global warming. My most striking experience of this was in the summer of 2005 on the Adamello glacier, one of the southernmost in the Alps. You could almost see and certainly hear the ice melting. Somewhere beneath our feet could be heard the worrying sound of gushing streams of melt-water.)
The Julians were first really explored and extolled by Julius Kugy, a German speaker living in Trieste at the end of the 19th century. In his book “From the life of a moutaineer” he wrote that you only really get to know a mountain when you sleep on it. That was really the case for me with the Julians when Alex and I spent three nights up there in three rather different huts two years ago. Watching the evening draw in, seeing the starry night, waking up to a new day at altitude really adds a new dimension. Another of Kugy’s great sayings is that the best part of any mountain walk are the pauses. It’s not that we dislike the physical effort of walking; it’s just that some times as we’ve been concentrating so much on where we put our feet, that we only start to take in where we are when we take a well earned break and admire with some satisfaction where we’ve managed to arrive by our own efforts.. The best break of course is the one on the summit.


It would be disingenuous to deny that to be truly satisfying a mountain outing takes in a summit. There’s an unbeatable feeling that comes from actually getting to the top of a mountain and being able to survey the 360° panorama. Near Brunissard I used to love climbing Cöte Belle (2844m) and just sitting there for as long as I could. Frequently there are imperative reasons to start on down, but if the conditions are good, it’s the right place for lunch. Getting to the top of a mountain in the cloud, is not such a high to me, as I realized with Alex on top of Triglav this summer. Ok, I’ve been there and I can put it on my list, but it won’t loom large in my memory.
Yes, I admit I do have a list of summits I have climbed and here are the highest five:
Dôme de neige des Ecrins (4015m) by ski, with Thomas
Gross Venediger (3674m) in the summer, with Alex
Similaun (3597m) by ski
Aiguille du Tour (3540m) by ski and also in the summer
Hochfeiler (3510m) in the summer, with Alex
Ticking off summits might give kudos, but it is not really what moutaineering is about. I have had plenty of great outings where no summit was reached but the experience was special because of the conditions, the views, the overcoming of adversity, the companionship.

There are of course many mountains outside the Alps and I try to seek them out when I can in other countries and on other continents. I once did a fabulous two week trek in the Himalayas in Nepal to the Annapurna Sanctuary and would love to go back there. The Himalayas actually make the Alps look small, but their real charm is in observing and meeting the people who live up there. In North America I have enjoyed hiking in the wonderful Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park. I have walked up Table Mountain (1060) in South Africa starting in the centre of Cape Town, and taking the cable car back down. That’s the way to do it ! I find coming down more tiring than going up these days as years of mountaineering, skiing and cycling have started to wear out my knees.
But in many ways the Alps beat all the other mountains. As they are younger and not yet worn down, their jaggedness makes them more spectacular. There is a huge variety in landscape and human settlement through the long arc of the Alps. I never tire of the Alps which is why I try to spend as much time as I can manage there.

Wherever they are mountains fascinate me and free me, whether it’s sitting quietly contemplating them from the valley or making the effort to scale them.

About the Carso

Just behind Monfalcone starts the Carso. The limestone rises up into a plateau between 100 and 150 m full of curious depressions, scattered with stones and covered with exuberant Mediterranean maquis vegetation. It’s very dry. A lot of the plants are armed with thorns to protect their hard won growth. The water from occasional showers is sucked into the ground before it can go anywhere forming numerous sink-holes and patches of reddish earth that has washed away and then dried out again.
The Carso continues on gradually higher towards Trieste and into Slovenia where it is called Kras. Under the Austro-Hungarian empire it was also called Karst in German, a name familiar to geologists for this kind of honey-combed limestone terrain. The Monfalcone or Isonzo Carso is separated from the Carso further East by a good sized valley called simply il Vallone, so that it forms a quite discreet and well defined area.
This has become Thomas’ and my favourite terrain for mountain-biking in the region (notwithstanding risk of puncture by thorns). It’s close to home and in an hour or two you can get in a decent ride with plenty of climbing and off-roading, and lots to discover.
From a natural point of view, the flora is very rich, although the Carso is dry it can also be quite green and full of flowers. I particularly like the slender light blue thistle-like flowers that are everywhere in the summer (eryngium amethystium). Because of the geology and micro-climate you can even find normally Alpine flora in some pockets. There are animals too, right up to small deer and plenty of birds and butterflies. You can also observe strangely worn rocks and a lake in a dead end valley that comes and goes (Doberdo).
The views on a clear day are wonderful with to the South the whole sweep of the Gulf of Trieste right across to Croatia, to the West the plain stretching away towards Venice with church bell-towers sticking up here and there, to the North the distant high wall of the Alps, especially the Julians with Canin and Mangart and to the East the higher hills in Slovenia.
It’s an area full of history too. There are old tracks edged by dry-stone walls, small fields and vineyards still worked in the fertile depressions and a few picturesque villages. Then quite shockingly the scars of numerous First World War trenches. These military workings represent various front lines and fall back positions of the Italians and Austrians. Yes, this pretty area was once the scene of insane trench warfare in a barren lunar landscape (they burned down all the vegetation) with tens of thousands of casualties. On the West flank at Redipuglia there’s a huge war cemetry and at the highest point on Monte San Michele a museum.
The poet Ungaretti came back from Paris to fight for Italy out of patriotic choice, and ended up serving on the Carso.. Somewhat sobered by his experience he wrote a fine collection of short poems encapsulating how it felt to be there, mentioning after each one the time and place of their composition. At Easter I went with Julia, who was studying Ungaretti, around the various locations reading the poems where they were written. It was quite a moving exercise in literature and history, imagining these peaceful places in a quite different setting nearly a century ago.
There are some curious war memorials in purest Fascist style from the 1930’s in the oddest places. One is a column (Cippo Corridoni) about 10m high right in the middle of the maquis with stylised fascii and eagles on it and the inscription to “those who by the sacrifice of their lives fecundated the future of labour” - very strange! A quite different sentiment to Ungaretti’s.
There’s even some industrial archeology: on our last outing we found a former soda quarry and the base of a dismantled cable way to take the stones to the quite distant industrial port.
It’s fun to explore up there and the network of tracks has been improved recently so as to facilitate the access of fire-fighters but also cyclists and walkers.. Quite a few trenches have also had the undergrowth removed around them and been excavated with explanatory signs put up. People are redisovering the Carso.
For me though, despite the historic interest, it is the natural beauty and curiosity of the place that attracts me.

About opera

The first opera I saw was Verdi’s “la Traviata” at the Fenice (where it was first performed). I was seventeen, in Venice while inter-railing and was standing up in the gods, having foregone a proper dinner for the ticket-price. The audience was clearly having a great time. I remember them singing along to the chorus “Libiamo” when it was encore-d.
It was a long time before I went again; that was in the late eighties in Brussels to see Mozart’s “la Finta giardiniera”. It was at the time of the Théâtre de la Monnaie’s renovation, so it was put on in the much smaller Théâtre Royal du Parc which meant we were sitting close to the stage and could really see the singers’ expressions and acting, which convinced me of the theatrical potential of opera. It was also in one of the Hermanns’ delightful stagings. That was what prompted me to take out a season ticket with the Monnaie, which was easy to do just then as the newly enlarged theatre could accommodate more opera-goers the next season. Since then I have seen eight to ten operas a year, including those caught elsewhere on my travels.
I’ve seen well over a hundred different operas performed live, and heard as many again done in concert version or of course on CD. I find, however, I don’t listen to opera that often on CD, apart perhaps from on long car journeys, as I need to have enough time to get all the way through a work. Most operas, being conceived as an evening’s entertainment, last two to three hours. So I prefer my opera in the opera-house. I’ve seen some bad performances of operas I like on CD and seen some good performances of operas the music of which I don’t particularly care for.

We recently had the perfect operatic experience at the Monnaie at the first night of Verdi’s “la Forza del Destino”. Everything was just right.
The singing was tremendous with big voices from the principal tenor Zoran Todorovich as Don Alvaro and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, as Leonora, both young and relatively unknown (at least to me) but really giving it some, which is just what is called for - bel canto is not dead. The whole cast was good and it was nice to see José van Dam as the cameo grumpy monk Fra Melitone: his voice in old age is sadly not what it was, but is still suited to this rôle. The huge choir was on top form, especially in “Rataplan”.
The Monnaie orchestra played beautifully conducted by Kazushi Ono, their departing musical director, with whom they have a great rapport.
It was great music.
The staging was simple and sympathetic, concentrating attention on the singers and the action. Against a plain backdrop of varying colour, indicating in a minimalist way the location, they stood out in period costume, lit often like so many scenes from the golden age of Spanish painting. Some terrific effects were achieved just by lighting especially in the battle scene. The acting was convincingly natural and everyone had the “physique du rôle”.
It was great theatre.

This is what opera should be: great music and great theatre at the same time.
If you have read previous postings, you will know I like both classical music and theatre, so when the conditions are right, opera is a wonderful experience.
It’s not always that way of course. Sometimes the singing is not so good, the staging rather ridiculous and the music boring.

A first key to success is to put on a work that is worth performing.
“La Forza” is not put on often, but it is Verdi in his mature period, and undeservedly neglected. The overture is one of his best and well known. It contains three beautiful tunes that return prominently (at the climax of Act I, at the final show-down between Don Alvaro and Don Carlo in Act IV and on Leonora’s arrival at the monastery in Act II) and are quoted at key moments (not quite in the manner of Wagner’s leitmotiv, more as dramatic pointers). For my taste great tunes are called for in an opera and their recognition gives the audience satisfaction. There is a whole lot more good music in la Forza: stirring arias, great duets and big choruses. Although it comes in at nearly three hours, we didn’t notice the time passing.
This opera is often shunned for its length, uneven tone and totally ramshackle plot and is regarded as difficult to stage. It certainly didn’t feel that way in this performance. As the title “the force of destiny” suggests, the whole point is that seemingly random events and improbable coincidences shape our lives. So actually the very far-fetched nature of the story is appropriate. Likewise the fact that the story is not stripped down to its bare essentials but spread over a period of several years and presented in a whole mixed bag of scenes including intimate ensemble, crowd scenes (tavern, monastery, battlefield) genre (grumpy monk, fortune-teller, camp-following pedlar), tragic and comic, sets it in a full range of random circumstances which may or not have an impact on the outcome. So it does actually make dramatic sense.
Some of the text is diificult to take these days: most famously the line “Morte ai tedeschi” (Death to the Germans); but also “Viva la guerra” (long live war); and plenty of heavy-duty Catholicism. But actually if scenes are on the battlefield and in a monastery, it is of a piece with the action (and of course as always in Verdi with the situation of Italy at his time).
In short, “La Forza” is a good Verdi opera and worth staging. I have now seen thirteen of Verdi’s operas performed. My favourite is “la Traviata” with “Rigoletto” a close second.

Mozart is my other favourite composer of opera, I have seen eight of his, and like “Don Giovanni” best followed by “die Zauberflöte” and “le Nozze di Figaro”.
Mozart is quite different to Verdi. For a start Mozart mainly does comedy, while Verdi mainly does tragedy. but they do both go in for great tunes. Mozart’s operas are not through-composed like Verdi’s, rather the numbers are separated by recitative accompanied by harpsichord (or even in the case of the German ones, by spoken text). That makes it easier to follow the text (if you understand the language). and plot, then the arias mark the key dramatic moments giving depth to the characters’ feelings. Mozart’s operas are not conceived on the same grand scale as Verdi’s, the forces are smaller (orchestra, choir) and the instrumentation, of a different period, is quite different, much lighter and airier.
It so happens that I saw “le Nozze di Figaro” in Prague a couple of weeks earlier in the Estates Theatre, a beautiful small 18thC house which is one of the first theatres where it was performed, actually conducted there by Mozart himself in 1787. The vibe of seeing this opera in these ideal historic conditions was wonderful. As it’s on a small scale you’re quite close to the singers and can really see their facial expressions and gesture. The small orchestra (40 players) doesn’t make a sound so big that it drowns out the voices. This is how Mozart should be performed and is best enjoyed. I have to admit that though I know the music well and have seen “le Nozze” a few times, there were some aspects of the plot I got for the first time!
Also like Verdi, Mozart adores ensemble singing but he takes it further with his trick of adding more and more singers as the finales build up. You get the different characters singing their contradicting views at the same time and the music actually makes it all work. Mozart excels in this truly dramatic art of getting his charcters to interact in an intimate setting. He is not interested in painting a huge historic fresco with atmospheric music. I say Mozart, but he obviously owes a lot to Da Ponte the gifted librettist of his three great Italian operas “le Nozze di Figaro”, “Don Giovanni” and “Cosi fan tutte””. Having said that, the texts without the music would be nothing. Great opera is the succesful combination of good music and a text that works dramatically as theatre.

This brings me to why I dislike Wagner who is the third great composer of operas in the canon alongside Mozart and Verdi, certainly in terms of how often their works are performed. I have seen ten of Wagner’s operas performed (as we have a season ticket at the Monnaie, we see all of their new productions), so mine is an opinion informed by some experience. I have tried hard to keep an open mind about Wagner, given the fact than many opera-goers do enjoy him and that he has an important place in the history of music. He is of course not helped by the fact that he was Hitler’s favourite composer, but I shall ignore that and tell you what I don’t like about his operas.
To start with, Wagner’s orchestration is too thick and opaque. You can’t really hear the singers properly and there is little variety of texture or relief. The music is relentlessly through-composed without there being any distinction between recitative style passages and arias: it’s all the same and never really breaks into song. Oddly enough Wagner’s best tunes are in the instrumental bits (flight of the Walkyries, wedding march, Tristan and Isolde prelude/Liebestod). The singing is not beautiful: most of the time it’s bombastic, heroic, declamatory rather than lyrical. His music after about fifteen minutes begins to pall and bore me big time, and his operas last for three hours and longer. For me it’s just not great music.
At the same time there is no action. There is no ensemble singing, it’s just one interminable monologue after another talking about things that have happened elsewhere: hardly anything happens on stage and the characters don’t really interact. He wrote his own librettos. The text is absolute doggerel, unreadable (I have ploughed through the whole libretto for “Tristan”) and full of dliberately archaic German. The stories are invented mythology: there is nothing that rings falser than fake myths, there’s something not quite right and rather silly about them. So dramatically, Wagner is dead in the water. His operas lend themselves to colossal over the top gloomy sets and no movement. For me, it’s just not great theatre.
Between the boring music and the boring stage business, I always fall asleep at some point during a Wagner opera. I really fail to see the attraction, and I make no apology for that, I’ve seen pretty well all of his operas and they leave me cold.

So whose operas do I like apart from Mozart’s and Verdi’s?

Puccini seems to be spurned by the Monnaie who rarely put on his operas, perhaps finding them too low-brow compared to Wagner. I think Puccini is good. He has a great dramatic sense, is very economical and effective in creating emotions in the audience and can be quite moving. He gets through to me more than many other composers. He has some great tunes (“lucevan le stelle”, “nessun dorma””) and clear and varied instrumentation. “Tosca” is my favourite by him.

Britten too has an unerring sense for what works on stage and a fine and boldly original sense of melody. “Peter Grimes” has some terrific dramatic moments and you feel the tension between this loner and the tight-knit village community (some great passages for the choir), with always the presence of the elemental sea in the orchestral interludes.

Shostakovich was stopped dead in his operatic tracks by severe criticism from the Stalinist régime of his second opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. To play safe, and probably to save his skin, he then avoided the genre - a great loss for us. “Lady Macbeth” is really very good with moments of high comedy and deep tragedy: it is a very powerful piece with some fantastic orchestration, as one would expect from Shostakovich. I saw a great production in Riga set in the last days of crumbling Soviet Latvia with lots ol allusions to daily life not lost on the audience. His earlier comic “the Nose”, based on Gogol, is terrific fun as a cheeky youthful piece.

You certainly need the surtitles for Janacek, sung in Czech, but I enjoy his highly original instrumentation, his slightly folk-music like tune and rhythms and his theatrical sense. “Jenufa” is best. Surtitles by the way are an essential requirement for enjoying opera as theatre and have fortunately become the norm in most opera-houses.

Rossini and Donizetti were very prolific in both comedy and tragedy. I can’t help liking the tuneful singing and sometimes over the top virtuosity they never fail to provide. I’ve seen many good productions of their operas over the years. They’re rarely opera at its most profound, but are reliable for a good evening out.

However, my enjoyment of a good opera can be marred if it is staged unsympathetically. On some rare occasions I have felt like closing my eyes just to listen to the music. My main wish is for the director to treat the opera as theatre rather than as conceptual art, that is taking the form of a series of static tableaux with special effects which are meant to symbolize some particular bee in his bonnet. It really annoys me when the director seems not to have bothered reading the text so that the stage business doesn’t match the words that are being sung. He misses the point and substitutes one of his own not actually in the work. I remember a particularly dreadful staging of “la Traviata” in Nuremberg, where for example in their final love duet “Parigi, cara” Adolfo and Violetta were apart at opposite extremes of the stage. Many German directors seem to go in for this sort of thing.
Having said that, I hasten to add that I do like the highly inventive Hermann couple’s work, their marvellous series of Mozart operas for the Monnaie, also Rossini’s “il Turco in Italia” and more recently Handel’s “Giulio Cesare”. They do pay close attention to the text but bring their idiosyncratic playfulness to bear in a way that illustrates it amusingly and can often help maintain interest in otherwise over-long passages. Theirs are certainly some of the productions that have stuck in my memory for their aesthetic appearance.
As for dramatic impact I would single out this season’s “Wozzeck” which I mentioned in “About theatre” -
“In “Wozzeck” the opera, you basically get the text in a sing-song way with atmospheric musical backing. With the action played here realistically in period costume in a dark minimalist setting, the overall effect was devastating. The drowning of Wozzeck at the climax was actually staged - he was seen to disappear into a pond of water leaving his cap floating on the surface. Great stuff!”

One of my worst operatic experiences also occured during this season. It was “Phaedra” a new work by Henze (which has nothing to do with the tragedy by Racine). The production designer admitted he had never even staged a play before. He took the orchestra out of the pit and placed it at the back of the stalls. He covered the entire back of the stage with a giant mirror in which the audience could see itself and the orchestra reflected. For the first scene, which contained a lot of important background information for the plot, he had the surtitles switched off so no one knew what was going on, the singers unidentifiable and a slowly revolving gold ring in the dark caught in a spotlight above the auditorium casting reflections - for ten minutes. All very gimmicky but it had nothing to do with the story. The music was unspeakable: the worst excesses of tuneless disjointed percussive modernism that soon became boring in its very predictable inanity. The text was like bad sixth-form poetry. Proceedings reached an embarrassing all-time low when the main character simulated a rape on top of a grand piano crying out “Freiheit” (freedom). The evening was toe-curlingly bad from all points of view. It was bad music and bad theatre by a self-indulgent composer and a self-indulgent director.

This brings me back to my starting point: good opera is great music and great theatre at the same time. When it fails to deliver, bad opera can get very boring and rather silly, but when good opera works it can be a captivating and deeply satisfyng artistic experience.