Monday, October 20, 2008

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.

Monday, October 13, 2008

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.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

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.