Hungary: A difficult start.

Typical of a short city break, the moment our aircraft touched down we didn't want to waste a minute. From the airport to the hotel and out again the scene might have resembled a 'skip the exposition' film montage. After dropping our bags in our hotel room and deciding, very roughly, which clothes needed to be hung immediately and which ones could survive in various states of contrived neatness on the bed, we took our dehydrated heads and gassy-empty Easy-Jet bellies into the first city centre-bound tram we found. As this was eastern Europe the first one to arrive was a jerk-rolling wreck of a thing with an ushanka wearing, ear-muffled, pinch-skinned driver who was in the process of pulling a freight of sallow-faced, muffled up pensioners. We bundled on hopefully, two funny foreigners making haste towards the not so famous Christmas Market in Budapest's Vorosmarty Square.

We were on the tram for next to no time -  finding out the hard way that the centre was actually walking distance, but, it was starting to rain; grey eastern European December rain with those gun barrel grey skies that fit so perfectly with the bleak backdrop of old soviet style buildings with their complement of minimalist windows and prison gate solid, 19th century doors. The tram ride, turned out to be a good call. 

At the allotted stop - with the flight, never mind the tram trip still thrumming in our ears, we took a a breathless, puddle spattered, coat huddled speed-march across the Chain bridge, completely forgetting to look at the statues of tongueless lions that lying in guard at either end, and fell blindly into the market square and the Christmas Market Hungary style. 

There wasn't much colour or a lot of festive jollity - just a few shacks with poorly constructed awnings spilling out lines of people getting wet, and if not fed, certainly fed up. It became apparent that they were waiting for free mulled wine to be served to them in traditional grubby white Styrofoam cups, something of a Christmas tradition in Hungary - a kind of nod to the feeding of the the poor and goodwill to all men.

The queues for the food weren't quite as long as the ones for the free wine  - though the the food queue customers looked distinctly in need of real food rather than experimental morsels and gruesome tidbits they were scrutinizing as they collected their fare. We, in our own, rather privileged way, so joined a small line of paying customers who for just a few Forints were being ladled hugely plopped-out gouts of steaming goulash into the inevitable Styrofoam trays - flat egg boxes without the compartments, or the eggs.    

With numbing fingers and damp collars we sat down at a moldy wooden table in the drizzle, trying to eat this peppery goulash, trying to keep our noses from running  and with salty steam and rain smarting eyes, surveyed silently from our dank vantage point what appeared to be a disappointingly drear Christmas market. 

I looked harder at the people in the food queues and concluded that they looked... or at least appeared to look, very Hungarian. At some point I'd noticed an agitated man in one of the free lines, even more poorly dressed than everyone else. He had lank, unwashed looking hair a Catweazel style beard and a coat that was gave the impression that its life as a comforter to a human being was nearing its end.   He appeared to be half in half out of the the queue, as if having difficulty with the concept of waiting his turn. His behaviour seemed fitful, challenging, unsettling to those around him.

Pretty soon there was one of those odd commotions where the normality of peacefulness and expectant behaviour appeared to be breaking down. As the shapes before us began to make sense I noticed that the man I'd seen earlier, for no seeming apparent reason, appeared to have started a fight with a another much older man. a proper fist fight - not a stand-off staring match and a few accusations that amount to nothing - but with blows exchanged straightaway without recourse to any of the usual preliminaries. Pretty soon others joined in - it was impossible to make sense of who was supporting whom - it was developing into a free for all - Styrofoam cups and plates were caught in the wind and blown around like stage rubble. One person ended up failing against an awning and collapsed the table from where the goulash was being dispensed - the ladle fell clanging to the ground before someone dived on it and proceeded to swirl it round like an Olympic hammer making everyone within ten meters duck for cover.  
     
We'd only just arrived in Hungary, and knew next to nothing about the country - its traditions, (this was all very pre-wiki travel and it's invaluable stay safe paragraph which I always go straight to these days)  - other than what we had gleaned from the tatty, in-flight brochures and somehow felt that whatever was going on here was none our business. This wasn't the start of the mini break we had been hoping for. Only hours before we had passed through the gates at Ferihegy Airport with our untidy hand cargo of bags and coats full of that joyous traveller expectation; suddenly we were somewhere bearing witness to something that made us feel that staying home would almost certainly be on the agenda for the following Christmas.

We continued sitting uneasily in our chairs trying to look, and yet not look - silently trying to wish the whole episode away. Who could possible know where it would all end.  Would we be dragged unwillingly into the dispute and end up battered and robbed . Or would we find ourselves hauled into the state version of events - whisked away to make statements, then casually questioned about our reason for being in the country - then it all going wrong somehow and finding ourselves manhandled into some God forsaken cold war style holding area - like something out of the film 'Midnight Express'. We had only just arrived. The hardest thing I'd encountered in the last hour was the Telegraph crossword on the flight over, I didn't expect to feel as if I'd just parachuted into the middle of some kind of turf war with the Christmas Market in Vorosmarty Square apparently the chosen venue. Not great timing. 

And then it ended. As suddenly as it had begun things went back to normal, the combatants melting into the crowds. The Christmas cheery music volume was pumped from tinny and sporadic to full volume jollity, and the pigeons, like feathered stewards, descended to peck up all the wasted goulash.  Almost on cue the clouds broke and the sun started to shine - and in the distance the Danube started to shimmer like crystal blue. If only we hadn't rushed to get here quite so soon. How different my initial thoughts would be.  How different an account on trip adviser might look.   

Rome. Part One.

Listening to Test Match Special on the radio this morning - one of those little bantering sessions they have in the box revealed that one of the commentators had just come back from a mini-break in Rome. There wasn't a lot happening in the match, (first morning of the final test against Australia in the Ashes - which England have already won), so, the city of Rome received a little air time. When the commentator was asked by his cohort what he did whilst he was there, one of his answers was that he had visited the Parthenon.

I visited Rome last year, and I pretty much saw everything that you're supposed to see on a first visit - and yes, I remembered visiting somewhere that sounded like that - but not quite like that. To be fair, whilst I contemplated the word, allowed it to swirl around my mouth, weighed it, analysed it, try to picture it in my mind, a correction was given on air, (probably via a more sophisticated traveller-producer through an an ear piece), together with additional information. The Pantheon of course is where he meant. Built by Augustus as a consecrated temple to the gods,with Hadrian (The Wall) picking up the pieces - perhaps literally -  during the latter stages (these things take time). The Parthenon, a few hundreds of miles away in Athens, Greece is  a grand building  in its own right, but not to be added to any Rome visit itinerary.

This little dispute did two things to me.  First, I was annoyed that I didn't pick up the error straightaway given that I only visited Rome two years ago, coupled with the fact that that I am due to visit Athens in less than 3 weeks. Also, I wondered, why haven't I done a piece on Rome, one of the best city breaks I've ever been on. So thank you TMS for the reminder.

It took a while for Rome to wiggle its way to the top of our travelling agenda. It's odd that I allowed world class destinations like Rome, Paris and New York to fall behind our wish list of destinations with Tallinn, Prague and San Francisco all of which somehow managed to elbow their way to the top of the list, are now 'done' so to speak.  I'm still yet to visit Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney and only went to New York very recently. Perhaps there's a sense of deferred gratification  in the holiday selection process which is an unconscious way of enhancing the experience - a bit like leaving the most interesting looking pressies under the tree on Christmas morning and choosing the also-ran, thinly-wrapped or easily-guessable examples first. In this, as in life, it's often tempting to draw the important things out slowly - the savoring process showing itself to be at least as important as the highlight.  So maybe it's no wonder that I went to Florence before Venice, LA before New York, Munich before Berlin, Granada before Madrid, and so on;  and no real wonder why it took so long for me to get to Rome.

Rome.  Even the place we stayed in was interesting.  St Peter's Six, an old building converted into half a dozen luxury suites half way along the via della conciliaazione - a road of classical buildings that lead all the way to the Pope's front door. These apartments once provided accommodation for Vatican nuns and as such is so close to the papal city you can almost feel the thrumming waves of dedication and prayer rippling from the palace areas of worship through the huge 15th Century portico that served as our front door for us and the other guests - all six of them.

Certainly we could hear the St Peter's basilica bells being rung whilst having breakfast, which reminded us -  if we needed a reminder, to preserve the Vatican on our visit list  And that's the thing about Rome - its like there's two of them: the Rome of the Ancient Romans - the Colosseum, the remnants of the city, the ubiquitous columns and god like sculptures; and the Rome of the Italian Renaissance period with its own historical grandeur.  It's as if they are locked together in an eternal tussle to show visitors they are the main reason for coming to Rome. Throw in a commercially vibrant medieval city of huge charm that has elements of every age as you walk through it, and there's a third player in town.

It's because of these historically and culturally disparate strands that it's sometimes difficult to imagine what you're going to be faced with when you get to Rome. Better just to flop at the nearest cafe and gather your thoughts before planning your day - and  then, whether you know it or not, you've already started. The ancient Romans and the Renaissance are two historical titans and they're both in town.  In the red corner the team captain for the ancients: Julius Caesar, and in the blue, Michelangelo - split by a few thousand years and the river Tiber. In the middle of this spectacle: a medieval cobblestone series of corridors housing the best alfresco eateries and drinking holes. Through this grid work each path leads to yet another square, with every one of them exhibiting something of renown. Every square good enough to be known as 'The Square' any other city in the world. 

Nestled in Rome's squares are monuments that appear in every tourist guide book of Rome ever written. And you stumble into them almost accidentally. As you wander into these squares - you can't help it -  every one of them has at least one fountain that resembles the sort of cloud lands we imagine we end up on when we're dead. People cluster around them, drawn to photograph them from every angle. The Trevi is the most impressive of them all -  it's so busy there you can hardly get a look in. All around it people can be seen wetting themselves or emitting the contents of their stomachs whilst striking louche poses for the camera. And the sculptured figures are nice to look at too. A three dimensional fresco of extraordinary imagination. plop a coin in the water on your way out, ideally over your shoulder trying not to hit yet another photograph poser plumb in the face, and one day you'll return to Rome they say.

A week or so after we left Rome, one of the statues crumbled and plopped into the water. I can imagine the scene; everyone looking around innocently wide-eyed with vicarious guilt -  as if too close to a collapsing pyramid of baked beans in their local Tesco, half  believing the ghost of Jeremy Beadle was lurking around  dressed like Lurcio from Up Pompei.  The stricken figure must have been inching itself forward for its impromptu dive very slightly all the time we were there, until balancing so precariously the beat of a bluebottle's wings might have been enough to unseat it.

The Pantheon can also be found during your wanderings from square to square (not the Parthenon - that's in Greece,). If it rains when you get there it's no good going in to keep dry because there's a hole in the roof the size of a science fiction time portal. This is a design style that would never catch on in the UK. The Spanish Steps are pretty - though I'm not sure it would get a top billing if it wasn't  for the film  Roman Holiday, though try as I might I couldn't find any sign that Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn  were ever around.  And I couldn't really be bothered to look for the saturnine visage of  La Bocca Della Veriata or The Mouth of Truth, if indeed the tall bell towered church of the Santa Maria in Cosmedin  is anywhere near there. We ran out of time so that's one place I will try to get to next time. The list of places, like all really good cities, is virtually endless, so it's no surprise to me that we don't ever get to half of them.

I have to say the Colosseum - which is bit of a walk away from the centre, was for me a little a bit of an anti-climax.  You can't really go to Rome and not go there. It's one of those places that represents a 'I suppose I must go' response.  None of us wants to sound foolish when we return home from Rome to face the inevitable question, ' what did you think of the Colosseum?' Only to be forced to reply, 'the where? Oh the Colosseum!  No we decided not to bother.' No one wants to do that, so you go. But in truth, it's a bit boring. A huge ring of ancient concrete lumps cemented together with a void in the middle that looks a bit like London in the aftermath of the Blitz. The structure itself appears to have been repaired, renovated and restructured over and over again making it the Roman version of HMS Victory - this bit was altered in 1798 after a student on a Grand Tour, drunk on porter, fell into the arena; these bricks were fired and brought in from Tuscany due to bomb damage sustained during the war; these columns were made by Sicilian craftsman in the 1970s and shipped in to replace the originals that were eroding and proving a concern to health and safety officials.  That kind of rubbish.  Once I hear stories of authorities messing around with authenticity, my concentration quickly goes and I start dreaming of my next double espresso/cappuccino/latte which you can only get once you've left the building/structure/thing. And I was happy to leave pretty soon after I arrived.   It's a great canker, a solid blot in what is an otherwise a dreamy city. For me any way.

I enjoyed the remains of the old Roman City. It was possible to lose yourself amid the real history of the place - but I was already thinking about the Vatican.  Ever since our arrival I couldn't stop thinking about it. I really wanted to visit the Sistine Chapel.  Although I'm not really religious, I'd  become obsessed with the whole Vatican thing due to its proximity to our apartment. The bells ringing probably had a lot to do with it. The more I thought about it, particularly the chapel, the more I wanted to see it - even though everyone said you might have to queue half a day to get in. And even then you'll have to walk through it in silence before being ushered out by Vatican bouncers who treat you as if you're infected with the Bubonic Plague. Undeterred we left it to last - another example of that deferred gratification thing I guess - and  for me it would prove the highlight of the trip.

To be continued...

Travels: Iceland

I have decided that I'll write a regular blog. It's one way I might be able to locate my writer's mojo, rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration. And to try and train myself to avoid cliches like that when I should be digging into my writer's brain: delving into, scrooping through the contours of my creative conscience for when I finally get around to putting 'pen to paper'. Is that irony? The words 'putting pen to paper' is also a bit hackneyed. Perhaps, before I sit at my keyboard, fingers flexed and cracked, poised fizzingly expectant, might look a little better - if slightly hyperbolic. Anyway, I'm trying to warm myself up a bit. Get the blood to flush through my system:  swill through the brain - clear out those inspiration clog ups, sluice through those temptations of indolence.

There's always source material. I recently came back from Iceland.  I took many photographs as you might imagine: dramatically photogenic scenes such as the waterfall at Gullfoss, and the dependable Strokkur at the eponymous Geyser. Unlike the others, this one blows every 5 to 10 minutes whilst threatening to suck in any foolish tourist who get too close to the bubbles (some do) and blasting them out with rubberized bones and flayed, or perhaps no skin. And the Aura Boleros: God's own light beam show (though you will have to provide the soundtrack - God doesn't do musical backdrops), which will put in an appearance if it's not raining.  But I didn't write any of my experiences down.

Time was I wrote blogs about all the places I visited. I can remember writing a few light humoured pieces about Tunisia when we holidayed there a few years ago. In the first week we didn't get out much so I concentrated on reporting on things like: how the hotels are now frequented by newly rich Russians, whose impoverished nutritional heritage seems to be sticking around around like droplets of treacle matted in the beards of czars. I remember noting something to the effect that it was to see them in the hotels restaurants, loading up their plates from the meal buffets until they resembled Desperate Dan style sausage and mash platters. And how every female under the age of 70 dressed each evening as if they were members of an ABBA tribute band; and the males who either looked like refuges from a Brotherhood of Man mash-up, or extras from Godfather 2, the musical.

Later on when we did get out and saw other things, I wrote about the desperate state of the towns, the worrying proximity of Libya and Algeria (you could clearly see the mountain ranges that merged both east and west) and the various dangers associated with a night spent in the desert. And of course, I included the obligatory camel ride, the preliminaries of which for us involved the skillful avoidance of one particularly chippy one who was threatening to do some serious harm to any one brave or daft enough to choose it from a line of snorting, farting, restive really quite pissed off (talk about having the hump) camels waiting with their shouty, agitated and importunate guides.

And then there was Bangkok, Thailand, from where I sent an email home and talked about how in a moments of idleness I sat watching from my hotel balcony at the Nai Lert Park hotel which overlooks the Chao Phraya river noticing that: ' the locals boat food merchants, their boats laden with fruit, vegetables and spices - piled high like offerings to their Gods, plying their trade on the churning brown river on boats partly submerged from the weight of their freight, and looking like they'd slid in from another world.'  And how: ' they ponderously steered their boats into their watery trading slots, and that: 'once their loads were relinquished, roaring off like like demons to somewhere unknown to restock, turning the river into frothing whirlpools and scummy waves.'

I admit, that here's nothing special there, but at least I was writing: at least I was keeping the creative muscle from wasting away. If I can trace these old blogs I might well add them to this selection. But for now I've let the habit slide and I need to write some new ones. Unfortunately I have very few notes about Iceland now and my memory is failing (well I have had another birthday since going, so there are excuses, however unremarkable), but that's not going to stop me. 

I chose to visit Iceland because it had for a while been a destination that appealed to me. One of those countries that hover around the edges of one's imagination for half a lifetime before perhaps, finally being chosen. Many people simply would never to go there - not because it's inherently bad (although perceptions of awful weather, ash clouds, infertile lava fields, and cruelty to animals might be sufficient for some not to look too hard in its direction), but because it sits desolately alone, an ink spot-splat on the map in the mid Atlantic, just off the coast of Greenland (which really is inhospitable to most people's minds), and part way towards Canada and the USA (why not go there instead?)

The island of Iceland offers nothing in terms of good weather (the old British thing of chasing the sun is alive and well), and is perceived as being horrifyingly expensive, compounded by the banking crash of 2008 when many Brits lost money in Icelandic saving schemes and the ongoing refusal by the banks and the Icelandic government to compensate savers. These people were seeking unbelievable savers rates at the time, so not everyone is sympathetic, the rates were unbelievable for a reason it seems.  But Iceland has other delights that you simply will not find anywhere else on Earth and it probably should be visited by everyone.

For a start it's not far away - look at Scotland. Think about the Outer Hebrides. Although a bit of a by-word for miles away, the notion of the Hebrides as being the ends of the Earth is only ever suggested in a frivolous, parochial sense: 'a job's finally come through, trouble is it's in the Outer Hebrides!' (it's 5 miles north of London), otherwise the Pitcairn Islands or Tristan Decuna would be used in these kinds of perception statements. All you need to do is fly over the Outer Hebrides keeping the Shetlands to your right, then keep going for a bit. Shoot past the Faroe islands remembering they're not ours but Danish albeit with a bit of residual Scottish blood which enlivens some of their traditions, like bagpipes and being rubbish at football.  Keep going a bit longer - though not much longer or you'll miss it and end on the shores of Greenland (you wouldn't want to do that), look down and you'll see it. Iceland.  Plonked in the the middle of the sea -  a little fat specky-eyed fat kid thing of an island - banished and ignored, floating in a vacuum of greyness - gurgling and excreting like a new born baby, which of course in geological terms it is.

It's not that far from us. Despite being so different from the UK, it's roots are very different. The UK and Ireland split off from Europe. Iceland split from Greenland. The divorce settlement was amicable. Half of Iceland gets to stay Greenland - even the odd polar bear can drift in on the ice flows between the two; The bottom bit with its more benevolent coast line and slightly kinder climate is more gets to be more like the Highlands of Scotland - but far more dramatic and without the underlying suspicion about the English.  A bit more European a little less Arctic. That appears to have been the the deal.

You can see that the whole thing was a bit of Greenland once because the north of Iceland is still like a mini version of it:  glaciers, snow. Snow glaciers. Don't think of going there, it has the north pole running through its DNA, and it shows. It's a place of expeditions. It's a frozen moonscape. It's not really for holidays - more for challenges I would think.  There's enough in the south of the country to keep the casual tourist interested.  Everything you want from Iceland can be found down there - the north of Iceland is the still the pole - and that's for another day, preferably in the summer.

Iceland is not Greenland though. Greenland is huge. Massive. If it wasn't for Canada we'd consider Greenland another planet, such is its size and hostility to supporting life. A frozen wasteland, pock-marked with thick-blooded, blubber worshiping people living in crummy wooden houses stuck on the rims of sea-wrecked villages.  Probably look nice in the snow, until it melts - then the whole thing looks like an aftermath of a 10 year old tsunami disaster with no-one really getting to grips with the tidying up.  But Iceland remains a bit of it. Drifting away from the mother ship, made to sit on the naughty step - not quite able to rise to the impossibility of sustaining life like the rest of the land and shunted off to try its luck at being a successful country on its own. I might be wrong about this. Some people believe it emerged in a fizz of bubbles gasping like a waking whale.

So my journey concentrated on southern Iceland: Reykjavik and its associated places. Everyone stays in or near or just a little north or just a little east of Reykjavik - it makes perfect sense. After Reykjavik comes undulating lava fields that go on forever, cracking and fizzing beneath the surface. There's only one important road really: the ring road which does precisely that - encircles the island - which includes the frozen north which you'll want to avoid unless it's summer. But if you go up there there's nothing to see for miles and miles, small as the island is.But there is lots to see in Iceland. That's the thing - but you always need to head in the right direction - always remember, go north but don't go to the north.

In Reykjavik itself there are things to keep you interested. The town is pretty so-so, rather like an expanded fishing village - though I guess Plymouth and Bristol started that way.  Maybe even New York and London. But it hasn't quite made the jump into international city status. It's still an expanded fishing village that didn't really expand that much. The geothermal pools on its outskirts however would be near the top of any of those mega city shopping lists if there was a fire or car boot sale with all of Reykjavik's visitor attractions being held. The pools, hot and blue with heat hazes smoking off the surface looking like the ghosts of Icelandic fishermen. To swim in them is like taking a bath with a few tons of assorted Swedes, Danes, Dutch and Russians. Hardly any Brits seem to bother - maybe we are too dirty a race to want to spend our holidays being dunked in a communal tub full of nationals who can't wait to get naked in front of foreigners.  You can't swim, you just marinade - your body's warmed by the thermals in the water, but your exposed head feels like ice: it can easily feel as if some one as screwed a G clamp to your head and hammered a foot long icy stalactite through your ears once you're in, so it's a good idea to plunge your head under the warming water every now and then to allow it to thaw.

Once you' feel comfortable enough in the water you can bob your way to the little sulfur stations at the sides and plaster yourself in white grey muck that has allegedly restorative and curative powers beneficial of anything from skin complaints to arthritis - though you will have to try to avoid the young Germans who, because you're technically allowed to drink alcohol while you're in there, are damn well going to try, so you have little clusters hanging around the watery hole exclusion zones talking and laughing about whatever it is they talk and laugh about about when they're on holiday. Unclean Brits in their buttoned up swimming costumes probably.

Driving along bottom half of Iceland, the roads are dead. there's nothing to see for miles - no buildings, no trees, not much traffic. But there are chance encounters -  the likes of which would take up whole chapters in any visit Britain book. Here, they're just side shows - if you want a real waterfall you've got to head for Gullfoss. Remember that film Prometheus - at the beginning? Too amazing to be real? It wasn't CGi - you don't need such artifice in Iceland, it was real; but long after our visit, we learnt it wasn't Gullfoss but Dettifoss, further up the north eastern part of the island, impassable for normal vehicles on the early spring roads. But Gullfoss is spectacular, it could easily have been chosen.

Actually, Gulfoss does at least does put in an appearances in western popular culture: it appears on the front cover of the album Porcupine by Echo and the Bunnymen. That's what happens when you get spoilt for choice. If Gullfoss was in, say,  Dartmoor or the Yorkshire Moors or the Malverns, it would be world renowned. Concerts would take place there, it would appear in hundreds of TV and film productions, thousands of TV commercials and advertising campaigns. Millions of pounds would be generated by its existence - it would rival London and Stratford Upon Avon as the most visited place in Britain, the roads withing ten miles of the place would be permanently jammed and you'd need to take out a bank loan to pay for car parking or lunch.  But because there are loads of waterfalls in Iceland and it's not quite as high as Dettifoss, it's a bit part player on Iceland's 'Golden Mile' - which in itself is hardly known about unless you're there or preparing a 'visit Iceland itinerary.'

Gullfoss really is spectacular though, and you can park right in front of it as a casual stop off. It doesn't have the height of Dettifoss, but it's spectacular all the same. It's a kind of undulating watery staircase which twists and turns, each level wider and more thunderous than the next. Each tier in its structure forces the water to tumble ferociously into a series of convergent cascades that roar towards you as you stand watching the show, open mouthed. You feel it might almost reach out and scoop you in along the way if it can't draw you in with its magnetic power and terrible beauty.

At some point whilst on the road east from the city, you should be able to spot some of Iceland's notorious volcanoes: It's along this road (the ring road again) that after a couple of hours or so, if you glance to your left you'll see a mountainous range that includes the Eyjafjallajökull, that troublesome beast from a couple of years ago when the term volcanic ash cloud and cancelled flights all over Europe was first mentioned.  It's all part of a mini glacier area that you can visit. You can''t really see the volcano from the road unless it's blowing - and if it's blowing you probably shouldn't be in the neighbourhood - but you can take the gritty, pock-marked volcanic rocky tracks off the road (if you have a 4 wheel drive and there's little point in hiring a car that isn't) and stop off at the little cafe that sits bravely underneath it amid millions of charred chips that have rained down on this area for millennia.  It makes you think that maybe one day, in a thousand years time, the cafe and its customers might resemble a mini Pompeii - except ash preserved images of a Portakabin, three huddled coffee drinkers, half a dozen rickety chairs, and one car with over sized wheels wouldn't be quite as spectacular as the victims of Roman time Vesuvius.

An interesting country to visit and probably one I will re-visit sometime in the future - perhaps next time I'll go during the summer months and venture north - I have a feeling that if Iceland is a little bit like another world, the north part is another world all of its own.
  

Test Post - Blogger's Been Messing Today.

Now the creative writing courses I began back in 2011 have both finished I'm wondering what I should do next. I have managed to get the Open University Open degree which was my main ambition, if not the extent of it. During the courses I have been able to collect a small portfolio which I haven't been shy about putting into the outside world - though quite what the outside world will make of it or any part or parts of it is anyone's guess.

I had heard about the Costa Coffee short story writing competition a matter of hours before its cut off - I seem to recall it was something like 4 o'clock in the afternoon during one of the first days of August. Whenever it was, and I can't be precise, I had three hours to think of something to enter or (and I was tempted) to let it pass another year. The thing about the Costa Coffee competition is that it is free to enter - and that the business of entering is amazingly straightforward. Write something, create a file and put it on your desktop, fill out the simple CC form, upload the file and send it. Nothing could be simpler.  Providing of course that you have completed the first bit, the actual writing of something. 

Obviously I won't win. If I had spent the whole year on something nothing would change that fact - CC are doubtless deluged with entries from would be writers all of whom probably believe that they're at least in with a chance. I know how good some of these writers are having just spent two years with many of them as fellow students. And let's not forget the tutors - there's loads of them and most of them haven't been published, or if they have it's to very modest audiences through Kindle or very small publishers with very modest success. Yes they have Masters degrees and PHDs in creative writing, but at times like this, competition time, they aren't complacent enough to turn down an opportunity for a cool three grand as most of them are getting by on a living wage no matter what it says on their profiles. And let's not forget published authors - all of whom have hundreds of scripts kicking around that have rejected slips stapled to them.  A tweak here, a change there and presto! competition fodder - what's the difference between entering a rejected manuscript for a competition? Absolutely nothing. On reflection perhaps the only difference is that there is often second and  third prizes perhaps more, so it's redundant to think that this wouldn't appeal to all but the most successful writers out there.   

So the competition within the competition (if you will) is huge in size and in the scope of the ability of the entrants. Taking all this into account, I am not going to win, or anything like that. But it still feels satisfying to have something to enter, even if it's just a cobbled together patchwork of ideas with a theme running through it like a vein of hopefulness.  Enough to allow you to breathe breaths of relief after sending - a sense of geborgenheit that your hard graft is in the mix and maybe, just maybe, it'll claw it's way closer to the top of he heap instead of residing it's whole submitted life in the bowels of a hopeless pile. But I had a problem. The word count was 4000 and nothing I had was more than 2,500 - and I had less than four hours to either write something completely new, right off the bat, if you will allow me a writer's cliche (I'm listening to Test Match Special right at this moment, that's my excuse - and incidentally by the time I have finished this page - if I edit with any sense of pride - I'm fairly sure the whole of the England team will be out for less than 250 runs) or look to the work I have and start some judicious pruning, imaginative segueing, altering the ends and changing the beginnings. Then pulling together the disparate strands and unifying them in ways never before intended. making a new whole new world out of fragments born for very different purposes. And then from the grits and grains of a cutting room floor - dog-ends included, fashioned 4000 words into a trip spanning the first 18 years of my life.

It  was hardly surprising that the early stories and poems, and to an extent a lot of my later work, was based on my own personal memories - life writing peppered them, laced them, made them what they were - characters were based on me: they said the things I'd said, thought the way I had, saw, smelled, heard and thought what I had.  I'd woven these things into my fiction - I just needed to cut them out, strip them down, re interrogate them. Then, newly gussied, titivated and smartened, and re imagine them for a brand new role. 

And with minutes to go, I succeeded. 

Through the line.

A little bit embarrassingly I put this as an addendum on one of my writer job CVs  to show that I could write. It certainly isn't the best thing I've ever written, but I was in the awkward position of having to find something quickly (the deadline for the job was fast approaching and as an idea of adding a story only came to me at the last minute) and that it would be sufficiently decent despite my having no long term literary ambitions  for it. I might have been a misjudgment not to have added a better piece of work on the CV as I had absolutely no response (though I did note that there were well over 100 applicants for this particular job).  Anyway *flexes fingers - hears the cracks and lets them fizz expectantly over the keyboard.* And...                   

When we were about 8 and 10, always at bedtime, and providing she left her door open, I’d watch my older sister sitting on the side of her bed with her legs crossed, hunched like a crab, writing something into a red leatherette covered book. I'd watch her peering through her little Gandhi spectacles, writing in that round curly lettered handwriting of hers as her plaits dangled in front of her. Then she’d dart the page before locking the book with a little in-built padlock and attach the key to her constantly worn charm bracelet. My interest in this item grew from bored curiosity to a maddening need for answers. It was the lock that did it.

She had a money box too; like a miniature bank cash-box – an ugly black square thing that looked like it had been made from left over armoured plating from a tank factory, totally immune to the hairgrips and paper clips I’d used to try to get it open. But I knew the contents of the box amounted to little more than three apple snail shells, a folded picture of Cliff, and a couple of defunct farthings. Compared to the book, this was only of passing interest, fuelled mainly by brotherly menace.

 After several attempts at stealing this mysterious book thing from her desk and prising open the pages, nearly breaking my finger nails; and a failed attempt to obtain the key once by slipping her charm bracelet into my pocket after she’d left it lying around outside the bathroom, she informed me that it was her 'secret diary.’ After allowing for this exotic fact to sink in, I dug out my ongoing Christmas list and looked at the items listed, staring at it with new eyes. I then scratched out the number one entry: ‘Magnetic Robot ‘and inserted the words ‘lockable diary’ in its place.

            That Christmas, I got one. It wasn't lockable; instead it was a ‘Scout’s Diary,’ full of kids doing stuff I didn't do like tying knots and earning merit badges for good deeds. But it was a diary. My initial disappointment that it wasn't lockable waned when I found a loose floorboard in my lair and a secret cavity in which to stow it. I could now record my life in complete secrecy; I’d write in it every day and one day show it to an astonished world.

                                             The Diaries Begin

Thursday 18 October 1968.’ Dear diary, I felt poorly at school today and had to sit in the assembly hall with my sister. She was made to sit with me until I told the truth. Spangles is always suspicious if we say we feel ill in class.’ (Age 12)

     My sister sat and glowered at me. Her hair now brushed moodily forward, tumbling over her suspicious face where her girlish plaits once hung sweetly. I was her brother; therefore I was a liar as well as a thief. And here I was, lying my way out of lessons. She was relieved and skipped off to her friends when Mrs. Spangler, who made no pretence of her dislike of boys, exasperated, sent me home. The hobble home wasn’t a tough, sports injury limp, it was one of those clutching belly, ‘I feel fragile’ hobbles. I felt sick and depressed. One light however shone my tortured route home: it was a Thursday, and my new Tiger comic would be waiting for me.

              Very little interrupted my comic obsession, whether sadness, illness or pain. I’d stuck with my Tiger through crippling migraines, breaking off only to stumble to the bathroom to release the headache demon by inducing warm, sour, throat-scoring vomit that filled my nose with the sore-stink of acid. But, eyes still fizzing, my mouth sluiced and sweetened, I’d be back to the comic. Even when the words wavered, and the superheroes looked like smudges, I’d carry on. Comics were my solace and my comfort, a sublime private entertainment no matter how I felt. On new comic delivery day, I’d be almost paralysed with delight.

              Home at last, stumbling through the door, I looked across the hall and saw my Tiger, sleeping on the worn mat in the porch; pristine, lit by a dusty ray of late autumn sunshine, shimmering with seductive newness. I took it to my private lair, slinked away with my prize as a real tiger might, then sat on my bed to inhale the inky flavours of its print, its pictures and its promise. Wrestler Johnny Cougar would face another terrible adversary, Skid Solo would be racing against cads with superior technology, and the opposing football team would be out to nobble Roy of the Rovers. It didn't matter that I knew this. It was the familiarity I craved the most.

             And then the unthinkable happened. My interest waned. I was page flipping, not getting to the end of the stories. Suddenly Roy of the Rovers didn't seem quite as captivating. I closed the comic and lay down. Put on my pyjamas and sat in bed clutching my belly. I looked at the comic. The strength of my feelings for the comic now locked in battle with my pain. I picked it up again and read the cover. Then I was flipping again, backwards and forwards.  Finally, I dropped the comic to the floor and it flapped lifelessly to the carpet like a flattened hero. My eyes felt full.  Fluid rattled in my nose. I didn't feel like being brave. Further down, my appendix grumbled, preparing itself to explode and fire poison into my blood.

                                           Starting Work

     ‘Monday 11th August 1972. ‘Dear diary,  the reason I stood today in a carpenter’s workshop wearing my new blue bib and braces overalls with four corned beef sandwiches and a flask of tea with sugar, stowed in a tartan duffle bag slung over my shoulder, was because this was my first day as a proper adult.’ (Age 16)

          ‘Am I in the right place?’ I said to a fat man wearing a brown overall as I wandered into the yard. This turned out to be the foreman, a notorious hater of new apprentices, due to, as I later learned, their callowness and youth being disruptive to the old guard of grizzled ex national servicemen who preferred to work grumpily alone. The scrappy remains of his hair were tar black but greying bits were fighting through and looked as stiff as wire wool. Filaments of hair poked from his collar showing despite his bald head, hair was thriving everywhere else. Spiders legs crawled from his eyebrows and his heavy-lidded eyes were as brown as the bundles of teak stacked by the door. I noticed a stumpy pencil behind his ear, conveniently placed, like a cigarette stub.

        ‘I’m Mike,’ I said, putting out my hand as my dad had said I should.

       ‘Good for you,’ he said, ignoring my hand. ‘Stick that thing in the grub room and meet me by the mitre saws.’ I nodded. The 'thing' was my duffle bag. I was never that keen on it myself but never thought of it as a 'thing'. I looked at it now in a new light, my old PE duffle bag, a reminder of the recent cross-over from childhood. I didn't know what a grub room or a mitre saw was, but didn't want to ask too many questions so early on.

       I guessed the grub room was the place I first went into where two old guys were sat slurping muddy looking fluid from dirty looking flask cups and reading red topped newspapers. What the Hell a mitre was, was anyone's guess. The only one I could think of was the tall hat I wore in drama when I stole the role of Archbishop of Rheims from Melvin Foreacre after auditions, due to being slightly taller, and impressing Miss Strummer with my high, flat toned diction when reading aloud.  But now I was 16, with no school kids anywhere,  just old guys slurping coffee and talking about mitre saws and grub rooms and pursing their lips at pictures of naked women.

On my way home I’d mused about my strange first day in the timber yard. ‘It’s not wood,’ I was told, ‘It’s timber, it’s always timber’. I thought about those workmen and their odd insularity, particularly their Page 3 obsessions. If I’d wanted to see a naked female body, I thought, I only had to ask Samantha to take her top off, which she would, if her dad wasn't home, and if she was in the right mood. Sometimes I was even allowed to take her bra off, a devilish task of finger trembling complexity that reminded me of those obsessive travails with my sister’s lockable diary and money box about eight years earlier. I’d thought about my diaries as well. I was an adult now and thought perhaps I should end them.

                                                         Today…

         I’m sitting on the floor of my lounge reading through a box of really old diaries. There are boxes everywhere with some that date right up to today.  I’m reflecting on my obsessive nature and my need to write.  Once those story plots that burn within me are vented, I’ll make a start on my autobiography. Everything I need is right here. 

             

                             Copyright © @2013 (Michael J Ragan) All rights reserved

Little Fishes

I made a huge chore of learning to swim when I was young on account of being a 7 year old coward. 

Actually, like all human babies, I could always swim. My body understood the rudiments of breath holding and doggy-splash even though I didn't know it did. No one told me it was one of the purposes of survival and that God was smart enough to give us this basic survival tool - our lungs being well attuned to watery breath due to the whole getting born thing and I guess there always existed the possibility that you’d clamber from your soaked prison and be expected to do a bit of inelegant skinny dipping straight off. 

It’s a bit like the giraffe thing, they’re all born as walkers: shaky and uncertain, but solid enough to wobble into a safe area once they've slid into the world, instead of lying down and glistening with stickiness waiting to be eaten alive by any lions lounging in the neigbourhood. But having unlearnt it over the next 6 years or so, I had to find my fins all over again if I was ever to swim properly in the junior school swimming pool and receive the coveted width distance certificate. 

But as time progressed, and certificates and praises were received, I was one of the last ones still flapping about unable to swim without the aid of enough buoyancy assistance to keep a blacksmith's anvil afloat. Water wings pumped up so tight you could almost hear them squealing in agony, and floats shaped like little tombstones made of polystyrene that squeaked in your hands as you squeezed them between your meagre thighs to keep your bum poking upright out of the water. 

These floats had minds of their own, and lines of them could be seen making little bids for freedom all round the pool, leaping out of the swimmers thigh-grips and jumping into the air like shoals of passing river salmon. As time progressed the last little group, which included me, were told to dispense with the floats and make do with the arm bands. Reluctantly we did, which left us swimming about with crazy arm movements, scrunched eyes and legs that felt as if medicine balls were tied to our feet. But a momentum had been established and today the Z group were going from concrete lumps to slick mermaids. 

It was time for the great con called the 'graduated confidence process' (though they never told us it was called that). Each time we managed to shimmy-splash our way clumsily to one end of the width, Mrs Spangler would release a little air from our taut arm bands. Even with the smell of chlorine rinsing through my nostrils I could smell that rubbery wind as it hissed out of the valves that bubbled, and I heard them blow mini-raspberries at Mrs Spangler as she fumbled the caps back on. I envied them. Then more widths. Then more air releases before being told to give up the floats. A pile of them was collected by the benches and ended up looking like discarded teeth pulled from a giant's mouth. A pile of white flotsam. 

Up and down we swam, splashily; eyes tight and sore. Mouths, chemically dried, throats raw, noses numbed, lungs on fire; hearts flicking through our skinny chests like little gasping fish. 

By this stage I was happy, I'd made enough bragging progress to get out. One arm band looking sad and deflated, the other no longer in full bloom; the old pumped up look now consigned to the shrieking dwarves in the shallow end. I had achieved enough; the certificate would wait another week. I looked forward to getting out and enjoying the sublime comfort of dryness. But no, I wasn't allowed out. Miss Spangler was on a roll and no-one was getting out yet; no drownings to report - the great Health and Safety push was a long way away in the future, germinating in the back of someone’s mind - perhaps one of these little would-be eels struggling along with me. It would have taken a drowning to call the session to an end. Even Stuart Stickler’s tears weren't helping him: 

‘Stop being a baby!’ I heard Mrs Spangler shout as Stuart wiped a bubble of snot from one of his nostrils. I made a mental note: tears aren't working today.

More deflation visits to the side of the pool. I couldn't work out why they bothered as by now it didn't make any difference. I'd rest my elbows on the cold slippery surface, shaking and making spluttering comments that made no sense, and listening to the trebling echoes and shouts of encouragement all around me which blended with the stuttering snuffling and mad splashing coming from Stuart who was going the opposite way with a face that was part terror, part grim determination; then with another gurgled hiss from one of my arm bands I was tapped on the head and ordered back across again. I was swimming. I was a winner in everyone’s eyes, except my own as nobody had told me I’d been swimming for 10 minutes and attributing my success to two flat pieces of plastic and rubber that hung limp and breathlessly from my arms.

Edinburgh

To make after a lean period of writing I have used travel as inspiration more than once. In fact travel has over the years been an enormous inspirational source for me during different writing phases of my life. I remember when my ambition didn't go beyond writing a blog (long before doing anything with the OU) writing (what I believed to be at the time) hysterical accounts of holidays in Spain, France, and other parts of the Mediterranean. I must try and re access them and see what paltry disasters they actually were!

I'm just back from a short visit to Edinburgh  It was a very short visit but was almost unique in that I learnt very little about the place due to drinking far too much single malt on the first night I was there. Foolish, yes, but very Scottish so perhaps excusable though there were unfortunate consequences. The main one was that I felt ill most of the following day rendering the open top bus tour that we had promised ourselves pretty pointless - just felt too tired and queasy to take in the sights or listen to the commentary - which was, too be fair, rather poor.

Plenty of cobblestones have remained from the previous last couple of centuries  - I liked that. Tram lines exist, but no trams. Plenty of eateries - almost too many I would say. Some high quality coffee houses including Artisan Roast which was cool. The only problem I had was making a choice between Brazilian and Ethiopian coffee beans! In truth you simply could not hope to get away with asking for a cup of coffee as there are countless beans, variations of bean blends, and blends withing blends.  I think it's almost possible to go in and invent one for yourself by asking for certain mixtures - seriously turning the dimmest of dolts into a coffee connoisseur for the day.

Princes Street is so named so that you'll always call it Princess Street and entertain the locals with your ignorance.  And it's nothing special. There's great architecture all over the place - bits of it look like Georgian Bath - other bits like London. loads of iconic statues, luminaries like Robert Lewis Stephenson, David Hume the philosopher - Adam Smith the economist (OK Edinburgh is scratching around a bit - where there is no Churchill or Dickens you have to kind of make do). A cool castle - sitting high up at the end of the old town which I have to say caught my intention.  As did The Witchery: Boswell's old place apparently, said to be haunted by one of the thousand people who were burned for witchcraft on Castlehill in the 15th and 16th centuries. I liked that. One thing I did spot from the bus during a rare lucid moment was the hanging point now commemorated by plaques. Unfortunately I didn't take proper notice of where it was and couldn't begin to find it again once we were off the bus. Nor did I take note of the Heart of the Midlothian - I'm sure that was a different place -  where you're allowed perhaps even encouraged to aim a mouth full of spittle to demonstrate your protest against the prison toll booth that was once sited there and from where many unjust hangings were authorised. (something like that).

Travel does inspire but I feel it's a bit of an uphill battle for me today.