The Bear and the Bees – Page 4 – The Bear and the Bees

Polo and me

Polo and me. Well, that’s an oxymoron to start with. I don’t like horses and a sport that involves a bat (ok, mallet) and a ball is so far beyond me, I’m almost a natural. Watching me try apparently resembles a handcuffed crab with a blindfold on, so I don’t try anymore. It’s now officially summer in Victoria, but not so as you’d have known it today as it was close to 16 degrees. Last weekend it was much nicer weather and thanks to a friend in marketing, we had free tickets to the local polo and access to the clubhouse, which meant free food and booze.

I hadn’t been to the polo in years and actually, the last time I had had been was at Smiths lawn at Windsor in the UK where I had met Sarah Ferguson’s father. I’d like to claim I was one of the members there, but I’d actually been delivering some advertising banners on behalf of one of the sponsors. I scammed a glass of pimms and hung around for a while, soaking everything in until it became very obvious that I didn’t belong at all. This time, being Australian polo, it was a slightly more egalitarian affair, if you discount the folks that arrived by helicopter and the Porsches parked in the car park. There was a smattering of ‘names’ there and a well known TV presenter, who took a turn on horseback.

Looking down at the plebs, from the clubhouse

Not the national team, but nonetheless, a very keen group of young players

Between the chukka’s (they are seven minutes long and there are between four and eight of them in a game) it’s traditional to get out there on the pitch and ‘tread in’ the divots caused by the horses hooves. It’s hard to be doing it without thinking about Julia Roberts character in the movie Pretty Woman. The yanks call it ‘stomping the divots’ but ‘treading in’ is the proper British terminology according to a very knowledgeable friend who was an officer in the Welsh Guards.

A very sensible player riding up to the bar…

My well hidden but naturally larcenous nature came to the fore when I saw a couple of unaccompanied polo balls loafing around on the ground and I took a fancy to one. I exploited the competitive nature of my host and dared him to souvenir one for me. A little later, he slipped one into my hand with a request for some home made alcohol in exchange, which I will happily provide as soon as I can figure out what kind of redneck hooch ‘apple pie moonshine’ is. Not wanting to get caught with my swag and not having a pocket large enough, being the gentleman that I am, I slipped it into Mrs Jerry’s handbag.

I’d been lucky enough to have been at home for a few days and to have spent an hour or two as a garden slave to Mrs. Jerry (I was going to fib and say I’d spend days out there, sweating and toiling but I was caught typing this). She’s a really keen gardener; me not so much, but when cornered with no excuse or escape route, I’ll get out there and get my hands dirty. That said, I do love being in the garden but more specifically; sitting out there in the evening with a tall glass of my home distilled gin. A quick update on that score – from the first trial batch, where you really had to apply yourself, the second is a much more mellow affair and definitely worth drinking, without a major fear of organ failure.

A few days later, on the morning of the Ballarat rowing championships, we were standing admiring the garden and fine tuning the irrigation for the recent planting. The Bees were out and active, which was lovely to see as they hadn’t done very well over the winter. In fact, along with most local beekeepers, I haven’t had a honey harvest of note for several years and its been a job just keeping them alive. I’d been of a mind to try making mead, but you need an awful lot of honey and I just don’t have enough to spare.

Later that morning, I went out to nearby Lake Wendouree to see the rowing armed with a folding chair, a paperback, a lot of water and a couple of sandwiches. I found a shady spot and almost immediately had to loudly “excuse me” to several Chinese rowing fans who quite obliviously decided to stand right in front of me, in the 2 meters between my chair and the waters edge. The races started and as I was just by the finish line, I was in the position to see the rowers up close. I don’t know if you have seen the size of Australian school kids lately, but many of them; especially the farmers kids are huge. They look like blokes in school uniforms and I swear I saw one with a Ned Kelly beard! I almost felt sorry for #2 son, who mind you, is absolutely ripped and a very respectable 5’8″ (and still growing), but he looked like the cox compared to some of the others. I have to say that it didn’t seem to slow him down at all as his boat came first in both heats.

A victorious team rowing back to the clubhouse

Despite lathering on the sun screen and donning a large brimmed hat, I had managed to unaccountably burn my wrists, as they had obviously been exposed as I’d been holding up the book. I felt less silly when I saw the bare shoulders and necks of the rowers, as some of them had really been roasted. I’d really enjoyed the day out and although I was going to miss the following weekends ‘head of the lake’ competition, due to my next lot of travel, I was glad to have been out there and supported #2 son. This was the first trip home in a while where I hadn’t worked solidly on the house and it felt good. Stay safe.

Jerry.

Christmas Gin?

It’s always the time of the day/year to enjoy a glass of gin but this Christmas, I have decided to make my own. Distilling has been a long standing dream of mine, but I have never really found the time to get started and besides, bulk duty free Bombay Sapphire is quite affordable.

Things changed when my early Christmas present arrived from Portugal – a copper still! There is a small family business over there who make artisan stills and sundry beautiful copper pots and vessels. Mrs Jerry found the company on the internet and excitedly messaged me over a picture. I knew then that it* was meant to be.

*’it’ being hours of endless fun leading to days of unending hangovers, if I wasn’t careful.

My still arrived in two large boxes and as I was travelling at the time, Mrs Jerry unwrapped her and took pictures to send to me. As always, I couldn’t wait to get home, but there was now another reason…

*The main components just waiting for me*

We christened my rather beautiful still ‘Genie’ because she looks a little like the bottle in ‘I dream of Genie’ and also because she’d be almost as much fun as Barbara Eden… Due to the rather archaic Australian laws prohibiting home distilling in anything larger than a 5 litre container, she was cunningly labelled as a still for making ‘essential oils’ – but given that she has a 33 litre capacity, that would be an awful lot of peppermint oil…

The fabulous Barbara Eden with her own still…

Genie’s first test drive was last week when a friend and I sparked her up. I had made a ‘wash’ a week earlier to give the gin a base. The wash is the basic source for making alcohol and you can brew it from all manner of organic substances. When the base has stopped fermenting; the idea is that you boil it in the pot and the alcohol ‘heads’ start to vaporise at around 70 degrees. You don’t want that bit as it’s the stuff that gives you really nasty hangovers, it also smells of oily rubbing alcohol. Heaven is where you want to be and that’s found in the high 70’s and at about 78 to 80 degrees it’s called the ‘hearts’ of the distilling run. As the temperature rises out to 100 degrees C, the smelly ‘tails’ emerge from the still; promising a slow and painful death to anyone unwise enough to do anything other than degrease a tractor engine with them.

In a typically Heath Robinson moment, I decided that the best way to cool the vapour passing through the condensing coil in the small copper cylinder was to hook up an aquarium pump to tubes in the large red bucket, which was full of cold water. The closed cooling loop of water could then be chilled further with ice or freezer blocks. Primitive, but effective. We giggled like naughty schoolchildren as the first drops plopped slowly out of the pipe. It really was like magic!

The Irish have a long history of making illicit alcohol and they traditionally made it from potatoes, grain or sometimes even treacle. They spelt it Potcheen, Poitin or Poteen, probably depending on how many they have had. It was illegal over there until 1997, when reality persuaded the authorities to change the law so that the drink could be made and sold legally under licence. During a tour of the province in the early 80’s, I remember coming across a batch in a van that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had confiscated during a search operation in South Armagh, Northern Ireland. I watched the burly Policemen quietly test it by lighting a small amount to look for its lead content – yellow flame = bad, blue flame = good.

It obviously met their benchmark as they slipped it into the back of their vehicle, rather than pour it down the nearest drain (it could make pretty good drain cleaner apparently). The RUC men shared it out liberally at our ‘end of tour’ party and stood back to watch the havoc ensue. A little while after the first few glasses, I somehow ended up in a conga line, wearing a bloodied toga with a button sewn onto my head after having it cut open by the front teeth of a severed pigs head that was thrown across a room. Perhaps there’s a reason why people think that the Irish are always drunk or mad, or both…

We made our ‘wash’ from a lot of sugar, water and yeast, which is simple but surprisingly effective. Many commercial distillers also make their wash from sugar and water when they are making gin or vodka as its simple to work with. It’s also pretty cheap!

My first attempt at distilling the wash took Terri and I several hours and a quarter of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire (I was so taken with the whole gin making thing, that I decided to do some benchmarking) and that first run resulted in some 70% proof spirit that smelt a little bit like windex. I spilt a few drops on the table and when wiping it up, I noticed that the varnish on the table had bubbled slightly. Hmmm, perhaps my technique needed a little tweaking?

Leaning over the collecting jug, I felt my face start to tingle and my eyes watered copiously from the vapours, so I knew I was in the right ball park. Another run through Genie and after we had added some aromatic botanicals, we had an 80% proof London gin with only the slightest bouquet of methylated spirits. Obviously, unless you want to lose your eyesight and probably most function in some pretty major organs, you don’t drink something that strong and I watered ours down by volume, with water to a manageable 42% Most gins are somewhere around 38% to 45%, so I felt that ours was safe enough. We mixed up a modest G&T and gingerly sipped it, not really knowing what to expect. Not bad for a first try, I thought. There was certainly some refining needed, but it was gin and thankfully not a different kind of poison.

Apparently you don’t age gin in barrels like you do with other kinds of spirit, you use glass or stainless steel, so I decanted mine into a glass demijohn and in order to cut the time needed by around a third, after tasting it again, I placed it into the freezer. I read that this also helps rid the gin of the slight metho smell. If it doesn’t, it’ll go back in the still for a second try. We’ll see what happens.

Happy New Year.

Jeju and the sea

Jeju island is about 90km off the southern tip of Korea. It’s volcanic – not with any live volcano’s sadly, but it’s covered with craters, lakes and waterfalls. It’s very beautiful, has more electric cars than the rest of the entire country and they are planning to be carbon free by 2020.

I have been here a couple of times before but the first time; fifteen years ago was an eye opener to the seedier side of life here. I had been working on an anti counterfeiting investigation that led to a Korean national living in the Philippines. It transpired that he had substantial business interests on Jeju. There’s a lot of casinos here and along with casinos, there tends to be organised crime.

That fine gentlemen turned out to not only be (allegedly) involved with counterfeiting and smuggling of duty free, but also the (alleged) smuggling of people. There had been a steady stream of transvestite performers and singers shipped out of the Philippines and onto the cabaret circuit and some of them had never returned home. However, that’s a story for another day. My current task wasn’t any easier emotionally, but it was on a much smaller scale and so I had the time to get some exercise and check out the city in the daylight. The first time here, I hadn’t seen much daylight.

During my morning drag (no pun intended) around the waterfront contemplating life, I noticed that they were going to some serious trouble to protect the coastline. There were large barges unloading huge concrete tetropods and then stacking them in intricate patterns along the sea wall.

I watched the floating cranes placing the alien looking shapes on piles of large rocks in the harbour. The result was actually quite beautiful and it provides a kind of artificial reef for the fish and other sea life. This kind of coastal protection is ubiquitous in some locations, such as the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa where there are so many, it’s actually hard to find a stretch of unaltered coastline near the cities. I found that the fishing boats were moored just around the bend of the harbour, having returned from sea in the early hours of the morning. Very practically, the nets have floating lights attached to their booms in order to attract the fish but, also to make it easier to find and retrieve the catch. It’s just as well because at night, there’s almost an unbroken line of fishing boats across the horizon.

Jeju’s capitol is quite small actually; it’s more like a big town and you can tell that the place revolves around the sea. The fishing boats are close to restaurants with strange looking sea creatures in glass tanks all along the seafront. The side streets around the harbour are full of stalls, where seafood is sold almost off the back of the boats.

*Calamari anyone? – fresh out this morning*

Glancing out to sea again, I was a bit alarmed when I saw bobbing heads moving close to the barges, thinking at first that they might be seals stealing crab pots, as they were close to small buoys. As I looked closer, they weren’t seals, they were skin divers who were perilously close to the boats. They do wear flourescent vests, but clearly OH&S rules in Korea aren’t that stringent…

Aside from the fishing that is done from boats, there’s a traditional method of gathering produce from the sea by hand. It’s done by the Haenyo divers. They are all ladies, most of them in their 80’s and they go out everyday with no specialist equipment – just wet suits, fins and masks.

They are seriously impressive free divers and I tried counting the seconds when they duck dived under the surface. Minutes seemed to go by before they popped up with armfuls of seaweed, oysters, abalone and clams. In order to get their swag to shore, they drag a floating basket behind them on a length of rope suitable for the depth they will be diving to. The other end is tied around their waist, where they also carry a small knife.

Haenyo Free divers (an official photo)

These tough ladies have known each other since they were very young, most are related in some way and you can hear them bickering like kids at each other. The day after spotting them in the water, I went out early to see if I could catch them before they started work. I found the steps they were using and hung around to watch them go into the water. They noticed my white legs in my shorts and on what was a fairly brisk morning, one clearly made a ribald comment, to which the others laughed uproariously. Another, who was probably the trouble maker in the group indicated to me that I might like to join them in the water but all I could think of was the ‘not so nice’ mermaids in Peter Pan so I shook my head and bowed politely – much to their delight.

The Haenyo divers are so famous that they even have a ‘little mermaid’ style statue on the waterfront.

Later that day and once my work was done, I needed to clear my head so I headed out along the seafront again to find dinner. Obviously, it was going to be seafood of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what. I didn’t really care as I knew it would be fresh and fresh seafood with cold beer can’t really be beaten. I was waved into one of the restaurants and essentially told what I was having. I had some wonderfully oily mackerel fresh out of the tank and onto the bbq.

I like Korea, the food and its people. And their beer, I really love their beer.

Armistice day

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month holds special meaning for many. It’s also when barely known, if at all, but never forgotten relations and total strangers who gave their lives for freedom are commemorated. Commemorated, not celebrated, because who could celebrate something like 67, 000, 000 people worldwide dying in the first and second world wars alone? You can somehow celebrate the bravery of those who fought and died to protect their Country and their mates, but how can you do anything other than mourn the tens of millions of non combatants who ceased to exist as a result of war?

The word ‘armistice’ comes from the latin word ‘arma’ meaning ‘arms’ and ‘statism’ meaning ‘a stopping’ At this time of every year there are services and parades that help people born almost three generations since the cessation of hostilities of world war two remember that sacrifice. This is an account of my family, my wife’s family and others experience of conflict close to where I grew up. There wouldn’t be a family in the UK without a similar story.

As a child in England, I remember the parades in the village I grew up in through my years spent as a cub, scout and sea scout, where we marched proudly to the music played by the boys brigade band, we fidgeted through the last post being played at the local memorial and we flicked boiled sweets at each other during the following church service.

I bought into the whole Baden Powell legend of how scouts were used during conflicts to perform reconnaissance against the enemy in order to gain a military advantage. As a boy, I day dreamed during the countless hours I spent crawling through the predawn damp, misty woodland with my air rifle hunting rabbits that I was actually a soldier, sneaking up on an enemy who was about to attack my unit. By means of several well placed shots and a last minute berserker bayonet charge into the middle of them, I had defeated the enemy, survived the winning of the Victoria cross and had been sent back to Blighty to convalesce from several nasty looking, but non disabling wounds to the admiring glances of the young ladies in the village. I think the rabbits died laughing at me…

In the first world war, a young local man whose family had lived in the English village I grew up in had been killed in an artillery barrage whilst serving in France. His bereft parents had created a memorial park in his name so that he would never be forgotten. His name was Lieutenant William Lisle Rockley MC

William Rockley is commemorated beautifully in a peaceful location near the river that couldn’t be more different from the place where he ceased to physically exist, but he lives on in the memories of his family and villagers like me.

In Mrs Jerry’s family, her paternal grandfather Sidney was too old for military service in the second world war, but he served his country as an air raid warden and rode motorcycles throughout the blitz in order to lead ambulances through the bombed out streets. He was also an accomplished Jazz musician but tragically, he was killed when he was knocked off his bike by a drunk driver, leaving a widow and orphaned children.

He was obviously very proud of the motorcycle

Sidney’s widow Kate met a gentle man named Louis at the British Legion and she married him. Louis eventually became our village lollipop man (a crossing guard for the children coming home from school) and when he told Kate that he’d been a “conchie” or Conscientious Objector during the war, she thought that he was very brave and his name was the last one on her lips as she died. I don’t know his story, or what happened to him as a result of his beliefs and I wish I did, but it wouldn’t have been good as many CO’s had a very hard time of it in military prison. Others served very bravely as stretcher bearers and medics.

Mrs Jerry’s maternal grandfather Stanley, was married to Mabel and he was classified as unfit to serve as a result of childhood TB. He drove trucks up and down the country delivering food and other essentials. When Nottingham was bombed, the house next door was destroyed, with the family inside.

Mrs Jerry’s late father Peter, had spent the blitz in an air raid shelter and he did his national service in the RAF Regiment. It was the end of the war and he’d won a round the world trip as a bodyguard to an Air Marshall for being the best recruit. His experiences in Singapore, where there were still a few lost souls from the recently liberated Changi Prison, never left him. He was a very special man and I miss him.

Thats Peter, just left of centre in the front row.

In my own family, my paternal grandfather Charles was part of the non combatant ‘land army’ of workers who fed the country and provided the means to fuel the desperate fighting not that far away to the east. As I got older, I learned that he was probably what would have been unkindly called a ‘spiv’ during the war. He was certainly a farm worker and later a trader of necessities but not necessarily of luxury items.

My Grandfather Charles, selling his wares

My grandmother Violet and their young family no doubt suffered every bit as badly from the deprivations following WWII, but I did sense his regret whenever the subject of the war came up in conversation; as if he was embarrassed by not having medals to wear on Englands most special days. That generation was never openly affectionate to each other in public and for me, he wasn’t easy to know; nor was he an obviously warm individual, but I did get the impression that he was at least fond of me in his own way. Grandfather Charles attended the remembrance services but being a teetotaller, he avoided the groups of old soldiers who frequented the Royal British Legion bar afterwards. Perhaps part of the reason for that avoidance was survivors guilt?

Many years after the Falklands war (which I missed as I was just a bit too young and was in the process of joining up), I attended a reunion of my old Royal Marine Commando unit. Most of those attending the reunion had bravely served in that conflict and there really was a special bond between them. All of them, in their teens and early twenties at the time had sailed away, not knowing if they would return or in what state they would be in if they did. The organiser of the reunion read out King Henry the V’s speech (as written by Shakespeare ) before the dinner. That speech encapsulates the inferred shame and guilt perfectly.

“Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day”

Although I eventually did see active service with them, it was hard to not feel shame that I hadn’t been there with them on their St Crispin’s day.

My maternal grandfather Ernest or Ernie, did fight. He had a chestful of medals and who never walked past an open pub door when he could enter, was the total opposite. His war was initially fought in Italy, Africa and Palestine with our local regiment; the Sherwood Foresters, and in later years with anyone who hadn’t served in uniform or who got in the way of his drinking.

Ernie’s ‘St Crispin’s day’ was at the battle of Anzio in Italy. He told me a few stories over the years with tears in his eyes when he was ‘in his cups’ but the story I remember most was when told me that he was too proud to ask for compassionate leave when his first wife, my grandmother, died and instead he went AWOL for the funeral. This resulted in him being busted back to private from acting sergeant.

I was once given an old car of his, an Austin Allegro, which had done less than 1000 miles in all the years that he owned it. The Allegro was certainly one of the ugliest cars ever to have been built outside of the soviet union and it even had a square steering wheel, but it was in pristine condition at the front, on the drivers side and at the rear. The nearside was a mass of scrapes and dents gained during his daily obstacle course back from the pub. I’m afraid that I inherited his affection for the bottle and his parlous mental state, but luckily not his habit of drunken driving.

The Austin Allegro – described as one of the worst cars of all time. But it was free…

When I was serving, my grandfather liked to talk about me to his mates at the pub and often said that we were the only ones in the family who “were keeping the war going” At the time, I was very flattered, but as I matured I became aware that he wasn’t the nicest of men to those closest to him and I only saw him on the rare occasions that I wasn’t overseas and on leave when both of us were usually hell bent on our next drink. When I left the service, he hardly ever spoke to me again. There was that inferred shame that I had left the ‘family business’.

I often wondered what a one to one meeting between my grandfathers would have been like. One, in the others eye’s, a teetotal ‘Arthur Daley’ like character, metaphorically (as he was quite short) looking down his nose and the other, a drunken bully swaying slightly as he knowingly asked of the other where he had served in the war. Conflict, pride, guilt and alcohol can make arseholes of decent men.

Right now, I’m sitting in Singapore at two minutes to eleven writing this and I’m feeling quite emotional. There are so many men who never made it to my age and got to live, love, marry and have children. I did and I’m a lucky man.

The streets of Jamnagar

This week, I find myself back in the far north west of India, in the state of Gujarat. As I have lamented previously, it is both vegetarian and ‘dry’ – neither of which do me any harm. Gujarat is the home state of Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, so it does not suffer from a lack of investment and in the area surrounding the provincial city of Jamnagar there are several refineries, one of which claims to be the largest in the world. Another has just recently been purchased by a Russian corporation and the locals are delighted because they see that as effectively being protection against being bombed by the Pakistani’s. The massive investment also means that unemployment is low and upon first examination, it seems to be a little wealthier and better served for amenities than most provincial town and cities.

I’m here to visit and learn how our project people manage multi million euro projects with a largely illiterate workforce, navigate political self interest, get the job done and still stay on the side of the angels. If there’s anything that I have discovered, it is that the Indian people have a fierce pride in their country, a wry appreciation of its failings and a willingness to defend it against all comers. That’s not a bad thing for any country. Most people know that cricket is India’s national sport and it is very close to being a religion. You’ll see people watching it on television, playing it on the hard baked playing fields at schools and on the litter strewn communal areas in the villages. I can barely hit a fly with a rolled up newspaper, so there no possibility of me trying to bond with the locals and join in but I have been invited, more than once.

A rickshaw driver accosted me on my morning drag today and said in very good english, “where are you from Sir?” I usually refrain from engaging in what is certain to be an attempt for my custom but in the interests of ‘talking to strangers’ (explained in a previous post), my well intentioned attempts not to be an alleged moody bastard, I wished him good morning and claimed ‘England via Australia’ as my origin. His eyes lit up and he recited the names of what must have been the entire current first XI for both countries. I say ‘must have been’ because I have no cricketing knowledge much past the memory that a man nicknamed ‘Beefy Botham’ had played for England, another named Shane Warne had shagged for Australia and that a fellow named Sachin Tendulkar had dominated Indian cricket through much of the nineties and noughties. When I ‘tossed’ his name out there, he reverentially waggled his head and said “ahh, the little master” which was India’s affectionate nickname for the diminutive cricketer. I dodged the jet of betel juice laden spit that he expelled on the ground as punctuation and left him to his reverie.

*Goats, just like my Dogs, have to climb and survey their territory.*

Rickshaw drivers routinely sound their horns at traffic, wandering livestock, other road users to warn, chide, attract and sometimes, just for the hell of it. They always seem to drive in the outside lane, which given your average streetscape of overflowing humanity is perhaps not a bad idea. I do try to ignore the drivers repeated attempts to get me to hop in as I am trying to exercise, but they rightly think that it’s strange for a middle aged sweaty white man to be be wandering the streets just after dawn and that I must be suffering from some sort of mental affliction. Speaking of the streets, if you have never been to India, they can be quite confronting and I rarely go wandering in Bombay or Delhi anymore without a good reason. The ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ vision of the Bombay underbelly is not entirely inaccurate and I have seen more than a few disfigured children begging on the streets. If you look carefully, you can usually pick out a Fagan like character lurking in the background, watching every rupee that is thrown onto the ground from cars and after a frenzied scrap between the young beggars, the coins quickly disappear into their grubby clothes, only to be seized later.

*A rickshaw drivers family getting ready for the day.*

Indian streets are much more than thoroughfares, they are living rooms, dying rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, farmyards, workshops and sometimes, even morgues. Poor peoples whole lives can pass living on the streets. Thankfully, I haven’t seen a body by the side of the road for a while but they don’t usually stay on the streets for long anyway as there is still a thriving trade in skeletons. In the mid 80’s, India reportedly exported around 60, 000 full skeletons a year to the US. According to the Chicago Tribune, that was enough for every medical student in the developed world to buy their own bone box for $300. I was also interested to read since the trade has been ‘regulated’ that the middleman is a Singaporean businessman. Along with middlemen selling landmines and other armaments.

On a brighter note, I also seem to have been very lucky with my hosts in India recently and this time was no exception. My colleague Vipul took it upon himself to overfeed me at every opportunity; marvelling that at my age (only 7 years older than him), I still had most of my hair and that unlike him, I was actually taller than my circumference. He actually suggested that such relative leanness was unhealthy, which I smiled at, as on this visit, I learned how you could actually put on weight with a vegetarian diet when you really try, as almost every dessert in India seems to have a pound of sugar in it. Vipul insisted that I try everything and as he finished off what I couldn’t, nothing went to waste. I also learned that later that evening, we were to go to the nine day long Navratri festival in the city. He said that there would be lots of dancing and many, many people there and that his friends wanted to meet me.

One of the colourful and very energetic dancers at the festival. Picture courtesy of Gujarat Tourism.

I have a self conscious horror of being selected to dance in public at touristy events and I was tempted, at that moment to fake a seizure and choose a night in a local hospital, rather than find myself dressed up in a Bollywood style costume and be paraded around. After rummaging in my bag for some kind of disguise and failing miserably, I did what every foreigner who visits here must do and I surrendered to India.

And no, that’s not me.

The dancers were incredibly athletic, spinning round and round in the arena for what seemed like hours to a hypnotic beat. It reminded me of the depression era marathon dancers, but with the contestants here being on LSD and speed. Vipul introduced me to his many friends and explained that the shiny new scooters that were displayed around the ring were actually prizes for the best dancers. No wonder they were trying so hard then.

Thankfully, no sparkly costumes in my size appeared out of nowhere and I was ushered through the crowds, who were rather embarrassingly parted by armed Policemen to allow us into the VIP seating area.

*The rather distant view from the VIP platform*

The thing with Indian VIP areas is that they are awfully obvious, being raised up, brightly lit and the nobs sitting on them preen whilst they are minutely scrutinised by everyone else in the crowd. Feeling rather fraudulent, I sat down in the middle of a double seat, provided purely for me and leant over to the neighbouring sofa to speak to Vipul, who by this time had assumed the pose of a Roman Senator waiting for his grape to be peeled. Excluding our small cameo, the show was certainly spectacular and very much enjoyed by everyone in the crowd. My head started to droop around midnight and not wanting to shame my host, I suggested that we return to the car before the crowds moved to the exits.

The next morning, we toured the site and I glad handed the local staff. I was asked to plant a tree, which once again had me feeling decidedly like fake royalty. I discovered that that it wasn’t just me as every visitor is asked to do the same as an environmentally sound gesture of land rehabilitation. In the local village there were many cows wandering around and of course, I knew that for Hindus, cows are considered to be sacred and that mistreating one would get you into a lot trouble indeed. I have even heard of car drivers who have hit one being beaten to death by an enraged mob.

*About to be mugged by a two bodied Bull*

People toss their scraps out just for them but sadly in the towns they have become effectively omnivorous, grazing on refuse piles full of plastic and paper as most vegetation at ground level has disappeared. Some kind people will carry large bunches of greenery a long distance through the dry and brown countryside as snacks for the local Zebu cows and you’ll often see them garlanded in the festive seasons and their milk being used in Hindu worship. I mentioned that in Australia we also have a very similar looking animal with the distinctive fatty hump behind the head. After explaining that they were bred specially for their drought and tick resistance and that Australian cattle were exported all over the world it began to dawn on me that I was approaching what could only turn out to be a car crash of a comment alluding to what fantastic tasting steaks they made. I tried to walk back my obvious train of thought before retreat became impossible but Vipul kindly put me out of my misery by commenting that in Australia, the cows weren’t Hindu…

Back on the road again tomorrow.

Talking to strangers

Don’t talk to strangers. This is, of course, the first thing that you are taught not to do and it’s probably the only early lesson that I paid attention to and took to heart. As a result of this I have occasionally being accused of being a moody bastard, because as I got older I have become been a little reticent about stepping outside my comfort zone when it comes to social situations where I don’t know anyone. If I find someone interesting, I’ll probably spend the evening talking to them, rather than attempting to chat to everyone. Don’t get me wrong, I can work the room in a business environment when there’s a need for it, but if there isn’t a specific reason for me to be sociable, I’m probably not going to be overly so.

This reticence has been noted and remarked upon by certain members of my family, so I do occasionally try to prove them wrong; usually when I’m on holiday and no one knows me, but that’s when it comes back to bite me.

I had really relaxed and stepped outside of my comfort zone by the time we got to the desert. Mrs. Jerry was attending an ‘Up with People’ reunion just outside of Tucson. It had been 35 years since she had seen some of the people there but with the wonders of social media, they’d mostly kept in touch. She’d been out to see them a couple of times in years since her original tour, but this was the first time we’d been invited to go along. The luxurious JW Marriott resort had around 750 rooms, all full of over excited alumni. The volume in the bars was like being on a runway at an air show, because when Americans are happy, bless them; they like you to know it.

The none too shabby pool area at sunrise

The resort really was surrounded by the desert.

There was no chance hiding away here and it was lucky that the over excited ones were so lovely. So much so that Ms. Jerry Junior drank the Kool aid and signed up for next years intake of the non affiliated community organisation that sings and dances its way around the world. She’s way more sociable than I am and she sang her way through the wee hours with Mrs. Jerry and her cast mates. I generally drank Gin and smiled a lot. Or was it drank a lot of Gin and smiled? I can’t quite remember.

I also wandered off into the desert in the early hours of each morning before it became inhumanely hot and anyone else got up. Clearly you expect to see Cacti in a desert, but as a kid, I only saw the miniature versions that you could buy from shopping centres in the UK on Mothers day. Some of these bad boys were over 6 metres tall and the Sonorus Cactus doesn’t even grow ‘arms’ until they are around 60 years old.

This one looks like a surrendering Pingu (in my overactive imagination…)

This is a ‘Teddy Bear’ Cactus. Some nut cases think they look soft and fluffy. Believe me, they aren’t.

A Barrel cactus. Just about to flower. They aren’t cuddly either.

In terms of wildlife, there are Lizards galore in the desert and although I didn’t see a live one (there was a 4 mm tall one spread out on the road), there are Gila monsters and Rattlesnakes around as well, according to the signs around the resort. I also saw a Tarantula whilst taking the kids for a nighttime stroll around the walking trails.

Not poisonous, but they’ll give you a painful bite apparently.

People do live quite comfortably out in the desert in Tucson, as evidenced by some of the luxurious pads near the resort. In the past, settlers did build their ranches out in the valleys and used them as hunting lodges (there are mule deer around, although I’m not sure how they find water) and some people lived for many years with the heat of the desert day and the cold of the night. I found one ruined hacienda on a walking trail, that had been built from the local stone.

You’d really need a good fire on some nights out here.

At the end of the week there was a big show with members of various casts dating back to the 60’s performing some of the songs from their years tour. I loved it and actually wished that I was a bit more musical. I can see why Mrs. Jerry had such a good time and why our daughter got the bug and auditioned. I also really enjoyed being out in the desert and although it wasn’t exactly the desert of Lawrence, it was fascinating and I could have spent days exploring. Hopefully I’ll get back there one day.

The next stage of the holiday was Lake Tahoe. Our lovely friends had arranged a hotel for us right on the edge of the lake. We were two families intent on partying as much as our sometimes embarrassed kids would allow us to and Tahoe is a good place for it. We had been before, when there was snow on the ground and enjoyed the fantastic ski runs, I’d even been cross-country skiing with Jerry Junior, who is now in his mid 20’s, in a back pack. This time however, there was no snow. Well, actually there was, but it was right on top of the mountains that ringed the lake.

Someone else’s snap of Emerald bay, just around the corner from where we stayed.

Most of the days were spent swimming and paddling around the lake and the evenings were spent partying. It turns out that Marijuana is legal in this state and obviously the folks in the apartment below us had purchased a large amount for the holidays. Every evening they blazed up a doobie and we sat on the balcony above deeply tolerating their fragrant second-hand smoke.

Which incidentally, went down well with the sunset.

One morning, feeling slightly jaded, we walked across the road to a diner for breakfast. I resolved that this would be another day where I would step outside my comfort zone and that I’d talk to strangers again.

I made eye contact and said “good morning” to a young man carrying a garbage bag who was walking toward me. He turned on his heel and fell in alongside me saying “My name is Anthony, do you know the bible is coming true?” I ignored the sniggers of my family behind me and looking at the bag in his hand, which as this was the US, no doubt contained a firearm of some sort. I resisted the temptation to come back with a smart answer and instead introduced myself. He held out his hand to shake and all of a sudden I noticed that he had rubber gloves on and that there was a strong smell of bin juice. He’d obviously been dumpster diving in between delivering parables from the bible and was prowling the streets in search of converts for whatever cult he belonged to. Oh, how the others laughed…

The next morning I was crossing at the same junction holding the blonde and leggy Ms. Jerry Jnr’s hand when a familiar voice yelled out “IS THAT YOUR DAUGHTER? THE BOOK OF LUKE SAYS THAT THE WAGES OF…” – not really wanting to hear all about the wages of sin from Anthony, but being very, very tempted to point out that the quote was actually from ‘Romans’ I just waved and accelerated away. The family and our friends just about lost it. Serves me right for talking to strangers…

Rugby and Sea Lions

In this post, I am in the second stage of the holiday; between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. I get to see the Rugby 7’s and quite a bit of the city whilst wandering around the shops with the pups.

The beautiful copper covered Zoetrope “flat iron” building in North Beach https://www.cafezoetrope.com/introduction

Following an amazing few days in Yosemite, we high tailed it out of the park and away from the smoke as more and more of the area burned. At the time of writing, some four weeks later, the fire, which is now referred to as ‘the Ferguson fire’ has only just been brought under control and over 94,992 acres burned. The situation was so bad, the fire actually grew by 8,000 acres in one day alone. Sadly, parts of the Yosemite national park were also closed for several weeks to tourists according to the National Park Service. But, at least we got to experience a small part of the park.

The size of the fire, with half dome – the location of our campsite at the 2 o’clock position

After barely time enough to return the hire car and do the laundry, we were into the San Francisco 7’s. My friend Alan is the rugby fan and not only used to play but can also hold a sensible conversation with other people about tactics and comparing the individual players. Sadly, it’s all I can do to remember the beer order and transport it back to the stand without spilling it. This is my first return to watching 7’s rugby having been the subject of a domestic ban following the Hong Kong 7’s some years before. It wasn’t so much that I had been badly behaved, but some photographs of me looking rather dishevelled had appeared on social media and it was felt that I had better not go again. I had no serious expectations of avoiding a similar expose this time, but I was in slightly more polite company and I felt that the rugby might feature more largely than the partying.

The matches, which are 7 a side and last for 7 minutes per side are fast and furious and are watched by a surprisingly large number of fans who travel around the world to watch the series. The San Fran 7’s was held at the AT&T stadium at the home of the San Francisco Giants, the local major league baseball team and their stadium is located right on the bay in the south beach neighbourhood.

Approaching the stadium and feeling very excited.

As you can see, the ball park doesn’t look too bad and during the baseball season the yachties sail right up to the stadium and try to retrieve any balls hit right out of the park and into the bay.

Taking a quiet moment to contemplate how much I love beer on the edge of San Francisco bay

Having unsuccessfully played ball sports at any level, I am always impressed by anyone who has reasonable hand eye coordination and can chase a ball without falling flat on their face. Don’t get me wrong, I can shoot a running rabbit or a flying pheasant, but can I hit a ball with a stick or catch one whilst on the run? Nope, not a chance.

As you can see, the 7’s is quite well attended…

Rather like at the Hong Kong 7’s, there are a number of characters who all vie for the cameras eye and to end up on the giant screen. They generally dress up and play up and I was pleased to see that there was a ZZ Top looking cowboy in assless denim chaps.

He got rid of the chaps later and happily danced around just in his denim jocks, becoming more and more sunburned as the day went on.

But not for this cowboy I suspect…

There was hugely muscular bare chested Samoan with long crimped hair and a flower behind his ear, doing a traditional dance every time his team scored and a bare chested man in an avocado suit with his pot belly representing the seed wandering around. I’ll spare you pictures of them.

The one thing you don’t want to do at the 7’s is fall asleep in the stands. One tired and emotional young man, who had been drinking the ‘almost beer’ that some Americans drink and he had a power nap. Graciously, the crowd had a whip around to find empty beer cups to keep him company.

By the time he woke up, the tower was three times as high and he received a huge cheer from the crowd.

Australia was out pretty quickly unfortunately, but England made it to the finals only to be beaten by New Zealand (33 to 12) clearing the competition out of the way, NZ also won the womens 7’s after beating France.

The next day, the pups took the train back in to the city and I hired bicycles so we could ride up the waterfront and on to Pier 39 to see the Sea Lions loafing around in the sun. The original intention was to ride up and over the Golden Gate bridge, but we struggled to fit that in with various shopping requirements- there’s a great Levis shop there… Apparently the Sea Lions arrived just before an earthquake in the bay area in the late 80’s and have stayed, in fluctuating numbers ever since. They make a lot of noise and are pretty smelly, but everyone loves them.

No sun screen needed, just throw fish…

Lake Tahoe came next (or thereabouts) and courtesy of our lovely friends, we had somewhere special to stay. More later.

Jerry.

Sorry, not sorry

Recently, Mrs Jerry and I travelled to the US with two of the litter for a holiday. For me it wasn’t an especially long flight at 17 hours, but aside from being fed up with sitting down at the blunt end of the plane, I knew it would potentially be challenging for the rest of the mob, so I used my many frequent flyer points with Qantas to upgrade us all. That went down very well and the pups made the most of the very attentive attendants who were happy to run back and forth with drinks, noodles and chocolates as we snoozed.

The best part of a Qantas flight is and has always been the staff and not usually the planes themselves, which on the long haul flights, are often quite tired. The attendant was at pains to point out that although the planes were pretty ‘well worn in’ (see the in flight repair picture below), the engines were in GREAT shape…

Foil wrappers from the meals and their sticky labels holding the patches in place…

We all arrived in pretty good order and contrary to our expectations of being strip searched and genetically tested to makes sure we had no Mexican heritage at the border, we made a smooth transition through immigration and customs to the arrival area. I noticed that the usual crowd of happy Latino workers who usually ‘bus’ the luggage trolleys and keep everything running smoothly were missing and I mentioned it to one of the ground crew in passing “sorry about that” he said, “we’ve lost a lot of our casual staff recently as they’ve all been deported”. Without having time to ponder that, our lovely friend Alison (herself a British export) was there, she picked us up and ran us all out to Los Altos, a very nice town in the hills.

Within seconds and totally unbidden, she laid into President Trump and his behaviour (according to the media, he’d been disrespectful to HM) during the recent UK visit. That really wasn’t necessary of course, because I know all about having embarrassing ‘uncles’ and aside from the scale of the presidential problem and the small issue with control of thermonuclear weapons being in the hands of a narcissist, surely things couldn’t be that bad?

Our plans for the long-awaited holiday included several days partying and shopping in Los Altos, then driving out to Yosemite national park, hiking around to see the sights, popping over to Lake Tahoe and then slipping back into the San Francisco to watch the rugby 7’s. I can’t play to save myself, but I am fairly proficient at the apres ski, so to speak. We then had a week down at resort outside Tucson, Arizona to dry out – “It’s a dry heat, so they say…”. I’m going to break the various phases down in a couple of posts, as it would be a bit tedious to describe it all in one hit.

After an ‘interesting’ drive; with me being tired, slightly hung over and driving on the wrong side of the road, we arrived at the visitor centre at the park entrance. Amongst all the signage warning against feeding the wildlife we discovered that there were significant forest fires burning at the Southern end of the park and that because of road closures, we wouldn’t be able to reach our booked and paid for accommodation outside of the park without an extra four hour drive. The wonderfully helpful gentleman in the park office went above and beyond the call of duty to suggest alternatives and after battling with an awful central booking service phone line, he managed to get us into a ‘glamping’ site within the park, thereby avoiding us sleeping in the car and probably being eaten by Yogi. The visitor centre helpfully screens a video showing a very large bear smashing its way into a car and trashing the inside in its hunt for food. It actually looks over its shoulder at the camera with a wry expression that very clearly says’ f**k you, I’m a bear, what are you gonna do about it?’

Part of half dome. The part we could actually see…

Checking into the tented village at ‘half dome village’ in Yosemite was a reasonably painless experience, although all the signs about locking your food away from the bears were fairly sobering. Apparently several people a year are either eaten by bears, washed away by the swollen rivers in spring or they fall off cliffs – probably while taking selfies. The person checking us in gave us a safety brief and upon deducing that we were originally from the UK was also considerate enough to offer another apology about the smoke and state that she ‘hadn’t voted for him’ upon our departure to the tent. She didn’t say why, but we did hear the term “Trump dumpster fires” mentioned. I smiled dutifully then, but I couldn’t quite figure out how the 45th President had found the time to toss matches around in rubbish bins, but I now understand that it’s a term generally used to describe his chaotic administration.

A very sleek and pretty Coyote passed us in the car park and I noted quite a few “not my president” bumper stickers on the ridiculously large gas guzzlers parked there. The kids complained that I hadn’t hired one of those with a “Duke’s of Hazard” horn, which would have been much more fun. I just can’t win.

With Ms Jerry Jnr being asthmatic and suffering from a sore throat and a tight chest, It didn’t take too long to find out how much the forest fires elsewhere in the park were going to impact our visit and it was obvious that many of the best sights were going to be at least partially obscured. Not so we would have noticed if you look below.

Mirror lake, with a hint of haze – more like a flooded meadow outside of the spring melt.

After having watched the youngest pup do back flips on camera for a while we made a run to ditch an armful of rubbish that had been thoughtlessly scattered around the pristine meadow in its proper place – the bear proof bins, some 200 meters away. Rubbish, especially plastic water bottles are a problem for a number of reasons. Back at the tent, we sealed anything that could be considered edible by a bear (food, soap, shampoo etc.) into the steel footlockers outside and tried to get to sleep in the ‘posh tents’ which was challenging due to the various crying babies and groups partying late into the night around us, but at least we didn’t have bears trying to get into the tent, so that was good.

The movement of tourists is well-managed within the park and there are shuttle buses to get from point to point. Aside from several different kinds of Squirrels that were everywhere, cryptically staring at the people and hoping that they’d drop lunch on the floor, we passed a healthy and not at all shy pair of deer grazing in a meadow before trekking out to Bridal Veil falls.

The lower part of the falls with the kids ‘pool’ hidden from view

It’s a bit of a tourist trap, with hundreds of Grockles* milling around taking pouty pictures with the falls in the background, but besides the smokey haze it was absolutely spectacular. It was also fun for the kids who disappeared up the rocks and towards the deep and very cold pool at the bottom of the falls. The youngest pup who is seriously into parkour filmed himself leaping between huge boulders and into the pool at the bottom. After they had been gone over two hours, I was despatched to find and bring them back.

*Grockles = a slightly derogatory English west country word for tourists

We were running out of time to get back to San Francisco and more liver abuse, so I dutifully did so, surprising them with my carefully hidden ability to climb despite two bung hips. I had visions of making like Forest Gump in the ‘run Forest run” scene when his calipers explode into the air, only my metalwork would be bursting through the skin. Why is that kids think that parents have never climbed a tree or done anything remotely adventurous and are shocked when they see them doing something active? Upon reflection, I’m pretty sure I thought the same thing about my parents, so I’d better not say anything…

Driving out of the park, we actually saw Yogi, or at least his big brother. Apparently Grizzly Bears no longer live in California, but there are plenty of large Brown Bears in the park and he was mooching around in a meadow. Even from a couple of hundred metres away, he looked huge and not at all concerned about anything. Seeing him capped the experience for us and Yosemite really lived up to its reputation. I could have spent a week there, avoiding bears and tourists, just hiking the various trails. But, back to Los Altos and the San Francisco 7’s.