Christmas cheer ...

Could there be any place more joyous than a Christmas market. I'm not talking about the flimsy thing they throw up on Southbank each year, but a proper, weighty German Christmas market where gluhwien, cheese, sauerkraut and sweets are produced and consumed on industrial, yet convivial, scales. Where raclette and scented candles are sold side by side with devastating impact on the olfactory neurons. Where ice skating becomes a spectator sport for the amateur acrobatics and the gravitationally challenged (I would be the one hanging onto the fibreglass penguin safety slide along with the three year olds). And where no-one even pretends to be looking at the nativity scene. Like architecture in Berlin (a melange of fascist, stalinist and hipster), any of its 60 Christmas markets offers the kitsch to the sublime.

Who then can  help but forgive Germany its trashy house taste in music, as long as it keeps churning out brie and black truffle cream cheese, at least a dozen versions of sweet and savoury strudel, and plum liqueur. All of which are best consumed in an atmosphere of roasting potatoes accentuated by fairy lights, and overseen by several angels on stilts who keep the real world at bay for at least a few hours.

Happy pagan festivities.

Of raffles, tights and gala affairs ...

Only in Hackney would prizes in a black tie fundraising raffle include 60 rolls of toilet tissue. Pleased to say I won the 7th prize ... an electric tooth brush. This at least meant that I got to display the magnificently price-tagged tights (see previous blog) when I went up to collect my winnings. Most tables seemed to be made up of property developers, housing associations, and assorted mayors, mayoresses and consorts from other boroughs who spend each weekend attending each others' galas. They are identified by the subtle competition of 'my ceremonial chain is bigger than yours, and did you see the car that I arrived in'. The charities we were raising money for weren't allowed to make a presentation lest they lower the bon vivant tone (we're talking food banks, domestic violence and youth work) but fortunately the Speaker filled the gap by engaging in a bit of karaoke until the real Elvis Presley impersonator came on for his act. I love Hackney.

Why I should never be let into Westfields on my own ...

There are many reasons to dislike Westfields: ugly buildings, temples to consumerism, crowds, bad food. But mostly I just dislike the fact that it seems to be able to make me do things I would never do in any other spatial dimension.

Admittedly today I was in a hurry. I had given myself 30 minutes - get in, get out - buy your Mary Janes, a pair of gloves, and a pair of tights to match the dress being worn to a black tie dinner tomorrow night (yeah, we're socialising at a fundraising gala - Hackney style).  All three purchases made and I'm heading for the door with a hot jalapeño and cheese pretzel in hand. But then, bastards, they put a lingerie shop near the exit with just the nicest looking tights in the window. 

'I'll grab those too just in case', I thought. And so I did. And another pair just in case. And then I handed over the plastic and punched in the numbers. Alas, too late,  I finally noticed the sum total flashed up on the screen. 

'How fecking much?! £100!! You have got to be kidding me!!!' I screamed in silence. Through the blur I vaguely recalled something being said about 'hand stitched' but I really should have been paying more attention.

Seriously! Who pays £100 for tights!?! Well .... me apparently. 

'They will make your outfit' said the shop assistant valiantly.

'For that price, love, I'd expect them to make me a cup of tea at the end of the night and give my feet a massage'. 

If those tights don't make it into the socialite pages of the Hackney Gazette I'm going to be well pissed off. 

A View of One's Own

In the weeks leading up to the GR10 departure, whenever it came up in conversation, there was the inevitable question: ‘So Mos is going too?’. Well …. No. This became an even more awkward question when Mos was present. There was the natural assumption that if I was going somewhere then so was he. But apart from the fact that the idea of walking up and down mountains for days on end is as appealing to him as a cold cup of sick, I wanted to be on my own. And for some reason this was considered singular at best, misanthropic at worst.  I imagine that if I said I was going on retreat it wouldn’t be considered so odd, but existentially, at times, everyone needs a view of their own. We should be able to affirm our existence on its own terms rather than through someone else’s eyes.

Dining out is probably the most awkward for the single, with the inevitable ‘table for one?’ question from the waiter. Having zipped on the bottom half of my trek pants, and thrown on the one clean t-shirt, I would be seated resplendent in muddy trousers, blue fleece and matching smelly sneakers (and as the t-shirt was merino ice-breaker there was always the faint whiff of sheep about me) in a room full of couples. I would be armed with a book, and, perhaps more disconcertingly for others, my knitting, and happily amuse myself until the food arrived.

Inevitably, however, despite the desire for aloneness, there’s just no escaping people. They are there each night, many of the same people from Day 1 there on Day 12 as we follow the same pattern of gîte d’etape. They will bring their habits, as I did mine, like hanging wet washing inside and letting it drip on the floor. At least one will be uselessly prepared with an out of date guidebook and no words of French, so that no matter how much you want to avoid them you will have to end up helping them so they don’t hurt themselves or someone else (and it’s not like I haven’t taken to a mountain a tad unprepared and paid the price so I did have some sympathy). Like life in general, you can’t always choose your travelling companions nor who you will encounter along the way. It is a matter of chance. Leave a day later or earlier and you will travel with different people. With the people you have there will always be the introverts, the extroverts and the catastrophies.

Even during the day, when I could resume my singleness as I bolted out the door to gain the first hours of freedom, you’re never actually alone. There is always someone ahead or behind: sometimes me in front, sometimes Mr G., with his long stride, passing by later in the day, then Père and Fils, then the French couple, finally the Anglos and Mz C. Space is given and received. A wave as one appears above the other or passes while taking a rest. So if something did go wrong help would eventually arrive. Having Mos or anyone else beside me wouldn’t stop me breaking something and if the worst should happen I wouldn’t be in a position to worry too much. Someone will eventually find the body. It took 75 years but they eventually found Mallory.

I would therefore always argue for the benefits of independence outweighing any sense of security that comes in the group. For being on my own each day avoided the insularity that group-dom can generate and instead brought the random encounters that become the great joy of travel. After many years of experiencing only a Parisien France where, let’s face it, the locals have a certain, much loved, brusqueness, it was quite surprising to find locals in the Pyrenées actually happy to stop and chat, in fact insisting on it, in fact indicating it was very rude NOT to stop and chat. Those coming the other direction, those out for a daily constitutional, farmers and other assorted locals, all had something to say. 

The man from the Caribbean who crashed his catamaran and was filling in his days walking while waiting to hear about the insurance – he wore a down jacket while the rest of us were in t-shirts. The pilgrims when we crossed paths with the Camino de Santiago, marked out by their shells and saintly determination; some decidedly odd, wanting to kiss cheeks and wish ‘bon camino’. Away from civilisation too long me thinks, or just a tad sleazy. I chatter away to a man who introduced himself as Dutch, until he finally points out in English that I need to stop talking to him in French. Taking the time to notice the sartorial elegance of a set of wiry, brown bare legs that stop for ice cream: tent hanging from the bottom, socks drying from the top, bottle and map bag strung in front. Solving the refugee crisis with a German couple over a cup of hot chocolate in a hotel in Lescun. It is one of my great sorrows that I could not communicate more fluently with some of the strangers passed en route. The man in his 50s who was doing the whole traverse, a wave, some chat about how his day had been, comparing notes on the route. But why he was doing it I will never know.

There are not just encounters with humans that singleness makes possible. Moving more quietly means sightings of the shy are more likely; the marmots, the deer that dance from field to forest, the gold and black lizard that scuttles away or the small snake that makes a dash for it. Semi wild horses grazed to my feet if I sat quietly enough with my cheese baguette, while the cows in creamy caramel coats over muscular bodies created acrobatic performances as they balanced on vertiginous escarpments. One day a sheep dog mistook me for a brebis and tried to round me up. It made the farmer laugh at least. For some reason the mongrel collies took a general dislike to me and I had no end of growling and snarling at my ankles across Pays Basque. It was only on one of these occasions, and it was three dogs versus me, that I did wish there was someone else around. 

Yet overall I make a case for the power of being alone in a world where, for the rest of the year, we must talk incessantly or listen to incessant chatter, putting out so many words into the air and on paper that most of the time fall into disregarded heaps on a floor, unimportant, irrelevant. Just for two weeks a year I want to be able to do nothing but walk on my own. To have the freedom of saying nothing while I sit in the sun with a book and a cup of tea, with no phone or internet or anyone I know. To have nothing to do for hours until it’s time to eat or sleep or walk again. I want to walk my own pace; make no decisions except when I’m starting and what I’m having for lunch each day; be responsible for no-one and nothing except where I next put my feet; sort out my problems my way; pack my own bag and strap my own blisters (actually I always strap my own blisters – Mos, quite rightly, refuses to go anywhere near my feet).

Our daily cheese (and bread)

                                   

This may not be a particularly scientific equation but according to my fitness app walking with a backpack burns up approximately 400-600 calories an hour. I figure that if on average I am walking six hours per day on a trek of the Pyrenées that enables me to eat about 900 grams of cheese. Per day! If you can’t think of any other reason to walk ponder that equation for a moment, and if you’re not into cheese substitute whatever floats your boat. Chips. Beer. Pizza. Chocolate. 

While I admired the stamina, and the greater freedom, of the people wild camping along the trail, these days as I age as disgracefully as possible I do prefer a demi-pension or restaurant as opposed to rehydrated vegetables and muesli bars for breakfast. This is doubly so in France where good food is an expectation even in a gîte d’etape. Three courses can come in at under €20 and taste better than anything I had the misfortune to pay for recently at Le Gavroche in London (and I highly recommend the squid risotto at Maison Oppoca in Ainhoa as an example, or the monk fish cassoulet in Terrasse dans le Parc, opposite the train station in Pau). I am always amazed by how much time I can sit grazing in a French brasserie. Not even having to monitor the falling of dead flies onto the table from the flypaper on the ceiling could put me off my dinner after a long day’s walk.

However, being a fish eating veggie did at times limit my options to cheese and eggs, or as the French would have it, cheese omelette. Fortunately, the first stage of the GR10 passes through Pays Basque with regional delights such as Gateau Basque (cream or cherry filling), pain d’epice and sheep’s cheese. Also helpfully, during summer, as the sheep are up on the high pastures so too are the bergers with their mobile milking stations and ‘cheese for sale’ signs. There is no time inappropriate to eat cheese and in Pays Basque they will have it for dessert with jam or a scoop of ice cream on the side.

There is of course always the danger of going slightly overboard. Breakfast was generally bread and jam at 7am (occasionally a gîte would offer cereal and on these rare occasions I would eat two bowls, assuming that the French wouldn’t touch it with a baguette and as the only Anglo it was all mine). I was usually ready for lunch by 11am, which was generally bread and cheese (and please note Didier, above, demonstrating the correct way to carry one’s bread – not folded in two and squashed into the top of the backpack, nor broken up or flattened). On Day 8, and arriving  in Logibar by 1pm, I was in time for a second lunch consisting of the standard vegetarian option: a salad of tomato, lettuce, walnuts, raisins, a few other bits and bobs, topped with warm goat and sheep’s cheese on toast (and nothing tastes better - take that again Le Gavroche with your boring, overpriced parfait and sick inducing bony turbot). Dinner was the usual three course meal, starting with a smaller version of the cheese on toast salad I’d had earlier, followed by a cheese omelette and fromage blanc for dessert. At this point I did wonder if there was an actual limit on how much cheese could be eaten before my heart went into cardiac arrest.

I did fall off the veggie wagon one night. I had forgotten to tell the cook and didn’t have the heart to make him open a can of something as he’d just put an enormous plate of haricot beans surrounded by confit duck leg on the table. May the duck forgive me but it was fecking delicious (take that for the third time Le Gavroche). The occasional lardon may also have been consumed (I think it sometimes counts as vegetarian in France as long as it’s an accompaniment mixed in with the salad).  The occasional falling off the wagon however does not excuse a gîte for refusing to make a vegetarian meal. It’s not that difficult to throw cheese on pasta – and yes I’m talking to you Auberge Elichalt! Or if you’re not going to make it don’t charge for it!! And no, my spleen is not yet emptied. I did manage to snaffle their last tin of pringles though which lasted a few days strapped to my backpack.

An emergency can of tuna was also carried at all times in case there were no shops or restaurants along the route but even better was what became an emergency block of pain d’epice. Thinking that the village shop would be open in Bidarray (Day 3) I ate all my supplies (keeping weight low in the backpack was always a priority). FYI, the village shop in Bidarray is closed Wednesday afternoons. It did reopen at 0830 the next morning but as it was a long day of big ups and downs it was not ideal to be leaving that late. Fortunately, I had accidentally bought a half kilo of pain d’epice the day before (sometimes crap French can turn out to be a virtue). A spicy dense cross between ginger cake and bread, it kept me going for eight hours until I could get to Baigorry, which probably has the most popular Spar on the planet full of customers incredibly grateful to see actual fresh fruit again … and cans of tuna (other treats in Baigorry became a washing machine and clean hair). But like biblical proportions of loaves and fishes, the pain d’epice seemed to regenerate itself and lasted for another two days.

The way of the gîte

It is possible these days to make the crossing of the GR10 without a tent as cabanes, gîtes, refuges and auberges are now spaced across the Pyrenées. This accommodation can range from purpose built with mod-cons, converted homes in bustling villages, to simple renovated barns in the middle of nowhere. They may still at times possess a squat toilet, lack toilet paper, or lack enough toilets, but they make for a comfortable, cheaper option that avoids the carrying of excess baggage.

However, there is a certain artfulness to gîte living. First, and most importantly, getting in early means you can get a good bunk: avoid those near a doorway and go for a low berth if you don’t fancy crawling off a six foot platform in the middle of the night if you need to use the bathroom. Respectful spatial arrangements are necessary including leaving a gap between yourself and the next body if numbers allow. You have no choice in who your neighbour might be, and in the busier gîtes, where the mattresses are lined up next to each other, you can wake up with a complete stranger literally in your face.

Second, don’t forget your earplugs. People will snore and fart and get up and rustle plastic bags. But hopefully you’ll be too tired to worry about it.

Third, go to bed by 9pm and get out no later than 8am unless you’re staying a second night. This may sound draconian but after a day’s walking I can sleep nine hours straight, be up at 6am and never feel tired. It’s a mystery why back in London I can just about manage to haul myself out of bed at 8am only after much mental persuasion, and four hours of uphill in the Pyrenées feels like a walk in the park compared to the four flights of stairs to my office.

Fourth, gîtes are unisex, intergenerational communal spaces. No-one is looking. It is also one of the great benefits of getting old in that I actually don’t care if anyone in the dorm does happen to see me in my undies (and I can highly recommend the Sweaty Betty boxer shorts for quick dry comfort. Now if only I could find a bra that I didn’t have to put on damp every morning). 

Fifth, expect a degree of eccentricity in some of the gîtes. There were beer shandies for the early arrivers on Day 1 because the manager ‘liked our faces’. There was a refusal to provide a vegetarian meal on Day 8 (Auberge Elichalt, Sainte Engrâce – avoid if you have the chance). In the Hebergement Pic D’anie (Lescun, Day 11), there are a lot of dead animals on the walls and a gun rack in the office. This is a reminder that there are sections of the trail best avoided during the hunting season lest an unfortunate walker be mistaken for a pigeon.

Sixth, try to keep track of all your belongings. Everyone has the same looking poles, pants, socks, hats etc, especially after a few days trekking (sweat, mud, wear and tear can soon remove any brand markers).

Seven, boots most definitely stay out.

Eight, communal tables for dinner should be joined.

Most importantly, and for this I thank Kim (a fellow walker occasionally passed along the way): ‘centralise your crap’. This is a lesson for life. Don’t go spreading your baggage in other people’s space and never, NEVER, make anyone else carry it.

Life at the speed of walk

‘We learn a place and how to visualise spatial relationships, as children, on foot and with imagination. Place, and the scale of place, must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities’ (Gary Snyder, Blue Mountains Constantly Walking).

It’s the hottest day of the year in Hendaye (33 degrees), a prelude to a thunderstorm of Pyrenéean proportions. A good day then to start the GR10.

To the question of why I would want to walk 866km over the Pyrenées there is the usual reason of finding out things about yourself you would never discover sitting on a beach. Like how something happens when I pull on a pair of trek pants, and I go from being compulsive about cleanliness to becoming very relaxed about collecting increasing amounts of assorted dirt and stains. Those same pants wont get changed until they can stand up by themselves – usually after a week or so. I also discovered that I feel perhaps a touch too much schadenfreude when getting into the gîte before a downpour and watching the late-comers arriving sodden and bedraggled.

There is experiencing the joy of having all worldly possessions in a 50 litre backpack that I can get down to 12 kilos. So familiar is it to me that I can find anything in it, in the dark, at three in the morning (important when suddenly feeling the urge to pee and needing to find a torch).

There is the simplicity of a routine (get up, dress, breakfast, clean teeth, finish packing, walk, lunch, walk, find gîte, shower, wash socks/undies/t-shirt, sit in bar with cup of tea or beer and greet others as they arrive, check route for next day, read/knit/chat, dinner, sleep), but a routine that never tires as each start and end point and route in-between is a different world to the one yesterday and the one that will be tomorrow.

There is the development of patience and managing unpredictability. The guidebooks offer a basic steer but the trail changes through the season: avalanches, flash floods, forestry and road works all demand their toll. Shops may not open, gîtes may be closed, the weather could do its own thing. And then there are people. Despite possible signs of misanthropy it is necessary to develop a certain degree of tolerance and respect. I may not like hearing the surplus resonance of Daft Punk emanating from other walker’s earphones but if it helps get them up the side of an escarpment then I can hum along for the few moments it takes to pass.

There is the time and space to think profound thoughts or think nothing at all. The latter is incredibly easy to do most of the time, which produced occasional moments of anxiety when waking from a moving daydream and not being 100 percent certain of where I was. But the route in the initial stages is well marked and as long as I could see the familiar red and white ballisage painted on rocks, trees, signposts, telegraph poles, or barns every five minutes or so I figured I was on the right path.

If I was attempting a profound moment of thought it was mostly about borders as the trail weaves in and out of France and Spain. Praise be to the border dwellers who slip between languages and ignore frontiers. There is a surreal moment on Day 1 when the path opens out into a tarmac’ed world of restaurants and ventas (duty free shops). These are to the French what the hypermarchés of Calais are to the British, and similarly they flock to them for the cheaper booze and cosmetics.

There is the joy of feeling like the only person on the mountain that day and the silence that comes with it: so quiet that it is possible to hear the sound of the wind over vulture wings as they ride the thermals close overhead. Other days, however, were surprisingly loud as thousands of bells attached to sheep, goats, horses and cattle on high pastures simultaneously rang out and rebounded off canyon walls. The rivers roared as their blood was up after a night’s storm. The vultures screeched in Jurassic chorus as they stood possessively over a carcass. There is the constant white noise of invisible crickets, the tapping of my poles and the crunch of my boots on stony ground. The singing from a funeral in a 12^th century church mixed with the wind that became increasingly cold as days passed, but under a still hot sun making for a hazy, late summer reverie.

And then there is just the joy of feeling the world pass at the speed of walk. It takes five days before the Atlantic can no longer be seen. Small green rolling hills and farmland become big hills become escarpments become mountains. The route shifts from path to mule track, single track through closed, humid valleys, blinking forests, corn and sheep fields, to long traverses around mountain sides, prairies and ‘guess at which way to go’ paths, way-finding over karst rocks, along ravines, across cols and open peaks above the snow line.

Some mornings are a damp rise through the mist, upwards through clouds coming at me from both sides, hitting the wall of mountain and rising to meet at the crest, engulfing first distant walkers then finally me. Skirting crops and boulders, traversing heather, peat and fern raked tightly against legs and poles. And then downwards in knee crushing descents into chocolate box villages. There must be a general edict in Pays Basque that decrees that all houses must be whitewashed the night before I arrive, while the afternoon light turns the rest of the landscape shades of teal. But as I walk east, and the villages become more rocky and even more chocolate box, like Lescun, held within a circumference of peaks in the Aspe Valley, the more empty they seem to be.

After some time I can’t recall details about scenery. I just go up and down, up and down again. It gets hot, cool, light and shade. By Day 8 the High Pyrenées are my constant companions, with Pic d’Anie appearing first as a tip of a peak on the horizon, and over time becoming a monolith directly in front. The thing with mountains is that looking at them straight on is daunting. It’s like ‘how the feck am I going to get up that’. But once you start and get into them you don’t see the whole, the giant. You just see the steps directly in front. And eventually, one after the other, you get up and over.

This spatial distortion of walking is one of life’s great mysteries, as is my ability to climb a pass with maximum inelegance; a pair of awkward hands and feet entangled in a bit of cabling. Mostly I’m mystified by the question of where the troupeaux of sheep come from. They cross the Pyrenees, grazing with such concentration, their patou keeping a watchful eye, knowing they have complete impunity and right of way in the pastoral areas (they’re not so stupid). Even a fully constructed ski station that almost generates a sense of violence when it appears from behind a hill seemingly in the middle of nowhere, poses no obstacle. So much concrete and modernity, D’Arrette (Day 10) had the look and feel of hell about it as diggers realigned rocks for the next ski season. The sheep ignore it and on some hidden signal, all walk back the way they came, disappearing into the folds of the mountain.

Getting used to the speed of walk is most noticeable when contrasted with other forms of transport that occasionally overtake: mountain bikes and assorted vehicles speed past near larger villages and towns. Walking on the other hand ensures that the random encounter cannot be avoided. The approach takes time, followed by a ‘bonjour’ and the chance for conversational French.

‘Tu traverse’?

‘Oui, je traverse’.

There is some chat about trail or gear or the weather, then a slow separation.

My watch was fixed with a new battery in St Jean but I only look at it at the start and finish of my day. As long as there is light, I can walk. Moving at this speed means watching clouds lift, rearrange themselves a bit and settle back over the peaks. From my picnic spot on the col above Etsaut I looked up and saw the contrail of a plane high over the mountain in front. At my feet the detail of the earth continued. A beetle wrestled with the tuna that fell out of my sandwich. The chunk was several times the size of the beetle but still it crawls over and under it, finding traction, rolling it, pulling bits off. I wondered what broad images those in the plane would have of the landscape passing underneath them, but even though I’m moving at the speed of walk my memories are also fleeting. I know I’ve been happy, humbled, delighted, silent, dirty, tired, hot, cold. I recall solid, crumbling, high, blue light. I recall the tin pan alley of animal bells, and the stink of sheep pens (shit, piss and lanolin). I want to burn them in, these memories: of mountains and forests and rivers and canyons and sounds and smells and long, slow traverses into storms and clouds and silence. But they are no more or less real, no more or less solid, than those from 10,000 metres and 1000km an hour. It can only be in that very present, on the ground, among the mountains, in my dirty trousers, with my cheese sandwich and a beetle, that the journey and the place I journey through makes sense. 

La Plage

Nothing is quite as liberating as a southern European beach. It is a mass of rolling, jiggling, swinging, sagging, hanging, leathery flesh. Scars, beer guts, drooping sacks of mice, wrinkles, cellulite, boobs, butts and guts comfortably bobbing in and out of the sea.

My name is Mz Kitty, and I'm addicted to fabric ...

It's true ... I can't help myself. Whenever I travel I have to collect fabric. And the mother lode is H. P. Singh, Nehru Place, Delhi (closely followed by Okadaya department store in Tokyo, and Habu Textiles in New York if you want to sacrifice your home or first born child).

On one trip to India I brought fabric from travels in Japan and China to get stitched. That's seven dresses worth of fabric. After a trip to the pre-Diwali hand loom fair at Dilli Haat I had enough for seven more long kurthas with left overs. This trip H. P. Singh provided fabric for three pants, two shorts, and two skirts (and I only went in for some grey wool for a skirt).  Lajpat Nagar market rounded the debauchery out with two punjabi suits (enough for kurtha, pants and dupatta).

I have had several tailors now who inevitably disappoint in their inability to turn what I'm seeing in my head into an actual piece of wearable fashion. Mr Noor has been with me the longest and can generally get a kurtha together as long as I'm okay with Chinese collars. He never bats an eyelid even when I turn up with saris and bed spreads to be converted into kurthas. Only once have I seen him stutter as I placed before him a Keralan cotton dupatta, hand painted with a winding lotus.

Master ji: 'Lining madam?'
Mz Kitty: 'No Master ji'
Raised eyebrow. Master ji places his hand underneath the fabric to show its transparency.
Mz Kitty: 'I promise I will only wear it in Europe'.
A sigh; eyebrow lowered.

So concerned is he with my respectability that for sleeveless kurthas he makes little loops on the shoulders to attach my bra straps to so I don't disgrace myself with slippage of lingerie.

Trousers, shirts and dresses can be trickier. My first attempt at getting a halterneck backless dress made took three attempts. The first rendition came back stitched into a version of skirted overalls that if I'd worn without a shirt underneath (defeating somewhat the purpose of a backless dress) would have created an outfit Ann Summers could display in her front window. The second and third tries added patchwork strips till eventually it resembled the original image. The last batch of dresses all had to be sent back at least twice as my hips had expanded in the tailor's imagination to encompass an awful lot of child bearing.

But I think Delhi's tailors are finally rebelling and blacklisting me having worked out that it is an impossible task to make 'madam ji' happy. I had to ask four tailors in Khan Market before I found one who would take on a job of two capris and converting a kurtha into a skirt. But
then maybe a total ban is the only cure.

Hail, the mighty sporkife ...

Making last minute preparations for the start of my GR10 trek I realised I was missing the all important spork.

What joy then to find in my favourite outdoor shop not only sporks in assorted colours BUT some clever bugger has now come up with a spork case to keep them clean and tidy in the backpack.

AND, these particular sporks also have a serrated edge, so in fact they are more of a knoroon or a sporkife.

I fecking love kit.

East London Life

Cheerfully pedalling to work this morning, enjoying a modest summer's day along the canals, I was slowed by a 'Divers at Work' sign in the middle of the towpath. As I passed I cheerfully waved at the divers and cheerfully asked:

'Hello lads, lovely day for it. What are you looking for?'.

They responded, somewhat lacking in cheer:

'Murder weapon'.

Not such a lovely day then for some poor bugger. And I cycled on.

Things about Switzerland ...

  Things that mystify us about Switzerland ...

1. Swiss German. It is the bastard child of romance elisions and Germanic umlauts.
2. Their love of cows and jokes like 'have a nice hay'.
3. Curried corn. It is just so wrong. Unless your chef has spent at least three years at the foot of a South Asian master, stay away from the spice rack. And it doesn't matter how precisely the rice is shaped, if it's not cooked it's still not going to taste nice.Stick to things you're good at Switzerland, like fondue, and hiding large sums of money for dubious people.

  
Things that we love about Switzerland ...

1. Raclette.
2. Rosti.
3. Raclette on rosti.
4. Bread. Fondue. Potatoes. Fat and carbs basically. 
5. Engineering. No messing about. Just put the train line right through the Alps. 
6. 4pm wake up calls, otherwise known as Jagertee, leading to at least another two hours of skiing. Black run anyone? Absolutely.
7. Night skiing with a full moon over an amphitheatre of big mountains.

On lacking imagination and other political faults ....

Yesterday was a very depressing news day. Not only the ongoing stories of war and suffering but now we have George Osborne announcing that his vision for the UK is that we become the richest country in the world. Not the fairest, the most green, the most creative, the most skilled, the most critically thinking country in the world. No, we must become the richest. I don't mind a bit of wealth but if that is all we're aiming for with our collective talent and imagination then I imagine we're going to be one of the poorest countries in the world on many counts.

To top it off we then had London Mayor Boris Johnson on the BBC London news (10 July 2015) announcing his support for a 'loosening' of local planning laws that gives the government more compulsory purchase powers and the mayor more power to override local government planning decisions. According to Boris, the lack of home building in the capital is 'essentially because of democracy, because of restrictions that planning committees place, that councils place'.

Ah yes, that pesky thing called democracy hampering developers in their desire to run a steam roller over every council estate in the city, and constraining the entrepreneurial spirit of the good home owner who wants to add a floor without planning permission that they can then rent out for at least the £1200 per month you would pay for one bedroom in West Ealing. Let's not even look at renting in Zones 1-2, and forget about buying. Boris has yet to explain how this helps the lack of social and affordable housing in the city.

I don't get angry with developers. It is their nature to obfuscate and manipulate in order to make the most profit. It's the Scorpion and the Frog scenario (go watch The Crying Game if you don't know the reference but basically if you're a frog never give a scorpion a free ride across a pond because eventually it will sting you and you'll both drown - it cannot overcome its nature).  I do, however, get angry with government because it is the role of government to mediate, on our behalf, the excesses of developers, not get into bed with them.

So no, Boris, democracy is not the problem. A lack of it is the problem.

Gird your loins, the gloves are off - and other mixed metaphors

Being a firm believer that democracy does not begin and end with elections that happen every few years I'm not so despondent about the new /old government we have here in the UK, or perhaps I'm just getting old and have lived through so many of them now that they all just merge into mediocre blancmange.

I remember a few years ago seeing statistics from the global pew survey on attitudes to democracy. While more and more countries become 'democratic', measured by the fact that they have elections, more and more people are increasingly dissatisfied with it. And this makes sense. Over the years, we seem to have collectively forgotten that power is transferred from we the people to our representatives and that we can withdraw our legitimacy at any time should enough of us say 'sorry to bother you but would you mind terribly not doing that' (as we would say in Britain). Even in the face of a necrotic political-economic elite propped up by scared men inflated into the status of media barons, we have power. We don't actually have to politely wait for another election.

So, pick your battle! Electoral reform seems like a good place to start - from UKIP to the Greens, the periphery needs to march up on the big boys, while they're squabbling in the centre sandpit over whose blancmange is best, and nick all their toys. I am fascinated however whenever I tub thump about electoral reform how many people say 'but that will mean UKIP will get more seats'. Yes, it might or even worse, the BNP. And that's democracy. Those voices need to be heard. It would also mean that Greens, and other socialist oriented parties, even independents, could get more seats and balance would be restored to the universe. It would mean that parties would be forced to put forward actual policies and debate them with dissenting voices - rather than the increasingly stage managed manifesto launches and meet-the-party-faithful gatherings we saw in this election. It would mean that the executive government would have to present policies to a reinvigorated parliament, not the whipped puppy we see before us today, and convince that parliament with sound argument and evidence that what they are proposing is at least necessary. It will mean that politicians could not assume that being our representatives was a job for life.

It will not be perfect. It never will be. But it will be better than the soul destroying option of being told that the only decision we have to make in this country is putting an X next to blue or red every five years. We deserve a bit more choice than that.

Electoral Reform Society
Unlock Democracy