Adventures in soup ....

So Dingo Baby was making his first foray into cooking lentil soup, unsupervised. Having never been in the spice cupboard before he had a guess at what he thought was cumin seed. We now have cardoman flavoured soup but I think he‘s on to something ... it’s delicious!

Adventures in London's musical underground ...

Having introduced Dingo Baby to Midnight Oil I felt compelled to accept his invitation to a night with Mac de Marco, if for no other reason than to experience the Coronet, a legendary sticky floor venue in Elephant and Castle, before it is inevitably knocked down to make way for more unaffordable apartments built for overseas investors to rent out to Londoners at exorbitant rates (read here the litany of injustice involved in this demolition of communities' and people's futures from Southwark Council and Australian developer Lendlease).

A quick tour through Youtube and I discovered that Mac de Marco's style could best be described as stoner or slacker rock so I was expecting mostly stoners and slackers to be in the audience. It's always disconcerting when expectation and reality don't meet so it took a few moments to adjust to being surrounded by a crowd of young, preppy, posh accents seemingly engaging in their own version of cos-play for a few hours, i.e., a mass sing-along of not particularly subversive lyrics wishing they too could be swigging beer and whisky from the bottles lined up on their speaker stacks.

Maybe after years of dance tents and stadium gigs, or the fact that I was just sipping on burdock and dandelion soda, I was also struggling with the repertoire of three minute pop songs ... just when you think the song is going somewhere, it stops. It was only in the second half that some of the music started to get more interesting but by then the state of mind of the band was starting to disintegrate along with the cheese sandwiches and other food stuffs being thrown at the stage (which was pretty funny). It was also funny to watch Mac de Marco (clearly a talented musician who will not age well) replace the drummer who then came to the front to sing; only he can't sing so it started to be largely unfunny after ten minutes. With long pauses and occasional guttural screaming, the jackass-ery finally came to an end with a five chorus version of 'I'm Henry the Eighth', lyrics substituted for something vaguely comical but I had given up caring. Apart from a freestyle long version of an instrumental somewhere at about the half way point (which was exceptional), my vegan souvlaki from the Greek cafe in the neighbouring BoxPark was the best thing from the evening (and the ride home on the night tube;  always guaranteed to be ethnographically fascinating).

I recognise that as the oldest woman at the gig, with a penchant these days for 'been there, done that' eye rolling,  my opinion on these things is doubtless considered worthless, but I would counter with the following vignette ...

This morning, on the way to a well earned recovery brunch in E20 (because dandelion and burdock soda can take it out of you), we crossed the no-person's land of Hackney Wick warehouses still to be demolished, to hear the ever louder pulse of a techno rave being illegally held in a squat. As the grinding bass lines reverberated off derelict walls and the houses of suffering neighbours, we started to see the late morning wreckage emerging, blinking, into winter sunlight, sitting in gutters with cans of beer, crashed out on nearby benches, digging holes in the ground for no particular reason, grinning maniacally in baggy cargos, hippy tie-dye and dreadlock splendour, make-up smeared down sweaty faces, in desperate need of a shower and sleep, weaving their way down the street beneath the ever encroaching cranes of gentrification to the overground station. And this was the vanguard of early leavers .... the hard core still had another eight hours of partying to go.

Now that, fans of Mac de Marco, is proper stoner/slacker behaviour, although debates on its authenticity are irrelevant if you have to live next door to it and I suspect neither the ravers nor their preppy brethren nor Mac de Marco were feeling particularly spritely today, and that, as I smugly sip my  dandelion and burdock soda, is a waste of a beautiful winter's day.

L'Ariege sauvage

You know you’re in a remote part of the world when you can’t get any phone signal … for days. L’Ariége has the reputation for being the most difficult section of the Pyrénées: there are fewer gîtes, fewer towns for resupply, fewer people about, and longer, steeper ascents and descents to walk over each day. But the reality is not quite as fierce as pre-departure wild imaginings may lead you to believe. The walking can be hard going but is more than compensated for by the spectacular, by the sense of having an entire mountain range to yourself, by attempts to market the area more and make the trails clearer, and the hospitality in some truly stunning gîtes.

The ‘hard going’ is evident in days of anything from three to seven hours of climbing, with the usual knee breaking descents on the other side. Fortunately, they love a lacet in l'Ariége and I lost count of how many I must have walked up and down. Not that I’m complaining, but I was feeling a bit seasick after an hour or so of tight turns on the descent from Col de l’Arech.

The weather can add to the ‘hard going’ no matter what part of the world but this was the first time I had to re-route a section as the evening thunder storm rolled in and stayed. The next day the weather would not settle and the mountains were invisible in torrential rain and mist. It took several days to get some sunshine back as the valley’s slowly cleared and the leaden sky sucked up wisps of cloud.

But on the side of the ‘spectacular’, after the rain the rivers and waterfalls were in full throttle. This section of the GR10 passes from high pastures to woods and ravines, and later the pines and granite cirques of karst country. It also contains some near perfect traverses of varying length: from the twenty minutes it takes to walk along the side of the valley from the Mines de Bentaillou (1870m) to Col de la Catauère (1706m); the last hour through forest along an old aquaduct into Marc; the dappled mule track above a roaring ravine from Pas de la Core (1385m) to the hamlet of Esbints (810m), tucked into the hillside in the forest; or the three hours from the Barrage de l’etang d’Izourt (1647m) to Goulier (1110m).

L’etang d’Izourt, an artificial blue behind a grey barrage, is trapped by 270 degrees of high peaks. It is stunning. But the traverse from this lake is back in the ‘hard going’ category. It is not flagged in the Topoguide as difficult but it should be … in big red capital letters. The trail is in bad repair as the path is little used now the gîte in Goulier is closed (due to reopen in October 2017). At times it disappeared into heather clinging onto steep slopes, at others times it became a rock scramble around cliff edges. It is totally exposed with a 500m to 700m drop to the valley floor. With few secure places to stop and take the pack off I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I’d like to but did remember to look back occasionally at the clouds and light working against each other over the mountains (with thanks to Seamus Heaney for the imagery).

Turning the nose of the spur and descending to Goulier I finally found someone to point me in the direction of the path down to Auzat: an ugly village of powerlines, pipes and abandonment. All through l’Ariege are ruined orries, cabins and hamlets, abandoned in France’s rural exodus towards the industrial revolution. Auzat is dead. Even the bus is long gone and I had to catch a taxi to Tarrascon sur Ariege (30km away) to make my train. It’s a sad place to leave the mountains but also a marker of how isolated l’Ariege can feel.

‘Solitude’, if that is what you’re after, is a strong feature of this section of the GR10. Previous blogs have highlighted my Greta Garbo-like desire to be alone when out walking and l'Ariége is as close as it’s come to the Pyrenees being all mine. As with the traverse from d’etang d’Izourt, from Artigue to Fos I was the only soul on the mountain all day apart from a troop of isards who grazed warily but without running as I ambled by. Perhaps because it is more isolated there was more wildlife present than previous years, including birds, foxes, snakes, and something akin to a pine martin or stout that popped up from time to time.

The sense of solitude extended to several ‘install yourself’ gites where you make yourself at home, have a cup of tea and wait for your hosts to eventually show up to cook dinner. Twice I was the only person in the gîte, sleeping the sleep of a single person: one eye and ear always half open. Interestingly, most of the single people I ran into were women wild camping along the trail: a moment of recognition that required no translation. 

It is always ‘hard going’ to manage the desire for solitude with other people’s desire to interrupt it to talk about their dietary requirements and the pain in their knees, but while Mz Austen may suggest that once names have been exchanged ‘there’s no escaping the acquaintance now’, I beg to differ. I resolutely refuse to give in to any attempt at attachment (not counting requests for help obviously), and always add in a couple of short days or a random rest day to lose the overly attached.

Still, some sections of l'Ariege were quite busy, related to attempts by the local tourist industry to boost numbers to the region. PassAran, for example, is a new sportive hike between France and Spain following parts of the GR10. It looks tough but has become very popular, especially with the Spanish, helping to keep the gîtes and refuges on the course in business. There are obvious signs of improving the paths on this particular section, with better signage, for example, and the three young men trimming the trail with whipper snippers above Maison du Valier. Of course the down side is overcrowding and perhaps people taking to the trail without figuring out that it’s not the middle of a city. How the young men got their float tyres, deck chairs, £20 pop up tents and sound system up to l’etang d’Ayes (a solid hike up from the parking bays to 1694m) is a mystery at once impressive and annoying.

Refuge de l’etang d’Araing was also busy with walkers, fishermen, climbers, feral shepherds and a man who seemed to have run there (which in fact he had as I discovered when I ran into him the next day for a chat – he was spending his weekend running around this section of the mountains with just the slight problem that he had forgotten exactly where he had left his car in comparison to where he thought he was on the map). I noticed that everyone at my table (I’m the only woman out of ten) was wearing a GPS watch – about £3000 in watches alone – all of which started beeping at 6.30am the next morning.

This sense of parts of the region being spruced up seemed to affect the gîtes along the way as well, some of which are the best I’ve ever stayed in for cheap comfort and superb food. Maison du Valier, for example, insisted on guests using their fresh sheets, and the hostess spoke French so deliberately that I could understand everything! Similarly, Village de Vacances de Marc has clean sheets and a buffet where I was instructed to push the chicken to the side of my plate and eat as much of the rest of the paella as I wanted.

There seemed to be a competition along the trail to see who could make the best picnic lunch. Marcel from Fos is up there with four pieces of fruit, the ubiquitous bread and cheese, a cereal bar and last night’s left over goat’s cheese crostini. But Village de Vacances de Marc gets the prize: two hunks of break; a chunk of cheese; two boiled eggs, already peeled; a whole tomato; apple AND nectarine; mayonnaise tubes; and TWO packets of crisps.

All other meals were consistently a tour de force of local cuisine for ridiculous prices. At Artigues, it was truite bio, tarte de myrtille, rosé de table and kick arse views of the mountains. The serious comfort food of tarteflette (without the lardons for the veggies) of Gîte Presbytère in Aulus les Bains made me institute a Montelbano (no talking) rule on the other English speaker at the table (I literally said to another human being that I needed to concentrate on my potatoes). Auberge des deux rivières offered a three course gourmet dinner and the smell of fresh pain au chocolat in the morning. The restaurant was all wood, stone and stuffed animal heads. It was one of those evenings when the manager, Robert, who is barman, waiter, maitre d’, and translator, effortlessly switching between English, French, and Dutch (he’s Belgium), wanted to proudly surprise me with a starter that turned out to be turkey stomach confited in duck fat (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was vegetarian). The chef arrived with my ‘surprise’ salad, dressed in an apron over his running shorts, while the old sheep dog did a circuit of tables looking for handouts. Everything came from ‘up the road’ and tasted better than anything I paid £200 for at Le Gavroche.

But the farm gîtes of Esbints and Rouze were my favourites. Esbints was a collective of cats, dogs, chickens and two lovely young farmers who run sheep for meat as well as produce vegetables, fruit, jams and sorbets. The dogs spent most of their time chasing the chickens and fighting for attention with the cat that goes off stalking phantoms. It is a low-tech farm in keeping with the self-sufficient atmosphere of the region. Our host carried loads of straw on his back like a Nepali, from the field to the barn. Everything we ate was from the farm and I get daal! Oh joy. Not cheese or eggs, but real daal. The French tried it but preferred their mouton. The guardians, as in other gîtes in l’Ariege, joined their guests at the table and over dinner the discussion turned to farm life and bergers. I have started to understand how respected they are in this region for the job they do. 

At Gîte de Rouze I was greeted by a troop of staring goats standing in the middle of the lane, who then spookily surrounded me, wanting a scratch behind the ear, and then followed me all the way to the gîte door. The patou appeared to check me out but just wanted a scratch behind the ear as well (note: never scratch a patou behind the ear in the wild). The garden was full of vegetables and a dairy that makes 20 types of cheese. Our dinner was entirely from the farm: bread, baby goat (chevrette) for the carnivores, butter, milk, cheese, yoghurt, vegetables, jam and sorbet from Esbints. The fire was lit, there was a big jug of red wine and talk turned to the local protests over re-wilding bears, including something said about people who live in cities and are vegetarian (I decided discretion was the better part of valour and held off announcing that I think re-wilding is a good idea). In the morning our breakfast bread was warm! Seriously, someone got up at 5am to make bread for us. They left our bills stapled to our picnic bags and asked that we put the money in the unlocked cash box by the door.

The one exception to the exceptional hospitality was Refuge de Bassies. The spectacular setting at the foot of a circle of granite peaks did not make up for being told I had to buy my own toilet paper. The heating couldn’t be turned on because the heater didn’t work so at night it was every layer on plus four blankets (which was probably a bit excessive as I had to shed thermals and two blankets during the night). There were no lights in the dorms or vestibule and in the morning the main dining room lights didn’t come on till 0800. Although this may be related to their solar power it didn’t make for a cheery establishment. I did get a room to myself though.

 Notes to self:

• Icebreaker really is the best. After seven hours of ascent, sweating in 32 degrees of heat, yes, I’m going to sleep in it and wear it the next day.
• Gortex really is better. I’ve worn a Berghaus brand wet weather jacket for years along with gortex pants for really wet days. They were both severely tested in a Pyrénéen storm this year: six hours of walking in rain ranging in intensity from a shower to sustained torrential downpour. The results: legs completely dry but the top was very damp and cold. I’m now going gortex all the way.
• Embarrassingly, I somehow always manage to be as slow on the descent as the ascent, so after watching a young woman with a full pack gracefully descend a boulder field I decided I can do better by sucking in the stomach, tucking the butt under and leaning back into my sac à dos. It feels odd, but it seems to work. I'm open to other suggestions.

A fortnight of cheese sandwich lunch stops

Day 1: With view towards Bagnères de Luchon (1230m).


Day 2: Pic de Bacanère (2193m).


Day 3: Carrefour d'Uls (1820m).


Day 4: From Gîte d'Eylie en Haut (990m).


Day 5: Cabane de Bessett (1494m), looking back at what has already been climbed and descended in the morning.


Day 6: Between Col d'Auédole and Pas de la Core (1550m ish).


Day 7: Auberge des Deux Rivières (541m).


Day 8: Soggy cheese sandwich in lashing rain with zero visibility, Col de Pause (1527m).


Day 9: Salle de manger, Gîte Saint Lizier d'Ustou (740m).


Day 10: Passerelle d'Ars (1485m).


Day 11: Col de Bassiès (1933m).


Day 12: Former aqueduct, above Marc (1010m).


Day 13: Barrage de l'Etang d'Izourt (1647m).

Meeting the neighbours

All happening in Homerton this evening ... traffic collision outside the block turns out to be our suspected local dealers trying to execute a handbrake turn in order to get away from a police pursuit. The driver missed the turn and hit a neighbour's car instead, which then rolled into another neighbour's car. The driver legged it leaving his girlfriend to deal with the police, two of whom ran after the driver eventually tackling him on the green. They've just brought him back kicking and screaming ... literally. 
Meanwhile half the street has come out to watch the performance and piece together what happened, swapping notes and perspectives from our various vantage points, having a laugh at the poorly planned escape attempt and commiserating with the car owners. Conviviality in action! It may not be pretty but it works.

Season's greetings ...

So in a week we have a spate of acid attacks in the neighbourhood, a riot brewing on Kingsland Road following a death in custody, a man beaten up on a local cycle path, and dealers now taking up residence on it. It's an odd, angry summer, this one. All thunder storm and gusts of wind out of nowhere. Anything unmoored is being buffeted into a gutter, and the rest of us cling on to our umbrellas and find the nearest wall to stand with our backs to. Youth workers talk of withdrawing from some streets because, like fake news, and alternative facts, and trolling, and Brexit, and Jo Cox, and shrapnel at a kid''s concert, the borders have shifted.

Up North

It seems that there comes a point in the life of a challenge eventer's feet when they finally give out a definitive signal that they've had enough. Losing sensation in my big toes was pretty much it for this year at least. Discretion, and the avoidance of gangrene and subsequent amputation, being the better part of valour, I finally had to accept the inevitable and withdrew from this year's North York Moors 100.

Yet having overcome the feeling of being gutted this actually turned out to be a good decision on many levels. First, I had always wanted to see the North Yorkshire Moors, and now I could walk around some of them at a leisurely pace with a camera. Second, Dingo Baby could  join in, rather than sit in a community hall waiting for me to arrive at some ungodly hour of the morning to hose me down and carry me home. Third, I could drink as much ale along the way as I wanted.We soon discovered however that there are other challenges that need to be overcome when travelling up North. All restaurants seem to close at 9pm (at least in Whitby) and if you happen to be still eating your spotted dick and custard too bad; cleaning of floors and tables will just go on around you. And don't even think of being a soft Southerner and asking for a spoon just because the waitress forgot to give you one. You can manage your seafood chowder with a fork like everyone else.  Likewise should you put on a jumper when sitting outside on the pub terrace, no matter that the sun is setting, the temperature dropping and the wind picking up, expect a chorus of 'soft Southerner'. 

The need to  test the plethora of 'best fish and chip/yorkshire pudding/homemade cakes in Yorkshire' claims in every village in the county led to challenging mathematical calculations of the ratio of calorie intake to walking time necessary to burn it all off. And if you ever want to sadistically see your Siri SatNav lose it, then tell it to find Botton Village or some other obscure, but ridiculously beautiful, dot in a dale. We also walked through fields with some of the scariest looking rams I have ever seen. I am still haunted by their appearance of being the bastard off-spring of a pig-sheep mash up and if anyone knows what breed they are I really need to know so I can stop thinking I imagined them.

Such challenges, however, are more than compensated for by big sky walks that take you from the sea, to moor and dale, forest and fields of rampaging wildflowers, interspersed with people that will stop and chat along the trails (even if only to point out that you're a soft Southerner for walking in boots instead of sandals).

THE fight

At least half a dozen times each year I drag Dingo Baby to the theatre because 'it's good for him'. It is not his favourite art form but he comes along, valiantly trying to see what I love about it. The closest we got to shared enjoyment was Butley in 2011, with Dominic West as the English lecturer falling apart at the seams.

Given this sacrifice it seemed only fair that when a couple of tickets popped into his hand for the boxing 'heavyweight championship of the world', namely, Joshua versus Klitschko,  I could only say yes. It's not that I don't like the athleticism of boxing, particularly the lighter divisions, and despite appearances it requires strategic intelligence. I even tried Muay Thai for a year but gave up after hitting myself in the nose (it's a short, embarrassing story). Both Joshua and Klitschko seem like nice chaps with none of the trash talk of fighters like David Haye.

But it's obvious that unless you're going to pay £6,000 for ring side tickets you will get a much better view of a boxing match in a pub on a large, HD flat screen TV. Sitting up in the god's at Wembley Stadium requires binoculars. Not even the two large screens around the stadium provide the detail necessary for a really visceral experience of sweat and pounding movement. The whole show is designed as a spectacle for television, complete with fireworks and platforms raising 'AJ' up into the air to shadow box for the cameras before the fighting begins. Music at decibels fills any interstitial moment, between bouts and between rounds, and yet there is an odd silence at times including during the fights. There is no commentary in the stadium, only the murmurs rising to roars of the crowd. It is boring with intermittent flurries of action.  

So 'why?', is my question, are 90,000 of us coming along to sit in a cold arena to watch something we could better see at home or in the pub. And the answer is that it signifies the continued importance of 'the gathering', the need for human contact with like minded others. 

Then the question becomes, 'who are these like minded others?'  And here I begin to delve into unknown territory.

We arrive early for the preliminary matches, including watching an excellent bout between Katie Taylor from Ireland defeating Nina Meinke from Germany for a WBA lightweight championship. At this stage the stadium is almost empty. 

As the bouts become heavier the crowds get bigger and I am slowly surrounded by predominantly young, white, men, well groomed, smart-casually dressed (loafers, sometimes with tie and blazer), drinking and occasionally enjoying a return to the 80s as they emerge from the men's toilets with a spring in their step. This energy contributes to frenetic explosions of dancing to House of Pain's 'Jump Around', and rousing sing-alongs to Gala's 'Freed from Desire', something from Usher, and that classic of arena events, 'Sweet Caroline', oh oh ohh. Amidst chanting of 'Oh Anthony Joshua' (to the riff of White Stripes's 'Seven Nation Army') I am on a football terrace. With the chanting of 'tits out for the lads' I'm back in Australia (sigh). At my age I can at least challenge the lads around me on their use of the latter and asked loudly to no-one in particular why men are so fascinated with breasts and were they not breast fed as babies. 

While there are few women those that have accompanied their men folk are split between casual sports wear and what is affectionately known in the UK as 'totty': the smallest of dresses no matter the weather, the highest of heels, the longest of lashes and hair extensions. I blame the WAG effect at boxing matches and the endless shots of the glamorous partner who has to sit in the front row and watch her man get beaten up. And of course there are the William Hill Women who get to hold up the Round Number every three minutes. They must get some kudos for being able to get in and out of a ring in heels and mini without flashing a knicker. 

Sitting in my sneakers, thermals, cardigan and wool coat, with half a pint of real ale and a bag of pick 'n' mix, I was in a foreign land. Supporting Klitschko was also not helping given the uber-nationalism being whipped up in the stadium. I added the mental strength to lose in front of this crowd as one of the skills of boxing (as well as an ability for agile ducking by spectators to avoid pints of beer missiles), although in fairness, while it's not possible to say it was a good natured crowd, there was a cheer for Klitschko at the end. 

On the hour tube journey home this crowd dispersed as we looped through the city on the Jubilee line, stations north, west, south and finally east. I have no compass for their location but I'm wondering if it might not be important to take a GPS to them next time ... I have a feeling the future of this country is somehow tied up with this cohort of young men and what brings them together to chant mantras of belonging.         

Economics ... what is it good for? Not much apparently.

In an effort to demonstrate a statistically significant negative correlation, with a p value less than 0.001, between the declining usefulness of economics as a social science and Mz Kitty's eye's glazing over, I spent 90 minutes in the company of economists last night.

This required first removing some confounding variables, notably random gents seemingly disturbed by states of singularity and wanting to know if they could have my mobile number to arrange a visit sometime soon. I appreciate that outliers can make the other dots in a series feel uncomfortable, or apparently get the wrong idea about the availability of the outlier for social outings, but I feel no need to be drawn into anyone else's line of best fit.

After some precision dispersal I found myself unfortunately regressing into a mental foetal position as speaker after speaker spoke about the state of statistics and economic measurement in India. Note that's not discussing the state of poverty in India, but rather how their ability to measure it has gone into decline since the original launch of the book, 'Poverty and Income Distribution in India', in 1974.

Detecting a fairly low level of standard deviation in the discussion, someone in the audience finally dared to ask how the eminent scholars (some of the world's finest, at Yale and MIT for example) might actually address poverty in India. The response from the MC was 'that's not the topic of discussion', and we returned to talking about how to measure it instead.

If you've got some of the finest economic minds in the business sitting on the podium surely they could have offered some thought on how to address poverty in India, or the world for that matter, especially now that it's over 40 years since the first publication of the book and in that time India has radically changed, culturally as well as economically, as a result of globalisation and neoliberalism.

To be fair, maybe I'm just too focused on my indeterminate ethnography with its pretty pictures and thematic analysis, underpinned by the certain belief that human beings cannot be reduced in totality to discrete variables, diced into quartiles and measured like so much daal. But I'm happy to work with statisticians and I even got a distinction in statistics in my Psych degree. I know my T-test from my Chi Square. And yes, I get that the underpinning data, government statistics, could be better, and statistical tools, and statisticians, need to be robust.

But dear economists, even with these caveats, in these days of re-writing the economic curriculum take a stand on what this thing called 'poverty' actually means for real people and the human implications of what your measurements are telling you!

I have no review of the actual book. I was going to buy it but by the end of the seminar my eyes had reached peak glaze and the only thing that appealed to me was the cover photo.

Perfect Day

Today has been, by Mz Kitty's definition, perfect.

A run in the morning as the sun is getting up, through a frosty white Victoria Park with noone but the hardiest souls sharing the glories of a still winter's morning.

My sourdough bread finally, after two years of experimentation, rose to the occasion and actually looked almost like a proper sourdough.

Then on to join thousands of like minded souls in the streets of London, reminding the newly inaugurated President Trump et al that we will be watching them.

Back to the marché for my coffee and the London Review of Books, to finish reading a 10,000 word essay on the life and works of David Bowie, some esoteric poetry, and squeezing in the latest instalment of Alan Bennett's diary for good measure (which I shouldn't really find as interesting as I do).

Home just in time to receive my new Salomon gortex-lined trail runners (although feet still slightly encrusted from last Sunday's mud so might wait a few weeks before christening them properly).

Some more baking of chocolate custard tarts, complete with home made flaky pastry.

Then anticipating a few hours in front of the goggle box with my fella (who did all the cooking yesterday for the coming week) watching Taboo and finishing a jumper.

It can only be bettered by the knowledge that tomorrow is Jane Austin, Cocktails and Knitting Appreciation Society day!

I suspect I may have hit seasonally adjusted middle age, where the desire to go out dancing in winter is outweighed by the desire to stay on a comfy sofa.

Things we love about Norway ...

Things we love about Norway:

1. Honesty. The country is legend for the cost of alcohol and waiters are not embarrassed to suggest we drink water. On New Year's Eve we thought we'd splash out and asked if they had any champagne. 'It's too expensive', we were told. 'Drink the red and more water'. The red was still £16 a glass.

2. They positively insist that we take food from the breakfast buffet for a picnic lunch (are you listening Switzerland!), only the Norwegians seem to take vegetables and fruit. This does however leave more bread, pancakes, apfel stroop and nutella for my continued carb fest that I kid myself will be burned off after a few hours of pottering around on skis.

3. They can ski madly for hours, occasionally stopping to shoot at things, then get on their bicycles and cycle up the hill to home, on snow, when it's -14 degrees, balancing their skis on their bikes.  It's all I can manage to finish the same 5km circuit in 40 minutes, trudge up the hill dragging my skis behind me, and then spend 20 minutes in the shower defrosting.

4. They are really good at cooking fish. Even my 'vegetarian' meal is fish; a 'cold water' fish I'm told when I ask what it is. In Norway I wonder if there is any other sort. It is Dingo Baby's ambition to change his diet and he reads 'Becoming Vegan' at the table while eating reindeer four ways.

5. That beneath that taciturn exterior that respectfully refuses to intrude on my personal space by saying 'hi' when passing (except when they want you out of the way on a trail and if you don't move it's your own fault if you get mown down ... I will get over it eventually) there is a sense of humour ... coincidently appearing whenever I deploy my magnificent snow plough on the steep bits.

6. Berries: in drinks, in deserts, stewed, whatever.

7. Hardy facial hair, essential for dealing with gale force head winds ripping across the fells that shred anything stupid enough to have been left uncovered.

8. And the fact that they can be as smug as they like about the wealth in the country. Rather than give away North Sea oil to BP et al, it has been used to fund the largest global sovereign wealth fund, worth today 711 billion pounds sterling. Four percent of the fund's return can be used in the national budget for the current population of 5.1 million people, saving the capital for future generations. The country is ranked in first place on the Human Development Index (2015), comes in fourth on the 2016 World Happiness report (flanked by other Scandinavian countries and Switzerland), is ranked in first place for income equality (gini coefficient), and is second on the global gender gap rankings (again, flanked by other Scandinavian countries). In comparison, the UK, who gave its North Sea oil to private interests (at least taxed from the 1970s at 50% under a 'super profit' law, but a rate that has declined over time and was effectively abolished in the 2016 Conservative party budget), is respectively: 14th, 23rd, 14th, and 18th.

Way to go Norway.

Notes to Self for the New Year 2017

1. Keep things in perspective: remember the Cold War when we learnt how to hide under a desk in the advent of a nuclear attack (although I was always a bit sceptical that hiding under a desk was going to be much use). There was never a 'golden age' of progressive liberal ideas nor will there ever be. Every civil liberty and law against bigotry we have now has had to be fought for and the coming years are just a continuation of that struggle.

2. Prepare strategically: the next five years is an endurance event, not a sprint. Carbo-loading is necessary, as is a flask of tea. Avoid chafing, and anything liable to fall off or breakage will need to be strapped down.

3. Pace yourself: fight one battle at a time, and fight it well.

4. Hang on to the belief that there is no way 2017 can be as interesting or as tragic as 2016.

5. Put on repeat ... 'not to compromise, not to collaborate, but to understand': remember that there is a reason why people do the things they do the way they do them. Just because someone votes against their own interests does not mean that they should be shunned, laughed at, or insulted. That would just be an indication of my own fear shining through and what generally got us into this mess in the first place. It is not beneath my dignity to engage in dialogue .. not to compromise, nor collaborate, but to understand.