Footfall

There is a sound and a sense when your foot hits the ground. It can be first thing in the morning when you get out of bed and wander in a wobbly line towards to bathroom to see what damage your dreams have left on your face. That first wander for me is as if my left foot has been in a plaster cast for a year and is unfamiliar with it’s job as a foot and has to be taught how to behave before the world requires it to take half my weight and get things done. It can be on sand. Sinking in, pulling out. The miracle of all those tiny pieces of silica, the shavings at the edge of the solid world, that right themselves smooth whatever words or holes or castles we make with them. Beaches sometimes ring of summer holidays, but because I have lived so much of my life by a beach it is often in the winter that I love walking on the sand so much. Because then it is often just me and a few other hardy ones and the beach is free of man made detritus and your footprints feel like they are the only ones on the moon. There is cement. There is always cement. In England the pavements, or sidewalks, are often made of paving stones. These slabs of rectangular stone that are in the older streets were still brought in from the quarries of Purbeck and in newer streets from the concrete shop.

I fell on one of those a few months ago. Marching along the pavement, off to the bus stop, avoiding the shoppers with their shopping bags on wheels, scanning the ground for the pavers that didn’t fit so neatly together and whoop de do.. the classic phrase, “the ground coming up to meet you,” did exactly that. It was so fast. Flat on my face. Felled in my pride of over familiarity. Some young man came to my aid. “ No, I’m fine” I said, gracelessly picking myself up from the ground. I was embarrassed at being careless. Not wanting to be one at odds with the ground on which I walked. Not wanting to be a stranger.

I know I have written before about old churches. Not always the big ones, but the smaller ones in villages now consisting of a farm and a scout hut. Where you walk through the grass churchyard with gravestones almost illegible with moss and hundreds of years of weather.

And you open this wooden door into a stone vestibule where benches line the sides. Maybe for people to shake off the rain or the mud of where they had walked through, before making their way through the second door into the church itself. No fancy stained glass windows, no high vaulted ceilings.

Wooden pews, warm to the touch. These are the everyday of ancient stones. The working man’s path of pilgrimage. Many lifetimes worth of sunday devotions have made worn patterns into the uneven stones. Pressing indentations into the steps to the altar. will give you smooth and shiny stone, worn curves in the steps to the altar. Once bright and tight, now pressed down by so many centuries of feet, that you feel the echo as you walk on them and step where they once did

Footpaths and bridleways. These are not hiking trails. They don’t end up at “ Inspiration Point.” They don’t tell you how many miles you will have achieved if you do the whole loop. They may start with a wooden stile off a small road. They might start at the far end of a churchyard. They often cross fields of wheat or grazing cows. This is also where you pay attention to those grazing cows for the bullocks or bulls among them who can charge and have you running literally for your life to that stile on the far side of that field over which you throw yourself to safety. Sometimes you skim past a grand stately home. If you are lucky they pass by a pub where you can sit on a bench and grab a libation and a packet of crisps. These are the footpaths and bridleways of Great Britain. Criss crossing the countryside. Decreed by law. Drawn in the Ordnance Survey Maps. There is a swishing as your feet move through the cut grass, or the stubble path at the side of a field. There is a give as you walk through the wood that is under a canopy of trees. Not grass here but soft earth with the occasional tree root fighting its way though. This is the world of bluebells and stinging nettles, where tiny birds hop around inside bushes and gnats swarm in late afternoon.

Angela

It was my first job outside of the provinces. My first job in London Town. I knew it wasn’t classy. But it seemed like a step, a diagonal step. if not forward, then a diagonal. I was going to spend a year in “ The Mousetrap.” At the St. Martin’s Theatre. The east end of the West End. One. Nobody said Miss Casewell wasn’t written as a lesbian. I simply chose to play her as someone who had spent far too long on a hockey pitch, Two. The Policeman did it. Three. My career in Agatha Christie plays may now be over. In this year I learned never to rely on anyone for lifts home and I bought an orange Peugeot bike. the extra money I earned bought me a trip round the world when I was done and I met a dear and wonderful man called Peter. Peter Penry Jones was this big polar bear of a Welshman. handsome with a mass of wonderful grey hair that he constantly pushed away from his face with his hand. He had a voice that should be bottled. He wanted to do this job about as much as he wanted to shop in Harrods, but he was pulling his weight for his family. Peter decided to invest in me. I had no idea why. He had no interest in developing his social circle. But to a couple of people every so often, he opened his massive arms and invited in. I don’t know when I started going round to house in Chestnut Road, West Norwood. I don’t remember when it was I started joining them going to the this free form church service down the road on a sunday. I know that a couple of years later I moved in with them for about four months when my flat, that I had bought, was being gutted and rebuilt. I went up to Wales and spent time with Peter, mowing the fields, sitting in that little hut up on the hill at the end of the afternoon, going fishing with his wife’s brother for mackerel off the rocks. And then there was Peter’s wife. Angela. Angela Thorne. Peter was demanding of your intelligence, Angela was demanding of everything else. You could easily get it wrong with Angela. Read the moment incorrectly, say one word too many, Smile when it wasn’t funny, and you were toast. She made me observant of being accurate with my speech, my information. She smacked me down if I repeated unsubstantiated gossip. Her temper was fast and short-lived. Her sense of humour was explosive. Her language was sometimes unexpectedly blue. her loyalty and love were enormous.

She and Peter had met when they were both young actors. She was in Ralph Richardson’s company. The brilliant and beautiful young ingenue. He was in Olivier’s company. The youth brilliant and handsome . He was Welsh from the bones out. She was English with stories of going out to India as a child. Coming back on a boat to go to school. A family that changed shape in a way that must have been challenging as a young girl. She loved her two boys. She didn’t always like the everyday bits of being a housewife. But she adored those boys. She was always keeping track of the life that she wanted. The flat in Marble Arch was one of them. “ if I am going to live in London, I want to live in the centre.” Her career was a prestigious one. I caught the middle and latter part of it. With Alec Guinness, with Stephanie Beacham. In Ayckbourn plays, Playing Maggie Thatcher. In Television dramas, in television comedies.She kept track of her friends. And she had great friendships. She moved fast; in the street, round the house, in her little car. She wasted no time. Had good books on the go. Watched good television. Went to plays worth her while. She wasn’t unkind. She didn’t mean to choose the words she did, but out they came anyway. She had a critical eye and it traveled to her mouth without passing the pause button. One of the times we had tea, she said ,” shall we have biscuits? Or maybe you shouldn’t.” Her Peter left her when he was 70. It was a sad, sad time. For her sons. She said she was very lucky with the people they had married. She had a hoot with her grandchildren, one of whom came to spend the last year living with her whilst she attended a London college. A younger brother and sister, and older brother… nieces, friends ; professional and from way back when. They all had a place. When I last talked to her she said she couldn’t wait for summer so she could attack her garden in Battersea. “ Tidy it up.” She asked me if I knew where I was going to stay when I came back in the summer. “ Darling you know you can come and stay here, if you’re desperate. You know you can, if you’re desperate.” She had the loveliest face, the best hair, she wore fantastic clothes. She adored animals. Her family. The people she chose as friends. she was hilarious intentionally and not. She missed Pete, her Welsh champion, every day. His ashes are under an apple tree in Anglesey. That is where she is going to be too. A sad sort of perfect.

Slow days and bees

Having a slow day. Slow because there is something oozingly gentle about English summers. In the back garden of my friends house in Stockwell. I have doused the baby kefir lime and lemon trees in pots. I have carried a watering can through the house to the front garden and watered the beds containing poppies, salvia and hollyhocks. I am an interim gardener. Just the spreader of water. People are sanding and painting the houses on either side and I have heard talk of planned weekends in Whitstable and the horse to back at the 3.30 at Epsom. They have taken proper breaks at lunch and teatime. I have even seen two bees mating on the wall behind me. It was mating or murder, but am assuming the former because they both flew off but not at the same time. It is that slow. I have time and the attention to watch bees mating. Gorgeous really. In my own house , there is always something I have left undone. A pile of papers. An appointment to be made. An appointment to be kept. A bill. Washing to take in or out. Here in someone else’s house, there is nothing. Apart from watering the garden and two mugs of tea to fill my days. And a book I bought yesterday called “ Seats of London.” Yes, I bought a book on the various patterns of London transport seating.

I was traveling on the northern line with my young American friend and she didn’t understand why we didn’t have plastic seats as opposed to these carpet like ones. I have no answer yet, but I will be an expert after my book. I do know they are made now as they were then, by a factory near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. If you have read any of my little essays over the years, you will know that I love all things bus and train. Coaches and cars leave me yawning. But the glass curve of a train station, the front seat on the top of a double decker bus, the slide of a train as it shifts from stationary, the old subway tiles of the subway….I am agog. I have only been in London a couple of days. It is the summer. So there are ‘crocs’ of school children on planned excursions. There are foreign students all wearing the same sweatshirts. There are a a lot more foreign tourists than I am used to, because I normally come in the spring or winter. They are all very well behaved and happy to see the Crown Jewels at the Tower or see shows like Wicked or Frozen. Which leaves me more chance to see Eddie Izzard play all the parts in Great Expectations, catch the amazing “ Guys and Dolls” for a second time, wallow in the miracle of “ A Little Life” and be informed by Peter Morgan’s new play about the rise of the oligarchs in Russia.

There are people on every piece of green. The Common. The Parks. Having impromptu picnics after work. The pubs are surrounded by groups, with jackets off and ties loosened having a drink in the evening sun

I will go to my favourite museums. Of course I will. And sumptuous gardens designed with long ago brilliance. But also I will watch bees having their way with each other. And drink tea. And eat strawberries that taste of strawberries. Do I dare to eat a peach?Or shall I wear the bottom of my trousers rolled? Someone, much more eloquent got there before me.

The smiles of Cambodia

Cambodia was always on my list. I had wanted to go the capital Phnom Penh and to the temples of Siem Reap. But then I also wanted to go down the Mekong River and catch that fast train in Laos and have a baguette in Luang Prabang. Of all those things, the only one I had time for was to visit Siem Reap. I didn’t want to be the rush around traveler. I heard the apocryphal story of the coach tour and “It’s Paris, it must be Thursday.” I wanted to be someone who watched the tours go by as I sat on a wall and sipped a fizzy drink. But hitting many countries in just a few weeks means that you are always catching up with your looming return flights. I booked flights and then changed the dates twice because I had seen enough and wanted to move on, or the weather was not conducive to comfort or because there was a promise of a more interesting destination. Having survived the chaos of Hanoi and the downpours of Hoi An; Siem Reap, although it is in the North of Cambodia, promised gentler, warmer weather. And I had been told that it would be criminal to visit South East Asia and not visit the temples of Angkor Wat. So it was, that the small city that means “ the victory over the Siam people”, became my sole Cambodian encounter. Cambodia is still on my list. Along with Laos and the Mekong and the baguette. But Cambodia calls in the sweetest of ways. had been shut down for three years. There were no visitors. There was no work. There was no money. They opened up about 3 months ago and everyone was hopeful that life was going to get better. These people were dignified and gentle and kind. They said We are so Happy you are here, and please tell your friends to come. The driver had gone back to work with his father in the rice fields. Our guide had survived on the money his wife had made serving breakfasts from her cart. The hotel manager had moved to Phnom Penh to be with her husband’s family and have her first baby. The people who run the country, the primeminister, who was once a general in the Khmer Rouge, has been in power for 40 years. His favorites, be it family or cronies…they were just fine... But the people, their people. They were floundering. Their past sits right on top of their present. The Khmer Rouge only died with Pol Pot in 1997. Everyone has a brother or a grandfather or a mother who suffered or died. Our guide lost a younger brother and a grandfather to starvation. His family lost their farm. He is a smiling man. He loves sweet things and carries a catapult in his backpack. He says it is for monkeys. His mother used to sell pickles in the Market. When I suggested that he should watch English TV shows to improve his English, he said he doesn’t have a television . It is too expensive. Apart from being “ evacuated” with his family he has never been further afield than Siem Reap. There were the wars with the Siam people. There was a monarchy who were corrupt and there was the coup of the army led by Lol Non. And from that emerged the Khmer Rouge. Who tried to create an Agrarian culture and forced the evacuation of the population from towns and cities to the countryside and killed everyone who they deemed to be intellectual. That was the civil war. Then the Vietnamese came in and attacked the Khmer Rouge. That was the invasion. Everyone wants a bit of Cambodia. it would suit all their neighbors to bite a bit off. I met a young man who had his leg blown off by a land mine. I met a woman from Georgia whose husband had come to help with the mine clearance. I met a man who had cleared 50,000 mines on his own having been forced to fight for the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese and he didn’t want to talk about the past anymore. “ it is too sad.” He says. Cambodia is still on my list not because just because of the temples. Those that are magnificent and restored, or the ones that are crumbling or those where the trees have grown their way into the walls and their roots cascade like Rapunzel’s hair. It is still on my list because of those extraordinary beautiful people and I want to see more of them. On the ride in from the airport our driver told us the King “ liked dancing.” What kind of dancing? I asked. “ Just dancing” he said. “ we think he might be gay.” and he laughed all the way to the hotel.

The ancient City of Lanterns …and of rain…

I should have known this but Vietnamese is a very long and mostly thin country. So the top to the bottom of it covers a few latitudes. Hoi An is in the middle, close to Da Nang.This area is known for clouds. However I have had the added pleasure of the ancient City of the Lanterns in the torrential rain. You know when your trousers are so wet they are translucent. When your shoes are so full of water that you squelch with every step. There were some hours without rain. And then you could see how beautiful it still is. The buildings are small. Predominantly yellow. The roofs are tiled . All dark. The streets are narrow. There is a river crossed by a quaint painted Japanese Bridge. There are river boats and tour taxis made to look like automobiles of the 30’s. There are alleyways and trees and street vendors by the hundred selling pancakes, roasted okra, whole squid and bamboo sticks with an assortment of unrecognizable seafood. There are coffee shops selling salted cream coffee. I am not a coffee drinker, but it was riches in a glass. A tea called Rose and Lychee. Is actually hot and pink, made from lychee with roses floating in it. There are lanterns hanging everywhere. Across the streets, along the river. Silk and bright. There are also many mopeds and scooters. it is still Vietnam after all. There are plastic ponchos and umbrellas leading me to believe that I am not the first person to squelch through the charming streets of Hoi An. What is remarkable is that although every doorway opens onto a shop or a cafe of some sort, the external facades of the buildings remain as they always were. The concrete steps, the shutters, the big wooden doors, the windows; they are all still there. The main trade is making clothes. Turning rounds suits, dresses, shirts, trousers in a couple of days. It seems that Jeremy Clarkson did an episode of “ Top Gear” in Hoi An and his measurements still are held at the shop called YALA where, when he is need of another fine suit, he just calls and hey presto! I’m not sure everyone has such success. I passed by a women being fitted into a green dress with ruffles in odd places that she will surely look at with horror when she gets home. For the locals or visitors from the country they have this iconic dress that women wear. Loose trousers and a very fitted dress that splits at the waist and two flat panels hang front and back. In pinks, yellows, cream, patterned and textured silk. Perhaps it was so common to see because it was New Year. It looks a little less formal with a plastic poncho or a puffer jacket over the top of it, but I blame the rain. Apparently Anthony Bourdain’s favourite Banh Mi came from a lady in the market in Hoi An. I am not surprised. I had brilliant Hoi An spring rolls made with a clever shredded wheat exterior. Pho and Morning Glory. I may have to give more respect to this plant Morning Glory. It has a really pretty flower, often blue and in my garden it weaves up like a baddy in a fairytale and chokes all the other climbers on my fence. I’m not going to try cooking it. I’ll leave that to the Vietnamese. Met lovely people yet again. Traveling in different kinds of ways. All with information, some with insight. And a few make your day with their laughter. Oh, how that brightens the world. As you feel the threads that connect people from all different sorts of places and periods and you realize homecoming is not about “home” but comfort in company. I went for a bicycle ride with my last afternoon in Hoi An. Two hours in and I got hopelessly lost. I knew I should head for the sea, but there were so many bodies of water: rivers, ponds, rice fields…that I lost my sense of direction. There was a moment where my blue watch that had been telling me I had lots of time, turned on me and I was getting flustered. Two older men on bicycles passed me. ‘ where was I going?’ They said. I pointed to the basket on the front of my bike which had the name of my hotel on it. ‘Ah’ they said. ‘Difficult’ they said. ‘Follow’ they said. And I did. Until we stopped and the younger one said, ‘sorry, wrong way.’So we turned around and they said ‘follow’ again and they bicycled , me in the middle, one in front and one behind, all the way till they deposited me at the gate to my hotel. Then they bicycled off smiling and waving. Were they on a bike ride for pleasure those two local men? Were they expected at a family meal? Did they really give up an hour of their Sunday afternoon to help an incompetent foreigner find her way back to her packed suitcases? “Si Camun” I said many times. I don’t think I ever pronounced it well enough to make it stick. That is the closest I can get to thank you.

How Many Mopeds Can One City Hold?

If the city is Hanoi, apparently as many as the streets can hold. Hanoi has hundreds, thousands, millions of people zipping around on their Vespa’s or small motorbikes. But I get ahead of myself. Hanoi. A word that belonged to M.A.S.H. To China Beach to the Thin Red Line. I remember on my very first trip to America I went to a cinema in Westwood. There was a matinee of a new film by Stanley Kubrick. It was called “ Full Metal Jacket.” The titles were coming up, the theatre was still dark but I could hear sobbing from the back of the Cinema. When the lights went up I saw it was men sitting separately probably in their forties or fifties. In the years I have lived in America the Vietnam war has been documented in films, in exhibitions, by Ken Burns in his ten part series, in the memoirs of Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger. I have known and admired John McCain, who is perhaps the most famous survivor of imprisonment in Hanoi. And now I am here in the streets of Hanoi. There are a couple of areas which have the mark of communism. The policemen guarding the fireworks for New Year’s Eve are soldiers not to be messed with. The flags flying everywhere red with a yellow star. The vast Ba Dinh plaza in front of Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum guarded by soldiers all dressed in white. The sleazy cops in the three police stations I had to deal with when I had my phone stolen, who smoked and watched videos on their phones and would only ask “ what do I expect from them?” The strangeness of visiting the “Hanoi Hilton” the famous jail in the centre of Hanoi where the Vietnamese were imprisoned under the French Colonialists and which was then used for American servicemen who were captured in the Vietnam war from 1965 to 1973. The many descriptions of the appalling treatment by the French Colonialists. The many descriptions of the caring and thoughtful treatment given to the Americans. How they were given better food than the local population, how they played chess, and football, how they received lots of care packages from home. The photographs of happy prisoners to back it up. Strange again I say. There are fires everywhere. Little piles of red and gold paper being burned for good luck. The pavements are impassable, littered with plastic chairs and cooking pots and thousands of motorbikes. You step out into the street hopeful that no one will run you over. And they don’t. These bikes with three, four, five people squashed onto them; with shopping and dogs and babies and half a tree of peach blossom. They obey no signs, no traffic signals. They drive on the wrong side of the street, going the wrong way; but somehow they scoot and curve and brake and no one seems to hit anyone or anything else. It is one of the miracles of Asia in my book. The people with whom you come into contact are very kind. They would love you to pay full price, but allow you to bargain in a language you both make up to use between yourselves. Their money is ridiculous. The smallest note is 500 dong. That translates to 1 penny; or 2 cents. Then up to 1000 dong. Which is 3 pennies. Or 4 cents. And thereon it goes up to 10,000, equaling 34p and 42 cents. I can say no transactions are smooth. You insult people many times a day by offering to pay them an amount less than the paper it is printed on. You end up showing them what you have in your wallet and let them select what will get you out of the shop soonest. It seems that they stopped making coins because children swallowed them. Good move, I say. The bell boy in the hotel took us on a personal project. He was horrified when I was robbed. He would jump up and open the door when he saw us approaching. He snatched our bags away from a taxi man he didn’t like the look of, holding them to his chest as if they were the Crown Jewels, saying “ we don’t know you.” His uniform , which he wore proudly, was slightly puffy as if the lining had shrunk and the trousers finished an inch or two above his ankles. He was older than the rest of the staff as if he had missed a promotion somehow. “ T” he said his name was. It wasn’t, but he wanted to save us the embarrassment of getting it wrong. It will sit hard with me for the rest of my life that we tipped him what we thought was a handsome amount and it was probably less than 50p. I didn’t know about New Year. it’s enough that I avoid it in my own culture because midnight will never come and after midnight is just too silly a time to be up without pyjamas and good book. But here in Vietnam it is New Year. It is Tet. It is enormous. A six day national holiday. it is about red dresses and smart jackets and being with your family and eating special food. Everyone puts on their best and walks around eating ice creams and taking photos of each other. Many shops are closed. As are banks. Everything costs a little more. But hey! What is a few more Dong…actually I can’t answer that.

Temples and more of the north

I don’t know how you prepare for another culture. You read books. You watch films. But when you park your bag in the clean hotel room and you grab your cotton cap and you wander out into the streets and wham…..is it the noise? The smell? The feral cats darting from alley to alley. The minor motorcycles zooming everywhere. The open spaces on the ground level, with tables on an angle where people sit and drink or sit and eat or stand and cook. The sky is visible in strips above you as the narrow streets with their two storey buildings crowd it out. Every where underfoot there are slabs of uneven concrete perhaps covering water pipes. The streets have potholes, the sidewalks come and go on a whim. The poles carrying hundreds of electrical and telephone wires interrupt your way and the wires sling and circle above you like a knitters nightmare. Staying within the walls of the Old City. It is where you stay when you come to Chiang Mai I am told. It is not like a city. It is as it was. With sections of the old brick walls and a moat that defines it’s borders. It isn’t that it is dirty, but it is cluttered. In a way that has secured it’s survival, it is now full of hotels and guest houses. Using the existing buildings for the most part. Restaurants, some haphazard with plastic chairs, some inside what looks like a furniture store. Many, now cleaned up and spacious, sadly serving pizza and burgers. There are many massage places. Blind massage, Thai massage, every version of massage that you can get on a sandwich board. But there are also places like the Coconut Cookery school where you share tables with other visitors and eat paper spring rolls with basil and rice turned blue with a local flower and sweet curries served out of a coconut. Met a young family from near Strasbourg in France, who were coming to the end of a six month trip with their daughter Capucine. They told us of the many bus trips they had been making as they made their economical way around South America and South East Asia. They said all you need are Two T shirts, a pair of shorts and a pair of jeans. That was the key apparently. Note to self. Don’t need the pink linen trousers. The boutique hotel was called “ ElliBum”. An airy, eclectic place full of flowers and wicker furniture. Run by these glorious sisters. One whom has pink hair and when I asked her where the name came from she turned and patted her bottom. “ the most famous bottom in Chiang Mai,” she said. “ As big as an elephant’s.” Elephants like sticky rice with Ginger. Just in case you ever get the chance to feed one. And cucumbers and bananas. They will stand and pick up things from your hand one by one with their glorious trunks. For hours and hours. The ones at the sanctuary I met ranged from 6 years old to 76. Each with their ‘mahout.” The person who stays with them like a favorite uncle, makes sure they are safe and don’t get into trouble. Temples. Criminal to confess but after marveling at one and possibly two, it’s a relief to look at something with straight lines. I remember many years ago a great British travel journalist called Julian Pettifer, talking about how people had stopped using their eyes to record what they were seeing but used a camera. I think he called it “ missing the Diamond.” That it was a like a screen between them and what was unfolding in front of their eyes. What would he make of it now, I wonder. There is no arm without a cell phone pointing at a sight or held high to catch oneself and the sight or just to catch oneself and bugger the sight. The white temple of Chiang Rai was awash with single poses and walking videos and requests and gathering of groups and even a dog with booties who was lifted up to be remembered by the Buddha. It was a total chaos of little screens. It had a bridge that you walked over , apparently to Paradise. Surrounding you as you start your ascent was a sea of cement hands clawing upwards