Category: Travel

Our Marrakech Express

~ kevinrevell ~ 4 Comments

Mrs E and me decided to go to Marrakech because it was somewhere we’d never been, somewhere completely different and because we ‘needed a break’. Funny expression that, when you think about it. Not many of our ancestors downed tools and nipped off to a different continent for a few days because they needed to think about something other than the daily grind, I’m pretty sure my parents never did and I’m absolutely sure their parents didn’t. But it seems to be all the rage for us lot.

And so we set off at 2am on Friday morning, leaving the smaller kids and the dog in the charge of the larger kid, who, rather worryingly at that time still hadn’t returned from a night out, but we tried to put this to the back of our minds because we ‘needed a break’. And things would be ok at home. They’re always pretty ok at home; when something does go wrong, like an exam, or someone’s ill, or we run out of dog food, we just go and get it fixed. And then, on the way to the airport, we get a message from #1 son and he’s home, and he’s sorry he was late but he had a great night out and we should have a great time away for a few days because he knows we need a break.

Stansted at 0400 on a Friday is a lot busier than we thought it would be. A frightening number of stag parties, all bright and breezy, waiting for a few days of outrage to fuel their lad stories for years to come. Most have matching T-shirts with an embarrassing picture of the groom-to-be on the front, and occasionally full instructions for the stag party on the back (all drinking to be done with left hand only, your beermat must be used at all times, fines will be issued without exception at the 8pm meeting) which suggests that whoever is organising the event may well have appeared in scout uniform at some earlier part of their lives.

Mrs E lives in fear of Ryanair flights with stag parties on board, after some very long journeys in the past, the lowlight of which was twenty grown men singing to their fellow Budapest-bound passenger, Beryl, to whom the captain had just wished a very happy 70th birthday. No doubt wanting to surprise Beryl, our friends eschewed the obvious choice of ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Beryl’, and went for the more modern ‘Beryl, Beryl, Beryl, Takes it up the ar**, takes it up the…’, and so on. More disappointing was that this was their full repertoire for a four hour flight.

Anyway, one of the advantages of travelling to a devout Muslim country is that you’re not really going to mix it with too many stag weekends, at least, not those organised with any Baden-Powell like precision. And we didn’t, really. We chatted and dozed and thought guilty thoughts about leaving the kids behind while we jetted off and enjoyed ourselves, which is exactly the sort of thing that you should think about on this sort of adventure.

And I read a great book by Anharanand Finn on Japanese running, and in it he talks about needing to travel to Japan by rail (with his wife and three small children) so that they could all get a sense of the size of the planet. My immediate thought on this was that he could have saved himself a lot of bother by just buying a globe and teaching his kids the difference between small and far away, but before I’d really thought this through we’d landed, and I realised that he was pretty spot on. Because you do all of this without thinking – you drop your bags off, show some people some documents, hop on a plane, and three hours later you’re on a different continent, with no sense of any transitional space, where it’s 42 degrees in the morning, where not only the language but the alphabet is different, where people are still sleeping eight to a room without power, water, or plumbing, and where over 99% of the population share a common religion.

And we have three days of beautiful scenery, people who are far too polite than they have cause to be, and ways of living that we just can’t get our heads around. We secretly hide ourselves away to eat or drink during the day, because it’s Ramadan, and then when we mention it, we’re told not to be so silly. And we ask about how the fasting works, and while we’re there it’s about halfway through the 30 days, and the temperature is in the 40s and you not only can’t have anything to eat but nothing at all to drink between 0500 and 2000. And, possibly because we’re gormless westerners we say things like ‘isn’t that really hard in this weather?’, and we’re told, no, because it’s the best month of the year, because it purifies the body, and because it celebrates their feelings. So we stand outside a mosque at prayer time one evening and there are thousands of people being called to prayer, and each one as they cross the road looks relaxed and serene and just incredibly happy.

On our last day we travel up to the Atlas mountains and we talk to the guide about different cultures, and how he’s able to manage, practically, to pray five times a day. And he asks how many times a day people pray in England. And I fumble around for an answer, which eventually turns up as an apologetic mumble, and if you were to believe some of the press at home, this is the point at which he’d be muttering about western infidels, but that doesn’t happen. A bit of confusion, and perhaps a bit of sympathy and that’s all.

And before we know it, it’s time to travel back, and we hop on the same plane back to Stansted. And in the seats in front is a family of six who, at 0900 in the morning, are ordering the Ryanair hot dog special, the cheese and ham paninis and the chocolate croissants, and across from us are a couple who are incessantly complaining about someone having taken ‘their’ luggage rack, while they take it in turns to take their e-cigarette into the toilets. Behind me, someone is tucking into fries and a hot chocolate. Someone else tells us that their hotel was ‘supposed to be five star, but fell a little short in some areas’. It’s a three hour flight, and we appear to have got back to Britain two hours early.

We needed a break, and we got one. We hardly talked about work, or the minute problems of our near-perfect lives. We parachuted into North Africa, spent some money that, in relative terms, had come fairly easy to us, and which may, or may not, help the development of a beautiful country full of fabulous people. At the moment, that doesn’t feel like a very fair swap.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You…The Cramps!

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

(For the gig review of The (wonderful) Cramps at UEA in 1986, come back another time)

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If you should find yourself travelling through Provence any time soon, as you saunter down South, below Avignon, taking in the cherry trees and the lavender, relaxing with a couple of bottles of rosé and dreaming of a sunny retirement, do take a detour to look up at Mont Ventoux. MV sticks out like a sore thumb in the rolling countryside, and, if there was any justice in the world, ought to be removed. In the unlikely event that you’re a creationist and you’re reading this blog, a possible explanation is that He created a beautiful countryside of rolling hills and gorgeous valleys and then had a complete moment of aberration, possibly allowing His wayward office boy to run some calculations while He was off working out marine food chains. Or something.

If you’re not familiar with MV I’ll give you a bit of a duffer’s guide. It stands at 1,912 metres above sea level, and dominates the landscape as the biggest peak in the area. You can pick it out quite easily, as, on the South side in particular, the top third of the mountain is like a Star Wars moonscape, a desolate area of rock and cliff, that seems to light up when it catches the sun. Unfortunately that’s not all that often, as MV also has its own microclimate, which involves a good deal of cloud cover, rain, occasional snow at any time of the year, and winds (hence the name) that can whip up to 180 mph. It is, in the most beautiful part of Europe, an ugly bully of a mountain, often closed down for access due to weather, and regularly the scene of ambulance rescues of innocent walkers and cyclists.

And, naturally enough, a point of pilgrimage for cyclists, who have seen the summit finish on the Tour de France and want to experience it for themselves. It has an iconic status amongst cycling fans, as it regularly features in the Tour, and can be a real turning point, as riders break down part way up, as the stupid gradient, the horrible weather, and some jerk running beside you in a devil’s outfit all take their miserable toll. Famously, the British cyclist Tommy Simpson collapsed and died on the mountain in 1967, and was later found to have had a stomach full of brandy and barbiturates, which I believe were very much the de facto energy gels of the time. There’s a memorial to him about 2km from the summit, where cyclists touchingly still leave water bottles, jerseys, and for all I know, bottles of Purple Hearts as little gestures to the then hero of British cycling.

And over the years, as cycling fans will know, there have been some epic battles getting up to the top of the mountain. Charly Gaul won here in 1959, Eddy Merckx cemented his reputation as the ‘Cannibal’ in 1970, and if you pitch up in late June you can try your hand for the Cannibal competition for multiple ascents (or, for the ladies, the fetchingly titled ‘Cannibalette’). In later years, battles were fought out in the heat and oppressive air between the really big names like Beloki, Virenque, Armstrong and Pantani. In 2000, after an astonishing fight to the top, Armstrong was alleged to have gifted the stage to Pantani, but vehemently denied doing so. So he probably did.

You get to the summit from one of three routes, which go from the villages of Malaucene, Bedoin and Sault. The most common route on the tour is from Bedoin, although it’s not really any easier or harder than the others – each is between 21 and 26km long, and goes between a 8% and a 12% incline. There are no flat bits to speak of, so effectively you have to constantly pedal unless you want to fall off, which towards the top feels like quite an attractive option. On the south side, the ski chalet at Chalet Reynard marks the start of the weird moonscape part, and here the winds throw can throw you about a bit. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s a sheer wall of rock to one side of you, and a vertical drop, sometimes of a hundred metres, on the other. It’s a narrow road, and if you’re headed up, you need to keep hard to the right for fear of the cars, motorbikes and cycles going flat out on the way down. It takes you the best part of two hours to get to the top (unless you’re a pro – the time trial record is a jaw-dropping 55 minutes), and about 30 minutes to descend, and less than that if you don’t use your brakes. When we came here a couple of years ago, one of us clocked 50mph on the way down, particularly impressive in that he’d previously crashed, was on a rented bike, and had a young family at home.

Naturally enough, the challenge amongst cyclists is to do three ascents (and descents) in a day, thereby granting you membership of, and bragging rights for, the ‘Club de Cinglés’. I had to look up ‘Cinglés’ in the dictionary, and it means slash, sting, or whip, which seems about right. A few of us had come perilously close to achieving membership in 2013, citing a number of reasons for missing the target, including crashes, lack of preparation and severe emotional torpor. I had a reasonable excuse – I had to cycle the equivalent of the walk of shame back through Benoit after the second climb, nursing a bout of cramp that was so severe that I was physically unable to detach myself from the bike for several hours afterwards. So this time, the plan was a) to do the three ascents, and b) not get cramp.

To hit target a), I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the preceding months on static bikes. If you’re not familiar with these, imagine the boredom of running in a gym on a treadmill for an hour, then multiply the boredom factor by around 3. Anyway, the point was to get my body used to pedalling for long periods of time without any interruption. You have to keep your concentration going as well, otherwise your pulse drops and you just spin the pedals. Consequently a single 30 minute podcast can last you well over a week. To simulate multiple ascents, I used Mrs E’s big shopping trip to London one Saturday to do three one hour sessions back to back, emailing her attractive pictures during the course of the day of post-workout t-shirts. To her credit, she only used the word ‘twat’ on two of her replies.

Target b) was slightly more challenging, as I seem to manage to get cramp these days by almost any exercise, or sometimes from just going to bed, but, especially by long endurance stuff, so I put my faith in some serious intensive efforts, a disgusting looking pink electrolyte drink and by necking a load of magnesium tablets in the week before the ride.

Another blog, ‘Why grown men choose to cycle up mountains purely so that they can cycle down them again’ will be published in due course, but only after I find a way to write the conclusion. At the moment I’m afraid I just don’t have the mental capacity to answer the exam question. Anyway, that will describe the blow by blow up/down/up/down/up/down elements to the ride, and will culminate in the description of the final ascent, around the iconic hairpin to the summit, and into cloud cover so bad that I couldn’t even see where the altitude marker was. (It also made for the weirdest descent, whizzing down the hills to Malaucene at 25mph, with about 10m of visibility and the brakes just about keeping the rain off the rims. My teeth were clenched so hard together that my jaw still ached the next day.)

And, due to the intensive training regime, or a good slice of luck, the whole exercise from mile zero to mile 85 was conducted in a cramp free zone. Unfortunately, the entire route was 90 miles, and it was 5 miles from the end of the journey that I decided it was time to stop for a wee. I decided this a bit late on, halfway round a corner, and tried to stop in a hurry on the wet road. As a result, the back wheel locked and I skidded to a halt, just about getting my cleated shoe out of the pedal in the time it took to say ‘f*ck me I’ve got cramp in both calves’.

Just about managed to remove the bike from underneath me without any further damage, and stretched out a bit, then had to get over the road to a nearby tree.

You’ve probably observed, that, no matter how inelegant the average middle aged male cyclist looks when they’re on the bike, they look ten times more ridiculous off it, and I don’t think I’d have won any catwalk points for the mince across the tarmac in cleats (a sort of backward high heel), Lycra shorts, fingerless gloves, headscarf and ridiculous helmet, all done while trying to keep my calves from going into spasm. Having reached the side of the road without further damage, the challenge really began.

When I started cycling, years ago, a pair of shorts, ideally with a bit of padding in them, was all you really needed to keep, well, everything in order. These days, along with carbon frames, precision shifters and fully cleated shoes, comes the ‘bib-short’, previously only ever worn by professional teams. Oh, and John Curry. Nowadays, no middle aged cyclist would ever consider themselves fully dressed without first slipping into a pair of bib shorts, ideally in one size smaller than you’d have for, say, ballet tights. And, once in, they say, you never go back.

Which is all very well, until you need to go for a wee, although there is a technique, which I will now try to describe, sparing the blushes of our more sensitive readers. First, place your feet approximately shoulder length apart. Loosen your upper clothing as far as is possible. Check over both shoulders that there are no onlookers. With your left hand, and with your thumb pressed against your stomach, pull down the front of the bib, while bending forward slightly from the waist. While holding this position, use your right hand to do what your right hand would normally do in this situation.

On no account during this exercise, and particularly mid-flow, should you allow your legs to cramp up. Because, if this happens, it’s quite likely that you’ll catapult forward quite dramatically, and, the only thing you’ll be able to think of is the police evidence scene in ‘Withnail and I’.

And you’d better hope that there’s a tree in your way to break your fall as you catapult forwards with both hands, um, occupied. And you’d also better hope that you’re still wearing a helmet as you hit the tree. And you’d really hope that there’s a washing machine at the place you’re staying at. Because, if those things don’t happen, it would be quite embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Luckily, my luck was in.

I’d texted my friend G at the summit, and he kindly waited for me as I finally got back to the apartment we’d rented, near Malaucene. Managed to get off the bike without any further injury, and he offered to carry it up the steps for me.

“You go first”, I said.

I’d been out for about ten hours and was pretty familiar with the weather by now. Consequently I was anxious to remain downwind.

Bringing up baby

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Some years ago, me and Mrs E came under a certain amount of pressure around the kitchen table, particularly from numbers 1 & 2, to get a pet. After a number of months of resistance, we finally agreed that we could increase the headcount in the family with a hamster, an ideal pet that doesn’t actually do very much, is almost entirely nocturnal, and enjoys biting humans. So we trawled off to the pet shop, and the boys, after being encouraged away from the snakes and spiders, selected their new best friend. (The NBF, by the way, maintained the BF element for about 5 minutes after arrival, which might have been predicted, and ‘Brains’ maintained a hermit like existence for his entire life, doing what hamsters do, which, from my experience, is as little as possible.)

Anyway, we had a fairly memorable exchange with the shop assistant, who gave us a light/medium grilling on the importance of being prepared in the art and science of hamster rearing. Would we, for example, like to read up on the subject, just to make sure that we were completely ready to manage a new pet in the house? Perhaps we could take away a £6.99 book and check the safety features in our home, then return when we were absolutely certain we could cope with the upheaval.

I remember this meeting quite clearly, partly because Mrs E, who doesn’t raise her voice in public terribly often, raised her voice in public.

“Look”, she said, and I remember, all around us, people began to do just that.

“I’ve raised four children without a manual, I think I can manage a hamster”.

And so she could.

I mention the story of Brains (RIP) entering our lives in this way because we’ve just welcomed in a small puppy which has taken over our lives far more forcibly than the hamster, or indeed, any of the children ever did.

Just to give you some context here, I work away most weeks, returning on a Thursday evening to help with the telling off duties, so I end up speaking on the phone to my wife a couple of times a day. And for the last three weeks, almost every phone call between the two of us has focused on bringing up the new baby.

“Whatever did we talk about before we had Luna?”, Mrs E said at the end of a call last week, as I imagined the children looking longingly at their mother, desperately keen to tell me about achievements at school, new girlfriends, enthusiasms for improving readings, exercise routines and what they wanted to do when they grow up. (As if.)

In truth, having children has just about prepared us for the challenges of bringing up Luna, and so here’s a bit of a brain dump on how:

We are, for example, the only people who have ever owned a dog, just as in our own self-centred ways we were the only people to have ever had children, and thereby we reserved the right to bring every conversation around to how beautiful they were, whether they were eating/pooing in the right direction, what they’d learnt to do, and so on. Twenty years on, I can just about face talking about how boring we must have been to those around us, and only really justify it in that I’ve seen every other new parent I’ve met since behave in exactly the same way.

We’re ‘socialising’ the puppy in the same way as we took the kids to the park, and we look at her in that sort of benevolent angst that all the other dog owners do. Isn’t it great, we think, when they’re playing nicely together. But if your puppy starts getting above itself, we’ll take ours away before you can say obsessivemiddleclassttwit.

And, in the same way as we spent hours poring over the early learning centre catalogue to get yet another worthy toy, we’ve filled Luna’s living space (which started off as a bed in the corner of the kitchen and has now spread to pretty much the whole of the house), with dog toys, balls, chews and goodness knows what else. And, just like the children, she dutifully ignores all the toys and contents herself with a cardboard box. Most of the children have grown out of chewing table legs, but #4 still gives it a go now and again, and it’s quite sweet to see them side by side, munching on bits of furniture.

Already, Mrs E has trained her to have a better sense of personal hygiene than #3, although to be fair that’s not too high a hurdle to jump. Luna does catch you out though – when you’re home from a run, for example, she greets you by licking you as a makeshift salt lick – delightful at first, but a bit off putting when you realise she’s just had same tongue inserted in her own bum, and before that it was licking bird crap up off the pavement.

There’s a fundamental difference though, in the whole bringing up puppies and children thing. When our kids were born, obviously we loved them to bits, but their faces all looked like something between Winston Churchill and The Hood from Thunderbirds.

the hood winston

 

 

 

 

So, looking down into the pram, you might be forgiven for the odd shuddering recoil.

Thankfully they’ve all grown out of this look, although #3 does give a passable ‘Never Surrender’ look in a certain light – God knows what he’d be like with a big cigar and a homburg. In contrast, showing someone a picture of Luna always gets the same reaction. Altogether now…aaaah:

 

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Norfolk. And Good.

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

My parents married in 1957, and they honeymooned in the southwest of England. This event, monumental though it was of course at the time, was rather overshadowed by the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite into space.  And this was causing some consternation amongst the folk that my parents bumped into as they picnicked their way across the countryside.
‘It’ll change the weather’, the locals said, as they laid into another pint of scrumpy.

And, not so very long after, that reaction seems ridiculous. You could argue that the thousands of satellites that we have whizzing about us now do many, many things, but they don’t, as far as we know, change the weather.

And I was reminded of this story as I wandered in yet another sleep deprived daze, into Norwich station at stupid o’clock this morning. On the floor in the main concourse is a plaque, and it commemorates the electrification of the line from London to Norwich in (wait for it….) 1987.

I was lucky enough to be living in Norwich in 1987, and I remember the furore around this event (the electrification, rather than the putting of a rather pointless stone in the middle of the floor of the station. Although it does remind of a fabulous story about Prince Philip, when he visited the recently restored HMS Victory. His guide pointed out a plaque on the floor, and solemnly said that it marked the spot where Nelson fell. ‘Not surprised’ said our favourite royal, ‘nearly tripped over the bloody thing myself’).  The reaction was not that far away from that experienced by my parents all those years ago: Why would we ever want to get to London any quicker…or at all ? And what would people from London want to come here for, anyway? By the way, some peoples view on answers would be a) we still don’t know and b) to buy up pretty much every single property in North Norfolk so they can wear hunter boots at the weekend.

Then I spy a copy of the Eastern Daily Press, which has a headline of ‘Premier League’. People in Norfolk are drawn to headlines like this, as a reminder that we do still (currently) have a football team in the top flight. These things are very important, but, as I say, we need to remind ourselves to keep in touch with our own reality. Anyway, this article is not about football, it’s about the investment committed by HM government into the East Anglian road infrastructure. Catching up on this online, I was also delighted to read the second lead story as well (Dereham Deputy Mayor’s Recycling Shock), which gives a pretty good insight as to the range of topics that the press hounds of the EDP have to cover.  So, apparently, our PM is visiting Norfolk today (at last, a valid reason for me to be in London!) and keen to tell people about the biggest infrastructural investment in the country. Well, outside London and the southeast, it transpires, but at least that means that Norfolk can be nicely patronised while still sticking two fingers up to anyone living north of Watford.

Here’s the quote: Mr Cameron said: “Why does this all matter so much? Well put simply, the jobs of the future depend on infrastructure fit for the future. It is the foundation stone on which businesses can grow, compete and create jobs – jobs that provide financial security for families here in Norfolk and across the country.”

But I’m not sure I totally agree. I’m a long way from being a Luddite, but putting money into something that allows people to waste slightly less time travelling between two places feels a bit last year to me. Remember all that great stuff a few years back about the global village, where everybody was going to be able to telecommute, and think global and act local? Well, looks to me like we’ve lost sight of that a bit, amidst an enthusiasm for squeezing out as many fossil fuels as possible out of the planet to maintain our obsession with being in lots of different places, often for fairly negligible reasons. Surely the infrastructure we ought to be investing in is the one that allows us to have less relatively pointless journeys? By the way, as far as this blog is concerned, the great irony is that putting yet more cars on the road will of course, really change the weather…

The beauty of living in Norfolk is precisely because its hard to get to, and as a result, it hasn’t necessarily moved in the same direction or at the same pace, as much of the rest of the country. It might be lacking in a bit of drama as far as the landscape goes (although I remember mentioning this a few years ago and getting the response ‘Hills? What do we want with them? They’ll only get in the way of the view’), but its still largely of its own making. And most people respect it for that, and  for not being just another commoditised settlement.

Of course, theres a down side to living here as well, being a hard place to get to means that its also a hard place to get out of, a bit like Royston Vasey (Welcome to Royston Vasey – You’ll Never Leave) for those of you who remember the League of Gentlemen. So it can be a bit insular, and someone once told me that it was the ‘graveyard of ambition’, but (trust me on this,) I’ve met far less ambitious people in my wanderings around the country than those I knock up against in this fine city.

If you like the sound of all this and you don’t live in Norfolk, then do look us up some time. Let us know when you’re on your way, wear comfortable clothes and make sure you get some food in for the journey. It takes bloody ages, which is, of course, just the way we like it.

26/10/10 – a stream of consciousness

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


Am writing this a couple of miles above ground in an aeroplane that should have landed 30 minutes ago.
Our departure from Edinburgh featured a refreshing breeze and clear blue skies, but as we got into East Anglia, the cloud that had settled over that area all day surrounded us. Not a good sign, so when our cheery captain came on the PA to say there was nothing to worry about, our hearts lifted.
So the descent to Nch began, and we finally broke through the cloud at, I would guess, about 500 metres. At which point the pilot decided this was not he landing he wanted, grabbed the stick thing that he has in front of him, and like a WWI flying ace, we pulled out, up, and back into the cloud.
This is a fairly small plane, the wheels were down and we were landing, so I have a horrible feeling that when we came out of the cloud he couldn’t actually see where the airport was. Surely you can’t get lost in a plane these days can you?
Incidentally, this does remind me of the journeys I used to take from Norwich to Edinburgh years ago, in far smaller planes. Pre 9-11, if you sat at the front of the plane, all that separated you from the pilot was a small grey curtain, and you would always see, next to all the controls, the
key navigational guide, which was the AA Book Of The Road. I asked the pilot about this once, and he said that this was indeed what they used to fly with – for Edinburgh to Norwich for example, you follow the A1 and turn off at Peterborough.
Anyway, 30 mins after we should have landed, our pilot tells us that he’s going to ‘have a bit of a think’ about options, but not to worry as he’s got plenty of fuel. And while he’s thinking, he’s going to switch off the seatbelt sign if any of us want to move about. Bizarre.

45 mins after we should have landed, and the scenery (white cloud) hasn’t changed. Mrs Emu will, by now, be slightly irritated. No word from Captain Mannering in the cockpit.

60 mins after we should have landed. Everyone being very calm. Stewardesses wandering up and down not doing much and avoiding eye contact. Fair enough, that’s what I’d do, if I were them, although I’d draw the line at the stupid haircut. I’ve now officially decided that I don’t like flying. Some people do this for pleasure, you know. I understand the message from Captain Crunch now though – he was expecting to be some time in the air.
Just had an update – they were expecting weather improvement on the hour, and this hasn’t happened. I didn’t think weather was so precise as to change on the hour, but you’ve got to trust these people, haven’t you? Well, haven’t you? as Fagin might say. This is something that vexes me a little at the best of times, and it worries me more in these circumstances. Every day we put our trust in taxi drivers, airline pilots, cooks and many more people who we don’t know from Adam. Yet in my darker moments, I feel I can’t trust about 10% of the people I meet, a number that steadily increases in London, in pubs, clubs, or at anything involving the word ‘festival’. So what if Captain Flack is one of them? Or what if he’s having a bad day? Probably best not to think about it. I’ll look out of the window. Update – still white clouds.
80 minutes – the man in the seat next to me is taking an unhealthy interest in the ‘business’ article about Caprice and her lingerie range. With picture of her apparently falling out of her business suit. I think I just heard someone get a text and wonder if I should risk texting Mrs E. Best not. I don’t know technically how such interference works, but apparently mobile phones operating can make planes plummet from the sky, and I wouldn’t like to have that on my conscience. Not that I would, but you know what I mean.
We appear to be climbing again. Got a not good feeling about this; I think we’re headed for somewhere less cloudy. Oh dear. I’ll have a little nap now and hope it all goes away. The bloke next to me has closed his eyes. Probably thinking about Caprice’s fiscal planning.
120 mins – sod it, tried to send a txt to Mrs E. No signal – pah! Curse the
Blackberry.
Captain Fantastic says we’re going to try again in 10 mins! Using a different runway. I’m slightly worried that I thought Nch only had one runway, but the Caprice fan next to me assures me that if you approach from a different direction, it counts as two. So it’s been a rich learning
experience sitting next to him.
Switching Blackberry off as Ms Terrible Haircut glowering as I write that.
130 mins – hit the runway about 90 seconds after coming out of the cloud. Everyone suddenly starts talking. A round of applause for Captain Marvel.
Ms Flock Of Seagulls wishes us well, welcomes us to Norwich and hopes to see us all again soon.
Not bloody likely.

I’m Mandy*, Fly Me

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


I vividly remember the first time I flew on an aeroplane. I was 11 years old, and I was despatched to Rawalpindi, to visit my uncle, aunt and cousins. Exotic, huh? By far and away the most exciting event of my life, and travelling alone gave it a level of wide eyed wonder that I wish I could have bottled and kept forever. In contrast, my last flight, on an admittedly less glamorous trip, was rather less exciting. It was really just an exercise in getting from A to B, with all the attendant long queues, intrusive security checks, last minute rush to the gate, cramming into a seat and hoping that the whole exercise would just be over with before the noxious fumes of my fellow passengers took over completely.

Given that almost 40 years separate these two journeys then it’s hardly surprising that things have moved on a tad in the airline industry, not least to what the marketeers no doubt describe as the ‘customer experience’. Let’s face it, air travel has fundamentally changed, from the most thrilling and special experience you could possibly imagine, where everything about the journey felt geared towards you, to an exercise in unsuccessfully minimising the many hassles that you have to deal with. Added to which, in these enlightened eco-sensitive times, there is lots of guilt to mask any pleasures that you might have hopelessly been hanging on to.

Which brings me to the current challenges that BA and its much maligned cabin crew have been having in the last few months. With apparently very little reference to the ‘customer experience’, the series of strikes, combined with the already challenged air schedules, have made BA a bit of a joke for travellers, and I suspect that, following the debacle around Terminal 5 and various pricing shenanigans, that this latest story means that people flying BA will be those who have to fly BA, rather than those who have any choice in the matter.

So, given that it’s all gone in that direction, why? BA has lots of good routes, an excellent safety history, and pretty reasonable record in getting large groups of travellers to the right place on time. Most of the time these days the baggage goes to the right place as well.

My theory would be that the airline has just lost its way since the halcyon days of air travel. When you get on a BA flight, it feels like you’ve stepped back to the 1970’s, insofar that it ought to feel special, but it doesn’t. Most other airlines have recognised that it ain’t going to feel that special anymore, so they don’t really bother. And part of the problem, frankly, is the cabin crew, who have, ahem, grown up with BA. So the “special” bit is delivered by crew who, frankly look and behave as if they’ve seen it all before. Which they probably have**.

In contrast, the budget airlines put people in the air who know that their role is to give you the safety talk, not deal with any flak, and generally get the trip over as painlessly as possible, not least for themselves. These (young) staff know exactly what they’re getting into; there’s no glamour to this – at Ryanair they even pay for their own uniforms. And this is a million miles away from the image of air crew in the 60’s and 70’s, where, without blushing, a pouting stewardess would appear on an ad to say to the business traveller “I’m Mandy, Fly Me”. (Technically, I think this is somewhere between a double and a single entendre.)

Meanwhile, the BA management hold out against the unions in a manner reminiscent of the standoffs of the winter of discontent, and that seems a bit out of time. And, the cabin crew complain of being ill equipped, badly paid, put into difficult circumstances and unhappy with their uniforms. Which, given that these are much the same complaints being sent back from the military in Afghanistan, means that they’re also completely out of touch. Both sides are completely losing any public sympathy, which I would have thought, given the circumstances, that they should really be craving.

I’d really like BA to be a good airline. I just wish it would grow up a bit.

*Other names are available. Evening and weekend rates apply.

**I’m acutely aware that this is about the 4th sentence in this blog that is grammatically horrible. My favourite ever line from ‘Just A Minute’ was when Nicholas Parsons asked Clement Freud “Who would you most like to be shipwrecked on a desert island with?”. To which the great man replied: “Almost anyone who didn’t end a sentence with a preposition”. So, sorry.

Menus with pictures…a good thing!

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Things to avoid on holiday in Barcelona:

1. If your wife is scared of heights, and yet willing to confront her fears on a wobbly cable car several hundred feet above Barcelona harbour, really think carefully about the ‘bargain’ return ticket.

2. If travelling to Montjuic, the steep hills overlooking the city to the east, be sure to read the guidebooks in advance. They will tell you where to get an escalator to the top of the hills, and avoid you having to climb 1 in 4 slopes on your hands and knees.

3. If ordering from a Tapas menu, don’t feel that you have to be adventurous. For example, if you see ‘Sepia’ on the menu, and work out that it’s Cuttlefish, then don’t assume that because Cuttlefish have ‘fish’ in their name, that they look or taste anything like a fish. However, do make sure that when what appears to be a grilled alien lifeform is delivered to your table, make appreciative noises and get stuck in. However, you may find that the ink sac that gives Cuttlefish its Sepia reference is quite easy to burst. Watch out if this happens, as the ink can go quite a long way in a crowded restaurant.

For future reference, this is what a Cuttlefish looks like:

and here’s someone who obviously ate at the same restaurant as us:

4. Remember the golden rules around your fellow humans in European/ Mediterranean cities:

4.1 Whilst the image of loveliness that typifies our notion of people living in Milan, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid etc, is of beautiful olive skin, flawless bone structure, elegant dress sense and shiny hair, the grim reality is that a large percentage of the population look like Wayne and Waynetta Slob dressed entirely from Millets c1976, and with skin applied with an artex trowel

4.2 In any given crowd, on the metro or in restaurants, the majority of people wearing black clothes will be local. ‘Colourful’ clothing tends to be brought to you by Americans and Northern Europeans, most noticeably the British. As if you needed any more signs as to who they were.

5. Meanwhile, back in the restaurant, try not to improvise your order. So if you see a delightful fruit salad being delivered to a table nearby, and then think you see it on the menu for a mere 1 euro, don’t be surprised if you get into a bizarre discussion where the waiter lists all the fruit he has available, you keep answering ‘Si’, and he starts getting slightly cross. In case you’d not guessed, one euro buys you one piece of fruit. Still the conversation will stay with me for some time to come:

‘Plaintain?’

‘Si’

‘Mandarin’

‘Si’

‘Naranja’

‘Si’…and so on

Anyway, had a lovely time. Not as glad to be back as I’d like…

Joining The Norwich International Brigade

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I genuinely don’t like travelling on aeroplanes, and I really hate going from Norwich Airport. Most people I speak to feel the same…so let’s start with a stab at a top 5 peeves:

1. Norwich Airport charges £5 a pop…to use the airport. That’s in order to go through security into the departure lounge. Does any other airport do this? Actually yes, the massive commercial enterprises that are Knock, Waterford and Newquay airports. Now, only a cynic would say that these charges are simply there to attract ‘cheap’ flights.

2. Every time, and I mean every time, I go through security I get searched. Not quite as dramatically as last year in Schipol airport where I was, quite frankly, cupped, but still an early morning frisking I’d rather not have. And, while I’m on the subject, if I’m going to carry anything metallic onto a plane that’s a security risk, am I really going to put it through a metal detector?

3. I don’t use the car park, so I don’t really have a beef there, but don’t you think it’s a bit odd that airports are built on the outskirts of cities, yet the cost of parking is more than most inner city car parks? How does that get justified, other than because it can happen? And how does that make it right? And if you book a taxi, they have to wait outside the airport for you to call them, as they only get 5 minutes inside before they start getting stung as well.

4. The fact you can’t make your way into departures without going through the Eastern European style gift shop. Which is unmanned. And whilst well stocked with exorbitantly priced travel sweets and hilarious ‘bluffer’s guides’ books, does nothing for me about my life, as Morrissey might not say.

5. Cup of tea – £1.80. The fact you have to make it yourself – priceless.

But that’s far too easy, no? What would be harder/more fun would be a list of things to like about Norwich Airport?

1. Looking at the perspex box where confiscated items go to die. I enjoy this at any airport, and particularly enjoyed the box at Dublin earlier this year where there was a 5 foot long firework displayed. Again, hard to believe that anyone thought this would really work as hand luggage, but nowt so queer as folk and all that. Speaking of which, last summer, I noticed at Norwich, just before the weekly flight to Malaga, two confiscated tins of salmon. Which makes you wonder a) what sort of person considers tinned salmon as essential hand luggage and b) what sort of threat was actually posed to security…

2. Watching people shell out £5 for the airport development fee for the first time – hilarious!

3. There’s a ratio of around 1 staff per passenger. You may be ignored, but it’s not a bad ratio should you want a chat. As long as it’s not about the airport development fee. They don’t like talking about that.

4. There’s pretty much always somewhere to sit. The development fee has shelled out for a rather large lounge compared to the size of planes that go in and out of Norwich.

5. Norwich International. Words that go together like Polanski and childcare. The whole point of Norwich is that it is desperately non-international, so it’s all delightfully ironic to see the airport trying to be a hub of inter-continental travel, whilst all around is so incredibly domestic. More of this another time, but just be happy for now, that you can be in the car park of NIA and still not be able to see the terminal behind the smoking hut.

I’m Waking Up To Us

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One of the many, many perks of my job is the opportunity to travel at unearthly hours of the day through and to some interesting places, and whilst doing so, sharing my personal space with a diverse collection of fellow travellers. Or as, I like to call it, getting the 6am train to London.

This prevents me with a bit of a challenge personally, as I can no longer justify an early night. This has something to do with wanting to eke out every second of the day, and partly because I’m quite keen on remaining married. Mrs Emu has firm views on bed-time. She requires at least 2 hours of child free time in the evening, whether it’s spent slumped in front of the TV or, as we like to still call it in our house, becoming elegantly wasted.

And of course, the problem with this is that the children, insist on getting bigger and staying up later. Already this year we have had to extend both the house and our fridge capability, and now it’s the sleeping habits. Emu#1, for example, is now on a curfew of 11pm, which, assuming he has any vague idea of time (you really need to meet him), means that by Mrs E’s rules we shouldn’t be hitting the hay till around 1am. All of which means that with a 5am start, the train journey is a grand opportunity to catch up on a few missed z’s.

And this has some splendid side-benefits. Starting my journey in Norwich, which is not particularly lively at that time of the morning*, means that I can pretty much guarantee a seat. As the train gets busier, as we rattle towards Diss, Ipswich, Stowmarket and Colchester, the seats fill up, by which time I’ve settled back and very possibly have a small stream of dribble coming out of the side of my mouth. And the nice thing is that I wake up in Liverpool Street, genuinely surprised at who I’m waking up next to. I like to think of it as being a bit like a student, but without the constant threats of herpes and poetic regrets.

Most of the time it’s a fairly ordinary awakening; usually another bloke in a suit, putting away his killer suduko for the morning**, but there have been two remarkable highpoints in the last few months:

Highpoint one was the tall, and frankly, rather attractive, woman in her twenties, who woke me up by tapping me on the shoulder and whispering very gently in my ear:

“It’s time for us to get off”

Well, I very never, as you might say.

And the second highpoint was the bloke I woke up to a few minutes before getting to Liverpool Street. Although the train was packed, I still appeared to have plenty of elbow room, and even allowed myself a little stretch. All was clear when he stood up to get his jacket – his right arm was missing.

So, in the rather unlikely event that either of these two are reading this, please feel free to sit next to me again – you were lovely to wake up to last time and I’m sure you’ll be again. As for me, I’m thinking of playing a little game next time. I’ll wake up, not open my eyes, yawn, say ‘Morning Darling’ really loudly, then turn to see who I’m next to. Why don’t you try doing the same? After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

*Norwich last ‘got lively’ in 1985, when NCFC got to the Milk Cup final. People still talk of it in hushed tones, as the day when the city rather let itself go.

**Why? Why? Why?

That was nothing like a dame….

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We’re in France, and staying, as ever, in the middle of nowhere, with limited vocabulary and all sorts of potential hazards to remind us that this is the way to have eventful holidays. No sitting by the pool for us, no siree. Normally when we get here, the grass has reached around the height of a small child, and we regularly lose one as a result for the first couple of days.

Anyway, being the fit family, and having an even fitter family staying with us, no small commotion from this morning as six or seven of us came in from runs and bike rides, with news that there was an injured deer, hit by a car, on the road that runs near to the bottom of the house. There’s another blog to be written about the deer hereabout, and how they are an inspiration for us all to give up running and drive tractors, but that will have to wait for now. In the mean time, there is a deer with a broken neck on the side of the road. Breathing, and looking every inch just like Bambi’s mother.

We didn’t think the gendarmes would be particularly interested in the accident, so decided that the best next step would be to tell Yaside, who runs the Tabac in the nearby village. So off we rushed, with mission in our minds and a french dictionary by our sides.

‘What’s the french for deer?’, said Mrs Emu

So I looked it up – ‘Chevreux’, I said, ‘or Daim, if it’s a female’. Which it was.

Rushed into the Tabac to break the bad news. Now, what we were trying to say was that there was a deer with its neck broken, about 3km down the road, and we weren’t sure what to do. We should have twigged that the questions about whether there were any witnesses or police on the scene weren’t the sort of enquiries that normal French folk make about a dying deer.

Unfortunately, given that Daim looks and sounds a bit like Dame, what Mrs Emu had actually said was that there was a woman 3km up the road with a broken neck, but still breathing. And that if Yaside got a move on he might be able to have it for his dinner.

All of which is a bit embarrassing. I really think we’re fitting in here.