Eludia

Those of you who are familiar with Italo Calvino’s rendition of Marco Polo’s account to Kublai Khan of the cities in his empire, might wonder why the traveler omitted his impressions of Eludia, a metropolis with which I am familiar.

When you arrive at Eludia, you enter a city which appears unremarkable. Protected by sturdy walls, boulevards are surrounded by handsome houses. In the thriving market, old men sell oranges and avocados, young men hawk knick-knacks and girls stroll with their arms around one another’s waists. The population enjoys well-funded amenities and when they are not at work can relax in public parks with fountains, amusements and ice cream vendors. Order is maintained by gendarmes equipped with truncheons to deter thieves and flags for directing traffic. When a pedestrian accidentally brushes against someone proceeding in the opposite direction, each apologizes to the other, bows slightly and continues along their way.

If the young Venetian had tarried longer in Eludia, not merely pausing to partake of spiced fruits and marvel at the bas-relief effigies of the city's rulers embellishing the façade of the city hall, he would have observed a peculiarity in the demeanor of the inhabitants. Many appear of sunny and optimistic disposition. Smiles play about the corners of the women's mouths, the men whistle as they tend cattle waiting to be auctioned. But an equal number, no less prosperous in appearance and chaperoning equally handsome beasts, would have struck him as unaccountably morose.

This division is caused by the citizens’ compulsion to examine their appearance each morning in their mirrors. If their looking glass detects discomfort, perhaps occasioned by some imperceptible disturbance of the digestion, it will return an unattractive image. A woman's luxuriant auburn hair might be degraded to scant grey locks, while a man’s noble bearing may be reduced to the stoop of a pauper. Such images portend bad luck and the viewer is beset all day by the fear of possible disasters, which may turn out to be as trivial as a broken shoelace or as momentous as the loss of a ship. Those who appease the mirror, whether as a result of a temperate appetite or simply by a fortuitous flicker of the eyebrows, are rewarded with a flattering reflection indicative of good fortune, and hope to find a coin in the street or celebrate the birth of a healthy child.

After a week in Eludia, Marco Polo would have begun to wonder at the fluctuation of the temperaments of the barista in his coffee shop and the costermonger who supplied his apricots. Anyone who betrayed fear on one day, would on the next seem positive, while those who were optimistic the previous day are now possessed by gloom. These rhythms are a consequence of the predictions of the looking glasses. Those who are buoyed by receiving a pleasing countenance on one day and relish the prospect of success become gradually more fearful of the next day's forecast and transmit their anxiety to the capricious mirror thus forfeiting its goodwill. Those who have been vexed by impending bad luck, become hopeful that the next day will bring improvement, and the mirror responds accordingly.

The seeds of each day's mood is inherent in the previous day's forecast thereby keeping the city of Eludia in equilibrium and enabling its mercantile activities and civic affairs to function effectively at the price of the perpetual torment of its population.

Dreaming

Being able to remember the sixties, we are now told by raddled potheads, is proof you weren't really there. Observing the decade of love from prim sidelines, bounded on one side by the cage of a devout school and the other by self-righteous atheistic parents, I rode a bicycle while others celebrated the exhilaration of motorbikes. So I sought solace in the most accessible and least regulated immersive experience: dreams.  A good dream, I confided blithely to an incredulous friend, is better than a party. Of course, a party to which one wasn't invited.

We spend a third of our lives sleeping, or trying to, and much of that time dreaming, yet except for psychologists' desiccated analysis of their hidden meaning, the experience is disdained. Few criticisms of plans are as caustic as characterising them as a dreams.

It is life which informs dreams, much as it is life which informs art, the only implausible alternative being divine inspiration. So instead of links between yesterday's experience and last night's dream being viewed as an explanation after which the dream can be discarded, ('Ah, that's why I had that dream') the dream itself should be treasured, just as we value the transformative value of interpretations of the 'real' world presented by artists. Solving the provenance, in other words, while interesting, is not the point.

In literature, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is a boundary acknowledged within English yet absent in many other cultures, for example Arabic. It may have arisen from the need to establish the primacy of the bible and is sustained by bookstores for organisational purposes but is now being challenged. Similarly the relationship we have with dreams requires reconsidering.
Their impermanence, which is in any case at best a risible concept to mortals, is not a valid objection. Performance art rejoices in transitoriness, its temporality adding the spice of exclusivity.

For some, the barrier is already porous. The hypnopompic state is the liminal condition occupying the transition between sleep and burgeoning consciousness, a richly creative territory with characteristics of both dream and reality. And those who have mastered the technique of lucid dreaming claim to be aware of their state and able to control their dream's trajectory, although sceptics remark that we only have the dreamer's word for their experience and that another explanation might be micro-awakening. But this misses the point. The audience in a theatre is not invited to interrupt proceedings with suggestions for the denouement, so no more should the conscious mind seek to influence the outcome of a dream.

Lucid dreaming has a mirror image, in which the sleep/wake barrier is completely impermeable. In this, the dreamer is convinced that the dream is real, accompanied by the frustrated wish that it were a dream but burdened by the apparent knowledge that it is not. The more extreme or distressing the dream situation, the more convincing is the false certainty that it is not a dream, as though both the content and the context are intensified by the same mechanism which deliberately intends to ensure the dream state remains sealed and experienced as acutely as possible. In a recent dream, I had mislaid my laptop and now, days later, recall fervently wishing it was a dream while believing it was not. Waking from such turbulence is initially a relief but soon overshadowed by an unresolvable angst. If when actually dreaming I felt so certain that it was not a dream, how can I have solid faith in my belief that I am not dreaming now? Could the present simply be one more level of awareness nested inside countless others whose layers I am penetrating in successive awakenings? No doubt examination of brain activity enables categorical differentiation between states of consciousness, but this is of little comfort during early morning awakenings especially following a dream in which I even stuck a pin in my thumb to prove to myself its reality.

In retirement, as opportunities to participate in mainstream life dwindle, dreams regain their appeal and longer sleeps permit an elegiac blending with contemplations, memories and regrets, presaging the eventual abandonment of consciousness.

© David Thompson 2016

Tavira

Tavira

'It's in the Goldilocks zone.'
'What?'
'Maximum 19C.'

The principal cause of our holiday disputes is the temperature. On a weekend trip to Sweden, with an almost imperceptible dusting of snow, Sally refused to get out of bed. In retaliation, during a heatwave in Italy I was inseparable from the air conditioner. So 19C is neither too warm for me nor too chilly for Sally. It's not easy to find destinations which meet this criterion; Basingstoke does but has other disadvantages.

HF Holidays offers group walking holidays for people too unimaginative or too indolent to organise their own. On this trip, an elderly chartered accountant, epitomised the clientele and claimed to have been on over seventy HF jaunts over the preceding three decades. The unique selling point of the brand is the provision of at least two, sometimes three, guided walks each day so that all tastes and abilities are catered for, enabling couples with different levels of fitness to go on holiday together. Amusingly in deference to guests' sensitivities, the shorter walks are assiduously referred to as 'easier' rather than the more patronising 'easy'.

Our destination was Tavira, a small town on the Algarve which would be desiccating in summertime heat but pleasantly mild in March. Whispers of honeysuckle scented our balcony and tile-clad houses, fetchingly dilapidated, lined the street opposite. My study of estate agents' windows, a Londoner's obsession, revealed not only rock-bottom prices but a touching frankness in the descriptions: 'For sale, land with ruin' was trumped only by 'For sale, land with two ruins.' Such advertisements do find buyers: we met a Norwegian couple who had erected a makeshift bothy on land zoned as agricultural and lived there 'off grid' during the winter, returning to Norway in the summer to work.

It's not only property which is cheap; we calculated that we could have dined in Portugal for a week on the cost of our pre-departure dinner at the Gatwick Hilton, although that possibly reflected the inflated prices imposed on a captive clientele that mistakenly decided it would be cheaper to stay overnight at the airport than pay for an early morning taxi.

One walk took us along beaches populated by fishermen collecting shellfish by ploughing metal contraptions resembling supermarket baskets through wet sand, which looked like an exceptionally arduous way to earn a precarious living. On another day, we took to the hills, passing deserted holiday villas guarded by teams of vociferously barking dogs. In rage and frustration, one bared its teeth and clamped the metal railing in its jaws as we passed, an unnerving sight on a country walk. An especially elaborate edifice with a vast open air pool and manicured terraces was said to belong to Cliff Richard although we later discovered the owner was merely a Belgian plutocrat who only visited for a month each year but kept the place permanently staffed, just in case.

Our leader was genial and efficient if somewhat lacking in local natural history knowledge. On being asked to identify a colourful bird, he replied, 'It's a parity bird.' After a moment's confusion, we realised he hadn't a clue of the species and was merely likening it to a parrot. Flowers were safer territory and included the 'naked man orchid', remarkably appropriate when someone observed that 'orchid' is derived from the Greek for testicle.

A notable feature of the area, providing important habitats, are the mud flats. For a moment, I managed to convince Sally that, due to their water absorbing properties, these were originally called 'flood mats' and that the term had become Spoonerised to mud flats. Flamingoes were the main avian attraction but to my disappointment they were white rather than pink. Salt is harvested from the flats and the chartered accountant spent much of the holiday trying to solve the conundrum I posed about whether it was more profitable to fill the evaporation lagoons frequently with small quantities of sea water or less frequently with larger volumes. At dinner, he could be seen scribbling increasingly abstruse formulas on a napkin.

On the final evening, we were bussed to a hotel on the site of a former tuna fishing village. For a century, tuna had ensured the prosperity of the region until in the nineteen sixties heedless exploitation meant it was no longer economic. Their technique entailed placing nets up to eight kilometres in length across the migration path of the tuna entering the Mediterranean from the Atlantic to breed. With spectacular lack of foresight, they chose to catch the fish on their way to breed rather than on their return journey in order to profit from the roe, thus guaranteeing the population decline. Traditionally the first tuna caught was given to the church and it was in the year that only one was landed that the industry ended. Perhaps they had been propitiating the wrong deity; ritual sacrifices to Neptune might have been more effective.

In the hotel's museum, we were shown a particularly gruesome black and white film made in the final days of the industry in which tuna were massacred with hooks, much in the way that baby seals are clubbed for the fur trade. And then, without a of trace of irony, we were ushered into the dining room and served a delicious dinner the centrepiece of which was, yes, tuna. At a time when the future of the UK's membership of the EU is being debated, it is sobering to reflect that such indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources is, to some extent at least, controlled by European legislation.

© David Thompson 2016

Waterlink Way

I thought I knew all the agreeable walks in the vicinity of my flat. 

Towards the Thames barrier, around the O2 or via Trinity Buoy Wharf.  West to Tower Bridge via the dismal Pepys estate or the venerable pubs in Shadwell.  So a meetup invitation to the Waterlink Way, starting at Cutty Sark and shooting south to Lower Sydenham, was a surprise.  I declined as the day was wet but resolved to explore it by myself another time.

Thursday is a free day; no gym, no writing course and no Arcola. So in crisp chilly sunshine I set off for the official starting point, Deptford Creek. I’d taken the precaution of pocketing a Waitrose cup from my hoard and availed myself of the munificence of the Greenwich branch, sipping hot coffee while contemplating the river.  The spikes of the O2 behind a low-rise building on the opposite bank gave it a Mohican.

Hermione, moving south solely for economic reasons, confessed the change apologetically as though entering purdah and fearful she would be shunned by friends.  Having spent my formative years on the wrong side of London's equator I knew the truth: south is where people go when they are tired of life in north London - to paraphrase Samuel Johnson - or to make babies.  While our ears are rarely calibrated as finely as those of Henry Higgins, the south Londoners’ drawl is as unwelcome to their northern cousins as the grating Brummy or the squeaky Scouse. This distaste is manifested in practical ways: the objections to the proposed Garden Bridge is thinly veiled nimbyism, anxiety that migrant hordes from Lambeth will gain easy access to lusher northern pastures.

None of the capital's great parks lie south of the river, at least in popular imagining. From the jewel of the east, Victoria Park, to the great contiguation of Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’ Park, the formidable lungs of the West End, to the stately reaches of Regent’s Park and the wilds of Hampstead, all the noted splendours of rus in urbe, are congregated in the upper half of London.  Blackheath, Battersea and Richmond are almost unrecognised anomalies; as for Battersea Park and Clapham Common, no one outside their postcodes knows of their existence, and even if they did, how could they possibly get there, or, worse, home again afterwards?  The transport is lamentable, the sole tube line does not even acknowledge its southern presence, resolutely calling itself the Northern line.

So my expectations of the Waterside Way were carefully calibrated; I was prepared for the simplistic alliteration to be its most alluring feature.

The Creekside Discovery Centre was surrounded by sculptures assembled from flotsam gathered during the advertised low tide walks.  The coordinator, Bettina, provided me with a set of eight leaflets describing the route of Waterside Way which also furnished ample historical and environmental information for a future Ramblers walk, then locked the gate behind me for the protection of the school children present.

The route laces together half a dozen strips of parkland adjacent to the Rivers Ravensbourne and Pool, connected by nondescript suburban streets, light industry and building sites.  The result is a satisfying incoherence, rather like a poem compiled from words randomly picked from a holiday brochure.

Brookmill Park Pond, the last remnant of a reservoir, is a placid pool surrounded by trees.  A heron paused for a photo, obligingly striking different poses to ensure I captured her best side.

Ladywell Fields was the highlight.  Here the Ravensbourne has been partly diverted through the park in gentle meanders, mimicking its original route and creating a range of wildlife habitats while creating a simulacrum of a countryside meadow.  I’m always on the lookout for refreshment stops and toilet facilities for Ramblers walks and the Ten Thousand Hands café, occupying the old Ladywell Station premises on the fringe of Ladywell Fields, offered both.  I sat in the sun munching a ham and cheese toastie.

Despite the absence of tubes, there is no shortage of railways in south London.  Every half mile I was obliged to dodge under a tunnel or cross a footbridge, so when I reached the end of the walk I decided to strike out to Beckenham Place Park, confident that I’d be able to catch a train from one of the plethora of suburban stations which included park’s name in their title: Beckenham Road, Beckenham Hill, Beckenham Junction and New Beckenham.   The park is dominated by a golf course and a dilapidated clubhouse where I recalled having a measly sandwich during my tour of the Capital Ring.  I avoided the golf course and headed towards the less manicured northern end, aiming for Ravensbourne station, in honour of the river I’d been tracking.  It turned out to be on the wrong line so I consulted the map and headed off to New Beckenham station which, at the end of the day, felt further than it looked.  Sure enough, there were trains to Lewisham, but only every half hour, a frequency which would be derisory on the tube, Overground or DLR.  I realised that it’s not the lack of railways or stations from which south London suffers so much as an inadequate supply trains. 

© David Thompson 2016