Foals and Chimps 2 – Return of the Chimp (now with 74% extra chimpiness)

It's 11 months since I went on my first solo trip to Edinburgh, which I wrote about here. That trip was my first proper solo trip anywhere, so I tended to play it safe and spend time in multi-national conglomerates where I knew I'd get a smile and a welcome (sometimes it might have been the fake sort required by corporate training programmes, although in truth in Edinburgh it never felt like that).

And some known ones too

So this week I had a bit of time on my hands, and it's after the Spring Equinox and I thought there might be some blossom on the trees of Edinburgh again, and I thought it was just warm enough not to go slipping around on ice, so it's time to go back I thought.

Some blossom I found near the Royal Mile

I've been doing some internet dating recently. Or rather I joined a site. Judging by some of the people who use the site, it maybe should be called an Internet Avoidance of Dating Site. Some people on there, the best way to scare them off into the undergrowth / guarantee their abduction by aliens / have them relocated under the witness protection programme, is to suggest a meeting in the real world. Thankfully that's not the case with everyone, but you would think that being able to match up your interests with someone in advance would be pretty foolproof. In fact, it's made me reflect that maybe drunken disco dancing isn't such a backward way of meeting people after all. If it's true for a woman that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, I think it's probably also true that as a man you have to email a lot of frogs who don't reply, before you even get a shot at meeting your princess. More of that in a minute...

Here's my internet dating picture.  See how those offers just flood in!

I don't really know how to think up my own holidays, so I often borrow other people's ideas. I once spent two years on a single minded mission to cycle round the Isle of Arran, which resulted in near divorce, just from a conversation I had whilst delivering some leaflets with Carol Burr at North Tees Medical Illustration. The plans for the two weeks I spent in India in 2012 were completely turned on their head by a talk with an Indian waiter called PS who said we should go north to Rishikesh instead of south to Agra (he was right).

There's a whole other side to the Castle, which I missed before

So in the tradition of borrowing from other people good advices, I did that again this week. One of the pleasant side effects of the internet dating site, even if it hasn't delivered much in the way of dates, has been accidentally coming into contact with people who know things about things I don't know things about. One such person is Louise, who is not only Scottish, and a travel consultant by occupation, but also someone who used to live in Edinburgh. You see, talking to strangers isn't all being kidnapped and looking at puppies, there are happy accidents too.

More Blue Sky - 2014 Edition

Louise used to live near my blue sky thinking picture from my first trip and partly due to my over-reliance last time on Starbucks, McDonalds etc she was happy to recommend some different places to go instead. So once again, I set off on a trip, propelled by someone else's recommendations.

I'd booked the 07.07 from Darlington on Monday, but I could have had a lie in as it turned out, as it was 40 minutes late. I wasn't too bothered, as I was only doing this for fun. There were some people in business suits on the platform, worrying about being late for meetings etc, all with Costa coffees and smart phones.

It's not the End of the World - it's just a delayed train

When the train came it was a replacement for the one which had my seat reservation tucked into the back of the seat so there was a bit of a scramble for seats as all reservations were still in the broken down train. I thought it would make a change this year to listen to Doves rather than Foals and so I tried, but I fell asleep for a bit. When I woke up there were some white doves visible out the window (they were probably gulls or pigeons, I don't know) and also we were just passing Dove Building Supplies. It was at this point that I thought about calling the trip Doves and....something else, but I wasn't sure yet.

Dogs maybe?

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by big things, like cities and mountains, and by the time I exited the escalator onto Princes Street in Edinburgh on Monday at 10 am this week, I felt very small. There were people everywhere, and big buildings and a big blue sky. I thought about climbing the stairs of the Scott Monument, as I'd seen someone do that on Cloud Atlas, but then I remembered I'm scared of heights, so I decided not to.

Other Food options are available, but hey, this is Scotland!

I couldn't check into the Travelodge till 3 pm, but I thought there was a chance they'd mind my bag for me till then, so I thought I'd go ask. The receptionist in the Travelodge gave me such an overwhelmingly friendly welcome that I nearly couldn't get through the door. She happily took my bag, gave me a raffle ticket and asked me what my plans were. I ran Louise's recommendations past her, and in a show of Scottish solidarity, she seemed to agree with them, so off I went.

The Grassmarket - Beggars ain't what they used to be!

Last year in Edinburgh, I never really went south of the Royal Mile, into the old city. I just didn't know it was there. But Louise had recommended the Grassmarket, so I headed there. First I went and got a leaflet from the Tourist Information Centre with an incredibly non-detailed map in it (which came back to haunt me later) and for reasons unknown and possibly to do with my still disorientated state, I chose a leaflet that was written in French. Probably the fact that Edinburgh was spelt Edinbourg on the cover was a clue, but not a clue I was remotely aware of.

It's a shame Black Dogs are synonymous with depression, because having them around is a lot of fun, even when they get into fights with other people's dogs and try to pin them down by the neck sometimes

Partway down the Royal Mile I saw my first dog of the trip. At this point I thought about calling the trip Doves and Dogs, but I wasn't totally sold on it.

As I explained last year, I always struggle to know what to do with beggars, and I can never tell if they're genuine or not. There was a scruffy guy sat down in the Grassmarket with his legs under a blanket, presumably a beggar. Just as I was wondering if he was suffering from some genuine hardship or not, he took a mobile phone out of his pocket and started scrolling through some messages on his touchscreen. Bloody hell, I thought, beggars aren't what they used to be. To quote John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank, 'I've always felt very temporary about myself', too temporary to even enter into a phone contract, and here's a street bum with a better phone than me. What's going on?

Victoria Street - time to get some cake I think

After walking round the Grassmarket for a bit, I went to visit another of Louise's recommendations, which was the cafe at the Queens Gallery near Holyrood House. Now, without that bit of insider knowledge, I wouldn't have even known there was a cafe there, as it's behind the gallery.

There's a cafe and toilets there, which are not obvious from this picture

I went in and ordered a coffee and some bakewell tart, which cost about a million pounds and was very sickly. It sort of made me wish I'd ordered something savoury, but there was free help yourself water at the till so I got some of that to try and get the tart off my teeth. One of the really good things about last year's trip was how sitting still made me relax, and sitting in the cafe had the same effect this time. It was really cold outside, despite the sun, but inside the glass roofed conservatory where I was sat, with the sun warming me through the roof, I felt much more centred. 

This was the view from my table.  Not bad eh?

 I had a read of the French leaflet, which made very little sense because it was in French, and then I decided to go to Camera Obscura: World of Illusions. I'd wanted to go there last year, but ran out of time after going to see some chimps at the zoo. What I hadn't realised about Camera Obscura is that you can make your own chimps there. It's a bit like build a bear, but for build a chimp you use your own face.

This is the cafe from outside - Also nice, but look out for the Bakewell Tart

Before I went to Camera Obscura, and to help walk off the bakewell tart stodge, I went and found Greyfriars, and the monument to Greyfriars Bobby. The statue is black, and during my two days in Edinburgh I saw lots of black dogs. Seeing black dogs always reminds me of my own big, dumb dog Hudson who died in 2006. There aren't any statues of him anywhere, I don't even have any good photos, but I still think of him often. I had to have him put to sleep in 2006, his heart eventually would have exploded otherwise and he would have been in pain, and I didn't want that, and as has been documented elsewhere, the final injection was given to him by an Olympic Gold Medallist Kat Copeland's mum (her dad also killed my hamster), so if ever there was any doubt that all things are connected, well London 2012 and dead dogs are. 

Not all things which deserve a monument get one - There isn't enough space

Hudson would have followed me anywhere I think, in fact he did even till his dying day. I keep his ashes in my bedroom, I kept imagining I would scatter them one day in his favourite places, but I never got round to it. I don't know the veracity of the Greyfriars Bobby story, but it doesn't matter. The loyalty of dogs is self-evident, it doesn't require anecdotes. I'm glad that it's me mourning Hudson though, and not the other way round. I wouldn't want him hanging around my grave, wondering where I'd gone. At least I understand what happened to him.

It means Dark Room apparently - Don't stay in there too long though, it's sunny outside!

I got to Camera Obscura about 1.30 pm. I paid the 12 pounds or so entrance, and the incredibly cheery ticket seller told me what a great day I'd chosen to come, as the views from the roof would be spectacular. And she even stamped my hand with a smiley face in case I wanted to go out and come back in again. She also told me I was just in time for the next Camera Obscura demonstration, so to head right on up to Floor Number 5.

View!  - Now that's what I call Blue Sky Thinking!

She was right about the views. They were amazing. The first time I ever saw Edinburgh live was in 2005 from a faraway hill, through a pair of borrowed binoculars.  And now here I was right in the middle of Edinburgh, looking out in all directions in more borrowed binoculars. I love this kind of symmetry.

History - Another word for stuff that happened ages ago!

The most haunting thing about Camera Obscura was a photo on the wall from the year 1900, showing the exact same set of steps we were about to climb up into the Camera Obscura booth. I thought about all the changes in history between then and now, and two World Wars and the Moon Landing and Nelson Mandela and Italia 90, and I also thought about how every single person alive when that photo was taken is now dead, and well, it made me glad to be alive. The views certainly helped with that.

Castle with some people - Small or far away?

A young Eastern European called Irina took us into the camera obscura booth and showed us the sights of Edinburgh reflected onto a big dish. I wasn't actually all that amazed by this. It seemed a bit nuts to sit in a dark room and look at things reflected in a mirror onto a dish, when the sights were outside the dark room to see in full 360 degree panoramic full colour splendour anyway. I think the history of the building itself was more overwhelming than the camera.

Here's me - Three Quarters Chimp!

After the show, I descended the other 4 floors of the building. A lot of the displays were interactive and probably better for children or in a group but I did have some fun with the photo booths. There were various options. You could make yourself Black, Asian, Chimp, Manga or Caricature. The choice was yours. I had some fun with this. In the spirit of last year's trip, I just had to turn myself into a chimp. For some reason I came out with a score of 74.2% chimpiness. I'd always thought it was nearer to 98%.

I don't really get how this is supposed to be a caricature - it's actually a good likeness!

I also had some fun with trying to find my hot spots with the heat sensitive camera. I took what may well be called a Selfie. I'm not sure about that.

I'm so hot it hurts!

It was nearly 3 pm by now, so I went back to the Travelodge, got my bag out of the raffle and checked in. My room was bigger than last year, but equally as untroubled by natural light. After the bright sunshine and sky of Edinburgh, it felt very dark. But it was everything I expected from a Travelodge room. Cheap, anonymous and clean. In fact, if the room had been full of seafood and dancing girls, I wouldn't have wanted to go out, whereas I find the sensory deprivation of Travelodges act more like a catapult, firing me back out into the blueness of outside.

I suppose recently I've been a bit fixated on stories of loss, not just fictional ones, but also losses of my own, things I've personally suffered, and as I left the Travelodge I was reminded of a book 'Lost Worlds' by Michael Bywater, which I used to own. It was full of nostalgia for things we remember fondly but which are gone. Sometimes I feel like the Spitting Image caricatures of Lawrence Olivier and John Gielgud, 'Johnny Gonny' and all that.

Yes, it's still blue out there!

Although my fondness for Waterstone's isn't maybe as great as it once was, since they keep firing me, I went there on my way out, and I was reminded of the joys of browsing. This was because I didn't find 'Lost Worlds' but I found 'The Age of Absurdity' instead by Michael Foley. I just don't think you can replicate the experience of looking for one thing, but finding something else entirely, like you can by actually walking round picking stuff up and looking at it, like you know, with your hands.

Last year in Edinburgh, another favourite haunt had been the Vue cinemas, where I'd seen various blockbusters. This year another recommendation from Louise was the Dominion Cinema in Morningside. She had said this was either a bus or taxi ride away. I don't do short distances by bus, so I decided to find it on foot.

Sometimes it's reassuring to know that despite my advancing years, I'm just as dumb as I always was, and also that I don't learn from experience. Spending 5 hours looking round Edinburgh in 2005 without a proper map wasn't a lesson I was about not to make again. So, with my French leaflet in hand, I set off to find Morningside based on a terribly inadequate map. Another reminder of previous ineptitude was that I actually passed the B&B I'd been looking for in 2005 on my journey to find the cinema in 2014. In fact, this time I went straight to it! Better late than never!

I'd been walking for about an hour, and my feet were getting sore, so I thought I'd ask some mums coming out of an after school club if I was in the right area for Morningside. Oh it's miles away they said, you'll need to get a bus, but it's quite a walk even to the bus stop. They pointed me in the vague direction I should have been going and so I turned pretty much at 90 degrees to where I had been heading and walked some more.

About another 20 minutes later I asked another lady, and she said I was going the right way, but it was still miles away. By this time my feet were really hurting. Joggers kept passing me, and I kept passing bus stops but they were all going back into the City. No mention of Morningside anywhere. I nearly got on a bus at one point, just to have a sit down, but after about another half an hour I found myself on Morningside Avenue (or Street or whatever I kept wanting to call it Mornington Crescent). I still had no idea which way the cinema was, and Morningside whatever it was seemed to go on for miles. I turned right, which added a third side to the square I'd pretty much been walking in, and just as I thought my legs might stop working, I found the cinema!

The Dominion Cinema - I'm glad I found it before dark!

I checked out the showing times, and I was about half an hour early for Labor Day with Kate Winslet, so I bought some water and just sat in a massive chair and was glad not to be walking anymore. Before I sat down, I checked with the ticket seller that I'd be able to catch a bus back to the City, as I wasn't doing any more walking. I also had to check which side of the street to stand on to catch the bus, as I genuinely wasn't sure which way I was pointing.

The ticket seemed expensive at £10.95 and the cinema seemed to operate largely on special offers and coupons, but I was just glad to be there. The doors opened at 7, and on the way in the usher offered me some free Pringles (not technically free given the ticket price, but nice all the same). Once inside, I knew why Louise had recommended it. No broken knee or numb bum syndrome to be had here. All the seats were properly massive and soft double sofas. And not only with side tables for your drinks and Pringles, but with footstools, so you could put your feet up. Sometimes things are made for each other, and my sore feet and the footstools were one such match up. I kept my shoes on though.

I like Kate Winslet. Well, I like her acting and she's nice to look at, I'm not sure whether we'd get on in real life, and she doesn't go to many of the places I do, so I may never find out.  I also like that she's aging at about the same rate as me, so I can often tell how old I am by watching her. Although in films like The Reader, and now Labor Day, she does keep getting made up to look even older, which can be confusing.

Labor Day was set in 1987 (why are there always so many reminders to me recently of 1986/87?), and Kate was hiding a fugitive in her house. It was actually a proper love story, and there weren't any explosions at all, although there was some quite detailed stuff about baking and making pies in it.

Somebody got pushed at one point, but Olympus Has Fallen it most certainly was not. No vice presidents getting kicked down stairs, no bazookas in the face, no hand grenades down the trousers. And thank goodness for that. I'm on holiday, I don't need Gerard Butler blowing people away, I'm trying to relax here.

After the film finished, I got the bus back into the City. After the hours of walking it had taken me to find the cinema, I was really hoping as I sat down on the bus that it was more than 200 yards back into the city. I hate short bus journeys anyway, but suffice to say, the bus journey went on for quite a long time, and the longer I was on it, the better I felt about all the walking. It did appear that I had done 3 sides of a square to get to Morningside and the bus completed the square. Not so much squaring the circle, but squaring the square.

I got back to the hotel room at 10 pm, with very achey feet, and I got a sandwich from Sainsbury's Local before retiring. Once again, there was a black dog in the doorway. They're everywhere!

Unlike last year, when I was always up before 6, I slept in till 7.30 the next morning. I really fancied a bath, since my flat doesn't have one, but the water was lukewarm, so it was a bit pointless, as what I really wanted was to have a good hot soak, especially my feet.

My train was booked for 2.30 pm, so I went off and did some more wandering in the morning. I had porridge at Starbucks (it was so 2013 in there, lots of people in grey suits on Apple devices etc, Spanish and Eastern Europeans chatting), and I read some of 'The Age of Absurdity'. All the window seats were taken by people on tablets so I had to sit in the middle of the room, where the lighting was poor, so I didn't read for long. I think I prefer it when I get there earlier, before all the suits arrive. Next time maybe!

Black Dogs - Look out, they're always behind you!

I walked round some more, getting my bearings even more re: the layout of the city, and then I went and bought a present from my brother from 'Unknown Pleasures' a vinyl record emporium on the Royal Mile. It's directly opposite the 'I Love Edinburgh' shop. I nearly had a Turkish breakfast for lunch at Cafe Truvas, but in the end I decided to go and get some watery pea and ham soup from the Queen's Gallery Cafe instead. I'd wanted savoury food from there yesterday but didn't get it, so time to put that right.

Quick - there's a sale on!

It wasn't as sunny as the day before, and I sat in the main building this time, instead of in the conservatory. Starbucks it most certainly was not! 9 of the other tables in the room I found myself in were occupied by pairs of people. Not just couples, lots of pairs of people chatting. Everyone else in the room had a full head of grey hair, and unlike half a mile up the road in Starbucks, there wasn't an electronic device in sight. A few leaflets and other things printed on paper, but no tablets, laptops, smart phones etc. And all the tables except mine (I was the only one dining alone) were full of the buzz of animated conversation and laughter. People meeting in the real world, comparing notes on things they'd done, and what they'd seen. There was genuine enthusiasm all around, and an absence of loneliness, except for maybe a little bit in me.

A different view - No dogs allowed

I left Edinburgh soon after, and I was left to reflect on what it was like to come back there 11 months after my first solo visit, and about the changes I've made to my life since then.  There have been some gains and also some losses but it's always good to know that whatever is going on in my life, Edinburgh is always still there, feeling more like home each time I go.  Like a giant comfort blanket filled with museums and parks and other historic buildings and places just to wander round in the sun.

I've heard the expression before, that it's impossible to jump into the same river twice, well I reflected while I was in Edinburgh, that it's impossible to visit the same city twice too. Even if a lot of the buildings are the same, there are always new things to see, which may have been missed before, and even the me that sees these things is different one time than it was the time before.

And now I've had a good run at Edinburgh, I'm all ready for the trip to London I'm going on this coming weekend. Two capitals in a week, what an adventure! Although for that one, I may need to get a proper map!   

The Still, Small Voice: Part Two - This time it's personal

There's something quite disconcerting about waking up from a dream at 1.25 in the morning to find Jesus hanging on a cross just above your head. But that's what happened to me in the early hours of Saturday. I was in Room 16 of Alnmouth Friary, a bit hungover from two bottles of cider, I'd been in bed since 10 pm and I didn't want to set my alarm for the following morning's breakfast, so as not to violate the silence that's supposed to exist between 9 pm and 9 am. Probably this is why my body clock decided to wake me up around 7 hours early for breakfast, just to be sure.

Annie Lennox's Tartan Suit - It's the stuff of nightmares

A lot of Christian traditions seem to prefer to depict an empty cross, to emphasise the fact that Jesus is risen, and not on the cross anymore, but at Alnmouth they have gone in for images of him still being on the cross in a big way. I got up to go to the toilet just after I woke, and there was almost a lifesize Jesus on the cross just outside my room. And there's another one in the garden. In fact, they're everywhere. The dream I'd been having was pretty weird, and some of the resulting thoughts which arose from it made me feel sad and bit teary. I guess if anyone can relate to suffering, it's Jesus..

In the dream I was at work and just finishing my shift and someone I'd been chatting to online but who I'd never met turned up at the office looking for me. I was about to ask her loads of questions about what she was doing there, but all she said was 'It's okay, there's nothing that needs saying'. Okay I'll get my coat I said, but that was the point when I woke up...

When I woke I still had my earphones in, and the song that was on was 'The Lovers are Losing' by Keane. To paraphrase the lyrics of the song, it's all about 'having a dream about having nothing at all, and looking at your past and your future from a distance, and taking the fragments of your dreams, which you don't like the way they've been going, and rearranging them with hopefulness into something new'. I was maybe reading too much into this...

Somehow from that I started thinking about my dead dog Hudson and the merits of cloning technology. I reflected that, although I've got his ashes in a box next to my bed, I don't want to have him cloned. The reason for this is all to do with nature and nurture. The dog I loved was terrified of fireworks, and he hating hearing angry voices, and sometimes he'd get a bit insecure around big male dogs and try to pin them down by the head, which could sometimes result in some awkward moments with other dog owners I met whose dogs were pinned to the grass by Hudson's fully extended jaws...

But that was the dog I loved. Despite his faults. And if I could take some of his ash and swill it round in a test tube until I got a little black puppy, I wouldn't want to. Like in the Boys from Brazil he wouldn't be Hitler, he would just look like him.

I suppose the logical extension of this thought was that I don't want to be cloned either. The last 45 years or so have made me who I am, and that continuous narrative that spills out of me every time I write or start speaking wasn't written into my DNA, and can't be reanimated from a box of ash. How would I even explain the 70s to a newborn me, living in 2014? He'd think I was making it all up.

The night before in the pub we'd spent a lot of time talking about the movie Robocop (mostly the 1987 version of course). By the end of the film, despite nearly having his body blown to bits and almost having his humanity overwritten by computer software, he still knows that the same Alex Murphy is in there somewhere, and he hasn't become a machine. Despite life's admittedly massive setbacks, he's still got his narrative intact...

I slept for a bit after that, but then I woke up again at 5 (Jesus was still there) and again at 7 , and as I'd not brought any books with me I read the Bible for a bit, mostly the old favourites (James and Ecclesiastes). Just before going down for breakfast I read the verse from James 4:14

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

It was at this point (8.05 am) that I went down and sat through the silent breakfast. At first I found the silence oppressive but then I started to settle into it, and I didn't want to be the one to break it, when it finished at 8.45. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of the silence with a song in my head (All in vain, by the Vaccines), and the verse about being a transient vapour from James going round and round, and that made me even more aware of my narrative, and I kept thinking:

I don't want to be a mist that disappears when the sun comes out, I don't want to have lived my life in vain, I want it to count for something, I want to be the heroic star of my own show, who'll be remembered for ever...something like that.

At one point one of the brothers interrupted the silence to ask us if we were going to be in for lunch, but in the style of Keanu Reeves in the Matrix with his sewn up mouth, we couldn't answer him. Was this a trick, to see if we were following the rules?

Perhaps the effect of being squashed down like a spring during some of the night's thoughts about my own impermanence and by the silence at breakfast can explain what followed:

Stephen, Adam, Mark and I set off on our 10 mile walk to Amble, Warkworth and back and I suddenly turned into an airborne story telling projectile. Each and every subject that came up during the walk I greeted with the phrase 'Ah, I have a story about that'. To be fair, the other 3 had plenty of stories to share too, but stories were bursting out of me like popcorn out of the top of an uncovered popcorn maker on a high heat...

Subjects covered included Little and Large, lemon curd, the difference between rivers and seas, Blue Peter, Annie Lennox's Tartan suit and House of Pain...the list goes on.

Despite the fact that this was a walk and not a cycle tour, I decided to carry an oversize bag of spare things (in this case shoes in case the new boots I was wearing started rubbing), similar to how I always carry a bag of anvils and dark matter on our cycle tours, even when we've got a support vehicle. This also reminded me of our Royal Wedding Ride (I'll post a link later).

After about 4 miles, we almost got to Amble, but there was a river in the way, so we turned back to Warkworth and had a meal at the Hermitage Inn, which Adam researched on Tripadvisor before we went in. We were nearly put off by the age of the clientelle, as there was a man in a mobility scooter doing a 57 point turn outside, but inside there were some young people too.

Further strange rumblings from 1986 and 1987 came in the form of a playlist in the bar that included 'The Power of Love' by Jennifer Rush (she's half German, I saw her interviewed in German on German TV when I lived there in 1987) and 'Never gonna give you up' by Rick Astley, which came on about half an hour after I said 'The way this playlist is going, the only thing we need now is 'Never Gonna Give you up' by Rick Astley.

Also, there was a telly on near the bar scrolling through some photos, and at one point it settled on someone wearing Annie Lennox's tartan suit (there can't be more than one). This was getting more and more like the Matrix or The Truman Show...

The meal was excellent. I had some sort of salty brisket roast dinner followed by Spotted Dick (in honour of Dick the Vic with the massive shoes from the Royal Wedding Ride). Then the 4 mile walk back. My feet were feeling bruised by now, but the boots were still comfortable.

On the way to Amble we'd walked almost the whole way along the beach, and then on the way back from Warkworth we walked back along the cycle / footpath for National Cycle Network Route 1. Both routes were roughly parallel separated only by sand dunes, and each one reminded me of something from the past, two episodes almost exactly 10 years apart.

On 20^th July 1995 I walked along that beach with my first wife Beverley. She was a teacher, it was the first weekend of the 6 week holidays. After spending 70 nights in hospital in the months preceding that, and having had 3 major operations, there was a point she thought she'd never see anything else ever again, except the inside of hospitals. I think the emotion she felt on that walk along the beach that day, the ordinary wonder of being alive, had been sharpened by the months of fear and pain preceding it. This wonder can be lost in the noise of life, but feeling almost as if she was back from the dead, I can understand why she called it her 'perfect day'...

Having said that, it wasn't perfect for me. It was red hot, I'd forgotten to pack shorts, and as we wandered in and out of the sea, I removed my wet bottomed jeans and walked along feeling quite embarrassed in just my pants for a while. On reflection, for her, my embarrassment might have just added to the perfection, or maybe it made no difference at all...

Ten years later, 18^th July 2005, on the other side of the dunes, I cycled my first cycle tour with Ruth. That day we'd cycled from Whitley Bay, heading for Alnmouth, via Amble and Warkworth. It was by coincidence the first weekend of the six week holidays, and also our 6^th wedding anniversary. We ended that day in Alnmouth with a massive sleep inducing meal (at Beaches) and a walk along the beach before passing out at 8.40 pm. The next day didn't continue quite in the same style as we awoke to find a cat disembowelling a dead bird on the carpet next to the bed, but you can't have everything.

It may not have been apparent to my companions on Saturday, during the unleashing of my unlimited reserves of stories and anecdotes on the 10 miles we covered, but I was nevertheless on some level paying my respects to two previous versions of myself on the walk, the 27 year old version of myself who'd been there before in 1995 and the 37 year old version from 2005.

It's a bit cheesy, but something in the day reminded me of that cathedral book shop staple bookmark fodder quote about 'Footprints'. About alternating between one and two sets of footprints on the beach. It was another reason why I don't want to be remade in a test tube from a chunk of my own DNA. Because as well as all the thousand stories I did share on Saturday, there were other personal stories I didn't share. I didn't just carry an unnecessary pair of shoes all day. I also carried those two remembrances from earlier in my life. I wouldn't swap the memories of either day for being rebuilt from scratch.

A really nice part of the day was that I didn't have to remember them alone this time. Instead of being aware of my own pair of solitary footprints in the sand, next to where my previous ones had been, there were four pairs on Saturday, making a brand new memory from scratch, to add to the previous two. And it's another one I wouldn't swap for anything...

I did reflect afterwards on whether there was any meaning in my dream of the night before, or in fact no meaning at all. A day I spent moving between extremes of silence and an attempt on the world speed talking record made me wonder about the person in my dream, who said there was nothing at all that needed saying. Was that person God, or an actual person in my life, either past, present or future, who already understands me so fully, there's no need to explain anything?

On Saturday night, after my speed-talking-a-thon, I got chatting to an Australian called Dave, and he said as well as listening to the words I was saying, he was listening to the silence in between them, to the pauses. I was quite relieved to hear that there were some!

As I said to the glazed over faces of my friends in the car on the way back on Sunday, Ecclesiastes talks about there being a time for everything under the sun, but how do you tell when it is? How do you decide what to say, and what not to? And more importantly, how do you decide when? I read the whole of Ecclesiastes on Sunday, and it doesn't tell you when to do certain things, just that there's a time for them...

The last thing I read before I left on Sunday was this: From Ecclesiastes 6:12

For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow? Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone?

I guess everything I say and have ever said, whether in person, or by blog post, or in the olden days by letter, has been an attempt to explain myself, to put myself across in a way that conveys more than just the basic DNA of me that could be collected from a cheek swab. My very essence...

And that's important to me, because I don't want to be just a mist that vanishes...or a shadow that is passing through. I want there to be something in my story (and endless stream of anecdotes) which is lasting and indestructible, and which will continue long after I'm gone. 

 Is that too much to hope for?

Alien Invasion Imminent? Natural Disaster on the Horizon? Get yourself a dog, and you just might live

I watched Cowboys and Aliens last night.  Ruth has been wanting to see it since it was on at the cinema, but I've completely resisted going to see it  because I assumed it would be a giant pile of dung.  Then, when I found out Graeme, Carol and Suzanne were all going to be watching it last night, I thought 'Oh well, why not?'.  Even though they were watching it in Grantham and we were watching it on Teesside, it still felt like a shared experience.  Sort of.

In actual fact, it wasn't half bad.  There seemed to be some gratuitous Daniel Craig getting his top off while getting dripped on from above nonsense, but other than that it was quite engaging.  Another thing I've noticed about Daniel Craig, other than him getting his top off, is that he also seems to really enjoy punching people, because he doesn't just hit people once, he keeps pounding away on their faces until they look like mincemeat. I'm sure it's not fully necessary.

Harrison Ford was in it too, and he seemed on good form.  Last time out, as a geriatric Indiana Jones, he hardly seemed to be able to move, but he looked quite sprightly again last night, he was chinning aliens and all sorts.  I suppose in the style of the later Roger Moore Bond films, I didn't see him do much bending, but he seemed to compensate for this, by riding round on a horse and firing guns all the time.

I think I lost it with the last Indiana Jones when he survived an atom bomb by hiding in a fridge, and when the fridge landed after being blown about 3 miles from the epicentre of the blast, Indy just walked out without a scratch.  I fell asleep after that.

There was a dog in the film last night.  A collie.  And of course he made it through till the end.  There was shit blowing up all over the place for nearly two hours, except for around the dog, where all was calm.  And it reminded me of all those other films, where people are getting rolled over by buses, and are falling into craters in the Earth, and getting melted by volcanos, and there's always a dog, and the dog always makes it.

It made me wonder if I should consider getting another dog.  As insurance against the coming apocalypse.  Will Smith's girlfriend had one in Independence Day and she got away, there was a tramp in The Day After Tomorrow who had a dog, and he was fine, even when loads of people were getting frozen outside.  There  was a dog that was right next to a Sumo man in the middle of New York in Armageddon when he was hit by an asteroid, and the Sumo man ended up down a big hole, but the dog was unharmed.

This dog-friendly habit amongst film-makers probably isn't helped by our tendency, as an audience, to join in  each time and start rooting for the dog.  We're willing the dog to get away, even when in the background New Yorkers are being swept away by tidal waves and aliens and Godzilla, and oh dear, the Chrysler building seems to have fallen on a coach load of nuns again.  Never mind.

The one film that I can remember, which is the exception to the 'dog always makes it' scenario, is I Am Legend.  Sorry to spoil it for you, if you haven't seen it.  The dog's death scene in I Am Legend, is, by the way, genuinely upsetting.  The ending is complete baloney as well, but even though this film has some good bits, I would never want to see it again.  Because I wouldn't want to see the dog buy the farm again.

Yet, I've watched Independence Day, Armageddon and the Day After Tomorrow about a hundred times each.  In these films thousands of people get blown up, crushed, burned, frozen, incinerated, melted and otherwise killed in an endless array of horrible ways, but that never puts me off watching them.

I just keep smiling and say to Ruth 'Oh look, here's the bit where that reporter gets crushed by a billboard, pass me another chicken wing, will you?' or 'Oh look, Jeff Goldblum's boss has just been crushed by a bus, how about a nice cup of tea?'

I even kind of felt sorry for the wolves in 'the Day after Tomorrow' when they were trying to bite Jake Gyllenhaal's legs off.  I mean, they had been swept out of the zoo, and so they weren't getting regular meals any more, what were they supposed to do?

And the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, of course he wanted to eat Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill.  All he'd had to eat all day was a goat.  That wouldn't even fill me up.

It's my dog's birthday - he's 16 today.

I used to have a dog.  He was a big black labrador type of dog, only with longer legs. We got him from the Dogs Trust at Sadberge near Darlington, in November 2002.  We weren't sure we should get a dog at all, because we were out quite a bit in the daytime, and it meant leaving him on his own.  He won't mind, they said, he's been in the kennels for months anyway.  He won't mind a warm house instead.

He didn't seem very well behaved.  We took him for a walk round a muddy field, and they made him put a halter on, to try and help with steering him.  It didn't help much.  He just kept pawing at it, and he pretty much went wherever he wanted.  At one point he managed to get the lead tangled up in Becky's legs and  tripped her up in the mud.  That didn't go down too well.

After we'd walked him round the field for a bit, we took him back into the shelter and even though he wasn't supposed to, he stood up on his back legs, put his front legs on the desk and licked the girl's face behind the counter.  I think that was when I knew he was ours.

We wanted a few days to think about it, so we put a reserve on him.  There won't be any need, the girl said, I don't think he'll be going anywhere.  Anyway, a few days later we went back for him.  He cost £60 and he had a birth certificate and everything, although I think his Date of Birth was probably just a guess, as he'd been picked up as a stray in Leeds.  It was 2nd April 1996.  That means he would have been 16 today.

I wasn't really cut out to be a dog owner.  I'm not really alpha male material.  I used to give him bits of my dinner straight from the dining table, and let him up on the sofa, and I didn't like telling him off, even if it was the right thing to do.  The first time I let him off his lead he looked like he was rocket powered.  He hurtled round the field as if he was in the Large Hadron Collider and when he eventually came back towards me at about a hundred miles an hour I realised that between me and him was a barbed wire fence.  By some genius bit of mid-air manoeuvring, the like of which you'd expect to see in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, he managed to turn sideways and dive through the gap between the two horizontal pieces of wire.  I inspected him all over for cuts but I couldn't find any.  I think he knew what he was doing.

A few days after we got him, my friend Mark brought his German Shepherd round.  This was probably a mistake, as after a bit of snarling my dog pinned his dog to the ground by the head.  Mark managed to get his fingers in my dogs throat through a gap in his teeth to stimulate his gag reflex, and eventually he let his dog go, but it freaked us all out a bit.  I think on reflection, it was our fault more than the dog's.  I think he was just defending his new patch.

He did once try to eat a Weimaraner as well, which belonged to a big burly neighbour of mine.  The guy came after me with a stick, after my dog got his dog by the ear.  Oops.  Again, I think it was my fault.  I think he picked up on my nervousness, and he thought he better stand up for me.

We think he must have come from a good home at some point, because he knew all his commands, and he used to make the other dogs look bad at the dog training classes I took him to.  He was literally the teacher's pet.  The teacher used to let the other dogs mess up, and then call mine over to show them how it should be done.  The dog training was at the Dogs Trust, where he'd lived a long time, and I think they all knew him and had a soft spot for him anyway, but it was fun.

I won't go on.  I think sometimes that when people talk about their pets, it's a bit like when they talk about their children, and something cute they've done.  You can sort of picture what they're talking about, but as they're describing it, they're full of love, whereas to you it's just a story.

My dog was called Hudson and he died in 2006.  We only had him less than 4 years, and then his heart started to fail, and we tried to give him some medicine, but when he started to go and lie down on his own in the garden, and he wouldn't eat, we knew it was time.  I was in the room with him when he died, and that was six years ago.

In the early days of having him, when he was going through his awkward big dog eating phase, we tried a muzzle on him for a while, but he hated it, and one day we lost him in a field and when he came back, he'd managed to wriggle it off.  He looked so pleased with himself.  We never put one on him again.

At the time when he lost his muzzle in there, that field was just a field, but a few years later, and they're building houses on it.  I was cycling past there the other day with Ruth, and there was a big sign up advertising new build properties, and it made my day, when I saw what they were calling the development.  It's called Hudson Park!

I think it's unlikely that a whole housing development has been created, in memory of my dog.  I doubt very much that anyone connected to the building company knows that a dog named Hudson lost his muzzle in that field ten years ago, and even if they do, I don't suppose they would care.  But it made me smile when I saw the sign.  And apart from the times when I had to try and get other dogs' heads from out of his mouth, that was pretty much what happened every time I spent time with Hudson.  He made me smile.

And during the time I knew him, I did some really stupid things, and sometimes no-one in the house where I lived wanted to talk to me, except him.  He was always there, and he was always happy to hang out with me.  He loved me when I was an idiot, and he loved me when I wasn't.  I don't think he knew the difference.

Anyway, today's his birthday.  Probably not his real one, but it's his official one, from his birth certificate and all.  And that's good enough for me.  Happy Birthday Hudson.  I still miss you.


Postscript:  I found out from the developers Taylor Wimpey that the name Hudson Park was actually put forward by one of their employees to commemorate two plane crashes that took place in this area during the Second World War.  The Hudson was in fact a twin propeller engined aircraft and details of the two unfortunate crashes are detailed below.  Both very sad stories.  Thank you to Jenny Mothersdale of Taylor Wimpey for taking the time to reply to my enquiry.


http://www.yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk/aircraft/yorkshire/york41/v9032.html

http://www.yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk/aircraft/yorkshire/york42/ae627.html

Dealing with rejection - Indian style

I got turned down for a job yesterday.  After spending 5 hours doing role plays and presentations and stuff.  It was in York.  A recruitment day for the YHA.  There were about 25 people there and about 12 jobs, so by pure statistics alone there was a 50/50 chance of being offered a job.

I was pretty disappointed to not be offered anything.  In some ways it would have been easier if they'd said 'We think you're crap, piss off', but instead they said, that I was good enough, but there weren't enough jobs.  This may have been a polite way of saying 'Piss off, you're crap', but they seemed pretty genuine.  What it did mean though, was that there were some people there, who were considered more suitable than me.

Under normal circumstances, I would probably have spent ages agonising over everything I did and said during the course of the day, trying to second guess the interviewers etc.  But I've been to India now.  I don't need a reason for things.  I'm used to not understanding why things happen.  And it wasn't just the Indians I learned this from.  Dean adopts a similar approach.  He described himself as being fatalistic and he was willing to accept things that happened and he didn't waste time and effort reflecting on them too much afterwards, to see whether the outcome could have been different.  Maybe that's why he's got the stamina for the trip he's on, because he's always looking forwards and not back.

One thing I've noticed since I got back is how much time English people spend a) choosing things and b) thinking about things to do with status, ego and self-esteem.  Maybe Indians do too, but I couldn't understand what any of them were saying.  Now I'm back I feel like that little kid in the Sixth Sense, I can hear voices all the time.

My first full day at home was Monday.  I took Ruth out for lunch and for a walk up Clay Bank.  It was cold, foggy, icy and very English.  I wasn't especially paying attention to the women on the next table but once or twice I overheard them, and they spent the entire course of their meal talking about dogs.  One of them was really excited about getting a new miniature Schnauzer.  They spent ages talking about why this is a desirable type of dog, and how affectionate they are etc.  I couldn't help but laugh.

I was laughing because I was thinking about the dog situation in India.  Basically there seem to be a lot of medium sized mongrels.  They don't have really big dogs or really small dogs.  They certainly don't seem to have breeds.  The dogs there are just hang about on the streets, sleeping mostly, occasionally looking for some food.  They don't have to try too hard, because the gutters are full of discarded food containers.  On two occasions I saw someone doing something which approximated walking a dog, although I wasn't sure on either one, whether the dog was just following them.

If India has any places that you can get a dog from, which I doubt, I imagine, the conversation would go something like this.

'Hello, I'd like a dog'. 
'There's one, have that one!'
'Don't you have any miniature Schnauzers?'
'Any what?'
'Miniature Schnauzers'
'I'm sorry, I don't understand the question'.
'Well, what type of dogs do you have?'
'Stray ones'
'Are they good companions?  Are they affectionate?'  Do they like children?'
'They're dogs.  They just do dog stuff, they're not service providers'
'I think I'll leave it'.

Choosing stuff, expressing preferences, it's all a bit of a luxury over there.

Before I went, some people told me India would be a life-changing experience.  I'm not sure it was for me, because when I used to lie awake shivering at Bhandari Swiss Cottages at 4 in the morning (I liked the daytime, because it was always sunny, but the nights were when I thought about home) I thought about the life I have, and I realised that it was already good, and I didn't need to change it.

At home I've got Ruth, and I've got friends and family.  They love me, they accept me, they understand me, and even when I talk absolute rubbish, they still listen to me and love me some more. 

I read in some guide book or other, that Westerners often feel guilty in third world countries.  Guilty for all the stuff they've got.  It didn't affect me that way.  I just felt lucky.  It's an accident of birth that I was born in the UK.  I'm not actively going out and stealing material things away from Indians and Africans.  I was just born that way.

One thing I did notice while I was away was that the few thiings I had with me, my bike, my camera, my phone, and all the other stuff I took, became more important to me, not less.  Whether they were just a mobile part of home I don't know, but I didn't want to give them up.

Even in Rishikesh, where people were off seeking enlightenment and trying to find themselves, I didn't want to let go of my life back home.  I didn't need to find myself, because I knew where I was.

Some of the Westerners I met in Rishikesh seemed to have missed the point somewhat.  It was an area where alcohol is banned, and eating meat is frowned upon, and even eating eggs is normally done in private (I'm not joking).  And what did they spend their time doing?  Buying illicit beer, getting pissed and eating chicken.  They could have done that back home.

Some of my favourite Indians I met were the ones at Rishikesh.  They were always smiling and at times they were definitely laughing in the faces of us Westerners, but not in a negative way, just in the way that you might watch chimps or seals performing at the zoo.  I used to wonder if they went back to their rooms on a night and said things to each other like 'You'll never guess what that English girl asked me for today!' or 'Look at that guy wearing the tea cosy on his head, is that how he thinks Indians dress?' or 'You'll never guess how much that Greek guy is willing to pay for a can of beer!'.

A lot of the emotional knots that I tie myself up in, wondering whether I could have done things differently, or whether I've come across badly in a social situation, or whether this activity or that is making me feel good about myself, are luxuries that only a Westerner needs to worry about.  Dealing with Indians is lot like Luke Skywalker's encounter with Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back.  Over there, thinking doesn't get you anywhere.  It's all about what you do, or don't do.  There is no try.