Brightly-Coloured Blobs

There is a kind of fixed template nowadays for those who wish to make TV programs for very young children. They need a handful of blobby near-human looking characters, usually furry and always brightly-coloured. These characters wander around a landscape that is not just brightly-coloured but almost exclusively primary-coloured. They make a variety of pre-linguistic sounds that are apparently meant to mimic the noises children typically make before they learn to speak but which in fact resemble the noises you get if you try to speak through a kazoo.

There is usually some kind of narration, often by a "famous voice" – a down-on-his-luck actor or a pop-star-turned-thespian will do nicely.

And not being a child psychologist I have absolutely no idea whether this is a good thing or a bad thing and hence no comment to make.

What is the point of this post then?

Well, flipping around the channels this morning I happened upon something called "In The Night Garden" in which a light blue blob and a brown blob in dungarees were running around a large bush that was a shade of green unknown in nature. They were looking for each other but as they kept running in the same direction were always on opposite sides. All the time they were making a kind of squeaking-grunting noise. Eventually they did find each other, at which point the narrator (apparently Derek Jacobi) chipped in with the comment that stopped my hand on the way to the channel switch

"Igglypiggly and Upsy Daisy have found each other. Isn't that a pip?"

"Isn't that a pip?"

I haven't seen language like that since I last read a Famous Five book and that was more than forty years ago. Enid Blyton, who wrote them, died in 1968.

So why, I wondered, did the narrator use such an oddly dated turn of phrase? Is it perhaps making a comeback? Can we look forward to similar 1950s middle-class expressions being revived? Will it be a jolly good show? Will everything be absolutely ripping? Or perhaps topping? Will there be lashings of ginger beer when mater and pater get home? Are you a good egg? Or maybe a brick?

Maybe not. Maybe it's just "pip". Maybe it's part of the current street argot of the average three-year-old. Of course as I don't have an average three-year-old handy I may never know.

When all is said and done it's probably just an idiosyncrasy of the writer. Who knows?

And with that I must be away. It just remains to say "Toodle pip, old chap. Toodle pip."

Yellow Dust Jackets

At the top of this blog it says "travel, language, poetry, teaching and anything else that occurs to me" so let's get away from travel for five minutes. Let's talk instead about libraries. (And I can think of at least one reader who just cheered.)

Nowadays, apart from looking for text books, I don't go to libraries. If I want a book, I buy it. It accounts for a substantial percentage of my salary but what can I say. I like owning books better than I like borrowing them.

Part of the problem is that I don't have a convenient local library and the selection of books available at the less convenient ones (the ones that are an hour or more each way to get to) don't coincide with my requirements.

But it wasn't always this way.

I've lived in the same house (give or take periods working away or travelling or living at the University Halls of Residence) for forty-five years – I was six when we moved here. Back then there was a library and I had read a lot fewer books. It was, even for a six year old, a five-minute walk away. It has long since disappeared, demolished for no very good reason. The land to this day remains derelict although they did put a fence round it and dig a hole a couple of years ago.

But that's something else that wasn't always this way.

I remember the library so well I could draw you a map and with a bit of effort label up the shelves with Dewey classifications. I remember it as I remember little else of my childhood. It's a bone-deep visceral memory.

At first I used the children's library. (In through the front door. First door on the right. Librarian's desk on the left, immediately inside. Young children's books at the back left. Older children's books at the front.)

I remember taking my books to the librarian and the pink cards being taken and put into little card envelopes and filed in a wooden drawer.

I also remember the day when I couldn't find anything I hadn't already read and was allowed into the adult library. (In through the front door. Through the door straight ahead. Librarian's desk to the right – connecting to the children's desk via an arch). Fiction on the left. Non-fiction on the right.)

In the next few years I probably read ninety percent of the fiction in there. (It would have been a hundred percent but inexplicably the library also had books suitable for girls.)

I'm getting all nostalgic for the colour yellow now – not any old yellow, the yellow of the spines of the books published by Victor Gollancz. They were always the ones that I looked for first. They had all the best science fiction. Of course at this remove it's difficult to identify specifically which authors were in the Gollancz stable but among the science fiction authors that I discovered at the time were Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Keith Laumer, Andre Norton, Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, John Sladek, E.E. Doc Smith, John Wyndham and Robert Zelazny.

Ah. Those were the days.

But don't get me wrong. I didn't just read Science Fiction. I also read Ian Fleming's James Bond books Adam Diment's less well-known spy books The Bang Bang Birds, Dolly Dolly Spy and The Great Spy Race. I read Russel Thorndike's Doctor Syn books which I remember fondly and Kenneth Royce's XYY Man series. I read Sherlock Holmes. I read anything and everything. These are just the ones that jump immediately to mind. I'm sure I could come up with many more if I put my mind to it.

And now I don't go to the library. Instead I browse in bookshops. I treat bookshops as libraries with the inconvenience of having to pay but without the inconvenience of having to take the books back.

And even that is changing. Quite often now I browse on line. And that's what I'm off to do now, to browse on line. I have a sudden fancy to read a Doctor Syn novel, or maybe one of the Adam Diment ones. If I can find them cheap enough I'll buy some. And as I read them I'll think about the old library.

Another Point of View

It's often nice to get a different viewpoint on something, to see something familiar through other eyes. Paul Merton's TV series on China could scarcely be more familiar. Although he's getting to meet lots of people arranged specifically for him, and staying in decent hotels rather than the tents and downmarket dives that I managed, he's visiting all the same places that I went to last time I visited China and that's giving me the chance to compare my observations with his. Of course there are some differences – I paid for my trip whereas he's was paid for his – then again he's a famous (and very funny) comedian and I'm a bloke from Bilston who has a blog. So how do things stack up?

A few general observations first. He was absolutely spot on target when he talked about the ever-present noise that forms a soundtrack to the Chinese experience – the sound of someone hacking up a mouthful of phlegm and gobbing it into the gutter. On my first trip – way back in 1992 – I wrote down my first impressions and they included this

"the other thing you can't help noticing (is) the amount of coughing and spitting that goes on among the Chinese. To a westerner it is very disconcerting to see everyone from teenage girls to little old men coughing up a mouthful of phlegm and expectorating with gusto into the gutter."

He seems (though I missed an episode, so I could be wrong) to have missed another particular favourite in which someone will lean forward at an improbable angle, place a finger firmly against the nose to close one nostril and empty the other onto the ground by blowing very hard.

Something else that I have to agree with him about is Chinese Opera. After I saw it in Beijing, my local guide commented sadly that it was killing Chinese culture in the eyes of foreign tourists because once they had seen that nothing he could do would persuade them to see anything else "cultural". A group of us who had been to see it struggled for appropriate descriptions and eventually came up with

"It sounds like someone strangling cats in an alley full of dustbins and looks like Max Wall performing Aladdin."

When we saw it, it was enlivened by a faulty computer generated translation of the words which seemed to be omitting all the nouns and thus providing such eccentric possibilities as "I will overcome my and build a mound of their."

Another point of almost complete concord between his experience and mine was his boat trip down the River Li from Guilin. He went on one of the small boats which seem to always be full of backpacking Australians. The scenery is magnificent, far more so than you can possibly appreciate from a television program. It was such a highlight of my trip in '92 that when I returned nine years later I made a point of ensuring it was in my itinerary again.

Although both Guilin and Yangshou had changed greatly in the intervening time, the river had not. It was every bit as lovely as I remembered it. The sun was high in the sky, the water was calm enough to be a mirror reflecting back those remarkable conical mountains that rise from the plain like giant molehills. Here and there, there were groups of children playing at the water's edge and sometimes a long low boat with a fisherman. We floated downstream, watching the birds wheeling overhead and the buffalo cooling off in the shallows. It was idyllic… and just as with Paul Merton's trip every now and then the peaceful tranquillity was completely shattered by the noise from a flotilla of huge boats steaming up-river full of Chinese tourists all sitting inside, eating dinner and ignoring the wonders around them.

I have to differ with him on some things though – specifically on his opinions of Yangshou and Guangshou. In both cases it would be harder to find a more complete disagreement. Oh, the facts of the cities are indisputable but it's the interpretation that you put on them. Paul Merton wasn't to put it mildly, very keen on Yangshou which he thought was too touristy and too commercial and too much like every other touristy and commercial place in the world. I, on the other hand, loved it. I checked myself into a very odd hotel that reminded me of a condemned flat I once occupied in Nottingham. Not only did I have the room to myself, I had the whole building… an annex to the main hotel. Why should somewhere quite so deadbeat have appealed to me? It's hard to say. I wrote several versions of a description while I was there. The best of them was this.

There was something very Chinese about the room: not the Chinese of pagodas and palaces, or rice fields and straw hats but the Chinese of the cultural revolution. As I looked at the streaked and stained whitewash on the walls and the bare floorboards with just the faintest remaining traces of ancient varnish; as I looked at the beds with their thin mattresses and single sheets, I could picture myself as one of the proletarian masses living my life in what was only technically a two roomed apartment. I paced out the larger area – almost eighteen feet square and about the same height. The other "room" connected via a hole in the wall without a door. It contained a tiny cold shower, a cracked and plugless sink and a squat toilet. It was about four feet by three.
I lay down on one of the beds and stared up at the green metal fan, which, even on its highest setting, moved barely fast enough to disturb the humid air. It didn't matter. I hadn't put it on for the comfort but to help dry my washing – underwear, towels, T-shirts – which were strung out across the room on a wire fastened there by some previous occupant. It was a losing battle. The day was so humid they would never dry adequately.
I mentally inventoried the furnishings. It didn't take long. Two beds with mosquito nets. Two armchairs far too dilapidated to be called threadbare. One table with a wobbly leg. A broken television set. An apparently homemade cupboard.
As I lay there trying to relax, I could smell the mustiness of the place. The whole building reeked of it. The room was a perfect match to the building, which was a seedy run-down thing away from the main block of the Xiling Hotel where those on higher budgets were staying. I didn't mind. I actually felt comfortable there. It was – after a fashion – en suite and I did have a room, indeed a whole building, to myself.
Forty yuan per night? For a whole building?
A bargain.

Anyway, back to why I like Yangshou. After months of travelling we were stationary for a few days and I couldn't think of anywhere I had been that I'd rather be stationary in. It's a backpacker town and anyone who has ever been backpacking around the world will need no further description. It's a place that seems to have no reason to its existence beyond the travellers on its streets. It has two main streets joined by various alleys and they are crowded with a fifty-fifty mix of tourist shops and bars. They all have either jokey or mock-classical names : Minnie Mao's, The No-Name café; The Golden Lotus; The Shining Mountain. The shops sell nothing but souvenirs (T-shirts, carvings, lanterns, jewellery) or pirated copies of rock CDs.

I found it all very relaxing and friendly and for three of the four days there I did absolutely nothing except hang around in bars chatting to random strangers – Chinese and otherwise – and generally relaxing more than I had done in the previous five months of travel. It was great. I was very tempted to answer one of the many advertisements around the place for English teachers and stay there.

Guangshou, by comparison, Paul Merton liked, seeing it as the authentic face of modern China. And he's not wrong there. Unfortunately the authentic face of modern China looked to me very much like a grim and dull industrial city with little to recommend it other than the facts that a) my stay was very brief and b) it was a convenient place to get the ferry to Hong Kong. It's the kind of place that is vastly improved by leaving it. The restaurants and hotels were too expensive for someone on a tight budget and all in all, especially coming a mere day after Yangshou, I'd have to say that I found the place thoroughly depressing. This wasn't helped by the fact that I could find absolutely nowhere to eat that wasn't well beyond the money I had to spare and ended up sitting in a hotel room (I'd persuaded a couple of Danish backpackers that what they needed was to rent me six foot of floor space in their room, without mentioning it to the hotel management), drinking a couple of bottles of beer, eating a packet of biscuits and watching a documentary – in Chinese – about tuna fish. It was a new low.

Next week Paul Merton is in Shanghai. I shall make a point of watching to see if we agree or disagree. Either way, it's good to get a second perspective.

Ten 100-word annecdotes involving food

I don't do lists. They are too trivial and pointless. Waste of space. So this isn't a list of ten one-hundred-word anecdotes involving food.

Definitely not.

1.Kyisimoss Dinner

Panchase Ridge, Nepal, Christmas Day 1993

The locals were preparing Christmas dinner for us. One of them accidentally kicked over the basket that the chickens were under and spent an hilarious fifteen minutes chasing them across the hillside before returning them to their prison to await dismemberment.
I looked away again, to stare at that view across the valley – at the twin peaks of Machapuchare.
I looked back. They were killing a goat for the curry.
And away. And back. They were baking a cake in a round iron pot in a hole in the ground.
They "iced" words onto it with jam.
"Happy Kyismoss 25thDac1393"

2.It's What Flavour?

Beijing, China, 1992

A hint for those travelling in China – don't eat the ice lollies.
Why not? What can possibly be wrong with an ice lolly?
At the delightful Yonghegong temple, I found out. After queuing for tickets in the blazing hot sun, I decided to buy one and cool off. From the selection, I chose one with a green wrapper, expecting it to be apple or kiwi fruit flavour. It wasn't. It was chopped green beans frozen in sugar water. It tasted disgusting. I gave it to a passing ten-year-old, who evidently didn't agree with my assessment, and went into the temple.

3.Just For The Tourists

Somewhere on the Amazon, Ecuador, 1999

Look! Absolutely no one really does this, right? It's like the sheeps' eyes thing. Made up to gross out the tourists. So here we are, a day out in the Amazon Jungle. See, there's our guide, over there, breaking a branch off that tree.
Urgh. It's covered in ants. He wants us to do what? No way! Wait. Dave's taken the stick. He's licking them off.
Why did he have to do that? No we all have to do it or look like wimps. I like fresh food but this is ridiculous.
No, I don't think they taste of lemons.

4.I've Had This Before

Austria, 1989

The morning, billed as a strenuous hike, was in reality a gentle, albeit uphill, stroll. Nevertheless we were ready for lunch and grateful to find such a delightful Alpine bistro. Now Donald was studying the menu. Most of us played safe with the easy translations. He declared loudly
"Ah, I think I've had this before." and ordered something unrecognisable before starting lecturing us on haut cuisine.
Fifteen minutes later a plate containing several pounds of almost raw, quivering white fat was placed before him.
"Oh," he said "That's not at all what I was expecting."
Everyone tried not to laugh.

5.A Smell Of Water Bug

Vientiane, Laos, 14 February 1998

Translated menus should be approached carefully. Things are not always as they seem. We sat in the restaurant. We ordered. The waitress brought food. My beef and peanut curry was bright red, astoundingly hot and very tasty. David's sticky rice was rice. It was sticky. Warren, more adventurous, ordered "Chilli with smell of water bug". A translation problem, he assured us. It was a plate of vegetables with little unidentifiable black things. One of them turned over, grew legs and escaped over the side of the plate. Translated menus should be approached carefully. Things are sometimes exactly as they seem.

6.Frankendeer

Inari, Finland, 1995

I hadn't fancied the boat trip and that left me at a loose end in an especially uninteresting town. After a little desultory exploration I decided on a whim to try reindeer for lunch. It came as shapeless lumps of unappealing grey meat served with about two kilos of mashed potato. It was deeply unimpressive.
Afterwards I explored the shops which seemed to contain every conceivable reindeer part fashioned into every conceivable souvenir. If I'd bought them all I could have probably reassembled a complete animal.
Later, back at camp, Herman had prepared a treat. Reindeer stew. With mashed potato.

7.Hotpot?

Chengdu, China, 3 August 2001

Misled, perhaps, by having already found a café that did bacon sandwiches, I felt optimistic about dinner. Hotpot. It conjured images of steaming potato-topped stew.
It was an upmarket restaurant but I was puzzled by the polo-mint-shaped tables. We were quickly seated and gas burners, built into the table, lit. A put was suspended over it, divided into two sections. One contained bubbling red lava, the other bubbling green slime. We were given plates of unidentifiable shredded meat.
"Drop them in," said my guide," "Then take them out with the chopsticks and eat. Be careful. The red one is hot."

8.A short treatise on literal-mindedness

Barcelona, Spain, 2004

Catalonian restaurateurs must be trained in literal-mindedness. Menus deliver precisely what is written on them in black and white. In a chic restaurant I ordered duck with orange, expecting perhaps duck in an orange flavoured sauce and a few accompanying vegetables. What I got was half a duck. And an orange. Whole and unpeeled. Others ordered peas and ham, which was a large bowl of peas and a slice of boiled ham. I was sorriest for the man who ordered the spinach. Two kilos of boiled spinach, unsullied by contact with other foodstuffs, would be more than Popeye could manage.

9.Keep Your Hands Off My Sausages

Various locations, South America, 1999

There are two main varieties of vegetarian – moral and practical. The practical ones don't eat meat because they don't like it, the moral ones because they prefer a more ethical treatment of animals. I don't understand either of them but I respect their views. The trouble is the third kind – the part-time vegetarians. When you are cooking at the campfire and you've prepared, at their request, a separate meatless option, it's annoying to have them nick your sausages because they "look nice". I'm sorry but vegetarians are like virgins. You is or you ain't. And keep away from my sausages.

10.As Sure As Eggs Ain't Eggs

San Jose, Philippines 22^nd December 1995

There is something important that you need to be told,
So listen, listen well now, I beg.
Though it may look like one on the menu
"Balut" simply doesn't mean egg.
Oh, it's true it's an egg in most senses.
It came from a hen, can't deny it,
But you need to delve closer and deeper
If you think, "That looks great! Think I'll try it."
For a "balut", though an egg is quite fertile
And if it's closer to hatching that's more tasty.
It's a "boil in the shell" baby chicken,
So when choosing your lunch, be less hasty.