Quiet consummation have...

My mother at the Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Ţūlūn, Cairo

Bay phoned from Scotland
"You should come"
I'm flying to Inverness tomorrow

Mum at Telouete

*** *** ***

Sandy

• Today
• 

  08:28
  

  Simon Baddeley
  

  
  

  Thinking of your dad in Manhattan. I'm flying up to Scotland this afternoon to be with my mum and yours. X Simon
• 

  08:40
  

  Susie Roskelly
  

  
  

  Thanks Simon- he's fine, just very dark!! ;) thinking of you guys too up in Scotland. Look after each other. Xxx

Scanning pictures from New York

The Itchen

My sister, mum and great grandmother at Itchen Abbas in 1944

After I'd finished a day's tutoring a rewardingly enthusiastic group of local government professionals in the King Charles Suite at the Guildhall in Winchester, I cycled out of town on the Alresford Road, turned left down back roads towards Easton until I came to a road bridge over the Itchen. I munched a Cornish pastie I'd bought in town staring at the water, a swan working its way upstream sifting the riverbed - it's head below water for a minute at a time. It began to drizzle. A footpath by the bridge meandered across damp wormcast fields separated by wooden kissing gates - slightly tricky to negotiate with the folding bicycle - towards an avenue of gnarled lime trees, home to crows, that runs between the road through Itchen Abbas and the river.

The light was going. On the avenue I turned down where I remembered the land flattened into water meadows, passing through a gate, left my bicycle by a heap of ivy covered logs; strolled past Grey's Plot towards the river. It was running fast and high. I remember, gazing into its swift crystalline water - a first inkling of being in harm's way when I was four; when I'd wandered down here as children could without causing anxiety. I'd lie on my stomach peering over this bridge watching the dappled wild trout inches from my face, edging across the gentler summer current, drifting back with the stream for an instant almost stroking the crowfoot, resuming station, unworried by the small break in the even shadow of the bridge on the sunlit gravel.

As a child I lay, face down, head over the edge of this bridge gazing into the water

The past was far away; something gone. After a few moments I wandered up The Limes - Grey's Lea - to the Winchester road, gazed for a moment at Bignell's Cottage in the gloom. The present was too intrusive - the rain, the constant rush of passing cars, the plethora of signage, the dominating roar, like distant falls, of traffic on the M3 to recover an inkling of an intimation of childhood ... 'the things which I have seen I now can see no more.' It mattered not a jot. Revelations come when they want, unplanned; unlike this small pilgrimage to a place I'd visited only once before in over 60 years. I was content with my present ride and walk. The rain fell more strongly as I cycled back to Winchester in and out of the dark, dazzled by passing headlights, passing tyres splashing my waterproof trousers, rain seeping into my shoes. "This is become the land of car people" I muttered, but I'd enjoyed the ride; enjoyed getting back to my hotel room, putting out my wet things to dry, settling in to read Ismail Kadare's The Siege - written in Albanian in 1970 it's taken over thirty years to get his work first into French and then into English, a reminder of Albania's continuing impenetrability and fascination. And now, on a recommendation of Danica, who met him and lived near him in Belgrade, I've gone and ordered a tricky sounding book called Dictionary of the Khazars by a Serbian writer, Milorad Pavić who died last year. I can almost date my interest in the Balkans - October 2008 - alongside a wider curiosity about Eastern Europe. I saw this article by Tim Judah in my mother's last edition of the New York Review of Books, Vol 57 (4), 11 March 2010 - At Last, Good News from the Balkans [see also Balkan Insight]:

If you only want bad news from the Balkans, it is easy enough to find. You can read the next few lines and then read something else. Bosnia is on the brink of war again. Kosovo's independence is 'a failure.' Serbs are scheming, unredeemable extreme nationalists, and organized crime is everywhere. In the last few years I have come to understand that many people outside the region actually want to believe the worst: they want black and white when, like everywhere else, real life is a shade of grey. I am not arguing that, fourteen years after the end of the Bosnian and Croatian wars and almost two years since Kosovo declared independence, serious problems do exist. It is just that in many respects things are not as bad as commonly believed.

** * **

I was flown from Inverness on Wednesday, leaving the last of the snow, stopped for a few hours in Birmingham to pack and collect things for teaching, a poached egg on top of a welsh rarebit from Lin, then cycled to New Street to catch a train to Winchester for two days on 'Managing with Political Awareness' for Hampshire County Council.

I dislike CrossCountry Rail; noisy trains, dirty lavatories, crowded with little space for luggage, a management that exudes indifference to passengers. I dislike the trainline too*, having the nerve to buy advertising that presents rail passengers who buy tickets at the station as sheep. Even so I enjoy train travel, suppressing my ire at the state of our railways, sitting back and thinking of better times. It's even possible that Lord Adonis, were he given the time, which is unlikely right now, could breath a new spirit of reform into this intractable mess. (*June 2012 and I now use the Trainline website almost exclusively. V. user-friendly)

Dropped off at Winchester

Southern Ocean

The last of of our seven seminar tour around Australia finished at 4.30 yesterday (evaluation). The videos seemed to make good sense to people. The cases of overlap-negotiation we'd selected from the film of Mayor Felicity Ann Lewis and CEO Mark Searle at Marion City Council went down particularly well, with practitioners' analyses adding to insights about the process of political-management leadership.

John and I went back to our hotel - The Chifley, Adelaide - showered and took a tram to the beach at Glenelg, met an old academic friend of John's - Chris Paris - drank good beer from bottles - Coopers sparkling ale - watched the sun set below the Southern Ocean and enjoyed a celebratory meal of champagne and a good Shiraz with perfectly cooked 500gr steaks at the Glenelg BBQ Inn in honour of scholarly work with practitioners. This Bond-ish product placement serves as a memo.

Within a drink of meeting Chris I'd learned not only that he's a keen fisherman. John had already told me and he'd chatted knowledgeably with an old bloke squidding on the pier - smears of black ink on the deck - who'd come from Essex, where I was born, but...but that he was a campaigner for the conservation of brown trout (most don't know the difference between them and the rainbow) and a keen dryfly fisherman who'd enjoyed my stepfather on TV - and remembered the shed. "So you're his stepson. Wow!" Well that got me more unearned beer and a reminder that there are still places in the world where you don't have to be rich to enjoy The way of a trout with the fly - one of Jack's favoured fishing books for all his rueful amusement at the bizarre earnestness of the Skues-Halford controversy.

What was so pleasing was Chris' optimism about the prospects for restoring the habitat of wild trout - my favourite fish and the first live fish that ever I saw while I was living at Bignell's Cottage in Itchen Abbas, still with the hush-mark on my upper lip trailing clouds of glory, staring down from a low footbridge over the Itchen by Grey's fishing hut, swimming with the water crowfoot, holding station above the golden gravel.

Bay, my sister, my mother Barbara, and my great grandmother, Lucy,at Itchen Abbas in 1945

We'd had a minor mishap the night before the Adelaide seminar. Sydney Airport had a computer hiccup at check-in; long queues and all luggage labels written in longhand at the desk with staff struggling with unfamiliar use of pens. At Adelaide I waited with growing anxiety by the emptying carousel. My bag had gone missing with my laptop charging cable and speakers - vital to our teaching. QUANTAS help-desk gave me a nightbag with tooth things and pyjams but I had to wear my shirt and underwear another day. In the morning John phone-found a local Apple dealer - Next Byte. While he and Julie Kerr, of the Local Government Association of South Australia, welcomed arriving participants, I taxi'd to Rundell Mall, got my cable and we were ready to roll at The Pavilion with seconds to spare; a local friend of John's having driven over with excellent speakers.

My bag was in my hotel by the end of the day. "You should never travel without cables in your hand luggage" said Lin in the kitchen in Handsworth as I chatted with her on Skype from Adelaide airport QUANTAS lounge. She brought Oscar dog to the screen camera but he's sees with his nose and doesn't do digital. Lin's email:

I'm not just a pretty face, you know!

In fact I'm not a pretty face at all at the moment - I'm ill with flu and I feel awful. Amy and Guy are both ill too, though I don't think it's the same bug. Kiz was ill last week and stayed here for 3 days - most of the time in bed in the spare room. She's home now, but has had to go to the doctor, who told her to expect the bug to last for 8 - 10 days. Richard says I've still got sickness to look forward to, if I've caught it from Kiz. I hope mine's a different bug!

Auntie Barbara's given us a goose for Xmas. Richard went to Mom and Dad's to fetch it this evening and it's now in Jo's freezer. Not sure where it was poached from. lol

Gosh, the time's gone quickly. Only just over a week till you come home! See you soon. L x

Down to the shore on the evening tram to Glenelg - every colour under the sun

* ** ** * A letter about the Victoria Jubilee Allotments dated 18/11/09 from Andrew Hogben, forwarded by John Tyrell in Handsworth after he'd received it from Cllr Martin Mullaney, Birmingham's Cabinet Member for Leisure Sport and Culture:

Dear Councillor Mullaney. I have spoken to the developer's representative today who confirms that although recent heavy rain has delayed the importation of the final loads of topsoil for the plots; this will be completed along with service connections to the building which is now in place, landscaping around the building; the ripping of the plot areas and provision of turf between plots, by Christmas. At the same time I am expecting a draft transfer plan today from Persimmon which I will forward to Education and our Survey section tomorrow for verification, prior to preparing the authority to transfer the various parcels of land to the Council i.e. the open space, playing fields and allotments. Persimmon have agreed that if necessary the Council could be licensed to occupy the allotments land early in the new year, if the transfer is delayed for any reason e.g. ordnance survey query proposed boundaries identified for the transfer. I'll keep you informed of progress. Regards, Andy Hogben, Principal Landscape Development Officer 0121 303 4764 andrew.hogben@birmingham.gov.uk

Adelaide: flying over Glenelg pier where we were the evening before