Big nose

Yesterday I booked flights to Italy. The Ryan Air experience. I don’t feel as excited about going as I normally do. I don’t think I am not going to have a good time; I suppose it is a little to do with work and the fact that there is a number of things that I need to ensure happen over the next few weeks.

I feel like I will just wait to be surprised by something nice happening when I get there. I imagine I will get a new pullover from Benetton in L’Aquila, I always do. L’Aquila is a very attractive place, on a hill it seems to have its own climate, sometimes it seems to be looking down on the clouds around it, perhaps that has something to do with it’s name, L’Aquila means the eagle, that is how someone can be said to have aquiline features, although I would be more inclined to say they had a big nose. In China a guide told me that the Mandarin colloquial for a westerner is Dai Beezer (obviously my own spelling) which means big nose.

Anyway, you have to drive a long way across the Abruzzo plains on roads that rarely turn corners to get to L’Aquila. You might be driving off the end of the planet. The town is ancient and walled, full of tiny little roads to explore. It is always a shame to leave. I would like to live there for a few months and find out what it is really like. There is a restaurant with vaulted ceilings that we have been to two or three times, top pizza. Last year Ralph and I had a few drinks in a tiny bar whilst the girls did something else. On one occasion I noticed that they have a velodrome there, I love the idea of a velodrome, somehow so civilised and a bit futuristic. Ralph asked me what sport I would go and see at the 2012 Olympics; put me down for a velodrome seat.


tiny bar

I have been to a few places in various countries that feel like home. They don't have to be conventionally beautiful. In the film La Haine (the hate) a group of kids get up to all sorts of shenanigans in a very rough, concrete suburb of Paris. Throughout the film the energy of the place really came though and I fancied having a go at living there. Apologies to anyone who has seen the film, it is quite shocking and I’m not trying to glamorise its harshness.

Saint Louis Obispo looked good. We had driven from San Francisco down the coast and stopped there. Some people walk their dogs on the beach of an evening in front of their houses on stilts (that would be the houses rather than the people or the dogs that are on stilts). Others are having a drink on their balconies; the Pacific really does feel like the edge of the world. Me, I checked into a hotel and feeling quite smug, bent down to test the temperature of the water in the pool, thereby snapping my credit card which was unusually located in my front jean pocket.

What do Ikea?

Earlier this week we went to Ikea. Once or twice a year I go, having vowed never to go again after each ocassion. Having driven up the A23 for an hour and twenty I parked in a nice spot. We went in and had a coffee. We walked round once slowly and once quickly and then stopped for lunch (no items selected at this point). Neither of us had meat balls. Then we made a bee line for the filing cabinet thingy we had decided on, queued to speak to a lady about the spec, she printed off our list and we made our way to the end of aisle 57 downstairs (via the congested market place). There was a gaggle of stressed customers hanging about at the "full service" desk, looking like they were at Bogota Airport waiting for news of friends and relatives from and lost plane. A notice advising that it would take 30 -45 minutes to get your stuff was scribbled on a white board. There were a number of tense interactions between the long suffering Ikea lady and customers. After an hour our boxes arrived and we headed off to the tills. Twenty minutes in that queue, we were ready to pay when I noticed that we did not have on our trolley what we had expected. By way of feeling I had achieved something, I bought it anyway. Remaining calm I drove cautiously out of the carpark, mounting the pavement only once.

Maria Full of Grace *****

This evening's award winning DVD followed the trials and tribulations of Maria, a seventeen year old pregnant Columbian girl who decides she needs to affect some changes in her life and allows herself to become a drug "mule". The film feels real, one of those which helps with your perspective. Taking a big risk can be very dangerous or it can open up a new world. Catalina Sandino Moreno who plays the main role is most lovely.

I'm not scared (by Niccolo Ammaniti)

This novel might have been written by Enid Blyton after she had endured a prolonged nasty experience. It is non the worse for this, very very easy to tune into, less easy to put down, I read it in two sittings. If you are looking for a several hour diversion, I would recommend it.

Healthy option

On Saturday I acquired some tasty looking crispbread thingies with seeds on them, (they looked to be to Ryvita as a king sized bed would be to a bumpy ground sheet) from an expensive healthfood shop. Indeed I had a couple for breakfast yesterday and felt quite smug about how much good they must be doing me.

So come dinner time I was enjoying another with a bit of omelette when I suddenly felt quite replete. This was due to the fact that I had tracked down the origins of the small maggot that was gyrating across the table cloth in front of my plate to the unseeded side of the remaining crispy slices where a number of his clones were continuing to gorge themselves. There is something about the way maggots seem to enjoy themselves that really adds to the afront.

The Assassination of President Nixon ****

This was last night's DVD entertainment. Sean Penn is a very believable in this plausible story of a man's increasing alienation from his environment. There is definitely a bit of the character he plays in me and I've always enjoyed stories of one man against society, everything from Albert Camus' L'Etranger to Sylvester Stallone in First Blood. (Other films of this theme would include Glengary Glenross and Fallen). Enjoyable and the climax is worth waiting for, though a slow burner this one.

2 Films

Rating

***** - Stoater
**** - Most adjacent
*** - Okidoke
** - Rough
* - Oh dear

3 IRON - *****,

A young guy spends his time breaking into houses and flats, on the front doors of which he had previously left flyers. (If they had not been taken off a day or two later, he assumed the owners were away). He spends a night or two in these places, tidying up and doing the laundry in lieu of rent. Things get interesting when a battered wife turns out to be skulking about her house whilst he does his thing.
A great film which manages to combine the real and the surreal. Despite being a bit clunky at times, it transcends itself (and it took me with it).

CRASH - *****,

Thought provoking, carefully assembled jig saw which explores relationships between ethnic groups, individuals and good and bad. Left me feeling for all the characters (as well as a bit for myself)!

Terror risk

When you go out in the street these days, you know that there is a chance that people will approach you and ask for money, that you will step in something unpleasant or that you will have an altercation with someone. You are even aware that, although the chances are very small indeed, you could be run over or even involved in some kind of terrorism incident. You might not like it, but you go with it.

However, I noticed myself feeling differently at the idea that I could be sitting on a tube train reading my free copy of Metro and without warning be shot by people paid to protect me. I even caught myself wondering if I should dress more smartly next time I go into London.

What the Germans are doing in China.

So, I mentioned recently that I had enjoyed a day I Shanghai last year and that that was partly (largely) due to a trip we took on the Maglev Train to Pudong Airport which is itself a stunning bit of architecture by the way.

I had intended to use the train on that particular day but hadn’t been able to ascertain exactly where the station was in town. On a previous day I had entered a Shanghai subway station and attempted to find the Maglev line on the map but not only was it impossible to communicate with any station staff; we had not a common word between us, even “Maglev” drew a blank expression, but neither the station in question nor the line appeared on the map. The only thing I came away with was another packet of delicious little dried fish. I came to the conclusion that the organisers don’t want to make a big deal of it at the moment. Having travelled on it I can see why, I reckon it would be inundated with thrill hunters who would be justified in travelling half way round the world purely to sample what must be the fastest land speed available for a six pound return ticket.

So having failed to find the station we took the easy option the following morning and asked the doorman at the hotel to sort us out with a taxi to the maglev terminus. This he did and a half hour of interesting cab ride later we arrived in a quiet part of town that featured some large expanses of grass surrounded by new housing, in the middle of which was what could be nothing other than a station for some kind of futuristic transport. There was an eerily low amount of activity, but somehow that didn’t matter, there was a real air of expectation about the place. About forty feet above the ground there was a hundred or so meters of what appeared to be a large “slinky”. Projecting from one end of this there was the concrete track, no sign of a train. The entrance to the station was beneath the slinky where we stepped on to an escalator. At the top we found the place to be almost deserted but the ticket window had a girl behind it. We bought first class tickets because it wasn’t going to be every day that I got to ride on this thing (and also it cost next to nothing). Having passed through the barrier we caught first site of the shiny projectile. It looked very relaxed, like it was taking things all in it’s stride. I remember going to a Lennox Lewis fight, he had that same aura about him before knocking his poor opponent about most effectively.

I have to confess I was excited. I had wondered if I would ever travel on a train that ran using electromagnetism since a physics class when I was thirteen when a sheet of metal had shot across four feet of desk. The teacher had reckoned that we might.

Inside it was like any brand new train except that it was a bit wider and was obviously not mass produced. The seating, for example had an amateurishness about it, like something from a Thunderbirds set, that made the whole thing even wackier.

There was only a handful of passengers. We went to the front where we found the drivers cockpit door open and no one there. No levers, no steering wheel, a couple of screens a few buttons and a mouse were all the consul comprised.

Tempting though that mouse had been, we were installed back in the carriage when we started to move. I couldn’t stay in one seat, I kept trying different ones. The trip takes 8 minutes, most of which is taken up with accelerating and decelerating with a minute and half or so of top speed: 430 kmph (270 mph). There is a speedo above the door between carriages, if it hadn’t been for the awesome spectacle through the windows, that in itself would have been mesmerising. By the time it showed 431 kph I was giddy. I had my picture taken under it and the previously demure Chinese businessmen, the only other occupants of the carriage, started to do the same thing. Outside there was a motorway, we were passing cars travelling parallel with us two hundred miles an hour slower than us. The track banks for turns and you look down on the bizarre sight of that slow motion world.

At the airport we had a very nice cup of tea and skipped back on board the train. This trip was just as much fun. The thing I will remember about the return journey though was the experience of another train coming the other way. On your Intercity 125 your leisurely progress is punctuated by the occasional thump and three of four second woosh as people leaving the place you are going to pass you by on there way to where you have been; I have to say that I find even that quite exciting. However, to be sitting at a table (possibly drinking coffee and reading the magazine of your choice) travelling at 240 miles per hour when you are passed by a train doing the same speed coming the other way is a jolt that induces a split second of full body terror followed by a big grin (well in me anyway).

Funny chairs.

Maglev sets off.

To Maglev.