Snacks on a different scale........

.......or scales on a different snack.

If you visit China you might be pleasantly surprised, as was I, that in many places they sell little dried fish in packets.

One of the best things about them is that if you like them and if you travel with a party form the west, as I did, you will be able to eat almost as many as you like, because in a sample survey of 12 occidental people of a variety of ages and sexes (well, 2 sexes), I was the only person to find them yummy.

Indeed, on a flight to Shanghai from somewhere else in China, we were given them by the delightful cabin staff (they are delightful by the way) and I had most other people’s from my group. On that flight I also enjoyed the kind of purple rice dish that they have for breakfast.

Film Recommendation

This weekend I thoroughly enjoyed the film, The Station Agent. Three isolated people becoming less isolated and making me laugh and feel a bit emotional along the way.

Her name was Rio

The other day I had lunch with Jose and Julian at a pub in town. I must have had quite a few lunches with them.

I suppose I must have been in my late teens when for a while, pretty much every week, Jose (Julian’s dad) would pick me up from my mum’s on the way to picking up Julian from his, on the way to going to a nightclub called the Warehouse in Leeds....for Sunday lunch.

They served food upstairs. Jose knew the owner, an American bloke I seem to remember. Having scoffed our burgers, Julian and I would go downstairs to watch the band, usually a fruity disco group called Best Friends. “Put it in the slot”, they would sing. There were also the Space Invader, Galaxian and later on Asteroid machines. Usually we’d end up amongst the last people there after the act had left the stage, Jose carousing with the beautiful people upstairs, me shooting lines of grunting luminous crabs, Julian watching.

There was the Sunday when we didn’t stop in Leeds but went to Milton Keynes to see UB40, Squeeze and the Police amongst others; Jose left us there and went on to London with his pal, picking us up on the way back later. Muddy, Milton Keynes Bowl.

We went to some massive discos in Spain circa 1981. “Operation Suntan” started as a 30 hour bus trip from Leeds to Barcelona to meet Jose. We stayed in Spain for a couple of weeks during which time we climbed into Salvador Dali’s garden and were the only trunked people on a nudist beach, (whenever I think of that I cannot get the sight of the naked German windsurfing bloke out of my mind). Then we headed off to France, driving fast along the motorways the bright sunshine bouncing off the blue sea, the car full of the sound of Duran Duran, Jose sharing a private joke with his girlfriend; the twenty four year old model, Julian and I wondering.

More recently Julian and I visited Jose at his home near Barcelona so we could attend the Spanish Grand Prix. Rosa, Jose’s friend from school would cook a lovely meal for us before we’d go out in the evening get drunk and play with the road signs. (Actually I’m talking about myself there, I blame those continental measures).

Jose, the Catalan septuagenarian, is still cool, always smart, always tanned, smelling cosmopolitan and expensive. He tells me he can’t be bothered to chat up girls anymore but I don’t believe it.

Commuting

In Sedona there is a small airport on the top of a plateau. It looks like a large rocky aircraft carrier. I drove up the hill and at the T junction at the top, was confronted by a sign offering about ten companies to the left. There were fewer to the right; I turned right. I parked and walked into the small terminal building and immediately knew how to choose which company to use. On his own playing a game on his PC was the Benny Hill look-a-like who was receptionist, chief executive, pilot and presumably everything else of his company. He couldn’t hide his excitement at the fact that once we’d gone out to look over his powered glider, I had said I’d like to take a trip.

The machine had two seats, side by side. Once inside we drove off to one end of the runway, abruptly he summoned full power; there was a lot of noise and moments later, still travelling quite slowly, we left the ground. After ten or so minutes he turned the engine off and so it was much easier to communicate; he told me that he lived a half hour flight away. On a typical day, he got up, stepped out of the house where his plane was parked, flew to Sedona, played computer games and flew people like me about and then flew home. Here was a man who was happy in his work and had given up trying to look otherwise.

With the engine off, we soared about the canyons sometimes skirting across the rims, frightening a little group of dear, sometimes plunging into a deep orange chasm as though on a massive, silent big dipper. He showed me ruins of American Indian cave dwellings and I remember seeing a very deep hole that he explained had one day recently appeared in the landscape without warning.

I glanced across at him a few times; he was grinning from ear to ear as was I. On one occasion we both looked at each other simultaneously and there was a slightly awkward moment before we quickly looked away and pointed out some landmark to each other.

After about a half hour, he radioed the airport and made an arrangement to land. We arced round gracefully so that the runway was stretched out in front of us. A few moments later we landed, the whisper of the wind shattered by the noise of the plane hitting the ground like a box of toys.

Water shock

For argument’s sake, lets say I am 75kg, just under 12 stone (or 168 pounds, good afternoon American readers ) and that 70% of that weight is water (a conservative estimate) which comes in at about 52 kg or, in fact 52 litres. A large bottle of Volvic is 1.5 litres, I therefore have about 35 bottles of water in me, or one bottle short of six 6packs of the type that you get at the supermarket.

If I could be dehydrated and rehydrated prune-like , at my destination, then I could arrange for my transportation in a handy 23kg pack carried by a friend or relative on a major airline, but not Ryan Air where it would be cheaper for me to buy a ticket and travel full of H2O.

Wedged Up

There is much fear about. It could be that of terrorism (although I personally don’t know anyone with that particular type), being poor (quite popular), worrying what people will think (I suppose I have that, but I am better able to recognise it in others), getting ripped off; that’s quite a personal one. People are easily vexed when they think that they have lost something rightfully their’s. Their concern is not really about losing the thing in question, it is a very primal thing, to do with clans and hierarchies and finding a mate, an so on. If you want to be sure that a tiger will track you down and eat you, apparently you help yourself to one of his kills. I saw a documentary recently where a miserable Siberian had done just that. So convinced were people of his fate that they wouldn’t let him stay in their houses. Sure enough, several days and miles later, his remains were found strewn about his camp-site.

I am in the supermarket, in the queue at the checkout. The person in front of me has loaded their gear on to the conveyer belt and I am starting to fill the space that is left. Check out what happens when you fail to place on of those “next customer please” doofers in the gap between his super size bottles of diet coke and your goats’ milk yogurt. You don’t have to wait long before he will slap one of those plastic wedges on to that rubber as though I’d just helped myself to few glugs of his low fat fizzy drink.

Does my failure to have positioned the plastic toblerone symbolise the fact that I might be about to grab his wench by the hair, and drag her, kicking and screaming, back to my cave. Mister, are you seriously that worried that you might accidentally pay for my daily portion of friendly bacteria? No, we are in fact talking about a hunter-gatherer-territory thing!

I suppose we should be thankful for those small wedges otherwise people would be micturating over their messages.

A Peeling

A few years ago I went to the see an exhibition in the East End of dissected and “plasticized” human bodies.

I left with a new respect for mine. There were lots of different types of exhibit, one of the most beautiful was that of a child whose blood had been replaced by resin and then everything other than his blood vessel network had been removed leaving an intricate sculpture. Whilst I rated it highly and found it to be very informative there was undoubtedly an air of the performance about the display.


Flay Boy

That turns out to be nothing compared to the first of four programmes called Anatomy for Beginners and featuring the slightly bonkers Dr Gunter von Hagens (responsible for the previously mentioned exhibition) dissecting human bodies, which was shown last night on Channel 4. Almost as revealing as the exhibition it was nevertheless a little bit like watching a spoilt child blowing a wad of his dad’s cash on rubbish with no one able to take him to one side and have a word with him. The good doctor got a clap for goodness sake, for managing to remove the donor’s spinal chord and the associated nerves leading down one leg to his foot, in one piece (and without taking his hat off).

But I’ll be watching again tonight as the oddest thing of all is the taboo around dead bodies which means that I know as little as I do about how mine fits together.

Last of the f*cking whining

Sunday evening, (when last week ends and next starts. Nowadays almost all children are at this moment listening to their iPods, slaughtering folk on their Play Stations, texting their friends and being rude. Not that I'm jealous. I can look back on a Sunday evening when Dom and I would attend chapel, tea and then the off-license; on the way back from where we would consume a bottle of cider each in preparation for Hart to Hart and a pot noodle. Or heading off to Cleckheaton for the week in my Cortina after a Chinese Take Away on Leeds Rd), it's a barometer.

Sangfroid

Yesterday I went to the town hall. I filled out the forms and joined the queue where I started the Sudoku puzzle in the Times. (I have become hooked on them, despite the fact that the part of my brain which causes me to return from a trip upstairs to collect the car keys with a flap jack and no keys, adds to my failure rate).

Next I chat to someone about where in China I went last year. When (in June) they learnt that I‘d been there and particularly that I’d been on a boat trip, they told me not to bother showing up for six months; they were quite nice about it. I went into the next room and waited to hear my name. When called, I went over to the other side of the room and lay down next to a very attractive Eastern European girl. The podgy, friendly bloke in his blue uniform seemed, not surprisingly, seemed a little reluctant to turn his attention from the clear skinned girl to me. More questions then; “you will now feel a sharp scratch”. About a pint of blood lighter I sat up on the bed, I was the only person in the room now, the staff had all gone off on their break.

I forewent the biscuit and tea, (I had had a Bounty before-hand) and left the bag of my bodily fluids to be transported to the National Blood Bank in Tooting last night. Apparently most blood is separated into a number of components to be made into various products. Where will my chi end up? I like to think it will be of some good. I wish it well. I have type B negative which 1% of the UK population has (but 20% of the Japanese have). I think they like O negative best because anyone can receive it. The Hopi Indians who live in the Mohave Dessert in Arizona have something in their blood only found in the blood of Japanese. Their folklore says that they travelled the world thousands of years ago before choosing to settle in what must be one of the most challenging places to live on the planet.

I am interested in the Hopi and when in Arizona a while ago, decided to go to see where they lived. My expectation was that we would find a fairly touristy place. Consequently we took a picnic. We found what I would describe as a run-down council estate in the desert. We are talking basic. Many of them have refused to be wired up to the electricity and telecommunications networks. There are a number of villages in the area. The one we arrived at was on the Second Mesa (a plateau in the desert). There was a shop, the lady was nice, she seemed to be aware that we were expecting something different. She suggested that if we followed the noise of the drums we would arrive at the local school where there was some kind of celebration going on in the car park. Very big energy there indeed, there were no other white people; kids of all ages in bright costumes dancing around in front of their proud families.

At the third Mesa we found the village of Old Oraibi, some say the oldest inhabited community in the United States. If anything it was even more bleak than the Second Mesa. There was another little shop. I bought a silver pendant with the image of the Ancient One on it. He looks like a space man.

Despite the harshness of the environment, there was something very powerful and attractive about the simplicity of the place.

Kent wait

Listening to the album Vapen & Ammunition by Kent as kindly sent to me by Dom in order that I can revise for their concert in May. Am very much enjoying it indeed.

I am in front of a big screen. The John Cussack character is reflecting on having been ripped off in a leafy street, or speeding down a dramatic coastal road having retrieved something that the baddy is going to want back, or celebrating in a bar with his mates, exchanging a furtive look with an unavailable girl across the room, or maybe typing up the critical information; cigarette dangling from lips, stopping to knock a big slug of ash into his plastic cup, smarting from the smoke......

Tanks

It was dark now, the driver dropped us off at Tiananmen Square. You cannot be ready for how big that place is. People were still flying kites. There is a large building in the centre of the square which is Mao’s Mausoleum, a day or two later we would join the queue to file past what is supposed to be the remains of the man himself. His face could have been made of marzipan.

It was a balmy evening and we strolled about a bit. It certainly feels like stuff has gone on there. It is adjacent to the Forbidden City and the government offices. From time to time you will see a posh black car with people in suits going about the business of transforming their county into a super power. There are no rubbish cars around as they haven't had cars there that long.



Anyway we had been wandering about for about 20 minutes and we were approached by a very smiley Chinese bloke. A few people had wanted to sell us something. He was more persistent than the others, more charming too. For the next two or three hours he was our unofficial guide, it didn’t matter that he was being paid by the shops and tea houses we visited; it was worth it. During the day he teaches English at the University but cannot afford to accommodate his family in the City, they lived out of town; he stayed during the week in a Huton, a one room apartment (without a toilet) off a little communal square. Everywhere in Beijing the Hutons are being flattened and replaced with tall buildings.


"no rubbish cars"

Whilst we were still in the square I asked him whereabouts the student was standing when he confronted the tanks. He looked at me like I had just taken all my clothes off. Through a fixed smile, glancing over his shoulder he said, “you cannot talk about that here”.

Pelican

October 1994; we were going to Florida. The flight followed a path down the east coast of the states, I tried to identify cities from 30 000 ft. By the time we were on board the hire car, heading for Miami Beach, it was getting dark and starting to rain. We had no bookings anywhere and it was several hotels before I had found one that showed the ESPN channel on the TV in the rooms; I wanted to know if Michael Schumacher was going to win his first world title.

The following morning we awoke to the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon. There was a lot of rain and we were told to expect it to last a while. We moved to a cool hotel on the beach called the Pelican. But the weather was still interfering a little. We drove around through the floods in our convertible.

The pair of us considered flying inland to New Orleans or somewhere but in the end decided to drive south. We had to drive all the way to Key West before the sun came out. A bit knackered, we checked into the first nice and very expensive hotel we found. This was on the basis that we felt due some “r and r” and we could move somewhere cheaper later. We never moved.

Every evening there is a bit of a party to watch the sunset. One evening we found ourselves sitting side by side in a Tiger Moth. As it flew over the little crowd by the port we were joined by another old plane and we did some modest aerobatics; we even saw a shark in the clear sea. Another evening we were on a sailing boat and became witnesses at the wedding of a drunk bloke and his much older slightly less inebriated partner.

I went on a dive. My diving buddy seemed surprised that I didn’t know Ridley Scott (as I lived in London) and on the way, talked a lot about how much he enjoyed diving. I had never dived before but I wasn’t the one who freaked out. On my second dive I let too much air out of my regulator too quickly and when the bubbles had dissipated I found myself standing on the bottom with a small group of divers around me. I learnt that before I stood on it, they had been studying a baby shark on the sea bed.

When you dive you can move by the way you breathe.