Lac d'Arvoin - 1663m

Sunny warm and blue skied walks
above lakes; below lakes above snow flat,
ice flat blue below powered peaks.

Lower levels wooded slopes a verdant verte
of fresh growth, soft brush-tipped ends
curving, freshly in the rising breezes.

Under snow covered ice, trails crack
sandwiched between crunching boots and bubbling creek.

Raquettes mounted clacking forward,
the panting of pole planting patterns;
Stop! Breathe. Look about;
the furthest stone strewn slopes
covered by snow traced tracks of
heavy hoofed winter woollen'd beasts.




Silence completes among the trees,
personne probing -
the bark of dogs a valley distant,
only the crack, of falling frozen rain,
dripping slowly melted in the pine top sunshine.

Snow deep and wind blown slope;
a dreamlike piste demands a carve,
instead we trudge, upward to waiting lake
and perfect peaceful picnic...

Rock Bottom by Geoff Baker

I always seem to have more than one book on the go at any one time.

Rarely are they novels. They tend toward the autobiographical, the travel writers of a half a century ago walking across unexplored desert terrain which I read with a tinge of sadness and regret as those 'lost' places are now found by ever more people...

But these past few months have been an exception and I have bought The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; as a new American edition threatens to do away with the word 'nigger', which I don't use but which I think in this case illustrates a country's history and this should be taught and properly explained. But that is just a personal opinion. Also I have never read the whole book and only had passages of it read to me when I was a child in the Cub Scouts.

In addition to that I found on a Geneva second hand book stall one cold February Friday afternoon a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover; from the original manuscript or edition published by Lawrence in 1935, if memory serves me well. I can see here the start of a pattern; the desire to read the classics before I die. To that should be added a borrowed copy of Nine Lives by William Dalrymple. His earlier City of Djinns I found absolutely fascinating. A collection of personal histories of a year spent in Delhi. And pretty much anything I can find on India I devour hungrily having been to that enormous beautiful country twice in the last six years.

Jan Morris' Venice is still there by the bedside too, to be dipped into following a long weekend there last September. A stunning work.

All these books have one thing in common, and it is the beautiful and extreme spoken word; the extraordinary use of language of the time and place.

To that pile I have merited Geoff Baker's "Rock Bottom." I thought it might use the word fuck too many times; more than necessary in anycase, but having laughed through the story, often aloud I have to say it is one of the most enjoyable reads I have had for a long, long time. And you can never have too many fucks.

None of the characters are what one would call nice. They are not admirable. They are hard, rude, addicted, self-opinionated modern Britons. Not very likeable at all. There are none that you can hang your hat on, and say I enjoyed him, I liked her and I'd like to read more about these people. But nonetheless I could not put the book down and worked that week suffered.

It is quite simply a view on a particular part of Britain's music industry, the people who play in it, work in it and keep the whole circus of celebrity turning. Geoff baker should know as he worked in that industry, as publicist to Paul McCartney and Linda his late wife, the American photographer.

I hope Baker writes another. And this book will make a bloody good film. I even discovered I feature on page 51... that's to say I am one of the old fuckers, the character Billy Vernon talks about.

Sympathise with me.

Where did this winter go ?

This has been a very strange winter.

Maybe it is me that is strange or perhaps has become so.

I rather miss not adding to this blog, this infrequent record of what I have done or where I have been but as I see the last entry was mid-December I cannot believe I haven't done anything or been anywhere since then, and now it is approaching late March; it is Spring. The sun is staying with us longer; it is gradually getting warmer and the prospect of disruptive snow recedes. With that came the first calls of the migrating Black Kites, arriving back on the shores of the lake here for the next few spring and early summer months. They will gone by the end of July, but in the meantime their trills and calls as they rebuild nests, scavenge, hunt for small rodents and for lake fish straying too close to the surface will enthral me, friends and visitors to the area; along with their acrobatics as they soar on the thermals rising between here and the nearby mountains. Already I have watched as a recent arrivals have been mobbed by crows as they defend their nests.

In the intervening months, I have suffered pig flu' - at least it wasn't malaria - and that stayed until after Christmas. The first ski of the season was January 1st in a crowded Les Gets. Late for us. I have been to the movies a couple of times in the big city an hour from here. I flew to see my family in England in mid-January.



I have enjoyed some long hikes in snow and on ice; bending almost beyond repair one expensive Black Diamond randonnée ski pole when slipping on ice hidden from sight by the fresh thin layer of new powder snow. If I had been nearer the edge of the cliff face down which runs the metal mountaineering ladder I might well have disappeared over the edge and not be typing here now...still the view of the distant mountain ranges would have filled the falling time.

I have with my mountain path mate, trekked from Lac de Montriond to Lindarets; a three hour hike with the first 45 minutes like a never ending stair way, up, up, up until in the winter cool air the sweat on the back of the t-shirt become uncomfortable. The restaurants teem with lunching skiers when we arrive and once fed and wined we descend for two hours along the track leading past the iced waterfall, along the edge of the lake with its track clearly showing where walkers have chanced their luck and left their booted imprints the length of the ice, past the holes cut earlier by chainsaw for the weekend's expected ice divers.



I have determined to get rid of an excess of weight by eating less, eating more healthily and drinking less alcohol although that latter choice may be harder than the others; and of course by continuing to exercise as much as I can.

Monday last I called a friend whose husband has recently dumped her, and suggested a good walk, under the mountain cliffs, in the sunshine, an easy hike and one that should do her good, get her out, get her talking, make difficult decisions easier by being listened to; a problem shared is a problem halved? A solution may be easier to find if that is the case.

I have worked too although not very hard and not very much but that is a consequence of my winter here.

Each week I visit a neighbour. I teach him English. He actually speaks it rather well, in his heavily French accented way. He has much more than a rudimentary grasp of it, but what he needs is conversation and correction and with that in mind we talk. I try and put on American accents and use American idioms and slang; all in order that he might better understand his boss, an American woman, a busy politician of sorts, who speaks to him fast and while either leaving her office or just turning away from him as she has other matters on her mind. No matter that her staff don't understand.

In return he teaches me French. And my français is I think, no modesty here, more rudimentary than his English. But that is what comes of living in a foreign country, and having a shared nationality and language within a family. Each Wednesday evening, I arrive and kiss his wife hello, a French kiss of course. A kiss on each cheek and she of course is French. Very French. If I saw her in a photo or in a film before hearing her speak I know she would be French. It is her very being.

My other non-French neighbours and friends tend to have at least one French family member, or kids born and schooled here, who come home after a hard day conjugating verbs, to a mum or a dad who can help them with (or rather do) the homework given.

Time to walk, to buy baguettes for tea...

More, perhaps, tomorrow.

Oh, what a pain flu' is...but Malaria is so much worse.

It makes even posting memorable photos a pain in the butt... now, a week or so later having had confirmed that I am not suffering from malaria, I can rest assured it is nothing worse than a debilitating dose of grippe...

Some of the earlier fevers were particularly nasty and had been accompanied by weird, and some quite horrible, dreams. I thought I was delirious as I burned up with skin hot to the touch. Once, the disturbing sound of my telephone broke through my painful sleep only for me to be caught by a cold sales call from a charity whose complaints were falling upon my deaf ears. It was not their time.




I determined this year I should support some of those children in a part of Africa recently visited, where malaria is still a major threat and where small African children die needlessly.

Despite malnutrition, dirty water, HIV/AIDS, general disease and wars and other tribal and territorial strife, malaria succeeds in killing an African child every 45 seconds.

Yet, £3 will buy a new mosquito net impregnated with an insecticide that will give a child a fighting chance.

All I have to do really is to buy more than a few, and to maybe pass around that knowledge and ask others to try and do the same.

So, anyone passing here, if you like these photos of a beautiful, strong winged, majestic eagle and you have a mind to help, please send some money to a charity that helps provide mosquito nets for those underprivileged kids that might die without them.

www.christianaid.org

You may not be a Christian, I'm not but they'll accept my money and so I'm sure they'll accept yours too...

Thanks.

African Fish Eagle on a small island in the Chobe river which separates the two beautiful countries of Botswana from Namibia.

memories of chobe safari

This is the elephant in the room.

This wonderful animal plodded gently through the brush of what is part of Botswana's Chobe National Park. It quietly approached our vehicle with outstretched trunk sensing the air, sniffing for smell of threat. Our driver and guide, Lucky, had told us not to speak, not to make a sound or sudden movement. We could easily scare this elephant although we were all petrified in any case and it may well feel threatened and therefore charge. It's eyesight being bad as with all elephants it had to come close to investigate and once it was positioned in front of us, I felt able to take this shot of the right eye.

Look deep within it. Such a lovely brown. Soft and almost welcoming perhaps. Trusting.

She stood close and still for a few moments and then slowly moved off. All the while several other elephants had passed by, on both sides of our vehicle. Some ignoring us, some stopping momentarily and sniffing for scent, others to pull vegetation with a trunk's end and a snap of the root. Others had no sense of concern and crashed noisily through the trees and brush, and in between the legs of some the smallest and less sure footed babies stumbled, vainly making a grab for mum's tail.

I didn't time how long we sat there quietly watching as elephants from several matriarchal groups passed us by, but as we independently counted in small groups we agreed between us that we had been passed by a few thousand. A small fraction of the 140,000 odd that live in Botswana.

A most beautiful country and long may it be so.

Hadouk Trio Hi Jazz Hijaz

Yaron Herman performs at CosmoJazz Festival Chamonix, 28 July 2010

Back in July, I felt like I needed a day off... shoulders were hurting from strimming steep slopes and holding hedge cutters higher than I should have. It had been quite hot and I hadn't been down to the lake for a swim and I was becoming frustrated...

Mrs, P said to me as she walked out the door at 6am to catch the 6.15 train to work... "go on, go, enjoy it...sod it...take the day off"

And so an hour later I was speeding along the autoroute A40 towards Chamonix with the mountain top of Mont Blanc shining in the summer sunshine down the valley. Once I had arrived and parked up by the téléphérique for the Aiguille du Midi, slung my pack over my arm and walked towards the lift station ticket desk, I saw an enormous snaking queue around the forecourt and tail back towards the tunnel I had just walked through. A couple of people clothed in T-shirts proclaiming CosmoJazz Festival Chamonix told me I might just make the concert en haut, but it was as likely as not that I wouldn't. However, across the valley on the other side, other concerts were about to take place and I could easily get there in time; besides, the Brévent lift was under far less pressure of people wanting to ride up and so thanking them I walked across town, buying a couple of croissants on the way and soon found myself, lift ticket in hand, at the head of the line for the télécabine to Belvédère Planpraz.

At about 2000m altitude, that's 6000 feet in proper money, I settled down to watch and listen to an excellent solo piano concert by Yaron Herman who had only walked off a Marseille stage at midnight the previous night and been driven directly north to Chamonix for this free concert. After only a few hours sleep Herman climbed on stage, settled over the keys of what lloked to me like a baby grand piano and seemed lost in his solo. He played like that for over an hour and a half.

As he left the stage at the end of his concert I climbed higher above the seated audience, and found a space to picnic and lean back against a rock and wait to discover the wonderful sound of the Hadouk Trio...

This is part of what I heard...

Working Class Hero by John Lennon

If ever there was a working class hero to me, it would have to be Lennon.

As a kid growing up in Britain in the 1960's there were not many heroes who were not musicians, singers; 'pop stars'. The youths that made up these groups were seen as rebels, they acted for some part like rebels, but unlike Lennon, they did not all know how to take on the authorities and start to assert their own authority on the next generation yet to rise.

I remember arriving at school one day with a copy of Lennon's "A Spaniard In The Works". Most of it I didn't understand at first, but with assistance from an interested and enlightened teacher, who made me stand in front of class and read some of Lennon's poems, I began to see more in what he wrote, where he was poking fun but at the same time being critical and forthright.

At the time it was probably my first exposure to satire.

So for that John Lennon, thanks. And I wish I could say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.