We visited the largest of Jaisalmer's Jain temples today.  An ornate stone labyrinth pregnant with symbolism.  Like everywhere here it was packed with visitors snapping away on everything from battered smartphones with smashed screens to the latest digital slr cameras.  Snap, snap, snap we all went until in the end the temple dissolved for me into a series of photo opportunities and I forgot entirely to actually look and take in the things I was supposedly trying to capture.  I look down on the vacuous and self-absorbed fashion of taking selfies so that a distorted image of oneself becomes the star of one's own "B" movies, but am I any better? Maybe compulsive picture taking is just another facet of our worship of the individual and their "experience".  So, just as Jains come here to worship things I don't really understand, so I come to worship at the temple of experience, burning images onto an artificial retina to be shared or not at a later dat...

On the afternoon after our visit to the Golden Temple we went to the newly opened Partition Museum in the old town hall.  It doesn't have any grand artifacts to display, just a historical narrative illustrated with the recollections, photos and possessions of some of those affected. It's a very moving experience and an uncomfortable one for a Brit, given the British government's role in this tragedy, which may have led to the death of a million souls and the the displacement of millions more.  Having exploited India for all we were worth for a couple of centuries and creating the myth of the "white man's burden" to help us deal with our guilt, we happily dropped that burden like a stone as soon as it was politically and economically necessary to do so. Not only did we British use a "divide and rule" policy to exacerbate tensions between Hindus and Muslims thus increasing the pressure for a post-colonial partition, but the way we administered the...

Sue and I got back to Puglia on 30th October with a list of jobs to get done before the winter, not the least of which was to harvest our olives.  Last year's harvest was one of the worst on record in this part of Puglia, mainly because the olive fly was especially bad, causing most of the olives to drop in high winds before they could be picked.  We had so few olives we didn't even bother to try. This year is much better for everyone, but due to very hot weather in the summer many of our trees still seem to have lost a lot of their crop and we had a struggle to find enough to make up a 200 kilo load to take to the mill.  In the end after three days of scrabbling around our land in the rain and the mud we loaded our old Fiat Punto with about 250 kilos and three days later returned to the frantoio to collect our stainless steel churn or "bidone" containing thirty odd litres of oil. In a good year and with better pruning and management of our trees we could ha...

We're indoors in our house in Contrada Papariello.  The doors are all shut and the house is in darkness with several fans moving the sluggish air around.  It's nearly midday and outside it's 40c, inside the thermometer sticks stubbornly at 30c, day and night.  Only a break in the weather can bring the temperature down.  The caper plant on our stone steps is thriving however on the odd teaspoon of water Sue feeds it.  It's now flowered, giving the plaster Easter Island figure a floral garland that has turned its tight-lipped expression into almost a grin. Yet again months have gone by since I last wrote in this blog.  I've been busy, but also not inclined to write for reasons I can't pin down. Flitting from the UK to Puglia we've now finished decorating and upgrading the flat in Newark.  Now all we need to do is put some furniture in it.  I've done quite a few baby namings and weddings in the UK and to my surprise I'm in demand in Italy too...

We met Carole and Kevin in about 2005 when we were still in the first flush of our Italian adventure and they were running a holiday letting business.  We've always associated them with Italy and were frequent visitors to their trullo complex in Puglia and later to their townhouse in Nocera Umbra, to which they returned after it had been renovated some thirteen years after the earthquake that rendered it uninhabitable in 1997. Now we all find ourselves back in the UK, at least temporarily, and so we went up to see them in Kevin's old home town of Newcastle.  Sue and I both feel at home with Carole and Kevin, in part perhaps because we have a shared sense of adventure and a willingness to do things rather than just dream about them. Although we met in a new context we quickly settled down into our easy friendship, strolling around Lindisfarne and Newcastle, chatting eating and drinking.  On the Friday night we found a Malaysian restaurant in the City Centre which...

The weekend before last we travelled up to Newcastle to see our old friends Carole and Kevin and found ourselves on an outing to Lindisfarne, the Holy Island.  It's the third time I'd been there and the memories of those earlier visits dogged my footsteps as we strolled around the island on a cold and unsettlingly bright winter day. The first time was in the early eighties with my ex-wife Rosemary for a camping holiday in our brand new little Fiat Panda.  Thinking back to the younger me I could hardly bear the thought that I am the same person.  I was so ignorant of myself and my peculiar preoccupations and Rosemary and I were, well, so young and so naive. The second time was in 1993, en route to the Edinburgh Festival with my friend Rob, his wife Vivian and my girlfriend at the time, Annabel.  I was just getting over divorce and a fucked up rebound relationship and was feeling full of myself, little knowing that within the week one of us would be dead in a...

Part of Sue and my experiment with retirement seems to involve impromptu outings.  Thus having a celebrants meeting near Wakefield Sue decided we should spend the weekend there and promptly booked us into the Holiday Inn Express in the city centre. In the event my meeting was cancelled but on Saturday we drove to Wakefield anyway.  At least I now know why it was never on my bucket list, although it would be worth going back to just for the delightful tapas bar we went to that evening. The highlight of our trip was a visit on Sunday to the National Coal Mining Museum, just outside the city.  It's actually located in an old coal mine and includes a guided tour underground.  This was especially resonant for me as reflections on his short time "down the pit" figured so strongly in dad's anecdotes about his past.  The tour helped make real just how dangerous, noisy and unpleasant mining work is and how a gas explosion is an ever present danger which requires co...

I never tire of this view, out over the coastal plain at the little hamlet of La Tufara, ten minutes down the road from our house.  I come here to run and sometimes just to take the air and to think.  There have been so many dramatic changes in the world these last few months, Brexit, the attempted coup and crackdown in Turkey, the siege of Aleppo and now the prospect of President Donald Trump.  I like to look down there and think this view hasn't changed much in a thousand years or so - the same Roman road, the same villas, towns and olive groves.  Sure, it's also seen a lot of change, Hannibal came this way terrorising the locals, then the Normans, followed by Arab raiding parties, then the Germans who were chased up and out of the peninsula by the British and Americans.  Even just a few years ago US fighter jets screamed over this ridge to bomb Serbia not far away cross the Adriatic and yet still the olives get picked each year and milled into oil. Objec...

I arrived in the UK last Tuesday on the latest of my bouncings between Locorotondo and Newark.  Ostensibly I'm here to do a wedding and go to the BHA Celebrant's Conference.  The wedding was yesterday in a pub in Lincoln and was lovely and the Conference is next weekend.  I have a few meetings in between.  Actually, I feel sad to be here.  Sue has been having very painful dental work, which from her perspective feels like it's been going on forever and has put her life on hold with no immediate prospect of it finishing and I want to be at home in Italy with her.  We were planning to go to India for a couple of months in December and January, but this may have to be delayed or postponed. Although I have a fair bit to do I feel strangely at a loose end, waiting for things to happen and stuff to arrive.  I feel I should be phoning friends, but something in me keeps putting this off until tomorrow.  It's the same with this blog.  Ever since dad...

I decided it was time to take the reference to my dad's memorial service off the home page of my blog.  Instead, I've put the text of the ceremony, plus a few pictures, into a blog post dated 14th March 2015, the date of the memorial. As I was doing it I got to thinking that this was yet another stage in moving on from his death and that by consigning the text to the back pages of my blog I was conducting a kind of burial.  There is such a vast amount of stuff on the world wide web now that most of it is effectively buried, because the population of readers is so small compared to the volume of reading material. I think this point is often lost in the debate about how we live in a surveillance society.  There may be a CCTV camera on practically every street corner in the UK, but if there is no one monitoring them except maybe a bored and over-worked security guard nodding off in a control room, then what does it matter?  I suppose the answer to that is it depen...

It's been a couple of months since we bought our apartment in Newark and I'm beginning to get a handle on the place.  From the windows of our apartment there's a good view of the main town-centre car park next to a bridge over the river Trent.  It's packed during the day and empties out completely after the bars and restaurants have closed around 11pm.  Now sunnier weather has arrived it's become a popular spot for bikers to come for a drink at the pub/barge moored next to the carpark.  I guess many of them are from the nearby city of Nottingham and they make me feel at home here. Also from our windows we can see the massive spire of the church of St Mary Magdalene which was finished in 1350 and is a landmark for miles around.  It's strange to think it's been there for nearly eight hundred years and sometimes one can hear, that most English of sounds, the pealing of church bells, crashing out from its bell chamber. Strange as well to think that at the ...

It's more than six months since I last wrote up my blog. I've thought a lot about why I stopped and it's definitely connected to dad's death and my leaving of my father's house, physically and emotionally.  At one level I never wanted dad to read my blog, but in another way it actually was for him.  I was accounting for my actions to my parents, like I'd done throughout my life.  Do we all do this or am I queer?  An issue I've come to reflect on in a more general sense since dad died. I shall tell the story of the last few months in pictures. In September 2015 I moved from dad's bungalow to temporary digs in Lincoln with Harry and Zack and their delightful dog Oscar, with whom I enjoyed many excellent runs along the banks of the River Witham. In November Sue finished her contract in Borneo and returned to Puglia, where after a gap of some years we finally did our olive harvest together again.  Also that month I completed a Humanist weddings c...

Sue was feeling poorly on our first day in Hanoi, so this morning I set out on my own to walk the three or four kilometres to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  It's a chaotic and friendly city, teeming with motorbikes and taxis and sensually overwhelming, with its mixture of strange sounds, sights and smells. Our hotel is in the old quarter, which is particularly dense and busy, with narrow streets and a jumble of old buildings in a wide range of architectural styles.  As I got closer to the mausoleum the streets turned into wide boulevards and more police and military uniforms became apparent. Eventually I reached the queue for the Mausoleum, patrolled by sombre white-uniformed soldiers who checked we were suitably attired (no vests or short shorts, no cameras and sunglasses and hats respectfully removed).  We were kept moving at a steady walking pace up marble stairs and round a couple of corners into the chamber where Ho's body lies in state, looking like a Tussaud's w...

I've been going more and more stir crazy staying at dad's place waiting for the 'phone to ring.  Sometimes it feels like I'm in hiding here, reluctant to make contact with people for reasons I don't understand.  I have a list of people I feel I should 'phone, but somehow I never get around to it.  In need of some human interaction beyond Facetime with Sue on my Mac, occasional meals with my dad's friend Bernie and a chat with the checkout staff at Sainsburys, I finally gave my old friend Andrew a call on Friday and invited him over for the weekend. Andrew and I first met thirty five years ago at a course for trainee local government accountants and had an instant rapport, both unable to take the process seriously and disappearing over the wall to the nearest pub at the first opportunity.  Later, we studied together for a while at East Ham Technical College, where he was my bridge partner during long pub lunchtimes and a bit later we both worked for ...

I bought myself a new gps watch last week.  I find the act of going out running or cycling and recording a track which I can then upload and look at on a map strangely magical.  I started doing this when Sue and I were in Borneo, where there were so few maps or signs that it was actually a good way of getting a picture of where I really had been. I've got a busyish day today so I decided to get a bike ride in this morning.  It was cold and bright as I cycled around the flat surrounding countryside, past bright yellow fields of oilseed rape and along dykes.  At one point a young deer broke cover and bounded along in a field next to me.  Eventually I cycled into the middle of Lincoln down the Foss Dyke and into the Brayford Pool before returning to dad's bungalow. I guess I should stop calling it that, I suppose it's my bungalow now, though it doesn't feel like it.  I feel I'm camping here while I finalise dad's affairs, which is nearly done now.  ...

It's been a couple of weeks since Sue and I scattered dad's ashes and she is back in Borneo and I'm still in Lincoln.  I've been gradually emptying out his little bungalow of some of his more idiosyncratic personal touches.  Like the clocks everywhere, in wooden boxes with fake pendulums and cheap quartz movements.  Maybe they were his idea of a joke about time passing.  The oddest things make me tearful, such as the plastic model of the USS Constitution that has stood on the living room window ledge for years.  He made it when his hands still worked properly and it must have taken a lot of time and care.  Now it's all dusty and some of its spars are broken, it has no value and I've moved it into the garage to await its fate, probably the recycling bin.  All that time and effort for nothing. Hanging up my washing I noticed that the pear tree was in bud.  A few years ago dad tried to "make a feature" of it by painting it in creosote and sti...

Just over half way on MH0004 from KL to London.  Two clocks running in my head; 7pm Malaysian time and; 11am UK time.  The window blinds are all down and the cabin is dark.  My knee is throbbing and I’ve got a developing toothache.  Feeling sad and anxious about what I might find when I finally get to Lincoln.  I tried to speak to Dad on the ‘phone from hospital last night (Malaysian time) and could barely hear a word through the wheezing of his chest. “Pneumonia” the Staff Nurse says, which they’re watching very carefully.  I thank her and follow my gut and buy a ticket on this morning’s flight.  As soon as the word ‘”pneumomnia” is out I remember that a friend who is a nurse once told me that it is known to clinicians as “the old man’s comforter” – a way to quietly slip off if one has a mind.  Dad has already made it clear that he wants to be treated as a “DNR” (do not rescuscitate) case, but I have no idea if this is in his mind. I was lo...