Island life without Putin

I was greatly amused to read that Putin’s spokesman had apparently described Britain as ‘a small island no one listens to.’

Not sure how keen I am on having that guy listening in

Well, I’ve been saying for years that all that nonsense about Britain ‘punching above its weight’ needed to be put far behind us. It’s salutary to be reminded that when our leaders speak out on the world stage, the audience may be texting friends.

In any case, look who those leaders are. When Big Dave Cameron or his little sidekick George Osborne speaks for Britain, I can’t blame Putin for stopping his ears. I try not to listen either.

Of course, Putin’s denied every having made the comment but then he would, wouldn’t he? Strikes me that Putin’s default position is denial. Ask him whether he knows the time, and he’ll deny ever having seen a timepiece and go on vehemently to proclaim that the US government has in any case unilaterally decided to set its nation’s watches to run several hours adrift of the correct time, which is only properly determined in Moscow.

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying life in our little island. One of the more appealing aspects of the insular existence is that it tends to be unpredictable. So many people, for instance, announce with portentousness seriousness what the weather’s going to do, including some who do it officially and in good suits on the TV. They’ve actually got a lot better at it recently. They’re quite often right, when they’re talking about weather arriving in a few hours, and seldom go wrong when it’s actually happening already. But they persist in claiming to be able to speak for the weather several days ahead.

So it was particularly enjoyable to go out yesterday in the pleasant warmth of late summer under blue skies, when the so-called experts had spent the week telling us to expect a catastrophic fall in temperature and torrential rain.

Today’s dawned just as lovely too. Time for me to go and enjoy it with our dog. And to indulge the thought that if our leaders could occasionally produce such cheering little surprises as the weather, instead of boring us to death with the same old threadbare nostrums, it might be worthwhile paying more attention to them.

And if Putin’s not listening to my inconsequential remarks about how lovely early September can be and how uninspiring our politicians are, does anyone honestly think I care?

In any case, the NSA in the States and GCHQ over here are allegedly listening to every word we say already. Why would I need Putin eavesdropping on me too?

The rain in Spain

It’s always fun to test received phrases and sayings in practice.

Travel broadens the mind, I’m told.

This I’ve always taken as meaning that they do things differently in other places and visiting them helps understand that one’s own way isn’t necessarily the best, let alone the only one.

Sometimes, though, travel can reveal things to be exactly the same somewhere else. In a village, up in the mountains north of Madrid, we came across an English party over for a wedding. Spain in June: unbearably hot, flooded with sunshine, making a high-factor sunblock vital for health. Not hard to imagine what the happy couple were expecting.

They didn’t get it. Instead they, and we, found fine rain alternating with grey skies which would have felt like that most comforting of places abroad, a home from home. Except that England enjoyed superb weather over the weekend. 

The experience at least gave me the satisfaction of learning that the rain in Spain by no means stays exclusively in the plain. You can get plenty of the damn stuff up in the mountains too. Even in June.

We took advantage of the occasional gentle rain and the cool temperatures under grey skies to tackle a bit of a hike to a place called ‘the cascades of purgatory’. Interesting notion. The place is actually rather attractive, the waterfall impressive. The purgatorial bit is the eight kilometres to get there, including a 500 metre rise. 

The Falls
Not so purgatorial as the way to get there

The irony is that the walk took us two hours each way, admiring the falls about two minutes. As they say, what matters isn’t the destination, but the journey.

Danielle in the Sierra
Proving that the journey matters as much as the goal
and adding a splash of colour as vivid as the flowers she's photographing

Of course, once we’d finished the sixteen kilometre round trip – something good about that number, incidentally, since it just takes you into double figures in what I still shamefacedly regard as real money, working out at ten miles – my youngest son Nicky felt he’d barely scratched the surface of his need for exercise. So he went off to climb another mountain pass by bike, to ensure that he didn’t have a wasted day of it.

He was doing the same stuff today, though this time we went up ahead of him by car and could greet him, cameras at the ready, as he reached the top. 1796 metres above sea levels, after a 700 metre climb. And barely out of breath.

Hard to tell from the photo, but he's smiling

Watching him convinced me that every remarkable endeavour includes a measure of madness.

Nicky reaches the top.
He seemed disappointed there wasn't any more

That isn’t a received expression, though. I offer it as a modest contribution to the world’s stock of proverbial sayings. And at least I can attest to the truth of this one, from the behaviour of a member of my own family.

Curse the weather

Glorious piece of conversation overheard on the bus today.

The speaker was a young woman clearly not inclined to make any concessions to conventional standards of good language.

‘[Adjective drawn from a verb representing the act of sexual reproduction] [noun denoting a place of punishment in the afterlife]! Why did I put my nice new £120 boots on today? The rain’s just ruining them! I should have come out in my Wellies...’

Don’t you love it? I’ve always thought that complaining about the weather was one of the most completely pointless activities imaginable, even though we all enjoy indulging in it. It's like moaning about a fundamental law.

‘What can they have been thinking of? The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter isn’t a rational number. Who works that way?’

‘I know, it’s appalling. And the atomic number of Uranium is 92. It isn’t even prime!’

But complaining that the weather has spoiled your nice new boots takes the ticket.

I tried to conjure up an image of possible responses. Dark clouds rolling sulkily away and slinking off in embarrassment to rain on someone else? An offer from the meteorological office to pay for a new pair of boots? Or at least a decree from the Pope ruling such behaviour an intolerable breach of divine subordination of nature to man, or in this case woman?

I found myself smiling as I listened to the outburst. Especially as the sun had come out. A refreshing change: all those grey skies, all that drenching rain were beginning to drive me crazy.

After all, it’s nearly May, for God’s sake.

Why does this keep happening to me?

Silver linings

It’s often said of Britain that the country has no climate, only weather. It’s certainly true that whereas one might head off to the Maldives with a reasonably certainty of sun, or to the Austrian Alps with a good hope of finding snow, if you go to the Derbyshire Dales you’re likely to see beautiful countryside but shouldn’t be unduly concerned if you forget to bring your sun block.

Officially what I think of as ‘the Dales’ are actually called ‘the Peaks’. Since these peaks don’t tend to get much beyond 500 metres, it feels to me more sensible to concentrate on the valleys between them, the dales that give the area its beauty. We were there on Saturday and Sunday, as a kind of farewell to the region: after two and a half years in Stafford, just over an hour from the village of Castleton where we spent the weekend, we’re moving to Luton which is more like three hours away.

We went with friends who were once near neighbours, and soon will be again when we complete our move. It was an excellent demonstration of the principle that I mentioned before, that with really good friends, when you pick up again even after far too long a separation, it’s as if you had never been apart.

Castleton really doesn’t have a huge amount of entertainment to offer: wonderful walks during the day, certainly, but at night there’s really little more than the pubs. Plenty of them, for a village that size, but that’s about it. So we spent the evening catching up with our friends, and a great delight it was too – picking up conversations as though they had barely been interrupted, revisiting old interests and pleasures as though they’d never been suspended. Since we were spending our time in pubs, we helped the conversations by lubricating them with a moderate number of drinks. And then a few more, since even a taste for moderation is something one shouldn’t indulge to excess.

We had one reasonably long walk up on the ridge linking the various ‘peaks’. That was where I had a wonderful illustration of why it’s possible to enjoy holidaying in England despite the weather: suddenly, and for a brief moment, the gloomy skies split open and the sun shone through.

It’s the one great thing about living with so much greyness – you really appreciate the occasional glimpse of brightness. It’s just like a weekend with friends, after having gone through a difficult time, with redundancy and unemployment: a real breath of fresh air…