Sense of Smell

Just went out to check the mailbox and Kuu is crashed out in the afternoon sunshine. He's made himself a little 'nest' in the soil near the fence and he's happily curled up there. Dogs really know how to enjoy the sun, they are a serious object lesson in just how to take it easy. Especially old brown Japanese dogs. Their English counterparts can sometimes bustle around as if they are on the road to achieving something important in life like finding a new postman to bark at. But ambition doesn't figure in Kuu's life at all. Well, unless there are any females around of course.

I remember once doing a perception test on my old dog Crackers one Spring afternoon long ago. She was similarly crashed out asleep in a beam of sunshine so I cut a small bit of cheddar cheese off the chunk in the fridge and hid it under a cup about ten feet from her nose.

Within a minute I could see her nostrils twitching in her dreams, and within another minute she was awake, looking vaguely troubled and puzzled by her reflexes. Another few seconds and she had worked it out, got the cheese and eaten the prize and settled back down for another nap.

That kind of a sense of smell would have it's uses eh? But in some circumstances it might be a burden. For example if the neighbours were all fanatical chefs and epicureans going non-stop in their kitchen all day on dishes of the world and all you had in the larder was some stale cabbage and a crust of bread. OK, I decided. I'll just have to live with the nose I've got.

Jet-lag

Good grief! I'm really 'under the cosh' with jet-lag this week. It seems to be as bad as I've ever had it but maybe it's just that Edera isn't around to gently nag me into keeping moving. They say that it gets worse as you get older and it seems to be true.

Last night for the third time I was Mr. Wideawake at 3:00 am and after listening to the wind for half an hour I thought an interesting book on CSS Programming might help. But the cats soon had wind of it. One click of a light switch and they were hammering on the door (OK - well, scratching anyway) for a midnight feast. So then it was downstairs for all of us for a hot drink.

I bloomin' needed one too - it was freezing! Kanto in late March?? It feels more like Siberia in December around here eh? I thought I'd be wearing tee-shirts when I got home. Huh! There was even a ground frost today.

To make matters worse Edera didn't get any kerosene in because she was worried we'd be stuck with it over the summer and "You can always use the air-con for heating if it is cold" she said. Hmm .. yes, until I press the wrong button and get lost in a sea of kanji on the little display screen. Now it seems to be permanently stuck on "cool air" which is just what I don't want. Anyway, first thing this morning I shivered my way down to the garage and bought 18 litres of paraffin and then the cats and I gorged ourselves on an excess of delicious raw heat.

That sent us all straight back to sleep of course and for the third day I've slept away most of the daylight hours. Apart that is from calls from the Million Volt Store to tell me that E-chan's lap-top is fixed, from the co-op lady to tell me that she had eight eggs for me to collect and the Neko parcels man delivering a box of something fragile and leaning on our doorbell. I'd hate to live in Japan and work night shifts.

World of Kelp

I seem to have had quite a 'crop' of e-mails and messages from people saying they are pleased to see me back in leafy Chiba-ken, and lots of waves and 'konnichwas' from neighbours and people in the lane here too on my dog-walking trips. Also mail from people elsewhere in the world glad to know I made it back OK. It's nice to know so many people take an interest in how I'm doing. Thank you.

When I was moving my stuff around I realised that I'd had a web cam in England for years. I was given it for some video-conferencing that never happened at work. It turned up in a box full of cables and connections and I brought it back with me, so I'll have to get it set up so that anyone who contacts me can see how long it is since I last found my comb. Actually it's so old that it took me ages to track down a 'driver' program on the internet to get it working. Put it this way, it produces a good likeness of me in oil paints. No, only joking, but maybe it does have a bit of a sepia tint.

I'm getting to like older technology more and I discovered a lot of it in my garage back in England when I came to pack. Enough to start a museum perhaps. That's our way - in Japan people can't get yesterday's junk to recycling plant fast enough but we like to get it all working again, dress up in 'period' clothes and pretend it's all 'educational'. Why listen to a modern digital recording of the Pastoral Symphony when you can have the fun of listening to it on sixteen old scratchy 78 rpm records instead played on a steam driven gramophone.

I've noticed on many trips to France that in that country they have quite a different approach to museums compared with us Anglo-Saxons. There's definitely a Gallic tendency to universality; when it comes to 'collections' they like to think they are making an aesthetic statement about life. So for example in Mulhouse there is a "Museum of Wallpaper" that tells you everything you might ever want to know about it and publishes nice 'coffee table' books about the stuff.

One of my many little fantasies about the French was that somewhere, tucked away in Brittany perhaps and as yet undiscovered by me, there was the "International Museum of Seaweed". Hey! Don't spoil my dreams, if it really does exist and you know where it is let me find it myself when I'm good and ready.

But thinking about it this would be a great project for some hard up Japanese coastal municipality eh? We eat enough of it here. Here's a big opportunity to erect a billion yen modern UNESCO World Heritage award-winning architectural jewel on some windswept beach in Hokkaido or Shikoku. The World of Kelp. The posibilities must be endless ...

Back in leafy Chiba-ken at last

I've just been loading this onto the Japanese'Mixi' version on my site - it's my first entry there for weeks! Yes - here I am, back in Japan. It's cooler than I'd expected - actually this week so far just about the same as it was in Lancashire at the weekend. But otherwise all is deeply and happily familiar.

Edera picked me up at Narita as usual - it is only about thirty minutes drive from here. But within a couple of hours I was dropping her at the station and she was off herself, down to Hiroshima with the girls to spend a few days with her parents. I'm left here i/c the animals who all seem happy to see me home. I can almost hear the cats saying to each other "Ho!ho! Here's 'Mr. Softy' back. Free access to the food box again ...!"

Actually this is a good arrangement. It gives me a few days freedom to be outrageously lazy without anyone else knowing about it so keep quiet and don't 'let on'! I certainly need a good rest, I have been working non-stop for weeks. The heaviest work was moving all my stuff from the south of England back up to Lancashire, but I also did endless carpentry, decorating and general DIY in the new house. Enough already! Several good books and my feet up on the kerosene stove is my plan for this week although I will go to choir practice tomorrow.

One thing that made me smile a bit this trip was how big so many English people seemed to me. Large boned and rather bossy Saxons - blonde hair and red faces and such big noses. And so many of them 'look the same' to me! I've started to see them a bit like Japanese people do eh? Edera says though that I also seem more 'Western' to her than when I went away so maybe I've reverted to type a bit dusing my extended trip.

Anyway, nice to be back in leafy Chiba-ken. Watch this space!

Ancient snacks

All the planned DIY is finished and I'm hurrying to put away the remainder of my belongings. After tomorrow morning my diary is full, and then Sunday early I'll set off for the airport on my way back to Japan.

One box I unpacked tonight contained the stuff I used for my home altar down in Dunstable. It was probably all packed away in 2002. There was a bit of a dusty mess inside and digging down I soon found out why.

On Buddhist altars we normally offer candles, flowers and fruit. A useful 'standby' for fruit is to use nuts. I bought some at Christmas 1995 I'd guess and they were kept in the offering bowls for years. Actually they looked fine and it seemed a pity to throw them away.

Well, at some stage over the last four years a hungry mouse had sniffed those ten year old nuts out in the middle of a box in the middle of a pile of boxes. And the remarkable thing is the he found them despite all the packets of incense in there. He must have been hungry. All that was left was about twenty almond and hazel nut shells neatly gnawed in half.

I didn't even know I'd ever had mice around that house but I'm rather glad he'd found them. I'd only have had to throw them out sooner or later and they made a square meal for him. Or her.

Meet Hector

This week we've been "dog-sitting" for a friend of Julia's so before he goes home soon I'd better introduce you to Hector

As you can see he's a pretty bloomin' smart dog who, as you might expect with a name like that, knows his nominatives from his vocatives. He can move fast too - a bit like a hovercraft speeding over the floor. He definitely has identified me as the pack leader - this dog has intellect for sure.

Just 72 hours now and I'll be home in Japan. Before that we have a heck of a clean-up to complete and still a couple of pictures and brackets to fix on the wall but we'll get there

I think I'm in line for a break. Today walking around Preston doing some shopping I suddenly realised that I had two odd shoes on - the one on my left foor was black leather and the one on my right foot green suede. How did that happen? It's not somthing I usually do. But the curious thing was that no-one except me seemed to notice.

In future I'm going to go around staring at people's shoes!

Putting up some pictures

This evening my work on the house here in Lancashire is almost complete and I've been looking through our rather large collection of pictures wondering which ones to put up on the walls before I head back to Japan.

In fact there are far more pictures than I could ever use - most of them were collected when we had a much bigger house years ago. In case you are thinking maybe Im refering to a few Gainsboroughs or Manets here I should explain that most of them are only posters I've collected on my travels or photographs.

But I do have two nice 'limited edition' railway prints here. One is a picture of a freight train by David Shepherd, the artist famous for painting elephants. The other is a very witty painting by the railway artist Terence Cuneo - the "Running Sheds of the Great Caerphilly and Vole Tail Central Railway" that I was given as a leaving present from a job in Cardiff long ago.

But the picture that caught my eye again today was one by a minor Victorian artist called Alfred de Breanski. It used to hang on my grandmother's kitchen wall and I loved to look at it when I was small. It's called "Evening on the River" and it's that kind of dim heather-coloured print that Edwardians used to love to make lithographs. Eighty years ago you would have found at least one in every home.

In this painting it is already late evening in some remote and very deep wooded glen. It's a rather wild place and a small river meanders towards us. As our eyes become accustomed to the light we can see some sheep resting by the water. Perhaps it is October already - in another fifteen minutes it will be dark.

As a child I thought that this place was in upper Teesdale but the artist often worked in Argyllshire so it must be the west of Scotand. In the last few years the edge of the mounting has got a little stained but the picture is fine. I'll have to get it remounted.

Afternoon Reading

Driving back from Garstang today I caught part of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Afternoon Reading'. I think it changes daily but if you are very quick you can go and listen to it on the BBC website.

The story was called 'Grandfathers Medals' and it was recounted by a gypsy from Kent called Bill Lee. He told how his grandfather had fought in the 1914-1918 War but some years later had been pulled in by the police and suspected of theft because they found his campaign medals in his caravan. He was released later but the medals were never returned.

It was a beautifully recounted bit of family history but the thing that really made me laugh was what his grandfather had told him that he would never see. There were three things his grandfather said that you would never see in life, a dead donkey, a satisfied farmer and a church on fire.

The narrator commented that it turned out to be true that he never did see any of these things. He'd seen a cathedral on fire but not a church and he'd certainly never met a farmer that was satisfied. And though he'd come across many a dead horse, never a dead donkey.

Come to think of it I haven't seen any of these three things either.

On the shelf

Gee whizz! I seem to be living a life that only exists for DIY at the moment. Today I bought and fitted two sets of shelves - that's eight in total - and I'll be dreaming of using screwdrivers tonight. Or maybe the drill.

Once when we lived in Wales I had an exhausting day clearing some sycamore tree stumps from the garden - that's a species that takes over the whole place of you don't watch out. And I remember that later I was dreaming all night of wielding an axe and a pick to drag those stumps out.

Its' interesting now how just one task can take a whole day. When I was still working I'd have so many things in my diary and switch easily between them but now I find it hard to imagine how I did that. Now, if I start the day with carpentry, that's what I'll do - just devote eight or ten or twelve hours to one task. I don't like to 'chop and change' any more.

To be honest my enthusiasm for moving, DIY, house-painting and the reat of it is sinking fast at the moment. One thing this last few weeks has drawn to my attention is that I'm just not as young as I used to be. But tomorrow I'm off on a retreat until Monday evening and I think the change of scene is just what I need. After that four days left here to finish off, then a house warming party and then onto that plane bound for Narita at last. Hurrah!

Finding change

I suppose this is a sure sign of age creeping up but I often find myself fumbling around in my pockets for change these days when I'm in shops. And even the idea of searching for change instead of just pulling out another ten pound note seems to be a preoccupation of the 'more mature' too. I've got to the stage where I hate breaking into yet more paper money if I can avoid it.

Perhaps it is something to do with the denomination of coins but in Japan if you don't make a conscious effort to spend small change you soon end up with a pocket full of the stuff mainly in one yen pieces.

Well, since I got back to England this time I've found myself struggling a bit with English money. It's not as familiar in my hand as it used to be and my grip isn't quite as good as it was either.

But tonight I realised what a part of this problem has been. I stopped off at Barnard Castle to call into Morrison's supermarket for a sandwich on my way back from Durham, and bought about half a dozen items. The girl on the till had whizzed all those through the bar code reader and was asking me for my money in about five or six seconds - much quicker than I could actually put them in a bag and of course long before I'd ever put my hand in my pocket for money. I felt as if the items had been thrown at me. An impatient silence ensued while she and the queue behind me waited for me to find some cash.

In Japan it's quite different. For a start in our local Landrome supermarket the girl on the till transfers your items from one basket to another and you pack them later on a separate table, so that's a job you can do 'offline'. But more importantly she actually reads the price of each item out aloud as the bar code is read by the machine, so the speed is only around half that in the UK. Great! It gves you plenty of time to root out all those ten yen coins lurking in half a dozen pockets.

Mind you, not everyone in Japan takes advantage of this thinking time available. I usually get behind someone who seems amazed that they are suddenly being asked for money at the end of the checking out process and they don't even look for the stuff until asked. I imagine them saying to their friends afterwards "There she was putting all those items through the till and then you'll never guess what happened next ..."

Time for a haircut

I just realised over the weekend how long my hair was getting and with a retreat looming up in a few days it was definitely time for a trip to the barber's. Nothing worse than trying to get long hair to look vaguely tidy in a hurry in the dark before dawn.

In Japan I usually go to a barber's shop in a small supermarket in Yachimata. It costs me 1000 yen (around £5.20)and they don't ask questions that I can't answer so I like it there. Before that I used to go to a similar establishment above a MacDonald's in central Chiba, and before that another 1000 yen 'fleece joint' on the platform at Keisei Tsudanama station where they promised to finish you in the ten minutes before the next train pulled in.

In fact the whole of my life in respect of barbers in Japan has been about finding somewhere that does it for 1000 yen closer and closer to home. If you don't watch out you can end up paying three times that.

In all these 'cheapo' places you pay by buying a ticket - slipping your 1000 yen bill into a machine on the wall and handing it over in return for your hair cut. Very Japanese - we love putting money into machines for almost everything.

No coin-operated technology in Garstang though. A very English barber snipped away chatting all the while about England's chances in the cricket series in India and the latest small-time crime around town. He did ask me where I lived but when I said 'Japan' he just said 'Oh!' and changed the subject, I think Cabus or Winmarleigh was more what he had in mind. Or somewhere with a duff football team like Burnley or Carlisle. I'm not even sure he knew where Tokyo was. But he charged £5.20 too - it's a small world eh?

An unknown image

Sorting through yet another pile of 'stuff' today I came across a scrap book with lots of family photographs inside. There's nothing conventional about my family somehow - for a start all these pictures relate only to my mother's side. Also my great-grandmother was the oldest of a large family so the younger sisters of that generation were still alive when I was a child and a young adult as my great great aunts - Annie, Maud and my favourite Nora.

Maybe when I return to Japan I can put a picture of Nora in my blog.

This afternoon found myself looking at a photograph of my great grandmother on a beach standing next to a boat and with a dog by her side. By the style of her clothes I'd guess that picture was taken around 1925, probably at Saltburn in Yorkshire. She's wearing a dark 'pork pie' hat and looks pretty fierce - I never met her but she had a reputation for eccentricity.

Also a sepia print of a handsome young man in Edwardian clothes. I don't know who he was, but I do know where I found him. He was hidden behind this first seaside photograph in a little gold frame on the table beside my great aunt Nora's bed. I found it there when I was given that frame after she died in 1988.

My guess is that it was her sweetheart killed in the 1914-1918 War. She never married afterwards although she was surely the kindest person I ever knew. She never talked about him to me either but she must have remembered him through her whole long life. Typical of her to shyly hide him there where only she would be aware of him.

Over to Yorkshire

Over to Yorkshire today. It's a strange place eh? Japanese readers may be unaware of this but us folk who live in Lancashire always view Yorkshire with some suspicion. It all started off with the Wars of the Roses in the fourteenth century ...

It was a cold place today too, a biting east wind promising snow on the hills. To get to Yorkshire from here you have to coss the Pennines somewhere and to get to Haworth I use a little road from Laneshaw Bridge in the Colne Valley up over the moors. I wouldn't want to get stuck up there if the weather suddenly turned nasty.

Haworth is a moorland town famous for two things - the Bronte Sisters and the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. As luck would have it I visited both today.

Well, not actually the Bronte Sisters of course - they have been dead for 160 years. But the parsonage where they lived or to be more exact the museum shop next door. I'd vaguely hoped that I might find a hymn book in there for someone in Japan but it seems not. I find the Bronte Sisters compulsive reading - their novels are so powerful and give such an insight into life in northern England at an interesting time in our history.

And then down to the railway to meet up with some friends from Harrogate, inhale the scent of hot oil from a few passing steam locomotives and take a good look around the bookshop. There's always something worth picking up and today was no exception. Afterwards we headed for a tea room over the road for lunch - with such a chill in the air it was no day for lingering outdoors.

Must try harder

I've just been watching part of a programme on school reports on the Beeb. Actually it's nice to be able to understand what's being said on TV - back home NHK programmes are usually a mystery to me and I'll never get used to the weather forecast presenter bowing.

I wonder whatever happened to my old school reports. My experience of this 'end-of-term' torture was pretty well the same as everyone else's. The subjects that I enjoyed - geography (of course!), geology, history, music and art I'd get good grades. Then there was a pack of subjects like English, maths and physics that were 'OK' but the earth didn't move too much for me. And then - yuk! - French and (briefly!) Latin. The year I studied Latin I got hopelessly lost and once I'd been left behind it ony got worse and worse. My 'end-of-term' result? A record 15%! It was an all time record for awfulness in the school. Now of course I wonder how, in a class of twenty, a teacher could run through a whole year and never once say to me "Robinson - are you understanding any of this?"

When I was in school our reports were peppered with all kinds of judgemental generalisations like "Poor work" and "homework incomplete" and the legendary "must try harder". If the teacher couldn't remember which one you were he or she would write something like "Fair." When my own kids were in school I was appalled to see that all this homely stuff has now been replaced by awful politically correct computer generated flab along the lines of "Wayne can now resolve simple quadratic equations and has discussed in class the development of the plot of a John Wyndham novel" Yawn.

Driving Test

Driving up to Lancaster this afternoon I was in a queue behind a learner driver for a couple of miles. But that's OK eh? We were all learners once - what a great opportunity to relax and just take one's time. Standing in a book shop queue at our temple once I overheard one of the monks saying to a shopper "No rush! Iain is learning patience at the moment ..." And he was right.

In Britain we learn to drive on the road, not on a toytown patch of tarmac like people do in Japan. When we see that red 'L' sign on a car we know we need to keep our distance.

Driving at a leisurely 25 mph on a clear road today reminded me of the times that I learned to drive myself. I passed the third time I took the test. The first time was in 1965 in Crawley in Sussex - can't remember what the problem was there but I think I hit a kerb somewhere. The second time was in 1967 in Durham and I think the examiner must have been in a bad mood.

I eventually passed while I lived in the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland in 1972. It was kind of easy to pass there. An examiner flew up from Aberdeen once a week and as there were no traffic lights or roundabouts and only one pedestrian crossing in Kirkwall the test there was a bit easier than taking it in, say, central London. But in Orkney you had to take wind direction into account.

Goodness! So I've been driving 35 years! I reckoned up the other day and I've driven in fourteen countries now. On the left and on the right and if you count Portugal in the middle of the road too! I thought the Portugese must be the scariest but then last year I travelled in China ...

Impartiality

Interesting what you notice when you have been away from Britain for a long time. In Japan people seem much more concerned to work out compromises, but here we just can't resist the temptation to rush off and find a lawyer.

At the moment the news seems to be full of people taking issues to court. A gypsy family claiming their human rights have been infringed, doctors wanting to switch off a terminally ill child's life support system, a women wanting to implant some fertilised eggs in her womb without the agreement of the father.

And what is common to all of them is that when a judgement has eventuaally been given, someone somewhere won't accept it. They all plan to appeal - to the House of Lords, to the European Court of Human Rights. Everyone wants to appeal, no one wants to accept a judgement that has gone against them.

Somehow I'd just like once to hear someone say "Oh well! Fair enough! I made my case but the judgement has gone against me and I'll accept that." Acceptance - good grief! - theat's not in fashion at all is it? Nobody is prepared to be a loser eh? Whatever a loser may be.

But if no-one can ever accept things going against them, what hope for any of us? If we only believe that someone is being impartial when they happen to take our side, we are doomed.

A chance to 'sit'

Tonight I had the chance to get into Preston for evening meditation. For many years I used to go every week when I lived in Lancashire, and when I get there now it still feels like 'home' to me.

The Zen group sits in a small room in the University Inter-Faith Centre, which consists o two Victorian terraced houses knocked together to create a little warren of staircases and offices. Actually our room now is in the annex next door - when I used to be a 'regular' we met in a Quaker meeting house about half a mile away.

How different to going to the temple for zazenkai in Japan! Of course meditation is meditation anywhere but I do like the informality of just getting on with it with people I know.

And afterwards a cup of tea together and we listened to a recorded talk and then talked about it ourselves. That's good too - people feeling relaxed and confident enough to share what is on their minds.

So - that was my evening. Once so much a regular part of my weekly routine that I never thought much about it but now maybe I appreciate the chance to 'sit' with others more for what it is.

Gas lighting

Writing about my curent shortage of gas last night reminded me of the many times I went to work with my grandfather when I was a child. I've mentioned before that he was a signalman on the railway and that his job was to provide holiday and rest day cover at many signal boxes on a rural railway across the Pennines.

One detail of those trips which seemed unimportant at the time but which I can recall very clearly now was that those remote signal boxes had gas lighting. I suppose I'm one of a shrinking number of people that can remember what they were like.

I wonder where the gas supply came from. Gas lights had a kind of gauze 'mantle' shaped a bit like a small ball and there were two chains hanging down that turned the gas supply on and off. I seem to remember that you lit them but holding a taper just below the mantle and waited for it to begin to glow.

Gas lighting had a very soft feel - maybe about the same amount of light as as a modern 40 watt bulb but it was vey different. Yes, it was rather romantic.

But the thing that was really special about gas lighting was the sound that it made - a soft hiss that I'll never forget. I'd sit there as darkness fell outside the windows and the hills vanished into a starless summer night where only amber and red signal lamps twinkled listening to the gentle music of those gas lights.

No gas

Well, at least I have a coat to put on.

The family that lived here before must have had trouble paying their bills because when we moved in we found a gas pre-payment meter. I’d never seen one before – you have to take a ‘smart card’ around to the local shop and get some credit put on it at the till and then bring it back and put it in the meter. Whatever you paid gets credited to the account and you can use the gas.

We asked for it to be replaced by a standard gas meter and the day was set for last Thursday. I waited in for twelve hours and nobody turned up to do the work. On Friday I complained – it seems that whoever came (ho!ho!) got no reply at a house with a red door. I wonder where that was – ours is green. OK it was their fault but the next date they can do the work is March 21 st.

Today I got another ‘tenner’ on the card and slipped it into the meter and – “card not accepted”. I’d paid for some gas but it looks like someone at British Gas has switched off our old pre-payment meter without checking that the new meter was fitted.

Of course no-one works Sundays so – no gas. And tonight we are due to drop to minus five.

Those of you who know me well will realise this kind of thing presses my buttons maybe more than anything else on the whole planet. Sadly somehow it’s become something of a British speciality. Shoddy inadequate service, total lack of any attention to detail or quality. Don’t know don’t care.

And British Gas are just about the worst.

Well, I’ll stay calm eh? That’s the ticket.

Sea Areas

There's a lovely song called "The Slow Train" by the English entertainers Flanders and Swann. It's pure nostalgia - a kind of litany of railway station names. All were on branch lines and cross-country routes now long closed.

Another 'litany' I can remember as a child was the Shipping Forecast on the BBC Home Service. Twice a day normal radio programmes would be interrupted to broadcast a special weather report for seamen and trawlermen in British coastal waters and the adjacent areas of the Atlantic. The forecast was based on 'sea areas' and even as a small child I could recite them by heart clockwise around the coasts of Britain from 'Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, Humber, German Bight ...' right through to 'Faroes, Bailey South East Iceland'.

Later at University I discovered where all these places were and how to draw a weather chart from the numbers given in the broadcast. But I never had to do it on the heaving deck of a trawler in an Atlantic gale!

In the 1990's North Udsere and South Udsere got added into this list somewhere - I think they are just off the coast of Norway. But today I noticed yet another new sea area on the Radio 4 Shipping Forecast - Fitzroy. It must have been added to the list while I've been in Japan.

Where is Fitzroy I wonder? I'd guess somewhere down near the Iberian Peninsula, off the coast of Spain or Portugal. And who was 'Fitzroy'? If I was at the Meteorological Office I'd have chosen something with more of a ring to it - maybe 'Robinson' or something like that.

"Robinson. South West gale force eight to storm force ten" Yes - it sounds good to me!

That first article

I seem to have been really struggling to keep ‘blogging’ here since I got back to the UK. After all the disruption of moving house no sooner did I get back to writing again when the PC that I had on loan died on me. Spyware I think. But at last I’m back on line again – let’s hope I stay that way.

All this computer trouble makes me realise just how much my life seems to have come to rely on having a computer around – not just to keep in touch with friends but also for study too. I wonder if you could even survive as a student these days without a laptop. Every time I use the library at Durham or Chiba I always seem to be tripping over modem cables.

During my recent house move I came across a copy of the Durham University Geographical Society Journal for 1968. – my very first appearance in print! I have to admit that I rather blushed to re-read “Some ideas on the landforms of the upper Vale of Eden, Westmorland” – the style wasn’t up to much and some of the ideas were really ‘off the wall’. I wonder if anyone ever actually read it – it might have given someone a good chuckle.

But the interesting thing I remember about this article is writing it on notepaper with my fountain pen. Not only were laptops unheard of in 1968, I’m not even sure if I’d even used a biro. When you wrote a piece you had to prepare a first rough copy and then chew away at it with crossings out and re-drafting squeezed between lines and into margins. Then you would write out a ‘fair copy’ to be sent to the printers who were quite accustomed to typesetting from handwritten manuscripts.

Hard to imagine writing like that now! On a laptop you can pick away, making small changes to the text as you go and revising almost effortlessly. But perhaps we sometimes do so too much, ‘polish’ away until it is dull to read. With a fountain pen you just had to go for it somehow. I must try old fashioned pen and paper again soon.