The blog of the Ancient Mariner

A whole week without posting - how remiss.

2012-01-28T18:26:00.000Z

Well, the good news is that I seem to be effectively over that last round of cold etc that started at the beginning of December. It more or less wiped out 3 weeks of work and required me to convalesce over Christmas, so goodbye and good riddance to those bugs! I am so grateful to be better!

This has been a week of gearing up for 2012 for the business. At the end of last year changes were made to the diagnostic assay for which I sell controls, requiring that all the values for that kit were re-analysed to establish new ranges, and, together with some additional testing in the current kit, I have been doing that work. This will also justify sending customers and potential users a mailshot to stimulate interest.

On top of that it is always good to service and calibrate equipment when there's a quieter patch, so I've been servicing and calibrating the pipettes I use. This means I can be sure that they will deliver the (tiny) volumes of liquid they are supposed to with known accuracy and precision, and also confirms the work that has already been done is valid.

And finally, having moved on from my previous employer, I'm doing work for them for one of their clients which will hopefully be ongoing, so I've bought certain bits of kit and additional materials that will be needed for that - ended up spending a couple of hours researching and purchasing bits and pieces Friday. This week has also been VERY spendy!

So what else is happening?

Monday night we saw Ian B from Heyford Park licensed to work in Bicester and particularly for Emmanuel Church Bicester. My good friend Rachel who heads up the worship there invited me to come play for the band and I was able to get Mark from Heyford Park along to sing too - he's a great singer and fitted in really well. She'd asked me to play electric, but after the last 3 1/2 years here I nearly couldn't do it - in all honesty I've felt completely crushed over worship, and while God has been gracious in that time, it's felt so difficult. Chris was good and encouraged me to go for it, and Rachel was wonderful with her encouragement too, before and after. It feels like now is a time for restoration and healing, and that's where my expectation is.

I'm speaking again tomorrow, this time off Ephesians 2 1-10. It's a mixture of encouragement, theology and gospel message, and will hopefully be more than just words. I'm getting a little faster, but still seem to have to invest a lot of time to be thorough enough and to ensure I don't say anything overtly stupid or disconnected. Chris is also good for a sanity check.

At the moment, particularly now the lurgy is over, it feels like the time has come to take up the slack, start working, planning and above all, to not just give in to wishes and desires of self-entertainment and sloppy conduct. This is a partial success so far. I just need to spend much less time on the internet and more time doing other things - almost anything else that won't cause problems.

And there's more study for the licensed lay ministry to be done. Next weeks episode is dealing with apophatic prayer, which sounds like something with a carbon ring structure and a few amino groups and a Chlorine stuck to it.

There you go - a week in one compact-ish post.

20 years ago today

2012-01-21T14:37:00.000Z

My father died, aged almost 52.

There's no grieving, and I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't have wanted any, certainly not by now. There is, however, a certain sense of sadness, that he has not shared in our family life together, seen Ben grow and become able in so many ways. At the same time, I think Sarah would have broken his heart, and I'm glad he didn't have to cope with that.

But most of all I feel for my mother, having been a widow 20 years now despite marrying a man 7 years her junior: she had a sense that they would not be together a long time, and they made the most of all the time they had. She has been incredibly brave, enduring all the physical suffering as well as grief without complaint or grumbling, and with incredible graciousness.

Respecting the dead is a silly thing for the sake of the dead - it cannot make any difference to them. But for the sake of the living, there may still be a benefit. It just makes me so aware that, as people, nearly everything we do is about us, regardless of who we *say* it's for.

Please don't tell me about 'the good old days'.

2012-01-20T15:07:00.000Z

Ever heard of the Swiss contract children - verdingkinder? Neither had I until seeing this.

It seems that around the world, children have been shuffled about as if no more important than any other basic unit of trade. Even up to the 1970s children were being sent from the UK to Australia in a way not so terribly different. This, along with the emerging stories of physical and sexual abuse within religious institutions, makes me wonder what kind of past people must have had to consider this reasonable? One thing is obvious, that the mis-treatment of children was widespread and considered normal at every level in society.

I wonder what skeletons the previous generation have managed to keep tucked away, to make the last generation think like that?

Last year I resigned

2012-01-20T14:51:00.000Z

From my part-time job. I've been working 2 days a week (nominally) for another science business doing R&D for their customers. Back in the summer I realised that I was bringing far too much of the writing up and analysis work back, and it was compromising both their work and mine. Combined with the fact that we finished last year with (a little) more money in the bank than we started plus quite a bit of prayer it seemed right that I should resign.

So it should have all finished in December, but with my cold etc I just couldn't make it in for that last week's work and hand-over of all lab books etc. That finally happened today, and although there are bound to be questions etc about things that were done, I am at last free. It was good, and I really liked working with the guys, but there is now a huge weight off my mind, and I can focus on doing some things well instead of watching stuff fall through the gaps from time to time.

This year's aim - to generate enough income that I can start repaying us the money that we used to start things going.

I never used to not post stuff.

2012-01-19T15:31:00.000Z

If it was worth a thunk & writing down then it was worth posting. Now I'm cautious: how things have changed.

Please don't read this blog today.

2012-01-18T10:02:00.000Z

Please don't read this blog today. Consider it blacked out as part of the response to SOPA and PIPA in sympathy with our friends across the pond.

What was that I didn't hear you say?

2012-01-16T13:43:00.000Z

I have been wondering about the things we say and don't say. The title is something I read in an article about outreach, but in this context it's much more to do with how, and particularly what we communicate.

There's more to is than just being either cautious or conservative, although that's also powerful in controlling what we say & keep private. Sometimes there's a fear that we'll gossip, sharing bad things about people not present and unable to defend themselves, and sometimes we'll 'know' something inside and yet find it hard to identify what and why is wrong.

There are things I want to talk about, want to pour out and work through, reach an understanding of and come to terms with, to learn from. Yet I can't, and I am uncertain enough as to whether I'm right to hold back.

I was thinking about this earlier in the context of marriage preparation, while I was out walking & praying a little while ago. When people are prepared for marriage, do those helping them speak frankly and openly about how things really are, or do they speak in ways that suggest possible meanings, yet are ambiguous enough to leave room for interpretation? And what will happen when those who have a badly broken understanding of marriage hear us: they'll nod in agreement, knowing that their expectations have been confirmed by our ambiguous hints.

And here I am, hinting instead of speaking plainly.

Sorry to not be plainer. There's also a small hint of Mark Twain's quote about "better to be thought a fool than open one's mouth and remove any doubt".

Need to change interenet usage

2012-01-15T22:19:00.000Z

With my recent ill-health I've realised I've spent far too much time on the net, and really need to get it back in proportion. I plan to go net-light for a while, re-prioritise, spend time in prayer and generally re-focus instead of wasting time or even having useful discussions with people.

We'll see how it goes.

Ick.

2012-01-15T16:31:00.001Z

Felt very 'spacey' this morning, icky & migrainous this afternoon. Bluergh.

NEVER delete your original photos

2012-01-14T17:45:00.000Z

I've collected a lot of images over the last 8 years of digital photography, using a variety of increasingly acceptable cameras, processing them using software that has improved enormously over the years. At times I have given in to encouragement to delete the original images for taking up space (and I'm sure I lost some in a HDD crash some years back). For whatever reason, many original images are no longer available to me.

This is a big deal because I would really like to go back and re-work some of those pictures, saving them as larger files for printing, straightening horizons and verticals and generally cleaning them up now I have both the tools and experience to do a better job. Sadly, for many, it's too late.

So let me encourage you - NEVER delete the excess images you have on your hard drive - you never know whether you'll need them again.

Cold still here

2012-01-11T10:21:00.000Z

Head fuzzy, though face hurting less as the sinuses have mostly drained.

Worst now is the cough - my father used to cough terribly, even to the point of sickness as I remember from being small, but it passed me by until I was in my late 30s. Guess it's good that I've managed to push it back 10+ years, and hopefully Ben will do the same again or better.

The other thing that's a drag about this is lack of sleep. We were out last night for a PCC meeting, got home before 10, watched an episode of star trek next gen, then went to bed. after 2-3 min gentle snores from next to me. I saw 12.30 go by, eventually sleeping, but waking for Ben getting up at around 4.40am (starts work @ 6) and drifting in & out. The last few nights have been like that too, not sleeping well, and I think I'll be on the settee again tonight to help sinus drainage.

Meh, as they say.

I miss the city in the spring.

2012-01-11T10:14:00.000Z

While preparing breakfast I was thinking about Paris, springtime and the way a city is so nice. Out in the country the air is usually cold, ground still muddy from winter rain, but in the town the air feels pleasantly cool and there are parks to walk around in. I have memories from all kinds of places in the spring, and the city is one of my favourite places in that season.

Well should I stay or should I go?

2012-01-10T19:13:00.001Z

Not stop blogging, but should I give this site a facelift?

I'm no luddite, but I also don't appreciate change for changes sake, and as far as I am concerned the basic presentation of this blog has been entirely function as a place to present thoughts, ideas and images to the world. Some blogs seem to change more often than a child would voluntarily change their underwear, seldom actually being better for it.

However times change and new devices come along. It's not the most friendly place for the silly widdy screens on smartphones and even laptops, and although I did do some design work that got left on the back burner because it didn't make things better, it's more or less been unchanged since the first 6 months. So this begs the question - should this little haven of sense and stability leave port and risk being tossed on a stormy sea of alteration or does it still work OK for everyone? What, particularly, would you like improved?

C'mon you lurkers - this is your chance!

The cold is back.

2012-01-09T09:10:00.000Z

Apparently it enjoyed the Christmas break and, now the holiday is over, has come back to 'work' in my lungs and head. Would like to curl up in a ball and sleep this morning. Maybe that would make up for the last 3 nights.

A new year - a new start?

2012-01-03T13:09:00.000Z

I wasn't thinking for me, so much, but for the church.

Without wanting to discuss details particularly, Sunday in church left me with a sense of lightness, of how that was how church was meant to be. This is probably the first time I've felt that since we became part of Heyford park - an awareness of the church being family a little, just like Bicester Community Church was family. Chris seemed to feel the same lightness.

It's really important not to read too much into this, but I do very much hope it will continue. Situations change, but God is always there in them, and we do have a hope for the future.

How cool is this cat?

2012-01-01T23:35:00.002Z

There was a knock at the door this morning

2011-12-29T11:34:00.000Z

"Who can this be" we thought. Turns out to have been the postman, with a parcel too big for the letter box.

Hello, a box from Canada, but we didn't order any presents from Canada. Ah, there's a name I recognise.

Biscuits?

And a card.

All home-made. Thank you so much - I hope it's more blessed to give than receive, because this made my morning. And we might get a chance to share on Saturday.

Today is a day for new things

2011-12-26T09:46:00.000Z

In this case, new clothes, and new exercise.

Well, the exercise isn't that new, but it seems that I've been so unwell the last couple of weeks that I haven't got much strength or stamina left, and need to rebuild again. That has been a familiar pattern over the last 10 years - enter autumn reasonably fit and strong, hit by lurgy, collapse in heap, gradually rebuild in the spring and summer. Rinse, repeat.

10 years ago I'd have been out on a boxing day mountain bike ride, but today I have to make do with walking gently round the damp & muddy local countryside. And I'm grateful I can. The 'new' bit from the title is a nice new Berghaus walking jacket, heavily marked down & arriving courtesy of my mum. I also had a surprise from Ben - walking trousers (feels like neoprene) with built in gaiters. Just a touch large in my present slim state, but I'm sure that will sort itself out soon.

TTFN.

p.s. lets see what endomondo makes of it all.

Christmas eve.

2011-12-24T13:53:00.003Z

The tree is up, food (mostly) prep'd - last night Chris told me I smelled of Strawberry jelly.

I'm at that funny in-between place, where I'm waiting, not able to start, but not really able to do other stuff either. Glad the cold is mostly on it's way out now and strength is returning so that I can participate without coughing up a lung. It's still hard to hear speech and translate it into meaning, but that's as much a head as an ear thing.

Next to me on the settee I have a sleeping wife & a snoring cat, the cat making more noise than the wife! Afternoon naps are a basic human right in our household.

And so I have a prezzie or 2 to wrap still, in the peaceful gap. Hope she likes it (in particular) in white gold, rather than silver. We'll find out in less than 24 hours.

Christmas is an odd time.

I don't know really how to make it mean anything. It's not like a birthday celebration because there's all kinds of odd traditional stuff that's all about us wrapped up with it. And it's not like celebrating a birth because Jesus is here with me all the time, so He's not being born fresh again each year.

As a child, it was a time where you went along with parents to visit aged rellies,
usually living in coal heated houses so that the living room was roasting hot, hallway icy cold. My brother & I would crawl around warming up & cooling off, playing round the different floor layouts & unfamiliar furniture. Later there were church events we'd take part in, & family parties each with their own variety of funny games: passing scissors crossed & uncrossed, squeak piggy squeak etc. The childrens parties were more like a competitive sports session, always with games that one could never win, and the kind of food that old people imagined children liked to eat.

Later, it was an opportunity to acquire the things one could not be patient enough to save for, and later still, a time of hoping to 'get off with someone' while they were susceptible/charitable/careless (only worked once, did not work out well). Then came knowing Jesus, and Christmas stopped really meaning anything much.

Once again, as with so many other things we do, I'm reasonably convinced it's all about us, and only a little about Hm at best. I enjoy the celebration - no longer a radical that wants to ban Christmas - but it's still a strange thing for me because it distinctly doesn't do what it says on the wrapper. For years Christmas was valid as an outreach opportunity and a few days break after all the hard work at the mid-point of winter. Now... I dunno.

Maybe we need grandchildren to validate it now? AFAIK not too much chance of that for a bit (I hope!) so we'll have to carry on, just getting older, walking through it and trying to enjoy it for what it might be.

I'd love one of these

2011-12-17T18:25:00.000Z

for playing in church. Well, I would have at one time anyway.

I can't afford to replace the Macbook yet.

2011-12-15T17:56:00.001Z

But I've found what I'd like to replace it with.

This must be about as cheeky as it get - a nice Pear!

2011-12-14T21:41:00.004Z

Pear OS is a version of Ubuntu ripping off Apple's OSX wholesale. Even the version names (panther, puma etc) borrow from the cat theme.

But the funny thing is that it actually looks *good*.

The bundled apps are all the usual suspects: Opera, brasero, synaptic, shotwell etc though sylpheed email client is new to me, so it's probably going to mostly work just like any other Linux distro. But the interface does look very polished.

I've not moved to Apple's Lion 10.7 yet, and after Snow Leper I hope I don't have to. But this does look intriguing, in the slightly messed up way that OSX/Gnome 3 have adopted.

Get it here.

*update*

Review here.

*Update 2*

Downloaded a copy, burned DVD, now I'm running it here as a live disc. It's surprisingly snappy off the disc - live CDs etc are usually slow, but this feels only a little slower than off a hard drive.

Is it like OSX? No.

There's some nice eye candy in there if you like that sort of thing, but this is definitely a Linux distro. Would I use it? Not normally, except I have a box I want to build & experiment on, so I might just try it on that. Thing is, because of DigiKam I'm pretty much committed to KDE as a desktop now, and Sabayon do most stuff really well. But I could fiddle with other OSs on a spare system. Maybe try to dual-boot this with AV linux & have 2 dock-based OSs on the same machine.

*Update 3*

Is it like OSX? Actually yes, it is, quite a bit.

I've probably spent 20min fiddling, and I'd say that if you've used a Mac before then it may not actually feel all that strange. The Apps store is a nice touch, and made finding software very easy - except some of it is in French! In the review I linked the reviewer commented this was the first distro running Gnome 3 that he's recommend, and I guess I'd go along with that. Certainly worth a look.

Left work just after sundown

2011-12-13T18:34:00.000Z

Went early because this cold has become a full-on streamer.

My

Face

Hurts

I also feel sorry for the poor people that had to share an office with me this afternoon - must have been horrible to hear.

Fire's lit, I'm dosed up and Chris is cooking me dinner (kind of her, since we were both supposed to be going to a Christmas meal tonight).

Lurgy

2011-12-13T08:14:00.000Z

Don't you just love it?

Today is an odd day, leaving home in pitch darkness, driving down the A34 as the sky became deep blue, but with huge black storm clouds on the horizon so that it felt like I were driving toward night with no option of heading back toward daylight. Arrived at almost exactly 8am, still before the sun had actually risen enough to be visible.

2 more drives like this after today. Guess I've learnt something about myself and the way to work (or not work).

You may have heard of....

2011-12-11T16:59:00.000Z

The singer Dougie Dug Dug?

Does a great series of Christian worship videos for children. Unfortunately I also know a little too much of the English language:

Romeo and Juliet Act I, Scene 3:

Nurse: ...

And she [Juliet] was wean'd,–I never shall forget it, –
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug

Ho hum.

When it comes to dinner

2011-12-10T22:34:00.000Z

Is there really anything better than a thick, tender piece of cows bottom, lightly sautéed with mushrooms and olive oil, served with a nice baked potato? Chris's was medium-rare (hint of pink, Ben's pinkish and mine bleeding sightly).

Thank you mr. Tesco, for cut-price beef joints.

'Bout time I got some pictures up

2011-12-04T22:21:00.000Z

..... especially of somewhere other than India.

Local views, when we walked with Hillary.

And Southampton when we went to MK1.

Beautiful frosty, misty morning.

2011-12-02T08:21:00.000Z

With an early start.

I was looking out over the fields on the way in this morning, some emotional music playing, thinking Sarah and how nice it would be to just go lay down in the ice and mistiness and go to sleep permanently. No more struggles against sin and a gradually aging body, no more feelings of inadequacy and pressure to get work done and keep all the plates spinning.

Damn stupid really - I must make sure I get some early nights and not stop up late again.

Ever feel....

2011-11-27T16:37:00.000Z

....groggy, a bit disorientated and tired?

Since Thursday evening, winding down from the last couple of weeks, that's how it's been for me.

Crazy - we've only been back 3 weeks, and I'm already fuzzy headed and worn out.

Really fancied a ride today - the sun was bright, skies clear, temperature at lunchtime 13'C and it felt lovely. For various reasons I wasn't ready & able to ride until 3pm at which point the temp had dropped to 8'C and the day was no longer enticing. Blueh.

While I've been typing this with the updater and blogger windows each sharing half the screen the updater switched from downloading to updating & installing. It's interesting how the 2 CPUs (AMD 3800) get loaded up, sometimes 1, sometimes both. It seems much more efficient than when I was processing a bunch of files through doubletwist on the Macbook to adapt them for the phone, where 1 processor was constantly running at 100% and the other idling.

Dinner tonight is a large piece of pig. I'm probably going to insert a couple of sticks of Kabanos lengthwise through it, along with smoked paprika and herbs on the outside before slowly roasting it.

'Nuff of that - time to do something other than play on computers.

The time has come

2011-11-27T16:17:00.000Z

To talk of many things. Of sausages and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.

A 'wipe & re-install' session for Sabayon. From memory, I think the last rebuild happened about 16 months ago (shortly before Marc & Dixie's visit) so it's done as well as OSX and many Windows installs. The software was starting to get a bit cranky and temperamental, with DigiKam occasionally failing to show newly saved files in the folders to which they'd been saved, VLC playing the background music MUCH louder than the voices on DVD playback and the update application ceasing to work.

Probably entirely fixable, but it seemed easier to just save the Home directory to an external HDD, then re-load it and carry on.

I'd also wanted to see what the new (Sabayon 7) theming was like, because although Sabayon updates the complete OS (I started off with v5.5, finished on 7) the changes made are mostly under the hood, with usually only small changes to the desktop. Last but not least, Sabayon 7 uses the Btrfs file management system (like FAT32 or NTFS)which is meant to be substantially quicker in operation than EXT3 and 4. That might well be true - install time was around 20min instead of the usual 35-40 min it usually seemed to take. We'll have to see though, because I've also heard accusations of instability, so I'll need to be careful with the backups.

One other change I've noted, is that Sabayon have changed from Firefox to Chromium as the default browser. Not my favourite appearance-wise (and regrettably Opera are following this style increasingly) but it's bloomin' fast after FF. I shall have to do some re-evaluation alongside Opera, but with this level of performance it will be hard to continue using FF.

So what's the downside to the re-build?

Sabayon work very much at the bleeding edge, meaning that software updates get adapted, tested and then bunged in the repository ASAP. That means that for a 5-6 week old 'new' operating system there was one initial 20Mb download and then 861 further updated files for around a 3.5Gb download total. It's been going since around 2.15pm and has reached 44% at 4.09pm. And that's WITH removing most of the bundled games and WITHOUT installing any of my own software preferences (like Thunderbird, FF, Inkscape, Audacity, DigiKam etc).

So here we go. In another few hours I'll have a spanky new copy of S7 up and running (hopefully) solidly) that should see me through for another 15-18 months.

Does anybody need a new PC?

2011-11-23T23:45:00.001Z

Because if you do, buy it now, rather than 2 month's time.

The floods in Thailand have wiped out a lot of hard drive manufacturing - a 1Tb Samsung drive that was £40 in August is now selling for £120 on Ebuyer. This hasn't filtered through to the PC manufacturers yet, but the glut that was left after the recession bit is almost all gone, and unit prices will climb as demand exceeds supply. The cheapest external drive I could find was a Toshiba at £92: exactly like the 1Tb Tosh drive I bought 3 years ago for my Macbook costing £72.

This kind of price reversal just doesn't happen, except it has.

OTOH if you want SSD or RAM then they're both dirt cheap right now, and processors and MoBos will likely get cheaper as there is an excess compared to available HDDs for building into finished machines. I'm just hoping that my hard drives remain good for another 12 months+, and that I don't have to do a lot of system building/rebuilding for a while.

Says he, while backing up the home directory to the 'free' 1Tb Seagate drive. Now, if only house prices would halve... but that's another story.

They're up!

2011-11-21T10:58:00.001Z

The photos, that is. Links below, images relate to the days in listed in the blog and *should* all appear in order:

Delhi first day

Agra and the Taj Mahal

Fatehpur Sikri and Bharatpur junction

Ranthambore and the train journey

Jaipur - Bissau palace hotel, Mantar Jantar and Maharajah's palace

Jaipur walk

Jaipur day 2 - Amber fort

Nawalgarh and the Havelis

Surajgarh village

Additional pictures

Hopefully you'll enjoy, rather than being bored. I think it's taken about 20 hours to sort and present the images, and I'm ready for a break now!

Oh yes, to give you an incentive to have a look....

Our internet is down here

2011-11-20T08:51:00.000Z

BT replaced a relay box in the road on Friday, now although our phone works, we have no data connection.

:p

The upside is that I've had time to process most of the remaining images from India, to be posted shortly when I go to the office this afternoon.

I'm splitting the images from Jaipur

2011-11-18T01:00:00.000Z

Jaipur was where we stepped out of the bubble and into the street. However we also saw a lot of stuff while we were there, and in addition the hotel was quite spectacular.

These images start with the hotel, move to the Mantar Jantar and then finish with the Maharajah's palace. There's about 50 in all, in several groupings. If you get bored with the sameness of one type then move on to the next.

A quick word on image credits. While I took a lot more photos than Chris, there were times she got shots that I didn't or sometimes took a better pic than me of a subject. All her images were identified with a 'C' in the image name before uploading, but photobucket seems to have stripped that out. They are scattered through all the India albums. There will be quite a bit of similarity in appearance because I've done all the post-processing on her pix (including cropping, perspective correction and rotation). Some of her pics are really very good - an example would be the 3 'servants' in white uniforms and red turbans (below) and I've been glad to be able to include them.

Is a third enough?

2011-11-17T15:01:00.000Z

One of the things that has become increasingly apparent to me is that I mercilessly abuse the rule of thirds in composing my images. There was a time when I'd think (yes, actually pause and consider) the composition of a picture, deliberately looking at it for the point of interest, lead lines etc. Now *most of the time* it just comes together in my head, and, with the exception of symmetrical objects, I automatically compose on thirds.

While we were away, one of the guys was deliberately taking pictures at a 30 degree(ish) angle in order to break out of the classic composition boredom he'd developed. I did try that at one time, and might be tempted to try it again, if I could find a decent way of presenting images so created. I've wondered about how that might be done, practically speaking: maybe rotate the image in software on a transparent background, so that when published to the web, it appeared rotated on the page without a larger rectangular border irregularly displaced around it. Obviously it's a complete non-issue if you print images, although they do usually look a little odd in the hand or album.

So does it get any better than 'rule of thirds'?

I'd love to find something that was different and worked at least as well. Occasionally I'll just see a shot come together on the screen of my camera, but those are freaks of composition, rather than a development from solid technique. I guess for now, one or two thirds will have to be enough.

Fatehpur Sikri and Bharatpur Junction - gallery 3

2011-11-16T23:01:00.002Z

I've given up the idea of getting down to a smaller number of 'definitive' images, mostly because such a small number cannot carry the impact adequately that India had.

India was, for us both I think, a real shock to the senses after a soft, muted England. It's not that we haven't travelled - far from it - but the colours are so intense, the people so numerous that it pushes the senses into overload. My inclination with photographs is to present and display reality, so I want images to be sharp, detailed, natural, deep, even when they're simple. I want them to make me feel like I'm standing in the world that the image was taken, and all I'd have to do would be to turn my head a little and see the rest of the scene.

I found that with these pictures I really had to push the colours and contrast up to try to express the reality we'd found. Muted sophistication in colour and texture is for Scandinavians, for whom a third of the year is night and the rest is softly lit. India teems with bright colours, sparkly gold and mirror fragments. Subtly tasteful it ain't, but in context it all works, and much better than a poke in the eye with a technicolour sharp stick.

So here is gallery 3 - Fatehpur Sikri and Bharatpur junction. I hope you enjoy it.

Here's one of my favourites from this set.

As for me, despite still feeling a bit iffy, I'm wondering if and when we can next go over. 2nd visits are so often disappointing, but I think India is big enough that we don't have to worry too much about that. Fallen in love? Nope. But fascinated, and feeling like we barely scratched the surface, certainly.

More images - Agra and the Taj Mahal

2011-11-14T22:25:00.003Z

This time 39 images - I may not get time to do another batch for a couple of days, so see how you do with these.

Of all the images, this is one of my favourites - without the small boy, it would be nothing.

First batch of India images are now up

2011-11-14T05:59:00.000Z

Not too many yet, I'm sorry to say - 28 from the first 24 hours in Delhi.

The earliest pix show us out in Old Delhi centre on a rickshaw ride, then the India arch and finally on the road to Agra in a coach. You can see how smoggy the air was in some of the pix.

I'll try to get the rest re-sized and ready over the next week or so.

Just finished the first rough picture sort.

2011-11-11T23:38:00.000Z

That drops it to a shortlist of 300 images. Now to find out how to use the lightbox software.

Objective is to try for about 150-180 images that still covers the 9 days we were actually doing things. That's less than 20 pix a day, which will be quite a challenge.

It's been interesting working through this number of images from 2 different cameras: Chris's new Panasonic TZ10 and my old Samsung S850. While I love the super-wide zoom, fast focus lock and big screen of the Panasonic, at a pixel level the images don't come even close to the samsung, and are only tolerable because of the higher (12MP) pixel density. The Samsung optics aren't the best, but the 8MP 1/1.7" sensor and relatively minimal level of signal processing look very much crisper.

When it comes to post-capture processing, the samsung images could be enhanced much more than those from the panasonic - there was just simply so much more information to work with. The one place where it didn't matter was where there were large swathes of gently graduated colour: for example the water picture taken in Ranthambore national park. Here the Panasonic worked well, and the 'impressionist' style of detail didn't matter.

Images also deteriorated badly in low light with the Panasonic, even when limited to 400ASA.

Unfortunately the Samsung has started to become a little unreliable. It was failing to focus and a couple of times even refused to respond, requiring the batteries to be removed before it would work. If I do replace it with another compact then it will have to have at least a similar size sensor. A D-SLR would be nice, if bulky. I'm not sure budgets will stretch to some of the new micro four thirds cameras unless something amazing happens to the business.

Camera GAS - not something I need!

Day 10 – flying home.

2011-11-11T21:13:00.000Z

There’s not much to write. Delhi’s airport was spacious, clean, reasonably comfortable. One has to complete a visitor departure form very much like the entry form, including the hotel of residence, passport number etc. There’s also a game that’s played where at every opportunity some kind of official examines either the boarding card or passport, sometimes within a few feet of the last person that examined it.

Nothing exciting happened on the plane, other than it being somewhat late, which is all for the best and just how it should be.

And so home. The house feels cold and smells a little odd, but it’s incredibly quiet and peaceful to be back in the green and damp of rural Oxfordshire. But there are all the memories.

So to Noel and Julie, Matt, Ian, Jo, Nicki, Margaret, Anne, Liz, Susan, Helen, Chrissie, Sarah, Bharti, Judith and of course Junaid, thank you for being such good company. If you have read this then I hope it has brought back some good memories.

Footnote. As of 1 week after getting home, we both still have dodgy tums and don’t feel too good.

Day 9 – long drive to Delhi

2011-11-10T18:57:00.000Z

We left the hotel at Surijgarh at 6.30am!

One thing amazed us – someone in the village had deliberately cleared the gutters of rubbish, and it sat damply in small piles looking like it was waiting to be collected. This kind of thing must happen from time to time in all Indian cities, but the streets also looked swept and tidy, and that really made a difference to how I felt about the village. It seems curious how such a small thing can make such a difference.

And so to the coach.

Speeds are always low, and we saw a speed limit sign for a major road showing 68kph, but in most of our driving I doubt we got much about 60kph at any time, simply because the roads are absolutely terrible, and traffic density generally won’t permit anything more. There was a village that we drove through which appeared to be having a sewage system fitted, resulting in a rutted dirt road through the middle and long sections of deep mud. In various places there were enormous holes, just inviting passing cars, bikes and children to fall in.

Driving in India, especially with something as large as a 20+ seat coach is a slow motion ballet, with vehicles (pronounced why-ickals by Junaid) weaving in and out as gaps open and close. Lane discipline does not exist in any meaningful form, and all kinds of traffic use any available roadspace. White lines are usually used to centre the vehicle and people in side roads pull out into incoming traffic without hesitation. Overtaking usually seems to happen on the inside more than the outside, and smaller vehicles like cars and motorcycles literally weave across the road to take advantage of gaps as they became available.

This ballet also provides it’s own accompaniment. It is a requirement to sound the horn when overtaking, and so there is an almost constant cacophony in any built up area, particularly with motorcycles weaving through, passing other vehicles all the time. I have wondered semi-seriously whether Indian bikes should be wired with the horn permanently on, and with a switch that can be pressed briefly to silence it.

As we approached Delhi the sun gradually became duller, presumably from pollution, and the sky began to take on an overcast appearance from the pollution haze.

Around 40km out we pass Bharat. Apparently 12 years before this area was ‘forest’, but the are now is filled with shopping centres with places like Marks & Spencer and Debenhams for the people of Delhi to visit.

Shortly after Bharat the 3 lane road we were on just stopped – solid. Cars, motorcycles and tuk-tuks drove up the inside on the dirt between tarmac and bushes to create a 4th lane.

Most of the cars outside Delhi seem to be made by Tata – they absolutely dominate the market here. They tend toward a functional appearance, if one were being charitable, and were far from attractive. In the city it was a very different story, with more Suzuki than anything else, although Hyundi obviously have quite a big share too.

We finally arrived sometime around 1pm and got out for some lunch by about 2. The original plan was that we’d sight-see in the afternoon, but that had gone out of the window thanks to the slow journey.

After all the traditional curries we’d wanted a change, so Junaid took us to Evergreen Sweet House (http://evergreensweethouse.com/home2.php) which comprises a 'bakery' with cakes and upstairs, an Indian take on Macdonalds. Some of the party chickened out and went to the Costa down the road. I had a moong dal pakora – deep fried balls of lentil flour and a strong green spinach curry sauce - and Chris had a samosa covered in lentil curry and yoghurt. Probably not the height of culinary excellence, but certainly pleasant and fun.

That evening was our last, and for further dietary variety we were taken to a south Indian style restaurant, but before eating Junaid took us to the remains of a fort in a village that had been absorbed by the Delhi green park extension near the deer park. We arrived after dark, and he was able to negotiate with the gatekeeper to let us in for a quick look, despite the light failing. As a boy he used to go there because he originally came from Kashmir, and it was the quietest place he could find in the city that reminded him of home.

The south Indian restaurant had a very different feel to it from all the previous places we’d eaten, possibly because they were trying to create an atmosphere for local trade as well as tourists. Lighting was soft, there was lots of dark wood and natural materials in evidence and the waiters all wore quite different clothes from local costume. The food was all vegetarian and the restaurant was also alcohol free (causing some consternation among one or two in the group).

We had what was recommended. The meal started with a hot and sour soup (very like Thai soups) followed by the main course which came on a large metal tray about 18” across. The tray was lined with a palm leaf, and around the outside were small bowls of different dips, sauces, vegetables and rice. In the middle was a large dosa (Indian version of a gallette) shaped into a cone, and underneath were stacked some kind of bhaji, a deep-fried savoury dal flour doughnut and a very soft while spongy bread roll.

It didn’t look much but boy, was it filling.

Finally at the back of the tray was some kind of orange-ginger flavoured semolina type pudding.

We returned to the hotel, saying our goodbyes to some who were off very early, everyone feeling a little sad that we were finished with the holiday as a group. Email addresses were exchanged and there were promises to share photos etc.

Day 8 - Havelis and villages

2011-11-09T19:06:00.000Z

The highlight of the morning was a walk from the hotel into the village of Nawalgarh to visit a haveli.

The Shekawati region was on the old silk route, and provided water and stopping points for caravans taking goods from east to west & back until ports like Calcutta opened up. While it was still active, around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries a number of wealthy merchants built ‘havelis’ which were houses with central courtyards, multiple meeting chambers and characteristic paintings over the walls and ceilings. They have largely been left by their owners as they moved to live in other cities now that goods no longer flow along that route.

We visited the Podar haveli (http://podarhavelimuseum.org) which is apparently the best preserved of them in the area, despite having previously been used as a school. The owner had obviously been Hindu, and most of the art was of a religious nature. The local guide who showed us through the building was a Brahmin by birth, and very keen to present Hinduism in a way that might be more acceptable to those coming from a Christian/western background, gently avoiding some of the more ‘exotic’ aspects.

Within the building were a number of other sub-museums, focusing on areas as diverse as the caste structure, wedding costumes and regional turban variations.

The building itself had 3 floors inside, plus 2 levels of rooftop, and we were able to go right to the top to look out over the village. There were several other havelis visible, as well as temples and a double minaret/tower arrangement that signified the position of a well for use by travellers.

Most of the others travelled back to the hotel by tuk-tuk, but Liz, Judith and I walked back through the village, wanting the exercise since we’d done so little real walking on the trip. People stared, but politely, sometimes nodding. Children often waved, and we were allowed to observe as we walked through, uninterrupted except for motorcycles incessantly pottering up and down while sounding their horns. We were just beaten back to the hotel, where a couple of the more ‘adventurous’ were trying to see just how many people could actually be crammed onto a tuk-tuk (we got to 12 if I recall correctly).

Chris whizzed off to the pool, and I followed suit.

Just like the rooms, it was beautifully presented, clear blue water and with just a hint of chlorine to reassure us that it was safe. And breath-takingly cold.

Curry for lunch. :p

Couple of hours drive by coach to our next hotel – the Surajgarh Fort (http://www.kangragroup.com/fort.html) – which was another converted palace. The coach couldn’t get up the road to the hotel because it was simply too big to enter the village, so we wandered up through the outskirts while our luggage was taken by tuk-tuk.

This really was the ‘back of beyond’ and, even more so than Nawalgarh, it felt like a very rural and shut off village. As we walked up the village street, children in school uniforms streamed out a small side road, mingling with the other kids that had apparently not been to school. Animals were wandering freely, and we saw a large black cow attempt to enter several homes, being driven off with squirted water on one occasion. Camels and donkeys pulled carts (we saw horses elsewhere, but they tended toward the thin and unhealthy side) and there were the inevitable tuk-tuks, small motorcycles, bicycles and hand carts.

While the people were undeniably poor here, they also seemed not to lack for some modern equipment. Many motorcycles looked to be only a few years old at most, being driven with gusto by young males. We often heard mobile phones, and it was not unusual to see a woman reach under her sari for a phone, or a man in shabby clothes hunt for the source of the noise.

This was yet another spectacular hotel, although in places it looked as though it had been finished off in a hurry by an amateur DIYer. Again, previously a palace, the entrance hall and rooms were very grand. Our room was practically a suite, again with separate sitting area, pillars and arches, and in this case a good and fully functional bathroom. We were greeted with the usual red-spotting and garlands, and in this case the manager (a much taller and broader than usual Indian man with cowboy hat, pointy snakeskin shoes and a cowboy-style moustache) welcomed us with a “god bless you”.

Before dinner we went for a walk properly around the village. Beside the usual food, pharmacy and bike repair shops it was genuinely amazing to see how many stores sold bangles. I can only imagine that the hotel must bring in a lot of visitors who buy them: there must have been 7 or 8 shops, all selling what appeared to be the same stuff. The female portion our party entered and got lost in the nearest.

Chris and I wandered up the road further into the village as the night was really drawing in and it became very hard to see beyond the street lighting. Turning left at the T junction at the end of the main street took us to the village square, complete with tethered camel and statue of Gandhi (the glasses must have been so much a part of him, Chris said, that they have to be added to statues) and we circulated once before heading the other way.

Down the right fork we came across more havelis like the last village, some crumbling and mouldering, others in better condition, and with amazing carved stonework and some painting. I was told in no uncertain terms not to get ideas about moving out there!

On the way back past the shops we stopped briefly, and I tried to photograph in my mind one particular shop, for description here. There were 2 men sitting in the shop, one in a shirt and trousers, bald head, thick black moustache, the other with grey hair and traditional clothes of white collarless shirt, trousers created with a piece of cloth and sandals. The shop was painted a rich sky blue inside, and there were shelves on the left running the full height of the wall and a creamy marble counter at the front. Half the height of the shelves from the mid-point down were full of small square tins, coloured in bright reds, greens and yellows, each one seemingly slightly different. Above them from about 1m to the ceiling were curious square containers, each a deep royal blue, and with a ribbed or corrugated surface. The black on yellow sign above was in Hindi, and I have not the least idea what they sold, whether it was lubricants, aircraft parts or sweets.

Some of the shops had a kind of stove set up on the edge of the pavement, and were cooking food in large wok-shaped pans, about 24” to 30” across. Some were deep frying what I’d guess to be batter balls and battered vegetables, others had milky looking liquids bubbling away.

Children were still waving and smiling at us, and occasionally a stranger would speak a few words, asking where we were from. I’d thought that we’d escaped ‘financial’ attention, but just as we were entering the drive to the hotel a couple of teenage lads came up and told us that they needed 5000 rupees in a way that didn’t have the usual friendly overtones. We just walked on, and came to no harm.

That evening we sat in the rooftop courtyard of the palace, kept warm by the heat still radiating from the building despite the open sky above us. A family of local musicians played, while the 2 youngest boys danced and occasionally tried to get people to take part too. Unlike some of the previous performances we’d seen, I think a lot of this was improvised, although there was an occasional song. Patterns kept being repeated, not just within songs, but between songs, and either it was a very fixed local style or the lad drumming had a limited repertoire.

Dinner inside was yet another buffet, but at least a little more varied than so many we’d had before, and tasted fine. I’d not had beer with that meal, but when people asked for beer they were given Kingfisher Strong, which is a dark 8% lager! Almost everyone found 1 bottle quite enough.

Day 7 - Jaipur to Nawalgarh

2011-11-08T12:47:00.000Z

Off again in the morning, we check out of our amazing hotel, but on the way we stop to photograph the palace of the winds and visit the amber fort of Jaipur and the various palaces contained within it.

As mentioned earlier, for me, the Rajput architecture seemed so much more in keeping than the later Moghul styles. We have plenty of pictures, and will try to get them up soon because they offer a better explanation than words can. There were certain parts we didn’t get to see, including a fort and extensive walls around 1000years old, the amber fort being much more recent.

In retrospect, Jaipur was the first place we visited that made me think I’d like to return to India, and where it felt possible to be more than just an expensively cushioned spectator. There’s also quite a lot that we didn’t see.

So back on the coach to Nawalgarh in the Shekawati region.

Our next hotel – Roop Niwas Kothi (http://roopniwaskothi.com) - for this night was a converted colonial palace, complete with riding stables, swimming pool and bicycles for hire. Our room was beautifully furnished, and much simpler and more classically styled than the Jaipur palace. We also encounter our first fully functional bathroom of the trip so far.

On arrival at a number of hotels we’ve been greeted by a welcoming deputation, complete with red paint (of different materials in each case) rice and garlands of orange marigolds. The routine is that each person is given a spot, some rice is embedded in the ‘paint’ material and then a garland hung round the neck. We were more than a little un-nerved by this, because it has obvious religious significance (the red spot symbolises an ‘inward-looking eye’) and the marigolds are for ‘luck’). We went with it, because to object would not help anyone and would cause some fairly serious offence, but weren’t happy. I wonder if that showed?

That night we have home-cooked food, or at least some of us do, many of the others having gone down with D&V and fevers since Chris and I. We were pretty much recovered, for which I was enormously grateful.

A word on food.

By this time almost all food tasted pretty similar, just with subtle variations of ingredients, spicing and heat levels. At times we’d gone vegetarian because meat options were either dubious chicken or lumps of gristly, fatty mutton. Restaurants doing a la carte would sometimes offer Tandoori and Kashmiri styles, but most of the time it was dopiaza or kofta style main curry with chicken or paneer and vegetables, a dal curry of lentils or chick peas and accompaniment of rice, naan/roti/paratha. It dawned on us that we were eating the regional style of curry, and that’s why each time we went somewhere new it tasted so similar

Drinks were usually Kingfisher (Indian) lager, water, coke, lassi or a fresh sweetened (sometimes salted) lime juice and soda.

It more than kept body and soul together, and we could feel ourselves getting fat, thanks to the calorific nature of the food and a lack of exercise. Just one time everyone managed to get a non-curry based meal, but that was a relative disappointment.

Day 6 - Jaipur

2011-11-07T17:07:00.001Z

I was writing this sat on the plane, 5 hours into our journey and trying hard to remember events, feeling a little woozy from the flight. The last couple of days we were travelling and saw so many things. Ah, got it with Chris’s help!

Our guide in Jaipur for the next 1 ½ days was a local man we picked up on the way that first morning, called Amar. Obviously knowledgeable, but with a strong accent and he also found it hard to understand English sometimes (quite reasonably). Incredibly friendly and helpful, we really warmed to him and he to us as time went on – nothing seemed too much trouble, and he always looked out for us.

After a leisurely start we visited the Mantar Jantar whose name means something like scientific instruments. Basically it was a park that held huge sun-dials and various devices to permit tracking the movement of sun, moon and stars to enable the casting of horoscopes. I suppose it makes sense considering the way culture and mysticism spreads, but it’s fascinating in a slightly morbid way that astrology is so universal across the planet.

The stonework and structures were generally lovely to look at, and the largest of the sundials deserve admiration, simply for the sheer scale and accuracy of construction. It was built to give a time resolution of 2 seconds, but of course because the sun emits light as a disc and not a point, sharp shadows are impossible when the object casting the shadow is more than a few inches away. Maybe they followed the area of transition between shadow and full light as it moved across the scale?

After the Mantar Jantar we were shown round the royal palace. The present Maharajah of Jaipur is 14, and studying at school, so he wasn’t there. The buildings were a mix of highly attractive and a little tired here and there, although inside were some magnificent rooms and a huge hall in which hung paintings and photographs of the maharajahs down the years. Many of these had short descriptions of their reigns, each of which tried to be terribly diplomatic about shortcomings and that some of these guys had made a mess. The palace was good, but we were getting a little ‘monument fatigue’ by then, and it was beginning to blur a little.

It is worth mentioning that the air had now cleared, after the smog of Delhi and Agra. The air was always very dry, to the point that nostrils got itchy and lips became gummy within a few minutes, and carrying a water bottle was pretty essential, even if one did not drink much on each occasion. The sun was quite fierce, and places of shadow welcome when sight seeing around stone buildings. However a nice aspect was that one very seldom felt sweaty and people didn’t usually smell of stale perspiration.

More curry for lunch, this time in a café at the palace, back to the hotel for a rest, then a walk in Jaipur (just the 2 of us exploring).

Finally, beyond all the palaces, hotels, fancy curries and sight-seeing, it felt like this was what we’d come for. That’s not to say that it was like walking into a sunlit meadow with birds and flowers and a huge sense of peace and joy – quite the opposite. Walking through a busy street in a busy city meant (for me at least) sensory overload, and really pushing out past our comfort zones, especially as we were alone. The first 200 yards were the hardest, since despite being down a quiet-ish street, we were much more visible to all the locals, and we also had to make a diversion to avoid raw sewage running across the street.

Once again, the smells were a spectrum in the nostrils, running from human waste through cumin and chilli (made my nose itch) to floral and herbal scents, frying food, joss sticks and even a sweet green smell from the vendors selling sugar-cane juice, extracted by crushing cane in a steel mangle and served with ice.

The shop fronts were much better than we’d seen in old Delhi, and overall the buildings seemed less bad despite some almost falling down. We walked about 40min in one direction absorbing the environment, before we came upon a roundabout. The significance of this is that we saw men dismantling large bamboo arches that had been built across the roads entering and leaving for Diwali decorations. There were also small tent-like structures which appear to have been lit internally for the same purpose.

Crossing Indian roads is not without it’s challenges, but the main requirement is to either wait until there is a gap large enough to ensure safety, or to wait until the traffic is so dense it cannot move and to squeeze between the cars. No driver will wish to hit a pedestrian, but even if he sees you, he may not have space or time to miss. Zebra crossings are basically a suggestion.

Walking back, we were able to use the pavement (on the opposite side that wasn’t possible, so most people walked in the road) and go close to the shops.

We stopped off in one selling pashminas.

That sounds so straight forward, but for us it was quite scary. Outside of our guides and hotel staff, the only experience we’d had of Indians in India was that they were after your money, and would be hard-nosed and desperate to get it. In turn, it had made us wary and mis-trusting of those we met in any kind of commercial environment where we were not being advised.

So in fear and trepidation we entered a shop!

The people were completely fine, just normal guys with a job to do, happy to show what they had for sale. Yes, there was negotiation. Yes, we happily paid a little over the odds for the things we wanted. But it was done with a smile and friendliness, rather than hostility and pushing.

So we progressed back to the hotel, happy to have actually managed to get out on our own, pleased with the outcome and to have interacted with ‘real people’ in spite of our fears and the language barrier.

That night we play tourist at a large open-air restaurant, complete with local music and women dancing, presumably telling a story, including a particular dance involving balancing 7 or 8 jars on the dancer’s head before she stood on swords. Not our thang, but done with considerable skill.

Day 5

2011-11-06T22:53:00.001Z

Did nothing all morning, weak as a kitten, and with grumpy tummy too. We are due to move on this afternoon by train to Jaipur – hope I have enough strength to cope with the bags.

I wrote that while feeling really desperate. I was mostly coping doing nothing at all, but very uncertain that I would manage the train journey. In the morning most of the party had gone to a local school for deaf & dumb that the travel company sponsors and to give small gifts, but we were both trying to recover and stayed around the hotel complex. After a lunch that consisted of a couple of spoonfuls of fried rice and a naan bread for me, we were ready to really get in among the natives, traveling true cattle-class in a wagon with bars on the windows and bench-style seating designed for shorter legs.

The platforms were very heavily crowded this time, and we struggled to find a space to group together. A big concern was getting the luggage actually onto the train and stowed when so many others were likely to be occupying the spaces we had booked. Junaid told us that because of the holiday (Diwali) time, many people were traveling, and although one is required to book seats, the penalty for traveling without a ticket is truly minimal – around 20-30 rupees.

One thing worth mentioning about this stage was the smell. Pissing in public is normal practice for males, and on our wanders it was not unusual to see faeces in the road that did not look like it came from an animal. Now there were no obvious open sewers around the station, but the main smell from the crowds in the station was a mix of sweat in the 30 degree heat. and unwiped bottoms. Everywhere in India smells have been strong: strong to the point that I can never smell my own deodorant except at the instant of spraying, and conventional perfume seems almost unnoticeable.

The unwiped bottoms were to follow us into the carriage.

After the train arrived, Junaid forced his way on with a certain amount of difficulty. The carriages were absolutely packed solid, with all seats filled and people standing crushed together. All windows have metal bars welded on in this (2nd?) class carriage, and I almost wonder if they are there to stop passengers being forced out of the windows.

He arrived in the carriage and after a few seconds rapid-fire Hindi that section began to empty. The flow of bodies was quite astonishing, and far too vigorous for us to push through – there must have been at least 100 people in the space that we were due to occupy, and quite possibly more, and they all decided to get off there and then. As the human tide ebbed a little I was able to climb up, and saw Junaid and one of the porters from the station wiping the seats down before we were due to sit. The seats were just a basic padded plastic bench with a matching vertical padded upright section, and at least the lack of shaping made them easier to wipe.

Luggage was passed up to me by a porter, and I had to lift it up and over the seats to Junaid for it to be stowed as best as possible, given the very limited space. Once or twice I looked at the bags I was being passed, wondering how I would ever lift them given my present state, but somehow the strength was there, and eventually we managed to get everything stowed and the whole party on board.

As soon as we were sat down (some with their feet on bags – oh how we wished we’d brought less kit in smaller bags – knees round their ears) the tide turned and the carriage rapidly refilled. Some baggage hooks we’d missed by the window were used to hang bags, briefcases and a sack of rice to save the owner’s arms. Women carrying small children, younger men in shirts (we seldom saw Indian males in tee shirts) and the occasional man in his 40s all crushed together, standing up for the 3 ½ hour journey to Jaipur. A couple of young guys spent the whole trip hanging on in the carriage doorway and there were people on the roof too. Baptism of something, but I’m not sure it was fire!

A number of us had been suffering from griping in the guts, and had to endure. being crushed up in the stink and heat. I was lucky enough to be beside an open window, with a good flow of fresh air coming through, but poor Sarah (a fellow sick-note) was right in the middle, crushed in by standing passengers and occasionally having luggage encroach into her space around head-height.

The great thing about being by an open window was that it was possible to see the countryside as we traveled. The flipside of that was that the train was traveling quite quickly, and that made photography almost impossible. The terrain we crossed started off quite flat and parched, obviously farmland that had produced it’s crops, been ploughed & harrowed and was now waiting planting. Occasionally we saw crops of some sort, but it was mostly barren and sometimes with a woman in bright sari at work. Gradually changes took place, with a river, then an strange eroded landscape with sparse wild plants and odd rock formations, then mountains at the edges of the plains. Sometimes there would be some kind of fort on top of a hill overlooking the town we passed through.

After an hour of so we could hear animated conversation from our traveling companions on the other side of the human barrier in the middle of the carriage. It seemed that, being a little more out-going AND rather healthier than us, they had struck up a kind of conversation with one of the ‘hangers-on’ outside the carriage and were having a bit of banter among themselves. This was being visibly appreciated by the guys standing between us, and they often laughed along with our friends, even if they didn’t really know what was being said. We understand that at least ne of them asked Junaid some questions about us, and made some comments he was not entirely comfortable to repeat back.

On this part of the journey our guide went well above & beyond the call of duty, placing a couple of our bags on his own seat so that we had more leg room, and standing the entire journey.

At the station about 10 min before Jaipur the train stopped and the carriage almost emptied, quite possibly in order to avoid the officials that were likely present at a major station. The extra space was gratefully received and we discussed arrangements for getting everything off the train when it finally arrived. Porters had been organised, and once we’d carefully transferred all luggage to the platform they took over and did a great job of getting our luggage out of the station and to our coach.

A pleasant surprise awaited us – the coach we’d had from Delhi to Agra was there, complete with seikh driver and his assistant. They were a welcome sight – comforting and familiar faces after a time of disruption and transition. They had driven the 10 hours from Agra to Jaipur to meet us while we’d been in the reserves.

Transfer to the hotel in Jaipur took about 35 min, mostly due to the metro system being created. By the time we arrived it was growing dark and the city was difficult to see, but it seemed less brutally poor than Delhi.

Our hotel was the Bissau Palace (http://bissaupalace.com) previously a maharajah’s palace, and still owned by the family. As explained to us, all the kings or maharajahs no longer have any power, but instead have become businessmen. The hotel itself was a mix of the stunning full-on Rajput style, with a dash of British Raj and modern Indian ‘absolute minimum, just too late’ maintenance. Every room, we were told, was different, and that certainly proved to be true.

The hotel entrance lay down a side street just off a busy road, and was gated and guarded. When we arrived tired and having driven through the bustle and poverty of Jaipur, it was a little oasis of peace, calm and beauty that was like a cool shower for the eyes. The walls and ceilings were carefully hand-painted with flowers birds and patterns, there were white marble elephants, bowls with flowers floating in water and old photographs, antique weapons and ephemera hung on the walls. Older men, dressed in richly coloured Indian robes of deep red, green and gold stood around like aging retainers observing the masters unruly friends turning up as we walked in.

We were assigned a room outside the main building on an upper floor. The door was painted grey with metal shapes of elephants and camels, and looked like it was designed to keep invading hordes at bay. The porter who had brought our bags undid a large padlock, swung the door open and showed us in.

Just wow.

Our room was truly amazing. To the right was a large divan, of the sort on which one might receive guests if you were ‘sitting in state’. To the left, a few steps down to a bathroom with roll-top bath in a slightly mock-vintage style, and straight ahead between the pillars we could see a beautifully presented bed. The walls were painted with flowers and patterns and the furniture was nicely in keeping with the style. There were crumbly edges in the form of an ugly US-style aircon unit mounted through the wall and a separate step down transformer that buzzed loudly even when the aircon wasn’t used. The plumbing was less than entirely great too, but it was adequate to keep us clean. Also, rather oddly, the water left our hands feeling really dry and scratchy – that happened nowhere else, so I assumed it was a peculiarity of the water system in this hotel or city.

After the last day or so, this was such a lift, it made me want to stay after all.

When we went out for dinner that night I just had a yoghurt based drink with banana (called lassi) and half a litre of water. The smell of curry was almost unbearable.

Day 4 and (especially) night 4

2011-11-05T20:00:00.000Z

We were up at the crack of dawn for tea and ‘cookies’ (Ritz crackers!) to catch the truck taking us to the wildlife reserve at 6.30am. We’d been warned that early mornings were cooler, and that the game park itself was 3 or 4 degrees below the area outside, but we were (mostly) not prepared for driving 30+ min in an open topped bus at 10’C. We got thoroughly cold right through, especially being sat on a bus for 5 hours.

Ranthambore reserve was once a Maharajah’s hunting ground, now cared for by a special commission. The biggest, most publicised attraction are the tigers that live wild there, although there are lots of other species too. This was the first time I’d seen a side of India that was attractive instead of just dirty and poverty-stricken or outrageously wealthy. In brief summary (because a blow-by-blow account would make drying paint seem exciting) we saw a glimpse of one tiger right at the start of the morning trip, and that was it. However there were lots of other wildlife about, including several varieties of deer, monkeys, birds and crocodiles. In addition the countryside is quite spectacular, with mountains, lakes, streams and even an ancient fortress (that we could not visit) on the brow of a mountain. Our afternoon trip was rather delayed, but we still got to see a good range of wildlife, although by the time we got back we were caked in dust.

Night 4

When we got back from the wildlife trip Chris was chilled right through again, had a severe headache and was feeling queasy and with a tummy ache, so showered to thaw out & went to bed. There was obviously more to it than just a chill, and when I got back after dinner she was feeling sick & cycling hot & cold with a fever.

I went off for dinner, then came back and stopped up until about 11.30 to write up the Fatehpur Sikri visit and train journey, then went to bed.

When I laid down I just pulled the covers back as normal, but found myself shivering, so over went the thin sheet. Still not enough, so the duvet came up to my waist, again insufficient, and so it went until I was completely buried in bed clothes, yet with a nose that felt cold to the touch. Then came the muscle and joint pains, the jabs in the stomach, the queasiness, the feeling that one’s bottom my commit some serious betrayal. Finally, the fevered temperature brought distorted thoughts, and it felt as though my personality and understanding were being shattered into tiny pieces, demonic faces pulling things this way and that, all while unreadable scripts would flash past my minds eye.

Every few minutes things would become too painful in legs, back, side or arms, or I’d get too hot or too cold and have to cover up or uncover. At one point my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I developed sore patches in my mouth and throat where the membranes had dried too much and become damaged a little. 3 times in that seemingly endless night I got up for a drink, and it seemed like it had stones crushing my head as I staggered to the bathroom. Trying to spit to clear my throat was impossible and every burp brought a highly resented reminder of the curry we’d eaten every day for lunch, dinner and sometimes even breakfast.

Heaven only knows how the original explorers coped with this kind of thing, with the floor for a bed, filthy water, and no meaningful medication. It later transpired that all but 3 of the group went down with this to some degree – we’d both had a cholera vaccine before leaving, and seemed to escape more lightly than most of the others - £72 very well spent!

Morning eventually came at 7.30am. Chris seemed to fall asleep properly at some stage, judging by the light snoring, and seemed almost back to normal, though weak and with a migraine brewing (Maxalt melts are wonderful things, and it went away without returning). I was very weak, although my temperature had at least stabilised more or less, but was still very wobbly and heady. Eventually managed a shower, then breakfast (1 slice of dry toast & a banana + sweet tea).

Before breakfast I was quite ready to call it a day: I’d seen enough of India, eaten way too much good but extremely similar tasting curry – just pop me on a plane and I’ll go home now! We were about half way through, and I hoped that was it for the sickness. Several others had all gone down with the same thing at the same time, so my guess is that we’ve been fed something iffy, probably lunchtime at the buffet in the hotel at Ranthambore when the food was only luke-warm.

Nuts.

Thursday (day 3) was primarily a day of travel, broken by a visit to Fatehpur Sikri.

2011-11-04T20:22:00.003Z

Fatehpur Sikri was briefly capital of India under a Moghul emperor, effectively built from scratch after a Sufi (Moslem ‘holy man’) foretold the emperor would have an heir by his favourite wife, having been unproductive until that point. In gratitude the emperor relocated his capital in order to live with the Sufi, however there was never sufficient water, and after 16 years the city was abandoned. The buildings are a deliberate mix of Hindu, Moslem and an ‘Indian’ take on Christian styles of architecture, with varying degrees of success. Our guide described this particular emperor as being ‘ecumenical’, but syncretistic (worshiping several gods simultaneously) is probably more accurate. He apparently also tried to start his own religion ‘worshipping god’, which failed to take root.

It is very hard to put my finger on the reason Islamic architectural styles seem out of place here, even though India has had many centuries of Islamic rulers and cultural influence. For me, the style seems to cut across the natural style of the country. I guess someone coming to the UK from India and looking at many of the gothic buildings here might feel similarly. Or maybe it clashes with the internal pictures I’ve carried, of how India should be.

The structures were truly fascinating in places, and held a number of different architectural styles, if not in harmony, then at least in variety. There were pillared buildings, buildings with Arab-style doorways, carvings and domes, buildings with Hindu carvings and doorways. A real melange with no single outstanding feature, but interesting to see as someone’s attempt to blend 3 fairly immiscible cultures.

One of the themes that several of the guides have repeated over and over is how in India everyone gets along together, whether Moslem, Hindu, Jane, Seikh or Christian. While there has been some hard evidence to the contrary, overall most people appear much more concerned about how they will eat next than differences of faith.

In order to reach Ranthambore we had to catch a train. Indian railways seem to be ‘interesting’, in that time is frequently flexible, but when you have to get lots of people onboard there are only two or three minutes to embark – not necessarily convenient with luggage for 18. We were ‘lucky’ to have tickets purchased for us, because in order to track potential terrorists/security threats, it is necessary to use a computerised booking system with details verified with a passport. In fact this kind of verification has become the norm for a variety of activities, and not just transport. It makes me wonder about the future of freedom in India.

Outside the station we were able to stand back and watch ‘real’ India at work for the first time since arriving, mostly due to a lack of time and the hawkers that tirelessly assailed us where ever we went. Tuk-tuk drivers were deep In conversation or trying to obtain business, crowds of people were disgorged from newly arrived trains and poured from the entrance, people with apparently nothing pressing to do just stood around and watched. All this was set against a background of brightly coloured shop fronts, dust, concrete, bicycles being repaired and Indian adverts in eye-popping colours with culturally desirable, smiling people holding or wearing or washing or simply being associated with whatever the product was, supported by Hindi text presumably extolling said product’s virtues.

And so, we gathered our luggage from the coach, pointed it out to the porter marked out by a faded red shirt and brass plate tied to his arm, and trudged up the entry ramp.

In the station we were assailed by a couple of men asking us if we wanted a shoe shine. They were obviously highly imaginative, since almost everyone was in sandals or trainers, but why should that get in the way of business? We dutifully played the game as explained to us, not catching their eyes and continuing to walk forwards. This, we had been told, was the only way to cope with hawkers – any kind of recognition that an actual human being was there beside us would ensure we might never gain our freedom. Once a mark acknowledged a vendors presence, be it trinkets, a rickshaw driver or a glowing LED thing that was shot in the air and descended to earth like a helicopter, the vendor would follow you until physically prevented from doing so.

We had experienced this in a small way when Chris and I wanted a walk in Agra before lunch. We left the hotel grounds (guarded) walked along one side of the block and had just started on the second when we were approached by a rickshaw driver. I said and made NO very clear, but he followed us for the remaining 2 ¾ blocks until we walked through the gate of our hotel, at which point his face fell so completely I felt really sorry for him. I don’t know how or if it is possible for anyone outside of India to make a significant impact on a culture so poor that people must lose their humanity and self-worth in order to scrape together a few rupees to buy food. It scares me that I am having to treat people with such inhumanity and without respect in order to just mind my own business in their country.

As we entered the station there were 2 small girls begging, both very skinny with short hair and large heads. We gave them 2 rupees each and they followed us a long way through the station before giving up and turning back.

We eventually reached our section of the platform where the carriage was supposed to stop, still pursued by the shoe-shine men. After a few minutes we were approached by an old man in ragged traditional clothing, shouting in Hindi. Junaid translated for us – it was actually funny – that he was asking for a light, and what was India coming to when no-one had a match any more? He laid down on the platform and pretended to be tired out and going to sleep, but a shoe-shine man tried to take his stick away and then lifted him to his feet and man-handled him (not too roughly) down the platform.

Chris has also reminded me of the 2 beggars with leg deformities that were on the station. One was 'wearing' a shoe on his knee to protect it while he dragged himself along, while the other had no protection at all. They made a far larger impact on her than anything else in that part of the trip, possibly because she gave them money (by agreement between us) whereas I didn't. Overall she was generally braver than me when it came to dealing with 'strange' people.

There was a little concern about the fate of our luggage, last seen outside the station loaded on an old wooden barrow, edges and wheels pained a faded and dusty red to match the porter’s shirt. The porters had managed to get the whole kit and caboodle across the lines and several hundred yards down the platforms to where we stood. From the main platform to the one on which we stood there was a gentle but distinct slope heading down toward us. The poor porter in front was really struggling to control the load and stop it running away, and I was getting ready to rush across. Fortunately the other porter was at the back, holding on and stopping the load from escaping.

Our train came on time, but nothing is perfect and the carriages stopped about 100 yards further down the platform. Cue lots of running passengers and sweaty, panicked porters pushing an over-loaded cart.

Carriage C2 was pleasantly air conditioned, for which we were grateful considering the 3 hour journey length. We were allocated seats 67 and 68, and found these quickly and without difficulty. The interior was nothing ‘special’, being a mix of 1970s British Rail and economy airline, all with a modest helping of dust. Yellow Perspex windows prevented one enjoying the view of the countryside, so conversation or reading were the most reasonable forms of entertainment. Seats were arranged with the rear half of the carriage facing forward and the front half facing backward. There might be method in the madness, but it eluded me.

I don’t know if there were people on the roof, but ‘cattle class’ appeared to live up to it’s name, with barred windows through which the ‘victims’ could be seen. During the journey men walked up and down the corridor continuously, offering crisps, bottled drinks, tea and coffee. We had been pre-warned about not risking the Tea and coffee, and since we all had water, no-one had a need to partake.

On arrival we were collected in dark green open-top passenger vehicles that we were to come to know much better the following day. They had a crew-cab area with a roll bar (front only – worrying) and seats in pairs on both sides. Behind the crew cab was a bench seat and an open area, where the baggage was stacked. The cool breeze in the warm night air was lovely after being cooped up.

We were greeted at our hotel for the next 2 nights by a small deputation of staff. They were applying a red spot & rice to each forehead (causing minor consternation) hanging a marigold garland on each neck and presenting us with blue and red drinks that tasted almost, but not exactly, like a mix of sugar water and turpentine, or just plain sugar water.

After room assignment and a quick shower we were back together for dinner. First though, we had to survive the entertainment, otherwise known as demonstrating dancing and then embarrassing guests by expecting them to dance too. Some have it, and this particular some don’t, but I will say that Indians appear particularly quick and flexible to a tired 50 year-old. Finally dinner, then bed, with the treat of another early morning ahead, leaving at 6.30am.

Day 2 - Agra and the Taj Mahal.

2011-11-03T21:07:00.000Z

We were up at 5am local (i.e. 12.30am UK!) for a 6am departure to Agra & the Taj Mahal, with a 4 hour coach journey. Usually this section is done on the train, but this week is Diwali, and a time of chaos on the railways! Junaid was concerned that the train might be several hours late, so we were given a coach instead.

Driving out of Delhi, it is impossible not to be overwhelmed at the incredible poverty by western standards. It seems like none but the very grandest of houses is not partially ruined, filthy and falling apart. Many sections of waste ground have families camping, with shelters made from sticks and plastic bags or tarpaulins. Everything is covered in beige dust, and we saw many cows and in some places, Monkeys, roaming. Men stand with their backs to the road, urinating in public.

Further out from Delhi there are better buildings, and although the squalor is still intense, it feels slightly less crushing. All villages seem built on dust/dirt, and people also appear to throw their rubbish beside the road, where it was often seen smouldering in heaps. There were lakes and rivers and frequently pools of stagnant water, dark and foetid looking.

We have been given packed breakfasts by the hotel including salad sandwiches. We do not eat these! My pack was egg-free by request. In a stroke of irony, the apparently ‘lemon’ flavoured’ crisps in my pack taste intensely of eggs, thanks to the sulphur dioxide preservative used.

Many people are on the road, and at this point it’s worth mentioning the traffic. There are apparently rules for road use, and I suspect the first of them is “don’t get caught”.

Traffic is worse than chaotic, although Junaid assured us that they have few bad accidents because generally people travel slowly, even though or perhaps because the roads are so full. It is astonishing how pedal rickshaws & scooters, motorcycles, cars coaches and trucks all seem to want the same space, yet seldom collide hard. Almost all vehicles have some damage, and it’s just that driving under these conditions, some collisions are inevitable.

One is also required to use the horn before overtaking to ensure the other driver knows you’re coming. In a city as crowded as Delhi the result makes Rome or Paris seem peaceful. Our Seikh driver has a 2 tone horn, for which the word ‘blast’ is a good description.

If we though that whole families using scooters was scary in Thailand, here is worse. The Thais normally rode in line, front to back. Here, women are in saris, and almost always sit side-saddle with an arm around their husband to keep them on. If they have a baby then it is sat on the woman’s lap with her other arm around the child. An older child would stand in the footwell, holding on to the middle of the handlebars. The most we ever saw was 6 young adults on a single scooter.

We felt sorry for the rickshaw drivers, usually slender men and mostly short too. Many of them are clearly very poor indeed, and in the early afternoon we frequently saw them asleep on their rickshaws, stretched out in their stained and worn clothes. You know people are poor here when they can no longer afford to pretend they are well off.

Everyone seems on the move, for Diwali. Every tuk-tuk is full to bursting, there are people sitting on top of busses, filling the back of trucks, pedalling, walking and in some cases, standing beside the road with pink and yellow floral pattern suitcases in shiny plastic, clearly waiting for a lift. On the way to Agra we pass a place described as BS Elementary School.

We arrive in Agra at a more ‘international’ hotel – Yamuna View.

The hotel is ‘in the middle of nowhere’ in the centre of Agra. India seems like America, in that there are few pavements or parts of the road set aside for walking and everything is completely orderless. Pedal rickshaws were everywhere, the drivers desperate to earn money, and as we discovered when trying to actually go for a walk, you cannot prevent them pestering and demanding that you ride with them. We really wanted to get out and stretch our legs in the time before lunch, but after about 100 yards had acquired a rickshaw driver that followed us around in a circle for the entire block, not letting us go until we re-entered the hotel grounds. It makes me wonder how people manage if they just come for themselves, and not with a tour company.

So we were collected in our coach, and taken to the fort at Agra. Basically just a big castle, it’s constructed from a dark red sandstone, with gates that would look in keeping with Warwick castle, double moats once apparently containing crocodiles and lions and an entrance that turns 90 degrees between one gate and the next, providing a courtyard in which enemy soldiers could be trapped.

Our guide here was a young man called Ibrahim, who looks as John Lennon might have done if he’d been born in Agra instead of Liverpool. He, like Junaid, is a moslem, and he carried one of their fine lace skull caps in his back pocket.

Agra fort isn’t really old – 1600 something – but I got the impression that nothing lasts long in India. large sections inside the fort are still in use by the military but the palace buildings are still open for tourists. The fort and the Taj Mahal were built by Moghuls: Moslems from Uzbekistan arriving via Afghanistan, rather than Indians, and the architecture is more Persian & Arab influenced than Indian, with Koranic verses inscribed. A lot of the decoration wouldn’t have looked to out of place in English buildings of the period, and for all the spectacular size and strength of the fortress, it is a little disappointing. The one exception was a section of the palace built for a Indian princess who married one of the Moghul emperors, and this part was richly decorated and much more in the style one would expect for an Indian palace.

On to the Taj Mahal. The plan was that by visiting a bit later we’d see the Taj at sunset, glowing pink in the changing light.

This building has been presented to us by everyone we know who’s seen it as being incredibly beautiful, and the guide described it as the most beautiful building in the world (as well as bigging up the technology used in the design). It is approached by electric or LPG powered vehicles – no petrol or diesel powered vehicles are permitted close to it. Then one has to go through checks that first segregate men and higher class persons from women – lower class persons and Indian women – lowest class persons: there were metal railings that took each class through to separate metal detectors, screened off from each other.

After the screening we were admitted through a large ornate stone gate. There are a total of 3 such gates, each leading to a long footpath between gardens, and the footpaths meet at a crossroads, with the 4th path from the cross taking the walker through another and much larger gate constructed of red sandstone and white marble. Through this gate lay the way to the Taj Mahal.

Earlier in these descriptions I mentioned the smoky, misty air. The atmosphere on the day of our visit was very misty indeed, and as a consequence, the Taj appeared as grey upon grey – very far from the sparkling white structure normally shown against a blue sky. From the entry gate there were gardens and footpaths right and left, with a long, slender section of water running all the way up to the building, broken by a square raised marble platform about half way along. In front of the Taj there is a raised courtyard with steps taking visitors up from the garden level, and from the courtyard a second set of hidden steps taking people to a smaller balcony courtyard and entrance to the mausoleum itself.

The structure itself is impressive and pleasing to the eye. Maybe my view has been slightly prejudiced by everything we’d heard, by the poor weather and because we were also tired at the end of a long and jet-lagged day. It was very large, true, and certainly impressive. Yet somehow it was not the place of amazing beauty that I was quite fully expecting, not quite having the clean smooth lines of elegant simplicity, nor the incredible depth of fine detail that a major Thai temple usually has. Once again there were echos of classic English architecture, but given a Persian spin on an American scale.

In order to enter the upper courtyard and mausoleum it is necessary to remove shoes or wear overshoes, and we chose the latter. We ascended and then made our way inside where we were quickly whipped through a few dark rooms made of marble before being ushered outside again. Good, but not amazing. Chris and I both wonder if we’ve become spoiled by all the wonderful things we’ve seen: the Duomo in Florence is more striking as a structure, the coliseum in Rome more amazing for it’s construction. However compared to all the other buildings we’ve been exposed to thus far in India, the Taj is certainly the most appealing visually.

After our whistle-stop tour of the interior we returned to the gardens. Walking up the opposite side of the long ornamental pond, with the breeze blowing gently across from our right we caught the sweet scent of frangipan trees that were blooming in the gardens. India is full of constantly changing smells, and so often it seems that there have been attempts to adjust the aroma to please rulers, whether by planting strongly fragrant flowers or using rose water in various places.

We returned to the gate through which we entered and regrouped while the sun continued to set. As promised, the Taj did become a gentle shade of pinkish grey against an orange-pink misty grey sky, but without substantial tweaking, our photographs are unlikely to reflect this. As darkness fell the guards blew whistles to signal that visiting time was over: people streamed back from the Taj in a great throng and we fought our way back through the hawkers to our coach.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped by a workshop reputedly operated by some of the same families that were involved in construction & inlay on the Taj. Everything is quite hand-crafted, and the inlays are to a very high quality (if Gibson guitars could employ these guys then their days of shoddy inlay work would be over). They sell everything from place-mats at about £20 to tabletops at thousands of pounds, based on how many days labour to relieve the marble, shape the inlays and the value of the stones used. Chris bought a small ‘coaster’ type white marble platter for about £29 while others spent more. Their stuff was very good, but we don’t do nic-nacs.

Wednesday night was Diwali night.

We ate dinner at an open air restaurant, obviously designed to cater to tourists but with some Indians too. I seem to have been out-matched by Chris on menu choices, where she has consistently picked the ‘best’ dinners, but tonight was good, regardless. After my lunch-time experience of Rogan E Gosht (mutton was almost entirely fat, with a small amount of bone) I had chicken Bodami, which was like a korma but more spicy.

After the meal was over, our waiters brought plates of Indian style sweets (mostly based on semolina and sugar syrup, sometimes with pistachios) and then spontaneously set off a firework display less than 20 meters from where we sat.

Spectacular.

Back in the hotel, and at times it was not possible to hear a break in the sound of explosions, so many and frequently did they come. Even after 11pm there was a continuous racket with the celebrations going on. The Indians do like their bangs and bright flashes, and really go to town. Hopefully sleep will happen fairly soon.

Delhi district - hazy sunshine, high of 32'C.

2011-11-02T11:34:00.001Z

This is the first time I've connected to the internet since Monday 24th October, mostly because we've been more than adequately busy, and a little because because I've been happy to have a break. For those interested, I brought the Macbook, and have blogged the journey off-line.

There's quite a lot to tell, and I can honestly say that this has been a major experience. Those who read regularly or have read the 'warning' on this side will know that I tend to say what I think, except where it needs to be moderated for the sake of others. In this situation I have recorded my feelings and thoughts about things, pretty much as I felt them, and make no apology for it. Some, indeed quite a bit was written while travelling in a coach over bumpy roads, and that may have coloured the descriptions. If you'd walked in my shoes & eaten my food, slept in those beds and seen those sights then you would very likely have felt differently: we're all entitled to our views, and these were mine.

I'll try to post each part of the the trip as if it were 'live', and where possible, add some images. There is still a bit of catching up to do, and as the journey has gone on I've tried to become more descriptive and thorough, and there hasn't been sufficient time to write stuff up.

Without further ado, here's day 1 although day 2 may be a couple of days in posting because we're flying back tomorrow.

Delhi airport is new, apparently specially built for the commonwealth games in 2010, and is like an Indian take of a modern airport: large, clean, reasonably shiny and with the occasional statue or artefact that suggests an asian influence. There is little to give the new arrival any hint of what lies beyond it’s doors.

We were quite groggy after our flight. Leaving Heathrow eventually at about 9.10pm, we watched a film, had dinner and then (in my case) watched a second film because sleepiness wasn’t happening. Finally rolled over for an hour or so before being woken by Chris and then breakfast. We landed about 9.45 local time (4.5 hours ahead of the UK = 5.15am).

When ever I fly some where new the first thing I do on disembarking the plane is to sniff, to smell the air in the new place, although often airports don’t smell the same as outside. In the terminal I catch a strong hint of what seems to be cigar smoke mingled with a little incense. It’s not strong, but it is everywhere, and that provides the first hint that it’s not from just a single cigar.

After the visa antics I am not surprised that there is an entry form to fill in, and not surprised either that no-one has warned us in advance. Approaching the immigration desks is a slow business involving lots of queuing, and our nerves become increasingly frayed as we saw many people being delayed, questioned, having to produce additional documents etc. Indian beaurocracy requires careful and accurate paperwork. It seems that there is a benefit to having been trained to survive US customs, because when it came to it, our forms were examined, passports returned & we sailed through.

We are met outside immigration by Junaid, our guide for the trip, and then lead out of doors. As we approach the exit I could see what appeared to be crowds of people standing looking in, all apparently waiting for new arrivals, and for a moment it looks like a mob waiting for the losers of a siege to emerge from their stronghold. The crowd WAS large, but mostly made up of people holding signs for friends and family, and rather than fight our way through, we are led across the face of it and to the coach park.

And breathe in.

The smell outside is just like inside the building, but enormously stronger and more complex. The cigar scent became more clearly a mix of clay (presumably from the dust that’s all-pervading) and woodsmoke, plus a strong background of incense and joss sticks. But there’s no consistent or single smell, so much as a constantly changing and swirling mix of odours, from intense clay smells of freshly moistened soil, through cloying-sweet perfumes and incense to sweaty bodies, drain and sewage smells. It is also misty everywhere, with what looks like smoke: apparently this descended about 5 days before we arrived.

In the coach on the way to our hotel there were some large mosquitos. One landed on my leg, and I killed it, only to smear a large amount of blood across my trousers.

Delhi itself IS a bit of a blur, not least because we were seriously tired. The hotel is in a ‘nice’ bit in Green park extension, and made with lots of marble. The beds were comfy, the bathroom semi-functional (forget about showering easily). This is probably at the ‘nice’ end of Indian-style hotels, and we could have done much worse by all accounts.

My lasting impression of central Delhi is poverty and squalor. Everything was covered in dust, all buildings seem to be crumbling, rotting or peeling and there were men in rags and stained clothes everywhere. Chris and I were discussing just now how people live & make a living, and the simple answer is that, by western standards, many don’t. One of the first things the guide said to us was that every other problem in India stems from there being too many people.

We had a pedal-rickshaw ride around the narrow streets of old Delhi, then visited a large red-sandstone mosque where we were watched by men with hot, angry eyes dressed in robes and skull-caps, while women laughed and children played. In the mosque we seemed to be interesting enough for a small crowd to gather and photograph us! The mosque structure itself seemed in much better condition than the terrible, mouldering houses around it, although it too showed signs of deterioration despite being heavily used (we were assured by Junaid that it was full every Friday with 25,000 moslems). The main floor area was rough on our bare feet, and also covered in bird droppings. A permit to take pictures was 200 rupees, and frankly it wasn’t interesting enough to make me want to pay.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at the India Arch. Modelled on the Arc de Triomphe and Marble Arch, it is a prominent landmark in Delhi and commemorates the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who lost their lives while fighting for the Indian Empire, or more correctly the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The arch was impressive, however one of our party got lost, catching a cab to the hotel, and we spent over half an hour trying to find her!

Dinner in the hotel was (inevitably) curry, and probably because it was a hotel for westerners, even though it was Indian style, it tasted very much like something one might find in a UK restaurant, or even a Pataks jar.

And so to bed.

Terminal 4

2011-10-24T18:30:00.001+01:00

That sounds far too much like another film about robots. 2 and a bit hours before our plane goes.

Tonight we fly.

2011-10-24T11:13:00.001+01:00

But not like Peter Pan.

Ben is cat sitting, we're escaping for a bit. Wonder what we'll see - wonder what God will say to us? I hope, quite a bit of both.

It's curious when.

2011-10-22T10:13:00.000+01:00

Wonder how many posts I've started like that?

However it IS curious when your son is off to 'meet the parents', not least for the memories it brings back. And that makes me smile, because I also remember our first kiss, in the hallway after saying goodbye to them. Now those are memories to enjoy - and anticipate the next one.

Forward and reverse

2011-10-17T14:07:00.002+01:00

I've just got back from a bit of a walk/think/pray time round the site.

Many of the buildings I regularly walk past are closed and locked, but there's one I frequently see that bears the sign 20 CES Conference room. It's more or less a wooden shack with a couple of doors on the side, now rather falling apart. Some buildings like that are literally falling to bits, but this one seems more or less OK, and looking through the windows, there are no damp marks or sagging ceilings. There was also something odd in one of the rooms: Green & Red lights marked "Forward" and "Reverse".

Curious.

It took a moment to twig: the lights were in the projection room, and would have been used to indicate to the technician working a slide projector which way to move the presentation.

It made me wonder, in the greater scheme of things, if that's how we so often do church. We've kept the red & green lights, but few people really know what they're for any more. They have a symbolic value, and if people were to make a presentation from that room again then they would definitely need to go forward or backward as required, but things have moved on, and we do the same things in different ways. The lights were right then, but aren't any more. Of course, some people would remember how much better the lights were with their stately glow compared to a cheap plastic infra-red transmitter.... And no 'tradition' is immune: I do wonder if, in 25 years, the songs we sang that were fresh on the wave of what the Spirit was doing will sound as terrible in the ears of our grandchildren as Ira Sankey's songs did in ours.

You can see where this is going.

I've been considering some of the comments about my earlier post" - actually considering them quite a bit, particularly about passing on a form. It brings to mind when Paul & Barnabas went back to Jerusalem (Acts 15) over the very issue of passing on tradition. The Jewish believers had so many traditions and saw so much of their faith & expectation fulfilled in Jesus, one might expect that they would want to see the same pattern of rite and practice established everywhere now it had a meaning that could be universally applied.

What did they say? Basically: don't be troubled by what the guys demanding you follow our traditions said, and keep yourselves pure instead.

I don't want to go back to Egypt, but I'm not sure I want to go back to (the historic) Jerusalem either, particularly as it got razed just a few years later.

The wife was counting

2011-10-10T21:56:00.000+01:00

The wife was counting all the 1p's and 2p's out on the kitchen table when she suddenly got very angry and started shouting and crying for no reason. I thought to myself "She's going through the change."

I dedicate this one to Randall.

Producer Tony Platt on digital tuning benefits.

2011-10-10T16:44:00.000+01:00

What piece of technology do you think has been the most detrimental in the evolution of the recording realm?

'It would be the digital guitar tuner. When I first started, there were no guitar tuners, guitarists would tune to the piano, as the piano was always in tune in the studio. And so the guitar players always had the capacity to hold a guitar in tune. If they heard a string going out, they’d pull it a little bit to bring it back in. So things weren’t absolutely perfectly in tune but there wasn’t this focus of attention on the tuning so much. People were focusing on getting the feel right and getting it to where it was exciting. Now what happens is one string goes out of tune, everything stops, guitarist plugs into his tuner, tunes his guitar and then starts off again, but it has broken the momentum of the session so much. And again what happens is we have this overabundance of guitar players who have this overriding reliance on this piece of technology. They’re not thinking of tuning in their head, they’re not hearing the tuning in there, they’re looking at it, on the scale on the tuner.'

I saw this quoted on a forum as part of the discussion about tuning, and whether having everything perfectly was removing some of the soulfulness and feeling of music. We have become used to the idea of pitch-perfection, and ears accustomed to modern recordings often find older recordings unpleasant to listen to - at first. There's one particular track a friend of ours (Marc B Chapman) has on his Album 'Hiding Place' where a slide guitar doesn't quite make it to pitch, and at first it grated terribly. However after a few listens it now seems perfectly acceptable.

In a similar way, the guitar I used for the first 10 years or so was much stronger on the G string, and I'd play around that, either picking more gently to even it up or using it for extra sustain and girth when playing leads. Hendrix used strats upside down, and that similarly altered string outputs because of the staggered pickup pole pieces making string output unbalanced. Now all my guitars have an even output, and while that's nice for strumming, you only really get 2 tones (bare and wound strings) across the neck.

I wonder if all this 'wonderful' technology is actually taking over the very organic process we used to call making music?

Ever heard of a nontrepreneur?

2011-10-07T12:02:00.002+01:00

Nor had I, but this article on The Register seems to cover it.

For quite a long time there seems to have been a 'reality distortion field' surrounding the internet every bit as strongly as there has been within certain fruity IT companies. Google, for example, just simply ignored everyone's copyright on books, and has now placed huge numbers online for people to read FOC. The BBC (that bastion of all that's good in British broadcasting) has considered pictures found on the internet as being 'in the public domain' and has been known to use them while carefully stripping out the exif data (information about how the image was taken that might identify it) while carefully not paying royalties.

I'm not immune to this in some ways: I'll happily use software that is available FOC online (and I'm not talking about warez) and enjoy the fruits of other's labours. And that's fine when they are offered free, but the internet isn't really a place of computer hobbyists anymore, like is was in the late 90s.

Now knowing people as I do, humanity isn't about to miraculously transform into some kind of utopian culture, where everything you need and want is available free.

But the thing is, what many of the internet giants have really done is create a service industry ecosystem where the money just gets moved round in circles, without creating anything. And in the case of google, for example, what they've done is rob from the real world to pay for their exploits in the virtual one. As the report says, it's more and more looking like we have billions of dollars invested in a couple of hamsters and some guys in a horse costume.

So..... who wants to be the first to pay for facebook - to become a customer instead of the product?

Last night was the second evening

2011-10-06T14:01:00.000+01:00

in the series I'm attending "learning how to lead worship".

A more realistic title would be "learning about the history and mechanics of leading a Church of England service", but that's obviously not how things appear to those on the inside. In truth, it makes me feel hideously uncomfortable at times, some of which is due to the mismatch between my understanding of worship and theirs.

One of the things Chris and I are discussing is the whole issue of communion, and the rules surrounding it. There is a lot of tradition that may be present for a good reason, but which seems distinctly extra-biblical to us. There's a degree in which 'if you want to be in the club then you need to follow club rules', but we wonder if the club is fundamentally wrong in it's application of those rules. I suspect it's due to lots of left-over bits from a doctrine of transubstantiation which were never really tidied away or sorted out. But, to quote our friend Eddie, that's a conversation to have over a pint.

Another interesting thing was the statement that a primary Sunday CofE service was, in it's entirety, to be about worshipping God. Not necessarily bad, but it may go some way to explaining why the church of England seems to produce a lot of church-goers that have little understanding of either their faith or the bible. I did ask how people are taught, and there was a bit of a sucking in of breath through teeth, together with a comment wishing people were 'twicers' (going Sunday morning and evening) or went to housegroups and biblestudies midweek.

It may be a little presumptuous, but this has made me step back and try to think through how, if I were God, I might wish to interact with those who were the church. Having walked with God more than 30 years, my feeling is He's very tolerant of the ridiculous mummery and words we use toward Him, whether it involves dressing in strange clothes or trying to find an infinite number of ways to mix the words glory, worship, Spirit, bless, honour, Holy, Baby*, praise and Jesus into our songs. Or, sometimes, both.

This is not to throw stones, really, but we're both still having to think about what we're doing where we are.

Did we do the right thing moving? Yes, we're sure of that. Should we still be here after ore than 3 years? At the moment I think we're in this for the long haul, and not just missionaries who flit in for a couple of years, create mayhem and then leave as it reaches it's peak. But I can't tell what the future is, and anything can happen.

* I made that one up, but sometime it feels like a song should have baby in it.

Just done some rearanging over on the left.

2011-10-06T13:32:00.000+01:00

It was tempting to start a category "Blogs that I used to read when people posted" but that's too long-winded and a bit sarky. I'd also have needed to create a third category "Blogs by people whose writing I prefer not to read too often" and that comes with it's own hassle/questions.

At least this reflects reality.

So Steve Jobs is dead.

2011-10-06T09:56:00.001+01:00

The original Apple computer did so much to open up computing, making it accessible to ordinary people through an intuitive interface.

I used Apple ][ computers from the mid 80s, and even had one at home for a few years. Moving to British Biotech in 1990, I found Macintoshes everywhere, and with no training, was designing new laboratories to scale using Macdraw. By comparison PCs were truly terrible, and even the early windows operating system was a bit of a tram-smash.

I was an apple fan and proud of it.

16 years later I came back to Apple expecting wonderful things, only to find that they had become the 'evil empire'. I'd like to believe that it was Job's illness that made him guide Apple the way he did, but I suspect it was his status as a demi-god of computing together with an inability of people to be honest to him that made Apple turn out the way it has.

Thanks for the Apple computer, Steve. It brought out the best in you and the worst in you.

Interesting biog here on the Register that brings a bit more insight into the man's character and background.

And finally.....

2011-10-03T21:40:00.000+01:00

some time about now we managed to disappear, back to the flat we were very kindly rented in Auckland road. Going away would come tomorrow, but this evening was all about staying in.

And so, after pictures

2011-10-03T17:16:00.000+01:00

we went to eat, and party a bit.

Cash was tight, and to be completely honest, we didn't actually mind at all where we were, so we ended up in some kind of hall in Canterbury road, Croydon. Our parents shared the cost between them (very kindly - we were not exactly rolling in spondoolies) and everyone appeared to more or less get on and have a good time. My side of the family pretended to be a little respectable and Chris's side were sometimes inclined to sing "knees up muvver browunn" at parties.

There is a certain irony

2011-10-03T15:45:00.000+01:00

that in the last 35min I've started a coupling process, conjugating 2 things that many people would consider difficult or unlikely to work.

So it was, 30 years ago, that another coupling process had begun that many people said wouldn't work. I'm very pleased to say that we were NOT put in a gently agitated ice bucket and left in the middle of the room, although *some* ceremonies can feel like that!

I think some writing would have been finished about now, and then that was it - we started living the rest of our lives.

*You want pictures?*

Nah, this is 30 years ago mate - none of yer digital rubbish then y'know. You'll have to do just what we did - wait until they've been processed. Unfortunately you may be a little disappointed: the chap taking the snaps wasn't terribly good, and not everything was all that great.

Chris just turned up.

2011-10-03T14:59:00.000+01:00

The woman had - and still has - style, getting there just a couple of minutes early*, and wearing the dress we chose together.

There was no mistaking the happiness.

*I said that if she was late, I'd say 'no'. The driver wasn't aware of that, and actually drove round the block several times, just to waste a little more time.

Pete and I probably wandered off

2011-10-03T14:13:00.006+01:00

to head up to Holmesdale road, South Norwood a few minutes ago. Being late was never a good plan.

View Larger Map

Of course it didn't look anything like that in those days, but hey ho, you can't stop people rebuilding things that fall down.

If you want to know where we walked then you need to turn left down Oliver Avenue, follow it down past the clock tower and down station road. There's a subway with black railings near the end, and you'll need to 'walk' through there (not possible for a google car) to Clifford road, turning right into Crowther road. We left home from number 76 - which now has a blue front door - which was directly opposite Balfour road.

For those who care, looking back up Crowther (it's on a hill) you can see South Norwood Primary School, which Both Pete and I, and our mother had been through.

Around this time IIRC

2011-10-03T12:24:00.000+01:00

My mother was just back from doing some preparations, trying to prepare a snack to keep us going (as she was very inclined to do) and paint a handbag blue to match her shoes.

30 years ago.

30 years ago, about this time.....

2011-10-03T09:56:00.000+01:00

I'd hopped on my bike and belted off to Westfield road in Croyon. A certain Christine Porter had just stepped out of the bath, and was talking to me through the bathroom door. She warned me that her father would not be pleased to see me around that morning, and sent me away after various reassurances. I'm not sure what her mum thought, but all that really mattered was getting through the next few hours.

Broadway is pretty

2011-10-02T23:52:00.002+01:00

Check out the pictures - if you care about that sort of thing.

Just realised I forgot to provide a link to the album.

Post mortem's aren't usually much fun.

2011-09-30T11:57:00.000+01:00

And I seem to be rather good at doing them.

Preached last night & said a bunch of things that carried no malice by intent, yet reviewing them in my head afterward make me realise just how badly they could have been taken. That's not good.

Bluegh.

Lets hope people's memories are short and their attitudes good.

It's been a very emotionally charged day for me

2011-09-25T22:53:00.000+01:00

and I'm glad to unwind with some *good dinner.

This morning I was feeling a little odd, but we sang a particular song that will always bring back memories of my daughter laying in the back of the car, blood & cranial fluid dripping from her nose, gradually stiffening and changing as the character of the person that lived in her body no longer shaped it. It's a very vivid picture, and one that will stay with me as long as I live.

This afternoon we saw someone baptised who has been through some very harsh and difficult times, and is still having to walk that path. I'd felt God give me some sections from 'Ruth' for her, but when it came to reading them, the intensity of her pain was so alive in the words that I struggled to do more than blub - when I could talk at all.

An emotionally charged day.

* Dinner was slow cook beef, pot roast for 5 hours at 130'C with Ras-al-hanout spices, soy sauce, white wine, onions, carrots and mushrooms in the pot. They were inedible, but it was good with carrots and pasta with red pesto. Nice.

Is it possible

2011-09-25T22:34:00.001+01:00

to teach with a prophetic edge?

I hope so.

What has changed the face of the world?

2011-09-20T13:50:00.000+01:00

Never heard of Keith Tantlinger? Neither had I until 5 min ago.

After the earlier comments about lack of blogging

2011-09-19T21:31:00.000+01:00

I wonder too if it's just that we aren't blogging too many deep or important issues these days. I can't blog much about the church any more, and theology is often either self-centred, self-explanatory, argumentative or a combination of all 4.

Actually there's a bit of theology/church tradition that I'd like explained, and I know some visitors should be able to explain it, even if they don't agree with it.

In the context of communion in church, it was suggested that taking 'proper' communion meant we took part in the 'heavenly meal'. Now I may not have had eyes to see it, but I know my bible reasonably well these days, and this doesn't seem to crop up anywhere. Likewise bible gateway drew a blank, though I confess to not searching too exhaustively. The context was why a 'proper' cup and paten were required, but I don't want to discuss that especially. In retrospect I should have probably asked for an explanation, but it was getting late and we were all tired.

But I am interested to know if this is something else invented over the centuries, or if there is a scriptural background that I'm simply ignorant about.

Lion is Apple's Vista.

2011-09-19T14:32:00.002+01:00

This is something I'm hearing increasingly, as people get used to the new version of OSX.

It's interesting that they genuinely do seem to have lost their way on this. Could it be fallout from Job's withdrawal, or just simply engineers being asked the impossible: to make an OS for a computer with full sized keyboard and one for a hand-held device with a tiny screen operate commonly?

And just when I thought things couldn't be worse that Snow leper.....

*edit*
I've been reading comments in The Register too much - sorry about the scathing lines to begin with.

Anyone out there mobile blogging from Android?

2011-09-19T13:29:00.000+01:00

Wondering whether the app works well or, if as seems to be implied in reviews, it's a bit patchy.

Or maybe it's just that half the users are too dumb to use something like that in the way it's intended: facebook generation, each with their smartphone & all that.

Last year was the year of the Canadians

2011-09-19T13:26:00.000+01:00

This year isn't.

But I was thinking about the times we'd had with some of you over last summer, and how I wished I could have shown you more of this country, and at different times too. There's a lot of images on my hard drive that have only been seen through one screen, but they bring back memories - I guess that's what photos are for, rather than to show everyone how good you are with a camera.

One upside of being 'alone' again is the freedom to go have a lunchtime walk/pray time. Lots of thoughts running around (too many work projects, not to mention preaching in a couple of weeks and a whole bunch of other stuff to do with music, worship and blogging) and concerns for friends and family. Facebook has it's uses, but sometimes it's easier not to know things than to know and be concerned.

Tonight was the first time

2011-09-18T21:29:00.000+01:00

that I've lit the stove since summer.

Not by too much - but it was 13'C and dropping quickly out there this evening around 7.40pm. Got back from the prayer meeting around 7.45, and it was pretty chilly.

On a completely different front, it's interesting when you bump up against the effects of your psychological DNA.

Over the summer I had a young lass work as an intern with me. She'd completed her first year at a *good* uni, and was intelligent, quick, kind and just generally nice. She learned quickly, and listened to what was said as well as what she was told, if you get my meaning. After 6 weeks she was doing things that people can take several months to learn, and if she'd been working for me, I'd have been happy to trust her to do things unsupervised after a bit more experience.

But here's the thing: now that she's gone I have become aware that she was becoming another daughter. Fatherhood seems to be in my 'DNA' as inescapably as baldness and making bad jokes about the English language.

Now please understand that there was nothing inappropriate or untoward about our relationship. But I found that it was natural to care, to want to put in the best and to hope that the outcome was for the best too, rather than just treat her like someone passing through, to be used for whatever could be squeezed from them. Tomorrow I shall be back in the lab, and will miss her, even though it means I shall be able to focus on my own work undistracted.

Maybe life is that complicated after all

2011-09-14T11:05:00.000+01:00

I'm inclined to believe that people are more difficult than molecules - harder to get hold of, define, understand and work with. A little like trying to hold a jelly that grows thorns as it runs through your fingers.

Life isn't really complicated

2011-09-09T22:09:00.000+01:00

but that's how it looks on the surface.

I've been looking at how some antibodies interact with their targets, using recombinant proteins in comparison with natural ones. The application is in creating tests to measure natural proteins, but in order to do that I have to be sure the materials I have will give meaningful results, and that's not always the case.

I tried explaining to Chris this evening. Imagine someone sneaked in during the night and changed your tape measure, so that instead of feet it used millimeters instead. Now imagine that same person did this with most tape measures used by those whose opinion in how long things should be was most valued by the world. Suppose you then went and, using a standard of measure created and stored by a world authority, discovered that the measurements everyone had been using was about 1000 X too small. And not only that, but some rulers that you'd tested about 6 years before (produced by a prestigious University in the US) in comparison with the dodgy rulers had appeared to be wrong, but were in fact correct....

So you start thinking life might be a little more complicated than it should be.

If I did not have access to the tools and the experience that I do, this project would have gone in the bin by now (and it very nearly did anyway). However there is a very distinct possibility that things will actually work out well after all, and we may get a useful commercial product after all. And for those who wonder, I think there really IS quite a lot of grace from God in here, allowing me to keep going.

On radio 4 this morning (Libya content)

2011-09-08T09:02:00.000+01:00

They had a reporter visit one of the prisons previously used by the old regime to hold political prisoners, now being used to hold those accused of fighting for Gaddafi. The description was a place of overcrowded filthiness, with sick and injured people who needed to be able to lay down & rest while getting decent food, fresh air and sunshine.

First interview was of a Liberian man, accused of being a mercenary but who claimed to have been a worker. He was articulate, spoke of there being no proof of him having been a mercenary, but actually *sounded* as though he could have been a mercenary (he sounded too sharp to be a simple labourer).

Next up was a young woman. She told a story of having been abducted, raped by the head of security before being drafted into their services. Shortly before the fall of Tripoli she had been forced to shoot prisoners at gun point. Her words were clearly spoken in distress, and it sounded very much as though she'd been through a system to break her will and character. This nearly had me in tears.

Has the blogosphere of my friends (almost) ground to a halt.

2011-09-07T10:56:00.001+01:00

Maybe everyone is twittering?

Or maybe no-one has time to say anything.

Perhaps the era of personal blogging is (mostly) over and done now that the novelty is well and truly worn off. Most blogs now seem to be for the purpose of directing others how to think in one form or another.

Maybe I just need to get my backside in gear and post some content?

Stuff I care about:

My friend who has moved abroad, only to take their troubles with them: they can't seem to realise that drunkenness and sleeping with various people is the source, rather than solution of their problems.

My friend who believes people want to dominate the lives of others.

Friends who are sick and struggling.

Friends who are divorced, and in one case, gone from loving Jesus to being actively hostile in their determination not to be guilty for carelessly destroying their marriage.

The church: mistakes I make and my failure to do the things I should while doing the things I should not. Guess that smears into the rest of my life too.

The church again: why, no matter how much we *talk* about the Holy Spirit, the signs of His presence are subtle and hidden, rather than clear and overt.

My family and the negative impact the things I do might have on them (it's hard not to overlook the positive impact good things I do have also had on them). Included in that is wider family.

Where the business is going right now, and whether we'll have to can it at the end of the year.

That last is a potential source of fear - and one I'm fighting, having already given notice on the part-time job because I can't keep doing it.

Jabba the carrot

2011-09-05T07:34:00.000+01:00

One of Chris's carrots, entered as a 'vegemal' in the Somerton village produce show 2011.

Just popped up a couple of small photo-galleries.

2011-08-28T15:57:00.002+01:00

garden birds and Hook Norton brewery.

I hope to take more bird pics soon. They are changing - colours becoming more defined, feathers moving into place - as the year is aging. I think many of these were just the young from this spring's hatching.

Hooky has been brewed on that site for about 150 years, and the building itself is over 100 YO. Quite a fascinating place, with much of the original machinery still in place and - like the grist mill - working. The old steam engine isn't used as a power source any more, although it can run.

Singer

2011-08-25T17:09:00.000+01:00

Today I managed to sync the HTC Desire with the Macbook

2011-08-23T21:28:00.000+01:00

For those out there allergic to iPhones (in my case, primarily because of the cost and dislike for the Apple empire) but who are saddled with a Mac, I recommend Syncmate. You require the main application on your mac, plus a small app on the phone. In the free version you can sync just address books and calendars, with the option to include folders, music, images etc using a paid upgrade.

I already had most of the contacts moved across from my old Sony Ericsson W650, but this just helps keep stuff together a little better and allows me to get reminders from the phone. I don't need to control my HiFi with it - all I really want is a simple device for calling, sending text messages and (in rare circumstances) letting me wish 'happy birthday' to certain facebook users when I can't get near a computer.

Happy 21st birthday.

2011-08-22T12:50:00.000+01:00

Doesn't time roll on?

We are booked.

2011-08-17T10:53:00.000+01:00

India in October.

I chickened out, and we're going with a travel company which is certainly not especially economical, but will enable us to see things in a relatively low-stress fashion. Also if we ever do decide to return under our own steam it will feel a little more familiar and a little less awkward.

If we were moving there then that would be different - there would be justification for huge amount of research and subsequently investment of lots of time getting to know people and places. Unfortunately we don't have too much time for that, so we decided to 'cheat' in the hope of maybe returning one day at a more leisurely time.

So last night I installed AVLinux

2011-08-16T13:03:00.000+01:00

It wasn't as completely simple as most linux distros - in other words I actually needed to read and understand a few simple instructions about partitioning the hard disc and then later about installing Nvidia proprietary graphics drivers. But it wasn't hard at all, really.

However.

I can't get sound (yet) because (I think) it's recognised the chipset audio even though it's disabled in the Bios, as well as the audio card separately, and unfamiliarity has prevented me from finding where to disable that facility. And it isn't printing yet because it needs HPLIP installing.

Apart from that it looks great, and the Nvidia drivers really crisp up the display so that even small icons are sharp and clear and screen effects smooth and snappy. I'm not tempted to move away from Sabayon (yet) because I'm now comfy with that environment and the image processing tools I've assembled work well for me, even though it's slow by comparison. But as a workspace for audio, when I can get the sound sorted, it'll be great.

One of those 'penny drop' moments?

2011-08-10T11:32:00.000+01:00

Mike Mahoney has a post about music stored 'in the cloud' that provoked some thought. I wonder if we're 'not getting it' with music, and these services are a way of monetising something that many have missed.

Kids grew up listening to the radio. Music was always free - it was broadcast everywhere on the radio! All these streaming services are doing is offering the equivalent of 'radio on demand' without the annoying DJs, and playing the tunes people want. The old paradigm of owning a copy of the music hasn't disappeared, but instead people are treating music as they've been taught by several generations: that it should be everywhere freely available, and you only buy it if there's a reason.

And that, of course, explains why downloading and listening to music for free is not perceived as theft - there's a conflict between what they have been brought up to enjoy and what the law says. The conflict is at the deepest level, since they've always known music playing without restriction, and observed their parents apparently enjoying it freely, confirming it to be right and natural. Listening to music without payment is what they - and we - have been brought up to expect, so when it became detached from a physical product (and therefore cannot be stolen) why would they ever pay for it?

There is a sad and faintly ridiculous irony.

2011-08-09T08:52:00.000+01:00

Here we are as a country, supporting those seeking freedom in Libya, Syria etc while people riot on our own streets, abusing genuine freedom. I suspect many of these have more in common with Gaddafi than they do with people seeking any kind of liberty.

There were pictures on the BBC last night of fires in all sorts of places, but the 'Reeve's Corner' furniture store which was torched yesterday evening was where we bought our first ever suite. That was more than 25 years ago, but I remember them as being helpful, friendly and not at all snooty toward a young couple who couldn't afford much. I hope their business recovers.

Well happy rainday to me.

2011-08-04T09:52:00.000+01:00

The weather is always sympathetic on my birthday. It knows to cry when I've added another year to my age, and it's doing it really well today to mark 50 years.

Chris has arranged to take me to Hook Norton brewery later, so I can drown my sorrows at joining 'club aching dirty' (many of you may be too young to remember club 18-30). She also was kind enough to buy me a pair of special handlebars for the bike that should help my wrists to ache less.

Amazing how some intellectualise their faith

2011-08-03T08:13:00.000+01:00

For me it's always been so simple - just kind of God and me walking together.

Sure there's info and detail that supports it, but at the end of the day it's friendship and love. I don't need to understand God in the Hebrew or Greek. He doesn't insist that I exegete society around me in the light of the latest scriptural understanding. Some seem to need theology to be complex, difficult, convoluted, full of answers to questions no-one asks and even fuller of questions no-one wants answers to.

Wonder if that's how some people see me too, sometimes?

Sometimes that rain sounds so sweet.

2011-08-02T20:38:00.001+01:00

And the temperature is dropped from about 28 to 21ish.

Nice.

"Internet explorer users are as dumb as a bag of hammers"

2011-07-30T15:26:00.002+01:00

It must be true - I read it on teh intarwebs.

;-)

If anyone remembers the awfulness that was IE6 (and it was terrible in 2007, let alone 2011) then it's almost unthinkable that anyone would still be using it unless they weren't capable of installing a different browser. I take a certain pleasure in knowing that a large company I used to work for had IE6 as their standard corporate browser, and would not permit use of any other (Firefox would run 'live' off a USB stick!).

Ever use a new operating system and go "WOW"

2011-07-30T10:43:00.000+01:00

I've just run AV Linux from a live CD.

WOW.

It's Debian 5 (so old) but with the latest Linux Kernel and LDXE as a desktop manager. I've never known a live CD seem fast, but if this was a proper install you'd think it felt snappy, let alone as a live CD. The browser (Ice Weasel) was REALlY fast, but overall it seems quick regardless.

The other wow factor is that it looks nice (apart from the crappy quality wallpaper image) with a very clean interface and sharp fonts.

Best of all, the sheer quantity of audio visual tools bundled. Some faves are missing, like DigiKam, but there's a lot to like here, especially for recording. I think I've discovered what my dual-boot machine is going to look like soon. This might even replace Sabayon.

It almost feels like I'm on holiday.

2011-07-30T10:14:00.000+01:00

The last 3 weeks have been really hard going, with me staying up until 4am to write a report required for the following day, plus several evenings and doing work for my 'other' job at Heyford when I should be doing my own stuff. I've also been losing sleep over the 'other job', and on Wednesday was on that site from 5.50am until 5.15am with about 1 1/2 hours driving in each direction to get there.

For the last couple of weeks I've had someone working with me: a lovely lass who has completed her first year of biochemistry at Durham uni. The trade off is that I get her work free and she learns key skills (cell culture and ELISA assay techniques, plus real-world basic laboratory skills - university definitely doesn't teach those) while she's with me. This is significant because having her around means that I can't blast through my own work (or ignore it) in order to do stuff for the 'other job', and this has caused something of a crisis on Wednesday when things that I'd committed to do simply couldn't be done.

I've been increasingly aware that there was too much going on with both jobs, and pretty much since taking on the second job I've been neglecting aspects of my own company. However since Christmas this year it's escalated to the point where either company was getting a good job done, and with that comes stress, distress and more worry, leading in turn to an even worse job being done. Discussing this with a friend who has been in a very similar situation, he talked about all the time he'd spent writing lousy reports at 2am, knowing they were bad, but having to submit them anyway. Being unable to produce work of a high standard due to pressures and conflicts of interest hit his confidence, and I know, given time, this would hit mine too.

So I've taken a decision, talked it through with Chris and we're happy with that, even though it's going to potentially cause stress in other areas. But I think I can do this in faith. Where I've prayed for things to change and business to come in then God has provided, and with much greater effect than any mailshot I've ever put out.

So it feels a little like I'm on holiday, partly because the early morning men's group is also having a holiday, and I could get 8 hours in bed, getting up gradually with my sleepy wife instead of dashing out at 6.55am. But also because, although there's a huge amount of work to get through and sort out, I feel like an area of pressure and stress that I have been decreasingly in control of will now be resolved.

Just finished a backing track

2011-07-23T15:36:00.001+01:00

playing in St. James Somerton for the King James 400th celebration. Guitar, bass and strings all jostling away robustly in the same audio file. I hope it sound's 'live' enough, because my timing is highly flexible!

I just hope no-one is *really* listening - the more I play it, the more I with I'd had A) Drums B) a better sense of rhythm and less sense of wanting to impart 'feeling'. Still, I've managed to marry Joe Bonamassa and Pachelbel, so it can't all be bad?

Fuduntu! Eh? What?

2011-07-22T20:57:00.000+01:00

Have a look at this youtube video.

Actually have a look at the videos linked off that page, if you have a passing curiosity about various linux distros in general. It was enough to convince me to download Fuduntu today (partly out of curiosity to see if their version of the dock was better than Apple's) and partly because it just looked funky.

I know I'm being a bit of an OS trollop, but I'd really like to have 5 or 6 different OSs all available and ready to roll at any given time, just to sate my curiosity. Also really looking forward to Gnome 3 being refined a little more (you should take a look at his Fedora 15 review too). When I was running it briefly here (before that Seagate drive went belly-up - now replaced with a 'repaired' one) it actually seemed pretty good to use.

Talking of whoring OSs, has anyone out there tried Lion yet? After my experience with Snow Leper I'm reluctant to upgrade, but also sense obsolescence creeping up on my (increasingly tardy despite the high speed HDD and 4Gb RAM) Macbook. I'd be interested to hear if your system worked properly and completely after the install.

Most of us feel fundamentally fatherless.

2011-07-22T20:42:00.001+01:00

Now if you saw that question, what would you think?

Would you think, like me, here is an American trying to sell a book that over-thinks a whole bunch of things that are not normally issues?

As a men's group, we've worked our way through John Eldredge's Fathered by God which had some good parts (the section on spiritual warfare was particularly good, and I benefited much from it). However it starts from the premise of the title above, and frequently goes downhill from there.

We are now working our way through the companion book - the 'personal and small group map for your masculine journey' - and I'm finding it harder and harder to take it seriously.

We also come from a different perspective on reality. For JE, it's as if the struggles, failures and frustrations of life are fundamentally wrong, and would disappear if we were really fathered by God. For me, many of them are there BECAUSE I'm fathered by God, and they are for my strengthening and training. I suppose as much as anything, the mixture of hand-wringing 'I want my daddy' and references to Hollywood kitsch just don't mean anything and have really got on my nerves.

Tomorrow I'm leading the group through this for the last time before we break for summer. I'll miss the guys a little (love Saturday mornings in bed with my wife!) but not the book.

Who would have thought it?

2011-07-19T21:50:00.000+01:00

We had to stop playing at a music practice because we were laughing too much.

Guitar synth + horn section riffing away on a song when it's not expected is really funny. Or at least highly unbelievable. The guys have got use to Sax, strings, piano and flute, but a horn section caught them by surprise.

Don't know if it's naff or not, but I'd happily use this sound live.

This isn't Canada.

2011-07-17T09:30:00.000+01:00

I watched Ironman 2 on DVD last night, for the second time. During the 'congressional hearing' there's a little section where they mention personal security, and the character says something along the lines of "I'd like to leave my front door unlocked, but this isn't Canada".

It is an interesting perception and comment on several levels.

It also makes me wonder if there was a Canadian writer/producer involved somewhere.