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You’re Bored? That’s So AWESOME.

Jan 27th, 2012
by Mikeachim.
2 comments

So…I saw your tweet.

You’re “bored”?

WOW!

I am…absolutely floored. Hopelessly lost in admiration!

You are everything I aspire to be.

Oh. Hold on.

…..

Back. I had to go and check what “bored” meant, just in case the definition had changed in recently months, but no! It’s the same! In essence, you’re saying you have run out of things to do that are worthy of interest. Which is just an incredible place to be.

HOW YOU MUST HAVE LIVED.

I mean, by being bored, you must have…

  •  Eagerly delved into everything Stanford, Harvard and Yale are offering up on iTunes, entirely for free…
  • …and then did the same with Chez Pim‘s output  - with enormous emphasis on the Pad Thai.
  • Backed up every single photo and critical document you own…
  • …and then did it again, elsewhere, because you never know when the badsectorpocalypse will strike…
  • …and even went as far as protecting all your precious bookmarks & settings on your favourite apps by going portable and sending a backup a copy to your USB or cloud drive?
  • Read all The Morning News, then all of World Hum, then every scrap of archived material from Brain Pickings, rounding things off with the Paris Review. (Well done. You’ve read some of – and read about some of – the best writing on the Internet. Admirable way to spend a couple of decades. I applaud your dedication).
  • Read Lord Of The Rings yet again, except following the route in Barbara Strachey’s Journeys Of Frodo (which can be previewed here because someone’s scanned them, but really, the book is a toe-wiggling joy – but you know that, having bought it, right?).
  • …and followed it up with a substantial dollop of TED-watching.
  • Grasped the fundamentals of the 6,000+ living languages of the world.
  • …and then somehow, against staggering odds, managing to fight your way through all 50 of these.
  • …and then written at least as many fiction and non-fiction books as Isaac Asimov.
  • Sat outside and listened to the world – the birds, the weather and the bustle of humanity, the creak of your chair, the sound of your own breathing – until everything held absolutely zero novelty or interest for you. Been there? Done that? WOW.
  • Addressed every lingering guilty regret, until you were satisfied you’d done absolutely everything you could to make amends, no matter how belatedly.
  • And finally (because it’s important to have a sense of proportion here) – you’ve followed every single link in every single issue of Zunguzungu‘s Sunday Reading series.

I mean, there’s other stuff – but let’s face it, doing these things really ate up your free time. You’re allowed a little slack!

And I don’t want to sound unreasonable, of course. Or bitchy.

Anyway, I’ll let you get back to being bored.

Because you, my friend, deserve it.

Image: Shermeee.

Posted in: The Axe To Grind.
Tagged: · · · ·

Death Of A Camera: Cheerio, Kodak Z740

Jan 20th, 2012
by Mikeachim.
6 comments

The rain twists slowly across the landscape. It hisses around me, making the world sound like a dead channel, and it clatters against the back of my waterproof as I hunch over my rucksack to fish out my camera.

What a view.

“Please, let nothing change – this is perfect,” I say to myself, ignoring the fact that physically I’m in a fairly miserable state. However, just for a few minutes I will be able to banish what my rational brain is telling me – that my so-called waterproof trousers obviously aren’t, that I’m standing on a Northumbrian hillside in the rain on December 29th, while other people are laying on the floor and groaning from being mince-pied and turkeyed to the brink of death, and it’s only a matter of time until my boots fill with water, at which point Full-Blown Misery will commence. For a few minutes, I can put the camera up to my eye, and the world will recede, the same way it does when I’m tapping out or scribbling down words. For a very short while, it will be nice to not be here.

I compose my shot, hold down the shutter release…

That’s odd.

I check the batteries. Oh well, I’ve had these rechargeables for years – I know they’re topped up because I did it last night, but maybe their charge has shallowed out with use. Fair enough. I dig out the pack of brand new batteries I bought at Hexham Tesco the day before, spend a few moments cursing because my fingers are too cold to lever the plastic away from the cardboard back, and pop 2 fully-charged AA cells into my camera.

I turn it on.

After a few seconds, the power indicator flashes red – and it shuts down again.

Alas. After ten years, my trusty point & click Kodak Z740 is no more.

But I can’t complain. I knew it was coming, which is why I’d been scanning point & click camera options for the last year. I wasn’t using it to learn to take photos – that’s what my Canon EOS30D is for.

Still, ten years is a lot of photos, even for someone as erratic with a camera as I am…

Ten years is a good time for a camera to last. But it’s a royal pain that I’ve discovered this at the beginning of my walk. Well, c’est la merde. I shove the inert, suddenly useless lump of metal back into my rucksack, turn and trudge onwards.

My Kodak Z740 is dead.

(Oh HAI,  just-arrived Panasonic Lumix).

All photos: Mike Sowden.

Posted in: The World, The World.
Tagged: · · ·

Hexham Abbey: Where Romans Come Out Of The Walls

Jan 15th, 2012
by Mikeachim.
1 comment

We step through the doors (modern, efficient, out of place) and into Hexham Abbey…and the world goes silent.

After a few seconds, I realise that’s not quite true. The great outdoors – which currently consists of a howling wind throwing frigid rain up your nostrils – is being held at bay, somewhere very distant. It’s only when we’re halfway down the Nave that its fury gets through to us, as a distant roar you imagine you can feel in your knees. It’s a savage night, and Hexham is taking a battering.

I wander up and down, trying to remember the church architecture parts of my Archaeology degree. Luckily (or unfortunately) I don’t have to, as my companion knows a thing or two on the subject.  He points things out, and I nod sagely in an attempt to hide my bewilderment. What I’m finding most fascinating, as always in such structures, is the world-building. Step into a building as big as Hexham Abbey or York Minster and you really do feel you’ve stepped through a doorway into Somewhere Else – a transporting, transformative experience, to use a banal phrase that conveys little of the feeling of having been, well, conveyed. I’ve just come in from Hexham – but it feels like I’ve left Hexham.

It’s easy to slip into a timid, unquestioning reverence in places of worship, especially if you’re English. Shuffle around, make the right noises with slow, unhasty gestures, ponder on Godly things, pop some money into the donation box and file out. There’s a pressure to behave in a certain way, the same as in airports. There are roles to slip into – in this case, being a non-believer, I’m only dimly aware of them.

But I’m walking far too softly, too far into my thoughts. Something in me is disgusted. “You’re here to observe and learn, not disappear into yourself”. I want to take photos but my camera is dying – it’ll die tomorrow, on the Wall (which is why these aren’t my photos). I want to rebel, the same way I did when I momentarily found myself at the back of York Minster one day, just past midnight, everyone waiting for me outside, and I stood at one end, faced down into the vast cavern of one of Britain’s most famous sacred spaces, and whistled a few notes of the X-Files theme tune. (Let me tell you – it sounded incredible).

By a blocked doorway is a 9 foot high sandstone slab. It’s pitted and softened by time, but the figure of a horse-rider wielding a staff can still be seen, another man cowering on the ground as the horse rears over him. The rider is armoured (plumed helmet and all) and his sword is sheathed, while the naked, wild-bearded man on the ground is clutching his in apparent desperation. It even looks like the rider is kicking the prone man up the backside (now there’s symbolism for you). It’s a powerful scene. What’s truly remarkable is that it’s 2,000 years old – and we know who the rider was.

Flavinus was the standard-bearer of the Petrian cavalry, a Roman mounted unit based at the fort of Coria (modern-day Corbridge) south of  Hadrian’s Wall around AD 80. Since many troops manning the Wall were Romanized auxilia (Latin for “help”), and since the Ala Petriana came from Gaul, it’s possible Flavinus was by birth a Celt. Through his 7-year military service he diverted some of his pay into a regimental burial fund. We know these details because like the modern variety, Roman tombstones were inscribed – and this is the marker for the last resting place of Flavinus, dead at the age of 25. It’s believed to have been brought from Corbridge by the builders of the Anglo Saxon abbey of St. Wilfrid, Bishop of York, in the late 7th Century. By the 12th Century the Benedictine abbey had become an Augustinian priory, and the tombstone was positioned face upwards in the east end of the cloister. There it was found in 1881 by Charles Clement Hodges. And here it is today.

It’s far from the only piece of Roman stonework in the abbey, or in Hexham, or in the many historic buildings dotting the landscape along Hadrian’s Wall. This is another sign that history is populated by people acting like people. If you’re building a garden wall and there’s a handy pile of bricks nearby, hey, why not? If you’re building a 7th Century abbey and there’s a handy pile of Roman stonework nearby – why not? Stone is precious, and people make do with what’s available. For that reason, it’s possible to find the structural handiwork of the Roman Army in the unlikeliest of places in this landscape – sheltered from the ravages of time by being wedged out of the way, forgotten but still useful, until that building crumbles or is taken apart and someone knows enough about what they’re looking at to call an archaeologist…

I’m heading towards the door, but James beckons me over to some steps leading under the floor, from which someone is emerging.

“Can we have a look”?

She agrees (evidently we don’t look the type to steal Baby Jesus), and down we go.

It’s dry down here, and the air is thick and close.

We’re in the crypt of St. Wilfrid’s. It’s tempting to say we’ve stepped back into the 7th Century, but these are chambers and passageways with 1,400 years clearly visible in the deeply pitted stones, the scrapes and splats of repairwork mortar themselves as severely eroded – the unsettlingly friable look of the stonework, a feeling that vanishes when you lay a hand against it, and returns again when you lift your hand and see the powder on your fingers.

We walk to the end of one passageway, and stop.

James points at a slab in the ceiling, not itself doing anything special – but there are letters, broken off (the other half of the inscription is now in the Nave), eroded and partly defaced:

The Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius  Severus Pius Pertinax and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius (Caracalla), Augusti, [and Publius Septimius Geta Caesar] built this granary with the detachment of the…

Sometimes the search for ancient history doesn’t require transportation into another world. It’s right there, embedded in yours.

Further reading:

Hexham Abbey: Flavinus and Crypt.

Images: Dick Penn, NightFall404, Mike Quinn, Paul McGreevy and nicksarebi.

Posted in: The World, The World.
Tagged: · · · ·

Writing Fantasy: Choose Your Own FAIL

Jan 10th, 2012
by Mikeachim.
30 comments

Welcome, adventurer! You’re about to embark on the most difficult challenge known to any creative artist – ACTUALLY STARTING WORK.

Millions have tried, and millions have failed!

Will you be one of them?

BEGIN!


……….

1.

During the night someone stole into your room, hung you upside down and lived out their Rocky Balboa fantasies on your face. It’s the only explanation for what you can see in the mirror – not that you can currently see much through that face. You need coffee before you can even think – hell, before you can even BE. And you’ve only got 3 minutes until you start your writing shift for the morning. Do you:

(a) get writing, and never mind the coffee? (Go to 6).
(b) go downstairs and make a pot of truly violent bean-juice, taking as long as it takes?(Go to 8).
(c) stand under the shower for 20 minutes, drinking Red Bull? (Go to 12)


……….

2.

It was an age of dragons, and heroes, and mouse-related repetitive stress injury. You lose yourself in it. You need gold and experience points. Do you:
(a) look for gold? (Go to 16)
(b) look for experience points? (Go to 16)


……….

3.

There is no such thing as a “single episode of Battlestar Galactica“. The afternoon and evening pass in a blur of Cylons. Pretty soon it’s time to go to bed.

But you still have another season to watch, so you stay up all night.

So that’s tomorrow’s writing schedule hosed as well, then.

Oh man, you could have been somebody.

THE END


……….

4.

OMG OMG OMG! @NASA has retweeted your tweet about space kittens! And now 1,737,763 people will want to know more about the peep behind the tweet! You HAVE to follow up while the social media spotlight is shining down on little ole’ you. Do you:

(a) immediately log onto Twitter and tweet out the good news, carefully phrasing it so it sounds like you and NASA hang out all the time, hey no big deal? (Go to 17)
(b) stiffen your upper lip, straighten your back and resist the temptation to fly your own flag online? (Go to 10)


……….

5.

You knock back a couple of stiff ones, and as the alcohol slams into your bloodstream you gradually un-knurd. Unfortunately your nervous system is so disgusted with you that it shuts down in protest, and you fall asleep, hugging your whisky bottle. When you wake up, it’s growing dark. It’s like being a student again – in the sense that you got absolutely nothing done today.

Aw, bless – you’re utterly pathetic.

THE END


……….

6.

Your lizard-brain is imploring you to do anything but sit down. You ignore it, sweat bursting from your forehead, and sulkily stab the Power button on your computer. It’s going to take a few minutes to finish booting up. Do you:

(a) get down on the floor and do a few stomach-crunches, like the very, very worst kind of asshole? (Go to 13)
(b) throw yourself down the stairs in a wild attempt to boil the kettle before boot-up is finished? (Go to 8 )
(c) shout at the screen for being so slow, curse computers, curse technology itself, curse Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Charles Babbage and that ape with the thigh-bone in 2001: A Space Odyssey, then go back to bed? (Go to 15)


……….

7.

You work.

Congratulations.

Against the odds, against the formidable obstacles you threw in your own way, laughing in the very teeth of distraction itself, you did your work.

There’s hope for you yet.

(Well, until tomorrow morning).

THE END


……….

8.

Blessed is the evil bean of waking, for it sets your mind in motion. Coffee fumes fill the kitchen like smoke from a tire fire. As usual, in your uncontrollable lust to caffeinate yourself, you’ve made way too much coffee for one person. You drink one cup. Ohhhhhh it’s so GOOD – at the same time, you realise you can’t feel your lips anymore. Probably a good time to stop, then. Do you:

(a) knock the cup back and go upstairs to work? (Go to 11)
(b) knock back the remainder of the pot, however many cups are left? (Go to 9)


……….

9.

Two cups later, you can only see in black & white – worse, you’re going KNURD, the state of super-sobriety that hides nothing of the tedious awfulness of your daily life from your screeching, cowering mind. Why? WHY? You don’t know, but you wish it would all just stop. Hell, what’s the point in anything? Do you:

(a) lay in the hallway, screaming yourself hoarse? (Go to 14)
(b) attempt to drink yourself back into a productive state using single malt whisky? (Go to 5)


……….

10.

My word – it seems you CAN do this. Incredibly, you’re on the verge of starting actual work. Do you:

(a) celebrate by a quick session on the epic roleplaying game “Cloudlip” you bought on Steam just yesterday? (Go to 2)
(b) destroy the world, turn off your phone notifications, block social media sites and lean into the work? (Go to 7)


……….

11.

You’re ready for this. You are READY. What are you? Yes – READY! Crowd roars! Your computer has booted up – oh, wait, it’s still not done, you need to type your password in. Another wait. La dee daa. This is wasted time, and hey, if you used your phone to check the internet, it’s not technically a distraction, is it? Do you:

(a) resist the siren-like call of e-mail and social media? (Go to 10)
(b) grab your phone and check your e-mail, Facebook and Twitter accounts? (Go to 4)


……….

12.

This is delicious. You’re loving this the way cats love cat-nip. Who cares about deadlines? I mean, everyone has to give themself a little slack, yeah? And once you emerge from the bathroom, you’re going to be on fire, chile’. You daydream for a while of Pulitzer Prizes and shiny red sports cars.

Two cans of Red Bull and an appalling, environment-slaying 40 minutes of showering later, you realise you’re running late. But that’s okay – you can make up the time later. Do you:

(a) step out the shower, towel yourself briskly and get to the writing as soon as possible? (Go to 11)
(b) take your time purrtying yourself up in front of the mirror, then go downstairs for a coffee? (Go to 8 )


……….

13.

Early to rise, late to bed, makes you healthy, wealthy and dead. You’re feeling super-virtuous, so you flip over and start a few chin-ups. Unfortunately without any caffeine in your system there’s nothing propping up your feeble writer’s frame, and your bones, muscles and sinews are immediately stretched beyond breaking point.

You suffer a series of wildly unpleasant sensations, and then you pass out.

When you wake up, it’s after lunch. Your working day is over.

Also, you’re going to be in traction for the next month.

Way to go, GI Joe.

THE END


……….

14.

You lay there, resting your head on the welcome mat, shrieking. Frankly, it’s rather relaxing. Yoga for the throat. It’s a little worrying the way you initially can’t stop, but after an hour you get yourself under control, just in time to be hit in the face by the snail-mail as it’s thrust through the letterbox at a speed suggesting a postman in the throes of mortal terror over what he can hear.

You’re feeling much more alert, but it’s well past mid-morning. Do you:

(a) immediately go upstairs and sit down in front of your computer, ready to salvage your working day? (Go to 11)
(b) Decide the morning is written off, and since you’ve got an hour before your afternoon writing schedule kicks in, watch a single episode of Battlestar Galactica? (Go to 3)


……….

15.

You instantly fall into the deep sleep of successful denial. When you wake later, you’ll hate yourself. But while hard work pays off over time, laziness pays off right now. And hey, you never wanted your dreams to come true anyway – after all, what would you have to dream about when you sleep in every day? Exactly.

THE END


……….

16.

With the whole of the bountiful land of Cloudlip to play with, you quickly find what you’re looking for. But you need more! Do you:

(a) look for gold? (Go to 16)
(b) look for experience points? (Go to 16)


……….

17.

Once on Twitter, you discover an amazingly unmissable conversation about how long pieces of string should be, and you end up telling strangers they are complete idiots, which is enormously satisfying. The morning passes briskly until you realise you haven’t even checked Facebook yet, or updated Pinterest. You do this, taking your time as of course you should (because you’re an artist, not a hack).

Then, since you once heard of someone whose friend lived next door to a person whose brother got a job through LinkedIn, you spend 2 hours cropping yourself a new profile picture from the least worst Christmas party you recently attended.

After that SmugMug, Stumbleupon, Flickr and Klout all need your input. (Or you need theirs. Same difference!).

Then someone pings you on Skype.

You are now so far down the rabbit hole that not even the soles of your feet are showing. There’s no escape for today.

Game over.

THE END

 

Image: _Zeta_.

Posted in: The Idiocy For The Sheer Hell Of It, The Scribbling Pen, The Clattering Keyboard.
Tagged: · ·

Fevered Mutterings: A Year In Review (Part 2)

Jan 6th, 2012
by Mikeachim.
1 comment

Clicked all the links in the first half of my 2011 roundup?

Wired sums of money to me, tears of gratitude coursing down your cheeks?

If not, I’ll wait for you to do that.

(Note: I accept all major credit cards, all minor credit cards and pretty much anything I can turn into money – ie. no GoDaddy accounts, official Rick Perry merchandise and so on. Thanks).

Now for the difficult sequel.

July

August

September

  • A very personal audio piece on the importance of not waiting….
  • …and then I go quiet – because I’ve started working here.

October

November

December

Well, that lot should keep you busy. (It certainly kept me busy).

But not as busy as 2012 will be keeping me. It’s barely the beginning of January, and I already have more travel planned and more exciting projects I’m busily kicking off than the last 3 years combined. No, really. (If I was waxing hyperbolical, I’d be the first to laugh at myself – you know what I’m like).

And more than that…I think I finally know what this blog is for. And I’m damn excited about that.

Yes, this is going to be a whirly year.

Coming along for the ride?

Images: aspearing, Cristophe Becker, flickrPrince and Mike Sowden.

Posted in: The Everyday.
Tagged: · · ·

Just Get On With It

Jan 2nd, 2012
by Mikeachim.
1 comment

I think I’ve found my motto for 2012.

(From the Laugh It’s Free Facebook group, via Mary Jo Manzares).

Posted in: The Axe To Grind.

Fevered Mutterings: A Year In Review (Part 1)

Jan 1st, 2012
by Mikeachim.
8 comments

Fevered Mutterings image: Pen & Glasses by Generationbass.com - Flickr

I’d love to tell you about all the amazing stuff I saw up on Hadrian’s Wall this week, or the things I have lined up for this blog in 2012, or the places I’ll soon be visiting and writing about, or start telling you about the other major thing I’ll be writing about for the next few months…

But frankly, I’m still recovering from New Year’s Eve.

So, posted a week late (because I’ve been up in Northumberland, getting rained on), here’s what went on in these parts in 2011:

Fevered Mutterings image: Lighthouse at Chania, Crete - Flickr

January

February

March

April

York To Thirsk Railway Line 1 - Mike Sowden

May

June

Part 2 coming as soon as I’ve recovered from yesterday. Just…just give me a while. Thanks.

Images: Tris Linnell, Generationbass.com and Mike Sowden.

Posted in: The Everyday, The Scribbling Pen, The Clattering Keyboard, The World, The World.

Introducing Hadrian’s Wall: Where Rome Meets Westeros

Dec 22nd, 2011
by Mikeachim.
15 comments

Watched or read George RR Martin’s Game Of Thrones? Been captivated by that colossal wrought-ice defensive battlement known as The Wall?

Here’s some news that may interest you.

It exists in our world too.

Fevered Mutterings image: Hadrian's Wall, by Bill Hails - Flickr

The Wall, the Others… where did that element of the story come from? Did that grow up as a plot device or is it more?

Well, some of it will be revealed later so I won’t talk about that aspect of it, but certainly the Wall comes from Hadrian’s Wall, which I saw while visiting Scotland. I stood on Hadrian’s Wall and tried to imagine what it would be like to be a Roman soldier sent here from Italy or Antioch. To stand here, to gaze off into the distance, not knowing what might emerge from the forest. Of course fantasy is the stuff of bright colours and being larger than real life, so my Wall is bigger and considerably longer and more magical. And, of course, what lies beyond it has to be more than just Scots.

 - George RR Martin, in conversation with Wayne MacLaurin, 2000

In Martin’s Westeros, The Wall is designed to keep Wildlings, grumpkins and snarks (plus darker, nastier things) at bay, providing a seemingly impenetrable fortification manned by the haggard, stalwart members of the Night’s Watch. It marks the northern edge of the Seven Kingdoms in the starkest sense (pun intended) – a physical deterrent to invaders from beyond the fringes of civilization.

Hadrian’s Wall is far more interesting – and not just because it’s real.

Fevered Mutterings Image: Hadrian's Wall - Mike Sowden

From Bowness-on-Solway in the west to the appropriate named Wallsend on the Tyne in the east, Hadrian’s wall runs the width of England’s northern boundary with Scotland (although not along it – the whole wall lies within England, and while it’s just 1km shy of the Scottish border at Bowness, it’s 110km south of it at Wallsend). It originally ran for 73 miles (117km) of stone and banked turf, 7-10ft (2-3m) thick and between 15 and 20ft high.

Think about this for a minute. Imagine a branch of the Roman Army ordered to defend the northern fringes of the Roman Empire from the marauding Scots. Hadrian’s Wall is a military structure, built by troops and initiated shortly after the Roman Emperor Hadrian visited Britain. A 15ft high unmanned stretch of wall would hamper the progress of invaders, but would it stop them? Unlikely.

The true significance of the wall, and the reasons for its construction, must lie at least partly elsewhere – for example, in the symbolic defining of the end of territory under Roman influence (being an urban culture, the Romans stamping their authority on landscapes and peoples with urban building-work – towns, bridges, aqueducts, fortresses, villas and the like. Otherwise, they tended to adopt an “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude to local government – while Romanizing it sufficiently to make it clear who was in charge). The power of Rome wasn’t limitless – and Britain was at the Empire’s fringes. A line had to be drawn.

It’s not hard to imagine Hadrian, or one of his strategists, running a finger across northern England, from sea to sea, and saying “this is enough – for now”.

Fevered Mutterings image: Hadrian's Wall, by Stu & Sam - Flickr

Whatever the motivations for its construction, Hadrian’s Wall remains one of the wonders of world archaeology. It’s an astonishing feat of engineering, comprising of walling, milecastles, forts and a wall ditch and track (or vallum) that often had to cut through rock. The foundations and lower layers of many of its associated structures endure, making it one of the richest accumulations of Roman archaeology outside of Italy. It’s also a bulwark that’s deeply in tune with the landscape it works its way through – taking advantage of inaccessible rocky outcrops to heighten its defensive power (literally), while employing the characteristic uncompromising lines that can be seen in Roman roads across Europe. (“Geology, get out of our way or prepare to be quarried”). It’s astonishingly self-assured. If you were a non-Roman inhabitant of Britain of the time and were in any doubt that the Romans intended to stay, this would have shut you up for good…

I’ve been infatuated with Hadrian’s Wall for years now. I’ve walked sections of it, I’ve cycled along it, I’ve huddled under it as the rain scythed down, and I’ve been told off by an English Heritage inspector for clambering over it in a moment of weakness. It’s a stunning display of human ingenuity – and it’s also not a little mad. Why would anyone build such a thing, on such a scale, in such a place? Another reason for my obsession is the land it winds through – some of the loveliest (and bleakest) in England.

For 2012, as one of a number of new themes for this blog, I’m getting up close and personal with Hadrian’s Wall country. You’re going to find me writing about…

  • glimpses of a civilization that popular culture is still fascinated with after 2,000 years (no gladiators, though – sorry);
  • what the Wall was (perhaps) for;  
  • how, when and why to walk Hadrian’s Wall, where to stay, and what there is to see;
  • how the Wall affects the lives of people in Cumbria and Northumberland today;
  • how the landscape shaped the Wall’s development, and how and where its builders overcame or defied the many obstacles in their way;
  • the cities, towns and villages of Hadrian’s Wall country, including one of my favourite cities in the whole of England, Carlisle;
  • …and finally, the Wall Walk, all 73 miles of it, which I’m undertaking sometime this coming year.

As I write this, I’m hoping to be up on the Wall next Wednesday, walking from Hexham to Once Brewed and hopefully further – but since I’m currently fighting off the remnants of a heavy cold, we shall see. (It’s certainly nice to know I have some kind of survival instinct. I’d wondered).

(Note: As I said here, I’d originally planned to be sleeping in a Goretex sack of misery, better known as a bivi-bag – but if I do make it up there, I’m still post-’flu. Sleeping in a sack in the open air with temperatures hovering around the zero Celsius mark…might not be the greatest idea I’ve ever had. Another time, I think).

So – are you coming along for the ride?

Images: Stu & Sam, Bill Hails, Paul McGreevy and Mike Sowden.

Posted in: The World, The World.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · ·

How To Be Rude To A Latvian

Dec 20th, 2011
by Mikeachim.
7 comments

(April, 2000)

Well, maybe it’s down aisle 3.

I try aisle 3. Bread. Strange jars of cabbagey, pickly things. More bread. Larger pickly things. Even more bread. Dear god, Latvians like their bread. Sadly, I’m not after bread, I’m after what is apparently the rarest of things in Latvia – a jar of curry sauce. And if it’s in this supermarket, it’s not down aisle 3.

Okay, maybe it’s down aisle 4…

A soft, leathery hand wraps around my wrist with a grip of iron, stopping me in my tracks and whirling my handbasket around in front of me, slingshotting a small tub of curry spice towards the checkout. I turn to find – nothing. Then I look down. She’s around 500 years old and wrapped in a shawl, and she’s peering at me with fierce glittery eyes. They nail me to the spot.

“[incomprehensible Latvian]!”

She gestures upwards. I follow her wizened finger.

“Tomatoes? To-Mah-Toes?” I say, slowing down my speech and painfully drawing out each each syllable – because that always helps when the person you’re talking to can’t speak any English.

She stares at me like I’m an idiot, then impatiently shakes her head. I move along the shelf, pointing at adjacent items until she finally nods. Ah, it’s the broad beans. This poor old Latvian dear is too short to reach her broad beans, and needs a relatively tall stranger to help out. I’m happy to assist. It’s the least I can do, love.

“There you go. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Again the leathery handcuff closes over my wrist. I’m tugged down the aisle. She needs pasta.

After this, it’s onto aisle 7, for pipe cleaners. And onwards.

Quarter of an hour later, I’m getting annoyed. “Look, I know you don’t speak English, but can you understand my tone? I really do need to go….”

“[incomprehensible Latvian, with hint of pleading]“.

We’re back onto aisle 3 now. And I’m now reaching things for her that she could easily reach herself. This is getting out of hand.

“I’m sorry, but I’m supposed to be making curry for my girlf…”

“[incomprehensible Latvian, with an edge to it]“.

I snap.

“Oh, yes, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more, you daft old bat. You think so too? I’m glad we think the same thing. Oh yes, I do love to stand here in the middle of a bloody supermarket agreeing with you, it’s the chief reason I’m here in Riga. Maybe we could do this again tomorrow! If we’re not actually still here tomorrow! Perhaps we could just keep shopping for your crap until one of us dies!”

She frowns and clutches her basket to herself, leans forward – and says, in perfect English…

“You are a very rude young man”.

Then she strides off, her nose in the air.

So if you’re ever in Riga, Latvia, and a 500 year old woman in a shawl comes up to you and gestures towards some pipe cleaners on a high shelf…

Reach out for the nearest stick of bread (there’ll be a few within reach), hit her over the head with it, and then run like hell.

Thanks.

Image: Unhindered By Talent

Posted in: The World, The World.
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Baffled Into Being Myself: 7 Books That Changed How I Think

Dec 17th, 2011
by Mikeachim.
28 comments

Yesterday, the travel blogging fundraiser Passports with Purpose met its target of $80,000 – and then kept going. Last I heard, they’d overshot by $8,000. And so for everyone who asked me to curry them (keep an eye on your post-Christmas mail, guys) and everyone who donated so generously…

Thank you. :) (more…)

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Posted in: The Axe To Grind.
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