Letter from Warwick: 9 of 2008

Dear Family and Friends, March 31

This week has been mostly about moving into our new home. Right now, Monday morning, we have no hot water and no heating. But more of that later.

On Easter Saturday, we visited the dogs as usual, and, in the evening, went to dinner at Richard and Anne’s home in the tiny hamlet of Winderton, nestled in the Cotswold Hills about 30 minutes away from here. Richard’s cooking raises the bar on what I shall have to come up with in return. He also had some fairly spectacular wines to compliment his efforts.

The week began with the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix at 06h00 on Easter Sunday morning. I rolled out of bed at our guesthouse, and stumbled through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I was startled to see through the windows that the world had turned white with a two inch layer of snow covering the ground. More came drifting down in great big flurries. I took a few photographs, and then deposited myself in front of the television with a blanket over me. (You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) I fully expected to be able to take more pictures after the race, but the sun came out an hour later and it had all melted by the end of the Grand Prix. I felt cheated. At least a Ferrari won the race, which is as it should be.

Then Lucia and I headed off for the railway station where we caught the train into London. I still wince at the eye-wateringly expensive price of public transport here. We could have flown to Portugal (okay, on a very cheap flight) for the price of the one hour journey into London and back, including a London travel card for the day. I can’t help but feel that successive governments have got their policy hopelessly wrong; you can either have expensive petrol or expensive public transport – not both. When you restrict movement, you restrict the economy. On a different tack, I have heard a good few Warwick shopkeepers complaining bitterly about the lack of parking and the strict enforcement of parking laws by the ubiquitous parking wardens. All of them say it’s killing their business. (Parking is also a significant cost of transport here.)

Anyway, we went into London to meet Becky, a lawyer turned schoolteacher whom we met in Zanzibar two years ago, for lunch, and also just for a general stroll around the city. We met Becky at Waterloo Station and went for a walk down the South Bank (of the Thames) as far as the Tate Modern gallery and then back to an Italian restaurant at a place called Riviera Pier. Or maybe the restaurant was called Riviera, I can’t remember any more. It’s an area that has a couple of art an artisan style shops and a few restaurants. The restaurant which we got Becky to choose had the most stunning view of the river and the passing parade of people. We were glad to be indoors when we got there because it was bitterly cold outside and gray outside, with a cutting wind that sliced through my jacket, scarf, jersey, shirt and T-shirt. We spent a wonderful couple of hours catching up with Becky, and look forward to hosting her and her partner in Warwick soon.

Afterwards, Lucia and I walked back along the South Bank to Westminster Bridge, across the bridge which was teeming with tourists, past Westminster Palace, and up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. We had intended to go window shopping up Piccadilly and along Oxford Street, but it was cold and just too full of people so we changed plan. I had been wanting to go and see the newly refurbished St. Pancras International railway station which houses the UK terminus of the Eurostar trains, so that’s what we did. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Pancras_railway_station) It’s amazing what they have done renovating and redeveloping the building as an international railway station, as well as the redevelopment currently underway of the landmark Midland Hotel which forms part of the station concourse. Lucia too was hugely impressed. (We still find the concept of being able to catch the train to France hard to get a grip on though. We’ll have to do it sometime soon.)

On Easter Monday, we packed and tidied our guest flat before taking ourselves for a walk around Warwick Castle in the afternoon. Lucia and I bought year passes which allow us in at anytime, give us discounts for guests, discounts on food and free parking. (So please visit soon.)

On Tuesday morning we went to sign the lease for our new home at the estate agent after stopping off at the bank to draw the £1150 deposit in cash. (Only cash is acceptable for a deposit.) Can you imagine drawing that much money in SA? You’d have to hire an armed guard for protection. After signing the lease, Lucia went to work and I went to the new house and was horrified to find that the carpets were really grimy and filthy, which is a bit of a cheek given that the lease contract specifically states that you have to have the carpets cleaned when you move out. I didn’t want to hassle about it with the landlord, so I went out to hire a carpet cleaning machine. Except, of course, I couldn’t. You can’t do a damn thing in this country without proving who you are AND where you live. You need a utility bill (telephone, electricity, gas, water or council tax) to prove where you live. If you don’t have one, the chances are you will not get what you’re looking for even if you offer a very large deposit. It’s maddening. I eventually had to go back to the guesthouse and beg the owners to take the Rugdoctor in their name. I spent the rest of Tuesday cleaning the sort of salmon pink carpets upstairs. Downstairs is wood and tile.

Lucia took the day off on Wednesday for the arrival of our furniture and worldly goods from storage. The removal company was late, but it didn’t really matter because Lucia was able to give the kitchen a good spring cleaning (which it desperately needed) before they arrived. The team from the removal company consisted of two South Africans and two Hungarians. The one South African is actually a serving member of the British army, but was on leave and didn’t really have anything else to do, so he joined a friend on a delivery crew for the removal company. Next week he’s off to Afghanistan for a second or third tour of duty. He gets a British passport in February next year which is rather vital because the South African government now has laws in place which deem him to be a mercenary and subject to imprisonment in SA.

Anyway, as they unpacked, it became clear that we still own far too much for a British home, even after we had sold, given away or tossed a significant amount of our belongings in SA. The rest of the week and the weekend has been spent trying to sort it all out, and find a place for it. The garage is fairly full of the overflow goods. Put it this way, we’re certainly not getting a car in there. But then we wouldn’t have anyway because that’s where the fridge, washing machine and tumble dryer (which come with the lease) are housed.

The heating started playing up straight away. But every time the landlord came around to check up on it, it had “magically” switched itself on. He had a plumber in on Saturday to check everything who then declared it all to be in good working order. On Sunday morning (yesterday), we woke up to a freezing house and no hot water. The back-up electric immersion heater in the hot water cylinder also refused to switch on. The plumber is due at three this afternoon to fix it all. (So please don’t worry Barbara and Terry. There will definitely be hot water when you get here later in the week.)

(We hope. Because it really is bloody cold without it.)

That’s it for now. I off to visit the zoo and then to buy an iron before the gas man gets here.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 8 of 2008

Dear Friends and Family, March 22

It’s Saturday morning and I’ve just finished watching the qualifying sessions for tomorrow’s Formula 1 Malaysian Grand Prix. The Ferraris are in pole position, which is as it should be. I was a bit worried after their disastrous performance in Australia last weekend which was particularly galling as I had woken up at 3am to watch the race. (Or should I say I sort of dozed and watched at the same time; the point is that I got out of bed.)

Through the window I can see occasional snow flurries. It’s certainly very cold outside for a South African, but not cold enough for the snow to gather on the ground; it just melts away as soon as it touches down. We have more of this predicted for most of the weekend.

Our week began last Sunday with a long drive west into Worcestershire and Herefordshire, almost to the Welsh border. Large tracts of land were flooded after two days of heavy rain. The Rivers Avon, Severn and Wye had all burst their banks in several places. There’s just no drainage here – everything is so flat. Reading the newspapers though, particularly the more salacious tabloids, one would think it’s all the Government’s fault. I haven’t yet seen anybody explaining that a flood plain is called a flood plain for a specific reason. We were thankful for the high clearance provided by the Honda CRV around the corner from the Eastnor Castle (http://www.eastnorcastle.com/) in the Malvern Hills where we came upon flooded patch of road which we had to ford. I knew having a 4X4 would come in handy. Much to my surprise we also came across a couple of vineyards, although nothing like the scale one would find in traditional wine growing regions around the world. I wrote down all their names in my little black book to look them up on the Internet, and for future reference. I’m sure we’ll take our own wine tour around the estates in due course. (http://www.ukvines.co.uk/vineyards/fourfoxes.htm; http://www.broadfieldcourt.co.uk/) We didn’t take any pictures of the day simply because the sky was too grey for the pictures to show much. (But you can find more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual. You will have to download the pictures if you want to see them in a larger format.)

When we got home, and I was waiting for Lucia to gather her belongings together, I suddenly noticed, much to my chagrin, that the front driver-side bumper had been scraped and that the headlamp washer had been snapped off. It was one of those cases where I stood there wondering whether I had done it myself. But the giveaway was that the smashed headlamp washer was lying in one of the parking bays. Clearly some ineffable pratt had driven into my car while trying to manoeuvre himself/herself out of the parking lot. I took the car to Honda on Monday morning and arranged to have the damage repaired on Thursday which cost just shy of £200. One hundred of that went straight into the pocket of the paint touch up specialist around the corner and out of view of the management.

I had decided to go to the Midland Air Museum while the car was being fixed, and walked the mile or so there only to discover that it only opened at 10am. So I walked all the way back and caught the bus into Coventry. The first bus driver wouldn’t let me on because he didn’t have change for the £20 note I offered. The next bus driver also wouldn’t take my money citing the absence of change. I fixed my eye on him and asked in desperation: What does nobody have change? Where are you from, he countered? South Africa. Then he explained to me that the Travel Coventry buses don’t handle any money as a matter of security. When buying a ticket, passengers put the fare directly into a slot which leads to a mini safe. So if you don’t have the exact fare – tough. But he let me on anyway, much to my relief. I spent a pleasant morning wandering around the Coventry Transport Museum which is entirely free.

On one of the days during the week, I forget which, I went to Leicester after visiting the zoo. Leicester is just another 13 miles up the road from the kennels. I can tick off Leicester; there doesn’t appear to be much reason to go back.

Yesterday (Good Friday) I took Lucia to Birmingham. This is the first chance Lucia has had to see the city. We strolled along some of the canals and the streets of Birmingham’s jewellery quarter before the clouds drifted in and the rain started spitting down. After lunch, I took her to the Bullring shopping centre which I find so impressive. Not so impressive were the crowds; we didn’t stay long. We did find biltong at Selfridges though, but not a price I was prepared to pay.

On most days I still take different routes home as I try to build up a mental map of the area. One of the things I have noticed is that very few of the old stately homes and manor houses are still in private hands. Most are hotels, conference centres, tourist attractions, business parks, schools, colleges, belong to the state or are in ruins. And I got to wondering why? The simple answer is tax. In most cases, the families that owned them had to sell up because of the UK’s swingeing inheritance taxes. This raises an interesting point which my friend Johan had noted about property in the UK – there is no absolute right of ownership. If you don’t pay your council tax, your house can be taken away and sold. And when you die, the state appropriates, or should I say misappropriates half your wealth. In other words, there is no right of ownership.

What I didn’t know is that the US has similar inheritance taxes. This week in The Times, there was an article about this using Bill Gates as an example. The article noted that, should he drop down dead today, his estate would owe about $35 billion to the government. The really interesting point though is that the US, like most other countries, demands that its taxes be paid in cash. I think Bill should start building up a stock of 1c pieces.

That’s it for now

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 7 of 2008

Dear Friends and Family, March 14

Our week began last Sunday at the Crufts dog show held at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) just outside Birmingham. Crufts is one of those British institutions that hold a global caché; it is THE preeminent dog show, representing the apotheosis of dog breeding. If your dog wins in its breed or category at Crufts, you can be assured of charging a significant premium – running into thousands of pounds – for its sperm (dogs) or puppies (bitches). It’s not just a snooty, upper class convention – it represents cold, hard cash. Crufts is officially recognised as the world’s largest dog show by the Guinness Book of Records, and this year’s show attracted almost 23 000 dogs entered with 160 000 dog loving visitors going along to gawp. The event takes place over four days.

We woke very early on Sunday because Lorraine, part of the husband and wife team who own the quarantine kennel where our zoo is ensconced, had told us dire stories of nightmare parking and traffic chaos around the NEC for all major events. We left home at seven in the morning, drove right into the NEC and got ourselves as good a parking as any. As it turned out, we were pretty close to the front of the queue and stood around for an hour waiting to be let in. We also managed to buy one of our tickets on the cheap from an exhibitor who had a spare ticket; otherwise entrance was £15. The other thing I noticed was that the victuals available were not as expensive as we had expected; in typical British tradition, Lorraine had us believing that we would need to pay for any food and refreshments in gold bars. In fact, they were priced much the same as one would find on the high street. I wouldn’t know what they tasted like because – prodded by Lorraine’s dire warnings – we took our own sandwiches along.

We dashed over to the ring where the Rhodesian Ridgebacks were being judged when the doors finally opened to visitors. It is difficult to describe the excitement of a dog show. Have you ever watched paint dry? It all gets to be a bit same-ish after about 10 minutes. And one gets the impression that the dog experts are much like wine experts (if they aren’t indeed the same people); eighty percent of them are talking absolute shit, but they do it in such a knowledgeable way.

We chatted to a few people as we strolled around the Ridgeback ring – just one of 30 rings spread across five massive halls – and all of them were disappointed that that Edgar (once we got around to mentioning that we have a Ridgeback in quarantine) is not quite the man he once was. Apparently new bloodlines are highly prized, and we could have earned many thousands of pounds by getting him to do what comes naturally to dogs. I’m sure he would have felt fairly flipping important too!

We have also decided that Hazel is part Otterhound – the part that we used to call terrier. The other part stays Retriever for the time being. I also decided that I quite like Irish Wolfhounds (which aren’t much smaller than a pony).

The event is also a big commercial showpiece with everything you can imagine – and a few things you would never have dreamed of – on sale to keep your best friend happy. By lunchtime the place was a heaving sea of humanity where the people start to become as exotic as the dogs (lime green track suit, gold lamé boots and handbag, and big golden hoops of earrings that could quite adequately serve as a perch for a large parrot.) Those people who know me fairly well will know that I don’t do the crowd thing. I suppose it’s rather fortunate then that Lucia sees things much the same way. So we left, thus avoiding the predicted traffic chaos, and took a leisurely, winding drive home. And, while I really enjoyed the experience, I think I can place a tick in the box next to Crufts.

On Tuesday I went exploring again (my mother used to call it gallivanting), although much closer to home this time. I ventured out on the minor roads south of Warwick and into the Cotswolds north of Banbury. Although I had the map book on the seat next to me, my journey was more a series of arbitrary turns taking me more-or-less south. At midday, I found myself in Shipston-on-Stour, an ancient market town very near to Ann and Richard’s home in the hamlet of Winderton. So I called Richard to find out if I could take him to lunch. He told me to meet him and Ann (who was at home that day) at their home. When I got there, a large and colourful badge on Richard’s jersey advised me that it was his birthday. (I’m guessing here that the badge was daughter Polly’s idea.) So instead of taking Richard to lunch, I benefitted from an absolutely delicious lunch of fried haloumi prepared by Richard, accompanied by cheese, paté and crackers. Lunch ended when Richard and Ann went to fetch Polly from school. I then took a road which led me in to Banbury, and then another, which ran parallel to the M40 motorway, and took me all the way back to Warwick past the old RAF Gaydon air force base. The old nuclear bomber base now houses the Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin plants, as well as the Heritage Motor Centre which I returned to on Friday.

I spent the better part of Friday morning strolling around the museum which only really covers the history of what became British Leyland. I learned, for instance, that MG actually stood for Morris Garages. William Morris, who started out as a bicycle mechanic, was later created Lord Nuffield, as in the Nuffield Hospitals. I discovered that the person who designed the iconic Morris Minor, Alec Issigonis, went on to design the even more iconic Mini. I learned that the UK motor industry now employs many, many more people than it ever did at the height of the industrial clashes of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, except most are now employed by Japanese motor companies. What’s left of the “British” industry is now owned by Americans and Germans. I wouldn’t mind owning an MG from the 1930’s and a half-timbered Morris Minor estate (station wagon, for the South Africans) from the 1950’s. Maybe when I win the lottery, but one of those gull wing Mercedes sports cars from the 1960’s would have to come first.

As usual, I visited the zoo on all the other days. It’s getting a bit warmer, so I’m able to stay with them a bit longer before I get too cold.

I also finally managed to get the satnav device on loan from Andreas to talk to my computer. It’s an example of the dumb things some companies can do. I had downloaded the latest version of the software for my computer that allows the computer and the satellite navigation device to talk to each other. That’s the clever thing to do, right? But they just didn’t talk to each other, and I couldn’t understand why. After a number of telephone calls to TomTom, the maker of my device, I finally had it sorted. It turns out that the latest computer software doesn’t talk to the old software on the satnav device. (What company makes software that isn’t backwards compatible? This must be one of the more egregious examples of how to piss of your customers.) I had to download the old computer software and install that on my computer. The old computer software then downloaded and updated the new software for the satnav device. Then, the old computer software downloaded the new computer software which it reinstalled on my computer. Still with me? This is important, because then I was able to buy the service that downloads all the traffic “safety” cameras onto the satnav device. It makes a howling siren sound every time you approach one the thousands of fixed speed cameras dotted around the UK. The police also have to declare days in advance where they are going to set up mobile speed cameras which you can download to your satnav device every morning. So there really is very little reason for ever getting a speeding fine ever again. And, um, I’ve had a few in my life. In SA it was simple, I just ignored them. So long as you don’t sign for a summons, there’s very little they can do about it. Here in the UK it gets a little more serious. They add points to your licence; get too many points and your licence is gone. Well, once I actually get a British licence. And I’m rather impressed with the fact that we can just exchange our SA licences for UK licences which we shall do when we move into our new home in two weeks.

Tonight (Saturday) we’re going to a concert of choral works and organ music at the parish church – the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, Warwick, to be precise. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegiate_Church_of_St_Mary,_Warwick or http://www.stmaryswarwick.org.uk/) The church has a carilloneur who bangs on his bells every day – Elgar and Holst are his favourites. It sounds so much sweeter than the cries of the muezzin we heard rising up to us from District Six and the City Bowl everyday in Cape Town. I know a great joke about Muslims ... but I wouldn’t want to have a fatwah hanging over my head even if Jesus did expect Mohamed to go and make the tea for some visitors in heaven.

Then at 04h00 tomorrow morning (UK time) there’s the opening round of the 2008 F1 Grand Prix season being held in Melbourne. Can’t miss that. Daniel, the son of the owners of the guest house we’re staying in, tells me that he used to work for McClaren and was Ayrton Senna’s chef for three years. He’s staying here while his parents are away in India and he waits for a Zambian work permit. So it’s not like I’m going to be waking anybody up if I start shouting at the TV set.

Lucia’s just got back from having her hair coloured and we’re off to see the zoo.

That’s it for now.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 6 of 2008

Dear Friends, March 7

I didn’t really understand YouTube in South Africa. Trying to watch a video that keeps stalling because of the limited bandwidth available to Internet users in SA can get quite irritating. It’s only now living in the UK – with high download speeds – that I can see how enticing YouTube can be. And I’m only using 3G broadband which has a somewhat variable quality. People with ADSL lines at home are getting true speeds of up to 8Mbps – that’s the equivalent of very damn fast for those people who don’t understand the jargon. For instance, I needed to download a 150 megabyte update for my computer the other day. So, instead of doing it on my 3G modem, I went to a cafe-bar around that corner that offers free wireless Internet access for its patrons. I walked in, sat down, set up my computer, connected to the network and started the download. Then I went to the bar counter to get a beer. It took a couple of minutes because the barman had a few people to serve. When I got back to my computer, I was stunned to see that the download was almost finished. And the really funny, fascinating bit is that the Brits can sometimes be heard complaining bitterly that they have the worst Internet backbone and facilities in Europe. I, on the other hand, who knows what a truly crap service is, am more than happy for the time being with what’s available here in the UK.

I got on to this because I read something about comedian Billy Connolly in the newspaper which persuaded me to look it up on Google. From there, one of the links was to YouTube. I opened the link, and a six minute video downloaded within about 30 seconds. That led to watching a whole bunch more Billy Connolly clips which, in turn, led me onto other comedians whose humour I have particularly enjoyed like (You know you’re a redneck) Jeff Foxworthy and Steven Wright. Later, when I was trying to find downloads from Portuguese television to help my Portuguese language skills along, I found a website which allowed me to watch live Portuguese television. As a result of these discoveries I’m really looking forward to moving into our new home at the end of the month when we will be able to get an unlimited ADSL service.

The week began with a trip to London last Sunday to go and meet our friends Johan and Linda for lunch. I decided to do whatever the satnav that Andreas lent us told me to do. Rather oddly on the way there, it told us to go south around London on the M25, which probably added 20 or 30 miles to our journey by my guesstimate. For the journey home, I told it to take us HOME which I had reprogrammed as the guest house in Warwick. Once again, I thought it was a bit odd when it told us to take the M11, which goes to Cambridge, and I asked Lucia to check that the machine had defined our Warwick address as HOME. Indeed it had, so we continued to follow its instructions in the dark of night. When, much later, it told us to turn North rather than East, I knew there was something wrong. It was definitely ordering us to go to Andreas and Michelle. I asked Lucia to switch it off and then on again, and then told it to lead us home which it sweetly did this time, never mind that it had maliciously added 50 miles to our journey. I think the secret is always to have a map book nearby which one can consult should one doubts the veracity and correctness of the instructions. But for city driving, when continual references to a map book can get both cumbersome and annoying to other road users, I think the satnav device is unsurpassed (so long as you have given it the correct address, postal code or coordinates.) It really does take you right to the door of wherever you want to go to.

What I need to do now is buy the cable which allows you to connect the device to your computer. This is vital because one of the added options you can pay for and download onto the satnav device, is the location of all fixed speed cameras in the UK. These cameras are big, garish yellow devices planted in plain view with added warning signs before you even get to the camera; on top of this, the authorities have kindly painted a series of 20 very noticeable white lines in the road at each camera. But it’s still possible not to notice the device, particularly in built up areas where there are lots of other distractions around. I have “suddenly” chanced upon a camera on one or two occasions and have had to brake sharply. I hope I haven’t been zapped.

But I was talking about Sunday lunch. What the four of us hadn’t figured out was that it was UK Mother’s Day and every restaurant we tried in Chislehurst high street was fully booked through the afternoon. We just carried on walking down the road and eventually came across a completely empty Indian restaurant. But, yes, they were open, and lunch was a delicious, relaxed affair with very attentive service.

I went to London again on Wednesday because the Portuguese consulate just didn’t answer their telephone. All I wanted to know was what we needed to get Lucia a multiple entry Schengen visa so that we don’t have to apply for a visa every time we want to fly down to see Barbara and Terry at their home on the Algarve. It’s all very well being able to get a return ticket for £30 or £40 from Coventry or Birmingham airports to anywhere in Europe, but a round trip to London to get a visa costs £30. So that’s £30 when you go to London to hand in the visa application, and another £30 to go and fetch the passport when the visa is ready. Fortunately we don’t have to pay for the visa as Lucia is the spouse of a British citizen. Anyway, the short answer from the consulate was that there is no set rule for getting a multiple entry visa. Each application is taken on merit, and the decision is made by ministry staff in Lisbon rather than consular staff in London (as would be the case for a normal tourist visa). We also have to get a notarised letter of invitation from Barbara and Terry, as well as providing all the usual visa guarantees that we have sufficient funds to support ourselves as well as health insurance in case anything should befall us.

It took me all of 10 minutes to get the short and not very helpful answer, and I had the rest of the day free to stroll around London as well as joining Johan for lunch around the corner from his office just off Brompton Road in Knightsbridge. For a while I walked around the streets of Soho which is much, much different from how I remember it in the 1980’s. Now it’s full of chic boutiques, coffee shops and eye wateringly expensive homes. The only reminder of its past are the discrete plaques on the doors of many houses that say: “This is not a brothel. There are no prostitutes here.” I also found a tiny two-seat barbershop where I got a Number Two haircut for just £5. Lucia thought it was, perhaps, a bit too short when she saw it. I disagreed. I also spent some time strolling around the streets of Knightsbridge, Brompton and Kensington, daydreaming about which house I might buy when we win the Euromillions lottery. I finished with a stroll along the South Bank from the London Eye to Waterloo Bridge and back.

Today (Friday) I went to a lunchtime organ recital at the Birmingham Cathedral, probably one of the smallest cathedrals in the world. The cathedral has free lunchtime concerts most Fridays. Today’s programme was a bit obscure. (That means that I had either never heard the piece of music before or, beyond that, never heard of the composer.) I know I’m out of my depth when the organist says that there is a very amusing little passage in the work reminiscent of “For he’s a jolly good fellow”. While music may indeed raise many emotions within me, hilarity is seldom one of them. I think the closest I’ve ever come to humour in music was various recordings by musician/humorist Victor Borge sometime in the early 1980’s. Borge died in 2000. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Borge or http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Victor+Borge&search_type=)

It’s Crufts this weekend (probably the world’s best known dog show) being held at the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) just around the corner in Birmingham. Lucia is watching the day’s highlights on BBC2. We’re going to the show on Sunday morning when the Rhodesian Ridgebacks are being judged. I bet Edgar would beat them all hands down if he wasn’t in quarantine (and if we hadn’t given him the chop.)

That’s it.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 5 of 2008

Dear Friends, March 1

Lucia was still struggling with the remnants of her bout of ‘flu as the week started, but she had recovered enough by last Sunday to allow us to take a drive to Oxford. A few of Lucia’s colleagues live in Oxford and its surrounding areas and say that it is ideal for their jobs as it lies more-or-less half way between London and Warwick. For them, it’s a relatively quick train ride into London, or on the other hand, a fifty minute drive to Warwick. So, we wanted to see what Oxford looks like. We drove around for a bit taking in the neighbourhoods, and then took a stroll around the colleges and city centre (nothing too strenuous to put strain on Lucia’s recovery.) I could certainly live there so long as I didn’t have to do the commute. Although it is a way of life for many people, spending an hour or two on the road every day just getting to and from work isn’t my scene; never has been.

This is the first week that I haven’t visited the animals every day. They’re looking happy and healthy now and I’m sure they’ll survive without seeing me every day.

On Tuesday Lucia went to London on business and I went to Birmingham to stroll around. Birmingham is Britain’s second largest city with a population of something over one million people which stood at the heart of the industrial revolution. It’s not very far away from Warwick – the centre of Birmingham is just 22 miles from Warwick. The greater metropolis includes Solihull, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton and Walsall which probably add another one or two million people to the mix. Nearly all the descriptions of Birmingham will, at some point, include the words industrial and depressed. While that may well have been true two decades years ago, it rings a false note now. Much work has been put into rejuvenating the city centre over the past 15 years, and it looks stunning – well, at least all the bits they’ve attended to. Everywhere else is a construction site with smart new marble and glass clad buildings soaring into the sky, or a mass of scaffolding wrapping older buildings which are being given a new lease of life.

Given the various descriptions I had read, I was expecting an entirely new city that had been rebuilt from rubble after the War. But that clearly isn’t the case. Approaching the city it looks like a modern metropolis of skyscrapers, but walking the streets one finds that it still has a good stock of architecture running from before the industrial revolution through to the Victorian era. Most of the ugly concrete monoliths that rose after the War have been torn down, to be replaced with the modern genre of glass and marble. And the new buildings are not just square blocks; there is plenty that is different and daring that I think could still look fresh 50 years from now.

The most radical redevelopment has occurred around the canals which fed Birmingham’s industrial machine. This was the area that suffered most from German city planning in the early 1940’s. Only the canals and a few buildings from before the war are left and have formed the nucleus of the city’s redevelopment since 1990. I think it looks great. It’s a mixed use development with apartment and office blocks side by side. Yes, it’s all modern, but it has a warm look and feel with the canals as the central feature.

The most daring design in the central business district is undoubtedly the Bullring, a shopping mall of massive proportions. I never thought I would say that I think a shopping mall looks appealing, but this one does, both inside and out. The centre of Birmingham is built on a hill, and they’ve built the mall into the hill over several levels. From the outside – and depending on your vantage point – it looks like a space age stadium. What I didn’t like was the £8 (R120) parking fee for six hours parking.

I also came away with a small stack of concert, theatre and other cultural programmes and leaflets. Birmingham has a very active symphony orchestra and many more music ensembles.

That’s not to say that all of Birmingham is like that. I drove through some fairly grotty, depressed looking neighbourhoods on my way in and out. But there’s always a satellite dish stuck to the side of each house no matter how poor the neighbourhood may look.

The other thing that struck me was the mix of cultures. Birmingham has the highest concentration of non-European cultures in the UK, the vast majority of them coming from the Indian subcontinent. But there are plenty of Chinese, West Indians and Africans too. Most of them tend to wear traditional dress. The dominant religion is clearly Islam with most women walking around covered from head to toe, although most don’t wear a full face veil. I also saw a scattering of men dressed in the full gear of a Pashtun tribesmen (Pakistan/Afghanistan). This is also reflected in the type of shops available in the high streets of these neighbourhoods which seem to cater exclusively to the oriental market. When you do see a white face, you wonder what the hell they’re doing there.

On Friday, I went to Caerdydd (Cardiff, for all those non-Welsh people.) I took my computer’s AC adapter to the store to be replaced first thing in the morning, and then carried on driving instead of going home. I thought I would go and look for our nearest beach. I now know it’s a 250 mile (400km) round trip. My heart skipped a beat when I laid eyes on the sea as I crossed the Severn Bridge into Wales. I miss seeing the sea.

Cardiff was interesting. It’s a major industrial hub. The massive steel plants stick out the most as you drive through the industrial outskirts between Newport and Cardiff. But, like Birmingham, the city itself is getting a massive facelift. The old docks on Cardiff Bay are being transformed into smart new apartment and office blocks on a similar, if not bigger scale to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town. Once again, I thought it looked great. And the parking was cheap.

I had cheese and ham baguette and cappuccino for lunch in a coffee shop right on the bay, and then wound my way home on a different route that took me into the Welsh countryside and valleys. Not that I saw much though because it poured with rain most of the way.

I’ve got some more pictures up on the Picasa website. (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones - look in both albums.)

That’s it for now.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn