Softbridge: Architectural Challenges in Oxford

I like change, most of the time, and in Oxford I live in a changing environment. I start each of my many tours of the city by stating where I live then asking my group where they are from. A few years ago I told them that I resided in paradise in Oxford and I did: 18 Paradise Square! Nowadays I tell them that I live in the part of this city where the rich and famous reside: most visitors find this amusing, not all. To make the latter even happier I describe a property they might like to buy, my current example is a house around the corner in Crick Road which has an asking price of over £5m! Ridiculous. You could buy the entire block of flats in which I live for that.

Actually most of the changes that occur here are in the colleges and university buildings surrounding us rather than the residencies. St Hugh’s has recently completed its Chinese centre; St Anthony’s  thankfully blocked the view of its ugly concrete dining hall a year or so ago with a quite passable residential building; St Anne’s is currently digging a deep hole on which it will build, if the artist impression is anything to go by, a bulky building which will fit in quite well with its existing buildings, but will hardly grace the Woodstock Road. Added to this, the university recently completed its new mathematics and humanities building nicely incorporating the old 19^th century hospital building. Furthermore, it has nearly finished the new governance centre on the same campus: I love that new building with its diminishing glass circles.

Architects , I believe, divide into two camps: one of which tries very hard to design buildings that fit their surroundings and adjacent buildings; the other endeavours to make a statement. Nearly opposite me, in the grounds of St Anthony’s College, is an example of the latter. It is sometimes called the Softbridge and sometimes the Investcorp Building, by either name it is something of a shocker: it reminds me of the sinking of the Titanic for some reason. Built predominantly of stainless steel it links two innocent and attractive brick building from the 19^th century. As the new building grew so too did my horror. An awful thing was evolving on my doorstep. I thought of writing to the Oxford Times about this monstrosity signing the letter ‘Bemused of Butler Close’ but felt that I could not since I no longer buy the paper.

After two years of work the Softbridge is now complete, the gardens are nicely planted and manicured, the trees hide quite a lot of the tapering, shiny tube and…and I must confess that I quite like it! The stainless steel reflects the trees, the lawn and the plants in a rather interesting way. The sun glints on the odd truncated portholes which lie along the backbone of the monster, and it now looks milder, softer.

Am I going soft? Not really. I am still appalled at the University of Oxford for spoiling, and the council for allowing them to spoil, the views across our cherished Port Meadow. The latest compromise for this travesty of planning is that the guilty buildings should be demolished at the end of their thirty-year lifespan. Thirty years! I and many of the protestors will not be there to see the destruction – or protest.

Still, perhaps it’s all about perception. More on that later.

Peak achievement

Our huerto in Spain (garden/orchard thing) is one of many that line the Mataranya River. They are all long and thin. At the river end there is quite a large level area which in our case is planted with young olive trees, above that there are three terraces which we have managed to tame over the years and are mostly cultivated, then comes the track which is parallel to the river and serves all of the huertos and alongside that track is our little casita which I have spent five years extending. Beyond this, the ground rises rapidly and is mostly pine-forested rocky outcrops.

 I was quite amazed to find that I owned a strip this lovely wild area right up to the top of the Mataranya valley. Of course, I was keen to explore it all, but for some reason I made a vow to myself that I would not climb to the peak until I had completed the work on the casita – and I stuck to that promise.

On Saturday 9^th May 2015, we held our opening party: a big and important event for both of us. The Spanish call it an ‘inauguration’ which sounds a bit formal. In fact, it was great fun. Though I did most of the work on the place alone (“solo”, the Spanish say), Margaret joined me in the rush to finish during the week before the party, spending many hours grouting the floor and wall tiles that I had laid. We also sent out the invitations together and tried valiantly to ascertain how many might come, how much meat to order for the barbecue, how much bread, how many rice salads to prepare and so on.

And everything was all right on the day, though with a wood fire, charcoal barbeque and gas barbeque all sizzling away our lovely casita became hot and choked with smoke. I greeted the guests with streaming eyes and a hoarse cough. Lots of people brought wonderful gifts which I really did not expect: my favourite was an old and worn hand millstone that I placed with pride in the middle of the floor of the casita and then tripped over it twice. I made a speech in stumbling Spanish, Dolores recited a Lorca poem from the steps in passionate Spanish and we did the Hokey-Cokey in Spanglish.

In honesty I have not quite finished the job: I have to renovate the little lean-to at one end of the casita and sort out some drainage and water supply issues (at present I pump up water to supply the casita from the irrigation channel below, in future it will use rain water). However, all the big stuff is done and we can live in the place once we have some furniture. Hence, the day after the inauguration party, I, accompanied by a well-deserved hang over, set off for that much-delayed climb to the peak of the valley so far above us.

The ascent was hot and hard, and I suppose is best described as scrambling rather than rock climbing. As I rose, I passed through our pungent pine forest with many of the trees at odd angles due to the slope, some were actually horizontal as if they too had attended the opening party the night before.

I reached the peak at last, fully expecting to see more pines, more wilderness. Instead, I was shocked to see ploughed and terraced fields growing almond and olive trees. It was like discovering the lost world, but in reverse. I even found an old iron bed up there, accompanied by a rusting, white-enamel chamber pot and water jug.

The view down into the Mataranya valley and beyond was stunning and I was overjoyed at just how difficult it was to spot my much-extended casita. It blends in perfectly, which is in stark contrast to other buildings that have sprung up along the valley. I did so enjoy that ascent and my time at the peak. I had looked longingly at the ridge high above me so many times during the five years of lonely construction work then, at long last, I was looking down at my completed project. I emitted a triumphal whoop into the wind-ruffled silence and began my descent.

What next? Well, I have already started writing the book which will record my struggles, the amusing interactions with the locals, the inevitable confusions that arise when building in a foreign land, and the highpoints that occurred over the last five years. I hope to finish it this year. And there’s plenty more to at the huerto.

Almost there! And so green!

There’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind. Some people hate ‘em – I love ‘em (as long as there is some chances of getting past the line alive).

My little project in Spain is coming to a climax, and the opening party is just a few days away. I finished the stonework on the last visit to Spain and built the ‘shed’ on the terrace to house the electric and water essentials. Now I have truly gone green. I have solar electricity lighting a string of LED’s in the new room and powering a mini light in the shower room. At present I use my generator (which uses petrol, so sorry) to pump the water up to the cold tank, but later the water will be supplied from collected rainfall and pumped up by a ‘solar’ pump. There is also a hot water tank linked indirectly to an external radiator/solar collector (both of which I bought second hand in the UK). These form the basis of a system that should provide solar heated water – but so far does not. The Mark II version is currently at the design stage. The whole thing, with the solar battery, is now hidden behind a wooden frontage and also includes an area in which a small person could possibly sleep.

I have recently spent a few weeks as an amateur carpenter making rough window frames, shutters and doors. The front door is in two parts and, to please Margaret, I have hammered in false nails which are quite popular around here - they give it a medieval look.

The kitchen unit, which I have mostly knocked up from wood used as concrete shuttering during the stonework years, is now tiled and awaiting curtains – it’s strong and of a traditional design, sort of. I have incorporated one of those strangely deep sinks which are common here; I think they were previously used for washing clothes. I’ve fitted it with old brass taps, and similarly for the little basin in the shower room. I bought the latter at our village’s antique fair for seven Euros each, then later found that you can buy them new for not much more.

The entire floor of the casita is now covered with very thin tiles which crack if you stand on them too heavily, but I have created a nice pattern in the middle.  I have still to tile, paint and provide a shower in the shower room. There will be no toilet at first since there is nowhere for the effluent to go, but I am working on that. Isn’t it great to be green? Self sufficient, ecological, low carbon and all that. Can I offset this against my carbon count in England is some way d’you think?

Anyway, the mayor (ex), the landlord of our favourite bar, the mechanic, the stone transporter, the blacksmith’s son, and fellow huerto owners and friends will, together with their families, hopefully be joining us for hamburgers, sausages and a rice salad at the “inauguration” at the end of the week. Oh, and I must not forget to buy beer and wine. Could I forget the essentials?

A squeeze of the shoulder

I come from a remote family – in the sense that we kept our distance. The nearest my father came to hugging me was an outstretched handshake. That’s not a complaint, quite the opposite, although I enjoy the occasional hug with those I like very much or love, I do believe that hugging in the UK is little overdone nowadays and has lost its way. In Spain it is very natural, of course.

My first intimate experience with a Spanish woman dates from our time as smallholders on the outskirts of a town called Woodbridge. New people had moved into the cottage at the end of our lane: he built boats (big ones) in the attached barn, she embraced me as if we were long lost friends or lovers. I quite liked it. Annabella brought a touch of sunny Spain to sombre Suffolk and a friendship which has certainly outlasted the boat builder (never liked him much anyway and have no regrets about throwing him into our swimming pool – boy was he cross).

If I were sitting in a pub in Oxford, or even Stow-on-the-Wold, and some bloke I barely knew squeezed my shoulder , I would be deeply shocked and suspicions would crowd my sozzled mind. Yet here in La Fresneda it is quite normal: often nothing is said, just a squeeze and a smile. And I quite like it. I sometimes squeeze the shoulder of some villager I know and respect. I think my advances are always well-received.

There are, of course, some people that I would not like to be squeezed by at all: the carpenter for one. Eva is quite the opposite: she is the most passionate woman in our village. A lovely woman , she greets us with such enthusiasm: hugs and showers of kisses. Like most Spanish mothers she has taught her charming little daughter  well – the little girls stands face up waiting for a kiss once her mother has finished with us.

On Friday last we were taken on a mystery tour by our near neighbours who are both enthusiastic nature lovers. He is English and she is Swiss so the hugging and kissing is mostly replaced with a firm handshake before they drive us out into the countryside to view waterfowl and wild goats. We had a lovely day. 

Towards the end of it they took us to a village in the Maestrazgo mountain range where they  have befriended a very nice family who run a Casa Rural ( a sort of B&B) in which they often stay. The man of the family is a sort of forest ranger for the area and has two children. With the grandmother who has her own house, they dominate the village: there are just seven occupants in total. Most of the houses are unoccupied or used for tourism. Yet that family posseses a noticeable aura of contentment.

We met the thirteen-year-old daughter – out playing ball on her own.  A slim, tall girl, she presented herself to each one of us to be kissed on both cheeks with such a serious expression that I could only think of as charming.

The day was drawing to a close so we headed back to La Fresneda. Along the way we had one of those inspiring moments: a large male goat was standing proudly on a rock high above us seemingly watching out progress. With the setting sun behind him he provided a wondrous sight. He was a big boy and,  though I have milked many a goat, I would not like to squeeze his shoulder.

Oh, and that same week I saw a pine martin running over the roof that my house overlooks – a rare and thrilling sight. Isn’t nature wonderful.

A handful of chips and naming

The Spanish have solved the problem of inherited surnames. In the UK posh people in the past, anyone nowadays, sometimes combined the father’s and mother’s surname with an aristocratic hyphen. Hence Parker-Jones and Parkinson-Smith – so much more eye catching that Jones or Smith. In Spain this is the norm. The first generation take their surnames from the father and mother – in that order. That is so non-discriminatory in a country famed for its macho image and as a result, my grandson is called Robin Valero Walters.

 Hey, the Walters name goes on, but not for long. Assuming that Robin does marry and does have children, and lets presume that he marries an English girl with the surname Smith and that they decide to abide by the Spanish naming tradition, then what will my great grand children be called?  Valero Smith, of course. Hey, the Walters name has gone, shoved off the end by a Smith or whatever. So, what seems such a good idea and so egalitarian and non sexist is very short lived. The male dominates or, in my particular case, is soon swept aside.

Not that this bothers me much, probably not at all. But does a fair solution exist? Perhaps we should keep adding on all of the surnames at each marriage? That could be quite a burden for future generations. If my sums are correct then the fifth generation would  possess thirty-two surnames!. Alternatively, how about this: since the family is arguably disintegrating anyway we could abandon family names altogether – Bonjovi, Picasso and Björk seem to have managed OK and this would certainly make filling forms a little simpler.

From names to chips. I am glad to get back to our little village of La Fresneda again even though the elements were not welcoming. The rain began in Perpignan, just on the French side of the border and accompanied us on our entire journey south to our village. When we arrived it was raining so much that we slept another night in our camping car rather than attempt the walk up the hill to our house. In the following days we witnessed the damage caused by days of heavy rain: rivers torrential, roadside cliffs slipping, and terrace walls collapsing. However, by the end of the week the sun was shining so we went off to celebrate in the nearby village of Cretas.

We are regulars at the Cretas wine festival, itself accompanied by a Medieval Festival where local people dress up and sell stuff from stalls. Quite a lot of the stuff is edible and quite a lot of that is “ecological”, a word that rings alarm bells for someone as embarrassingly fastidious as myself. My sensitive stomach is not sentient of course, but it does perform a gentle churn when the word  “ecological” turns up. This churn replaces words like “wholesome, natural, organic” in my mind with things like “dirty, unchecked, no sell-by date”. Similarly perhaps, the  phrase “Made in China”  associated with anything that might pass my lips has a similar effect. The sensitive stomach has been to China and only just about survived the experience. Oddly enough, it has also survived many, many years of our own home-grown food which I suppose would now be called ecological.

So, rather than snacking, we sampled the wine and waited excitedly for the medieval breakfast for which we had prepayed seven euros (£5) each and was served by hand at the staggeringly late, but oh so Spanish, hour of ten p.m. I say “served by hand” advisedly. We tendered our tickets at the entry to a vast tent with seating for at least two hundred. In exchange we were given a plastic plate on which lay a lukewarm sausage and a slice of fatty bacon. We then shuffled long to the next server who picked up a fried egg from a nest of the things and threw it onto our plates. She then picked up a handful of chips from a big heap and spread these on top of our medieval breakfast. I could not believe my eyes, she really delivered the egg and chips with her hands: I filmed her doing it! 

Fortunately, she was wearing white rubber gloves, consequently the sensitive stomach stayed calm and the food - when washed down with more wine (included in the price together with a sweet course of an apple or orange) - was OK. But, if those gloves had been green, well, I could not have eaten one chip, not one! How I love it here; things are so…so ecological.

Being Famous: meeting a Hairy Biker

I’ve been really enjoying guiding recently. The long breaks in Spain (one of which I am beginning as I write) refresh me, though the first one on my return is scary – will I remember all the necessary stuff? When introducing myself to a tour group I usually tell them that I live in central North Oxford “where all the rich and famous people live”. Some smile, some pout. Then I tell them that I live in a very small flat and am not rich or famous.

On my last day in Oxford before this trip I did rub shoulders with a “famous”, well, actually, we touched toes – whilst sitting in the same punt! This was no accident. The scene was part of a new TV series centring on the Hairy Bikers and entitled something like ‘The pubs that made us’.

How I became involved is not important, and why I was placed in a punt rather than a pub is a mystery to me and will always remain so  - the latter being my more natural environment. My Hairy Biker was Dave and we met at the punt station below Magdelan (prounounced Maudlin) bridge. To my surprise, and despite his ostentation, I liked him. It was a surprise because I am an anti-personality person to the extent that I have a very long list of ‘personalities’ that I heartily dislike. And no, I am not going to list them, it is better to ignore them.

Dave comes across as a avuncular, homely, northerner with a Dali moustache and shapely beard. He wore a mid length brown, herringbone coat with purple pocket flaps and lapels. In a very short time I learned that he had five motorbikes and a Dutch Barge that he kept on the Thames. He also told me that he had recently purchased a chateau in France and was also part- owner of a new brewery in his home town of Barrow. Yet all of this did not strike me as boasting. He was not at all like the “I’m richer than thou” character of the Fast Show who once said, “Sophisticated? Me? I’ve BEEN to Leeds!” No, Dave just seemed pleased with his new toys and somewhat surprised to find himself so lucky. Maybe talking about them was his way of sharing them.

Having met, we had to wait around whilst Graham, the producer, director, cameraman, gaffer, and all else screwed his equipment onto one of the punts whilst ours was prepared by the professional punters. Then we had to meet again – for the camera. So much has to be done for the camera in this artificial world of TV. So Dave strode manfully down the slope towards me, then slipped dramatically and authentically as he stepped onto the jetty beside the river, almost falling in. This was very funny, everyone laughed and he joined in wholeheartedly. As a consequence we had to meet again, and again, and again, until our meeting seemed natural enough  – for the camera.

The filming caught by Graham as we were punted along the Cherwell was deemed to have gone very well by the producer and the director and the cameraman (Graham), but I am not looking forward to seeing it. Dave, in parting, said, “See you on TV”. But I know that might never happen.  Both of my last two interviews have ended on the cutting room floor. Given my previous experience, this time I insisted on being paid for my services at my usual guiding rate. That way I hope to win either way since I got to meet someone famous!!

Some of you may not know of the famous Hairy Bikers and I must confess that I’ve not seen any of their programmes. Suffice to say that they are hairy, they travel around on motor bikes to interesting locations, and they cook stuff. So, why are the Hairy Bikers the bedrock of this programme on the pubs of Britain? Because they are experts on pubs? No. Because they know lots about Britain? No. Because they are aficionados of the world of beer. No, not one of the above. It’s because they are well-known and loved by thousands. They are the personalities that attract the viewers to a series of programmes which presumably would not reach the screen on its own merits. We live in a strange world where the presenter is more important than what is presented. Perhaps it’s just another symptom of the Churchillian description of the importance of a parliamentary speech: first it’s who says it, second it’s how they say it, third, and last, it’s the content.

So, Dave and the other Hairy Biker, Sy, are perhaps the right choice for this series. Dave certainly has transmittable warmth and the actor’s ability to do a ‘take’ over and over and get better each time, rather than (like me) getting worse with each repeat. I liked him and can only suppose that thousands more do so. He is certainly not on my list of hated personalities. In fact, I would have enjoyed a pint with him afterwards. Instead, I cycled home in the rain and he returned his hotel - Oxford’s most salubrious.

Humanists, Jihadists and the Archers

I became a humanist last year, but am still not sure what that means. I have noticed no changes in myself so far. There is a tendency to define humanism in terms of what it is not, for example: not an organised religion, no belief in the supernatural, not racist, not extremist, etc. Friday night, at a humanist lecture on the jihadist mentality, the speaker tried to redefine humanism; I believe his intention was to reach out towards religious moderates and hence isolate the crazies.

His name is Roger Griffin, he’s an historian with a specialism in Nazism which he has now extended to terrorism. He began by describing the modern world’s tendency to rob people of meaning in their lives, particularly the erosion of unquestioning belief (in religion, government, law, morality, etc). This, he said, leaves a hole which can, on the one hand, be filled by an addiction to shopping, watching programmes like the X Factor or gardening, or, on the other hand, by creativity in art, music, theatre or whatever. But for some this is not enough, their search for meaning becomes obsessive and idealistic. In the worst cases they latch on to some extreme idea (e.g. distorted Islam) and become so strongly addicted to that idea that they are willing to kill and be killed for it: hence the Twin Towers, etc.

I’m sure that Roger would regard this as a vast over simplification of what he said, but that’s it in essence. He gave us many examples of terrorists and their bizarre creeds including Brusthom Ziamani, the 19 year old arrested in London carrying a flag of Islam, a hammer and a knife with the express intention of beheading a soldier. This man was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness and converted to Islam in his teens. In London, he joined a group of followers of some radical Muslim cleric.  His ex-girlfriend said that, “he wanted to die a martyr and do things to get to heaven and to please god”.

That night the audience were clamouring for solutions to the ghastly problems of extremism rather than reasons for it. The speaker’s response was that those who have been turned can be unturned - given the right treatment. He referred to the Danish solution in which radicals returning from ISIS in Syria are treated kindly, rather than being imprisoned as they are here. They are re-educated and once converted released to become educators themselves, thus creating people with the ability to reach out to the terrorists groups that they themselves once belonged to and to reason with them. This was treated with some scepticism, but what really got the assembled humanists off their chairs was a suggestion that the humanist view should be more tolerant towards religion. Here the speaker was, I think, suggesting that the “militant” humanists (he mentioned Hitchens and Dawkins) attacks on religion sent the religious scurrying to their defensive positions and the nutters to their guns.

I think he has a point. There is, to my mind, a large area of overlap between the beliefs of atheistic humanists and the moderately religious. ‘Do unto others as you would have done to yourselves’ is surely an aim to strive for: for oneself, one’s family and the community at large. Unless, of course, you are a terrorist.

Serious as this topic is, there was a lighter side to the evening. The speaker talked of the depressing effect of news broadcasts and suggested this is why BBC Radio 4 has a comedy half-hour immediately after the six o’clock news. Naturally, this led onto the calming effect of The Archers which follows the seven o’clock news. And this sparked a brief debate about the main story currently unwinding in this long-running radio soap. And then to the disclosure (fresh from that night’s episode) that David is not leaving Ambridge. Phew, great relief all round. Sorry if this seems obscure or even irrelevant, but it does go to prove that humanists are human.

Pubs merry-go-round in Stow-on-the-Wold

I suspect that I mention pubs quite a lot in my blogs: they are very much part of my life and I did come very close to buying one – twice. To me they represent many things: a place to drink one’s own choice of poison, a meeting place for friends, a place to make new friends or to chat with passing acquaintances, a place to play the only games that I really like, a place to enjoy live music, and so on (see my pub in the bookshop for more).

I know that I have often written about the two bars of La Fresneda, our Spanish village, but think that I have said little about the bars of Stow-on-the Wold, our Cotswold base. However, there is something interesting going on there at present which reflects the swingeing changes that have rocked the pub trade over the last decades.

Years ago, pubs were owned by the breweries producing the beer, and in those pubs you drank the beer of the brewery that owned them, or lumped it. There were a few, so called, “free houses” where a variety of draught beers might be found, but by far the majority were tied to a brewery. Then, stimulated by government legislation, greed and corporate economics, things began to change: the big breweries sold off their vast estates of pubs and concentrated on brewing and spending their piles of cash. Pub companies bought chains of pubs which then purchased beer from the ever-increasing number of breweries and supplied it, at inflated prices, to the tenants and managers of their pubs. Later again, some of the breweries that had retained their pub estates sold the brewery, usually for housing development, and then outsourced their core competence: brewing. All of this has had a profound effect on the pub trade and, of course, on the pubs of Stow.

There is one area however where Stow does buck the trend and that is in closures. Pubs in the UK are still closing at the rate of twenty a week or more, yet those in Stow have been stable for a very long time. There are ten bars, some of which are within hotels, others are stand-alone pubs and just one is a club. The population of this country town is about two thousand so that is a goodly number of boozers.

When I first began to visit the place, the pubs concentrated almost entirely on selling drink, and were themselves partitioned into public bars for the working-class locals and lounge bars for the rich and the ‘better’ classes – or so it seemed to me. Nowadays the partitions have gone, the bars are mostly food rather than drink led, the classes have merged or drifted upwards and a true local is a rarity, my wife being one.  Meanwhile, some of the pubs remain tied to traditional breweries; others have seen many transformations.

I used to predict that Stow could not sustain so many drinking establishments and that the Bell, the most remote from the centre would be the first to go. It scraped along breaking the hearts of many an aspiring tenant and was an encumbrance to the pub company which owned it. I think the most enduring tenants during that period were two lesbians, one of whom regularly paced the bar draped in a large, live lizard. Even I once offered to buy the freehold of the place, but was turned down.

Finally, a lady entrepreneur did manage to buy it up, spent a lot of money on it, imported a very good chef, introduced well-kept real ale and installed pretty, polite barmaids. She brought with her a load of discerning and well-heeled customers and The Bell is now such a success that a brewery has bought it from her – Youngs’ brewery. Except that Youngs no longer brews beer! It sold its wonderful London production base some years ago and the beers are now brewed by Charles Wells. I presume the company is using cash raised by the sale of the brewery site to purchase pubs like The Bell.

Up the road from The Bell is a pub and hotel which has changed hands, and names, rather a lot over the years. It was the Eagle and Child at one time and is now the Porch House. Like many in this country, it claims to be the oldest in England. It too has now been bought by a brewery – Brakspear. But this brewery has also sold its brewing facility and its beers are brewed at the Wychwood brewery in nearby Witney, and that brewery has itself been bought by another called Marston’s located in Wolverhampton.

And so these bewildering cycles go round, recycling landlords and beers and tossing out dartboards, skittle alleys, pool tables and local characters along the way. Is it bad? Is it a tragedy? For some yes, for others not. 

Nowadays there is a good selection of pubs in Stow that sell a range of beers and a variety of food in restaurant-like surroundings. At present, two of the bars are closed for renovation; they will no doubt open as gastro pubs of some sort. So if you want to play darts or pool in Stow-on-the-Wold, or want to drink with the few remaining ‘locals’ what can you do? Join the club, perhaps.

Another Christmas, another year

After years of action-packed family Christmas celebrations involving plays, games, quizzes, serial present giving and of course food and drink, I spent this one in the pub. Well not the whole of it, but quite a lot of it. Did I enjoy it? ‘Course I did – even the wet walk from the bus stop to Oxford’s Thames side Isis Farmhouse on Boxing Day failed to dent my appetite for real ale and good company. On Christmas Eve, we planned a tour of the pubs in Stow-on-the-Wold and barely got past the Bell, the first one. I met a man there who works for a Chinese telecom company in Bahrain which was really interesting (yes, really). On Christmas morning, we began drinking in another Stow pub which had 7% Christmas ale…and it was uphill all the way from there. Had a nice couple of pints in the Talbot with friends whilst overlooking the delightful Stow square, then returned to the 7% place which was still open (I did lower the alcohol content of my beer selection on this second visit and consequently made it back to the house). On New Year’s Eve, we took in some music at the Wheatsheaf in Oxford from the Pete Fryer band and Redox – Christmas would not be the same without them. And last night I ventured out alone and found Oxford in a hung-over, stay-at-home, post Christmas sort of mood. However, the Rose and Crown, one of my locals, was lively enough though.

You could say that Christmas, for me, is becoming like any other time of the year since I do spend some of my time in the pubs anyway, but that’s not so. There is a different atmosphere over the festive period: people are more relaxed (or more tipsy), they are more generous, more inclined to laugh at bad jokes and smile at annoying idiosyncrasies.

Whilst on the Christmas theme, I, like Father Christmas, have always had a beard. I am therefore amused and bemused to find myself in fashion. Quite amazing how many young men are going hirsute. Where does that come from? I seem to detect a middle-eastern look to these hair-faced youngsters – surely not.

Since my return from Spain, I have taken two groups on tours of Oxford. It is quite scary to do this after a break of nearly four months: will the accumulation of facts, stories, jokes, and so forth – the tools of a guide’s trade – be there? I once told someone of my fears and they suggested that I revise; they had no idea of the enormity of that task. There are thirty-eight colleges and a myriad of university building. There is a history of twelve hundred years. There is a long list of famous or infamous personalities. There is just too much. However, all was well, both tours went swimmingly. I think these long breaks are refreshing: my enthusiasm for the work is strengthened and the visitors respond to that. On both tours, I sold books and received tips. That is not usual.

On the book front itself my Swedish translator, N Christer Frank has just launched Political Chemistry (the Dorothy Hodgkin and Margaret Thatcher book) in his language. It is rather fun to see this book with a Swedish title. This is the third book of mine that Christer has translated and I now call him eagle eyes because he does spot typos that I, and a number of English readers, have missed. Based on his comments I am just now releasing a new version of the English book. Though this is hard work, you cannot believe how much of a relief it is to be able to do so: in the past persuading publishers to produce a new edition was all but impossible.

2015 will be the year I complete, and celebrate the completion of, my stone hut in Spain – the party should be in April or May. Just now, I am beginning to edit the copious notes I have made during nearly five years of work and, that done, I will begin to write a book about my foreign venture. I think it will be my twentieth!

Happy new year to you all.

Home again, where I can write to my member of parliament.

My trip to Spain and back covered nearly 10,000 kilometres this time. Here’s a very stunted and biased review of the countries we passed through: Belgium, boring (but not the beer); Germany, efficient, regulated; Poland, bad roads, nice people; Slovakia, scary, struggling; Austria, see Germany, Italy, exciting, dangerous, historic; France, depressed yet delightful.

And so we came to Spain, our second home. I have lived there on and off for fifteen years, but often find that I am only just getting to know it, just now diving below the superficial. This time I began to understand why nearly everyone in our village owns plots of land: some tiny, some quite large, and often a number of them. More importantly, though I admire the degree of decentralisation – villages have significant local powers in Spain – there is a flaw: Spanish voters have no direct representation.

By Huse Fack March 05, 2013

Years ago, when I was politically active, I wrote a letter to the local paper about proportional representation – yawn, yawn. Wait! In my article I set the scene in a pub; four people were deciding what to drink, they each settled on a different tipple then one of them went to the bar to order. He returned with four glasses each containing a cocktail of all four choices: beer, gin, cider, whisky – a mixture that none of them likes, yet all of them had collectively chosen. That was forty years ago, now I have seen this plausible, but unworkable, scheme in action and it stinks as badly as that awful cocktail. It is the system used to ‘elect’ those anonymous, but very well paid, people whom we call MEPs and it is the basis of Spanish ‘democracy’.

Recently my half-Spanish grandson was amazed when I said that I had written to my MP about some aspect of immigration. He seemed unable to understand the concept and told me that you could not do that in Spain. I assumed that he just did not understand, after all he is young. But he is right, it is just not done. In Spain you are represented by a cocktail of people drawn from the parties who stood for election in your particular state, province or whatever, there is no single representative for your area.

Now, I am not saying that the British democracy is perfect:  far from it, turnout for elections is depressingly poor and respect for politicians and the system they operate in is discouragingly low. However, we do have representatives who hold surgeries in order to hear the views of their constituents and we can write to or email our MP. What’s more, in my experience, they do respond – it is a major part of their job. I wonder what the Spanish congress members and our MEPs do with their time.

There is more. Spain is a Eurozone country so monetary affairs are effectively in the hands of the EU. Other governmental responsibilities are delegated to the various states or autonomies which comprise the country (Galicia, Catalonia, Andalucía, etc) and those responsibilities include health and education. What does this leave for central government? Not much: just things like defence, foreign policy and transport. So, the power of parliament in Spain is severely limited. It is interesting then that regions like Catalonia and the Basque country are demanding ‘complete’ autonomy so that they can attach themselves directly to the mothership: the European Union.