Good reasons to be a naked mole rat

If I were a bird, I think that I would like to be a great-crested grebe. Smart looking fellow and spends a good deal of time underwater as well as above it – which must be interesting. Recently, Margaret and I went on holiday from our base in Spain. I know what you are thinking, you’re thinking that we are on holiday whilst we are in Spain anyway, but that’s not true. There is work to do on the huerto and the house: crops to plant and weed, olive trees to trim and hoe, irrigation to sort out and things to mend about the house. Anyway, our holiday started in Daroka, Aragon a unique town nestling in a narrow valley the ridges of each side being capped with ancient walls interspersed with Mudejar towers and reminding me of the crests on the backs of certain lizards and Margaret of the Great Wall of China.

Next day we moved on to visit Gayocanta Laguna, an interior salt lake, in the hope of seeing water birds, maybe even a crested grebe. But, alas, the extensive salt lake was parched, it was in fact salt – so no water birds at all. We moved on spending the night in Utrillas, an old mining town, where we dined on yet another ‘menu del dia’: these are three course meals with bread wine and coffee for a fixed cost, in this case just sixteen Euros apiece. With beer before and wine during our subject range became extensive, even incorporating the vexed question of consciousness. Margaret argued strongly with me that consciousness could not simply be something that evolved by Darwinian survival, there must be something else - though she did not know what that might be.

For me that debate surfaced my usual question: do other animals have consciousness. I believe they do to some extent and that extent may well evolve with geological time. A dog, on whose face a disc has been painted will, it is claimed, try to remove it when passing a mirror. Cats train their owners to provide them with food in trade for rationed affection. Chimps like a good joke and grebes are very much aware that other grebes may steal their dinner. Naked mole rats meanwhile may have a group consciousness. These little chaps are certainly not smart looking fellows, but you might want to be one. Take longevity for example other animals of their size rarely survive for a year or so whereas the naked mole rat clocks up over thirty! Mole rats are rarely lonely: they live below ground in tribes of as many as two hundred in service to their queen; a bit like ants. It gets a bit crowded down there so the good old mole rat has developed a plant like ability to live without oxygen - for up to five hours! They are pretty much immune to pain and to cancer and have no worries about having their coats stolen to make into trousers or being asked difficult questions in referenda.

So there you have it: either a short life on and below the watery waves as a grebe or a long one in the warm - dark burrows of a naked mole rat nest. You have consciousness, make your choice.

Easter letter from Spain 2017

As I write this my feet are tapping uncontrollably to the beat of some thirty drums: three or four big bass ones, the rest much smaller snare drums : bombos and tambores in Spanish. And during the pauses as the drum leader picks out one amateur drummer or another for helpful instruction my village is alive with the sounds of chattering children, barking dogs and parking cars. Yes, my village of La Fresneda, so quiet for the past two weeks that you could hear the house martin chicks demanding their dinners from the nests below the eaves, so peaceful that arrival of the refuse collection lorry is an event, so deserted that it is a shock to see someone emerge from one of the upper houses - my village has been invaded! It is Semana Santa –the week of the saints – Easter.

Tomorrow, at exactly midday on Good Friday, that drum troupe, swollen to one hundred or more will ‘break the hour’ with a thunderous and ecstatic roll, then continue to drum and parade for a few hours in the village square. Then after a deserved rest they will gather at the main church near my home and lead a procession through the narrow, winding streets to finish at the smaller church on the lower level of the village. There is no let up in the drumming. There are only two practice sessions, but in between these drumming can be heard from a house here, another there. Little boys and girls bang on tiny and tinny drums in the streets. Knots of people will form at street corners and shout joyfully at each other.  And all of this will also be taking place in most of the villages, towns and cities of our area – the major event being held at Calanda where film crews temporarily removed from the border with contested Gibraltar will capture the breaking of the hour by a thousand drums.

On Saturday our village will be invaded again as the streets fill with stalls for the annual antiques fair and on Sunday for its arts and crafts follow on. There will be nowhere left to park and the staff of the two bars will be driven to near exhaustion serving food and drink to the many visitors. Then the village will slowly empty, the drums will be stored away until next year, the blinds of the houses will be lowered and the families will leave their hereditary homes and head back to their real residences in Barcelona. The stray cats will emerge timidly from their homes in deserted houses, the martins and swallows will continue ridding the sky of insects and the long term residents will stroll along to the two village shops hoping that the shelves will not be entirely swept bare of goods. Then silence will descend on the sinuous streets of sleepy La Fresneda, broken only by the bells signalling the slowly passing hours from the church and town hall and the occasional passage of a tractor on its way to the surrounding olive groves and almond plantations.

Which do I like best? Well, the quiet periods need to be shattered at times, and the shattering should quickly return to peacefulness. This is the Spain I love: its vibrancy and variability, the way it has plucked the fun part out of the old religious festivals leaving the church going to the church goers, the inherent friendliness and inquisitiveness of its rural folk, the love of the city folk for their villages. Long live the difference between this and my home country, though not the difference over Gibraltar where the folks who live there clearly wish to remain British – in or out of the EU.

Off to Spain via a Dover micropub

Here we go again. It’s late March and I’ve just planted 300 little trees to create a hedge at the top of our field, planted seed potatoes, carrots, broad beans, parsnips, lettuces and onions in another part of the field that I’ve fenced off and Margaret calls the allotment, then left them all to their fate.

First stop, as ever, was Dover where we just missed Vera Lynne singing to long dead soldiers, but made a wonderful discovery on the way to our ‘local’, Blakes. I happened to glance down a side road and there spotted a pub called The Lanes: a micropub. I was so excited, I have read a great deal about this recent development in the pub world, but had never visited one. I loved it, Margaret was not impressed. We were welcomed almost immediately by the daughter of the owner who told us proudly that The Lanes was the 100^th micropub to start in the UK and there are now more than 250 of them (none of which are in Oxford regrettably). She talked me through the six cask ales on offer, whilst we viewed the casks themselves through a large window letting into a sectioned off part of the room where they lay cooling in their stillage.

The entire pub itself had previously been a gambling arcade and was about the size of our lounge in Stow-on-the-Wold. There was no bar as such, just a few high tables for leaners, plus sofas for loungers. The walls were decorated in wooden green men of the forest and hundreds of colourful beer mats from the brews that they had already sold. There was also a small bookshelf stuffed with beer-oriented books. The clientele was, let’s say, comfortably mature; the atmosphere relaxed and friendly. We chatted to a bearded, grey-haired man who had worked for years on the ferries, one week on, one week off doing twelve hour shifts – what an odd life. Margaret was approached by a woman who admired her coat and shared her name. She turned out to be Irish, but a true convert to real ale and her partner, who was a Dover man, who gave us a history of the pub scene there.

The landlord, an ex-train driver from London, came to join us. He had learned from his daughter that we were from the Cotswolds and told us proudly that he came originally from Witney. He then regaled us with an overview of the micropub scene: telling us what good times they provide with their policy of serving real ale and cider, no music or meals, friendly greetings, traditional pub atmosphere and so on. There were now four of them in Dover, he said proudly, and the owners were a community in themselves, sharing ideas and their private lives.

The micropub is good news for those of us that yearn for this sort of thing. Whilst many of the larger pubs are closing, they, with their low overheads and consequently cheaper drinks are thriving. I am lucky in Oxford, living near to some really good, fairly traditional, pubs that all serve cask ales. Nonetheless I would welcome a pub like The Lanes but realise that it is not at all likely. Property prices are so high and rentals similar so that the concept just does not apply there. As to Stow-on-the-Wold - it really has too many pubs anyway - though a micropub would provide a welcome respite from the same old beers and, perhaps, a welcome.

What a send off The Lanes was to a man leaving England for weeks of deprivation, forced to drink fizzy ice-cold beer and cheap wine in bars where the inmates all speak in a foreign languageJ. And when I return I will be leaving the EU behind me!