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!

Am I an Oxford intellectual?

Just the other day I cycled to the gymnasium as usual for a bout of physical stimulation and later that same day I attended a packed meeting in the nearby Oxford University School of Governance for mental stimulation. This, together with my work as an Oxford guide and slavishly following live music in pubs, etc, etc, forms the pattern of my life whilst residing in this stimulating ‘city of dreaming towers’.

The caricature of an Oxford intellectual has many versions though there is usually a bicycle involved, also a scarf, a gown and a smattering of other-worldliness. At that meeting in the School of Governance there were six academics each presenting their EU funded social science projects. Though professors at the University they were all fairly young, nicely balanced between the sexes, skilled PowerPointers, shockingly articulate and terribly enthusiastic. There were no gowns to be seen, but I did find their projects other-worldly. One presenter stated that the great thing about European Research Council funding was that it allowed you to get on with what you wanted to do: his project was to determine exactly when chickens and pigs and dogs became domesticated. I am not quite sure who needs this data or who in the EU decided to fund this arcane subject or why, but I was equally puzzled by most of the other projects. I am sure that they are of interest to the multinational Oxford teams working on them, I just don’t seem to have the intellect needed to appreciate their importance.

When I first arrived in Oxford I presumed that the academics of the University and the city council would be politically conservative. I was so wrong.  The current make-up of Oxford city council is heavily dominated by Labour (35 out of 48) and not a Conservative in sight. Also, during the years spent lurking on the fringes of Oxford academia I could not help but observe its leftward leanings which is seemingly innate and usually assumed. This seems to indicate to me that I am losing my intellectuality, if I ever had any, with the advancing years.

Recently the Adam Smith Institute published a survey showing that this leftward tendency  that I have observed in Oxford seems to exist throughout academia – only 12% of academics tend to conservatism! When the report surfaced the media Rottweilers immediately suggested a link with intelligence. Not so, said the survey. The top 5% in intelligence rating in the country are said to be slightly to the right – in common with the population as a whole. Since the latter includes me, the evidence is mounting that I am clearly not an Oxford intellectual even though I ride a bicycle.

What interests, and worries, me is why this strong and unrepresentative bias amongst academics should exist. There are many theories. One is that it is a conspiracy. The left, unable to achieve power through the ballot box, inveigled themselves into institutions, including academia, and then took care to keep conservatives out.  However, one insightful friend believes that socialism dominates because the academics are idealists (which squares well with unwordliness, I suppose). Meanwhile a Spanish friend just completing his doctorate in Oxford states quite bluntly that it is simply a pretence. My own view is that it is guilt. Let me explain. Academia is a reasonably well paid and respected occupation and well buffered from the vicissitudes of the economy. Unconsciously aware of this they rationalise their guilt into a desire for a fairer society where everyone could enjoy similar status and stability. Meanwhile, they are well aware of the horrifying results of imposed socialism in Russia, China, etc, so they really wish to maintain the status quo: especially the existence of a conservative government that can be safely criticised from the high cliffs of academia with little fear of the outbreak of revolution they pretend to eschew.

In conclusion you can undoubtedly conclude that I am not an Oxford intellectual and I would be grateful if you would ensure that this blog does not reach any academic in-tray. In the past week or so I have attended lectures on: artificial intelligence, global warming, corruption, populism, Brexit, aging and, of course, the point at which dogs were domesticated. I would be devastated if denied my intellectual stimulation in Oxford. What could I do instead: read the Guardian, rejoin the Labour Party, retire to Stow-on-the-Wold, migrate to the New World, regress to teenage and have my mind reshaped by academics, volunteer for the one way trip to Mars, or simply welcome the onset of dementia?

Exciting news in the colourful world of squirrels

In an earlier blog I disclosed conversations I had with French and Spanish red squirrels, and recently there has been a surprise twist to the vexed question of grey squirrel immigration involving none other than the Great Protector of redness, Prince Charles.

The Great Protector is the founder of the grand Squirrel Accord which states in its website that ‘Grey squirrels need controlling because they are causing major economic, social and environmental damage to the broadleaved woodlands of the United Kingdom. The grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) was introduced to the UK from North America in 1876 and its population has grown rapidly since then. The problem of grey squirrels was first recognised in 1930 when a law was passed making it illegal to release a grey squirrel into the wild.’

The Squirrel Accord points out that the freedom of movement granted to these interlopers has brought with it the pox which is spread by the greys and kills the reds. You may also recall from the earlier blog that French red squirrel accused the greys of ‘breeding like rabbits’: a point which has clearly been taken up by the Great Protector.

Squirrel Times recently reported that the Great Protector ‘is supporting government-backed plans to sterilise grey squirrels to protect native reds and save millions of broadleaf trees. The oral contraceptive, lasting several years, would result in a population crash, reducing numbers by more than 90 per cent from 3.5 million to fewer than 300,000, scientists believe. Prince Charles favours the idea partly because it is a humane alternative to culling. No grey squirrels would be killed under the scheme but the contraceptive, which could be concealed in chocolate spread, would prevent millions of births.’

I contacted French red squirrel about this news, he was aware of it and appalled that chocolate spread would be made available to the greys and not the indigenous reds. On the contraceptive issue he thought that culling was the least that the greys deserved for “coming over here and killing our trees”. Spanish squirrel was more restrained. He welcomed any move that strengthened the brotherhood of squirrels but he also felt that chocolate spread should be available to all squirrels though the contraceptive element must be optional. He praised the efforts of the Great Protector but was critical of his continued ownership of vast swathes of forest which he stated should be transferred to the Squirrel Brotherhood to be operated as a not-for-profit collective.

Oxford: housing, truth, Trump and global warming

There is no doubt that Oxford is a strange place: rare, desirable, bubbly, historic, intellectual, expensive, etc. Regarding the latter, on most of my tours I provide a short introduction stating that “I’m Rob Walters and I live in north-central Oxford where the rich and famous of this city live.” Then I pause for effect, before confessing that I am not rich or famous and live in a small flat. Dependent on reaction I then turn to my latest shocking housing report. When I first started guiding at least a decade ago I could shock my groups by telling them that a house in my area had recently sold for more than two million pounds. That was more than a decade ago and there has been some inflation since then. My latest example is a nine bedroom detached house in Crick Road which has recently sold for £10,400,000! Some inflation.

To re-establish my own credibility as a guide I go on to explain that you could buy my whole block of flats for that money and still have plenty of change. I also sometimes add that I do not know who lives in these obscenely priced mansions, but that is becoming less true. Recently, in one of my local pubs, I fell into conversation with a garrulous builder who told me that he was living in a big place in (highly desirable) Park Town. But his residence was temporary: the house had been rented for a year or so to provide accommodation for a team of workers who were renovating and extending the house next door. That house, he told me, had been bought by...can you guess...a football player! Furthermore, I have been told of someone nearby who downsized by selling their expensive home to a character who made a fortune from running an on-line gambling concern! And this is the area once occupied by the, so called, ‘Dons’ of Oxford in the late 19^th century.

Another view of the city is provided by a meeting of Skeptics in the Pub. It was a Tuesday night and the theme of that evening’s talk was science: particularly controversial science such as climate change and genetically modified crops. Now many pubs are lucky to get any visitors at all that early in the week, yet the St Aldate’s Tavern upstairs room was rammed full of people. Even standing space was in very short supply. And all for a talk on science, though it turned out to be a little more.

The speaker was Mark Lynham, a reformed GM crop destroyer and self labelled ‘environmentalist’. Mark told us that he had studied physics as an undergraduate. Presumably unable to procure a decent job in that world he travelled and on the shores of Lake Titicaca had a supreme awakening that launched his career as an ‘environmentalist’. In this guise he first became a leading opponent of genetic modification of crop plants, then a global warming evangelist. Another awakening followed when Mark realised that all of the facts underscoring his belief in the evils of GM crops were not scientific facts at all! He checked the science and became a proponent of GM, apologising for his earlier, ill-informed actions and determined to make amends. And through this he became a true defender of truth in science: even to the extent of attacking the holy green grails of organic food production and the misguided preference for ‘renewable’ energy production over nuclear. The latter is very dear to my heart as we, in Spain, look with weary resignation over the encroaching forest of windgens uglifying the beauty of our nearby mountains.

As I write this blog, no self-respecting speaker in Oxford is able to conduct a session without having a dig at Trump. And of course Mark did dig. But, in addition to the usual rants against the new President of America he tried to solve the outstanding mystery: just how and why did this millionaire, hotel owning, reality TV host get selected as the ‘most powerful man on earth’. And here he fell back on his original theme to develop an answer. Basically, many people do not believe the ‘experts’ anymore, they do not think that they are capable of speaking the truth. And of course we can all think of examples that substantiate that belief – the opposition to GM crops being one. And then along comes someone who people feel they know (from TV), an apparently self-made man, a man of great confidence who is seemingly a visionary providing simple solutions to complex problems, hope to the hopeless and jobs to redundant coal miners.

I think that Mark has matured with age, though some label him a turncoat who is creating a new career through his support for GM. I do not agree with all of his environmental beliefs, yet it is refreshing to hear realistic answers even when they do not fit the bill of ‘saving the planet’. He has no doubts over the reality of global warming and its causes, yet when asked if the Paris agreement, now under threat from denier Trump’s zeal, would really make a difference to climate change, he said no! What was making change, he argued, were the moves already in place to replace coal with cleaner sources, in which he even included fracking. He said, I think with pride, that there were now coal-less days in the UK: days when no coal was burned to produce electricity. That’s nice, except, of course, for the miners.

On the following evening I attended a talk on space exploration in which it was proposed that Donald Trump pilots the first manned flight to Mars. Not really, actually, surprisingly, he wasn’t mentioned.

Why didn’t I protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump?

The obvious answer to this question is simply that I did not think that any protest of mine would have any effect. But perhaps that is not good enough: after all, I am a protester at heart and can demonstrate that by two stories from the past.

At the peak of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa I boarded a bus bound for London then joined a huge throng converging on South Africa House. Our protest march was supposed to be peaceful but, because our march was halted for many hours, tempers flared, stones were thrown and the police moved in. In my rush to escape the violence I narrowly avoided being struck by an enraged and hatless policeman whirling around within the dense crowd whilst wielding long pole torn, no doubt, from one of our placards,. And, as I finally emerged from the melee, I was almost trampled underfoot by a large police horse, its rider urging it into a gallop towards the centre of the aggression.

A few years later, a small group of us attempted to take Margaret Thatcher to court by accusing her of transgressing the Geneva Conventions through possession of nuclear arms – which inevitably, of course, would kill and maim non-combatants if used.

I certainly cannot claim that my contribution to those protests changed the world, but perhaps every little bit does help. On a more positive note I was also a keen protester for the return of real ale to the pubs of Suffolk. This was a success and much more fun – but hardly as important.

I do not like Trump. And I certainly do not like many of his extreme proclamations. Nonetheless, stimulated by his coming presidency, I did sample one of his television programmes. I was not amused or impressed by the hard talking, the humiliation of contestants and the explicit bullying (keenly supported, by the way, by the awful, toadying, Piers Morgan). I would not have given Trump my vote and surmise that I would have grudgingly voted for Mrs Clinton in order to keep him out.

But I did not have a vote, and that’s the point. The Americans chose this man as their leader using their own democratic system of presidential election. And that, of course, is worlds away from the situation of South Africa in the 1960s where people could not vote solely based on the colour of their skin.  I now await with keen interest to observe what will evolve from the USA’s choice and hope very much that it will be good for those whom he claims to represent and also for the UK and the world at large.

Meanwhile, I do strongly object to the conflation of Trump’s success and the Brexit vote in the UK. The connections are tenuous to say the least and the issues quite, quite different. Of course if you are eager to find links in order to undermine Brexit by association with Trump, you will. I attended an interesting lecture at Oxford University’s fine new Centre of Governance last week. It was presented by an American professor of Indian extraction and attempted to take a more nuanced view of the then President-elect under the titles: Tantrumps, Trumponics and Trump over the Globe.  It was interesting and thought provoking. Afterwards I had the misfortune to exit the building with a lady who was unmoved by the talk and thought that the election of Trump was a step towards the end of the world (though she did not enter the debate itself). In our short interaction she moved on to attack the outcome of the Brexit referendum at which point I announced that I, in common with the majority of the UK, had voted to leave. This brought an uncompromising, alarming and wholly irrational response: “A vote for Brexit was a vote for Trump”. At which point I left.

We cannot see into the future, most predictions turn out to be quite wrong: Trump and Brexit are outstanding proofs of that. However, there is a possible future where Trumponics and ‘America First’ lead to world-wide recession or, even worse, to war. How would I then respond to a question from one of my grandchildren: “What did you do about it Rob?” My response would have to be: “Nothing, because I could not influence it. But I did help to save real ale.”

Paris is not France: travelling perspectives

Think of France and the French for a moment. What images, thoughts and ideas fill your mind? For me it used to be Brigitte Bardot, chic, fashion, cheeses, onions, snails, frogs, crepes, champagne, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Bordeaux. Yes: sex food and wine. And that accent. Is there anything sexier than a beautiful woman speaking French whilst eating snails?

Margaret and I have probably seen more of France than most people, including the French. We take our time travelling through the country four times a year on average. We usually make three or four overnight stops and on our last trip down to Spain we spent nearly two weeks in Brittany. And we do try to take a somewhat different route each time, rarely parking our motor caravan in the same town or village.

We have grown to love the country, though not through sex, food, and wine, rather through its rivers, its architecture – the churches and chateaux – and the varied country scenery. In fact we find the food generally expensive and poor and the wine poor if not expensive. I make no comment on sex except to say that we find the villages and towns that we grace with our overnight presence rather dull (with some exceptions of course: see this blog). So dull that we look forward to a night out in Dover (we have a local there called Blakes) or our first night in Spain.

Usually we begin to search for somewhere to park up for the night as the light fades. And generally, though not always, we end up in run down places with many vacant shops and restaurants. Worse still the eateries that are open close early. On our most recent trip we stopped at Prades in the Pyrenees.  We left with memories of difficult parking and narrow streets; of almost becoming accidental extras in a film about Pablo Casals - a famous Spanish cellist who lived in the town; of the many dreadlocked dog owners; and of at least three restaurants, all open, all deserted. We were excited to find that one of the restaurants offered traditional French cuisine, but calmed down when we saw that Elvis Burger was on the menu. We ate alone in a pizzeria.

The second stop was at a place called Riom just to the north of Clermont Ferrand in mid France. We parked near the railway station which was somewhat noisy and walked into the historic town, which was mostly dead and had very few eateries. We ended up in a hotel restaurant which offered a reasonable menu and there we consumed well-done (as requested), tough, steak accompanied by exceptionally well-done chips. Unusually, in our experience, there were other people eating there, all sitting alone.

The third stop was at Senlis, not far north of Paris. This was completely different. There were many shops and restaurants, all open. There were dogs but their owners were not dreadlocked and their animals well-groomed. Golly, there was even a charity shop in Senlis, plus a complex and commanding cathedral, together with charming streets boasting warm, busy bars. We ate in a Michelin Starred restaurant and were asked if we had a reservation!! The food, surprisingly, was not too expensive, but it was not too good.

The point of this blog is this: France is a fraud. Just as London is not England, Paris (and its surroundings) is not France. Yet our images of these two countries are often formed by the capitals. And, given our own experience, it is no surprise that the voting pattern varies so much between the big cities and the remote countryside, just as it does across the north/south divide in England.

Over the years we believe that the contrast in France has increased. In the early days we did find traditional restaurants with good food, chequered table clothes and waiters who knew themselves to be our superiors. Now we are more likely to find pizza and kebab take-aways. Still, we are thankful that the rivers, the chateaux, the churches and that delicious accent all survive.