Land's End to John O'Groats may 2017

I have just committed myself to cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats this coming May. The commitment is nailed down by opening a JustGiving page . LEJOG is rather iconic and it will please me (I hope) to ride the length of the country. It feels like a target to pass after which one could be condescending or dismissive but nonetheless one to aspire to. Being 60+ helps to relieve me of any sense of competitiveness. I know it will be fairly slow and that will be partly because I am carrying a lot of stuff and partly because I am no great athlete and so on. i want to do some things to get in shape before setting off but i know that anything like a serious training schedule is unlikely to happen and if I get fit it will probably be en route. I would like to place updates here but as this site has virtually zero traffic (thanks google!), i may have to prioritise the Just giving site.

August Diary

Mito, Alcantara Gorge, near Etna, Sicily

31^st August 2016

Sicily is at once a redolent sensuous present and a layering of pasts that demand attention from even the most indolent passers through.

We are in a small house in an estate that rambles along the Alcantara a sweet watered river that cuts through and tumbles over the grey volcanic rock spewed out in the distant past by Etna our ever present smoking companion.

We are not alone. This is a working estate. Fruit trees must be irrigated, animals attended, paths extended. There is a working day – brought forward to accommodate the heat.

At some hour too early to be fully conscious the thump thump thumping of the irrigation brings relief to the parched trees. As you drift off again the workforce arrive, starting the ancient tractor breaking your slumber with a judder and a whiff of diesel. The workforce converse soto voce. The patient dogs, there are three, whine and bark. The sun is turning the sky red. Who would want to laze in bed at the beginning of such a day?

Breakfast on the narrow terrace fruit, bread and coffee while the three dogs and a thin cat hope for crumbs. We reflect on our visit to Taormina and its breathtaking theatre built by the Greeks for plays and modified by the Romans to make room for wild animals. The place where an American tourist stops to compliment Jo on her choice of travelling outfit. Taormina where Lawrence wrote Lady C and, I fancy, given the spring in the grounds of his villa, where he wrote

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

After breakfast, time to walk down to the river not to drink but to bathe, plunging and holding the rocks to avoid being carried away – then more relaxing and eating and reading. Is it ok to laze away the day? Should we be up and gardening or out and absorbing culture?

Well the dogs seem happy to laze except that one has disappeared. The rangy brown male has gone leaving his female lookalike and a more heavyset black female – like a tall bull terrier.

When we decide eventually to walk up the valley to see the Gorge, the female dogs come too.

It is as we climb a path up the hill that we see the snake still on the path partly shaded by an overhanging fig.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
And she was quite black and very long and...

The black dog leapt and the snake slithering at speed made it through the fence to the orchard and in a moment the black dog was upon it – breaking its back – worrying it, and worrying it so long that we left it and carried on.

And carrying the snake in our heads

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And not having Lawrence’s education there was shock and sadness at the death of the snake but an awe, an admiration for the dog so decisive, focussed, competent. And in a way the dog stood for a simpler connectedness than I can have, just being and acting in the moment.

And as we continued on our way the black dog caught up, her belly hanging low.

At the Gorge we found the beach and the tourists and, fast asleep on the sand, the male dog. We paddled in the river, took our photos, woke him and walked together home.

Mito 2016

Panhard Dyna

My Panhard before it became mine

Well something interesting happened today. I went to the hairdresser for my (always somewhat tardy haircut). It is always hard to get motivated when your hair is definitely on its way out but still hanging on in pathetic denial of its destiny. Anyway I was at the hairdresser and a man walked in - not as he explained for a haircut - even though as he offered "he might need one" - no he wanted to present the man with a Panhard with a book.
When I have my hair cut, I am always asked to remove my glasses, so my vision was via a mirror and hazy but I asked the man to leave his name and address so that I could thank him and he presented me with a Panhard Dyna "Manuel d'atelier" in English - something so rare I didn't even know it existed.
Owning an old car can seem like a daunting proposition but as I said to the hairdresser "more things go wrong but they are easier to fix".
Truth is she was profoundly uninterested "Didn't your car come with a manual?" she asked. Wondering perhaps why anyone would be so pleased at the gift of a dirty old book. This isn't typical, usually hairdressers attempt to respond to my no doubt oft repeated reflections on hair loss or whatever it is I happen to be doing. Just as I try to remember what my plans are when they ask whether I
am going out this Saturday. Still she did a good job and we ended with the ritual offering of the mirror to the back of my head - while I scrabbled for my glasses and responded positively to the "How does your hair feel at the back".
Now the Panhard Dyna Z is a rare car so what are the chances of there being two independently owned ones in one small Yorkshire town? Well there is another one in this town so in due course I shall contact the owner.
This could become a Panhard blog - not very attractive to the general reader but to the enthusiast a source of little bits of information that might help in that endless problem solving quest that old car ownership becomes.
An example from this week is "starting". On my Panhard after switching on the ignition, you pull a handle that engages a gear and at a crucial point switches on the starter motor. Lately the starter motor has not switched on - so not expecting much I squirted it with WD-40 - the car starts. Today the WD-40 doesn't work so I think "perhaps tapping it with something will loosen it up" - success.
Next time however both procedures may fail and so comes exploration, undoing bolts cleaning things. hoping you don't drop some vital part somewhere you can't find it and then putting it back together.

The joy of an old vehicle is that things are less likely to fail comprehensively more likely to be repairable with a cloth or a file or innovated in some way. On the other hand taking it to a garage or expecting a new part to be available are far less possible than with a modern car.
Panhard owners club

Want your own try McPheat

A Kind of Anniversary

The fifteenth of February is not normally a day I think about, but it is an anniversary. On the fifteenth of February 1971 the UK converted from using pounds shillings and pence to using our current decimal currency. On the same day I left home and set off for what would now be called a "Gap Year" adventure.
It was quite an adventure, taking in

• France
• Germany
• Austria
• Yugoslavia
• Greece
• Turkey
• Iran
• Afghanistan
• Pakistan
• India
• Nepal
• and eventually most of those countries in reverse order.

Of course as one's past becomes historical so people begin to think they know it because they have read about it. I guess  my own memories could be coaxed and distorted by the reflections of others. One thing that is perhaps hard to get across is the air of optimism, the idea that "the old order is rapidly changing", the sense that (predominantly) young people had a lever on the world that might make it progressively a better place.
Young people then were, as far as I can work out, no more stupid or naive than they are now. We were however hopeful and I think for the few who went to Universities this hope was partly fuelled by the possibility of getting appropriate jobs (not that life was without struggles) when we eventually came down to earth.
My link of the day is to Muther Grumble the Alternative Newspaper that in some ways summed up being a young person in the North East of England at the beginning of the 70s. 

Still here

The view from Shady Cottage has changed dramatically courtesy of a major house builder or as they call themselves builder of Homes. A herd of "anywhere houses".
There is a tendency for people to try to make their online persona less of a boring crochety old loser than they are in real life. Of course the true bcol may shine through. Some say that it is wrong to present ourselves as thinner faster more interesting sexy and successful than we are. The thought being that this will demoralise others. My excuse for presenting myself as more interesting than I am in reality is that you are here to be inspired and entertained not to conduct some kind of virtual social work.
Despite three years of retirement I am still ridiculously busy so much so that I neglect my faithful online audience - Where have you been these last 20 months? I hear you (yes that's you) say. Well real life still intrudes and tiresome as it might seem that is what I keep escaping into.