Rio 2016

I greeted Rio 2016 without much enthusiasm. A bit like I'm greeting life at the moment. For what's the point? This will surely be the last Olympics when we can enter as Team GB, when a Scottish tennis player will carry the Union Jack at the head of our team during the opening ceremony. It will be the last Olympics before government austerity bites and all the sports funding dies out. From now on, it will just be shitty old England failing dismally and getting nowhere unless your parents are rich enough to send you to Eton with all the Saudi sheiks and Russian oligarchs.

How we all long to return to London 2012, when the nation still embraced multiculturalism, diversity, and helping those worse off than ourselves to achieve great things. We welcomed foreigners, basked in sunshine, made our children excited, and grinned from ear to ear. Britain felt good. Britain was good. I was there at the 30th Olympiad. In Newcastle. It feels like an age ago. Everything seems to have gone wrong since.

So, with it not happening on my doorstep this time, and with me not feeling the slightest bit proud to be British right now I had decided to pretty much ignore the Olympics in Rio.

But, you know, the sight of Tom Daley in his swimming trunks does wonders for drumming up a bit of enthusiasm.

So I've been watching quite a bit of diving this week. And gymnastics. And it's given me a flicker of hope in the world. Despite the doping scandals, at least the Olympics is still a place where stupidity, madness and a whole lot of money can't win the day. Just a lot of talent and hard work. Unlike in EU referendums. Or (dreading November) American Presidential elections.

The British seem to be feeling very at home in Rio. The lousy weather, boiling hot one minute, freezing cold wind and lashing rain the next. Buildings a last-minute rush job. Nothing quite working properly. A cycle track being gaffa taped back together after a crash. A swimming pool turning lurid green. Everyone at risk from a nasty virus. It's kind of how we expected London 2012 to be. So no wonder we are well prepared for coping with adversity, and things just being a little bit rubbish.

Good luck, Team GB. I will miss you.

New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands

This was a stunning documentary about New Zealand's wildlife - batty penguins in a quagmire, prehistoric forests, nocturnal birds, giant snails, even more giant whales, cryogenic wasps (very Fortitude) and a heck of a lot of sheep. Crill vomit, abandoned eggs containing miniature dinosaurs, and farming by helicopter: things are very different on the other side of the world. New Zealand has been separated from any other land for so long that it has evolved in a different way, but without large predators, which is why it has so many flightless birds.

More dangerous is the geothermal activity bubbling under the surface, and often exploding through it. There are geysers that erupt 20 times a day. Patches of land can vanish. The Alps are still growing taller, there are slurping, sulphurous mud pools, and the city of Christchurch is still recovering from the devastating earthquake of 2009. There is also a lot of weather in New Zealand - cyclones, typhoons, seemingly endless torrential rain. It isn't called the Land of the Long White Cloud for nothing.

Christchurch Cathedral in 2006

There was also footage of the camera crew that went to film the penguins - sailing through terrifying seas (the Roaring Forties) to a remote offshore island; a lot of people with a lot of camera equipment crammed into a boat way too small for them and lacking much in the way of facilities. There was a toilet shack built on the land, but it had been commandeered by a smelly, angry sealion who was up for a fight.

A reminder of our wonderful three weeks in New Zealand ten years ago. The never-ending bush, the tropical plans, the steaming hot pools, the towering snow-covered mountains, the glaciers and reflecting lakes.

Southern Alps from the air

Lake Matheson

As for the wildlife, a lot of the animals we saw were farmed (deer being readied for venison, cheeky lambs nibbling on sauvignon grapes) or contained (kiwis in a nocturnal hut on a bird reserve). There were a lot of dead possums on the road, and a bird bone punctured one of our tyres. A cat wandered into our motel room in Franz Josef one night. Ducks begged for food at Lake Taupo, but they just seemed so terribly English. We tried to go and see the thieving keas on the road to Mount Aspiring, but the track turned to dirt and was banned for our hire car (especially a hire car lacking a spare tyre). Judging by the film footage, it looks like the keas would have wrecked the car anyway. The wildest creatures we saw - apart from a school of dolphins swimming alongside our Wellington to Picton ferry - were the cloud of sandflies at Milford Sound, who seemed determined to eat me alive. There was no time for whalewatching at Kaikoura or to stop at the glow-worm caves south of Auckland; our schedule was too pressing. For this and for so many other reasons, we would love to go back.

Too English

Seagull at Lake Taupo, also too English

Motel visitor. The English girl had drunk too much wine.

En route between Wanaka and Mount Aspiring. Too rough.

Gloom

I haven't posted for a while. I have been in post-Brexit despair. This may not be how you feel, but I do, and as this is my blog, allow me to wallow a while.

You see, I lived in my lovely York bubble, surrounded by Remainers. We've all worked or studied abroad, can speak foreign languages and love our Polish neighbours. Staying in Europe was just the obvious thing to do. We all went to vote on the 23rd of June fully aware of what we wanted and why. And then we woke up to find out that yes, York wanted to remain European, but across the UK as a whole, an extra 3.9% of voters didn't think like us. And this tiny amount was enough for the government to decide to decimate all our experiences and opportunities. We  - as part of the 48.1% - were all in tears in the school playground on Friday 24th June. The future for our children, as I feared, had been wiped out by ignorance.

Yes, ignorance. Of course, many Leave voters had true and informed reasons for their choice. But many did not. Many Leave voters had fallen for the lies about immigration and extra funding for the NHS. Many only read the “Be-leave in Britain” Sun headlines or the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the Daily Express and Mail. Many believed it was an excuse to chuck out foreigners from anywhere in the world. Many voters apparently didn’t know what the EU was in the first place, or how it might even have helped them, through the funding it has given projects in poorer areas of the UK. This alone is a grave indicator of the distance between the elite in Westminster and the realities of life in this country. Many didn't understand that, unlike in a general election, in a referendum every vote counts, so they thought it was OK to vote Leave as a protest vote against Cameron and the establishment. And because Corbyn refused to share a platform with Cameron, lots of people didn't even realise that much of the Opposition wanted people to vote Remain too. I understand Corbyn's resentment of the Tories - it's not like I can stand them either - but his behaviour struck me as arrogant. Politics is only progressive when people enter into debate together and make compromises to find solutions. 

I cannot believe – and am so upset - that the new government of Theresa May is so desperate to pursue Brexit, despite it being such a narrow win for Leave. Essentially it was a fifty-fifty vote, which gives a clear mandate neither to Remain nor to Leave; it just shows we are a country split down the middle and that there are problems with the EU, and problems in the UK. Personally, I believe it's better to stay and talk about things than run away and turn on ourselves. But whatever, as the whole Leave campaign fell apart after the referendum, with its key politicians admitting that they had no plan and that they had lied, there is now absolutely no justification for Brexit to be pursued with such vigour.  

May herself, as a supposed Remain campaigner, could stop all the “madness” (as David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, describes it) in an instant. The madness of putting our economy, our currency and so many businesses at risk, as well as our environment and important university research programmes in science and medicine. May became Prime Minister without pro-Leave opponents (or any opponents at all - there's that undemocratic EU for you!), with Leadsom leaving the race and Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in disgrace. And yet "Brexit" (apparently) has to "mean Brexit" and suddenly all the Brexiteers have key positions in the Cabinet. I realise one can argue that this is in fact a canny move by May, as she has made them put their money where their mouth is – in sorting out issues for farmers, business and foreign relations. But why do it at all? It's political suicide for whoever triggers Article 50. And if you know it will be a disaster, why go through with it? But then yesterday, May said she would gladly nuke 100,000 people at the push of a button, so why should she care two hoots about what I think about anything?

But really, Boris as Foreign Secretary? While it gets him out of the country for much of the year, it’s an embarrassment, just as Nigel Farage was a terrible representative as the face of Britain in the European Parliament.

But to be doing any of this without a vote in Parliament to back up the decision of the referendum (which was in essence advisory) or to fully investigate the legality of the situation or the constitutional issues just makes me feel so sad, lost and frustrated.

"Get over it," the Leave voters tell us. "We won." But how can I “get over” something that has such drastic and terrible consequences and that eradicates my identity as a European? And what exactly have they "won"? Pending economic catastrophe and disgusting racial hatred erupting on our streets? Some things won't change, they will find. People will still migrate to the UK, and the NHS will still have no money. For under the Tories, the poor will only get poorer, and the rights that workers earned under the care of the EU could now be stripped away from them entirely. We never “lost” our country to get back - we had control of our borders, and without EU collaboration between intelligence agencies we could be at even greater risk of terrorist attack than before.

I am feeling ignored. I don’t know what I can do to be heard. The party I have always voted for and supported is in disarray. It should be really easy to be in Opposition right now, with such a destructive and shambolic government having been in place since May last year, but there is no voice in Parliament from Labour to lambast them for what they have been doing. And this concerns me greatly. I admire many of Corbyn’s principles, but he can't win an election, with the right-wing press so determined to ridicule him. He doesn’t have the support of his own MPs, and he is too stubborn to move on. I don’t want to see navel-gazing and in-fighting when we are on the cusp of something as massive and as horrible as leaving the European Union.

So - ironically - I now want to leave my country. "Good riddance", the Leave camp will say. But I hope that in time Britain may find it needs the 48% after all.

York Says No To Brexit March

Love, Nina

North London crescent

A friend of mine regularly sees Alan Bennett from her office in Camden and in moments of boredom texts me his movements. "He just nearly got run over - again", she sighs, virtually.

Alan Bennett also features in Nick Hornby's delightful adaptation of the memoirs of North London nanny, Nina Stibbe. (The memoirs were originally letters Nina wrote to her sister.) For television, names have been changed. But in reality the fussy Scottish poet Malcolm Tanner, who turns up to have his dinner cooked for him most nights and then complains about what he is served, was Alan Bennett. The mother of Nina's wards was Mary Kay Wilmers, the editor of The London Review of Books, and their father the film maker Stephen Frears. And Ray, the man in the wheelchair that Nina's boyfriend Nunney cares for, was the son (Tom) of biographer Claire Tomalin, by then married to playwright Michael Frayn. As a link to the past, Nina Stibbe's real ward Sam Frears (Joe in the series) plays Ray. It's what Joe's Riley-Day syndrome looks like 35 years on from our 1982 setting, where he has regular and alarming bouts of extreme ill health.

All this may be rather confusing. But suffice to say, Gloucester Crescent, Camden (or Primrose Hill in postcode snobbery) is the hub of the London literati. It's Lady In The Van territory, but here seen through the eyes of a 20 year old girl from Leicester who has no idea who any of them are. (She thought she recognised Malcolm from Coronation Street.) Instead of being in awe of them she is entirely at ease, and tactless in her opinions. Nina's neuroses are instead to do with whether Nunney likes her, how not to giggle in her yoga classes, how much turkey mince to buy, how to rehome the cat, how to upgrade a bin, how to redial quickly on an old-school Bakelite phone, how to clean genitals off a pavement, and how to keep the exuberant, football loving boys safely occupied in a skip. (The boys' derision of Leicester City is of course rather ironic in 2016.) I am not sure of Nina's previous child care experience. She walks barefoot through the streets of North London, which not many would advise. Maybe it's to prepare for the boy's much feared nuclear war, or maybe the pavements were cleaner in 1982. The property prices were certainly lower. Nowadays a nanny in a similar location would have to serve spoilt bankers, Russian oligarchs or Arab sheikhs, rather than the creative core of our cultural heritage.

How to redial quickly on a phone like this?

Helena Bonham-Carter as mother George is brilliant - gruff, whimsical, rude, encouraging, dismissive, affectionate, emotionless but (deep down) extremely caring. The boys are delightful, Nina suitably kooky and cross, but Malcolm isn't quite Alan Bennetty enough for me, if Bennetty can be a word in NW1.

Some of this literary circle obviously rubbed off, as Nina, after a confused and cautious introduction to Thomas Hardy by the more erudite Nunney, eventually goes off to study English. And write a book or two.

North London is one of my spiritual homes. Alan Bennett or Michael Frayn are the neighbours of my dreams. Admittedly, my actual next-door neighbours in North London were a loud Brazilian family, ten Middle Eastern blokes crammed into a one-bedroom flat and an elderly man with behaviour issues who used to stand at his window in his pants, watching me on our roof terrace. But this was Crouch End, not Primrose Hill.

Not that I would cook dinner for Alan Bennett if he was that picky. Maybe that's why people keep trying to run him over - they served him tinned tomatoes in his Hunters stew and couldn't hack the criticism.

Aviary, London Zoo from the Camden Canal

Primrose Hill - those beautiful views over the zoo and the City of London, and the Greek restaurant Limonia, where we shared many wonderful meals with our dear friend Tony, who died recently.  The charming cafes tumble down to the markets and canals of grittier Camden Lock. But up on the hill, the space is light and airy. It's its own special world.

Of course Nina and Nunney, once married, settled in Crouch End. Just like all the good people. And most of the cast of EastEnders.

Child Friendly Holiday Review: Eurocamp at Camping Les Fontaines, Lathuile, near Annecy, France

We were slightly nervous about our half-term trip to France. Firstly, our amazing time at Bella Italia in Lake Garda was going to be a hard act to follow. Secondly, France was on strike. For the week prior to our trip the news was full of footage of cars queuing at empty petrol pumps, piles of burning tyres blockading ports and oil refineries, and police tear-gassing crowds of angry workers.

We tried not to worry. After all, we were flying to Geneva, which meant we could possibly skirt around French air space and its striking air traffic controllers. And the ever organised Swiss would surely have sorted themselves some petrol. And we'd be unlikely to need more than a tank for a week as we were staying only an hour's drive from the airport.

But then we read this article telling us that as of May 1st, it had become illegal for EU nationals to drive a non-EU registered car into the EU. In other words, British people are no longer allowed to drive a Swiss hire car into France. Luckily, when we rang the hire car desk at Geneva airport to tell them our plans they assured us that they could give us a car with German number plates and all would be well. And it was. Frankly, this new law must be affecting pretty much anybody renting a car in Geneva since it's almost entirely surrounded by France. As for the rest of the unrest, we saw only a couple of petrol pumps without fuel in the whole week. And no riots or demonstrations. Life seemed to be continuing as normal despite what had been in the press. We did have a power cut in the middle of our final night, but it was limited to the campsite.

We chose to go to Annecy simply because in the whole of the French-speaking world, Geneva was the only place we could find affordable flights to during May half-term. We paid £278 total for the three of us travelling with EasyJet from Manchester. I knew that good weather in the Alps couldn't be guaranteed, but I also recalled visiting Annecy with my family 30 years ago, and spending the whole time in boiling sunshine. Surely whatever happened, it couldn't rain every single day?

Well, yes, it could, unfortunately.

At the start of the week, the forecast was grim for the first couple of days, but improving from then on. But every morning, the forecast would change, and the magical moment of the skies finally brightening would be shifted on another 24 hours. In the meantime, the rain continued to fall, steadily and miserably. It hammered on our roof all night, keeping us awake. It turned the grass in front of our caravan to mud. It meant we were trying to entertain a five-year-old who was desperate to go out and make friends with other children all stuck indoors. It meant we couldn't dry our clothes or air our towels. And with only a blanket to sleep under and a single temperamental gas heater to warm the caravan, it was very chilly at night.

It's only seeing the news footage from Central France and Paris since we've been home that we've realised we got off lightly. There were no floods in our corner of France, and for that we must be grateful. Living in York, we endured a winter under water, and our city is still trying to recover from the aftermath of the Boxing Day storms.

All week, we had hopes for Friday. Friday was when the sun would come, said everybody. But Friday morning dawned just as damp and misty as the rest of them. We slumped into our chairs, defeated. How on earth could we fill yet another day of this? But mid-afternoon, there was a welcome break in the clouds and we headed down to the beach at Doussard. And by bedtime, we saw the Alps above our caravan at last! Just in time to go home early the next morning.

Sunny Doussard beach!

Looking towards Les Fontaines from Doussard beach

The snow-topped Alps appear at last above our caravan!

Mille feuille and religieuse from the bakery in Duingt

There was nothing we could do about the weather, so we tried to make the best of it. The good news is that in France, even when it is raining, the food and wine still taste delicious. We sat on our decking under the Eurocamp umbrella sharing a bottle of Haute-Savoie Apremont while the rain cascaded around us. And we did manage to see some of the local area between the showers. We didn't think it wasn't worth going on longer drives to places like Chambery or Chamonix in case we got there to find the mountains hidden by raincloud, especially as our five year old hasn't outgrown the "Are we there yet?" phase. But there are plenty of towns dotted round the lake which are worth a visit, Annecy especially. The Tuesday market was in full swing when we arrived, and it was wonderful to sample the vast array of cheese and olives, to smell the mounds of macarons and fresh herbs, and see the stalls laden only with local rather than imported produce - asparagus, artichokes, turnips, tomatoes. We also enjoyed Talloires, a small village of exclusive hotels and restaurants with eye-watering prices. How the wealthy spend their holidays on Lake Annecy.

Annecy

Talloires

The beaches around the lake were deserted. It wasn't yet summer season, but nobody else would have been foolish enough to visit them in our weather. Some beaches charge entry in July and August - how gorgeous they must be with the sun beaming down on them, with people leaping off the diving boards into the water and tanning themselves on the grassy lawns. We blew bubbles from the boardwalks and watched the paragliders spinning in the air above us. The paragliders, at least, come out in most weathers.

View towards Duingt from Talloires beach

Bubbles

Parapente

We also spent half a day in Albertville, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1992. There is a museum about this, apparently, but we failed to find it. We did enjoy some delicious crepes and sorbets while looking though. We also enjoyed the bunting strung across the streets ready for a stage of the Tour de France to pass through in July. It reminded us of York's great day hosting the Tour de France a couple of years ago, when the caravane and the cyclists came right past the end of our road. The little medieval village of Conflans up a hill above Albertville is also worth a visit. All the shops and restaurants were closed on the day we visited, but the houses and views were still lovely. I wanted us to visit the butterfly museum at Faverges on the way back to Lathuile, which an Annecy website had assured me would be open on Wednesday afternoons, but it turns out it was Wednesday afternoons by appointment only; an appointment which we did not have.

Conflans

View of Conflans from Albertville, with Tour de France bunting

Albertville and jersey bunting

The closed butterfly museum and chateau at Faverges

We grew very fond of Les Fontaines. It is a small and rustic campsite, run by a friendly family who plainly love what they do. They are always out and about working on the pitches or paths, clearing drains, tearing around on golf buggies. The campsite is on a hill, but you can't actually see the lake, even though it's only about 500 metres away. Some mobile homes have better views than others, and the Eurocamp tents have the best of all, overlooking meadows and mountains.

View from the Eurocamp tents

Main terrace of Eurocamp caravans

We had booked an Esprit, which was never going to compare to the Avant we had rented in Italy. It was clean, but also quite dark and cold, and didn't have as much storage as other models we have stayed in. I possibly only noticed these things because of the longer periods of time I was forced to spend inside, rather than living mostly outdoors as on previous Eurocamp trips. The caravan was dark because it was under a tree, which may provide welcome shade if you were there in a hot spell. (It's so hard to imagine this!) The Esprit did have English plugs, which saved messing around with Continental adaptors. I think this site could benefit from duvet hire, as it really was hard to keep warm at night. We hadn't been able to bring bedding as we had flown over, though we had packed hot water bottles and thermals. However, the couriers brought us extra blankets on request, and this helped enormously.

Our Esprit caravan

The site has two pool complexes, only one of which was really in use. This one had a section with a retractable roof, which meant we could still use the pool even on a rainy day. The water was too cold for our daughter though - it is technically heated, but as it circulates to the outside, it never truly warms up. The icy jacuzzi was also not what you would call relaxing. On the last day when the sun briefly appeared in the afternoon, I went for a quick swim in the outside part of the pool, and the setting was amazing.

The main pool (covered area to the right)

Water slides (not really in use while we were there)

There is a small play area, a sports pitch, two table tennis tables and a large bouncy pillow, which was a big highlight for the kids when it was dry. Some adult supervision of children on the pillow (or at least a bit of caution) is required - two boisterous boys managed to badly hurt their sister's arm with some overly enthusiastic jumping while we were there. You could borrow boules, racquets, table tennis bats and board games from the Eurocamp couriers, which were all much appreciated.

Pillow!

Campsite cows

Resident campsite dog

The campsite had a small shop, which had just closed when we first arrived just before seven on a Sunday evening, but the owner very kindly opened up again for us so we could buy a few essentials and order bread for the next morning. Fresh baguettes, croissants and pain au chocolats were delivered every day, but had to be reserved in advance. For a more extensive food shop, there is a large Intermarche supermarket on the road to Faverges, about 15 minutes' drive away, and there is a Lidl opposite that. Doussard, the nearest village to the campsite, has a smaller but well-stocked Carrefour.

We ate in the campsite restaurant on the first evening - the food was hearty and rustic, and kept us out of the deluge which had just started and then wouldn't stop for 24 hours. I enjoyed my tartiflette very much, and they made a good pizza for our daughter. The restaurant was open every day for lunch and dinner, which is great, as there isn't anywhere else to eat in the immediate vicinity of the campsite (apart from another campsite). We walked down to the restaurant Chez Ma Cousine on the lake shore for lunch one day. Very good food here, but apart from the menu du jour at 19 Euros for three courses, it was expensive. It had its own private beach and offered a valet parking service in its tiny car park, which being on foot we didn't require.

Chez Ma Cousine

Even in the rain, it's a beautiful part of the world. I hope we have better luck with the weather if we go again, and that the situation in France calms before the big summer holiday. Thankfully, air traffic control called off their strike scheduled for the weekend we were due to fly home, so our journey back was without issue.

Paul Merton's Secret Stations

I don't know why I have this pull towards programmes about trains. My railway obsessed brother would argue that it's genetic.

But this isn't Michael Portillo's Grand Tour style Continental journeys, staying in sumptuous imperialistic hotels, riding high-speed express trains wearing ridiculous fluorescent jackets. Instead here is Paul Merton in a flat cap and tweeds, visiting youth hostels and stations in such remote corners of the country that you have to stick your thumb out to stop the train. Once aboard you have to tell the guard where you plan to get off, otherwise the train will trundle straight through. For these are station request stops. There are apparently 152 of them in the UK.

Merton travels from Devon to Wales to Cumbria and Scotland on amusingly named lines (Looe Valley, Kyle) to amusingly named places (Luxulyan, Pontarddulais, Drigg, St Keyne Wishing Well Halt). A lot of the trains are no bigger than buses, but the last is the night sleeper to Fort William from London Euston, which deposits Merton in the middle of a vast isolated moor on the Scottish estate of Corrour.

Merton visits nuclear waste facilities, supermarket depots, espionage schools, wedding dress shops and china clay mines. He cheats at a spot of fell running. He walks through doors that lead nowhere. He overpays for a churn of Devon Ambrosia cream. He joins a male voice choir. He visits a station (Reddish South) which has only one train a week, running in only one direction. The service keeps going because it would be more expensive to petition Parliament to abolish it, but it has three loyal passengers, and three loyal trainspotters who wait to see them get off at Denton and get the bus home.

Paul Merton is always Paul Merton - jovial, witty, surreal, prepared to wear a funny outfit and point out the ridiculousness of life without being rude. It was a peaceful, enjoyable watch for a Sunday night, even if I was watching it about 30 years before my time.

Arisaig

West Highland Line going over the Glenfinnan Viaduct

We once spent a week in Scotland overlooking the West Highland Line to Mallaig. We stopped briefly at Arisaig, where Paul Merton tells us that the Special Operations Executive trained spies in the Second World War. I've also spent a beautiful week in Pembrokeshire, where Merton learns to operated a signalbox and meets the man (Dixe Wills) whose book Tiny Stations inspired the series. I've visited Devon and Cornwall many times. I've also spent a day exploring the bleak West Cumbrian coast, dominated by Sellafield and nuclear risk.

Aberfelin, Pembrokeshire

But I don't think I have ever had the pleasure of visiting a request stop station. Something to save for my retirement perhaps, assuming any of them are still open by then. Reddish South possibly.