Levada walking in Madeira

Madeira is not at all bad. The people are friendly. The motorists stop their cars to let you cross the road and the hotels seem quiet at this time of year. Why, I don’t know, because the weather is fine and warm.

The levada walking when you get in to the hills is excellent. A lot of tosh is written at the hotels, advising people to go on guided tours and to beware of the steep drops from narrow paths.

I think this is designed to keep the tour operators and guides in business. All you really need is good weather, a map and some transport.

Some sections are very steep but it’s OK if you keep to the paths and it’s difficult to get lost. There are more than 1,350 miles of levadas – spring-fed water channels that irrigate the island. Some of these channels run through tunnels so it’s a good idea to carry a torch.

The levadas are pretty good for playing poo sticks although the position seems to be decided as the sticks hit the water in the initial chuck. The following stick never catches the one in front so that limits the excitement. In that sense it is no different from the Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

Out in the hills on Wednesday, walking in tee-shirts in the warm sunshine, we had to pinch ourselves and remind each other that this was January. Leaving behind all that horrible weather for a few days has been well worth the minor hassle of getting here.

Today the weather was fine again for another great levada walk, this time the 11 kms from Ribeiro Frio to Portela. Some of the drops from the narrow path by the side of the levada are heart stopping. But, if you can live with that, the walking is quite straightforward.

The early levadas were hewn from the rock by convicts and slaves, sometimes hanging from whicker baskets suspended down the cliff face. It’s hard to imagine the work that went in to their construction.

From glumchal to Funchal

Sitting in the departure lounge for the flight to Madeira is like waiting at the last chance saloon. The average age of the passengers must be 101. Here we all are – Saga rejects - reading our telegrams from the Queen. The younger ones are jigging to the strains of Vera Lynn on their Ipods.

I am well aware by now that Madeira has a reputation for attracting oldies. It’s like Torquay with sun. The chief attraction of Funchal, the capital, is its botanical gardens. It’s like Wisley-on-Sea, where the idea of a good time is to be shoved down a cobbled street on a toboggan.

Every time I told friends of our January holiday plans the response was the same: “You’re not going to Madeira are you? It’s a bit past it isn’t it?”

We’re staying in an apartment a little way out of town. We have been told where to eat, what shows we must see and who we must visit. My mother-in-law, who usually comes here at this time of year, warns us to stay clear of the precipitous levadas –water channels that follow the contours of the mountains.

So we have packed our hiking boots to walk the levadas. If we must go to Madeira, we’re going to walk on the wild side.

I worked all weekend to complete various columns, pushing the parameters of procrastination to hitherto unexplored limits. By Monday morning, with just two-and-a-half hours’ sleep from the previous night, I am not the cheeriest of travellers.

What’s so good about travelling anyway? The more I do it, the more I hate it. The airports are guarded by men with machine guns – like prison camps. You’re shoved around from queue to queue, you buy some Euros at a rubbish rate of exchange (why the hell couldn’t the UK have gone with the Euro?) and all the time there are those stress-inducing announcements: bing bong: “We’re sorry about the delay to our announcement that your flight has been delayed.”

Once on board, with all the Zimmer frames and prosthetics stowed in the overhead racks, we experience a momentary frisson of giddiness as we’re placed next to the emergency exit with added legroom. But the euphoria is short lived.

Above the din of rattling angina tablets, I can hear the grating rhythms of piped, tinny, garage music. There must be good grounds for a case of common assault. You can feel the agitation among our fellow passengers. Where’s the Mantovani? Where’s Smooth FM?

The food arrives, if that is a fair description of what we discover sulking inside our little plastic oval dishettes – a less than hearty serving of Jamie Oliver-condemned chicken. The white chunks look and taste like classroom erasers.

The worthlessness of it all. This poor bird lived and died in misery to provide unwelcome sustenance for the world’s most undeserving diner. Instead it feeds me with guilt, knowing that a child in Eritrea would walk over broken glass for the chance of such a feast.

What joy, what pure, unadulterated, exquisite happiness it is to be on holiday. Madeira here we come.

National Treasures

Saturday morning. The quilt on our bed is a patchwork of pink and white, strewn with sections of the Weekend FT and Daily Telegraph. I hate the sectionalising of newspapers but I suppose it means that there is less fighting over the reading matter.

I have a fishing column in the FT but struggle to find it, even when I know it’s there. It’s the same with my column on work, buried as it is among the Thursday job ads. It must be like this if you work in the pastry room at Buckingham Palace. They give you a key and a pass but you have to know your place.

I’m reading a Telegraph column by Michael Henderson, discussing Alan Bennett and why someone like Bennett is perceived as a “national treasure” when someone like David Beckham, a footballer, is not.

Hearing that phrase uttered by Libby Purves on Radio Four is enough to set off my Bruxism. Describing certain well known people as national treasures has become such an overused piece of journalese. But presenters and journalists can’t help themselves. They’re seeking a form of veneration that identifies with the zeitgeist. Blimey: Bruxism, zeitgeist? Has this blog suddenly developed pretensions?

Henderson probably did a better job of explaining the thing without resorting to fancy language. He gave some examples too and I would agree with most of them.

In this celebrity-obsessed age it’s comforting to single out people we admire, whose work and behaviour has entered the national consciousness in a way that has nothing to do with the shallow results of a photographic ambush.

Our national treasures are the sort of people who get shortlisted for Desert Island discs, but there is a fine and almost undefinable line to be drawn between those who make the grade and those who are not quite there. A lot of it, I think, is about the relationship with the ego. Of course our national treasures have egos, often quite big egos, but they're not giant egos that are out of control.

It helps, of course to be in middle age or beyond. In fact that’s probably essential.
Jamie Oliver is getting close to making the grade. I know he is detested by some but his recent food activism on chickens and school food have singled him out as someone who is his own man. Authenticity is a base ingredient.

David Attenborough is the real McCoy; so is Bill McClaren, Murray Walker and Harry Carpenter. How is that so many commentators make the grade? I think it has something to with rubbing shoulders with greatness in a way that enforces the preservation of modesty.

Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin? Never in a million years. Jeremy Clarkson. God no. It would ruin his laddish image. Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench – absolutely. Helen Mirren? Debatable, but I'd like to think so. Like Clarkson, I imagine she might throw up at the very suggestion.

Mollie Sugden and Jean Alexander are both well qualified national treasures for the simple reason that they are northerners. It’s more difficult to reach treasuredom as a southerner.

From football I would choose Sir Bobby Robson and Nobby Stiles. From telly land, Michael Palin, having already mentioned Attenborough. There’s Chris Bonnington from mountaineering. From the radio it would have to be Humphrey Lyttelton, the quintessential national treasure – warm, friendly, intelligent but cheeky to the point of being subversive.

Ian Hislop? Almost, whether he likes it or not. Boris Johnson? No, no and thrice more no. Sadly in business we are not there yet; not Branson, not Sugar, not even Sir John Harvey-Jones. It’s difficult also to feel warm about politicians. Henderson suggested Sir Denis Healey. I suppose so.

Does the US, I wonder, have national treasures? Not many. I would single out Chuck Yeager, Clint Eastwood, Betty Ford, Hunter S Thompson and George Foreman. Mohammed Ali is on another plane of international treasures shared by a very few, such as Nelson Mandela and Sir Edmund Hillary.

The great thing about the national treasure game is that it is wholly subjective with no obvious rules and yet we all understand the concept. It’s part of the national psyche to appreciate a treasure when we see one.

Fish and chips with London nudes

I went to a book launch last night at a swish London club called Home House, the kind of place that buys old books by the yard to line its walls; think comfy leather chairs, brocade wallpaper and marble busts.

The afternoon had started well with haddock, chips and mushy peas at Fish next to Borough Market, followed by a meeting at the Globe cafe, then a stroll along the Thames to Somerset House and the Courtauld Gallery to catch the Walter Sickert exhibition, featuring his Camden Town nudes, before it closed.

Some might know the artist in connection with various dubious Jack-the-Ripper theories mentioned here, including forensic examinations of his paintings made by the crime novelist, Patricia Cornwell.

I left some time for the other works, including Manet's enigmatic A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. I love this painting but can never work out just what is happening to the right of the girl. The angles are all wrong for a mirror image. I wonder if it represents part of her imaginings: she knows, perhaps, that some time during the evening she is going to be chatted up by one of the regulars. Is that why she looks so apprehensive?

The book launch was a jolly occasion and I stayed longer than planned. There was the usual moaning about publishers and agents and the way they can make life difficult for writers. I must thank a publisher colleague for sending me this Mitchell and Webb sketch that puts the relationship between writer and publisher neatly in perspective.

Water wiggly sprinkler death

Greatness comes in many guises. Some people are born to rule, some make amazing discoveries, some demonstrate extraordinary bravery. For Richard Knerr, who has just died at the age of 82, the path to immortality involved jumping through hoops - thousands of them. To the man who gave us the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, the SuperBall, the Water Wiggly sprinkler, the Slip N'Slide water slide and Silly String, not to mention the do-it-yourself bomb shelter, I would like to say thank you.

Fabulous Scrabulous

If you're not on Facebook - the social networking site - and wonder what all the fuss is about, you might ponder on the latest controversy in the Scrabble games market.

Scrabble has been enjoying a renaissance lately, led in no small measure by the popularity of a Facebook version called Scrabulous. Srabulous is one of thousands of so-called "applications" on Facebook. These applications are clever bits of software built by enthusiasts within the Facebook community.

It is probably the only thing that keeps me coming back to the Facebook site day after day. Just now I have four games going with my sons, one of whom is at Southampton University, so it's a nice way of keeping in touch.

Enterprising Indians

As the Times story makes clear, the two enterprising Indians, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who are earning a nice income from advertisements on the Scrabulous mini-site within Facebook, are facing challenges from Hasbro and Mattel, two companies that make and sell Scrabble.

Hasbro and Mattel want Facebook to take down the game as they say it infringes their copyright. People who play the game are dismayed and some have pointed out that the popularity of Scrabulous must have been responsible for a big increase in Scrabble sales over the past six months. I, for one, bought a travel Scrabble for one of my sons this Christmas as a result of rediscovering the joys of Scrabble on the internet.

The old board was dusted down recently for family games once more and I'm sure this wouldn't have happened had we not have been playing it online.

I hope that Hasbro and Mattel do take Facebook to court. I hope that Facebook defends the action and I hope that a court, through the discovery process, reveals how Hasbro and Mattel sales have been influenced by the Scrabulous phenomenon. I hope then that a sensible judge awards a big slice of Hasbro and Mattel profits from Scrabble in marketing fees to the Indian software developers and Facebook.

This is unlikely to happen but it should. The actions of Hasbro and Mattel - which have taken time to emerge since Scrabulous has been around for months - is symptomatic of blinkered corporate greed and a stubborn refusal to wake up to the "win win" benefits of brand-sharing, using the internet.

Brand Sharing

Instead of asking Facebook to take down the Scrabulous game, Mattel and Hasbro should engage themselves in a good old business discussion with the brothers and with Facebook. It shouldn't be beyond all of them to agree a royalties deal that saves face for the rights owners (and a hell of a lot of business), keeps Facebook and the application developers well in pocket, and the rest of us happy playing one of the best online games around.

Next up, I guess, will be an action to protect the rights of Boggle, which is also available to play on Facebook although the online version is a rather solitary game.

Mattel and Hasbro should learn from the folly of the record producers. Chasing down those who infringe copyright is an expensive pursuit that brings limited success. Shut down Scrabulous today and there will be another version elsewhere tomorrow. As it is Scrabulous has created it's own website. The copyright owners must see that the Scrabble pie has grown a whole lot bigger while they stood by and watched.

Their instincts are the same as the record producers - they still want it all. Instead they should try sharing the pie around. They'll find it's a great way to do business. At the same time The Indian brothers should not believe they can have everything their own way. They've had a good run on the back of an established copyright delivered within a global internet platform that understands the value of their contribution to its success. In business terms it's time for each of the parties to talk turkey.

Do you pick up the pennies?

Have you noticed how often you see coins on the ground these days? Most people can't be bothered to pick up the coppers. Should this be a cause for concern?

I'm not sure, but what I do know is that one of the more heated family arguments we had at Christmas was debating the answer to this question: "What's the lowest value coin you would stoop to pick up these days?"

My sister-in-law said she would always pick up any coin she saw on the floor, no matter how low its worth. It was not so much what she said but how she said it that I found aggravating, as if it was criminal even to be debating the point.

She is of the view that to show a disregard for small coins is to show a lack of respect for money. Such lack of respect for money embodies the kind of attitude displayed by people who get things too easily.

I understand this view and have some sympathy for it. But I worry also whether it is right, conversely, to hold money in such high regard that we could appear to be worshipping it.

A few years ago I visited the Royal Mint at Llantrisant in Wales. What struck me most about the visit was that the production of coins is nothing more than a metal bashing exercise. The floor of the factory was strewn with coins.

It made me realise that coins are really tools for making things happen. Small change is just that and no, we shouldn't chuck it around, but I don't think we should be condemned either for leaving it on the floor if that's what we choose to do.

We were playing cards for money, something we often do at Christmas and I had the apparently outlandish idea of playing for silver rather than the usual coppers. We used to play for coppers when I was a kid. A game of New Market would require twopence per hand when we used a ha'penny for the pot, the face card, the odd card and the kitty.

The amount rose with decimalisation but it seems to have stuck at 4p per hand since the 1970s. This year we compromised on 8p per hand but it still did not make up for those 1970s values. In the same time frame a packet of crisps has risen more than 10 fold from less than 5p to 50p. Logic would dictate that, even were we to chip in 20p per hand, it would still be a relatively smaller stake than that made in my childhood.

I think this explains why the game is not as much fun as it was. Of course, it wouldn't do to look as if we were gambling fanatics but gambling - the possibility of winning or losing - is where you draw the thrill. I would argue that there has to be the possibility of some pleasure or pain to make it meaningful but I was overruled I fear and my suggestion dismissed as typical of the lose morals evident in today's society. I feel branded.

A good week for chickens

It’s been a good week for chickens. I don’t think they have enjoyed so much publicity since the last bout of bird flu. On TV there was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver both campaigning strongly against intensive chicken farming.

Then the government announced it would be banning battery hens. Now Oliver and Sainsbury's are trying to patch things up after reports of a rift that threatened to damage Oliver's lucrative contractual arrangement to appear in the supermarket’s advertisements and promotions.

Crying mums

Animal rights campaigners have been banging on about intensive farming methods for years without making much progress. But once celebrities get involved everything changes. Add a bit of theatre, some crying mums and kids – even Fearnley-Whittingstall was sobbing – and before you know it farmers, retailers, shoppers and journalists are running around like chickens with no heads.

I remember watching a Joan Bakewell programme years ago when chickens were having their heads removed on a conveyor belt. That did it for me for and I went vegetarian for two years.

Turkey gravy

It was tough being vegetarian, particularly at Christmas when I was eating nut roast and everyone else was having turkey. We had turkey gravy and vegetarian gravy in two separate jugs but my mother-in-law poured them both together. She said it was an accident but I have always suspected otherwise.

My own stance on eating animals had less to do with the killing animals of animals and more to do with the way they were living under intensive farming regimes. I have never had a problem with killing and eating wild things, which was why my vegetarian diet allowed fish, pheasant, venison, that kind of thing (OK, I realise that is not likely to pass muster among signed-up bean-eating veggies).

Later I decided sheep were OK because they lived on the hills, and when I began to see pigs in fields I came out of my meat eating hibernation although I still have issues with the indiscriminate netting of fish and I’m right behind the latest chicken campaigns. I looked around a chicken-rearing shed in Norway last year and it neither looked nor smelled pretty although it was well run.

Good egg

Sainsbury's has been leafleting heavily this week to tell us about its various awards in recognition of its animal welfare standards. These include "the Good Egg Award" from Compassion in World Farming.

Its leaflet also explains its various food standards labels from Sainsbury's basics (a shed)to Sainsbury's SO organic chicken (comparative chicken luxury where the chickens are allowed to get about a bit). My problem is not just with the chickens on display but the hundreds of chicken products in supermarkets. Where did all those chicken bits come from in the chicken supreme, chicken soup and chicken stock?

Chicken wars

Watch out for chicken wars in the next few weeks as the big stores begin to try grab the moral high ground on chicken welfare. The Sainsbury's leaflets, I suspect, were merely the first salvo.

Perhaps this is the start of something big. Where next? How about taking a stand to save battery people? Down with work cubicles.

Talking dogs

I had not realised when I wrote this blog in June, that someone had actually created a Facebook application called Dogbook. Now I find there are others, like this one. Our dog will not be joining. As I have pointed out in the past he stays in touch with all his friends the old fashioned way, by peemail. Of course, even peemail has reached the internet, a technology too far for dogs. All the same, I bet the Kennel Club is getting worried.

The Lost City of Leeds

The trouble with lost cities such as these is that they are not lost at all any more. For most of the year nowadays they are teeming with people who get to their long desired destination only to find that they are sharing what they imagine is a "desolate spot" with a few thousand others.

It's far better today to find your lost worlds in more familiar places. I love to go down back alleys when visiting cities. You never know what you can find. In Leeds there is an Egyptian Temple and several Italianate Towers. I mentioned them in this article from my archive.

We drove over to Leeds during a recent visit to Yorkshire. It's really buzzing. The market, pictured here, is as grand as ever and the arcades have most of the big names in shopping. There are far worse places to spend a weekend.

It was good to see butchers' shops with ox tails hanging on their racks and beef priced per pound, not kilogrammes. I know it's a sign of my age but I have never got the hang of kilogrammes. I know what a quarter of a pound of roast ham looks like but I hate trying to make the metric conversion. Britain's market traders fought long and hard to win back the right to price their food in pounds and ounces. I'm glad to see they succeeded.

If you have any interest in the UK's industrial heritage, the Yorkshire conurbations of Leeds, Bradford and Halifax are great places to visit. Go to Salt's Mill in Saltaire, The Corn Exchange in Leeds and the Piece Hall in Halifax. The British don't need to travel far to find their lost cities. They're on our doorstep.

Cool hunter

I like this site so much, I'm installing a link. It's like one of those dentist magazines, lovely for whiling a way a few minutes in between dealing with the real world.

Coming up trumps

No I don't know how he does this. But I am impressed.

First footing

Happy New Year! Lots of fireworks as has become the norm over the past 10 years. But did you have a first footer?

We didn't and that's a shame. There was a time when the new year couldn't start properly until a tall, dark man had been invited over the threshold. Or was this never anything more than a convenient defence in the divorce courts?

Well yes it was, depending on where you lived. The first footer was supposed to come armed with various gifts: a coin of the realm "to buy you the necessities of life," a piece of coal to keep you warm, a green twig to "remind you of God's good earth," and a piece of bread to keep you from starvation.

Some places also included salt to "add flavour" to the new year. The Scots can go overboard with this kind of thing, dragging the first footer through the house to kiss all the women (pot luck), not to mention sharing a dram or two.

I had not known, until I read this, that the "tall, dark" tradition is thought to hark back to the days when there was a real fear of Viking raids in Scotland and the North of England. You didn't want to open the door to an axe-wielding Bjorn Borg. On the other hand, if your husband was the village drunk with a face like a coal scuttle, maybe you did.