GOTHS

SATURDAY, JULY 21
Goths come out on Saturday night. Goths are similar to Peronistsas in being divided into tribes and sub tribes and dissident branches of sub tribes. I discover one of their meeting places and sit in a corner, watching.
All Goths wear black. Serious Goths wear leather knee boots. Less committed sub tribes wear boots only to mid calf and with canvas uppers. Festooning laces are an important detail common to all.
The 100% Goths spray their hair in red and silvery grey streaks and shave one side of the head. The spray kills all life in the hair. Add a chalked white face, blackened eyes and lips and you have a weird corpse.
A dozen silver lip ornaments are obligatory amongst the 100% Goth women. The ornaments must be sexually limiting; imagine having to scissor the woman free from a man´s lap. However the true Goth doesn´t betray interest in sex - or interest in anything other than his or her appearance. Drink is a single beer split amongst a dozen Goths. Conversation is a short sentence followed by minutes of silence.
Men of an unpainted sub tribe wear their hair spread in waves down their backs. Once settled, they barely move for fear of spoiling the pattern. This sub tribe is interested in sex.
And there are vivacious sub tribes, Goths who dress in black because they like black and have more in their lives than dressing up. These Goths chatter amongst themselves and even interchange remarks with other sub tribes.
I ask one of the vivacious to explain the classifications.
He answers that it is very complicated.
The same is true of the Peronistas.

SHOPPING

SATURDAY, JULY 20
I walk the Calle Florida for three hours. Calle Florida is pedestrianised and Buenos Aires´main shopping street. Argentinians are strong on facade and the more expensive shops specialise in smart country clothes for people who never visit the country. Midmarket Suburban Golf Club smart...
I am an indecisive shopper. My wife, Bernadette, is partly to blame. She has impeccable taste. The bags and luggage she designs are carried by movie stars and Royalty. I feel her watching over my shoulder as I finger a shirt. Is the colour right? Red and green colour blind, how can I tell?
So I play safe.
I buy a shirt of blue denim and a navy blue sweater.
Both are on sale.
And I finally change my Alpinestars boots for a pair of those black leather trainers that you can´t train in. Being able to walk three hours in biker´s boots is one hell of an advertisement for the boots.

HIGH FINANCE

FRIDAY, JULY 19
Midday and the flight from Madrid must have landed. The manager at the Gran Hotel Espana calls Aerolineas Argentinas at the airport. No bags have arrived. The manager is pleased at being correct in his sceptism.
Later I sit at table with a dozen men in their early thirties. They talk sex for a few minutes then switch to football. I ask which is most important to an Argentian.
The general agreement is fifty fifty...Though one adds that a football match lasts two hours.
I ask what they do.
They are in finance.
Finance has a ring to it.
However these aren´t bankers.
They are bank clerks and insurance clerks.

BUENOS AIRES

FRIDAY, JULY 2o
I had my beard trimmed today at a splendid barber shop on Avenida de Mayo. Shop? More of a palace. Back in the thirties all thirty chairs would have been in use. Boot blacks would have been burnishing shoes. Now two barbers remain. Both are ancient. Paintwork peels. Mould disfigures mirrors.
A man of Buenos Aires tells me over coffee, "Back in the thirties every Argentinian fancied himself an English gentleman. Peron brought us back to reality. We are working class Italians."
Thank you, Italy. Argentina serves the best coffee in Latin America.

JAZZ FOR THE PRIVATE SCHOOL SET

FRIDAY, JULY 20
Travel guides report that NOTORIOUS is a jazz club. The club is at the rear of a high tek music store where shoppers sit at tables, sip coffee, wear head sets and scroll music on a screen. Entrance to the club is $7 with a minimum $12 table charge. I wear a Peruvian sweater, cargo pants and biker boots, reasonable gear for a jazz club and I don´t have anything else. This isn't the standard jazz club. This is jazz for a private-school, fur-coat clientele. Wear a sweater, make sure it´s cashmere; gold is essential though unobtrusive. Persperation is forbidden.
A snotty waitress tries sitting me at the bar. I take a table against the wall. A smoked salmon salad comes with slices of brie, different greens and walnuts - and shards of walnut shell.
The band is an all-white Brazilian trio (a black or brown face would be out of place). The trio play Portuguese weep music - music that needs to be played softly, that makes the listener lean forward to catch the notes. These musicians have discovered mikes. Even the drummer has a mike. The noise level is bearable from midway back in the music store.
Hey, pay no attention to what I write.
I´m a crotchity old man who wants his luggage.

MEAT

Facades on Avenida de Mayo

THURSDAY, JULY 19
My first night in BA and I eat at my favourite workman´s cafe half a block off Av. de Mayo. The place isn´t much - ten or so bar stools at each of three narrow tables. Late, it is good for people watching, joining conversations and learning a little of peoples´lives. I order meat and salad. The salad fills a deep plastic bowl. The meat is half the size of a brick. It comes roast and tender. What cut? God knows. Meat is meat. Add a big bottle of larger and the bill is $2.50.
Fat and full, I head for bed and dreams of what Aerolineas Argentinas and Air Comet have done with my bike box.

GRAN HOTEL ESPANA

THURSDAY, JULY 19
The Gran Hotel Espana at Tacuari 80 (centre of picture) is a small fine fin de secle building - good stained glass and lots of marble. I have a quiet room at the back on the fifth floor. The radiator is hot, so is the water. The ceiling fan is for summer.
Tiled floors in bathroom and bedroom are a danger to old men.
I take a shower and walk with great care on wet feet.

The rate is US$20 at 3 pesos to the dollar.

Of the managers, one studied law. He is a both a cynic and sceptic.
The other manager is insulting. He has seen the photograph on the BLOG in which I am dressed in Alpinestars black thermals and which Bernadette thought very James Bond. Gustavo sees a strong resemblance to a garden gnome.

DON´T FLY AIR COMET

gran'dad under starter's order:



JULY 18/19
In preparing for this journey, I consult my grandson, Charlie Boo. Rather than bones, Charlie Boo throws pieces of his animal puzzle. Eighteen-month old sages take the long view and Charlie seems pleased. I should warn him that I am flying Air Comet to Madrid for an onward connection with Aerolineas Argentina.
The Air Comet flight out of London is delayed two hours and thirty minutes. No one from the airline meets the flight at Madrid. A mini tribe of despairing Bolivians or Peruvians are camped on the floor by the Air Comet enquiries desk. A further fifty or so of the less pessimistic stand in line. Neither queue nor camping offers hope.
A woman at Argentine Airlines check-in counter sends me back to Air Comet. I try a second check-in counter - then a third. The third woman smiles and issues me a boarding pass for a flight delayed from 1 a.m. to 4.35 a.m. and comps me a free dinner. Midnight and the self-service restaurant has left-overs that a Napoleonic soldier would have avoided on the retreat from Moscow. Everything else is closed. The water dispenser won´t dispense.
I curl up on a bench in the departure lounge. Thank God, I´m not travelling with small children.
We take-off from Madrid at 8 a.m. in a replacement plane that has to refuel in Natale, Brazil. The replacement cabin crew hate us.
Breakfast is a small yellow lump rimmed with dry red sludge. The bread is stale. Lunch is a stale ham & cheese sandwich. Dinner is a stale cheese sandwich without ham. This is the 19th. The food trolleys are dated the 17th.
I doze for a while, wake and wonder whether I am dead and that purgatory is a never ending flight.
We land at Buenos Aeries at six in the evening - no baggage from London. Much of the baggage that does appear should have been on a previous flight. Passengers queue at the baggage reclamation office: families with small kids, a school rugby team deprived of their sports gear. One of the ground staff tells me this is a daily occurrence both with Aerolineas Argentina and Air Comet.
I have been forty eight hours with out proper sleep. A room at the Grand Hotel Espana feels as good as a suite at the Ritz.

JAMES BOND & HIPPOS

Bernadette says that my Alpinestars thermal underwear is a James Bond outfit for night attack.
I doubt whether Bernadette sees me as a James Bond look-alike – even in slinky black.
A hippopotamus comes closer to the mark.
I have asked Jed to photograph me in the garden.
Jed refuses. An ancient dad dressed in skin-tight thermals comes low in his choice of garden sculpture.
He says, “Dad, don’t dare go outside dressed like that.”
Bernadette poses me amongst the lilies.
I associate lilies with funerals.

Shrimp…shrimp…shrimp…

SHRIMP

I am seventy-four and feared that I can no longer cope.
When I was young (back in the 1950s), I dreamt of organizing the world. Now, in my seventies, I accept reality: under Bernadette’s direction, organizing myself is marginally possible.
Bernadette is committed to a surprise birthday party in Rotterdam this weekend and leaves tomorrow.
I fly out of the UK to Buenos Aires on the 18^th.
Buenos Aires has had snow for the first time in 100 years.
Tierra del Fuego will be a frozen hell.
I have forty thousand kilometers to ride.
In younger days I might have encouraged myself with visions of golden breasts and buttocks.
Now I shelter in meditation. Ohm was the fashion in my youth.
Ohm doesn’t work for me.
I have my own magic key to oneness with the universe. I close my eyes : in near trance, I imagine the beaches of HispanicAmerica. I imagine small beachside restaurants. No need for menu. Only one excuse exists for this insane journey: shrimp.
Shrimp ceviche, devilled shrimp, shrimp, shrimp, shrimp.
Culture? Tomorrow…Maybe.

GREAT BOOTS

Improvement In Preparedness

Our cottage is suddenly infected with the foul odor of covetousness. A precious package arrived at midday: splendid biker boots, thermal underwear, T-shirts and a cap, all from Alpinestars. I have locked them away from the jealous hands of my younger sons.

FEAR OF A COLD CLIMATE

The manuscript of OLD TOAD ON A BIKE sits on Clare Christian’s desk at The Friday Project. I delivered it by hand last Thursday. For the past few nights I have been obsessing over what I left out or forgot to include. In writing fiction, protagonists discipline the content. Writing travel, the writer is the protagonist. I need to be more disciplined. Hopefully I will do better with the second volume.

I fly out of the UK to Buenos Aires on the 19^th.

Have I packed? No.

Am I ready? No.

How do I feel at the prospect of traveling alone from Ushuaia to upstate New York? Scared.

Mostly I am scared of falling ill. Health Insurance doesn’t cover bikers in their 70s.

A fatal accident should be reasonably cheap and convenient for my wife, Bernadette. I carry a Montecristo cigar box in which to mail my ashes home and the eastern section of the cemetery at the Catholic Church in Hanley Swan, Worcestershire, is family property.

As to midwinter in Tierra del Fuego, I will probably put the bike on a truck or pickup to Puerto Natales in Chile from where the ferry sails to Puerto Montt.

Essential, is to check the heater in the cab!

And pick a mature driver, a survivor...

OLD MEN CAN'T WAIT

Crossing Tierra del Fuego on a small motorcycle in mid winter is an unsuitable pursuit for an elderly gentleman. My bike is in store in Ushuaia. I must get to Puerto Natales in Chile to take the ferry north up through the Chilean fjords to Puerto Montt. Roads in the passes may be closed for three days at a time. The cold will be acute. I am fearful. I am not sure that I can manage. I am sure that I can’t manage. Then why not wait?

OLD TOAD ON A BIKE is the first volume of the travel trilogy and will be published in early February, 2008.

OLD MEN CAN’T WAIT is the second volume. I can’t wait. I don’t have that many years. My adoptive daughter, Anya, lives in Duchess County, NY. She is having a baby in January and granddad wants to be there. And I need to be back in England for publication. Ushuaia to Duchess County is one hell of ride on what is basically a pizza delivery bike.

HEREFORDSHIRE

I am leaving the English summer for Tierra del Fuego in mid winter. Insane! Our garden here in Herefordshire, at the foot of the Malvern Hills, is a perfumed heaven of roses and lavender. The view from our garden across two cricket fields to the hills is divine. Jed (17) is at Hereford Junior College. Josh (21) is studying Spanish and International Affairs at Leeds Metropolitan University. I will miss my sons, miss that small part of their lives to which they permit entry. And I will miss my wife, Bernadette. I will miss her every moment of our separation.

THE FRIDAY PROJECT

I had intended leaving for Argentina in late February. I required a publisher. That has taken a while. Firstly I am an old man and this is an era of youth. Backing me is a gamble. I might die before I produce.

Secondly, publishing is changing. Communications are changing. Blogs and web sites gain huge readership.

Who wants books?

Fortunately most people who fly, those who have need to spend nights alone in hotel rooms where the TV is in the wrong language and the news is broadcast by FOX, or holiday on the beach and are too old to surf...Oh, and all those perverts who find sensual gratification in the feel of a book - particularly a hardcover perfectly printed on good paper.
So there remains a substantial market.
I have finally agreed a three book contract with Clare Christian, MD at The Friday Project.

Why The Friday Project?

Because they understand modern media and specialise in transferring Blogs to print.
I was a little concerned at first as to whether they were proper publishers. They lack that slight air of condescension towards the writer which is the publisher’s hallmark. However, Macmillan's handles their distibution and foreign sales (think tweeds, starched shirts, careful ties).

SILLY DECREPIT OLD DODDERER

This is both an expression of thanks and an apology to all those who messaged me support. I didn't realise that people had been leaving comments on this Blog. My age is to blame. I have become a silly decrepit old dodderer who shouldn't be allowed out of the house on his own.
I leave on the return journey from Ushuaia at the end of May. Unable to find my way around my own Blog, how do I expect to find my way north the length of the Americas? By the same method used on the southerly leg - luck and chance.
However, I am better prepared for the second leg. I have the leather bomber jacket I bought in Peru. And I have taken to swimming to build up stamina.
I catch the bus into Ledbury, our local market town. Bus travel is free for pensioners and I receive an old person's deduction on the swim.
I swim twenty lengths of the Ledbury pool on my back.
A large white hairy baloon follows me.
As to the ride, my ex considers that I am irresponsible, at my age, to risk my life to the road.
My present wife, a sensible woman, encourages my departure.
My ex and I have been separated for 27 years - a fine example of absence making the heart grow fonder!

ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF SPEECH GIVEN IN MORELLA

I am deeply privileged by this invitation to speak. However I am shy in standing before you and ask for your forgiveness for those inevitable crimes I commit of syntax and vocabulary. There have been twelve years prior to my recent journey in which I had little opportunity to speak Spanish. My verbs are casualties of an old man’s memory and you listen to a man whose mouth is full of pebbles.
First, on behalf of myself and of my sons and daughter and of my grandson, I thank the citizens of Morella and your excellency, the Calde, for your kindness and hospitality. And I thank all those who have assisted in preparing this festival that recalls the life of my great-grandfather, Don Ramon Cabrera.
I wish to pay particular thanks to a close and valued family friend, Dona Conxa Rodriguez and to my cousin, Don Josep Llasat Roig. Their enthusiasm has made this congress possible.
I am a novelist. I distrust historians. History books are dictated by the victors (or by Hollywood film producers). My knowledge of my great-grandfather comes from the portrait that hangs in my study. I suspect that the young El Tigre would be unsettling as a companion. My Ramon Cabrera is in his sixties. I imagine that he has seen too much, that he has grown in wisdom, has lost faith in violence. Rather than a warrior, he has become a man of peace.
There is something more to the portrait, something unmistakable: This is a Spaniard.
And it is of this that I wish to speak.
I have returned recently from journeying alone by small motorcycle from the ruins of the first house of Hernando Cortes in Veracruz, Mexico, to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. Such a solitary journey is always as much a journey of self- discovery as of discovering fresh lands. I discovered how deeply I am rooted culturally in Catholicism. I speak not of faith but of culture. I admire the chapel of the Rosary in Quito and the cathedral in Cusco more than I admire the Inca stone work of Machu Pichu or the pyramids at Tikal and Copan.
I recall visiting the Jesuit Temple one evening in Oaxca, Mexico. A side chapel is dedicated to the Jesuit martyrs. I sat there alone in the quiet of the evening and read their names. The English were amongst their number, names familiar from my Catholic childhood: Edmund Campion, Hugh Sykes, Edward Thomson.
Yes, I am Catholic by heritage.
I discovered something else. Though we speak the same language, I find myself a foreigner in the United States. Nothing is familiar. In Hispanic America I feel at home. So much is familiar.
My journey took me over the Andes and across the altiplano. I thought often of the first Spaniards in the Americas. They were small men with little education and burdened by many superstitions. See the country they crossed, then judge them how you will, but never deny their extraordinary imagination and amazing courage. I have thought of myself as English. I should have paid heed to the comment of a Mexican in Veracruz: “The only Pure Bloods are horses.”
Following the trails of the conquistadors, I became increasingly aware of and proud and grateful to have inherited from Ramon Cabrera the genetic heritage of Spain.
This is my Ramon Cabrera, a man intensely Spanish, a man who has survived great storms and come safely to harbour, the great-grandfather who observes me calmly from his golden frame above the bookshelves in my study, a man I never knew but who has grown in my imagination and whom I have grown to love.
There is, of course, a different Cabrera; the Cabrera of history books; Cabrera, the Carlist General, Conde de Morella, Marques del Ter. Surely his battles are finished. The dead are dead.
Yet, for one hundred and fifty years, the followers of Carlism have been excluded from Spain’s body politic. Perhaps I am impertinent. If so, please forgive me. But it seems to me that this celebration is a final act of inclusion, a confirmation of the unity of a diverse nation, a modern nation, a strong, confident, democratic Spain - a nation of whose heritage we English descendants of Cabrera are immensely proud and grateful to partake.
Again, I thank you.

MY THANKS TO MORELLA

The fortified town of Morella occupies a peak in the foothills of the sierra del Maestrazgo and dominates the junction of three Spanish provinces, Valencia, Cataluña and Aragon. A huge castle crowns the peak and the town is protected by massive walls. The builders must have imagined the town impregnable. They were wrong. A Carlist general blasted a hole in the defenses.

The general, Ramon Cabrera, was my great-grandfather. He was notoriously ferocious in war. Spaniards named him El Tigre del Maestrazgo.

In late November, Morella celebrated the bi-centenary of Cabrera’s birth – a curious celebration given the damage he caused.

I spent four wonderful days as the guest of the mayor and people of Morella. The mayor opened an exhibition recalling my great-grandfather’s life. Amongst the exhibits was a painting of my great-great-grandmother being shot by firing squad. She is kneeling on the cobbles. A brave (or stupid) friar holds a crucifix over her head as the soldiers fire. My cousin, la marquesa del Ter, and I unveiled a plaque on the castle wall. Members of the PP (conservative party) presented Morella with a bronze equestrian statue. We enjoyed one of those civic lunches that continue for four hours (the wine was superb). The present Carlist pretender, the duke of Palma, sat on the mayor’s right. I sat on the mayor’s left. We three spent much of the luncheon discussing public education. Expected to make a speech, I remained moderately sober. My speech was heavily influenced by my recent journey through Hispanic America.

HAMISH

I have offended Hamish. He is a Border terrier aged 18 months. I posted his photograph yet ignored his existence when writing of my family.

HAVENS

Reintegrating after a long solo journey (in this case, six months) takes a while. Journeys have direction and imperative: Get up, get dressed, get on the bike. Each day brings new people and fresh interactions. The countryside changes as does the climate.

Now I am static.

I am back home in England. We - my wife, Bernadette, Jed (17), and Josh (20) - live in Herefordshire at the foot of the Malvern Hills. Jed is a freshman at junior college. Josh is a freshman at Leeds University – Spanish and International Relations.

Our home, a 300 year-old cottage, lies down a narrow lane. The cottage is set in a large garden. Roses, clematis and ivy compete for wall space The lawns need mowing (right now, the ground is too wet). A gate opens onto the village cricket field. A cedar tree shades that corner of the garden. A line of oak trees divides the cricket field from surrounding farmland.

Idyllic?

Yes - though my judgment is prejudiced.

And I have been lulled into inaction.

The great American essayist, James Baldwin, wrote: Havens are high-priced. The price a haven dweller must pay is in deluding himself that havens in fact exist.