MUPPIX

Writing tends to be a lonely business. Close on a year usually passes between completing the manuscript and the book going on sale. Painters show their work and watch people's reaction. Musicians enjoy a live audience. The chance of a writer seeing a reader engrossed in his work is remote. Receiving a letter from a reader is immensely rewarding. The letter helps recharge the writer's battery. So my gratitude to MUPPIX who posted on Tuesday's BLOG. Thank you, MUPPIX, and my gratitude also to those other readers who have taken the time to write me...

GUARDIAN SPELLING

Telegraph readers and Private Eye mock the Guardian for its spelling errors. Dyslexic, I am no judge of spelling. However I can spell my own name - thus my irritation at finding in the Guardian's The Full British supplement today a double spread on Herefordshire under the byline, Simon Gandalfi.
Ah, well...

OLD MAN ON A BIKE

Good day - though I am in a state of collapse. Bernadette has ordered me to take it easy for a couple of days. Meanwhile anyone wanting a signed copy of the book recording my septuagenarian ride south from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, OLD MAN ON A BIKE (HarperCollins), can go to my web site by hitting the above title.
You may not need the read - I definitely need readers to help fund this winter's ride through India. For those who don't read books - remember that books are the perfect present - easy to wrap, cheap to post and everyone complains that books are expensive. £8.99 as an expensive gift - I told you, perfect!

GUARDIAN

remnants of open air stage

My take on the Big Chill is in this Saturday's Guardian. I am dyslexic and write slowly. Hence I have not worked on this diary while writing the Guardian copy. I am about to drive to Gloucester to collect a young Australian law student who is visiting her grandmother here in Colwall. This done, I will get to work bringing both this Blog and the BIGCHILLDIARY up to date. Meanwhile here is a pic taken yesterday - good-bye Open Air stage...

BIG CHILL

DONE THAT! And have finished the piece for the Guardian for this Saturday's Travel Section. All four sons were here for the Chill, wives, babies, girlfriends, friends - total bliss seeing them together on the lawn at the cottage for brunch before heading back for another day of music and weird happenings.
My only sadness - that Anya and Michael weren't here with Shane...

KIND READERS

Thank you all for reading my stuff...and to those who comment. It helps. I have been busy these last two weeks with the Big Chill festival. I am due to produce 1500 words on the festival for the Guardian by Wednesday morning. Readers can check progress at my BIGCHILLDIARY Blog by hitting the KIND READERS heading above. Cheers...

IT IS OK TO COMMENT

Dear Readers - or what ever...
You may hate what I write on this BLOG, find it moderately interesting, totally boring, unpleasantly arrogant, presumptuous, bigoted, ill-informed, pretentious. Your comments would enlighten me. No bad thing...

GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

My apologies to any Telegraph or News of the World readers I deceived into buying the Guardian last Saturday. I was in error earlier. The piece on Herefordshire for the Travel section comes out at the end of August...

FAT OLD BLIMP

My wife accuses me of ranting. I do rant. Ranting goes with being a Fat Old Blimp. - probably because we know that we are powerless to change the evils and injustices we witness or counter the multitude of stupidities born of a failure to study even recent history.

THIS VILE GOVERNMENT

I come of a generation with military service. We have fierce feelings of loyalty to those serving today. The Regiment in which I served as a moderately incompetent junior officer, the 16th/5th Lancers, is now amalgamated with the 17th/21st. Though leaving the army more than fifty years ago, I take very personally the casualties the Regiment suffers.
This vile Government orders young men, many of them in their late teens, into mortal combat. Some are killed. More suffer appalling wounds. Meanwhile the Ministry of Defense takes Court action in an attempt to curtail disability payments.
I listened today in enraged disgust to the weasel excuses for this Court action offered by the new Minister, Mr. Ainsworth, in an interview on Radio 4. New Minister? Of course. Frequently changing Ministers stops the present Minister being held responsible for even recent errors. It was all a previous Minister's fault. Or a previous Minister's...
In this case, the previous Minister was Mr. Hutton. Mr. Hutton is favoured by many in his Party to replace the present Prime Minister. Mr Hutton was Secretary of Defense for a mere six months before accepting promotion to the Ministry of Health. A man of honour would have refused to leave his post until those he had ordered into battle had completed the task this Government set them. Honour? Amongst a Governing Party of which less than a dozen Members of Parliament bothered to attend either of the last two Parliamentary Defense debates? Presumably they were too busy seeking excuses for fiddling their expense accounts.
Are the Tories any better?
Probably not - though David Davies seems to be a man of honour.
Well, well, well - got that off my chest. Do I feel better? A little...

DISGUSTED AND ENRAGED

I should be concentrating on the build-up to the BIG CHILL, finishing an article on Herefordshire for the Guardian, praying for good weather so that I can mow the lawn before it grows into a hay field, reading more books on India, writing the final two chapters of a new novel and, most imperatively, attempting to converse with the Resident Teenager who has been in full grunt mode for the past three days. Am I to blame? Probably. Presuming my guilt, yet not knowing of what (in this case) I am guilty has kept me awake most of the past two nights.
This morning my anxieties have been replaced by fury. Why? Read the next entry.

GUARDIAN

The Guardian is running pull-out this Saturday on holidaying in England. I have a long piece on Herefordshire. Readers can check the Guardian's web site. Meanwhile readers of this Blog can follow my doing on my BIG CHILL DIARY Blog by hitting the GUARDIAN title.

BIG CHILL DIARY

Blogs become confusing. I should have written the two Americas journeys as separate Blogs with a third Blog for Home. Otherwise readers wanting to check a place or a How to must search though the entire archive. Irritating. I know. I have to do it when writing articles or what ever. So this new Blog, BIG CHILL DIARY, is the product of a learning experience. The Blog will cover the Big Chill Festival and its build up at Eastnor Castle. I am covering the Big Chill for the Guardian newspaper and making a presentation. Weird - I thought festivals were for the hip young - and for those who enjoy mud. However the Big Chill is different. Leonard Cohen headlined last year.

TEEPPEES

My teeppee has a central post. I can haul myself out of bed and stand upright whilst pulling on my trousers. Not for me the bum-shuffling necessary in the sort of tent that the teenager considers cool. You know? Dragging you pants on (or off) while seated on a cold damp groundsheet?

THE WEERMACHT HAS LANDED

I camped at the Horizons Unlimited Spring meet at Ripley, Derbyshire.
Or had the Weermacht landed? A meadow of gleaming BMWs!!!
Grant and Susan Johnson founded Horizons Unlimited on the Web as a biker community for travelers. The Spring meet ran for four days with a dozen or more bikers giving talks on their travels. The fun is in meeting people in the flesh whom you have communicated with over the years. I heard from bikers recently in Tierra del Fuego that the sainted Graciela (she who rescued me after my accident) has opened a Bar and reopened the Hotel Argentino. Travelers passing thru Rio Grande please stop by with messages from me of adoration. Graciela will show you my wheelchair...

TEENAGE SUPREMACY

THE TEENAGER DOING HIS THING

I have been camping at a biker meet and will do so at the BIG CHILL festival.
My life is a rearguard action against teenager supremacy.
Anti-cool is my only weapon - thus I bought a silver teeppee and two zebra-striped camp chairs that no teenager would be seen dead in - particularly not a teenage supreme sports suicide kid camping out at a supreme sports championship (at which all gear gets trashed). So my gear is safe. As is my pink pen...

EMILY

Anna has a new cousin - and I have a second granddaughter, Emily, daughter of Sarah and my eldest son, Antony.
Wow! Woopee! Cheers!

GRANDDAUGHTERS

I haven't written in a while. My head has been too full of anxieties personal to my family: tears shed for a new-born granddaughter in intensive care, pain for the parents, helplessness in the face of their fears, sense of utter failure in not possessing a magic wand - such is fatherhood.
Tiny Anna is home now. She is utterly beautiful, gurgles softly, joyously, and is gaining weight.
And I ask myself why am I so emotionally pathetic when my son and his wife are so strong...

ENGLISH CATHOLICISM

I find myself at ease with William Dalrymple's writings. I telephoned my brother yesterday to ask what he knew of Dalrymple – was he a Catholic?
Yes, educated at Ampleforth, the Benedictine boarding school which both my brother and I attended.
The persecution of Catholics in Scotland and England began under Henry V111 in 1535 with the Act of Supremacy and continued through to the Emancipation Act of 1829. Laws that forbade Catholics from Government service and from the Armed Forces and from the practice of Law made us onlookers to the conduct of our nation. Excluded from responsibility, our understanding of history is less partisan.

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

India is next on the itinerary. I hope to fly to Mumbai in October. Meanwhile, I have returned William Dalrymple's THE AGE OF KALI to the bookshelves and am reading his brilliant depiction of 19th Century Delhi and its destruction, THE LAST MUGHAL. Dalrymple's WHITE MUGHALS and THE CITY OF DJINNS await my attention in company with Mark Tully's INDIA IN SLOW MOTION.