roads of stone

I was in Haute-Savoie last week – part of the ancient kingdom of Savoy – that mountainous corner of France around Mont Blanc and south of the Swiss city of Geneva. The name Savoy comes from the latin sapaudia - fir forest – an origin still heard in the French word sapin (fir tree).

Long an independent duchy, the area was occupied by Napoleon’s troops from 1792-1815. After a period as part of Sardinia, Savoy was annexed by France in 1860.

The region has strong associations with Piedmont in Italy, and with French-speaking Switzerland (Turin and Geneva are both much nearer than Paris). The local dialects reflect old mountain French with a smattering of Italian.

But the food doesn’t reflect Italy or France. Savoie is a stronghold of Alpine cuisine. Don’t expect delicate French dishes – this is the home of solidly calorific monster feasts to fuel any long day on the slopes.
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“Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground”
- The Tempest, Act 1, Sc.1

“Full fathom five thy father lies” - The Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2

The sky is falling all around me as the winter afternoon is fading. Down, down we glide, towards the North Atlantic. Three thousand miles of unforgiving sea are all behind us and ahead lies just a pinprick of green holding out against the blue-grey vastness of the ocean.

The rain lashes against the windows as our wings bank on the approach, the landing lights looming nearer in the dusk. A rugged landfall, but now we’re safe.

Outside the airport and across the causeway, a deluge is raging in sheets across the road, the palm trees swaying wildly in the storm. The evening washes itself wet and windswept upon the shore. (more…)

There’s a brick building at the end of the street where I grew up. I run past it every time I’m in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Today, it’s just an empty shell.

After more than seventy years, a new Royal Shakespeare Theatre is being built inside the framework of the old one.

It’s a constraining decision, architecturally - which limits the capacity and design of the new theatre, whilst still destroying the marvellous art deco foyer within. Just think - for £110 mm we could have had a Sydney Opera House instead of a revamped old blockhouse with only 1,000 seats - a third fewer than before.

Looking across the river now, I can see empty space where the heart of the building should be.

And in a way, that’s just how it was in 1970 when I saw my first Shakespeare play here - Peter Brook’s famous ‘White Box’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, famously staged inside a chasm of blank white walls.
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Winter drags in February. The lengthening evenings seem to pack a scary sharpness in their chill, and there’s an unexpected bleakness in these brightening days which makes me yearn for spring.

But it’s not the weather really. It’s my lack of patience for this place, which palls now with every passing week.

The soulless office above the shopping mall entombs me on shivering days like these. Days when inertia sucks the lifeblood of enthusiasm out from in me. Hours spent waiting for the gloom to lift and fall. Days when I don’t feel like running, and I wonder how I ever did.

The crocuses in Epsom Park smile indulgently as I pass on my winter’s route towards the dry Chalk hills above the town. They remind me.
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It was a chilly evening in early February when the Managing Director called us all together. He paused a moment, glanced at the expectant faces all around him, and then he started.

Business is tough, he said, and we’re doing what we can. But finally, we’ve reached that moment when we’ve got to let some of you go.

A hundred of us stood there then, looking at each other, at the floor, and at the winter’s dusk outside.

There was silence. Some more explanation was required, and some more honesty was needed. And, to his credit, Mitch provided it. As ‘this company is going down the toilet’ talks go, it was pretty fairly done.

We’d had problems with one of our installations in the North Sea, he told us. We all knew that already. In the big money business of finding oil and gas and getting them to the beach, failing on either of those priorities was never good.

An asset team would miss its targets, and there’d be no bonuses or payrises for anyone ahead. Such is business, in any organisation. But this time, it was worse.

It’s the oil price, he said. February, 1999. (more…)

So. Farewell then
Barack Hussein Obama
The Audacity of Hope

For five January days
We believed
The world could change

And then New Hampshire
Told you
They’d changed their minds
Instead.

With apologies to EJ Thribb (17 ½)

* * * * *

Coming soon:
To mark the start of USA 2008 this column is taking temporary residence deep in the snows of New Hampshire.

Please see From Scratch for a specially syndicated Roads of Stone, reporting on the US primaries.

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4. GO British ! Chicago Marathon 2002
17. It’s puzzling - a letter on Iraq, to Tony Blair
71. How the West Was Won - Iraq implodes

The sun is wan and thin today, struggling weakly to light the path around the park as I lope my way through the winter afternoon on this, the shortest day.

Christmas is just around the corner.

In Ashtead Woods, near the famous Epsom Wells, my footsteps fall silent among the leaves. The track is lined here with silver birch trees, stripped bare to show glimpses of greyed out sky behind. A still and unforgiving air is rushing past my face. I hear the rhythm of my breathing, and nothing more.

I let my mind fall empty. And dream of a frozen hillside, in another season.

* * * * *

The frost is on the ground – shining sheaves of white splashed on the grass beside the road. It’s late October, dawn. With chilly hands stuffed inside my sleeves, I’m fighting up a steeply rising lane.

At this early hour, my stiff legs are unexcited about the slope. My heavy stomach and a thickened head recall a feast of French food and wine consumed in happier hours just a thirsty, restless sleep behind me.

A curve sweeps ahead atop the climb, and I strive to meet it, counting out each breath and gasping in my exertion.

Twenty, thirty – forty – my feet keep turning, and at last I crest the ridge to greet an unexpected dazzling sunlight where yellow leaves are exploding from the vines.
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Running ? Ah yes, I remember running.

To be fair, I fell down a rabbit hole on the third hole at Sandwich in late summer. I didn’t run a stride in September, and I’ve been slow since then.

But here I am, shivering on the start line in Brighton once again. Trying to remember just what it’s all about.
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