roads of stone

244. A day in November – Occupy London 2011

Roads — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:01:19 +0000

(… with apologies to Sebastian Faulks).

One day in November 2011. Two views of the City of London.

1) St Paul’s Cathedral, from the top floor of a major European bank;

2) The Occupy London protest. Down to Earth, in St Paul’s Churchyard.

Truly, we live in interesting, fascinating times. When distance and detail each yields its own perspective.

243. Across two continents: Istanbul, Turkey

Roads — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:01:12 +0000

As I stand below the Blue Mosque in the early morning, the Call to Prayer is deafening, drowning out all the other senses and sending forth the unmistakeable message — Istanbul is an Islamic city.

But this narrow street hides a wider view. Because just across the road stands one of the great ancient cathedrals of Christendom. The Agia Sofia spans the history of the Holy Roman Empire.

The first church here was founded in 360 AD whilst the present structure dates back to 532 AD — and for almost a thousand years formed the largest cathedral in the world.

Contrasts run through this city, at every level. We landed here in Asia, but we’re staying in Europe.

Last week, this place felt bafflingly exotic and full of oriental mystery. Yet returning now from central Turkey, Istanbul’s efficient trams and city bustle seem much more familiarly European, almost recalling Zürich rather than the Middle East.

I wend southwards through winding streets to reach the city wall. High above it run the last few kilometres of the mighty railway line which carried the Orient Express towards its European terminus at Sirkeci.

From there, the ferry across the Bosphorus sails to Kadıköy, the town which gave the quartz mineral chaldedony its name, where another line begins at Haydarpaşa station for the onward journey to Baghdad.

The long odyssey from Western Europe into Asia is divided in two by just this narrow stretch of water which lies ahead of me now.

I cross the road beneath the city wall and head east beside the Sea of Marmara, looking out towards the Fenerbahçe lighthouse on the Asian side.

On different days, in fair weather and in foul, I run through the promenade’s moods, stepping from warm blue Mediterranean sunshine into the puddles left by lashing Balkan rains.

To my left, the Topkapi Palace lies part-hidden amongst the trees, the historic heart of the Ottoman Empire looking from Europe across the gateway into Asia.

On the headland stands a fine statue of Atatürk, founder of the secular Turkish state, looking out to sea. It is thanks to Atatürk’s vision that Turkey is a modern republic but not a religious state.

With her Asian borders facing onto Iraq, Syria and Iran, Turkey’s oft-rebuffed efforts to join the European Union appear from here as critical to the future security of the region and the wider world as any initiative imaginable.

Just a moment’s indiscretion is surely all it would take for this most strategically situated of our near neighbours to back away from disappointment and turn towards the East.

The gravimetric pull of different worlds and different faiths has pulled across these straits for two millennia and more, and that’s not going to change soon.

The golden figure of Atatürk beams proudly upon a poster for the Marmaray project, which will soon link the transit systems of this congested city across the Bosphorus. A metro threaded across an acutely earthquake-prone seafloor calls for advanced engineering on an epic and courageous scale.

Until the line opens, it’s the ferries plying the Bosphorus which must link Europe with Asia, their daily intercontinental travellers surely sharing with Staten Island, Sydney and Kowloon commuters the joy of a ride to work across one of the most dramatic seascapes in the world.

Until recently the island ferries working here included the MV Mavi Marmara, welcomed back to Istanbul by joyful crowds only last December after her heroic attemps to break the seige of Gaza against the armed might of Israel.

Did I say that winning Turkish hearts and minds was important to our world?

This morning, the ferry terminus is bustling and frenetic, full even at this early hour with seemingly half of Istanbul’s 15 million inhabitants. This would easily be Europe’s largest metropolis, if only part of the city weren’t in Asia.

Atop the Galata Bridge at the Golden Horn, several hundred fishermen stand eagerly seeking a catch from these waters beside two continents.

High on the skyline stands the Galata Tower, built by the Genoese almost seven hundred years ago, and still standing tall above Taksim Square today. Last night we met our Turkish friends there, as we were welcomed into the very heart of Istanbul.

It was ten years ago, in the dark weeks after 9/11, when we welcomed the first of four young students from this city to stay with us in England. Now, a decade later, it’s time to pay a return visit to the little family we’ve gathered here.

Tensions have eased since those uneasy days in late 2001 when it was sometimes scary for a Muslim on the streets of London. And yet, with each year that passed it has grown ever harder (and now effectively impossible) for visitors from Turkey to gain a study visa.

Turkey has trodden her own path across those years, electing an Islamic government which seemingly questioned but, so far at least, has not succeeded in dismantling Atatürk’s secular nation-state.

The risks encircling this country’s future remain clear, and yet Europe’s leaders do their best to keep Turkey at arm’s length — misunderstood, feared and above all, surely, regarded as too different, too Islamic, to join the great European project.

We could blame racism, ignorance or blind stupidity for that shrunken view, but finally there are opportunities lost all round as we deny Europe’s brightest young people the right to learn with us.

I retrace my steps across the bridge and work my way back across the city and through narrower streets to Sultan Ahmed, past the Topkapi Palace to find the Agia Sofia and the Blue Mosque once more.

And as I run, I wonder. What cause do we really have for holding this nation back from Europe, and what do we really have to fear from Turkey?

Because here in Istanbul at the ancient crossroads of civilisation, I know we have so much more to gain.

242. The secret of Sandwich – British Open 2011

Roads — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:01:45 +0000

A major tournament – contested on the best links I’ve played, and won by the gutsiest golfer I know. There could scarcely have been a better result to this year’s Open Championship.

Amongst the courses on the British Open rota, Royal St George’s is the toughest and biggest one out there. And those are qualifications which could apply perfectly to Darren Clarke, as well.

It’s 30 years since I first played at Sandwich. Looking back across all those rounds, the links has offered pain and elation in almost equal measure.

Suffering through the times when the difficulty of the test simply wore me down. And joy when I found a way to hack a string of pars together somewhere, or when the elements really descended and I finished the course in less disarray than expected.

The more I’ve played at Royal St George’s, the more I’ve realised that no one conquers this course. The key to a good score at Sandwich isn’t so much the great shots that you hit, but rather the bad ones you don’t.

And perhaps there was no single outstanding shot which won this year’s Open. Darren Clarke won through scoring solidly through tough conditions and by avoiding the bad shots which ended his rivals’ chances.

That’s no mean achievement. Royal St George’s offers many more problems than opportunities.

On a windy day, there’s not a shot on the course which appears remotely straightforward.

The first hole might look simple enough, but as a 450-yard par four, it’s not exactly easy. With three deep bunkers just short of the green, and a downhill green beyond, most second shots are destined for the back of the green.

Clarke found himself there on Sunday. Leaving his monster first putt short, somehow he drained a scarily fast second from 15 feet. And in that one moment, the pathway to an Open Championship was laid.

Level par on the seventh tee, Clarke boomed a long drive over the sandhills, and then found the green with his second and the cup for an eagle. A two shot lead with eleven holes remaining.

That’s where the fireworks ended. Clarke found no more birdies, and bogeyed the final two holes. Yet he still won by three shots. So how was that possible?

The key lay in Clarke’s nine straight pars cut though the heart of the links in stiff unforgiving winds.

If Mickelson, Johnson, or Bjorn had closed out in pars, the result could have been different. When they fell away, Clarke was the last man left standing.

Royal St George’s is famous for the severity of its finish. The 15th and 18th are two of the toughest holes anywhere, while the 16th and 17th are nearly as hard. But in truth, the battle with the course is often over long before then. There are no easy holes after the seventh, and far too many places to ruin a good score.

Darren Clarke won the Open by not missing a sloping three footer on the 11th like Phil Mickelson. By not slashing a long iron out of bounds on the 14th like Dustin Johnson. And by not letting bogeys leak onto his card like Thomas Bjorn.

The trick at Royal St George’s is simply to get round the course safely and to limit the damage. Darren Clarke found the great secret of Sandwich. And no one ever deserved to win more.

241. Cuba 4: Cienfuegos – a pearl endures

Roads — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 06:33:12 +0000

Daybreak, 250 km east of Havana.

The sun is rising languidly above Cienfuegos as I take in the view of architectural wonders from the hotel roof.

Far below me in the city’s famed central square, Plaza de Armas, stands a fine statue of José Martí, most inspirational of Cuba’s great nationalist heroes.

The square is, quite simply, stunning.

Alongside the classical lines of its cathedral, theatre and town hall — all adorned in white — stands a billboard to Martí’s spiritual successor, Che Guevara.

Tu ejemplo vive — tus ideas perduran:
Your example lives — your ideas endure.

The colonnaded streets of Cienfuegos would thrill any aficionado of Hispanic architecture.

How rare it is to enjoy a World Heritage Site without any other tourists — and with just a few ageing Ladas and Polski Fiats for company, I run easily down the long boulevard stretching out towards the water.

Just before the causeway, I find another poster — urging the youth of Cuba to stand united for the cause. Further on, a billboard proudly describes Cienfuegos as La Perla del Sur, the Pearl of the South.

The ornate and sumptuous villas lining the bay road to Punta Gorda tell of this town’s affluent past, reflecting Cuba’s riches a century or so ago.

The city is still a centre for sugar, coffee and tobacco. And Fidel Castro has a house in this city, down on the waterfront in one of the finest villas of them all.

Story has it that El líder maintains a residence in Havana and in each of Cuba’s 15 provinces, so that he can be at home wherever he spreads the word of this most enduring of all socialist revolutions.

The heart of Cienfuegos is spectacular and iconic. Yet the shops here are almost empty, and away from the main streets it’s a much more modest and earnestly struggling lifestyle which endures.

Since the financial crash bled the life out of tourism, the Cuban economy has been suffering.

The people suffer through isolation and restrictions as best they can.

There are riches in this country, make no mistake. They just don’t filter down.

That’s a universal observation, of course, and there’s less inequality here than in most developed nations. But even in Cuba, some are more equal than others.

Because ideas may endure and principles stand firm, yet the essential problems remain unsolved.

240. Rory McIlroy – US Open Champion and UNICEF Ambassador

Roads — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:52:22 +0000

Golf is a sport which can make you humble.

Yet the new US Open champion had already learnt humility the hard way.

In April, Rory McIlroy led a major championship for the third time in a row, starting the last day of the US Masters with a four-stroke lead. That was before a spectacular Amen Corner collapse raised doubts if Rory could ever win a major.

After all, his final round at Augusta only matched the score he had made in a gale at St Andrews last July, after opening up with a 63.

Scoring 80 twice when leading majors seemed to ask serious questions about Rory’s appetite for the fight.

Yet really, his fortitude should never have been in doubt.

Because after such a disappointing second round, McIlroy quietly closed out the 2010 British Open with a 69 and 68 to finish third — the same position he finished in the US PGA last August, where he’d also led along the way.

After the Ryder Cup in Wales last autumn, the sports pages led with the decisive victory scored by his friend and predecessor as US Open Champion, Graeme McDowell.

But Rory’s tussle with Stewart Cink was even closer. Missing the final green in two, McIlroy contrived to leave his third in the bunker — yet somehow he gathered his composure to recover with a brilliant sand save to halve his match.

That took resilience — a quality Rory underlined hugely in Maryland this week.

But back to humility.

Perhaps it wasn’t McIlroy’s calm at Celtic Manor or Congressional, or even the stellar quality of his golf all year, which said most about the man himself.

Because just last week, only days before the US Open, Rory McIlroy visited Haiti as the Ireland Ambassador for UNICEF.

How many other recent major contenders have given freely of their time for others much less privileged than themselves?

The man has resilience, humility, charm and compassion. And those are the gifts of a worthy champion, in any age.

239. A goddess amidst the gorse — South Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Roads — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:34:33 +0000

The hotel may be still asleep, but by six o’clock a Scottish May morning is already in full swing.

Outside the sky is clear and blue, the lawns still dew-swept and the rhododendron in full flower.

At the end of the driveway, I turn right, and set course hard along the kerb. Any Aberdonian knows that the lethally fast South Deeside road is no place to play in traffic, but for now it’s quiet and a gentle mile is all I need.

A few minutes go by as I ponder the wonders of travel and the rewards of rising early. A long day in meeting rooms will pass more swiftly with an hour of energy spent before the taxi calls to find me.

On the other side of the road, the trees are opening up a longer view, and I step gingerly across the highway to take in the morning glory of the River Dee and the open farmland stretching far beyond.

The river is tranquil here, in the later reaches of its 87-mile journey from the Cairngorm Mountains to reach the sea at Footdee beside Aberdeen harbour.

The Celts worshipped the Dee as a goddess, and today she is blessed with diverse riches. Upstream from here lie some of the best and most scenic salmon fishing grounds in Britain, whilst downstream the waters flow into the busiest oil port in Europe.

This peaceful view alone has more than repaid my early alarm call, but the fast cars won’t be long in coming, and so I hit the road again and gratefully turn right, uphill and full on into the face of rural Aberdeenshire.

The slope ahead is rising uncomfortably now, demanding fuller effort and concentration, but eventually I look back on a perfect vista of green hills and yellow gorse, with the tower blocks on Aberdeen’s Anderson Drive floating faintly in the distance.

Here I am, just five miles from Scotland’s third city, and the rural idyll is still, unbroken.

A friend of mine lives nearby, and as I pass his house on this splendid springtime morning, a small and unexpected flutter of regret flickers across my mind, for these unappreciated gifts of the Aberdeen lifetime I never made my own.

A few reflective thoughts are enough to distract me from one final breathless rise ahead, and then I turn gratefully back downhill to greet my day ahead.

Blue sky, gorse, long grass and easy strides will bring me to the South Deeside Road for a final mile now frautly shared with SUV commuters speeding to the Granite City.

Before long I’ll join them, but in place of their white-knuckled weary tension, I’ll trade a morning’s clarity of thought and a sense of Scottish calm within my mind.

The granite mass of Ardoe House stands firm and fortress-like ahead of me amidst the gardens.

And as my day begins, I’ve already seen Aberdeen from a different place this morning.

238. Guildford is Olympic – torch relay 2012

Roads — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:00:31 +0000

The Olympic torch is coming to Guildford in 2012 as its last stop before London.

The grass running track in Stoke Park was laid out again recently. It’s from here in Guildford that the Olympic torch will begin the the final leg of its journey into London for the 2012 games.

There’ll be an evening celebration in Stoke Park on Friday, 20th July next year.

The International Olympic Committee has announced that the global torch relays of previous Olympiads are a thing of the past. In 2012, as in future, there’ll only be a relay within the country hosting the games.

So it’s certain that the torch won’t return to Guildford for many years to come.

But what better place to begin the final stage of the 2012 Olympic torch relay? Because not far away, there’s an ancient milestone hidden beside London Road which shows the distance (along the old roads) as 26 miles to Hyde Park Corner.

Guildford’s Stoke Park is exactly a marathon distance from central London.

Who will run the torch through Guildford? My vote goes to Atlanta 400 m silver medallist Roger Black, who used to train on the tartan track at Spectrum nearby.

I’ll be running through the park to Spectrum again shortly, as I’ve a marathon of my own to run in 2012.

Another 26 mile journey will start in Guildford very soon.

237. Travels in Asia Minor – Cappadocia, Turkey

Roads — Wed, 18 May 2011 05:31:00 +0000

The golden autumn grasslands looked benign enough in sunshine from our balloon flight at dawn today, but 600 kilometres into Asia Minor, and 1,600 years ago, life was hard here. So hard, in fact, that an entire civilisation went underground. Literally.

Cut up to 85 m deep in soft volcanic layers within Miocene to Holocene tuffs and ignimbrites, the underground cities of Cappadocia serve testament to how difficult life was for early Christians on these high and open plains.

Dangerous enough for whole communities of fifty thousand souls to seek refuge beneath the earth — at several places scattered around this part of northern central Turkey.

Life here is easier now than it was back then, but maybe not that much.

Avanos is a one horse town if ever I’ve seen one, and it’s clear the horse left quite some time ago.

It was still summer in Istanbul earlier this week, but as the late October afternoon begins to fade, it feels like winter is hanging low beneath the clouds.

In a dry creek beside the hotel, an old woman in a headscarf is rooting through some rubbish as I run past. She doesn’t look up.

It’s just a mile to reach the Red River, through quiet and empty streets. A half-deserted supermarket and a photocopy shop stand in the square before the bridge — the new town’s commercial heart in need of some defibrillation, clearly.

Across the river, the old town of Avanos stands dilapidated and neglected. There’s an unlikely kind of gritty charm in the seventies blocks beside the bridge and in the beaten-up cottages along the road rising beyond it to the west.

Higher up the hill, I climb steadily past derelict dwellings to reach a graveyard on the slopes above the edge of town. Row after row of memorials to generations who have lived a different life from mine.

The dusk is slowly falling by the time the call to evening prayer begins. As ever, it’s magnificent and mesmerising — there’s no better sound I know to define the pure translation and mystery of the East.

There’s a view from here across the wide plains of Asia Minor, while far below and beside the river, the streetlights are shining more brightly now against the autumn evening gloom.

Just ten minutes remain to relocate the shop for that perfect rug I failed to buy earlier on today. I put my head down and set tracks determinedly for the square. A short while later, I cross the Red River for one final time again.

It’s fully dark now, and the precious, secret parcel is safely wrapped and tucked beneath my arm — one small but magic carpet to transport us here to the plains of Cappadocia, over many years to come.

236. The price of oil: 6 – Libya and the Last Oil Shock

Roads — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 21:09:48 +0000

‘Paradoxically, the very worst outcome [for oil prices] might not be a sudden shock, but a milder recession. If this were to create some temporary spare oil production capacity by depressing demand, … the urgency of the need to prepare for the impending peak could easily be forced off the policy agenda…

As the global peak approaches and the market tightens, any sudden interruption of oil production could [then] spark the last oil shock.’
David Strahan (2007) — The Last Oil Shock (p. 177)

* * * * *

In early 2009, I described the dramatic rise and fall of the oil price associated with the financial crisis of 2008, and looked at the future oil price trends which might follow recovery through into 2010.

Two years on, economic uncertainty remains, and a return to growth is far from guaranteed. Yet across this time, the oil price has risen steadily. From a low of $40 in February 2009, Brent crude stands at well over $120 today.

The last time when the oil price was above $100, back in 2008, the economy was still booming. Three years later, during the long aftermath of the deepest global recession for eighty years, the oil price remains close to historic highs. How can this be possible?

Unrest in the Middle East has clearly offered the latest impetus behind the upward trend, providing the catalyst for the oil price to break through $100 in February and to surge further in the weeks since then.

In 2009, Libya pumped 1.79 million barrels of oil per day. The country is an important supplier of light, sweet crude to Europe, and is the world’s seventeenth oil producer.

In recent weeks, output in Libya has almost ceased. How the shut-in of less than 2% of the world’s oil production translates into a 20% rise in the oil price serves amply to underline the tightness of global petroleum supply.

There’s very little spare capacity to play with. When, and if, the geopolitical situation in the Middle East calms down, oil prices will likely correct, in part. Yet it’s clear that the overall trend is firmly upwards.

The impact of the global recession has merely been to divert attention away from the growing energy shortfall which will face us all in years to come.

Amidst the wild gyrations in energy prices of the past few years, steady trends have been hard to pick. This cyclicity is certain to continue, as investors react to economic news and to the direction of the market at any given moment.

The path of the oil price in recent times has been dominated by the historic summer 2008 peak and the dramatic slump which followed this. Plotting the oil price on a log scale serves to moderate the effects of dramatic shifts like these, placing more emphasis on the trend across a longer time scale.

The graph above serves to illustrate how from trough to trough, and from peak to peak, oil prices have doubled every five years since 1997. Extending these trends forwards could see oil prices reach $250 by 2015, and $500 by 2020.

Right now, these figures appear unimaginable. Yet, looking back, $120 oil seemed scarcely a possibility in spring 1999 when Brent stood at $10 a barrel.

The oil price has increased by a multiple of twelve since then. And in that context, a four-fold increase by the end of the decade seems almost modest.

As far as oil prices are concerned, it’s time to imagine the unimaginable.

235. Libya and the Arab Spring

Roads — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:01:34 +0000

It was always tense at the Libyan border.

It took a couple of hours to get through the melée at the best of times. All humanity was there. Migrant workers, goat herds, farmers, businessmen. And secret police, too.

Once, on the way in, we were questioned by a mysterious officer with Carlos the Jackal sunglasses and a pistol beneath his leather jacket.

It was hard to feel comfortable under interrogation with $5,000 in cash stashed secretly inside my socks — the only way to pay a Tripoli hotel bill back then, in those days of the UN embargo.

Another time across the frontier at Ras Ajdir, the driver went the wrong way around an oil drum and we had to go right back to the start of the queue and start our two hour wait all over again.

And getting into the country was just the beginnning. The five hour drive from Tunisia to Tripoli was easily the most dangerous trip I ever made.

With no spare parts available anywhere in the country, wrecks were rolling all around us.

Libya was an uncomfortable kind of place in 1997. That sense of unease only grew more intense as we travelled on to Tripoli. The depth of isolation which enwrapped us there at the end of our long desert journey was intense.

Try to imagine waking up somewhere which took longer to reach from London than Sydney. Where the carpet in the hotel had clearly not been vacuumed since the day it was laid in 1970. Where the phones hardly worked, and made mysterious clicking noises on the rare occasions that they did.

It was clear that Tripoli had been attractive once, with Italian gardens on the seafront, an intriguing labyrinth of a souk and spectacular Roman remains. But it was hard to appreciate the fine triumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius when it was piled high to the top with refuse sacks.

We walked around the city at will, but I never dared to run in Libya, or saw another runner either. Tunisia and Morocco had their problems, but Libya was completely different. We were spat at on the street that year.

The whole city was suffering then. The country was generating enormous wealth from its oilfields, but her population saw none of it at all. The shops were empty of food. There was rubbish on every street corner, and a haunted, wary look in every eye.

By the time I returned again in 2003, Tripoli had begun to change. There was food to buy and new shops had sprung up selling imported electrical goods.

A smart restaurant had appeared beside the Roman arch, and just off Green Square, we even found a cappucino bar. With daily flights between Tripoli and most European capitals, it seemed that the country was about to open up.

Gone were the calls to join quiet, edgy meetings with shifty grey middlemen and fixers in hotel lobbies. The Syriana days may not have been entirely over, but it felt as though Libya was slowly rejoining the world.

* * * *

Now, eight years later, the Arab Spring has cut its swathe of protest across North Africa — the area I used to work back then — and is making inroads across the wider Middle East as well.

If the spark of change was in the air, then perhaps Tunisia seemed the least likely place for a revolution to ignite. The country was much more European-looking. More prosperous, more open, tolerant, and free.

But perhaps that’s exactly where a protest could gather pace. Once Ben-Ali had gone, then it was an increasing difficulty curve to bring change to Egypt next.

After seventeen frenzied days in Cairo’s Tahrir Square had done their work, it seemed that anything was achievable.

Benghazi was bound to be the focus of unrest. The east of Libya was never entirely tamed. Yet neither was the west. The fourteen armed checkpoints between Tripoli and the border were evidence enough of that.

As we watch a desert war unfold around the Gulf of Sirte, let’s not forget that Misrata, and the western towns of Zuwarah and Zawiyah rose up as well.

The people there along the old route into Libya will be suffering now. Let’s hope their pain won’t last long, and that freedom in North Africa will soon have its day.

Libya has waited long enough.