Category Archives: summer

187. This is the Modern World – From The Jam, Guilfest 2008

Posted on 16 July, 2008 by | Leave a comment

guilfest-2008-from-the-jamA police car and a screaming siren
Pneumatic drill and ripped-up concrete
– The Jam: That’s Entertainment, 1981

Better stop dreaming of the quiet life
‘Cos it’s the one we’ll never know
– The Jam: A Town Called Malice, 1982

Gritty urban realism. Recession.

That’s how it was then, and this is how it sounded. The Jam captured the mood of Britain at the start of the eighties. The loss of hope and the mindlessly brutal banality of an existence with no glimpse of economic rescue or absolution.
Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in 2008, Guildford, heroes, history, London, music, politics, summer

186. Firth of stone and fire – North Berwick, Scotland

Posted on 9 July, 2008 by | 6 comments

streets-of-north-berwick-scotland-by-paradasos-flickrThe afternoon has flown me here, all across a summer sky of grey. The evening beckons now, and outside the window the narrow streets are empty, the shops all shut up for the night.

Scotland. June. Long hours of daylight reaching out ahead.

I stretch my legs along the main street, past red sandstone houses, cafés, bistros and grey tile roofs. It’s a dull old Monday, and the North Berwick weekend bustle, if there ever is one, is hidden far from sight.

The town runs out on me with just the links ahead, and so I try the steps down to the beach. The tide is low and the shore is softly rippled, quiet. No traffic noise. No planes. Just grey sky, grey water, and the lonesome cawing of a gull.
Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in 2008, geology, golf, history, Scotland, summer, travel

185. On the gallops – Epsom Downs and The Derby

Posted on 25 June, 2008 by | 10 comments

green-tunnel-crunching-flints-rifle-butts-alley-epsom-surrey-england-roadsofstoneSummer drifts across these hills. And on warm June days, this is where you’ll find me, the lazy afternoon lagging heavily at my heels all along this steady climb to reach the Downs.

I leave the grey town streets along the old familiar path and follow its narrow cut between the houses. Up ahead, across the road, the first field opens up beside me, but there’s still some work to do.
Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in 2008, geology, history, London, racing, summer, Surrey and Sussex

183. Kenya 7: new light on a dark continent

Posted on 23 May, 2008 by | 22 comments

malaria-dysentery-apathy-oxfam-poster-2008-by-roadsofstoneThis poster called as I walked from the station, reminding me that it’s time to wrap up my series on Kenya.

My visit last summer left me with a whole lot to say about the country, about Africa, and our attitudes to the continent and her people. I sat down to write, and the project found life of its own. Today I’ll outline some highlights, final thoughts and reflections.
Continue reading →

22 Comments

Posted in 2008, Africa, environment, Kenya, summer, travel

182. The truth about global warming

Posted on 12 May, 2008 by | 29 comments

The sun is out again in London, after an unusually cool spring. It’s been a cold winter across much of Europe and North America, too. But the year is turning now, as it always does eventually.

Cooler weather will come and go. Floods, droughts, disasters, snowstorms and heatwaves, too. That is the nature of living on the Earth. You’ll see reporters referring unusual weather events to climate change, but that’s largely misleading, and it’s misinformed as well.

So let’s not get confused. That is only weather, and it’s not the same as climate. Reports like those just serve to confuse the public.

The urgently pressing fact is that climate change is real. And it’s happening.
Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in 2008, environment, global warming, science, summer

166. Kenya 3: Masai Mara – the last wilderness

Posted on 18 October, 2007 by | 8 comments

dawn-masai-mara-kenya-august-2007.jpg

Cool grey skies hang their high curtain above the savannah this morning. Scarcely any flash of colour. Just pale grassland, reaching as far as the eye can see, the horizon broken only by the gentle rise of distant hills and the lonely spread of a guardian acacia tree.

vulture-in-tree-at-sunrise-masai-mara-kenya.jpgWe rumble on, the tyres of the Land Rover clawing restlessly at the gravel. A shroud of pink is forming slowly in the east, where an invisible sun is lightening the underbelly of rippled cloud like some low energy lightbulb down a lonely corridor – weak and inept at first, then adding detail with every second.

Dawn on the Masai Mara – daybreak over one of the last wildernesses on Earth.
Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in 2007, Africa, environment, Kenya, summer, travel