summer

For Whom the Bell Tolls

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

My provisional license arrived in the post yesterday. My second, I should say, since after a very thorough summer holiday shakedown of the flat I’m convinced I must have accidentally thrown my first one out with the trash months ago. It’s put a major stopper on the whole learning-to-drive this summer by holding up the theory stage, but now that it’s here I’ve got no excuses. I should get booking.

But first, I’m getting out of here for a few days. I’m done with scrolling, hoping for contact from the outside world and turning off the WiFi for a bit of enforced internet downtime. Summer holidays just drag on and on when you have nothing to do, so I’ve decided to get out there and do something.

So here I am in the ferry terminal in Portsmouth, waiting for the 22.45 to Caen. The overhead telescreens keep alternating between the blue departures board and the vivid blue and yellow banner of Ukraine. The BBC News app remains focused on the heatwave, though the magic number 40 has disappeared from the headlines – “temperature tops 38C and likely to rise”. Five stories down, Tugendhat is eliminated from the running for Tory leader.

It certainly was hot today, but it didn’t feel much like that blisteringly hot summer holiday in Jerez almost twenty years ago. Despite the threat of 40°C heat, the breeze rolling in across the Weald kept the school grounds pleasantly cool. Even so, the signs that this has been an unseasonably hot few days are clear. When I went out to do a little reading in the morning, the summer soundscape was there: the echoing whack of a tennis racket, the ceaseless chatter of the house martins, grasshoppers chirping lazily in the meadow. A few hours later, the whole place was silent. Only a lone crow broke the stillness, and that was just the once.

I thought the train journey would be problematic due to the hysteria in the news, but despite the grovelling apologies over the Southern Rail tannoy, the train was only ten minutes late pulling into Portsmouth – which is remarkable, given how prone to delays they can be outside of a national crisis.

It’s a beautiful train ride, the route from Crawley to Portsmouth – one of those British rail journeys you should tick off the list, like the one from Darlington to Edinburgh. I never get tired of passing Arundel Castle and the fens at its feet. A childhood spent in and out of various salt-marshes around Kent has left me rather fond of their bleak serenity. Herons stalking the water’s edge. Egrets bedecking the bushes like so many plastic bags snagged on the branches.

Suddenly, an intensive greenhouse-farm appears, concealed from the outside by a thick growth of trees. A ravenous human hand clawing the depths of the earth to satisfy a hungry world. And then it’s gone, the train is hurtling forwards and I’m back in the marshes. I could be looking into the past or the future. I remember the fate of El Acebuche, its silent reeds swaying in the wind, and I’m not sure I want to.

The French family in the seats behind me must be headed for the ferry port, too. At least, I guess they are – I’ve caught the word “bateau” often enough. The children swap in and out of French and English without much of an accent overlay in either. The father speaks only on French, until he stops the ticket inspector to ask if she can turn off the air conditioning. “Don’t you think it’s rather nice, as it’s so hot out there?” – “For five minutes is nice, but it’s freezing.” – “If I were you I’d enjoy it.” At the next stop, the father gets out to soak up the sun. His daughter only just coaxes him back on as the doors close. Before he returns to his seat, he steps into the next carriage, remarks that it’s warmer, and moves. Within minutes the rest of his children have followed suit. It seems petty, but they have a point – the air con was turned up so high I had goose-flesh for half the journey.

I haven’t been to Portsmouth before. The last time I caught a ferry in this neck of the woods was from Southampton, but that was many years ago and we didn’t stop. I had four hours to kill and not a lot to do, so I picked a spot in Victoria Park and watched the world go by. The bells of St John’s sounded for seven. They sounded strangely mournful, but though I hummed the melody back a couple of times, I couldn’t work out why. Two handsome women wander by, their accent West African and intensely musical. Three kids hurtle past, one on a scooter, two on skateboards. One wears a red-and-black chequered shirt tied around his waist (did everybody own one of those shirts at some point?). A family of cockatiels screeched from an aviary in the centre of the park, stolen away from their home far beyond the sea to entertain the fancy of the British public. An ancient Chinese bell stands nearby and seems to serve a similar function, pilfered – it says so in almost as many words on the plinth – during a campaign in Taku. A cryptically-worded message daubed above reads “Perpetual Felicity Achieved” in austere capitals. A breeze blows and the bell moves a little, but it makes no noise. Some cage birds stop singing after a while, too.

As the sun sets, I head to the port. The heat and the hysteria have driven everyone indoors. The high street is virtually empty. Just a couple of kids with drinks they’re nowhere near old enough to drink and a level of delirium to match, and a weatherbeaten gentleman sleeping in the shadow entrance to an Ann Summers store. A grey mannequin in turquoise lingerie poses suggestively through the window at him, blowing a kiss. He wipes his nose, shakes his head violently and turns the page in the book he’s reading.

There’s plenty of folk driving here and there, but nobody on foot. For several minutes I feel like the only human in the city. A couple of Deliveroo me go by on their bikes. A bearded man in a red-and-black chequered shirt worn over his t-shirt, bent over almost double. I pass an outpost of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in a backstreet, and later, the house where Charles Dickens was born. Everything is shut. The high rasp of a motorbike going by, the evening heat and the strangeness of a new place… It almost feels like I’m abroad already.

But no. I’m still here in the terminal. Boarding starts in ten minutes, so I suppose I’d better close there. A demain, mes amis. France is calling! BB x

Heatwaves and Boogie Nights

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

“It was a good year for the vultures. The sun, unfettered by even the promise of cloud, laid waste to the land with biblical fury. Men cowered in the shadows of their houses, praying to a younger god for salvation, while their sheep and cattle died by the thousand. Crops perished, forests blazed in the night and rivers that had once thundered through the mountains ran dry. Only the Tagus, the mightiest of these, stayed its course through the parched land, though it too had suffered, to which the broad halo of white mud that lined its banks from east to west stood as a grim testament. The vast plains south of the great river, once several shades of green, lay barren and brown under the white sky, scarred with huge marble wounds that ran like veins across the earth. In the heat of the afternoon even the mountains seemed to melt, shimmering somewhere beyond the cloudless ether; and it was from these mountains that they came, in ones, twos and hundreds, scouring the world below for the dead and dying.”

I wrote that old opening paragraph to my novel a few years ago during the sweltering Covid summer, when temperatures soared before the school term was quite finished. Half the trouble with writing a book set in Spain is that it was an awful lot easier to write convincingly about the place when I was living out there – since moving back to this rock, my wellspring has dried up somewhat. In truth, I’ve only ever experienced a Spanish summer twice – despite spending almost three years living out there, I’ve always managed to avoid the tres meses de infierno – but the current flick of the claw from Thumberg’s nemesis is giving me a pretty good idea of what it might feel like.

The UK is on red alert. Heck, the radio even said this morning that there was to be a Cobra meeting about the high temperature crisis (things really have reached that kind of an extreme, it seems). It’s a balmy 26 degrees out there right now as I write, and the happy-clappy Christian camp have long since retreated indoors, taking their frisbees and their babies with them. All the forecasters are pointing to a record-breaking 40 degree high on Monday. The current record was set two years ago, with a garden in Cambridge registering 38.7 degrees. That seems absurd, but that’s where we are. The last time I was caught in temperatures that high I was living in Jordan, on the edge of the Syrian Desert, where one expects that kind of celestial fury in the summer months. Not here. Not in West Sussex.

Scorching afternoons aside, I’m enjoying my current routine. I’m up on my feet almost as soon as I’m awake, which is usually around six thirty (yes, even in the holidays – I’m a creature of habit). I’m up earlier (and faster) if I find myself on the sofa. That thing is a death trap – I don’t know what enchantment was cast upon it by its previous owners, but it lulls whoever sits on it to sleep in a matter of minutes. If I don’t have to make the shopping trek (an hour into town and another one back on foot), I get an hour and a half in the sun with a book on the ha-ha. I’m currently working through Hernan Diaz’ In the Distance. When I return, I’ll make myself some lunch and kill the hottest part of the day with a round of Age of Empires II (if I’m feeling uncaringly unproductive), which usually knocks out a couple of hours – especially if I do a little follow-up historical reading afterwards, as I often do. By four o’clock the sun is no longer dead overhead so I pick a different spot on the ha-ha facing the South Downs and get another hour of reading in. I usually get distracted in that spot and end up watching the world. The presence of a summer school right behind me doesn’t bother me overmuch. It’s very easy to forget they’re there when you’re engrossed in a good book, or a panorama as beautiful as the one I have on my doorstep. Sometimes there’s a red kite or two riding the thermals over the Weald and I lose myself in the moment. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I’m somewhere else, like the shade of that special oak tree beyond the Puente del Ajoli on the Raya Real. And sometimes I just count the contrails. It’s a peaceful life. I’m grateful, really.

At the end of the day, after dinner, I retreat to the living room, put on some Soul, Funk or R’n’B and jam, with or without my liquid red bass guitar. I spent a good hour with my bass yesterday, to which the bandage on my thumb and the blister underneath will testify. I’m not much good at the bass, but I find it next to impossible not to get involved when I hear music I love, and I’m slowly starting to get the hang of my favourite bass riffs by ear. Always by ear. It’s the only way I know.

Last night I managed to get to grips with two of my all-time favourite basslines: I Need Your Lovin’ by Teena Marie and Till You Surrender by Rainbow Brown. I improvised around The Cardigans’ My Favourite Game and had an honest go at Billy Ocean’s Stay the Night. One day, hopefully, I’ll be good enough to nail the incredible slap bass in Ain’t We Funkin’ Now by The Brothers Johnson.

I can’t share my love for all things Soul and Funk with my students anymore on account of the colour of my skin. They say it’s not my place. But it remains my favourite music genre by far, and they can’t stop me listening to the music I love. It’s just a shame I have to be so selfish with something that really should be shared, not least of all on account of the power within.

Marvin. Tina. Stevie. Lou and Luther, Sam and Dave, and Aretha, Minnie and Michael. They’re in my ears most nights. But nothing and nobody can lift me out of a dark spot like the hardest working man in showbusiness, the Godfather of Soul, soul brother number one, Mister James Brown. If only I could have seen him live…! James was a living legend, and one of the few artists I know whose recorded work pales in comparison to his live shows. Any try-hard can stand in front of a microphone with a guitar and croon. James could move like lightning and his band hung on his every movement for their cues. I reminded myself of his mastery the other day by watching his performance at the T.A.M.I. Show back in ’63, when, in a fit of pique over being snubbed as the closing act in favour of the Rolling Stones, he and his Famous Flames blew the opposition out of the water with an up-tempo run of Out of Sight. That and his legendary mike-drop in Montreux almost twenty years later (check it out at the 4 minute mark).

The Trinity in the Mega Drawing (2017)

Forgive the fanboying. There are few things I love more in this world. I’d like to think that the sheer amount of time and love I’ve invested in my passion for Soul and Funk and its history over the years renders my taste in music sincerely reverential rather than appropriative. The way I see it, it’s steered me through the darkest waters in my life and always brought me back to the light, and I owe it to my old bandmaster Mr D who introduced me to that world. If I can share that light with somebody, even just one other person, I’ll have passed on the torch. Nothing so powerful and so precious should be preserved for enjoyment in private. That’s definitely not what James would have wanted.

Well, it looks like the sun is slowly starting to sink at last. Time to pick up where I left Håkan on the trail. Though the world is already blazing hot out there, keep the funk alive, y’all. BB x

Summer Ramble on a Ha-Ha

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Bastille Day. The temperatures hit 26 degrees Celsius this afternoon. The BBC Weather app is predicting a high of 34 on Tuesday. The folks on the radio are starting to use the words ‘ration’ and ‘hosepipe ban’. I sat outside on the south-facing ha-ha and stared out across the Weald towards the South Downs for about an hour. I brought a few books to read – four more than I actually needed, as is my habit – and spent about ten minutes “reading” the mega-drawing, reliving the memories recorded on that gargantuan scroll.

I saw a monk in the quiet garden sitting in silent contemplation and reminded myself how lucky I am to live and work where I do. Isolation does no wonders for the human condition, but there’s a reason enlightenment is rarely sought in the cities. Sometimes the key to more positive thinking is just to get outside for an hour or two, even if there is no destination in mind. I certainly feel a lot happier for it.

Over the forest to the south, I saw a pair of hobbies displaying. I haven’t seen such a thing in a long, long time. I’d forgotten what masters of the air they are. Little wonder they’re among the few predators capable of catching a swallow on the swing. They cut through the air like feathered lightning, making the hovering kestrel nearby look like one of Da Vinci’s clumsy flying machines by comparison.

A few minutes later, the white buzzard flapped into view. It wasn’t around for more than half a minute, before two crows sent it back the way it had come, back into the wooded dark of the Weald. A hat-trick of British birds of prey in as little as five minutes. Reminded me of a sunny June afternoon when I was a kid, when to my disbelief I clocked no fewer than six raptor species circling above the house at once: kestrel, buzzard, sparrowhawk, hobby, two red kites and a peregrine. To this day I have no idea how they all came to be in the same place at the same time. In Gibraltar, maybe, but not in Kent.

The race for Boris’ replacement is picking up momentum. My parents were quick to bat aside my guess that Sunak would take the throne, but the odds seem to be in his favour at the moment. I’m no political pundit, but I feel it’s worth recording these things from time to time. Since reading Philipp Blom’s Nature’s Mutiny last year (a collection of anecdotes documenting the Little Ice Age), I’m all the more convinced it’s important that those of us who spend our free moments writing make a point of logging the everyday. Who knows what it might tell future generations about the way we lived?

I’m getting itchy feet again. I think I might go on just the one *little* adventure before the summer is over, and I’m thinking it ought to be France – not least of all because of the relative ease of getting there by boat. It sounds like nothing less than chaos surrounding airlines at the moment, which are struggling to meet the logjam of two years’ worth of cancelled summer holidays when they haven’t yet recovered from the post-COVID staff shortages. I don’t plan on going far, but I have always wanted to see the Bayeux Tapestry, and one of the better things to come out of 2021/22 has been a rediscovery of my love for French, thanks to an especially heartwarming Year 7 class I had the pleasure to teach this year. I confess I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about going back to teaching two languages at the start of the year (after my experience teaching lower set Year 9 in my PGCE year), but these kids really turned it all around. So… Normandy? I’d better do some research, but… I’ve got to say, the opportunity to spend even a couple of days in a place of such historical importance… It’s dangerously tempting! BB x

For the Glory of Jellyfish

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Tuesday 12th July, 11.13am
Hassocks Station

I needed to get out. While it was ultimately my decision to come back south to my flat and cut myself off once again – and I stand by that decision – it’s all too easy to go stir crazy in here on my own. I was angling on getting out and seeing friends for a couple of days, but as my plans fell apart, I’ve had to take the reins myself. So I decided to strike out for the coast. Brighton always makes for good writing, that perfectly bizarre city.

It’s clearly a school trip day today. The train south from Three Bridges was absolutely rammed with saaf Landan kids in high-vis jackets, their beleaguered teachers sitting close at hand, identifiable for the throbbing veins in their temples if not by their lanyards. Standing room only. It’s kind of noisy in the gangway, so I pop my headphones on. The Spinners’ Rubberband Man cancels out some of the angrier verses the kids are throwing around from their phones. I don’t understand the unbridled rage in that kind of music, much less its magnetic appeal to kids. Give me the laidback fun of the seventies any day.

12.40pm
Brighton Palace Pier

Somehow it took me all of an hour to get from the station to the pier. Time slips through my fingers in a bookshop. It’s as though Waterstones operates in its own dimension. That could well be because I’ve become a lot more tactical when it comes to book-buying, taking the time to really get a flavour for a book before deciding to add it to my collection. As a general rule, any and all books on Spain (pre-20th century) go straight into the basket, but I’ve genuinely reached the stage now where if I don’t have it, it’s not worth having. There’s still a wealth of material out there in Spain in Spanish, but with Spain’s ludicrous stance on FBP, shopping for books over there is simply not economically viable. At the moment I’m trying to pick up my European reading challenge where I left off a few years ago, so I sought out a Ukrainian book to add to the collection today. I thought I was onto a winner with Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman – the forefather of Fiddler on the Roof – only it turns out, predictably, my mother already bought the book years ago. Still, no matter. That’s one more book I can feel better about giving away someday.

1.27pm
Brighton SeaLife Centre

Yes, I visited the aquarium. Don’t judge! When I was a kid I used to love going to aquariums – or the more ecologically-sound sealife centres, as they are so often called these days. Nausicaa across the Channel in Boulogne was a personal favourite, but Hastings’ SeaLife Centre came a very close second.

It was pretty much deserted. A large primary school group came in after me, but they never made it any further than the cafe housed in the original Victorian aquarium. I felt like a kid again and challenged myself to name the fish whose names I’d furiously memorised more than twenty years ago. For some crazy reason it’s all still there. From loach, tench and trout (easy mode), to snakelocks anemones, garden eels and corkwing, rainbow and cuckoo wrasse (standard) and on to pacu, Bloody Henrys and discus fish (hard mode). It’s a safe bet that the reason I had such a hard time learning anything in science class was because that part of my brain was stuffed full of animal trivia. If only biology had been about animals and not plant cell structure…! Who knows, I might have gone on to study it. As it is, I was bored stiff and let it go as soon as I could.

I stood and watched the turtles for quite a while. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a live sea turtle before. My god, they’re huge. Nature found a perfect recipe over 100 million years ago and decided ‘yep, that doesn’t need any more work’. Like sharks, turtles have been around for millions of years. Watch a turtle fly through the water and you’re reminded of how pathetically short our time on this planet has been by comparison. Only, these turtles looked a little stereotypic. One bit the other on one pass. Creatures can develop odd behaviours when they’re cooped up in small quarters. Maybe that’s a window into what’s happened to me in my flat this summer!

On to the jellies. I could have come here for the jellyfish alone. They’re absolutely mesmerising to watch in flight, pulsing slowly through the water, their hair-like tentacles trailing behind them. Another perfect life form that has seen millions of years of evolution come and go. Almost all sci-fi flicks imagine aliens from other planets as bipedal if not all-but human in appearance (Doctor Who and Star Wars are the prime examples), but if I were a betting man, I’d stake a fair amount on extra-terrestrials looking more like jellyfish than man. Isn’t it rather selfish of us to assume that ours is the perfect life form when turtles, sharks and jellyfish – hell, even cockroaches – have outlived us by millions of years? And on that note, I’d better clear out of here before I sell out mankind to the invading jellies faster than Kent Brockman.

2.58pm
Artists’ Beach

After nearly betraying humanity over a jellyfish and admiring the beautiful world beneath the waves for an hour, I promptly went outside, climbed the steps up to the palace pier and ate a battered fish with chips and vinegar. The irony was fortunately lost on the hoarse chippie vendor, who barely got the order numbers out in a grating voice. A group of girls next to me got their orders in after me, but somehow got their orders out first. £8.20 for fishcakes and chips seemed a bit steep compared to the £5.40 deal just 200 metres from the pier, but it was good quality, and since I barely managed to finish it, I didn’t have to wash it down with a tot of buyer’s remorse.

Brighton was packed with graduands this afternoon, red-faced and sweating in their full academic dress for the 28°C degree heat. If they opted for modesty, the other beach goers didn’t get the memo. British flesh on florid display, ranging from lobster-red to milk-white. A few lucky sightseers with bronze skin seemed to walk a little taller, but they were definitely in the minority. Lifeguards, street vendors and tramps made up the rest. Folk who have little choice but to soak up the sun.

Freeze frame. I pop the chip-box in the bin and look around – and really look. Yuppies in “gap-yah” pants and strappy tops. A lady in a wheelchair, and two women at the traffic lights who get to discussing behind their hands how she might have ended up there (the kind of curiosity my generation loves to hound out as aggression). Goth-types with nose rings, vape-sticks protruding from their fingers. On that note, cryptic vape ads everywhere (what on earth is the appeal?). A squadron of Korean cyclists suiting up on the sidewalk. A cormorant flying east along the coast. The indefatigable enthusiasm of the man selling rides on the motionless merry-go-round. A boy with what looks like rickets going by. The blonde girl in her thirties singing her heart out to a crowd of beachgoers enjoying a late lunch. Nobody is looking up at her.

3.35pm
Preston Park Station

The train home is much emptier, but I still walk the length of the train to find a carriage to myself. I pop the headphones back on as the train begins to pull away and Manu Dibango comes on. Sax City, Africadelic and Soul Makossa. Dibango was one of the victims of COVID two years ago. Like Marvin, James and Luther, that’s one more of my favourite artists who I’ll never get the chance to see live (or alive, for that matter).

During the Gospel Choir debacle, I spoke to a colleague and asked for their thoughts. They said they had thought a lot about the issue of music in a post-BLM world, and questioned even having been to a soul music gig as a white person. That messed with my head for months. It’s not that I don’t rate musicians who look like me, but give me a choice between Ed Sheeran and Fela and it’s Fela every time. Pop is catchy, but disco is eternal – it just keeps on giving, fifty years later. Folk is clever but Soul finds notes that folk just can’t. And highlife is surely a candidate for the most feel-good music genre on the planet. How can you deny yourself the chance to listen to such wonders on account of a feeling of awkwardness?

I’m all for better representation in the music industry. It needs it. I just hope we don’t end up carving ourselves up into islands where we can only listen to people who look like us, think like us, talk like us. And I mean that literally as well as musically. Social media is doing that already. It’s a dangerous path we’re treading, and I hope we can weather the storm that’s coming.

Would you look at that. I’m back to sermonising. I think I was doing better with committing acts of high treason for the conquering jellyfish. Time to go. Blppp blppp blpppp. BB x

Sh!tsh@w: A Recovery Plan for a Rough Year

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Sunday 26th June, 12:47pm.
The Flat.

We’ve made it. Blimey, but I thought that year would never end. School years come and go in cycles, and I consider myself an extremely patient man, but this one has been particularly trying. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve come close to questioning my career on more than one occasion, and every time I’ve been pulled back up to the light by the trinity: the kids, the music and the torchlight of my ancestors. I’ve never been overly fond of the yawning hole in the year that is the summer holidays – I have a desperate need to be busy that two months puts a serious strain upon – but I did breathe an almighty sigh of relief when the clock struck twelve on Friday night. It’s just been one of those years.

When I look back, I can’t help but label my third year as a teacher as the year when everything went wrong. The year when all my endeavours came to ruin. Consequently, it’s also the year when hope has been even more important than ever – and hope, shapeless and mysterious, has ever been my polestar.

This year my Gospel Choir was disbanded, cancelled on the grounds that I, as a white man, was not the appropriate choice to run such a group. I conceded without a fight. It hurt, it hurt right down to the core of my soul to be told so openly that my efforts – and even my taste in music – were so wholly inappropriate. It wasn’t an attack on me by any standards, but my word, did I take the issue home! My head was spinning for weeks and I took some time out in Spain with my cousins to heal. What had happened flew in the face of everything I’d been taught by my various Gospel mentors over the years, and everybody I spoke to seemed baffled. For my career’s sake I briefly considered abandoning my attempts to dabble in music absolutely, and would have gone ahead were it not for the discovery that my great-grandparents were both musicians. I cannot let them down. It wouldn’t be right. I also owe it to the kids under my aegis to find a way, so that the last three years of hard work will not be in vain.

Rising from the ashes, my new a cappella group has been fun, and I hope the kids have enjoyed it, even if we’ve never been concert ready when the time came. The simple truth is that Gospel music, as well as being eye-opening and soul-enriching, is easy to learn. It’s meant to be, because it was never written with trained musicians in mind. By contrast, a cappella arrangements are impressive when done right, but hard to pull off, even when you have a group of semi-professionals. It pains me that my efforts to instil a genuine love of performing have yet to bear fruit with my current cohort, but the kids rock up each week with big smiles and they enjoy the music, and I guess that’s good enough for now.

December hit me with a one-two punch that nearly knocked me out cold. I wandered out of a five-year relationship and within twenty-four hours I had a head-cold that left me half-deaf – and later, more excruciatingly, under the maddening influence of diplacusis dysharmonica. The timing could hardly have been worse: first the Gospel fiasco left me questioning almost all my choices in music, and then the mother of all earaches made it physically impossible to listen to any kind of music whatsoever for all of two months. It felt like the world was conspiring to bring me down.

I wasn’t especially keen to admit it, but I’ve been in orbit ever since. I tried a couple of times to kindle the sparks of a relationship with somebody new, but my attempts sputtered and died like the fireworks in the rain, and I confess I’ve probably been too proud to bend the knee in full to the world of online dating purely on principle. So I’ve been a family man to my kids more than ever this year, giving them as much of my time as I can muster of an evening and finding opportunities to praise and guide wherever I can. They give me hope and I try to do the same for them. I’m convinced teaching is the best job in the world.

I’ve tried to be more supportive of my brother this year. He hasn’t chosen the easiest path, and there are few people in the world I look up to more. I’ve also kept up with my youngest cousin through our English classes every week, or at least the weeks where he doesn’t have an exam to revise for. Family means a lot to me, squaring well with my dreams of being the best dad ever someday, which is partly why being out of a relationship has been so disorienting. At least if there’s been one success this year, it’s been a closer connection to my kin. Maybe rediscovering the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness earlier in the year helped.

Finally, I know I can be a better teacher. I’ve done well by my kids this year, but I can improve. I know I can. I think all the knocks I took this year left me on one knee, still standing though not as strong as before. I reckon it’s about time I got up on two feet again.

So it’s time to plan ahead and set things in order. Two months of summer stretch ahead, and I’ve got plenty of things to do, starting today.

I’m going to get fit.
Fitness has never really interested me, but a healthier body can only prop up a healthier state of mind.

I’m going to cook for myself again.
I’ve taken advantage of being fed at school for too long. I used to love cooking when I lived for myself. It’s time to rediscover that joy.

I’m going to learn to drive. Finally.
It’s a milestone that I can’t ignore anymore, and I’m finally at the stage in my life where absolute freedom of mobility is starting to interest me. Even if I don’t pass my test this year, I need to make a start. Starting is always the hardest part.

I’m going to read more. And I mean read, not just say it and buy more books.
I’ve set myself a target of a chapter a day, whatever the book, in addition to at least one article.

I’m going to plan ahead.
I want my teaching to get better and better, so I’m going to dedicate some serious time to planning some fantastic teaching methods this summer.

I’m going to write again. Not just on here, but the book.
My journals have been with me to almost every lesson and on every school outing, but I’ve made little progress on the novel since the real teaching life began. And that’s criminal.

Last but not least, I’m going to get out and see the world.
Not traveling – I can’t justify having more than one holiday per year anymore, and I had my holiday at Easter. But I need to widen my circle of trust. I need to allow myself to meet others, and if I’m guarded about making that connection online, the only way to do it is to get out and about.

I’m no fan of coming up with action plans at work, but my future is counting on me to make this choice now. Melodrama aside, I could do with some change in my life. And that change starts today! BB x

Hesperornis

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

At around eight o’clock in the morning, the sun isn’t quite all the way up yet and the beaches around Arenal d’en Castell are, for the most part, empty of swimmers. A few Speedo-wearing junkies hug the shoreline, and the running girl is back on the boardwalk as she was yesterday, same time, same place. Other than that, the beach is empty – except for one unexpected bather out for a morning swim.

The Mediterranean Shag – perhaps more appropriately dubbed in Spanish as the tufted cormorant – is a diving bird that one normally associates with the rugged cliffs and seabird colonies of the north. The last time I saw these odd-looking snake-necked seabirds I was standing atop the windswept cliffs of Inner Farne, where the birds had built their messy nests mere inches from the footpath. The Farne Islands are magical in their own right with their denizens so fearless and so close at hand, so I suppose I assumed the Farne birds to be a braver sort. In most other parts of the world, birds (and other animals for that matter) know well enough to steer clear of the capricious hand of man. The Great Auk didn’t – and is consequently no longer with us.

Before the tourism industry boomed in the Mediterranean, sea turtles and monk seals swam into the sandy coves to give birth and plovers nested on the shorelines. The human demand for a place in the sun has pushed many of these creatures to local extinction – the Mediterranean monk seal is now one of the rarest mammals on the planet – but some species have decided the only way to cope with the summer surge of noisy humanity is to simply go about their business as though nothing had changed. The shags of Arenal d’en Castell do not appear to mind the presence of their human neighbours in the slightest. The waters of the bay are still teeming with fish, and for this master fisherman, the presence of a few hardy toe-dippers is no obstacle to a morning’s hunting.

There are at least three shags in the bay, not counting those that haunt the rocky cliffs of the headland to the northeast. Like many “urban” animals, they lack the lustre of their wild counterparts. The shining bottle-green feathers of the Farne birds are absent here: Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii dons a more humble suit, with a touch of the sandy-grey “pardel” colour that flecks the coats of all Spain’s beasts, from its mice and rabbits to its bears and wolves.

Or at least, this bunch of townies do.

They really are masterful swimmers. This youngster did an entire length of the bay in a matter of minutes, displaying incredible agility as it darted through the shallows, oftentimes passing within a few feet of the day’s first paddlers, and avoiding what obstacles it encountered with incredible dexterity – with one exception. Perhaps age will bring wisdom.

Every once in a while, nature, that ancient mechanic, finds a form it likes and seems to say to itself ‘yes, that’ll do – no need for further adjustments’. Sharks and sponges and jellyfish have filled an ecological niche since time immemorial, and there is much in the shag that harks back to some of the earliest birds, not least of all the fearsome Hesperornis, a seagoing avian dinosaur with sharp teeth on its beak. There are no teeth on its descendant, but as it floats along the surface of the water, snorkelling often and propelling itself along by its back legs, it seems an ancient creature; and when it finds what it was looking for, it kicks with its powerful legs and dives. And if it looked a capable swimmer on the surface, that is nothing compared to what it can achieve below the waves.

Would that I had an underwater camera and could show you just what I mean! Swimming around the headland this afternoon, I ran into the bird again, paddling only a few metres away without a care in the world. When it dived, I went under and followed it on its underwater hunt. Such speed! The bird moves like a torpedo through the water, powering ahead with powerful kicks of its bright yellow feet. I could only keep up for as long as it allowed; when it had enough of the lumbering tag-along, it kicked harder and took off through the depths. Were the sea calmer I might have watched it go, but the high winds stirred up the sand on the seabed and within seconds it disappeared into the gloom.

It’s moments like this that I wake up for. The flycatchers hawking around the climbing frame in the garden. The hummingbird hawkmoth that visits the hedge every day, the turtle doves that purr from the Aleppo pines, and the blue rock thrushes that warble from the cliffs of every rocky cove – and all of this within five minutes of the flat. Menorca is wild and, for the nature lover for whom a casual swim is simply not enough, it is a truly beautiful place to explore.

The high winds of the last few days are finally on the wane; the waves are not crashing upon the headland as they were this morning. Tomorrow I make for Fornells to explore the reefs on the northernmost cape of the island. I hear there are moray eels to be seen, though I should consider myself more fortunate if I should have the chance to swim with the shags once again. It was a real RSPB moment, up there with the vultures in the mist and the saltpan harrier, and I shall treasure it for years to come. BB x

Entitlement

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I didn’t make it to Spain.

My bags were packed. I had my lightweight hiking clothes laundered and folded and neatly placed at the top of my rucksack. My flights were booked, hold luggage inclusive, my tent rolled up and my roll-mat tucked in along the side. I’d even learned a couple of lessons from last time, and I had stocked up on plenty of mosquito repellent, sunscreen and up-to-date maps. In short, I was readier than I’ve ever been before. But I still didn’t make it to Spain.

In the end, budgeting was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Five weeks ago, when I’d bought myself a decent tent at last and was eager to put it through its paces, it seemed perfectly logical to book a return flight to Spain and see what happened. I had a tent, so this time I could camp out in the wild for free and have a cheap trip. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, in fact, so much. The more digging I did, the more dangerous a notion it became. Wild camping is a legal grey area – that much is certain – but as the economic situation worsens, those countries hardest hit hit harder. Where there is money to be made, the freebooter and the vagrant are unwelcome. Whilst a local farmer may take no issue to you setting up a tent on the edge of his property, a passing local just might – for a quick buck. For a simple denuncio, one might expect to receive a small cut of the fine meted out by the police which, depending on the whims of the officer in charge, can be hefty. I’ve heard of cases of campers fined up to 600€, which is a good 590€ more than what you might pay in a campsite, if you can find one. If Spain didn’t still cling on to such legacies of the Franco era, it might not be so risky a venture. But as it stands, when a local shepherd stands to make more money by turning you in to the police than in an entire week’s work, it gives him little incentive not to do so.

My girlfriend’s mother passed onto me a keen insight on my last visit: we see a lot less danger when we’re younger. At eighteen, it didn’t occur to me that by setting up camp in the middle of the woods on the slopes of the Guadarrama I might be putting myself at the mercy, not of hungry wolves, but of hungrier shepherds. I just did it and moved on. Now that I’m older and wiser – and more wary – I find myself second-guessing a little more.

It’s just a damned shame that Spain does not have as many campsites as England does. Northumberland, for example, has over a hundred campsites. Extremadura, which is more than eight times the size of Northumberland, has twenty-two, with twelve of them concentrated in one mountain range in the north. Perhaps the Spaniards don’t enjoy camping as much as the English do, but they’re missing a trick. Spain is absolutely stunning, with scenery – in the very biased opinion of this author – second to no other country in Europe. Without campsites, or the option to wild camp, they’re missing out on the chance to reconnect with their supreme natural beauty.

When you can put a name to something you see, it means so much more to you. Your friends matter because you know them by name, just as the pupils whose names you recall stand out in your mind. Neglect to know the world around you and it will never mean as much to you as it will to the naturalist, the tracker or the mountaineer. It’s a natural connection we sorely need as tech takes over the world. Going camping offers that connection to the next generation. Or at least, so I believe.

Part of the reason I so hastily splashed out on flights to Spain which I now can’t make or change without incurring heavy surcharges (thanks a bunch, Easyjet) was a disgusting feeling of entitlement that I just couldn’t shake. Having been up to the Edinburgh Fringe for one last, loud fling with the Lights, I needed to get out. To be myself. To travel. Isn’t that what everybody else does in the summer? Instagram certainly seems to say so, as does Facebook. You can hardly move for photos of Cuba, Malaysia, New York City, the French Riviera, German markets, Polish cafés, Incan ruins and Thai elephant baths. It’s a storm of what-a-wonderful-time-I’m-havings and wish-you-were-heres that build and build until you ask yourself why you aren’t out there seeing the world. A FOMO more potent than any shot, and one that, like a bad drink, leaves a bitter aftertaste. Sooner or later, the travel bug gets to be like any other addiction, and after mowing through the next barrage of Phnom Penh sunrises and Carribean bikini lines you get itchy feet. I want to be there. I want to see that. What about me?

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It’s not the Inca trail, but it’s still bloody gorgeous

Let’s not kid ourselves. Travel is not for everyone. It’s just not. It can be done on the cheap, but it’s never free. Time is money, and if you’re not spending one, you’re spending the other, which means you can afford to spend it. Now that’s a privilege few of us have.

It isn’t often that I feel bitter about the affluence of the world around me, but it’s at times like this that I realise with a nasty jolt that it’s nothing short of madness to expect the same luxuries as one’s contemporaries. Life would be an awful lot easier if we stuck to telling people face-to-face about our adventures rather than bombarding them with photos twenty-four seven, and even then, do we have to yell? The blogger in me says yes. The writer in me isn’t so sure. I’m just a student fresh out of university with a modest job already on the cards, and that’s a luxury I can’t overstate highly enough. It’ll be many, many years before I can afford annual transatlantic summer holidays, and by the time I can, I don’t suppose I’ll want to.

Fringe, I accept, was my holiday. It was expensive, more than any holiday I’ve ever had, and I was a fool to think I could afford another, summer job or no summer job. In the end I was saved by the budget and, more poignantly still, saved by the bell. A couple of friends of mine are getting married in a couple of weeks, and it’s because of them that I had to return from Extremadura before flying back out again. The folly of making two trips to the same place became apparent only once I’d decided not to go.

I still have my dreams. I still dream of South Africa. But I can wait, until such a time as I have the time, the money and the maturity to go and to really make the most of it. For the time being, I’m going to focus on the humbler side of life. I have plenty of books to read and lessons to plan. I, too, am privileged to be where I am and how I am, and I should be grateful for that. Autumn is here, and autumn is always such a beautiful time of year in England. I should be making the most of it. BB x

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Sloth Break

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

My time at university finished almost a week ago, now. In light of the rather hectic run-up to graduation, and the even more hectic month yet to come, I unashamedly spent the last three days in total idleness. After a year of trying (and mostly failing) to squeeze productivity out of every spare minute, I squandered the first few days of summer and am now fully recharged. It’s that time of year again when I rediscover my inflexibility, when I yearn for a bike and reconsider another shortlived exercise regime whilst the sun still shines, before I accept my fate and return to the world I know best: reading, writing and procrastinating, none of which require the ability to touch one’s toes or do a one-leg squat.

It’s a beautiful summer’s day here in Sussex. There’s a pastel dusting of white cloud in the blue, but otherwise it’s a rare blue sky overhead. I lay down in the garden and almost immediately I spotted the far-off shape of a buzzard circling lazily towards the south. I might have missed it if I hadn’t chosen to look up at that moment. Life is full of instances like that. I wonder how many such creatures simply go by unnoticed every day? It must be in the millions.

I’m currently absorbed in the annoying process of filling out the usual admin tide for next year’s job. Frustrating, but more tedious than rage-inducing like it was the first time. If anything ever puts me off teaching, it just might be all the paperwork involved – though I appreciate that, as professions go, it’s probably a generous one.

Whilst I have the time to be idle, I’m finally making a dent in the large pile of books I’ve accrued over the year, starting with Aimee Liu’s Cloud Mountain, a fantastic find in a tiny old bookshop in Edinburgh that had me hooked from the comparison on the jacket to M.M. Kaye’s The Far Pavilions, to this date still my favourite book of all time. If I can learn to write a novel of such brilliance, I’ll know I’ve made it as an author.

Work begins in a week’s time. If it’s anything like it was three years ago, I’ll be up to my ears for a full fortnight. Busy, however, is the best thing to be. It should be said, five days down the line,  that I certainly prefer the idea of free time than the reality of free time itself. BB x

Two Men Skilled in Climbing Mountains

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

We did it. We conquered Ghorghez. It’s been staring us in the face for all of six weeks but now I can put my hand on my heart and say with all honesty that the beast has been vanquished. Call it the human desire to tame the wild in me, but I could never have left Tetouan with my head held high if I’d never managed to tackle that mountain.

Fortunately, Alex was of a similar opinion, so at nine o’clock this morning we hailed a cab and off we went.

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King of Tetouan (or that obligatory tourist photo)

We didn’t have the best of starts. My host father very kindly gave me the use of his topographic map and took me up to the roof to explain the route we could take; he would have come with us, if his wife was not still hospitalized from the accident. But when he asked how many of us were going, I had to lie and say five. If I’d told him the truth – that Alex and I alone were going – he’d probably have tried to stop us. The last time he went on a fossil-hunting excursion up in the mountains, he was attacked by a group of thugs and severely injured.

In that knowledge, Alex and I arrived at Ain Bou Anane and set off on our journey.

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Don’t be fooled… It wasn’t anywhere near as easy it looks

For the first ascent we had it easy, as there was a reliable, well-trodden path to begin with. Emphasis on ‘begin with’; after a hundred metres or so it vanished into the sea of thorns and scrub that covers most of Ghorghez and we were forced to resort to free-navigating the mountainside, cutting from goat track to goat track with the occasional wayward boulder as a bridge between the paths. And just as well: the tracks often vanished into thin air like fireflies in the night, leaving us stranded in the scrub.

The mountain wasn’t entirely wild. What I took at first for bird calls turned out to be the Ghorghez shepherds out on the slopes with their flocks. I’d quite forgotten how far sound travels in the mountains. More than once I thought we’d been followed, only to see the source of the noise sitting atop a boulder watching over his goats on the far side of the valley. I must admit, due to my host father’s tales, I was more wary than usual around these hill-folk. Seeing their silhoettes appearing and disappearing between the rocks set my teeth on edge. More than once I let slip that we might have to make a break for it if they ‘came back with reinforcements’.

But they didn’t, and Alex smiled and waved at them, and some of them waved back. I think we could all do with a reminder from time to time that, at the end of the day, everybody’s human. A smile and a wave could change everything.

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Now that’s what I call a hike!

As for their fences… Seriously. Fuck fences. The amount of backtracking we had to do to find a way around the vast sections of the mountainside that had been cordoned off was unfair, unhelpful and unnecessary. Who even builds fences on a mountain anyway? I guess they’re for the few cows we saw munching through the scrub, but what kind of a sadistic individual drives their cattle up into the mountains and then fences them in with barbed wire and brambles? Fuck those fences.

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You’ve got to hand it to Maroc Telecom. Fully functional 3G up in the mountains is impressive

Delaying our hike by one day was one of my better decisions. Not only was Alex fully recovered from his late late Friday night, but the weather couldn’t have been better. The sun shone out from behind the clouds all morning, and the wind, though strong, was cool and refreshing. Compared to the Azla trek, it was a much easier ascent. Which is jammy, for double the height.

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Ghorghez’ summit in the clouds

Alex had a run-in with a rather large snake on the way down. I know because one minute I was powering ahead with my trusty bamboo cane, and the next he was racing past, raving about snakes and putting about as much distance as he could between the cliff and himself. ‘I don’t like snakes. No one likes snakes. There isn’t a culture in the works that likes snakes. There’s just some things that nobody likes. Donald Trump, snakes… Oh, it was more than a metre long, easily.’ Ladies and gentlemen, Indiana Jones. ‘We don’t even have any antidote’. True, when I was packing this morning, I didn’t really think about preparing for a snake attack. I was too busy filling up five water bottles.

Five. I’d like to emphasize that five. Ben’s clearly learned his lesson from last year’s Dana disaster (you can read about that here).

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The coolest overhang in geology (or possibly the Wall from Game of Thrones)

Not sure about the snakes, but the cicadas were absolutely massive. Blood-dripping-from-their-fangs massive, as my parents would put it.

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Who needs Pokémon Go? I found a Ninjask without my mobile, thank-you-very-much

Besides the creepy crawlies, the mountain was spectacular for wildlife. That’s probably my favourite thing about mountains: the wonderful creatures it brings you into contact with. Mountains are some of the last truly wild bastions on the earth. Especially for birds, and birds of prey in particular. For a city, Tetouan’s got its fair share of wildlife, namely the local kestrels and cattle egret colonies, as well as the flyover storks and kites, but if you want a really wild experience, you have to go out into the sticks. I watched a pair of booted eagles wheeling and diving and whistling overhead from the summit, as well as clocking a flyby peregrine, a couple of kestrels, a few buzzards, five or six kites, ten ravens and an Isengard-level swarm of choughs. Saruman the White couldn’t summon such a flock.

The scenery up at the top might have been taken from that very scene from The Fellowship of the Ring, strewn with jagged rocks and sparse bushes. But if Saruman was indeed watching our passage south, he must have tired of his vigil before long and gone for a coffee break because, as is the way with mountaineering, coming down was three times harder than going up.

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‘Let’s not throw ourselves to our deaths just yet.’

Finding our way up the mountain had been easy enough, since the next crest was always in sight. You’d think that the same might be said for the descent, but mountains are fickle. Not only do they play with sound, they also throw your perspective off frequently. More than once we followed the latest road/path/goat-track/dry river to its end only to find ourselves staring into abyss as it plunged fifty feet down over the edge of a cliff we’d never seen coming.

The resulting backtracking led us back into bramble country, which didn’t bother me and my long sleeves too much, but it ripped Alex’s exposed limbs to shreds. By the time we made it to open country again he looked as though he’d been mauled by a particularly savage beast. We couldn’t even use the wild boar we’d seen as an excuse, as it took off into the scrub as soon as it heard us coming. Nope, that’s just the bush at work.

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Ain Zarqa at the feet of the Great Pyramid and Saddle Mountain

Seven hours since setting out from Ain Bou Anane we found our way back down the mountain to the village of Wargane, completing the arc that had taken us around most of the Ghorghez ridge. I left my trusty bamboo cane at the side of the road (again) and Alex flagged down a cab to take us back to Tetouan. Three mountains in one. All in a day’s work.

Ghorghez is down. Mission accomplished. BB x

Tetouani Wanderings

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s another regular Saturday in Tetouan. I’m chilling on the roof of Alex’s hotel doing sweet F.A. in the afternoon sun with a book and a blog and a map for tomorrow’s hike. Today’s a day for doing nothing and not feeling guilty about it. The others went to Chauen en masse. The Alegría music festival is on and they went to check it out, though I don’t half wonder whether they spent most of the day admiring the town itself. Apparently it’s shot from obscurity to one of Africa’s most visited municipalities over the last five years. Oh, to have visited it before the boom…

Tetouan’s Hotel Reducto has some simply gorgeous rooms…


I’ll keep today’s post short. Just a few observations I’ve made over the course of the day in elaborated bullet form. That ought to keep the ideas concise.

  • The wind governs life in Tetouan. Seriously, it exercises a power greater than the beloved King himself. When the Levante is blowing, and it almost always is, the world slows down. People sit out the sun and the maddening wind. The minute the wind changes, the city is suddenly full of joggers and movement. I’m serious about the joggers. That one afternoon when it rained back in June, every other man in town was out running.
  • Tetouan’s a great place to be in summer, even during Ramadan, but this place must simply shut down in winter. With the King out of town, and no tourists, and precious little commerce, not to mention the total absence of desire for the beach… why, it must be like Durham in summer. Or Mérida in winter, perhaps.
  • The Turkish First Army staged a failed coup in the early hours of the morning. Erdogan crushed it. It may not look like it, but the world is chomping at the bit for a war. All these proxy wars, migrant crises and terrorist attacks are the signs of a world that’s been held back from all-out war for too long. Globalization and the atom bomb might have saved us from further conflict, but it’s been over seventy years now since the last global war: seventy years removed from something that has been our oldest and most persistent tradition as a race. There’s a slow creeping back towards the far right across Europe. Britain has severed its ties with the European Union. Trump is within a few months’ reach of being allowed a shot at the nuclear codes. And all the while the terrorist strikes are increasing, striking randomly at civilians the world over like sharks biting at a whale. The centre cannot hold. It’s only a matter of time.
  • Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm… and yet, I have absolutely zero interest in getting in on this fad. And that’s despite being a PokéNut until I was twenty-one at least. I caught them all, all 720 of them – twice – and I must have spent several months’ worth of my life staring gormlessly at those little pixelated monsters along the way. I was just playing at David Attenborough, I guess. Pokemon was perfectly suited to a budding, obsessive, studious little naturalist like me. It’s less that I’ve grown out of it now so much as reading and the novel have taken its place. A well-deserved revenge, perhaps, since they were both ousted for hours of Pokébore when I was ten. No, I’ve already got a world of my own to jump in and out of, and it requires no technology whatsoever, thank you very much.
  • The girl behind the counter in the stationary shop is kinda cute. Buying a couple of 2B pencils and a pen turned into a scene out of one of my novels where I wound up talking to this lady through the glass as we picked out the right kind of pen. That was also a lot of eye contact for a little transaction (I tend to get to know the stationary shop staff far better than the people who work in cafes or restaurants. Hey, I have an insatiable appetite for a certain kind of pen and a certain kind of notebook, alright?). I do wonder, though… If I don’t find Her on the road, or in a park or concert or wherever, I might just end up finding Her in a bookshop. There’d be a kind of divine justice in that.

That’s all for today. Early start tomorrow. After weeks of staring up at those peaks, Alex and I are finally going to tackle Mount Ghorghez. And none too soon; another two weeks from now and I’ll be back in England and all of this will be a thing of the past. Fa3lan, time is running out… BB x