Five Hundred

March 24, 2026 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

When I set out for Peru next week, the number of bird species I will have seen in my lifetime will be a clean five hundred. I’d like to say I’m not usually the record-keeping sort, but that would be pretty unbelievable. The fact that I’ve kept this blog going for the best part of eleven years says otherwise. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with list-keeping, but it does border on the nerdier, birder side of birdwatching, and there is a lingering part of me that still raises a wary eyebrow at the prospect of becoming an anorak. However, since Peru is generally considered one of the world’s finest destinations for birdwatching, I thought I’d cave in for a change, do a little spring cleaning and get my affairs in order before I go. And that means working out just how many birds I have seen over the last thirty-two years or so. It took me a few days to collate the various lists I have held onto over the years, and longer still to whittle down some of the more fanciful additions that may or may not have been added in haste, leaving me with a perfectly square total of five hundred species exactly. It’s a start.

I have been very lucky. I haven’t been as committed to my old hobby as others my age, but even so, my travels have afforded me encounters with a number of species I might otherwise never have seen: pygmy cormorants in the silent marshes around Torcello, Berthelot’s pipits in the Teide caldera and Rwenzori double-collared sunbirds in the clouded hills of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. I thought I’d share a few of my favourite encounters below.

Griffon Vulture

Vultures are far and away my favourite creatures on the planet and I make no secret of that. Cinerous, Egyptian, Palm Nut, White-backed, Hooded or Griffon – I’m not fussy. Something about their enormity, the way their wingtips spread wide like fingers, the silence with which they rule the skies… It’s spellbinding. They’re easily the fondest memory I have of my year in Spain when, aged eleven, I traded herring gulls for griffons for a year. I think I can be excused for being occasionally distracted in class when a tawny giant with a nearly three-metre wingspan happened to be passing by the window. I still get the shivers when I see that silhouette, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an even greater shadow in the sky when I go in search of an Andean condor in Peru’s Colca Canyon.

Nightjar

Something of a late discovery for me and inseparable from the Camino de Santiago, where it is the nocturnal yin to the diurnal yang of the stonechat – since both species seemed to follow me all the way from the French Pyrenees to Santiago. Nightjars can be found in the UK, but I’ve never seen them, despite searching the forests and heathlands where they are said to breed. On the Camino, however, one is so often up before the break of dawn that it’s virtually impossible not to run into these cryptic creatures at some point. Their endless churring sound must be very strange indeed to those who aren’t aware of its maker, sounding more like a giant cricket or a miniature UFO than a bird. Reports from Manu NP indicate that there may be nightjars to be found along the Madre de Dios river – I shall be keeping my eyes open.

Abyssinian Roller

I could have put any number of the more than two hundred and fifty species of bird I saw in Uganda on this post, but this one takes the top spot because of our story. Having never had any luck with European rollers in Spain, I was amazed to learn on the very first day of my stay in Uganda that there was a particularly handsome Abyssinian roller in the neighbourhood. But I’ll be damned if I thought photographing it might be a cinch – the bird gave me the run-around for most of my three-month stay, fearless and indifferent to my presence when I didn’t have my camera to hand and skittish in the extreme when I came prepared, as though it were camera-shy. In the end an act of God intervened on my behalf: an explosion of winged ants in the neighbour’s garden brought every winged insectivore within a hundred miles to the yard. With more than forty kites to worry about, plus a host of other raptors including shikras, lizard buzzards, grey kestrels and falcons, the roller had his mind on other things and I was able to get in a good shot or two. Sometimes it’s hard-fought encounters like that one that make a photo more compelling than all the editing in the world.

European Bee-Eater

Much like the roller, the bee-eater is an explosion of colour in avian form – at least, to a British birdwatcher’s eye, since most of our native birds are rather drab by comparison. They’re incredibly captivating creatures to watch as they flit through the air like oversized moths, but it’s their call that I love the most: a cheery whirrup that heralds the spring in Spain just like the merry twitter of the swallow in Britain. The sound alone makes me feel warmer – it takes me back to the sands of El Rocio and the dusty scrubland between the Madre de las Marismas and the Palacio del Acebron. One day, it may be warm enough for bee-eaters to colonise the UK. They have bred here with occasional success in the last few years, but it remains to be seen whether they will follow the example of the egrets and move in for good. A part of me hopes they don’t – they are far too tied to my image of Spain as a special paradise. Some things you should have to travel to behold, to see with your own eyes. That’s what I think.

Purple Swamphen

What list would be complete without one of my all-time favourites – the bird that probably kickstarted my obsession with Spanish birds? The purple swamphen is unmistakeable: a moorhen on steroids, with bigger feet, a bigger face-shield and a bigger attitude. I saw them first in El Acebuche, but since then I have found them in several other places: the rice paddies of the Brazo del Este, Uganda’s White Nile river and under the Roman Bridge in Merida. Like griffons, they lose nothing with each successive encounter, and I confess that my eyes are always on swivel-stalks whenever I’m crossing the bridge in Merida in the hope of catching one of them in the reeds below.

Red and Black Kites

WordPress won’t let me upload the images I have of the hoopoe, Iberian magpie and Montagu’s harrier, which would bring the total to ten, so I will have to finish with another old favourite: the kite. Specifically, it’s black kites that have always held sway in my heart, due to their association with the Elysian stone-pine forests of the Raya Real, but since red kites have pretty much exploded in number in the UK in my own lifetime, they’ve earned a spot in this list too. Despite nearly twenty years of active pursuit, I have yet to take a decent photograph of a black kite (in my defence, I have often been without my camera when the right moment presented itself). Had I brought my DSLR with me on the Camino last summer, I would have had the opportunity of a lifetime when I stumbled – quite by chance – upon a feeding frenzy for the local kite population in a rugby field a day’s march from the Spanish frontier. But, I didn’t, so I just took a few photos on my phone and watched the spectacle.

Kites are something of a bait-and-switch story for me. Since their whistling call was used in the BBC’s Land of the Tiger whenever vultures were on screen, I came to associate that sound with those kings of the sky. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realised that vultures are pretty much silent (when they’re not squabbling over a carcass, that is), but by then the spell had already been cast. I would travel all the way to the Raya Real just to hear that sound. Of course, I’d go for more than that: the music-box melodies of a nightingale, the flute-song of a golden oriole, the oop-oop-oop of a hoopoe, the beak-clacking serenade of a stork and the descending whistle of a woodlark. But even if all those voices should fall silent, leaving nothing but the trill of a kite, I’d still make that journey. That’s how precious a single sound can be.

T minus one week. It’s getting closer! BB x

Egret

February 23, 2026 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

On my afternoon wander along the Tone yesterday I came across an egret fishing on the concrete steps of a flow measuring station. I’m so used to the snowy white shapes of these beautiful birds in and around the rivers and fields of the English countryside that it’s sometimes hard to remember a time when these were a very rare sight indeed.

When I was not yet ten, the presence of an egret in the area was something my family or friends found newsworthy. That’s not exactly surprising. Compared to our native (and undeniably stately) grey herons, they do have an exotic look about them. Maybe it’s the silky plumes (or aigrettes) of their breeding plumage, or maybe it’s the smart yellow galoshes they seem to wear on their feet. The speed of their colonisation of the British Isles gave the Roman Empire a run for its money: by the time I was fifteen, they were already such a feature of the Kentish wetlands and saltmarshes that they had somewhat lost their star appeal, if not their lustre. They no longer triggered a rare bird alert on twitchers’ pagers up and down the country, and their names no longer appeared in bold capital letters on the “Recent Sightings” blackboards at nature reserves.

But first, some myth-busting. It’s not as though the egret is an exotic immigrant to our shores. Far from it. Various species of egrets could be found in the British Isles throughout history, before a combination of over-hunting and the insatiable demand for egret feathers wiped them out. Such was the obsession for aigrettes – which once bedecked the headwear of noble lords and ladies alike – that the little egret and its cousin, the great white egret, were driven out of much of Western Europe as well, seeking sanctuary along the sheltered shores of the Mediterranean. It wasn’t until a pioneering group of Englishwomen came together in 1889 to form the Society for the Protection of Birds (the forerunner to the cherished RSPB) that the egret’s fortunes began to change, first by petitioning powerful high-society types to eschew feathers from their wardrobe, then lobbying the government to ban them outright. It clearly caught on, because the Americans set up a similar initiative of their own over in Oregon, where the native great and snowy egrets were suffering a similar fate. Gradually, with aigrette feathers off the market, the birds began to reappear in the fields and fenlands they had once called home. It would be another hundred years before they attempted to recolonise the British Isles, but once they did, they came back in droves.

I bought a magazine once in the late 2000s that predicted the arrival of the rest of Europe’s heron and egret species in the UK as global warming made these cold islands more favourable to birds more at home in southern Europe. It wasn’t wrong. Since then, both the cattle and great white egret have secured a foothold in Britain, with all three species present in the Avalon Marshes over in the Somerset Levels. If it weren’t for the fact that I work six days out of seven – and Sunday trains and buses are awful in this part of the world – I’d be over there like a shot. Somehow, I fear the open wilds of the Avalon Marshes will have to wait until I have wheels, because after a few sums, it would actually work out cheaper for me to fly to Europe and back than to spend a night or two in Glastonbury in order to visit the Levels. Mad how that works.

Not that I’d say not to being back in Europe, of course – though I am still waiting for my temporary ban to lift, as I hit the ninety day limit last year and would very much like to go back to my grandfather’s country without having to pay a fine. I always try to keep an open mind, but sometimes, Brexit, I really do wish you hadn’t screwed up my life quite so much.

Anyway. These papers won’t mark themselves. Just thought I’d muse a little on something uplifting before getting back to the grind. BB x

Cattle Egret (*Ardea ibis*) – Dehesa de Abajo, Spain. 26/4/10

Scorchio

June 29, 2025June 29, 2025 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Gate 17, Bristol Airport. 18.52.

Blimey, but it’s hot outside. If the hordes of ruddy topless locals in the streets of Bristol weren’t enough of an indication, then the winged ants might have been. They always seem to appear out of nowhere when the heat reaches its apogee. Where I’m going, it’s a full ten degrees hotter, and here I am with a cardigan tied about my waist. I felt just slightly insane packing the cardigan, but it’s best to be prepared for all eventualities – especially when I’m up in the mountains. Heatwave or no heatwave, a lot can happen over the course of six weeks.

Check-in at Bristol was a breeze – unless you count the security team selecting my satchel for “explosive checks”. I’m not sure what they expected to find in there: seven different grades of black pen, a rubber, a pencil sharpener, three pencils, three empty pilgrim passports, a hand-drawn map, a very battered journal and a rosary of La Virgen del Rocío… but no explosives. I’m not sure they’d fit! My rucksack might be light but my satchel is, as ever, full to bursting.

I broke the habit of a lifetime and lingered in duty free, where I picked up a few last minute supplies: namely, a solar battery pack and a watch. I’ve left the guidebooks behind this time, and I’m trusting in the plans I scribbled down on three flashcards (spot the teacher), but if it comes to it, I’ll need my phone for navigation. There’s a few stops without electricity on my itinerary, and sometimes you don’t get a bed near the sockets, so a battery pack is a pretty good investment for a trip like this.

Lord knows I’ll be moving and removing the watch a lot this summer to avoid getting a watch-strap tan, but I figured it was high time I had something to look at when I hold up my wrist.

It’s funny how regional Bristol feels. Half the tannoy voices are human (London’s human airport staff bowed out of their tannoy duties years ago), and with the automated RP infiltrating just about every corner of the country these days, it’s curious to hear the voice over the speakers drag the not-so-gentle R in airport. Sometimes it feels like the only place you’ll find the West Country burr that was once so widespread is on public transport. It’s a shame. It’s really quite endearing.

My flight is at 19.25, so I had an early dinner. My usual compulsion for continuity set in, so I grabbed a burrito from the Real California stand upstairs. I had my first non-school burrito in Chicago O’Hare International Airport at the end of my American adventure, so it makes sense to start the next grand adventure with one, too.

It’s a busier flight than I expected. Mind, it is a Sunday night – if anybody were here for the weekend, I suppose this would be the obvious flight home. I’m hoping the public transport situation at the other end is more reliable than the one in Tenerife, as I don’t really fancy another late night wander. All being well, I should be in bed by midnight, and it’s not a dreadfully early start tomorrow to catch the southbound train, but I would like to see a little of the city before I go, so I might start the early morning routine and grab a bite to eat.

After Bordeaux, we’re into the swing of things. I haven’t booked anything beyond the connecting train to Oloron-Sainte-Marie, so I’m putting my trust in God and the road. For somebody who genuinely despises planning in advance, the Camino is the very best sort of holiday. I have no doubt that there will be trials ahead, but that only makes the adventure all the more exciting. We don’t get an awful lot of real adventures in the day-to-day of adult life, so I’m off chasing dreams again. Only this time they’re not red-haired and American, but European and full of light and love.

I’d better save my phone battery and stop blogging. I expect we’ll be boarding soon. Oh – and there’s the bell. À bientôt.

BB x

Before the Storm

August 8, 2024August 8, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Three weeks of the summer holidays remain, which I must now try to fill somehow. Yesterday I went up to Bristol – for better shopping, primarily, but also because I’d never been, and there’s at least a couple of things in this city that I wanted to achieve: a new suit for work, and a close encounter with arguably one of the most famous statues in the country.

Bristol was not as busy as I expected, but then, with all this talk of protest in the air, perhaps that’s not surprising. Despite the official line from the police to the contrary, at least two shopkeepers warned me to get out of town before 6pm. They said that a mob was being gathered online to march on an immigration legal aid firm in the Old Market district, not more than five minutes or so from Bristol Temple Meads Station. I passed several shops with signs in the windows indicating an early closure, and I saw at least one being boarded up, just in case things got out of hand.

Part of me considered sticking around to see what went down, but for once, the rational part of my brain (which usually plays second-fiddle to the romantic up there) took charge and sent me home. Still, it was quite something to see a city preparing for potentially violent civil unrest, like a quiet siege. It was rather eerie. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

As it happens, there was a protest march that evening – but not the one that was expected. Nearly two thousand anti-racists staged a peaceful counter-protest in Bristol’s Old Market, where the anti-immigration rally was due to take place. My faith in this country has been restored, even if only by a little.

I visited the M Shed Museum in the Bristol dockyards, where the statue of Edward Colston can now be seen after it was recovered from the bottom of the harbour. Social media played a decisive role in mobilising the mob back then, too, albeit under very different circumstances.

Colston rests in a glass sarcophagus surrounded by a collection of placards borne by those who tore him from his plinth back in 2020. It looks almost like one of the stone effigies you might find in a cathedral, with homemade banners replacing the coats of arms.

Colston used much of the wealth that he accrued from his involvement with the Atlantic slave trade to philanthropic ends in Bristol and beyond, establishing almshouses and sponsoring schools. For more than two hundred years, he was even something of a local hero. But times have changed since the events of 2020, and a much-needed revision of the history books has shed a new darkness on men like Colston who, for all their good deeds, were active participants in a system which brought unimaginable misery, pain and slaughter to millions. Colston had many hats, but “slave trader” is usually the first title next to his name in most accounts.

I wonder if history will see modern “heroes” like Steve Jobs in the same light someday for their involvement in the rape of the Congo and its people for the coltan that powers our phones. We may be reliant on the damned things for just about everything these days, but that’s a poor excuse, when you think about it. After all, we used a similar excuse to justify the entire slave trade once upon a time.

I did a little window-shopping before popping into a second-hand vinyl store in search of a couple of albums for my wall. I’m in the process of making my house a really happy space, and I figured I’d take a leaf out of the book of my old bandleader (and great inspiration), Mr D, and frame a few LP sleeves. I was tempted by a couple of colourful Fela Kuti numbers, but in the end I came away with just the one LP: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, one of “the Big Three” albums that changed my life, alongside MJ’s Thriller and The Corrs’ Forgiven Not Forgotten. I’ll hunt the other two down on eBay.

Until the next time! BB x

For Whom the Bell Tolls

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 / 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

Reaching Out

March 14, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Dear World,

I remember a time when Brexit didn’t mean an awful lot to us. When it was just the latest in a string of buzzwords bandied about by the press. Before the year when the experts were all wrong. Before the referendum, President Trump and the sudden violence of world politics, like a particularly large and menacing dog woken from slumber by the rumble of a passing car.

I have tried to keep my mouth shut on Brexit since the beginning, suspecting that we could only have come to such a junction because of one failing or another in the system. Mutiny might breed in idleness, but anger, hatred and intolerance do not come from nowhere. The spark must have been glowing within the ashes, even if so few of us saw it smouldering there. And how could we, in the echo chamber of our comfortable social media bubbles, where everything hurtful and unorthodox is slammed before it is questioned, and the angry back down in silence to nurse their wounded pride and their encircling fear in the darkness. Certainly, we are not the architects of our own destruction, but we are not entirely blameless in bringing about the situation that so many are now quick to decry.

I was in Morocco when it all kicked off, now almost three years ago, when the referendum was as out of sight and mind as the essay I was supposed to be working on for my university. I was informed of the outcome by an American, who came rushing into the classroom to tell me, holding nothing back, that ‘your folks voted out’. Of course I was shocked, though perhaps not as much as I should have been – I confess to having forgotten entirely about the referendum that morning. Last night’s Arabic homework seemed more important at the time.

It was certainly not the result any of us had been expecting. But then, I did study languages at a British university, so almost all of my contemporaries were naturally predisposed to take an immediately dismissive view of anything akin to Brexit out of hand. I don’t think I ever saw anything other than rage against Brexit on my Facebook feed, and that in and of itself made me concerned from the start.

The eldest son of my Moroccan host family saw in it a cause for celebration, and he wasn’t the only one. I remember seeing fireworks from the balcony, set off from somewhere within the city outskirts. “It’s the best thing England could have done,” said the son. “Anything that weakens the EU is good for us.” I suppose being in a country that felt ostracised by the EU opened my eyes early on to the other side of the argument, in spite of my obvious leanings towards the remain camp, not entirely unconnected to being of Spanish blood myself. Without my grandfather to voice his European view on the matter, I had to find the answers myself. And as much as it hurt me to imagine where it all might lead, I had to listen. I had to know. Because there’s no use in complaining about the situation if you aren’t prepared to listen to the other side.

It seems strange to me that, in an age when even Disney’s recent heroes and villains have become various shades of grey, today’s politics should provide the black and white.

It’s been a few years since then. The strange, almost unbelievable scenario I discussed at length with an American in the shade of a Tetouani hotel roof on a hot July afternoon has now shimmered into reality. In a matter of weeks it will be B-Day – unless something radical happens. The last few months have been nothing short of chaotic. Defeat after defeat in the House of Commons. An increasingly beleaguered Prime Minister who soldiers on, determined to defend the decision of the referendum in spite of those who call for a second referendum, claiming the British public was lied to by the Leave camp – as if the concept of politicians spreading lies were something revolutionary.

Would a second referendum help? I can only hope that it would do more good than harm. We have walked right into a bear trap. To say the first referendum was wrong would be to call into question the referendum process, nay, democracy itself. And though it would not be the first time the United Kingdom has changed its mind over its core values – see attitudes towards homosexuality in the former African colonies – it does us no favours, having sold, extolled and foisted democracy upon the world to then tamper with it. In the words of the Spanish philosopher Baltasar Gracian, “never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it”.

Tonight the MPs voted against a “No Deal” Brexit. Tomorrow there will be a vote on whether or not to delay Brexit altogether – if the EU will even allow such a thing. I have given up predicting politics, preferring instead to take after my namesake in Animal Farm and hold to the adage that things will go on as they have before, that is, badly.

It is, of course, entirely plausible that Brexit was all one big power play – a high risk, high return move in a long and complicated game of chess. Perhaps Farage, Johnson and the rest of the Brexiteers are simply riding the storm, and have done very well out of it, to the detriment of millions. It is also entirely plausible that I have spent too long looking into the abyss, trying to empathise with a point of view that is so alien to my heart. The Spaniard in me cries out and beats his chest, with true melodramatic flourish, for all the harm that will be and has already been done to our sense of European unity. The Englishman I am, contrite to a fault, pleads for patience and searches desperately for answers.

Time, the master of all things, will tell on the matter of Brexit. And if there is indeed a special place in Hell for those who led us to this junction, we may yet all see a window into the inferno on the night of the 29th. Or we may simply wake up to another unpredictably disappointing morning, where everything stands on its head. The era of topsy-turvy politics continues.

World of the future, when you look back on all of this… Be kind with your judgements. Remember those who fought tooth and nail for unity, remember those who fought for what they thought was right, and remember those caught in the middle who tried to listen.

BB x

PS. I confess to not having read enough on the subject before writing, and being informed only by my European family, the odd snippet on the BBC and my almost entirely Remain camp circle of friends. But I have tried to be honest about my stance on the subject.

Exile

June 25, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve deliberately waited to pen this one. Being both out of the country and out of WiFi meant that I didn’t get the news until I got to class this morning, by which point I’d already forgotten yesterday’s referendum buzz. I had more important things on my mind, like how many men were really killed at Covadonga, and what kind of a world would Spain have been had Navas de Tolosa gone the other way. Stuff like that.

Waiting has also meant that you’ve been spared the knee-jerk, bloody-hell-it’s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it attitude that I spent most of this morning suffering from. In fact I was so shocked by the news that I could hardly talk for the first twenty minutes or so of class. And whilst I was a little tongue-tied for the first two weeks, the last few days’ confidence boom has brought out the chatterbox in me, and therefore it felt quite odd being left with suddenly nothing to say.

I’m talking, of course, about Brexit. About my country’s decision to ignore sanity, common sense and all basic human emotions besides fear and to rally behind some of the most sinister British politicians in living memory.

It smacks of Weimar. It smacks of Trump. It smacks of the start of pretty much every slow run-up to fascist mind-control. I’m not going to start spouting nonsense about the end of the world – it’s really not – but it was a knock I was certainly not expecting this morning.

And that’s the strangest thing of all. I simply never saw it coming. It always seemed so… laughable. Oh, I’d be the first to confess that I’ve barely looked into the consequences or the data. I got most of my updates from Have I Got News For You. In the end, if the truth be told, I simply let instinct and common sense decide my stance on the matter. Perhaps that makes me no better than anyone else. But if my Facebook page is anything to go by, the Brexit voter is a very rare beast indeed – at least, amongst my generation. I’m told it’s the fault of the older generation; they voted for Leave in their droves, apparently. Personally I have no idea. I have no grandparents, no great uncles or aunts, and therefore no contact with that generation whatsoever. I don’t have the foggiest how they live, or how they think. Therefore I refuse to buy into rumours or make claims about what I don’t know. If only some of my countrymen had done the same.

It still shocks me, though. How did it happen? It was just a joke, right? Everyone and their tabby cat was against it: Patrick Stewart, Alan Sugar, Ryanair, James Bond, David Attenborough, the Prime Minister… The list was endless. Who was supporting Leave? I mean, apart from Trump, Kim Jong Un and IS, who naturally all want what’s best for us, of course. I was baffled enough by the Trump campaign. How could a man faced with such a fierce backlash ever get to be the Republican candidate for the President of the United States? And yet he did. It was tempting to think ‘only in America’… and yet, here we are. Severed from the European Union by another silent majority who – if the rumours are true – won’t have to live with the results for even a breath of the time that we will. We, the generation who came out so strongly in defense of the Union… Ignored.

To say that it swayed my mind on moving abroad after university would be heresy. I’d already made that decision many months ago, and I’m proud to say that I made it out of love, not fear. My decision stands. Only, perhaps now there’s a sense of urgency, a feeling of Cortés landing in Mexico about it. My plans were laid, but somebody went and burned the boats. It may take all of ten years to obtain my Spanish citizenship, or – if that old Hispanic obsession with blood still stands – it may be less, but the way things are going, I’m bound for exile no matter what happens. BoJo and Farage and their silent worshippers have made it just that little bit harder now, as my road is now fraught with VISAs that had never been necessary before, but I won’t let that stop me. They can try, but they’re not treading on my dreams.

The way some of us Brits have reacted to this – myself included – you’d think that war had just been declared. That’s the worst part of it all: the fear. It’s fear that has got us in this state. Fear of what? The unknown? The migrant crisis? I would pay handsomely to send the average Leave supporter to one of the refugee camps in Jordan or Greece for a couple of months, if just to see if there really is a right answer. Familiarity: that’s the obvious solution. Once you know that which you’ve only seen and heard in the news, it’s suddenly a great deal more than a number on a piece of paper (Would Stalin have sent so many to their deaths if he’d had the chance to get to know them all?).

Of course, I’d go for the laughter route myself. Laugh at your fears, laugh at the world and especially laugh at yourself. I almost walked into the same lamppost twice today, and I had to count the hours between nine o’clock and twelve just to be sure there were three of them. And yes, I just did it again to confirm. Yours truly has some remarkably oafish tendencies. But I revel in my bouts of stupidity. It’s what made the Greek gods so much more interesting than the Abrahamic belief in perfection. None of us are perfect, nor ever could be. We’ve as much hope of being ‘perfect’ as a Jack Russell has of explaining quantum physics to a nursery group. But we try. And that’s kind of funny. We should laugh at that.

J.K. Rowling had it down: laughter really is the best cure for fear, but familiarity is the next best thing.

Where am I going with this? I’ve literally just got home. My phone wouldn’t make the connection to my host family for some reason so I ended up sitting in the doorstep for an hour, as I’ve done in one way or another so often in my life. I’m quite used to it by now. Waiting is no bad thing. It gives you time to think, to muse, to watch the world go by. Life goes on. Britain may have decided to leave the European Union and we may or may not be headed for troubled times, but it’s business as usual in Tetouan.

I’ve been waiting my whole life in one way, shape or form: the right girl, the right moment, the right place, the right language. Patience: birdwatching taught me that. I can wait a little longer. One day, when of all of this fear and hostility has blown up and/or over, we’ll look back and have a good, long laugh. No matter how dark it gets. BB x

Beginning is the Hardest Thing

June 4, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

‘Business or pleasure, sir?’

‘Does language study count as business?’

‘Ah, I guess that’s a bit of both, then. Enjoy your stay, sir.’

I don’t think I’ve ever had a worse case of cold feet than I did last night. If I paint myself as a seasoned traveler, the reality couldn’t be more disappointing. I spent most of this morning flying about the house in a panic, weighing, re-weighing and rearranging my suitcase, adding and removing books, cursing and swearing about how little I actually know about what happens when I leave the airport at Tangier. Shameless.

For the record, I had cold feet before going to Spain last September. Not quite this bad, but I still had my doubts. I suppose knowing Sevilla and being very confident in my Spanish did help, but having a firm knowledge of where I’d be sleeping that night was an added bonus. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve had precious little over forty-eight hours at home that had me unsettled, most of which I spent traveling anyway.

It could also be the fact that I’m striking out alone.

I’ve forgotten my little green Arabic grammar book. It’s not essential, but it would have been nice to have – like so many things in my life. Al-Kitaab will do.

On a similar note, I’ve a lot less baggage this time. 18 kilos of hold luggage and a much slimmer rucksack than usual. Benjamin learns. It’s only two months, after all. I’ll need to invest in some decent sandals when I’m out there, though. Like as not it’ll be much too hot for socks. That might mean haggling, and I hate haggling, but… I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. This is why I’m heading out alone rather than waiting for the others. I have to push myself. I have to, or else I’ll never learn.

The gate info will be up in a minute. I guess I’d better get up and get ready to go. I’m not feeling quite so jittery anymore. Excited and a little scared. Good combination! I’ll see you in Africa. Ma’as-salaama! BB x

Whistlestop

June 3, 2016June 3, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

I’ve been in the UK for just over twenty-four hours. In another twenty-four hours I’ll be gone again, somewhere over the Iberian peninsula on a plane bound for Morocco. I finished work on Tuesday night and I’ll be back to the grindstone by Saturday afternoon. Even by my standards, I’m cutting it fine for breathing space.

It’s my birthday that spoiled it. It’s quite stupid, really. I should have been heading out next Saturday, not this one. Any other day and I’d have been quite happy to head out to begin the third and final stint of my Year Abroad… But it’s the thought of spending an entire day traveling and winding up in Tetouan, alone, and very probably lost in translation on my twenty-second birthday that held me back.

It’s only another day in the year. And twenty-two is nothing special. But I’d rather have got cozy and settled in before I think too hard about aging another year. If I’d had half a brain and just a pinch of common sense, I’d have ignored the detail and given myself just a few more days to rest. Another week, perhaps. But I didn’t, and I’m off tomorrow, to begin the placement I fought so very hard to win last summer. I guess I have little choice but to tackle it head on, beaming.

There’s also the fact that I won’t be ‘alone’ for long. Just two weeks after I touch down, I’ll be joined by two Arabbuddies from Durham: Team Jordan’s very own Katie Lang and Kat, both Team Morocco veterans. The temptation to resort to English will be strong. All the more reason to knuckle down and get stuck in first. As the first Durham Arabist to test the waters at Dar Loughat – a pioneer, if you will – it’s my prerogative to get off to a good start, which means the less tempted I am to fall back on English, the better. I won’t have any repeats of Jordan.

Not that it’s a competition or anything like that. Language learning never should be. Even if it were, I’d have lost already. Kat will be fresh from at least five months and more in Jordan, Team Fes totaled six or seven shortly after Christmas and the Lebanon lot have just clocked a whopping nine months in Beirut, so any chances of the Arabic class of ’17 coming back on an even playing field are already dead in the water, but at least Katie and I are of the same mentality: namely, one of ‘ah heck, let’s just get this over with, shall we?’.

But that’s ok. Arabic is fun, it’s interesting and the countries where it’s spoken doubly so, but I never really wanted to go anywhere with it. A desire to explore North Africa and to make myself understood in the process are all I really wanted from it, and that’s exactly what Dar Loughat can provide. So what if I’m going to return to Durham near the bottom of the Arabic pile, despite having started off so strong? Put me in a Spanish class instead and watch me fly. Arabic is no lost cause either. Morocco will bring out the goods. All I have to do is hold up my end of the bargain and work for it.

The train’s pulling in to Paddock Wood. England looks so very green and lush and beautiful… And cold. It was almost worth making this brief sortie back home just for the train ride. The Kentish lowlands are really quite pretty.

I know next to nothing about what happens after I touch down tomorrow. I know I’m getting picked up from the airport, which is a plus, but as for the name and number of my host family for the next two months… Zilch. Kaput. I’m just hoping there’s something fixed on the other end. I seem to remember that it was just as laissez-faire in Amman, but I’m striking out alone this time. And whilst it’s hardly more a priority than having a roof over my head, I wonder if they’ll have WiFi… Internet access has been very touch-and-go this year; quite literally so, now that I have a portable device in the form of this Durham courtesy iPad. Since July 2015 I’ve leant out of windows, loitered about cafés and put in extra hours in the staff room in search of WiFi. Even here at home I’m going to have to go next door into the common room to post this. Here’s to third-time lucky.

First priority when I get home is to get packing. If I could finish unpacking first, that would be a plus, too. I suppose I should also spend tonight thinking about my dissertation; module registration opens tomorrow, so I’d better do that just before I go. I’m not lacking in ideas. I’m holding a book on captive narratives in the Empire years, and in my rucksack are a further two studies on women in the Indian mutiny and the role of Lawrence’s young men in the Khyber border disputes.

Unfortunately, I’m not studying for a History degree, and since the Spanish never had a hold over the Indian subcontinent, there’s precious little good any of that will do me, besides being thrilling reading. I’ve been obsessed with the Raj since Pavilions.

It’ll be something literary I suppose – that’s where I work best – but I haven’t quite narrowed it down yet. I’ll try to focus my three potential fields into two titles apiece and see what Durham’s advice is. I’m getting myself another £9000 in debt this year just for the privilege of studying at university (future generations, look back and weep); the least I can do is ask them to do that much for me so that I’m all cleared to begin in September.

Before that, two independent research projects in the target language are outstanding: one each for Spanish and Arabic, on bandit legends and the Barbary pirates respectively. All I need is reliable internet and I’ll get cracking. Morocco, don’t let me down.

The next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Africa (oh, but that felt good. I should say that more often. It makes the next leg a great deal more exciting, when you think of it like that). Until then, wish me luck. It’s going to be quite the uphill struggle, getting back into Arabic after almost a year’s wanton neglect, but I’m up for a challenge. Bring it. BB x

Back in Action

January 3, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s been a while!

I kept my word, it seems. It’s been about two weeks since my last post. Probably more. In that time I’ve not honestly been up to much at all, hence the dearth of posts, though that probably has more to do with a real need to take some serious time-out; last term was pretty hectic, especially towards the finishing line.

Coming home for Christmas was never part of the original plan, but I’m glad I did. England at this time of year is pretty magical, with the mist, the frost and the rain in the pine woods about the house. Doubly so this year, as it’s been all of three months since the last time I saw rain in Spain. Apparently global warming is to blame. Whoever the culprit may be, it’s impressed upon me just how much I like rain. I don’t know whether that’s ineffably English or the reverse. I don’t really mind either way. I wasn’t really complaining about the gorgeous blue skies and twenty-two degree heat right up until my last day in the country (the twenty-second of December, in fact). All I hope is that it keeps for one week longer at least, so that it doesn’t put a damper on my stay in Madrid next week… more on that later.

That said, I haven’t sung a single Christmas carol this year, and that makes me feel more than a little wierd. Not even Silent Night. That must be the first time in my life where I haven’t. Next year had better make up for that.

I haven’t made anywhere near as much progress on the grand drawing as I’d have liked. Nor have I finished my series of 2015 doodles. What I have achieved over the last two weeks, however, is a new camera. The trusty old Nikon D70 has done me wonders over the last ten years, but… ten years is a long time. Especially in the fast-moving world of digital photography. I got my comeuppance for my loyalty when I went into Extremadura’s biggest camera store and was roundly told by the head clerk that nowhere stocked the ‘gigantic’ CompactFlash memory cards that the D70 runs off anymore. Time, perhaps, to move on.

Fortunately, I’ve been working two jobs and several private lessons over the last three months, so I’ve enough set aside for such adventures.

Introducing the Nikon D3200. In all its 24 megapixel glory.

Tech that can crack out magazine quality prints on AUTO mode is worth the investment. Sadly, most of my lenses are a little out of date too, and the autofocus doesn’t work, so it’s been an ordeal learning to use manual (finally). A necessary one, but an ordeal nonetheless. Manual and nuthatches simply don’t mix.

To put it through its paces, I took it to Deal for a final coffee with the family before I jet off back to Spain for the unforeseeable future. Even on manual mode alone, it did a fine job.

The phrase ‘a kid at Christmas’ springs to mind; but then, I am a kid at heart, and this is technically still the Christmas season, so there you have it. I’m waiting on baited breath for my kit lens and the ol’ telephoto to have a functional autofocus (I haven’t been able to check thus far as I left them in Spain), but in the meantime, I’ll just keep practising with manual.

A gannet far out to sea (Sigma 500mm, where are you when I need you?)

Apart from getting back into some serious camera hijinks, it was worth coming home for a reunion with two very special friends, and a whole panoply of others close to my heart. That’s what Christmas time is for; being with your nearest and dearest. A phrase I heard bandied about a lot this Christmas was that people had learned to distance themselves from those they ‘simply no longer really had time for’. I guess that’s a good ethos, and a strong marker of that over-the-hill feeling that is turning twenty-two. The first winnowing of friendships that were once so strong, and at the same time the moment when you see clearly, perhaps for the first time, who the people are that you will fight to keep in touch with. Having always had it in mind to leave these rainy shores to chase my dreams in Spain, I’ve never allowed myself to grow too attached to anybody here in England, but for two shining lights I would return home anytime and oft, and you know I would. You know who you are. Thank you.

Things you’d be hard-pressed to find in Spain: a tankard of whipped-cream-topped hot chocolate

Well, Kent is behind me now, I’m back in West Sussex – where the rain and the darkness has not ceased for several days – and counting down the hours until my plane whisks me back to Seville and home. But for the wind, the place is as silent as the grave. That hasn’t stopped the birds from letting me know that they have not appreciated my absence, so I made sure to throw out some New Years’ seed for them. They’ve got to be so tame now that I hardly need to freeze when the camera’s out.

Such is the power of that camera that neither of those have been zoomed in or edited whatsoever. Oh, but we’re going to have some serious fun with this thing.

Well, I’ll keep you posted. My next insert will probably be from Spain, but whether that will be pre- or post-Madrid depends entirely on whether the Bar Atalaya WiFi is in operation. In any case, hasta pronto, amigos. The rain in Spain falls mainly on England x