Song of Autumn

November 28, 2016November 28, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I usually walk home across the Bailey after lectures, but today I turned left at the end of Kingsgate Bridge and took the path along the river Weir. It was the goosanders that did it, I suppose. The one constant of my three years at Durham University has been that, come winter, there’s a family of three goosanders on the Weir (don’t know what a goosander is? Look it up, they’re beautiful). I was done for the day and everybody else had gone their separate ways to study, so I thought I’d treat myself to a half-hour’s isolation.

I don’t think I ever forgot how beautiful England is in the autumn. In fact, I think I grew to appreciate all the more for being so far away from it last year. There’s nothing like thirteen consecutive months of almost total sunshine to give you a real heartache for a cold, crisp autumn morning. Well, it’s certainly been cold recently, even if the frost hasn’t settled in yet, but now that our boiler’s fully functional, I’m not complaining. Even so, after the madcap nature of the last two months – I really have had something to do every day, come to think of it – something I really had forgotten to do was to make time for myself. And I’m not talking the lying-in-bed-watching-Youtube kind of me-time. Everybody has something that fills them up again when they’re feeling low. Maybe it’s good food, maybe it’s a hearty jog, or that song that never fails to put a smile on your face. For me, it’s nature. Between DELE revision, rehearsals with the Lights and this many other commitments, I’ve scarcely had the time to think straight. I’ve waxed lyrical about the importance of being busy and having people around you that radiate good energy, but for me, there’s no substitute for a good hour or so in nature’s arms.

Mrs Goosander wasn’t about this afternoon. She sometimes goes fishing further downstream. Mr Goosander and his rather shabby-looking youngster (still moulting, but more impressively, still here) were going about their business in their usual spot. The father looks especially impressive at the moment, with his feathers flushed that special shade of salmon-pink that is so particular to his kind. I think I saw him catch about three or four fish whilst I was there. Sit long enough in a sheltered spot and the little world accustoms itself to you…

An inquisitive little coal tit came to have a look-in on one of the trees overhanging the river. A couple of blackbirds were making a lot of noise rummaging around in the undergrowth as is their fashion. The soundscape was so autumnal, I only wish I could have recorded it for you. Words will have to do: the cooing of a woodpigeon in the trees; the machine-gun twittering of a roving party of nuthatches; the high-pitched seee of redwings overhead; the cawing of crows coming in to roost. The pitch-pitch, pitch-pitch-pitch of a chaffinch, tea-cher tea-cher of a great tit, and, once or twice, the distant shriek of a jay.

I don’t tend to talk about my favourite pastime all that often. Sometimes you don’t have to: the things that matter most are plain to see. Besides, who’d want to listen? I learned a long time ago that there are precious few who care about the distinction between wrens and robins, crows and jackdaws, mallards and goosanders. And, I suppose, the names are not important. What matters is that people know that they’re there. Planet Earth II seems to be extremely popular up here, and I hope it’s encouraging people to look around more when they’re out and about.

So that’s my advice. The next time you’re out for a walk, whether you’re on your way to or from work, or just to kill some time, unplug yourself from the noise, find a quiet spot to sit down, shut your eyes and just let the world let you in. You won’t regret it. There’s no better music (and believe me, I’ve looked – my whole family are musicians).

Blackbirds, crows and redwings. The wind in the trees and the splash of diving ducks in the silent river. These are the sounds of my childhood. Of all the things life has taught me, I am no happier than in my knowledge of the world around me. I have my mother to thank for that, I think. That and my obsessive habit of chasing the details. I should probably have given journalism a little more thought. Then again… BB x

An old photo of mine from 2008, when I had nothing on my mind but birds!

No Going Back

September 20, 2015September 20, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Saying goodbye is never an easy thing to do. I’m certainly not particularly good at it. In fact, there are quite a few goodbyes I’d like the chance to go over again, given the opportunity. You know the kind: the ones where it was all too fleeting, or maybe you didn’t quite say everything you wanted to say, or maybe the real goodbye never came around and you were left with a last meeting that wasn’t really a send-off at all. Most likely you’ve encountered that oh-so-very British awkward goodbye at least once in your lifetime: the one where you say goodbye to somebody, only to bump into them a few minutes later. Don’t you find that situation crops up a lot? It certainly does in Durham, anyway…

For a chatty gossip like me (you’ll just have to imagine the deep sarcasm there), I don’t suppose there’s much point in an elaborate farewell. It’s only really an issue if you’re going to be out of contact for an extended period of time, like stepping off the plane into the abyss and severing all connections with the outside world. Which is essentially what I do every time I step off the train at Three Bridges. I have a phone, true, but I rarely use it. I think I sent a grand total of three texts over the last three months, and all three of them last Sunday. Radio silence on my part doesn’t necessarily mean I’m traveling – I’m probably a lot more talkative when I’m on the road – but it doesn’t mean I’m inactive, either. I simply enjoy going for long periods of radio silence. Anything that needs saying can surely be said best face-to-face, and anything that’s worth saying is always worth waiting for. That makes me quite a distant person, I guess – and not the easiest to track down. For somebody who spent almost all of two years on teenage texting tenterhooks, it’s a policy I’ve guarded jealously for some time now. So in that sense, setting off on another long adventure isn’t really all that different from any other end of term break, as far as contact is concerned.

I’m going off topic. I suppose I’d better come out with it. I’m heading off to Spain in two days’ time – less – to spend nine months working in a secondary school… and I’m not coming back in between.

The idea first came to me when I had a look at the Spanish school calendar for the coming year. That projected end of term date on the twenty-second of December shocked me at first, despite having been schooled in Spain at Christmastime before. It’s all about the reyes magos out there, and that’s not until January. I must have got it into my head early on, but it wasn’t until saying farewell (successfully, mind!) to Andrew at Gatwick Airport that it hit me: I want to be out there for the long haul. Taking a year abroad isn’t just about honing your language skills to fluency, it’s about growing up – and Lord knows I’ve still so much more of that to do. What better way than to strike out on your own for an entire year? Because that’s what it’s set to be, with my second Arabic stint in Morocco striking up almost as soon as I’m done in Extremadura at the end of May, meaning I won’t see the green hills of England again until August 2016, at the very earliest. That doesn’t trouble me as much as it should.

I’m going to miss autumn in England. No, I’m really, really, really going to miss it

The last few days have been wonderful for a last taste of England. I consider myself extremely lucky to live in one of the most charming spots in West Sussex, overlooking a dream-sequence of rolling hills as far as the eye can see, right up to the point when they tumble into the sea to the south. Autumn’s in the air, the forest is full of mushrooms and the buzzards that nest deep in the woods are cartwheeling noisily through the skies as usual. Morpurgo described them ‘mewing’ in one of his books and I can’t think of a better way of putting it. This is England, and I’m going to miss it. But there’s something in the air, telling me it’s time I should be moving on. Maybe that’s autumn. The signs are everywhere. The leaves on the oak trees are going a gorgeous golden colour. Out on the school rugby pitches the odd wheatear sits taking a breather, whilst flycatchers and warblers hurry on through the hedgerows snatching a quick meal on their way home. But most telling of all are the great flocks of swallows and the martins streaming on southwards overhead, and in a couple of days I’ll be following them. Maybe I’ll even see some of the same individuals swooping by from Villafranca. Who knows?

Ten points if you can see the buzzard in this one

The hardest thing for me to leave behind – besides the monstrous tapestry, which is never going to be finished anytime soon – will be the growing mountain of books in my bedroom.

A year and a half, five metres in and still slaving away

A year and a half and still slaving away…

It’s pretty daft, but for an aspiring writer, I’m late into the fold as regards actually reading. I got it into my head once that if I never read any books that contained ideas similar to my own, I couldn’t get done for plagiarism, because I’d never have noticed the similarity. How very typically overcomplicated of me. The end result is that I haven’t read a decent book – besides Pavilions – in nigh on ten years. At least, one that hasn’t been prescribed by my course. Now I’m motoring through them at lightning speed, assisted by all the iBooks freebies, an immense library at home (courtesy of my equally bookish mother) that I never truly appreciated, and an all-too brief visit to a real bookshop over the weekend.

So many books, so little time…

I say real to distinguish it from your average WHSmith or Waterstones. Seriously, this place had everything. All the historical fiction you could shake a stick at. The entire Hornblower saga. Flashman in abundance. Sharpe, Iggulden and even the master of the art herself, M.M. Kaye. All beautifully spined, deliciously musty and lovingly second-hand. A new gadget may be a good thing, but there’s nothing better than an old book. Mum found a particularly beautiful pair of illustrated Arabic dictionaries – formerly the property of a military attaché, as stamped. Oh, I could have died and gone to heaven. I was in kid-at-Christmas mode. If I’d had this newfound book obsession just two years earlier, I might have given languages the boot and applied for an English degree. The only thing holding me back at the time was a general reading apathy…

Today’s been the downer of the month for no other reason than that every so often I have a lonely spell where it takes a lot to lift me up. Fortunately I’m in the best place for it: start of term or not, the grounds of Worth Abbey are no less than the finest place I’ve ever encountered for soul-healing. Alright, so the stone-pine copse along the Raya Real with its attendant black kites just comes up trumps, but that’s not on my doorstep every morning. Not yet, anyway. Besides, when the loneliness birds come flying in, the open world is always there. Nature’s an unpredictable lady at the best of times, but she’s never let me down. I’ve said that before, and I’ll say it as often as it takes to drive this funk of mine away. Everything will look better in the light of a new morning. It always does.

Waldeinsamkeit – the feeling of being alone in the woods!

These are curious things to dwell on when home will be so very far away for the next eleven months. But home is where the heart is, and mine has been in Spain for as long as I can remember, and that’s got to count for something. Maybe she’s out there, and maybe she’s not. That’s not for me to decide. If fate decides to cut me a break and give me a good turn, I’m ready to run with it. But one thing’s certain: I will leave Spain fluent. If I can leave the country at the end of the year as bilingual as the grandfather I never knew, I’ll have accomplished a dream two generations in the making. Being a quarter Spanish will mean so much more.

I will be fluent. And that’s a promise. BB x

Blood, Tears and Broken Glass

August 7, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s a Friday night in down-town Amman, the streets are buzzing and Andrew and Mac are exploring an abandoned hospital. Yours truly chickened out of this particular venture. I guess that means I’m on lookout? Jeez, how lame does that make me sound…

It’s kind of creepy, sitting outside this tumbledown hospital with the sounds of breaking glass and echoed footsteps breaking the half-silence. Not to mention the dim light from Andrew’s phone flickering off the walls between the windows from time to time. Am I missing out? Very possibly. Will I regret it? Almost certainly. I’m not about to abandon my post, though. Call it a brush with foreign police once too often, but I’m calling shy this time. In the countryside, maybe, but not in the middle of the city on a Friday night. And especially not after watching As Above So Below last night. Not on my life.

We’re into our sixth week in Jordan. Three school weeks remain, and after that – who knows? I took out another two hundred and fifty dinars this morning. The goal is to make that last until the end. With any luck, that should just cut it, travel funds and all, although I have been known to be a little over-optimistic about this kind of thing. Jordan’s bus service may be criminally cheap, but the Amman taxi system is draining my resources at a ridiculous speed. And there’s no avoiding them either, and believe me, we’ve tried. Google Maps gave us an estimate of two and a half hours. We scoffed at that and called it one and a half. Turns out it was a three-hour job. We won’t be walking to down-town again any time soon – not when there’s shopping to be done. And I thought that living twenty minutes’ walk from any shops in Durham was problematic! Something to think about if you plan on staying in Amman. It wouldn’t be a problem if you lived down-town, of course, but up here in Tla al-Ali, it’s a different story. Please don’t buy my fervent dislike for the place, that’s just me and my city angst, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the cost of all these taxi rides – two dinars a throw – racks up fast. I’m looking forward to living in a town where everything is within walking distance.

Now that the end is in sight, though, it’s a lot easier to stay positive. I’ve got it into my head that I’m not coming back next year and that thought alone is keeping me going, no matter how hard I’m going to have to fight to make it so. Hence a slightly less bitchy, more reserved tone this time around. It’s a lot easier with the midterm depression out of the way. Any and all lingering ill tempers were successfully vented this afternoon with The Green Mile. Tears all round, as it should be. There’s no better way to get it all out than with the greatest tearjerker of them all. Next stop, 12 Years a Slave! (There’s a bit of a theme going on here…) Films aside, I’ve plenty of books to keep me going between now and then, thanks to the wonder that is iBooks and all the free material on offer. Best of all, I even stumbled across a book of Arabic short stories penned by none other than our very own Dr. Daniel Newman, which I simply have to get my hands on the next time I swing by Books@Cafe. For the time being, I’ve at least another twenty Henry Rider Haggard books to wade through, including the full Quatermain saga. Excellent stuff. Perfect travel fuel, too.

Although I’m swung to thinking that perhaps Ethiopia might be wiser than South Africa for potential backpacking. It’s just a hunch. Further research needed. BB x

A Distinct Lack of Bluebirds

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Two days until touchdown in Jordan. Officially speaking, that means my Year Abroad starts in earnest on Friday. Two words for that: country fudge. That sure came around fast. Two months in the Middle East yawning before me. A grey yawn rather than a black one, in that I don’t really know what to expect. I’ve done a bit of long-distance travel in Uganda and seen my fair share of Arab cities in Morocco – loved Fes, found Marrakesh over-hyped and absolutely loathed Casablanca – so I’m in the dark as regards Amman.

I’ve had loads of helpful suggestions from friends, friends of friends and their sixth-cousin-once-removed on what to see and do in the city, but if I’m honest, I’ve only skim-read most of them. Just once, I’d like to go somewhere without knowing the place inside out and back to front. That, of course, is more often than not down to copious procrastination, which requires you to have a lot of time on your hands; something which, for once, I don’t really have. Diving blindfolded, basically. It’s not the safest way to do it, but since when was the Middle East ever truly safe? (…nope, I’m not expecting you to follow that logic. I struggle with it sometimes) Of course, it’d feel a lot safer with all this outstanding admin tied up, over and done with, but I’m still wading through that. With a little luck, I’ll have most of it resolved by tomorrow evening. Fingers, as ever, well and truly crossed.

Fields of Gold

It’s good to be back in West Sussex again. I needed that two-day soujourn at home to see Dad and the bro – and the cats, one less than last time – but two days is barely long enough to settle in. It was more seeing like a snapshot of life back home: Dad out for work before eight, bro up and about on his bike a couple of hours later. I guess what I needed most of all was that long walk home along the cliffs. I’d forgotten just how long a walk it is: finding your way from Dover Priory station almost all the way to Walmer is a two hour effort at least. It’d be a lot faster if you could just walk along the road, of course, but the last time I tried that a police car ended up taking me the rest of the distance, with no shortage of suspicious glances. Never again. Besides, when the weather’s as fine as it was, the clifftops is the place to be on a summer’s afternoon.

Blue Skies over the White Cliffs of Dover

No place to be alone, though. In two hours and ten minutes of walking I never saw another lonely soul on the cliffs. But then, that’s nothing new. No shortage of families and lovestruck couples, however. And why not? It’s a stunning backdrop, once you get away from the noisy port down below. It was a little too hazy to see France clearly, but you could just about make out the shoreline on the horizon. Some of my companions – the ones who (wisely) stuck to their guns and studied French – are already working over there. I’ll be heading that way, too; only, a few thousand kilometres further. If only that flight could stretch just a little further and land me in Yemen. Bah, cut the middle man, just drop me somewhere in the Ethiopian Highlands. Gap Yah alert, but I’m having major Africa withdrawal symptoms right now. If I didn’t have this morbid disdain for cities, I might well have made a beeline for SOAS over Durham. Perhaps.

No regrets, though! There’ll be another time, I’m sure. In the meantime I’d better get packing, form-filling and brushing up on the Arabic; al-Kitaab’s gone neglected for over a month now. And then, and only then, will I try to decide between Ethiopia, South Africa and Cameroon as the next grand adventure… BB x

Summer Blues, City Blues

June 13, 2015June 14, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

There’s no better birthday present in the world than an invoice for nearly two thousand dollars. What a way to start the day. Even off the back of a very generous exchange rate, that’s still a cartload of cash. Of course, what with Student Finance working tirelessly behind the scenes, I suppose it’s easy to forget that I’m putting myself further and further in debt with those £9000 a year tuition fees hovering silently overhead, unseen until they pounce, leech-like, on my first pay cheque. That’s just a bugbear my generation have to face, I guess – not with apathy per se, but with a grudging acceptance that it’s the way things are. So yeah, in short, it was a good start to a twenty-first birthday.

In search of peace of mind, I took a wander out of town for somewhere quiet to sit and think. I initially made for my usual spot beside the river in the Broompark Woods, but as the sun was shining so gloriously and as I hadn’t actually done it before, I set my sights on the hill high over New Brancepeth and made for the top. It took a little while to climb down into the valley and up the other side, and it was quickly apparent that I’d left the Durham bubble far behind me. Everywhere I went I got strange looks from the people I passed; I guess not many students make it this far out of the bubble. Which is a crying shame, because it’s simply b-e-a-utiful. As soon as you’ve put a mile and a half between yourself and the city itself, you’re back in the real north again: fields lined with dry stone walls, rolling, sheep-strewn hills and open sky. Romantic, much. But you already know I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. From the top off the hill overlooking New Brancepeth, about an hour’s walk from Durham itself, you can see for miles in all directions. The cathedral tower, poking out from the valley in which it sits, dwarfs the city even from so far away. But what gets you is the silence. I’ve spent this year living on the fringes of the city, but you can still hear the hum of the A167. Get yourself out onto the hills and it’s another world. Just a couple of pipits, the odd yellowhammer and a single skylark singing their hearts out, with the far-off bleat of a lamb skipping after its mother. Rural idyll. Never mind its status, this is the real reason I applied here. If only I had the time to see more of it. I’d hoped to spend this end of term striking out around the north, but once again the year’s come and gone and I’ve not yet made the move. Fourth year will almost definitely see me finally striking out for Lindisfarne, the Lake District and the Farne Islands.

Durham City in the valley below New Brancepeth

I don’t know how I’m going to survive for the next two months. The Arab political situation and the basic laws of the land have left me no choice: if I am to continue to study Arabic, I must go to live in the city. Durham is by far the largest city I’ve ever lived in, which isn’t saying much, because it’s the only city I’ve ever lived in. And its size freaks me out sometimes. In less than two weeks’ time I’ll have to face down my fears and try to adapt to life in Amman, a sprawling metropolis compared to anything I’ve ever known. If I didn’t have a couple of good friends going with me, I know it would break me in days. I hope I can find somewhere to get away from it all, inside the city or outside. If only Amman weren’t so immense… The icing on the cake is the cost of it all. Two months’ study and accommodation in Amman is not exactly cheap. My twisted logic tells me that it’s just insulting to pay so much to have to live in a city, which is bad enough a situation as it is, but that’s obviously not the right way of looking at it. I’m just too much of a country boy for my own good. The sooner I can get out to some tiny, out-of-the-way pueblo in the Extremaduran heartlands, the better. My heart could do with the silence. BB x

Looking north from New Brancepeth

Tommy Brock’s Reconsideration

June 3, 2015June 13, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Walking back from college last night I was lucky enough to cross paths – no, to almost step on – our college mascot. No, not one of the burly B-team lads, but the real thing: a badger. Only a little one, mind – any older and it’d probably have done a runner long before I was within earshot – but the scamp was bold enough to root around for worms no more than a few feet away from me whilst I fiddled around with my camera, trying to disable the flash so as not to stun the creature. The result, of course, is that all you can make out in the picture is a grey blur in front of one of the traffic cones. You’ll have to take my word for it that it really is a badger.

Brock hunting for worms in the bushes…

The buzz I got from this little encounter took me by surprise all over again. I guess the two students who walked past got more of a shock seeing me crouching and talking to this little beastie a few feet away in the bushes, at about twenty minutes past midnight, than I did seeing it in the first place. Not that it matters. I seem to lose any and all worries around animals. I can probably say without a shadow of a doubt that it’s the one thing in the world that makes me genuinely happy. That’s genuinely happy, mind. I get a kick out of a lot of things. But nothing, nothing gives me the same kind of buzz as spending even a few minutes with a wild animal. It’s the same thrill I had as a kid watching my hero, David Attenborough, and all of his adventures at seven o’clock in the evening on Natural World, Blue Planet or the Life series. And it’s never really gone away. It turned into a list-making, box-ticking phase when I was a teenage birdwatcher. Thankfully, that anorak aspect is long gone now. But I’m still the nature fanatic I was when I was a kid, and tonight was just a stern reminder of that. It was what a wildlife magazine I used to get called an ‘RSPB Moment’; just a moment in time when nature gives you something amazing. It doesn’t have to be big. Maybe even just a conversation with a robin in the garden. Or a fleeting encounter with a Montagu’s Harrier (that one will always be stuck in my mind). Other moments that spring to mind include finding a chameleon after a five-hour search along the Mediterranean coast, seeing the whites of a vulture’s eyes as it loomed out of the mist over a cliff and watching a mountain gorilla pull the most ridiculously human postures. I can’t escape the fact that, beneath all the other layers, I’m a true-blue naturalist at heart.

I chose to study languages at University, not just because I love travel, but because I knew it would force me to confront what was then – and to some extent, still is – my greatest fear, and that is people. Not in a phobic way, but I was never as confident around people as around kids or animals. Never work with either, or so the saying goes. To hell with that. I love them both. But animals especially. And I think it’s time I acknowledged that the real reason I love travelling so much is that it almost always brings me into contact with the wild. It’s not just the landscape or the cultures I go in search of, it’s the nature. If this is a career reconsideration moment, it’s not been a dangerous one. Not yet. Just a reminder of where my heart truly lies. I think we all need that from time to time. BB x