It’s a Sharming Experience : @JakeTheWriter

I first wrote this article at the end of last year after the Russian airliner had been brought down while taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh. Just in case you would never have guessed, I should make it clear that this isn’t one of my travelogues and also it’s a fact that I’m not too fond of Egypt or Egyptians. As everybody says, “I am not a racist”. I do however speak from my own personal experiences and I have a long memory.

As a travel writer I have spent quite a few visits to many hell holes in the Middle East and North Africa. Out of all of them if I were to recommend giving the world an enema that procedure in which liquid or gas is injected into the rectum in order to expel its contents, the country where I would nominate to insert the tube would be Egypt.

I have every sympathy with those poor souls who perished on the Russian Airbus A321 that was downed over the Sinai desert, probably by ISIS. Incidentally my inquiring, journalist mind finds it very difficult to believe that the plane was blown out of the sky on October 31st and the wreckage was found nearly straight away and by November 10th and with modern technology, the Egyptians hadn’t discovered whether the plane was blown up by a bomb on board, or not.

It doesn’t surprise me that the Egyptians weren’t telling truth, as it’s not in their nature. It’s not as though the wreckage disappeared many leagues beneath the ocean. I have been dealing with lying, thieving Egyptians since the early 1950s when my ship moored at Port Tufic in the Red Sea.

Thank the Lord we only had to endure their hospitality for 3 days on that occasion. The local natives in bumboats swarmed upon us like scavengers and stole everything that wasn’t bolted down. We spent the whole 72 hours of our stay cutting grappling hooks as the dirty Arabs tried to scramble aboard. They used every trick in the book to pillage and steal

If the crew was momentarily distracted or inattentive we were robbed of most of our personal belongings, clothes, cigarettes, cameras, watches and other possessions. Most of the food from the galley disappeared along with every tin of paint together with paintbrushes, tins of jam and packs of rice all disappeared from the holds. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was where the description of a swarm of locusts in the bible came from, or at least where they got the idea from. Weren’t they Egyptian too? The only thing that was untouched was several thousand tons of unrefined Demerara sugar that was battened down in the cargo hatches.

At that time six of our crew were Lascar seamen, all Muslims from the Indian sub-continent all perfectly pleasant men who fitted in with our team. Pakistan hadn’t been invented in those days but I assume that is where their homeland would have been partitioned into. Fellow Muslims or not they were the first and easiest targets to be picked on by the Egyptians and they lost nearly everything they owned.
I made three more trips on different ships passing through the Suez Canal that produced similar raids from marauding Egyptians. So a visit that I made to Egypt in 1956 was far less unwelcome. That time I was aboard HMS Bulwark as a member of the Special Boat Squadron taking part in what was to be known as the Suez Crisis or the Kadesh Operation taking part in an invasion by Israel, Britain and France to take back the control of the Suez Canal and remove President Gamel Abdel Nasser.
The outcome of that SNAFU (That’s a rude Naval term, so Google it yourself) is well known. Once the dust or perhaps it was sand, had settled I just happened to be a qualified underwater demolition specialist in the SBS, and of course on the spot, so we spent just over 3 months clearing the Canal of the ships that Nasser had scuttled in order to block the transit of ships through the Canal. That was just one of his well thought out plans akin to crapping on your own doorstep, rather similar to blowing up your own tourist trade.
At least the thieving Egyptians were too afraid of us and tended to steer clear of us because of our reputation as killers. Even so one of our teams had an outboard motor nicked from one of the RIBs (Rigid Inflatable Boat), slippery bastards.
Since those heady days, I have visited Alexandria, Cairo, and the Valley of the Kings with my Travel Writer’s hat on, but forewarned is forearmed and I have managed to hang on to my valuables. I have witnessed dozens of fellow travellers being relieved of their possessions. So in spite of being an old Egypt hand I have never grown to even have the slightest soft spot for either the country or its people.
Unlike my son and his fellow diving chums, who regularly visit Sharm el-Sheikh for fantastic diving in the Red Sea, although they do now tend to stay aboard a diving boat while they are there! I have made my feelings plain questioning why anyone would want to fly out to a glorified Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Egypt (Spit), where they have scant respect for women and contempt for even basic human rights.
OK so it’s cheap and many holidaymakers have no idea whether they are in Egypt or Eritrea just so long as the sun is shining and the beer is cheap. Many venture no further than the all-you-can-eat salmonella buffet and the swimming pool. The whole point being to drink yourself silly and come home with a radioactive tan and a souvenir stuffed camel.

Sharm el-Sheikh has gained a reputation as being a relatively safe holiday destination thanks largely to the fact that it is heavily guarded by the Egyptian Military. It is heavily guarded because Egypt is full of Islamist Nut-Jobs looking for a chance to kill infidels.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to holiday in a resort that has to have a round the clock guard by the army. After all you wouldn’t choose to go for a holiday in Afghanistan or Iraq. If it does prove to have been a bomb planted by ISIS I wonder if their intention was to hammer the nail in the coffin of Egypt as a holiday destination for good. Talk about fouling their own doorstep. Good thinking Mussulman!

In God they trust : @jakethewriter

Today’s podcast from retired travel writer and commentator Jakethewriter is on travel through America; with a few words of advice for Barack Obama on his interference in the British Referendum on the European Union. Buddy you ain’t doing Bro Cameron any favours. In fact it would help him more if not only you kept your advice to the British people to yourself but you stayed away until after Independence Day.

In God they trust – it says so on the dollar bill…

The United States is a country that challenges the world traveller to adjust to its scale. Little slumdog children in India are told tales that its streets are paved in gold. Cartoon books the world over mock the culture’s lack of refinement. Newspapers around the world speculate on the effects of the American administration. Incredible landscapes, hidden throughout the vast continental mass, counterpoise the endless parade of WalMarts and McDonalds. While every preconception one has about the “U S of A” is valid, the challenge to the traveller is to accept this country for its gems. And here the gems are the brightest and largest, as Americans will tell you, ‘We’re number one!’

America, doubtlessly, is the First World and yet a visit to Katrina-devastated New Orleans or to the jaggedly backwards Appalachia makes one wonder whether the term First World even has any meaning. In this land of the free you had better not drink until you reach 21 years of age. The richest nation in the world does not provide its citizens proper affordable health care, and it has the highest proportion of lawyers and jailed criminals per capita.

All things are the best in America, but money does all the talking. The poor backpacker, scrounging to try and see this country on the cheap, is likely to be treated like something the dog left on the pavement. But for those with pluck, a thick skin, or a little money saved, the United States opens her doors.

For such a large country, America has an appalling sameness and a very monotonous culture from east to west thanks mostly to national television. And yet there are quite a few States that are like separate countries themselves – such as California, Texas and New England among many. The east coast, boasting a sprawling mega-metropolis from Boston to Washington, carries a sense of urgency in the atmosphere and there is no doubt something always going on in the city.

The South with its Bible belt states like Alabama and Mississippi slow down the pace a lot and race hangs heavy in the air. Along the Pacific a new braver breed of a people, with no history to speak of, cling to their mountain bikes or Louis Vuiton handbags depending on their personal market-influenced consumer choice.

Somewhere buried in all of this, perhaps invisible to the naked eye, is the heartbeat of a fresh continent that existed here even before the Natives came tens of thousands of years ago. This is the land of Walt Whitman’s plaintive singing, the land where technological marvels continually spring up in unlikely places and the country of highways carry such solitude that Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac canonized them.

The struggle for equality continues in the United States, too, and for every Bush and Nixon you have a John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to impart some hope. Echoes of the spirit of the ’60s can be heard, a time in history as powerful as any. 

When I listened to Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech I thought that there is hope. If he can impress a white, dyed-in-the-wool, English Tory like me I thought that he must have something. But like virtually every politician it turned out that it was mostly smoke and mirrors. He, like an old girl friend, promised much and performed little. I read somewhere, probably in a Republican newspaper that Barack Obama is close to having played more rounds of golf since 2009 than Tiger Woods. Unlike me, who has an opinion about everything, I am not going to put my nose into American politics. They appear to be a mystery even to most Americans and to this Brit they will stay that way.

While I make that statement I am equally certain that British and European politics and even world politics are an equal mystery to Barack Obama. In fact during his first term of office he took such little interest in world affairs we were even wondering whether, like very many Americans he even possessed a passport. This being the case no-one in this country can begin to imagine why he is getting involved in our referendum. In actual fact if he imagines that he is doing ‘Bro Cameron’ a favour let me tell him that his intervention in a matter that does not concern him will probably be the straw that broke the camel’s back, for the ‘Remain in Team’. End of political rant!

Yes the United States has much to offer for the traveller to see and attempt to understand. The vistas of the Grand Canyon are as mysterious as Mona Lisa’s smile, the city of Las Vegas that rose out of the desert is so artificial and enveloping, Los Angeles destroys pedestrians, the Great Plains are as flat as a pancake literally. The list could go on indefinitely. Hated for its imperialism and ignorance, America is still a great country and worth a traveller’s time.  

You will hear stories of rude U.S. Customs and Immigration officials and long queues as you attempt to get into the country; then when they eventually get in it seems as though everyone there with a menial job is an illegal immigrant.  I am always puzzled as to how they got in but honestly things haven’t changed simply because of 9/11.

In the mid-1950s I was a deck apprentice on a cargo boat when we sailed into San Pedro, California.  I was a well brought up English lad whose politics have not changed lot over the years and would put me slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.

I was just 16 years old and I was subjected to the most bullying type of grilling imaginable by an immigration official before being allowed to go ashore.  Incidentally the ship had already called at Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas where I had gone ashore without any problems, and my documents were stamped as such.  I was asked no less than 5 times whether I was or had ever been a member of the Australian Labour Party even though he had all of my documentation in front of him and could see that at that time I had never visited Australia.

I was a very frightened boy by the time that this cross-examination had ended and he had signed my papers to allow me to visit the land of the free.  I have told this tale many times since, you see the name of this officious, sorry I mean official, and U.S. Immigration Officer was one Herman Hoestetter. Sixty years on, that ‘Pig’s Orphan’s name is still burned in my memory. (A pigs orphan is a naval term that describes the bully to a T)

Obviously that proud, All-American boy thought that he was employed by the Witch-finder General, Senator Joe McCarthy.  As I matured I realised that America wasn’t at all like that self important, overbearing jobsworth and I have spent lots of time there as a visitor and love the place. I’ve crossed from East to West and North to South by car, coach, plane and train over many, many years. I still find the place and the people fascinating.

I query what the driving force behind Obama’s decision to use a visit to the U.K. this Spring to urge the British public to vote to remain inside the EU at the upcoming referendum. Does he not know that the E.U is unraveling? What are his advisors thinking of? Oh well it can only help Brexit on Independence Day.

What did the Moody Blues tell us? Nothing changes and nothing stays the same and life is still a simple game. Thanks for listening; I’ll see you again next week.

Travel that broadens the behind : @JakeTheWriter

Hello! This is sort of retired, travel writer and commentator Jakethewriter with today’s Podcast it was inspired by what I call my ‘real travel blogs’ written after I no longer had an editor paying my wages. Ain’t that the truth! . . . . . .

Warning this item may contain some fat related issues. So if you may be offended DONT LISTEN ME!

Travel that broadens the behind

This was motivated by a story that hit the internet recently about a morbidly obese lady who had set up an online begging bowl to pay for her weight reducing operation, new knickers elastic, rubber band or whatever they call it. In spite of being broke and unable to pay for her operation, the National Health Service had now let her down. Her sad story was that the NHS were going to do it but had now decided she didn’t qualify and were refusing to pay for it. She had gone ahead and booked it private anyway for around ten grand. She was hoping her story would touch the hearts of the charitable public.

Her troubles had now got worse, ahh! The media sniffing around for a story that would touch their readers hearts and kick the cruel NHS at the same time, discovered that the fat lady was not singing quite the same song and they discovered that her husband had inherited some cash, about enough to pay for his roly-poly wife to have her desired operation but . . . and here’s the rub, they had spent their windfall, wait for it. . . . . . . . on booking a luxury holiday cruise. Here endeth the fat lady’s tale as far as I am concerned along with her all hopes of a free operation.

I wrote a while back of a travel brochure that broadens the behind; it’s called a Cruise Brochure.  They say that travel broadens the mind but I think that travelling on a Cruise Ship just broadens the backside.

O.K. a Cruise Liner may put on half a dozen lectures, force feeding culture to the masses with classical civilisations and the history of mankind etc. but travelling universities they ain’t.  These lecture rooms are laid on to give a bit of interest to overfed passengers whilst they rest their bloated, sun-burned bodies in a cool air-conditioned theatre, between meals.

When the Liner anchors offshore and crew members help the more adventurous passengers out of their sun loungers, where they have been relaxing after a vast lunch, down the accommodation ladder to sit their fat bottoms on comfortable seats in the ferry boats and then ashore to be helped into a comfortable air-conditioned coach seats, where they can relax as they are taken to view the volcano at Etna or Stromboli (no its Thursday so it must be Vesuvius) from a safe distance.

They then retrace their steps until safely back on board to their cabin to change in time for dinner.  What a dinner? “More larks tongues or perhaps a few slices of roast swan, Madame?”  I don’t pen this as a travel writer but as someone who was fattened regularly on the great Cape Liners and even once on the greatest of the Queens, (I also met a few of them ducky), this particular one was the RMS Queen Mary crossing the Atlantic.  My goodness! I got so sick of eating Italian Truffle shavings and caviar; even now I cannot look a foie gras in the belly.  I even prefer the humble crab to a lobster.

My job as an Extra, Extra, Junior fourth officer was to put my good training as a ship’s navigator to good use by showing the rich, over weight and over fed passengers around the ship, having to flirt with their trophy wives and then join them at their dining table to dine right royally.  Heigh Ho! It’s a hard life at sea.

It was a long time ago and both the Cape Liners and the Atlantic Liners carried richer and fatter passengers than modern day cruise liners but the recipe is the same.  Ask any ship’s steward and he will tell you that most of the sea-sickness is due more to over indulgence than to motion.

The Roman’s had a good idea when they set aside a room next to the dining area which they named a “vomitorium” so that they could binge and purge, “excuse me while I throw up, but tell the waiter chappie, that I’ll have another crepe suzette when I get back”.

Lie back and relax, pass the gin old boy, the sun is over the yard arm somewhere on one of the oceans.  I bet that when Freddy Mercury sang of Fat Bottomed Girls he had met them on a cruise ship.

Going back to my original Fat Lady’s troubles perhaps she can spend her time while laying on the sun-deck (I don’t think that she could fit her rather broad backside into a deckchair) writing further begging letters about her plight after her life was ruined by the rotten Mejia for letting the cat out of the bag and the horrible travel company who wouldn’t let her cancel and give her money back when she was found out.

I know just what she means because as a former journalist and a former travel agent normally we are such suckers for a sob story; in fact we would usually have been the first to donate to GoFundYourself or whatever it’s called.

I’ll leave you with the words of one of my favourite sea shanties “Come all you no hopers, you jokers and rogues. We are on the road to nowhere let’s find out where it goes. It might be a ladder to the stars, who knows” Thanks for listening see you next week.

Oops, there goes another one! : @JakeTheWriter

Today’s Podcast from Jakethewriter, nearly retired Travel Journalist and Commentator, it’s more to date than many taken from my blogs in fact I wrote it and recorded it while another lapse in airport security was actually happening

Timeline Tuesday 29th March 2016

Oops, there goes another one!

I am writing this while watching live TV pictures from Larnaca airport in Cyprus where Egyptair Flight MS181 has landed after being hijacked from Alexandria. It had been on an internal flight in Egypt between Cairo and Alexandria and was hijacked by an individual, later named as Saif Elin Mustapha who was threatening to blow up the plane with a bomb.

My initial thoughts were, that couldn’t have happened on an El Al flight because the pilot could have confidentially said “You’re not the Messiah, you’re a very naughty boy” or words to that effect. He certainly would have been able to refuse his demands by saying “You could not have boarded this plane with a bomb so you are bluffing and if you do not immediately surrender you are about to be shot by one of our Marshalls”.

The difference between airport security in Israel and America or Europe is that the Israelis do not just go through the motions of security; they are looking primarily for the terror suspect, whereas the American and Europeans are looking for weapons, bottles of water or illicit liquids. The Israelis are advocates of what is known as profiling – building pictures of both passengers and airline staff – not in the manner of stereotyping such as looking for young Muslim men. Instead it is based on behaviour both prior to flying i.e. when, how and where a ticket is purchased and behaviour at the airport itself.

El Al employs people who have been trained in psychological observation techniques to interview every passenger before he or she is cleared to go through physical screening. Anyone who arouses their suspicion is then subjected to a further grilling and may be refused permission to fly. It is thought, (by me), that some of their profiling techniques may be politically unacceptable in Europe. El Al just shrug and say “It works”

In Great Britain and Europe the prohibition on carrying liquids onboard was introduced in response to the method of mixing chemicals to explosive effect revealed by a 2006 plot. If security staff find illicit liquids they deliver a ticking off and confiscate the containers, but still allow the passenger to fly. Discovery of a gun, by contrast would result in immediate arrest. Despite the mild consequences nobody has been apprehended trying to get bomb making liquids aboard in a decade.

This is not really because such measures have deterred terrorists from trying such methods again. The same likewise with passengers having to remove their shoes when no shoe bomber has been detected after Reid’s cack-handed attempt at being a shoe bomber. The terrorists have succeeded in causing upheaval at every airport with what they did so its mission complete for them.

Both the U.S. and U.K. security is purely a theatrical performance intended to reassure passengers and lull them into a false sense of security. In fact the American Transportation Administration have proved the inadequacies in spotting determined passengers attempts to get hazardous items on to an aircraft. A team of Homeland Security succeeded in getting fake bombs and weapons through the standard screening process in 67 out of 70 tests in various airports in America. Tests carried out by Special Forces teams have had similar results in the UK.

I wonder why? – The security screening process is an incredibly boring job. Nearly all alerts and warnings are false alarms. It is incredibly hard for people to remain vigilant in that sort of situation and sloppiness is inevitable. Disassembled weapons have a good chance of getting through.

I had a lot of brickbats to throw at Sharm el-Sheikh airport security when the Russian Airbus was blown out of the sky, but it is no worse than others at vetting staff. British airports employ those who follow Jihadist social media sites and at some big American airports, employees are not screened on their way into work if they have an identity card.

Some clue as to how easy it is to put a bomb into somebody else’s bag is shown from the number of valuables stolen from check-in luggage. In the past 4 years prior to 2014 (last available figures) passengers made more than 30,000 reports of missing property. This year police at Miami International Airport used a hidden camera to film baggage handlers rifling through bags in a plane’s hold and stealing whatever took their fancy. Security experts reckon such practice is widespread worldwide.

El Al spends more than other airlines on different types of security with armed Marshals on every flight. Hold baggage is subjected to pressure testing. Elsewhere better technology might improve the performance of conventional screening. Giving everyone a pat down is for too predictable and a waste of resources. Terrorists don’t like unpredictability. Confiscating my wife’s nail file and hand cream is too theatrical even for the most bored jobsworth, even if it did relieve his boredom.

Simply offering more airport security by rote also seems a poor idea. There should be far more emphasis on dealing with insider threats through better vetting and more intrusive vetting of staff. Plus far more, less predictable screening of passengers like swab tests and more sniffer dogs et al.

Keeping a sense of proportion – statistically everyone will tell you that flying is the safest form of travel. You are more likely to be fatally crushed by furniture than killed by a terrorist. Terrorism is effective in doing what it’s name says – Inspiring profound fear. But despite unremitting coverage of the Paris and Brussels attacks an objective examination of the facts shows that terrorism is an insignificant danger to the vast majority of people in the West.

The last couple of years have been especially bad in plane safety with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine and the recent crashes of Transasia Airways and Air Algerie Planes and the Russian Airbus A321 out of Sharm el-Sheikh but back to the sense of proportion – A look at the most recent atrocities will highlight that many more people travel by buses and trains, attend open air concerts and sporting events. These are all potential targets for terrorists yet receive not even a fraction that air travellers get. No-one confiscated my Swiss Army knife when I went to a recent Status Quo concert.

On a personal note I would add that enhanced security on airport staff would at least make me feel that far less valuables would be stolen from our luggage. That could see a reduction in our travel insurance, yeah you wish. Finally I am pleased to report that the hijack of a domestic Egyptian flight that caused it to be diverted to Cyprus has ended with all hostages released no-one injured and the hijacker Mr Saif Eldin Mustapha surrendering. No-one was injured. Thanks be to God! Thank you for listening.

Wonderful, wonderful, Kobenhavn (Copenhagen) : Jake

Today’s Podcast is taken from one of my mini travelogues entitled

Wonderful, wonderful, Kobenhavn

Travel writers are rather like politicians, although they don’t lie quite as often, they tend to write just what will please their editors.  Every once in a while a politician, usually after he has retired or has lost his seat will publish a book which professes to open Pandora’s box and tell the truth, unfortunately the new revelations are more to sell the book than to tell the truth.  My blogs have no kiss and tell revelations, I just have no longer to please my paymaster, and these are my personal notes on how I really saw some of my destinations.

For the next of my hereto unpublished mini- travelogues for the delectation of my friends; today we go to Denmark which seems to have cemented its position at or near the top of every global quality-of-life survey. Take a look around, and it’s not hard to see…

Denmark has a total population of 5,600,000 and Copenhagen a population of just over half a million. Compare that to the population of London at over 8,600,000 it isn’t overcrowded. Most of the population have bicycles and in fact there are twice as many cycles than there are motor vehicles. So many people cycle because there literally are no hills so it is fairly easy going. This lack of hills also means that when the wind blows it really blows and it seem to be windy most of the time. It also rains or snows for half of the year and that’s not in the brochure.

I have a number of Danish friends and have visited many times, they seem duty bound to put a positive spin on their harsh environment.  They seem to be united in turning lemons into spiced mulled wine; they call this cultivated cosiness ‘hygge’. And is considered the major weapon in combating the dreary darkness that befalls the Nordic countries over the winter, where the sun shines fewer than seven hours during the length of the winter solstice. I personally found it hard to adopt ‘hygge’, and felt it perhaps a good reason for the high alcohol intake among the Danes. They are however a happy people with a sense of social support, freedom to make life choices and a culture of generosity

One of the main attractions I find is that although they speak a peculiar “Harf’n’harf’n’harf “lingo among themselves they all speak far better English than what I do.  What is more everyone understands what I am saying; I don’t even have to shout.

Copenhagen is a gorgeous city filled with beautiful people, but has two over-hyped and most disappointing attractions that most people will have heard of before arriving. The first ‘attraction’ this wonderful city has, is this statue dedicated to the famous fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen in 1837. The Little Mermaid statue, as you’ll read in your guidebook, was unveiled in 1913 and is most famous among locals for all the times her head and arms have been sawn off by vandals.

Your expectations will naturally build as you take the surprisingly long and out-of-the-way walk along the harbour, and your only real clue that you are getting close is the crowd of bewildered tourists assembled who are taking their own photos and asking each other, “This is what we walked all the way out here for?”

The Little Mermaid statue is about 4-feet tall and looks more like an ad for bad posture than a city’s proudest landmark. It was built by the owner of the Carlsberg brewery and is not quite original.  She has sat on her boulder since August 23, 1913, but has had a very turbulent life, with at least eight vandalism attacks. She has been dowsed in paint numerous times, had her right arm amputated, been decapitated three times, and even pushed from her rock in 2003. Fortunately, the sculptor made a mold so the Little Mermaid’s “parts” have been reattached from the original mold.

We then read about the Tivoli Gardens, the most famous and the greatest attraction in Scandinavia and one of the world’s best known amusement parks.  However it is also the most expensive with a charge of around £15 entrance fee and every ride costing a little over £2 it’s not the place to go if you have a lot of kids although kids under 8 get in free.  It is also renowned for being jam-packed with people queuing for cheesy rides.  I cannot vouch either way because no-one mentioned that it is only open between April and September.  I read about the gardens being lit up at night-time with 120,000 lights and the evenings come to a close with a spectacular firework display.  One day I must go when it isn’t shut.

The city itself is truly a wonderful city and I love it, go and see the rococo Frederiksstaden district and its royal palaces and on neighbouring Funen is Odense, the hometown of storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, with a medieval core of cobblestone streets and half-timbered houses; but take my advice, you can give the Tivoli Gardens a miss along with the Little Mermaid.

I could certainly see why the current tide of immigrants invading Europe would find Denmark an attractive target especially for the economic migrants with the reputation of its government being people friendly. However the Danish parliament has backed a controversial proposal to confiscate asylum seekers’ valuables to pay for their upkeep. Police will be able to seize valuables worth more than 10,000 kroner (1,340 Euros; £1,000) from refugees to cover housing and food costs. All I can say is jolly good for them and the Merkel’s of the world can go hang.

The internet is full of stories of complaining migrants. One of them is Baraa Jehad, currently accommodated in the abandoned hospital in Helsingør, now a Red Cross reception centre for asylum seekers and refugees. He says that he is very unhappy with the government’s plans to give Syrian asylum seekers a provisional one-year residence permit without the possibility of bringing the family to Denmark. .”If I had known this, I would not be fleeing,
if I knew about these rules before I left Lebanon, I would have stayed there. If this one-year rule comes true, I would rather go back and live with my family,” Some asylum seeker! There you are, away you go then.

If this had been one of my sailor’s yarns instead of a mini travelogues I could tell you of the time I spent over 3 months here in Copenhagen, when my frigate on leaving harbour was blown off course (I told you about the high winds) and into the Danish Royal Yacht whose bow we sliced off and then proceeded over its anchor cable chopping off both our screws. But that’s another sailors yarn so I will keep that tale in my locker for another time.

Right, that takes care of the Viking marauders with their silly horned hats, “Skål”.  Now who can I upset next?  The world is a book – and those who do not travel read only a page. Thanks for listening.

Mind the Gap Please – Part 2 : Jake

Mind the Gap please!

I have divided my Podcast into two parts because even edited from my original article it is still rather long; my throat can only go for so long without a breather and I would hate for you to get bored and lose interest.

Part Two

It is amazing how far the English language can take you in even the remotest corners of the world.  However it is a gesture of respect to learn at least a few local words and phrases even it only to ask the location of a WC – I found the phrase “Where’s the bloody dunny mate?” extremely useful when in the outback beyond Cairns.

The Spanish I learned from watching Westerns in my youth served me well when I was travelling on a stagecoach from Durango to Mazatlan in Mexico – someone actually began a question to me with the words “Hey Gringo”, but now that I am older and wiser I take a relevant phrase book and a mini-dictionary.  Plus I practice sentences in the local language so that I am able to ask the location of a Vegetarian Restaurant so that my wife is not left to starve.

The Volunteer Trail

I have no intention for this to be a guide to suitable organisations whose aim in life is to recruit volunteers to build mission schools in darkest Africa or to muck out orphans in Bucharest.  These charitable organisations are brilliant at recruiting helpers and if this is your bag then they will take you under their wing and will in all probability arrange your flight and accommodation albeit in some cases somewhat meagre.  Some of them will even pay you some sort of subsistence allowance and feed you.  I feel that you should avoid any temptation to become an aid worker in Iraq at this particular time.  I will however float a few ideas that I have picked along the way, especially with the more mature traveller in mind who will have life skills to offer.

My son’s father-in-law, a country town GP took a sabbatical from his practice and took off for Afghanistan to give his services as a medic with the land-mine trust to the Mujahadin and anyone else who needed his help.  This was before Osama bin Laden, just after the U.S.S.Rs trial run at empire building.  The country hasn’t been the same since his visit!

It cannot be emphasised enough that commitment, no matter how fervent, is not enough to work in an aid project in the developing world.  You must normally be able to offer some kind of useful training or skill plus have overseas experience already, unless that is you are prepared to fund yourself and don’t mind that your efforts will be more a token than of any lasting benefit.  The main operational aid agencies such as Oxfam, Save the Children, UNICEF, World Health Organisation, UNHCR, Department for International Development, Care International, International Rescue Committee and Handicap International do not use untrained volunteers.

What agencies are looking for in first-time volunteers are:

  • A serious and proven professional track record

  • Good skills with people management and development

  • Specific technical or other hard skills

  • Ability to provide training and technical supervision in the above areas

  • A knowledge of a foreign language is a further advantage

This probably sounds very daunting and off putting but don’t be discouraged a lot of the same agencies offer fee-paying volunteers the chance to experience life at the sharp end in developing countries by working alongside skilled aid workers and local people for a short period.

I wholly commend this sort of Gap Year.  You will gain more from it than you give, in fact the more that you give, the more you will gain.  I however have not done it or even researched it.  These are professional charities who know more about organising aid volunteers and I would not deem to give any more advice or even point you towards such organisations. Google it!

You’re Going Where?

It is not my intention either, that this should be a gazetteer of suitable destinations; other than as a passing reference.  What I do intend, is for this to be an experienced old travel writer helping you to avoid possible mistakes, pass on tips and give as much helpful guidance as possible.

Whether you are 18 or 55 you are going to learn quite a lot about yourself.  Yes, even those of you who are like me ‘too old to die young’.  You will learn independence and self reliance and will learn to appreciate the people and things all around you.  That cannot be bad, just so long as you remember that there also will be dragons out there.  Maybe a few black bears and wild boars too!

You will have to look after yourself when you are ill.  You will have to live out of your back pack.  You will also have to face up to every problem and decision that confronts you.  However life is like that anyway, a series of highs and lows so why should travelling the world for your Gap Year be any different?

Without doubt, you are going to learn a lot about the world, no matter where or how far you go but even more certain is that you are going to learn even more about yourself.  You might even find that you like your new self.  Make no mistake however old or young you are, wherever you go to or how far you go, this will be a life changing experience.

I believe it was Billy Connolly who said “We pass this way but once.  There is no normal, and there’s no such thing as normal.  There is you, and there’s the rest.  There’s now and there’s forever. Do as you damn well please!”  He may or may not have written it but for a change he certainly wasn’t joking

Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Have you decided where to go? If you still haven’t decided, you need to do a lot of homework.  Travel Agents, Library, look at pictures, take some brochures home, and get a flavour of what’s in store.  Look at photos of rapids, deserts, mountains, crocodiles, elephants, camels, Sydney Opera House, Graceland and the Grand Old Oprey in Nashville.  Have a look at pictures of Table Mountain, Ayres Rock, the Rockies and the Grand Canyon, Route 66 and the Great Divide, the Taj Mahal and Mount Everest.  Surround yourself with pictures of the Inca trails, paradise, and people having fun.  Don’t forget to look at Bangkok, Beijing and Sumatra.  It really is big wide world out there and the choice is yours.  However only you can decide where to go.  Get the adrenaline going because; as the walrus said “the time has come”.  It’s make your mind up time.

Special Forces have a mantra that is worth adopting – Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, they call it Pea Picking and I commend it to you.  Ten minutes of prior study can make such a difference to a well-planned trip. At this stage you should know where you are going, when you are leaving and how.  You should have a good idea of how much it is going to cost.  You will also have so many other things buzzing around in your head.  It is now time to get out your notebook again it’s more Pea Picking for you.

Always looking for a Bargain!

While carrying out your planning it might be good to do some research to see how far your cash will go in any particular country.  I have just heard that cash in Rio de Janeiro is inflating quicker than a dead dog in the sun – a colourful description but an obvious flag for the crafty traveller – The Dollar or Stirling in your pocket is going to buy you a lot more in Brazil and there are many countries whose economies are worth serious consideration when you are Pea Picking but also consider that muggers and bandits thrive where the economy is poor and they can target rich westerners. Compared with some, even an impecunious western traveller will appear rich.  I think that it was the travel writer P.J. O’Rourke who quoted somebody who said “I thought that I was poor because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”.  You have shoes even if they are smelly trainers.

I read an absolutely brilliant wheeze – so good it could have come from Billy Connolly.  On your way home somewhere between the luggage carousel and the arrivals lounge – stop at a washroom and spray dye your hair magenta or similar outrageous colour, strip down to a sleeveless vest and cover your arms and neck with several fake tattoos and some fake rings for your nose, ears and eyebrows.  Your family will love the joke once your father has revived your mother from her faint.  It would be even funnier if it were your 40 year old daughter and your son-in-law who both burst into tears when they spotted you.

However everything that you have heard here are my thoughts from my research and experiences.  Certainly some of my suggestions have not been tried and tested by me so perhaps I should urge you to take them with a pinch of salt. The idea was to give you a flavour of taking time out from the daily grind.  Any decisions that you make should be of your own free will.  If you choose to fall off a cliff, marry a lap-dancer or step under a bus during your travels I take no responsibility for your actions.  When you get back please don’t forget – hair dyed magenta – fake tattoos – fake nuts bolts and earrings all over your body.  This will cheer up your relatives no end.

Thanks for listening!

Mind the Gap Please – Part 1 : Jake

Today’s Podcast by retired Travel Writer and Journalist Jakethewriter

The Gap Year

It was prompted by the pontifications of a Europhile from the CBI, who spouted that Gap years are a waste of time along with a lot of other rubbish. All his speech really proved was that because he didn’t do it, he doesn’t get it. A bit like his love of the European Union and trying to lay down the rules for those who wish to escape. My item was taken from one of my articles written and published some time ago which I called

Mind the Gap please!

I have divided my Podcast into two parts because even edited from my original article it is still rather long; my throat can only go for so long without a breather and I would hate for you to get bored and lose interest.

Part One

Why should students have all the fun? Gap years should be for those who have earned it and what is more who are old enough to appreciate it.  Right! that has upset all of you who have decided to go and see a piece of the world before getting stuck into several years of study at university having just escaped the struggle of our education system from the age of 5 to 18.

I don’t mean to upset anyone, I just think that if students believe they have earned the right to a gap year just you wait until you have graduated and then joined the JOB market.  Working the statutory 40 hour week for the just over minimum wage.  We enlightened souls, who work for themselves; smugly call the JOB market the “Just Over Broke” market because employers will never pay you more than they have to, object if you want to knock off early or even if you spend too long in the loo.  But that is another hobby horse that I am not riding today.

To return to the subject of worked out, wage slaves, deserving a Gap Year equally with the student getting off of the gravy train somewhere on the route between GCSE’s, ‘A’ levels, University and job.  So let us all plan to have a Gap Year whether we are 18 or 80. Everyone would benefit from a Gap Year or even Gap Three Months.  Does it matter if you are going to work for 43 years or 44 years whether you take time out to re-charge your batteries at the beginning, the end or even in the middle?

There is always a worry about taking time out and wasting time – At eighteen it will be parents worried about the dreadful things that could happen to their little darling and they will be trying delicately to suggest that you really should keep the momentum going until after you have graduated.  Quote the anecdotal facts that fewer people drop out after year one if they took a Gap Year than those who didn’t.

Once you have graduated, qualified or whatever – the advice (cold water) will come again from parents, who will have enlisted the battalion of grandparents who will all ignore the fact that they do not know what they are talking about and the fact that you are not sure in what direction you want to go yourself, right at this minute.  Tell them this time that you need something more than Nursery School, Primary School, Secondary, Comprehensive, Grammar School, Sixth Form College and University to fill in all of those blank bits on the CV and the application forms.  By this time you will have lost them, so quote me – You need a break

Then when, “To old to die young!”, you are tired out, worn out, battered by life at the JOB, having done your job as a wage slave for 40 hours every week plus commuting and to put it politely having seen better days.  Now you have the time and inclination to take time out.  You will find that all the negative advice will be coming from all of your family. – Grown up kids, your grandchildren, all of them telling you that you need to put your feet up not to be thinking of offering your services and all of your hard learned skills to some Romanian orphanage. Thinking about that I must add a warning; in the early 1990s after the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu, I allowed one of my staff to go on a one month paid sabbatical, as a volunteer to help sort out the ghastly mess he had made of his orphanages. My well meaning lady volunteer came back quite damaged mentally by the horrors she had seen and took some months to recover. So think carefully before making your decision.

Believe me your family’s concerns are less for your welfare and mostly about you spending their inheritance while you are away and “Who is going to look after your cat?” – Quote me – You need a break not a rest. As for someone to look after the cat, you could always put a hyperlink between those who kindly took care of Tom and your Last Will and Testament.

So who am I to be giving all this friendly advice and waving you Bon Voyage as you step into the unknown?   I didn’t get to University, I left Naval College at 15+ to travel twice around the world on a cargo boat.  Some Gap Year! actually my first voyage took 15 months which was followed by two years before the mast on a luxury liner plying the South African route and then into the Royal Navy.  What is it they say when singing the praises of taking a Gap Year?  “There is a world out there … go and see it … and live life to the full.”  I saw the world, I saw the sea and I lived life to the full and when the time came to settle down, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do.

I came ashore, tried working at a JOB as a wage slave, picking up a wife and two kids on the way together with a mortgage and all the accoutrements that go with them.  I then came to my senses and took on board the fact that I was not born to be a wage slave and didn’t like the JOB factor, in fact I was unemployable because I didn’t like being bossed around.  So I have been my own boss since before most of you were born and since 1986 was the Managing Director of a travel company and after taking early retirement have been a freelance travel writer and my researches have taken me even further than my seafaring or my travel agency.

Also on my CV is the fact that I did a lot of survival training in the Navy. I did Arctic warfare training and then put it to good use in the heat of the Middle East.  I have eaten weevils, earthworms and witchity grubs.  In my youth I was a keen rock climber and a sailor and have taught outdoor pursuits at an Outward Bound School in the North of Scotland.  I possess a qualification in mountain leadership from Plas Y Brenan and a Board of Trade Yacht masters Certificate.  So as the lovely Gloria Gaynor tells us “I will survive”

I now travel at leisure, for pleasure, with my much loved and long suffering wife.  My two married kids have added two grandchildren who are now adults.  Because I have always been somewhat of a free spirit – I believe my granddaughter calls it being a loose cannon – We get no grief when we decide to – Just Go! – And my lovely daughter looks after William my Burmese cat.  He being an adventurous spirit like his butler (me) and likes a change, sometimes packs his bags and takes himself off to stay with my sister for his gap year/week/month.

Anyway that is my CV – A much travelled wrinkly, nearly a crinkly, much researched travel writer who has been there and done that and had all of the corners knocked off on the journey.

Do you have to have a reason?

Why do you want to travel? If you are doing it for any other reason than because you want to – maybe you want to see the world before it’s too late. Maybe you want to see life, Maybe you want to appreciate how the rest of the world lives or maybe you need to “find yourself”, any other reason, don’t do it.  It must be your decision, it’s your life, and so do it for yourself – NO OTHER REASON.

Deciding to take a period of time out and then deciding how to spend it may not be as momentous as some other life decisions like getting married, having babies, choosing or changing careers, but it is still a big decision.  It certainly takes guts and that is an essential ingredient in achieving a break in your lifestyle.  The hardest part is the summoning up the determination to JUST DO IT!  No book can make the decision for you.  All outsiders, even someone who knows the ropes, can do is set out the possibilities and see if any take your fancy.  Do as much research as possible.  Ask yourself if you can imagine yourself trekking through a Costa Rican rainforest or teaching in a Tanzanian village or studying art in Florence?  The next thing to ask yourself is do you have the energy to make the dream come true?

There has never been a better time to travel around the world.  No matter what your age is or where you are bound there are literally hundreds of people doing the same thing.  If you think about it you probably know someone who is doing it and if you know someone and everyone that you know, knows someone else who is off into the wide blue yonder, can you imagine the number of backpackers out there?  It is easy for me to say and to imagine as I’ve been there, done that and seen towns literally full of backpackers.  If you imagine that you are going off into the unknown, completely on your own out there you can forget it.  This is simply not the case.

You couldn’t make this up!

I have a chum who went to get away from it all to Ulan Bator in
Outer Mongolia and found that the place was full of backpackers.  I met someone from the next village to mine when I was half-way up a mountain in Whistler, British Columbia, and my hairdresser bumped into one of his customers in a Souk in Beirut in the Lebanon.  The world has become a very much smaller place and there has never been a cheaper time to travel, it’s not only budgies that go cheep!

No time like the Present

Seriously with the increase in demand, prices for flights and travel in general are coming down the whole time and it has never been cheaper to travel.  As a result of this increased demand it has also never been easier to travel, with youth travel companies, help the aged travel companies (I just made that one up), tour operators, coach routes and even internet cafes everywhere, all making it easier for everyone to JUST GO, or as Nike say JUST DO IT.

If you stagger off the plane in Sydney you will find that you have landed in the number one destination for backpackers.  You will be surrounded by them – hundreds of them, all doing exactly the same as you.  You will find that there are buses continuously running up and down the coast from Sydney to Cairns.  You don’t even have to thumb it, just get on a bus and get off at the next town where you will be met by a representative who has a free mini bus to take you to the hostel that someone on the plane told you about.  Australian joke “How do you know which is the plane that has come from Heathrow? – It’s the jet that is still whining after the pilot has switched the engines off”.

When you are ready to move on, the rep with the mini bus will take you to the bus station to jump on yet another bus to take you to the next town where you will be met by another rep with another mini bus to take you to another recommended hostel.  It’s tough out there in the bush – Have you ridden in those mini buses?

I feel another anecdote coming on – My wife and I were staying in a small town called Zakapane in Poland at the foot of the Tatra Mountains and decided to make our own way up to the starting point of a locally renowned, 8 kilometre uphill trek through the forests to a restaurant with stunning views.

Following a locals’ advice who told us, when he discovered that we intended to walk the route, that it was a “damn long vay” – Under his guidance we duly found a mini bus which ran from the town centre to our setting off point – the 16 seater mini bus gradually filled up and then the courier/rep/conductor walked up the aisle to the back of the bus carrying wooden planks which he placed under the bottoms of those seated passengers, across the aisle and hey presto! Eight more seats for eight extra passengers.

As we lurched along in our now 24 seater mini bus the said courier/rep/conductor made sure that we were aware that the forest we were about to trek through, was the home of some of Poland’s much loved black bears and wild boar and that in this enlightened age they were protected by new and rigid laws. – I know that his English was rather broken unlike my Polish which is totally non-existent – but I believe the message he tried to get across was that Bear and Boar are protected – rubber-necking tourists were not.  We were not to protect ourselves if we were attacked by wild animals.

All you have to do is Find A Man Who Does

I digress – All over the world not just Australia there is a well –trodden backpacker trail and everyone you meet will be on it or have been on it.  Every time that you meet up with someone you will find yourself swapping traveller’s tales and ideas over a beer or two.  Have a look at www.backpackeurope.com which is the brainchild of an American and veteran backpacker Kaaryn Hendrickson, this site is a gem for any young person about to embark on a Grand Tour of Europe.

Even before you leave, the best advice comes from someone who has already done it.  They will have learned the hard way, so talk to your friends and acquaintances who have hit the road or the volunteer trail abroad.  Make use of the internet to locate travellers who have gone before.  You could even find a pub in Earls Court and chat to a few Aussies going walkabout.  You then must sit back and cherry-pick all the good and bad advice and try to make sense of what makes sense to you.  You will have to filter advice based on prejudice on one hand and bravado on the other.  All of the advice in the world is useless unless you make a personal approach to every particular situation.

Thanks for listening to Part One I’m stopping for a short R & R and hopefully I’ll see you on the flip side

Thanks for listening! (Cont…)

There’s no waste where there’s pigs : Jake

In today’s podcast I recall how Great Britain coped without the rest of Europe when our backs were really against the wall, I have called it
There’s no waste where there’s pigs
that was one of my mother’s much used expressions

With my interest and hope of Great Britain leaving the European Union I’ve been chatting to friends and relations, not I would add, trying to influence them in any way.  That statement will cause some disbelief among friends on the social media, but it’s true. I have no idea how my family are going to vote in the forthcoming referendum.

I’m first to admit that I’m quite a political animal with leanings to the right of Margaret Thatcher and next to Attila the Hun and on top of that I have never agreed with anything the European Union stands for.  As a writer I use the social media as a tool to express my views which I am happy to do and am first to admit they are strong views.

At home however although I make no secret of either my politics or my religion I also believe they are personal and have never attempted to evangelise either.  This could hark back to my time at sea when both subjects were Taboo.  In a confined space of a ship, a shipmate was just that and everyone’s personal space was sacrosanct.  I can still hear a much travelled Master at Arms saying “If yer can’t stand the smell of yer shipmates’ breff yer shoon’t a joined”.  Hence no preaching or tub thumping at home!

Not sure what that digression was about!  As I was saying, chatting to my daughter and grandson in particular, about my memories of when Great Britain – I like that, much better than the UK – coped in WWII when we really were on our own.  Being of my great age and probably sounding like Del Boy’s Uncle Albert “Djoorin tha wawar!” I began chatting on how we, and in particular my mother coped with the shortages of everything and food in particular.

Ma was a fearsome, strong minded, independent woman and the daughter of a coal miner and brought up in Edwardian times in a Durham pit village.  My Pa was a career airman in the RAF, having joined the Royal Flying Corps as a boy cook and a Warrant Officer when WWII broke out.  We had left a life in married quarters and settled in a delightful Home Counties village called Woburn Sands which is on the borders of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.  As a service wife Ma was quite used to her husband being away for long periods, so she didn’t suffer the sudden trauma of being abandoned when their spouses were called up to serve King and Country and having to cope alone with their children and keep house and home together.

It may have been less traumatic for Ma but having to feed and clothe my elder sister and me when everything that could be, was rationed and if it wasn’t, it was either unobtainable or in short supply was difficult and then just to stop us from getting too soft in our idyllic surrounding the government decided to pressurise us into taking in a Jewish family from the bombing in London consisting of a mother and her two daughters.  Their home had been reduced to rubble while they were in the shelter of an underground station.  Thank goodness they were an absolutely lovely family but I’m sure you can imagine the total upheaval it brought to our existence.

When I hear the likes of Bob Geldof and the bleeding heart brigade of politicians and actors pontificating about welcoming Muslim Refugees into their homes, I cannot wait for a single one of them to fulfil their promises, their Libtard – ‘promise much and perform little’, fantasy world.

Anyway I digress again.  I look back on that time and how my mother decided that no matter how Adolph Hitler aided and abetted by our own politicians and their red tape interfered, we would survive and my goodness we survived.  I can only speak for my mother and she is long dead and anyway the statute of limitations must have long expired for mother and all her friends who saw it their duty to get round the restrictions placed on their welfare.

We had a large garden so mother became a bricklayer; don’t ask where the bricks appeared from but Marston Valley Brick Company made them some 7 miles away.  She built a fine Pig Sty and two female piglets appeared to become our breeding sows as a way to supplement our meat ration.  Our evacuees’ mother turned to and built a chicken run and six pullets and a cockerel appeared.  Egg production was the plan, mainly to feed us as eggs were a rationed commodity.  Again mother had a cunning plan.  We were able to exchange one’s egg ration for an allowance of chicken feed.  Chickens were killed for food as soon as they stopped laying eggs and I soon became quite adept at wringing their necks and plucking out the feathers.

Somewhere in my mother’s plan and the reason we added a cockerel to our menagerie right from the start was that she intended to breed her own replacement flock of chickens.  Hence the need for a cockerel to fertilise the eggs and thus all of our eggs were fertile.  She had read a book somewhere about a family who made their own incubator, I think it was a novel rather than a DIY book but we subsequently had a tea chest cut down and fitted with a couple of electric light bulbs and we eventually supplied ourselves and friends and neighbours with a constant supply of little yellow day old chicks.

It was probably after the war that I discovered that the maker of rules and regulations to put a spoke in mothers’ plans wasn’t called “The Bloody Ministry of Food”, anyway we had started with two prospective breeding sows and mother could only have a licence to keep one.  So a second Pig Sty was built on our Allotment plot and whenever an inspector called or someone from the local Pig Club paid a visit their inspections were rotated between the one in the back garden and the other in the Allotment.  The licensing was all to do with the supplies of pig food and how much meat ration had been surrendered.  For centuries, gardeners and smallholders had kept poultry and the odd pig or two for their own house use.  The powers that be recognised that come what may that such practice would continue, so they encouraged groups of people to form Pig Clubs that were allowed legally to buy, feed and look after pigs.

Pigs were normally fed on scraps from homes, cafes, bakeries and anything edible that came to hand.  Clubs were allowed to purchase legally small amounts of corn or feed to supplement this meagre diet.  You will not believe the number of sacks of meal that ‘fell off the wagon’.  Of course this was years before Combine Harvesters became common use and the corn was cut very inefficiently with rotary cutters and stacked in sheaths to dry out before carting them to the threshing drum.  Literally hundredweights of ripe corn seeds spilled and were left on the fields to waste.  Much to the delight of the wild bird population and the local livestock owners who were given permission to ‘glean’.  My fearsome mother recruited gangs of holidaying schoolchildren as ‘gleaners’ and in about two weeks at the end of harvest our two barns and the allotment shed were filled with sacks of free grain.

Pigs and piglets are greedy animals and feeding has to be constant and never stops. Bins were placed at certain spots around the village for the reception of kitchen waste which was collected by the council’s lorry driver.  The stuff was sorted and sold to poultry and pig keepers.  We sometimes beat the council lorry and sorted out the good stuff.  If you like, cutting out the middle man!

We acquired a two wheeled barrow and as we were surrounded by the Duke of Bedford’s forests and had carte blanche permission to collect firewood most of our fuel was logs long before wood burning stoves became fashionable. I can remember on a couple of occasions collecting literally hundredweights of acorns and sometime sweet chestnuts in that barrow to feed the pigs on.  They loved them, shells and all, so we not only had well fed pigs we had happy pigs.  As the war progressed we used to get pig swill delivered that was collected from sources in London.  This food waste was called “Tottenham Pudding” which we assumed was its source, although something at the back of my mind has me remembering that it was sourced in Edmonton, wherever that is.  No matter it was dreadful smelly stuff but the pigs loved it.

Our pigs, both the legal ones and the supplementary ones thrived on the diet provided by my mother.  Each sow produced around ten piglets which were fattened for slaughter in around 12 to 16 weeks.  There was a big day when Ma’s legal pigs were slaughters through the pig club.  Half of the carcasses were sold (for a pittance as Ma said) to the Government, to help with rationing and the remainder was divided between Club members, as either pork or bacon.  When the other member slaughtered their animal we also were given our share.

Perhaps a month later, perhaps ten or so of our illegal porkers that had also been fattened for slaughter, this time for a real red letter day when a certain butcher with the help of a long retired slaughter man and perhaps a couple of Italian prisoners of war, collected our harvest in a large lorry.  I have no real recollection of the black-market distribution but on those occasions we had whole smoked hams hanging in our barn, legs of pork, sides of bacon, shoulders of pork, pork tenderloin, rib chops, loin chops and of course sausages and black pudding.  We of course had no refrigerators in those days but our tame butcher and a back-up from our tame fishmonger did and they were very well rewarded to house our household meat supply.

Not just friends and neighbours received benefits from mother’s allotment, the butcher and fishmonger could only look after so much of our prime cuts and anything that we couldn’t smoke in the form of ham or bacon was distributed that day.  I remember our local Bobby always had a roasting leg joint together with some kidneys and liver.  Possibly to salve mother’s conscience our Vicar, the Roman Catholic Priest and the Methodist Minister were all beneficiaries and no-one knew of the other recipient; but that was the way of the black market trade.  It wasn’t called that then, it was just being neighbourly.

Well that’s the tale of our pigs and poultry, as the war progressed mother acquired two nanny goats and a billy goat.  But that’s another story and I’m keeping it in my locker for another day.

I think the funniest memory was of our evacuees, they were orthodox Jews (I used to get pocket money for chopping sticks and lighting their fire on Shabbat which is observed from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, oy vey!) but needs must when the devil drives and Momma Levitt decided that rules could be bent for the duration.  They enjoyed pork every bit as we did, she told a white lie to her girls namely that it was chicken in case they let it slip to their father when he visited.  But they discovered a real fondness for lovely roast crackling.

In this digital age I am sure that my Mother would have been a leading campaigner against rationing and the Ministry of Food in particular. There is no doubt that it was for propaganda purposes, making certain that the British public felt that they were doing their bit every much as the boys on the front.  The Ministry of Food employed thousands of civilians, jobsworths every one.  As it was, it was sheer luck that Mother wasn’t arrested for doing her bit for the war effort.

Every single part of the pig can be eaten except for the squeal and as Mother often said “There’s no waste where there’s pigs”.  These days I would add, that it keeps Muslims away.