New website and blog!

Just to let you know I'm working on a new website, where I'll be posting blogs from now on. 

http://www.tickleflies.com/ 

I'll also be trying to migrate my posts over there - all the text should be up, but the photos may take a little longer.

Hope you keep on reading!

Halloweekend.

On Friday

We went to see Macbeth at the Covent Garden Odeon theatre. S and I pretended to dress up (I was wearing my gorgeous black lace dress, over which I had worn a red cardigan all day because I was at work and worried about being seen. Just about being seen. Does anyone else get that - being afraid of being seen, whilst at work? In public? Anywhere?).

On the way there I walked past a long, long line of people. It stretched out from the corner and went down the street past where the eye could see. It looked like a book signing line, or waiting for entry to a gig. The people were excited. They were buzzing and humming. There was a security guard telling them to keep the path clear. I walked down their length and found it eventually found the source - a costume shop with bright 'SALE' words all over the front window, mixed in with pumpkins and black witches' hats.

The movie had fantastic cinematography. The acting was good. They stuck to the original script and, by and large, delivered it well. There was also an attempt to provide more backstory that explained Macbeth and his Lady's madness, which I rather liked, but which most unfortunately wasn't properly integrated because of their faithfulness to the script. There were, however, a few very strange moments of madness, from Macbeth's timeslapse back-and-forth upright rocking in the moonlight to his comedic accusing cry of "Satan!"

The night was foggy.

On Saturday, Halloween

The day was foggy.

The All Blacks won. It was a fantastic game. There were about 8 of us in a family room, in front of a TV, yelling and wincing and crying "NONU!" and laughing about the commentator's observation of the concentration in Carter's nut brown eyes. But oh, it was a good game. You must know that.

Then we went home. We passed some ghouls and axe murderers, but I sort of felt the streets were oddly quiet. It may have been the fog. It left an invisible dampness on everything.

The night was foggy, and we sat up talking about how hard it is to make your life work sometimes and how it is that pot plants can die so easily.


On Sunday

M and I went to two talks for the London Month of the Dead at Brompton Cemetery. It is a beautiful cemetery, especially with the autumn leaves slowly falling from the trees. The day was foggy. There was a long avenue stretching down towards the chapel, lined with stones and statues and monuments along the flat ground.

The first talk was 'Stories in Stone,' where Marina Warner spoke about the British ghost writer M R James and fairy tales and mythology and Roger Luckhurst spoke about Yates' poem "All Soul's Night" and the cursed mummy that his friend Thomas Douglas Murray bought from Egypt. I was particularly interested in the idea of the power inanimate can have - something Warner spoke about in reference to the fairy tale 'The Singing Bone,' which I had coincidentally read just a few days before in Philip Pullman's collection of fairy tales. There is power in inanimate objects. We put it into them every day, and use them symbolically to talk about who we are.

The room was warm, and I was glad to get outside for a break between talks. We wandered around the headstones. There was a peculiar monument that reminded me of an Egyptian-esque alien temple I once created in a dream.

We saw a fox, too. He had a limp, and I fear he may not have been that well as he seemed to be slightly fearless, although he wasn't impressed by me. I filmed him so I could send it to my mother and to my little nephews and niece all the way back in NZ. I photographed him so I could put it on my Instragram and be like, 'Look at this handsome red fox. Yes. I saw this handsome red fox, and you did not, but you may now look at him by the grace of me.' He was smaller than Sigil, or Fabian, but much redder.

The second talk was about donations. An surgeon highlighted the importance of donating organs by talking about eyes. It's a way to live longer. Your cornea can help a 6 year old see, and a part of you can remain living and working for, oh, another century. I think it's important - someone else can use the parts of you you no longer need, because you are no longer there.

The second talk was about donating your body to medical science, which is interesting. I know from previous reading that you can never be quite sure where you'll end up or what your body will be used for. There was a very vocal woman in the crowd. I still don't know if she was opposed to it, for it, or just lonely.

The chapel was very hot by the second talk. I woke up on floor at the end of the first half, with the surgeon telling me to wiggle my toes. and then escorting me outside where M, who had popped out to get me some water, found me. I really must stop fainting.

The night was foggy and chill. Autumn leaves spun through it as we walked through the graveyard in the dark, towards the tall locked gates.

Bonn: A Neanderthal, a river, and a turtle

From Koln, we did two day trips - the first to Bonn, about 30k or so up the Rhine, and to Aachen, about 70k west on the borders of Belguim and the Netherlands.

We caught the rail from Koln to Bonn, accidentally purchasing the more expensive tickets because everything was in German and it wasn't clear. Don't go for the high-speed train. Take your time. Or, catch the ferry...

In Bonn we mostly wandered. We found the Botanischer Garten, which was quite pretty. It was a sunny day and the frogs, moorhens and one turtle were out enjoying the weather. We ate lunch looking out over the pond, watching silver fish under the surface, and the little chicks running along lillypads. We also discovered a section for Neuseeland plants - most notably some rather sad, small cabbage trees.

I was taken with the Rhine, and there are some beautiful parks along it that stretch down beneath a bridge that seems to be on the edge of the town. We walked through it, and I bought a kirsche (cherry) und bannana juice box which was quite tasty. Everything was green (well, not the juice) and lush. There were geese in the feilds, grazing, and people going for all sorts of walks.

By the Rhine I could smell the water, and although it's inland it reminded me somehow of an estuary. Although the banks were covered in stones there was a smell of mud, and something like salt. Then looking up the Rhine, deeper into Germany, was beautiful. There were hills there breaking out of the flatness of the places we'd been, covered in forest. A building on a hill gleamed white - a church perhaps, or someone rich's mansion, we couldn't tell. I imagined walking over the hills and through the forest. I reminded myself how much I want to visit the Black Forest, some time.

Bonn is home to the first Neanderthal man, found in the Neander Valley (about 12 miles east of Dusseldorf). We visited the LVR- Landes Museum. Everything was in German, but there was still a lot to see, including a surprising number of portraits and paintings and a collection of religious relics.

But it was the Neanderthal man I came to see. In Biology classes at high school one of my favourite topics was human evolution. I was very pleased with myself for memorising names like Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) and Paranthropus robustus. Then in Germany I was looking at an example of Homo neanderthalensis, the first one given that name. I must confess it wasn't as much to look at as perhaps I might have hoped, just some fragments of bone that, to my untrained eye, looked like any other random selection of ancient human bone. But, perhaps that's an important point. There was so little difference between one Homo and another - us. We are all Homos. And if there's so little between Homo N and Homo sapiens, how much difference can there possibly be between all us modern "wise" Homos?

In Bonn one can also visit the Beethoven-Haus, where the great composer was born. We didn't visit it - there was a long queue of Japanese tourists - but we did visit his statue, which we eventually got to see once another queue of Japanese tourists had taken sufficient photographs. It looked like Beethoven. Flippancy aside, it was quite neat to think that I was in a city where someone who did create some truly breathtaking - and significant - music had been born.

We caught a ferry back to Koln, and found that we got a discount by showing our train ticket. The journey was a couple of hours, and you don't realise quite how fast you're going really until you pass underneath a bridge. We sat on the deck and watched the flat wide water, the flat banks edged in green grass or stony banks, pieces of towns and cities. There were some people camping by the river in a white tent. And then we approached Koln, and the two prongs of the Dom showed up and neared. Everyone took photographs. The sun was setting bright red and gold behind it.

Services, Bryson, and little wonderful things

It’s remarkable how difficult it can be to get things done without internet. At least, that’s my pitiful excuse for my lack of blogging and writing, recently, anyway.

Punters punting in Cambridge

Along with my angst over how crap services are here (bank services, mobile services, trying to set up internet with EE services, even the service at a cafe in the West End which took 45 minutes to deliver us the most basic of brunches and, when we went to leave, informed us there were no card payments on Sundays and we should have known).

Last night M and I went to hear Bill Bryson talk at the Guardian’s book club event. It was well worth going. For those of you who have yet to encounter Bill Bryson’s work, go and do so immediately. I still have a lot to catch up on.

Autumn in Hampstead Heath

Bryson is originally from America but fell in love with England, and has been living here for decades (with a brief return to America to give his children the great experience of two countries). He was talking mostly about his 1995 book Notes from a Small Island, a book about his travels around Britain, with references to his new book Little Dribbling which revisits the same topic.

Bryson said that when you move somewhere, no matter whether you have lived there for a long time, you will always be a bit of a foreigner and there will always be things that just don’t make sense, that “befuddle” you – why, in the teeth of hell, do they do it that way? But there are always good things, always the wonderful and different things.

It was nice, on that particular day, to be reminded of such things.

Last week, S and I took a trip to China Town and had dinner in the marvellous Cafe TPT (I had eggplant, mmmm, and for dessert some kind of sago mango deliciousness) then wandered around the streets, finding wonderful places we will return to to buy mocha and pandam buns stuffed with red bean paste and cakes and these crazy bun things with pork shavings on the end and these tiny, beautifully formed fish-shaped cream pastries. It was night, so the woman in the shop was cleaning out the irons they cook them in, but there were some samples set on a small dish in the window – about the size of a thumb, perhaps, with details pressed into the pastry.

China Town

And I was so excited, to be walking around there at night, with a hum and bustle underneath the rows and rows of red lanterns strung up, banners set for the Chinese president’s upcoming visit, people everywhere. I forget, sometimes, how much I love being outside at night. It has a different feeling to the day, a kind of opening up of a new world. I believe the people change, and the buildings and streets pick up a new air, and in this part of London it is wonderful.

And what else? Dinner with my friend near Liverpool Street Station, a quick catch up and meal while she was in transit between Spain and Oklahoma. Seeing the neighbourhood fox at last (he told me his name is Sigil). The light in the mornings coming through our window, and the light over the bridge walking home from work in the evenings. (Walking home from work, in London? How lucky am I!) Train travel – I love travelling by trains – with scenery and weather travelling past, and that close feeling of being in yourself.

The bustling weekend Columbia Road flower market, where the street is lined either side with flowers and potted plants all the way down, and I got the fern for our bedroom. An unexpected 'Natural Park' near Kings Cross with a pond and a red robin and bees. A walk in Hampstead Heath with a friend, and a plastic heeled shoe filled with rainwater and leaves.

Camley Street Natural Park beehives

A trip to Cambridge on the weekend – my first visit – with all the canals and a view of punters from afar, so it looked as though they were pushing themselves through the land with giant poles, with the autumn leaves scattering everywhere. That was the first thing I noticed getting off the train – the scent of autumn leaves, the sound of them scudding on the pavement in a slight breeze.

And this weekend, I am going to attempt to get up North to visit my friend I met on the Isle of Skye last time – who gave me a ride back from Elgol and the wonderful Loch Coruisk to my grotty hostel in Broadford. I have a plan to get me there cheaply but will not find out whether it will work until I attempt to implement it on Friday evening. I will let you know, but fingers crossed for Yorkshire and a night sky where I can see a whole lot of stars.

More pics on my Instagram

A replica painting in the Plimco tube station

We got a flat

We are now more officially residents of London than ever before.

A park not too far away

Ruru on our bed

We signed a lease and moved into a 2 bedroom flat somewhere at the edge of Islington with my friend, recently arrived from the States. The flat is the second and third floor of a house arrangement they call a “mansionette” – on the first floor a living room that overlooks the neighbour’s apple trees with small bright red autumn apples, and a bedroom with a marvellous wardrobe (lined with shelves, equipped with its own private light) and a view towards the BT Tower; on the second, a bathroom with an incredibly loud water pump to give the shower some oomph, and a larger room upstairs with a skylight that affords wonderful views of a bright yellow moon. We have a small patch of garden out the front, containing a large beautiful tree, an old wooden table giving slowly to decay, and a large and beautiful spider.

Our house is near train tracks. Sometimes, lying in our bed (king sized! KING SIZED! And a real bed. Oh, I had so much fun with my friend, picking out the bedding we would have for our rooms. M and my bed has a forest on it now, black background covered in ferns and some flowers and the occasional curious dragonfly) – but, sometimes, lying in bed I can feel the vibrations of the train going by. I remind myself earthquakes aren’t really a thing here. I don’t mind the trains. I like them, in an odd way, and you get used to them quickly, the sound of them passing by, the slight shaking of the walls and mattress that could, if you are lying very still, almost be simply the beating and pulse of your heart.

And the other night a fox was calling. It was right outside, and loud in amongst all the houses. It stopped when my friend opened her curtain and spilled light out onto our patch of grass. I don’t know what it was calling for. I fell asleep and woke, briefly, when it called again in the early hours.

We’ve been here a couple of weeks and are waiting for the internet to arrive, and are still adding a some furnishings and need some things to add colour to the white walls. The place came with one picture – a gigantic, painfully stylised painting of Nefertiti, Tutankhamen, and a Sphinx in black and gold. It was hanging above our bed. We took it down a couple of nights ago, but I had strange dreams that first night. The image does not bear replication here.

Crucially, we have also been to see an excellent performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre. It was a fantastic performance, with an excellent Mrs Bracknell played by David Suchet. I cannot image a better Bracknell. I also cannot image a better, more amusing enactment of the muffin scene. You know the one.

One conclusion has arisen about general services in the UK: they are crap. Banks are crap. Phone providers are crap. Electricity companies are crap. Setting up internet is crap. You have to pay for water and council tax, which is crap. It seems that welcome weeks at universities are crap. Everything is disorganised and lined not only with beauracracy but carefully practiced incompetency.

On the way home from work

I have a nation-ist theory about this. The English put up with such crap services because they like to complain about things. It also allows them to continue with mediocrity, as they can hide behind the general incompetency. This is a slightly unfair statement, as I have worked with several people of the English ilk who have been incredibly hardworking and helpful, but nevertheless I want to stick with it.

Prove me wrong, general English services! I know you have it within you, underneath your passionate apathy!

Korl... Kerl.. Koiln... Cologne. 9 things.

Let me give you a few quick facts about Cologne, that German city with a name I still struggle to pronounce in German (Köln).

1. It's not in France, which I had always thought when I was younger, because I thought all perfumes and the like came from France. Instead, it was an Italian man who created  the scent Kölnisch Wasser (Water of Cologne). It's still in production today. I didn't smell any. 

Inside the Dom

2. It has a famous and beautiful Gothic cathedral - or Dom - with two distinctive, steep and high towers that mark the skyline. The cornerstone was laid in 1248, and since that time it has weathered time, seasons, pollution, acid rain, bombs, and people, going through several repairs. Although the original stone is a pale much of it is dark now, blackened. It's an imposing building. It's impressive. Inside it's beautiful too, high ceilings and stone and wood and beautiful windows. We walked up the Dom - nearly 900m up narrow and winding staircases, with a stop along the way next to the bells (which then promptly went off; it was rather loud. Some people screamed in surprise. Not me) - and a view at the top. Which brings us to...

3. It's flat. Köln is so flat. Looking out, across the flat land from the tall belfry of the Dom, you really get a sense of how flat the flatness is. Well, there are some rises and dips of course but most of the area is just a flat plain. Which is partly because...

4. It's on the edge of the Rhine river. This is important for any city, and shapes it both physically and in terms of population and production. The Rhine runs 1,233kms from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea in the Netherlands. It's been a major highway for transporting all manner of things throughout history - merchandise, migrants, marauders, and just people trying to get from one place to another. It's wide, and smells a strange mix of saline mud and fresh air.


5. Köln has a Shokoladenmuseum, which includes a range of displays about the history of cocoa and chocolate production. It has everything - traditional methods of preparation of the cocoa nut, Mesoamerican figurines of reverence, trends and changes in the marketing of chocolate, a small but certainly working Lindt factory, and a shop. The mini factory was especially interesting, as it had half its guts exposed and you could watch the process of the chocolate being mixed and set in moulds, then turned out. I also rather liked the examples of chocolate brand and marketing, but cannot, from where I am right now, see myself eating chocolate called 'Cats Tongues.' No. Well, maybe if I tipped it out of the box and then left it there for a while so I could distance myself from the thought of eating the raspy pink tongue of a poor little kitten.

Cat's tongues. Mmmmm. It's a German thing.

A Roman mosaic in the museum

6. Romans were everywhere. You know Germany? They were all over that shit, back in the day. I had no idea. I mean, I knew, but I didn't really have any idea. The Romans were scarily present throughout so much of Europe (and other places). The Römisch-Germanischen Museum, very near the the Dom, is fantastic. I've already seen a lot of Roman stuff this year, but this was probably the best and most interesting collection of items - from another gorgeous mosaic still in the place it was uncovered in the ground, to statues, to tiny trinkets, to incredible glass jars that have lasted thousands of years and still look beautiful. We spent a long time in this museum. (NOTE: There was also a mustard museum, which we spent 1 minute in.)

7. There will be wasps. If there is sunshine, the wasps will be there. Especially around bakeries. And no one cares! If you bake it, they will come, and people will just eat the food anyway. I don't know how more people don't get stung.

8. Unsurprisingly, the main language is German. Most people also have some English, but there's no guarantee. People usually have a decent amount of a second language, but it may very well be French, or Italian, or something else strange and indefinable. I took an introductory German course earlier this year, so I knew how to say "Hallo!" and "Tsuss!" along with "Ya," "Nein" and could count to 12 if called upon. I was no great help. But it all works out well. No one seemed to care! I think we were a little like the wasps, getting mostly indifference and sometimes a little attention depending on where exactly we popped up. My favourite word: Partyfahrten

Floor in the Dom

9. Things are on the reasonable-cheap playing field. Especially if you've come from London, where everything is darn expensive (no matter what your boss who used to live in London says). Food is cheaper, clothes are cheaper, and a lot of the attractions are cheaper (see "reasonable") as well.


We went in late August, and booked our sleep at the Station Hostel, which was quite nice. It was a hostel. We had our own room, with a real bed in it, and a bathroom, and a little closet - a heck of a lot better than our previous hostel experiences. Although we couldn't get wifi from the hostel in our room, we could reach it from the Hostel bar so I could find some new music to listen on Spotify (and some old goodies). We spent a lot of time sleeping, actually, especially me. I have been so tired. The rain helped make some decisions for me, and because the Station hostel is right next to the train station in the centre of Cologne it was easy to duck back for a nap then head out again.

Then this one time, I drank an amazing hot chocolate. It was covered in cream. Oh man. That was good.

Strathpeffer walks and Castle Leod

In the morning I skipped the church service to go for a walk. I have been known to do this.





I visited Eagle Stone. The Galic name is Clach an Tiompain, which translates as "Sounding Stone." That may not be as descriptive - the stone has an eagle carved into it, with a horse shoe above - but I like it better. It's a short walk above the village to find it, then along a small track edged by trees. The stone has been moved several times, and there's damage to it, but I think it likes where it's sitting now. It's peaceful in there, surrounded by trees, looking out over a gentle slope with a view of Knockfarrel at the end.

I walked up Knockfarrel, the site of another of those Pictish forts with a fantastic view and melted rock. The day was overcast, threatening to rain, but I often like that weather. It's certainly much cooler for walking. I took the same path as the day before but broke up through the ferns to the ridge line, to the edge of brown-green-purple bracken with tiny purple buds bursting, and the last bluebells of the season. I stood on the knock, greeting a man who was just leaving, and spent some time looking. I sat on the grass, near bluebells and bright yellow flowers and small ferns. You can't imagine how wonderful I found it just to be there, away from London for a bit, away from people, just myself  on a hill in the air in Scotland.

Knock Farrell

A view from the knock

I need to learn the birds of prey over here,
so I can recognise them.

I took the ridge the other way, through the forest to Cnoc Mor. The view from there was obscured by young planted forest, which did not impress the walking man whom I bumped into again. We talked - he was from the area, from the Black Isle which is not an isle at all but a jutting out of land into the ocean, with Beauly Firth and Moray Firth on its south and Cromarty Firth to the North. I suppose he was in his late 50s or so, dark hair, Scottish accent, always wanted to go to New Zealand. We got covered in midges and walked down through the forest. He explained the difference between England's right of ways - one step off those marked tracks and you're breaking the law - and the freedom in Scotland to choose your own path (within reason; no wandering through gardens or fields in harvest). We parted out of the forest and I visited a disappointing Maze which I shall not go into (I didn't; it wasn't even a maze, just modern stones). But I did watch a bird of prey land in a tree, call, fly, and I started a small deer amongst the bracken and flowers.

Spot the deer! Not its name, a challenge.

We had lunch at the Pavillion in Strathpeffer, then went to attend a tour of Castle Leod, open to all MacKenzies. It always seems so peculiar to me, the two-half houses, part public and part private, the half you live and sleep in and the half you show off to strangers. Grandma, with her vast knowledge of the area's history and having stayed at the castle several times before, served as a tour guide for one of the rooms. She was enjoying herself.
I don't know when the castle was built exactly, except that it was well in place by the 15th century and looked relatively recognisable. It seems to have been built from stones long before, on a site where Vikings celebrated their conquest, perhaps on an old Pictish site. I think there were dragons involved at some point, not large dragons, but smaller, sleek and streamline forms. The modern history of Castle Leod is much better known, and has been lived in by the same family for over 500 years.

There's a story behind every picture on the walls, every map or piece of jewellery or weapon or book or elephant's foot arranged for keeping miscellany together. I particularly liked the story behind the portrait of a pretty young lady who once disgraced herself at a formal dinner (I believe some rather important people were there) by removing all her clothes and running down its length. Now, that's a saucy minx.

They're doing rennovations on the castle now, restoration, so there's scaffolding over the front. It's cold and old to live in a castle. There's up keep and history, and opening half your home. I would find it hard.

I was driven back to Inverness in the afternoon.  I was catching the Caledonian sleeper back, departing at 8.30pm and getting in at London around 7. I had purchased a pillow just for the occasion. I was in the cheap seats, not exactly vertical but certainly not horizontal, but I managed to snatch some sleep and was right and ready for a good Monday of work. But I won't leave you with that, but with Inverness. It's beautiful there, especially in the evening. I found my spot from last time while I waited for my train - my seat in the graveyard overlooking the river. It was sunny by then, that glorious rich afternoon sunlight. I ate a little food, then went for a stroll. The air was clear and the river was bright and flowing.