There is a journey I want to make.
I remember little of my childhood.
Obviously there are some things that I remember, some vividly. Other things I remember vaguely and I have realised, as middle age becomes a memory, never mind my youth, that some things I thought I remembered I actually don't. They were things that were recorded on film, black and white film.
Every summer, my mother took me to the Netherlands; specifically Rotterdam.
I do not recall how old I was when we started going but it must have been when I was very young because one year I came back and Dutch was my first language. Actually, it was my only language and I had to relearn English, so my mother told me.
We didn't just go for a week or so. We went for the summer.
It was how we went that I would like to do again.
Parts of the journey I don't recall. Getting from our house to Bristol Temple Meads and indeed the train ride from Bristol to London Paddington. Nothing.
I do remember, however, arriving at Paddington and usually getting a taxi - a taxi!!! - across London to Liverpool Street Station. A big black cab in the big city.
Liverpool Street station was the place from which the journey would begin to take us to Holland on 'the boat train'.
I close my eyes and I can feel what that train journey was like, but I couldn't describe it at all. It was nothing special either, except that the terminus, the end of the line, was Harwich-Parkeston Quay.
I don't remember what happened after we arrived but the next thing I remember was boarding a big ship, named after a Dutch queen.
We shared a cabin with bunk beds.
We didn't tour the ship, we went to our cabin and stayed there until the morning.
Then the memories do kick in.
You knew you were arriving when the noise from the ship's engines died down. I woke up and looked out of the port hole and there was land.
I was captivated by it. The sun was rising and in the distance was the Hook of Holland where the trip would end.
As we got nearer to the shore I could see the railway line and better still there were trains waiting there, probably for us.
I have never forgotten that early morning 'feel' as we arrived in the mother land (well, the mother's land in my case) the sun peering through jagged white clouds, people going about their business at a time when we really should be sleeping.
My memory deleted the boring bits, such as disembarking, clearing customs and all that. The next thing I remember was getting on the train. And the next thing after that arriving at Rotterdam Centraal Station.
This was how you travelled in those days.
Air travel was for the middle and upper classes - as it remains today - and everyone else took a day to travel to the Netherlands.
But there was a sense of travelling.
I'd love to be more eloquent and write even more about it but sadly I can't.
But I want to do it again one day.
Not just travel to the Netherlands by plane but to make a real journey out of it.
My mum always did it and it was god enough for her.
Saturday 22 February 2014
Monday 10 February 2014
The winter of 2014
It is fair to say I am not in the first flush of youth. I'm not exactly in the final flush of it either. In fact, middle age is a bit of a misnomer as I near my bus pass, assuming Cameron doesn't scrap them before I get there, at a rapid rate of knots.
I vaguely recall the winter of 1963, or maybe I don't remember it but I think I do because I have photos of me in the back garden, posing with a large snowman who stood there for two months (so I am told).
I have seen the occasional extremes of weather.
The long hot summer of 1976, the storm of 1987 and now the never ending wet winter of 2014.
This year is, by far, the most depressing and dispiriting of the lot.
I am a great believer in science, not that I understand much of it.
I listen to Professors Dawkins and Cox because they know what they are talking about. That evolution is a fact and what happened in the Big Bang. Science tells it like it is, unless someone can come up with a better theory.
The science this year tells us not that this awful winter is because of climate change, but that we are likely to suffer more regular events like this because of climate change. There has to be something in it.
The sights and sounds from Somerset and increasingly elsewhere make my heart ache.
Ordinary, decent people seeing their lives ruined by the forces of nature, altered by mankind or not: for now it doesn't matter, or maybe this is not the right time to dwell on the likelihood that it is.
In all the distress, and my god there has been enough of it, there are signs of heroism, of community, of courage, of generosity. The human spirit, though drenched, has not drowned.
And suddenly we have the economics of Keynes, with Cameron's right wing government (correctly) throwing money at this catastrophe as a good socialist would. Because, and lest we forget, the market, upon which the Conservatives base all their principles, doesn't work in disasters.
No. Their much-hated public sector, which for four years has been attacked more than by any other government, even Thatcher's, is all that stands between the people and crushing defeat to the elements.
Suddenly, the heroes helping the citizens are soldiers, firefighters, environment staff, doctors and nurses, police officers, council staff and so on. No fast buck to made here.
And yet.
The first step this government took in 2010 was to announce austerity and the Department of Environment took the biggest financial hit of all, the biggest cuts of all the departmental budgets.
And what are the big budget items in DofE? Why it's only flood defences. The budgets were cut by almost £100m a year.
The Environment Secretary doesn't really believe in climate change either so he slashed by 40% his department's spend on developing the UK's adaptation to the effects of global warming. You know, like strengthening flood defences, protecting rail links, that sort of thing.
And now the politicians are at it.
Cameron, at last, arriving for photo opportunities, Eric Pickles slagging off the Environment Agency which is, er, funded by the government. (If the Tories hated it so much, why didn't they abolish it, or bring it back into full public control? Because it's easier to blame something semi-autonomous rather than accept blame themselves when something goes tits up.)
I doubt that the people who have seen their lives ruined by water are pleased to see the posing and posturing, although I suspect they have other things to worry about.
The government's reaction to all this was so slow it beggars belief. But then, why should it?
The government - and usually governments of all colours - have ministers, and indeed Prime Ministers, with skills no greater than us. Cameron, for example, was a TV executive.
They seem to have been following the unfolding tragedy like the rest of us, by watching on telly. And now, whilst Somerset drowns and other areas join them, they have twigged something must be done.
Well it bloody should.
Just a few weeks ago, the government confirmed it would be sacking around 1000 Environment Agency staff as part of the government's cuts. These are not all bean counters in non jobs. Many are those in the front line, trying to make people's lives better, or at least trying to stop them getting even worse.
I've never seen anything like it.
A great politician - a Blair or a Thatcher, I dread saying - would have risen to the occasion and shown real leadership, but this lot cower in fear of the opinion polls and allow events to unfold before their eyes instead of shaping them. They will pay a heavy price for this.
Away from the shysters of politics, we must never forget the people paying such a terrible price.
Ordinary people with ordinary lives whose lives are drowning in the floods of 2014.
The public mood is changing because, it seems, very little is being done to help the worst hit.
It's very, very sad to see but the reality appears to be that we cannot afford to be climate change deniers anymore, unless we want more of these disasters which could well be man made.
I think we would do well to assume climate change is for real just to be on the safe side.
I vaguely recall the winter of 1963, or maybe I don't remember it but I think I do because I have photos of me in the back garden, posing with a large snowman who stood there for two months (so I am told).
I have seen the occasional extremes of weather.
The long hot summer of 1976, the storm of 1987 and now the never ending wet winter of 2014.
This year is, by far, the most depressing and dispiriting of the lot.
I am a great believer in science, not that I understand much of it.
I listen to Professors Dawkins and Cox because they know what they are talking about. That evolution is a fact and what happened in the Big Bang. Science tells it like it is, unless someone can come up with a better theory.
The science this year tells us not that this awful winter is because of climate change, but that we are likely to suffer more regular events like this because of climate change. There has to be something in it.
The sights and sounds from Somerset and increasingly elsewhere make my heart ache.
Ordinary, decent people seeing their lives ruined by the forces of nature, altered by mankind or not: for now it doesn't matter, or maybe this is not the right time to dwell on the likelihood that it is.
In all the distress, and my god there has been enough of it, there are signs of heroism, of community, of courage, of generosity. The human spirit, though drenched, has not drowned.
And suddenly we have the economics of Keynes, with Cameron's right wing government (correctly) throwing money at this catastrophe as a good socialist would. Because, and lest we forget, the market, upon which the Conservatives base all their principles, doesn't work in disasters.
No. Their much-hated public sector, which for four years has been attacked more than by any other government, even Thatcher's, is all that stands between the people and crushing defeat to the elements.
Suddenly, the heroes helping the citizens are soldiers, firefighters, environment staff, doctors and nurses, police officers, council staff and so on. No fast buck to made here.
And yet.
The first step this government took in 2010 was to announce austerity and the Department of Environment took the biggest financial hit of all, the biggest cuts of all the departmental budgets.
And what are the big budget items in DofE? Why it's only flood defences. The budgets were cut by almost £100m a year.
The Environment Secretary doesn't really believe in climate change either so he slashed by 40% his department's spend on developing the UK's adaptation to the effects of global warming. You know, like strengthening flood defences, protecting rail links, that sort of thing.
And now the politicians are at it.
Cameron, at last, arriving for photo opportunities, Eric Pickles slagging off the Environment Agency which is, er, funded by the government. (If the Tories hated it so much, why didn't they abolish it, or bring it back into full public control? Because it's easier to blame something semi-autonomous rather than accept blame themselves when something goes tits up.)
I doubt that the people who have seen their lives ruined by water are pleased to see the posing and posturing, although I suspect they have other things to worry about.
The government's reaction to all this was so slow it beggars belief. But then, why should it?
The government - and usually governments of all colours - have ministers, and indeed Prime Ministers, with skills no greater than us. Cameron, for example, was a TV executive.
They seem to have been following the unfolding tragedy like the rest of us, by watching on telly. And now, whilst Somerset drowns and other areas join them, they have twigged something must be done.
Well it bloody should.
Just a few weeks ago, the government confirmed it would be sacking around 1000 Environment Agency staff as part of the government's cuts. These are not all bean counters in non jobs. Many are those in the front line, trying to make people's lives better, or at least trying to stop them getting even worse.
I've never seen anything like it.
A great politician - a Blair or a Thatcher, I dread saying - would have risen to the occasion and shown real leadership, but this lot cower in fear of the opinion polls and allow events to unfold before their eyes instead of shaping them. They will pay a heavy price for this.
Away from the shysters of politics, we must never forget the people paying such a terrible price.
Ordinary people with ordinary lives whose lives are drowning in the floods of 2014.
The public mood is changing because, it seems, very little is being done to help the worst hit.
It's very, very sad to see but the reality appears to be that we cannot afford to be climate change deniers anymore, unless we want more of these disasters which could well be man made.
I think we would do well to assume climate change is for real just to be on the safe side.
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