Blow My Mind, Waiter.

The trend for even more exotic ingredients in the dishes served by the great restaurants of the world seems to have reached a new, and rather fascinating, point. Forget the old Spagh Bol and a drop of Chianti before your Tiramisu - imagine what the 8 course tasting menu is like at this place:

According to the BBC, he was only growing the stuff as part of his quest to enhance the Mediterranean flavours of his food. That's a useful line to remember the next time you're tapped on the shoulder at a festival.

"Excuse me sir, I have reason to believe you are inhaling a class B substance, which can attract an on-the-spot fine of up to £90."
"No way man, don't be so heavy, here take a good look. I call this the Colchester Carrot. It's a real carrot infused with cannabis flavour, the genuine taste of Essex, and it's going to be priced at £45 a plate in my restaurant Le Manoir d' Quatre Fumeurs. Would you care for a slice?"
"Oh, yes, right, sir, probably shouldn't while I'm on duty but as it's a festival..., mmm, surprisingly crunchy, oh wow my truncheon has turned into a golden light-sabre ..." etc etc.


With grateful acknowledgements to all behind the film Withnail and I

101 Things #6 - Everest

For many the ascent of high mountains is a great and memorable achievement. The higher, more remote and more dangerous, then the more satisfying. Naturally, climbing Mount Everest is number one on the bucket list of anyone who goes in for this sort of thing. It seems fair that I should, as part of my continuing series 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die state my position on this matter. It is simple. I will not attempt to

Climb Mount Everest

I have been up the odd high place in my youth. But a poor sense of balance and a inability to deal with exposure - that is, not such a fear of heights but a fear of falling - have always conspired to keep me on the horizontal, albeit happy to let my eyes roam over the peaks and to admire those able to find a route up every towering face, overhang, chimney and crumbling ridge towards a summit.

In any case, Mount Everest has become a joke. The pictures taken earlier this year of hundreds of climbers queueing to scramble up and around the Hilary Step, and the deaths that occurred when bad weather closed in trapping many high up, mean that for the tourist climber this mountain has become a bit like the Night Watch at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum or the Mona Lisa at the Louvre - you desperately want to see them to appreciate them as paintings, but not if there are crowds of selfie-snapping, "let's tick this one off the list", casual visitors clogging up the room ahead of you. Those who are very rich will always find some way to climb it, with teams of experienced Sherpas to drag them up the hard bits and keep them well supplied with oxygen and hot tea. Real climbers will find better challenges elsewhere.

One of the most inspiring climbing books in my collection is The Shining Mountain by Peter Boardman. With Joe Tasker, he climbed Changabang in 1976, forcing a route up the hitherto unclimbed and, for many unclimbable, west face of the mountain. Just the two of them, no support team, no porters, no cameramen and no tourists. I would rather read, and marvel, about such exploits than even consider approaching Base Camp at Everest let alone thinking of climbing it.

 Sadly Boardman and Tasker were lost on attempting the North-East ridge of Everest a few years later.

The Climb-Everest trope is really a symbol for many areas of human endeavour. First considered impossible, then something only for madmen, then attempted and eventually attained by a few at the very top of their game, at last they become something to be commercialised and owned and subject to permits. Is there much point for those of us who are not, and will never be, anywhere near to the abilities of the trailblazers to consider emulating them slavishly? I think I can answer that. No. Only if the doing of it is fun and gasping for breath at 8,000m with sheer drops on either side and rocks crumbling under your feet is not fun. On this one I wish to be excused.

 -*-*-

I had intended to finish here but, the day after I drafted this piece, I glanced at the digital Guardian on my tablet and the following story was prominent.

I didn't bother reading the details just in case they conflicted with my instantly-formed assumptions. It seems to be saying that you too can effectively climb Everest if you climb the equivalent amount of height.

Well, this a game-changer. The Base Camp at Everest, that almost everyone uses, (the one in Nepal), is at 5,364 metres. The summit is 8,848. We merely need to ascend some 3,484 metres, 11,430 feet and we too will have climbed Everest. The Guardian piece is about finding various mountains in Britain to climb. Seems like a lot of hard work. I reckon that going up my stairs at home will do the job if I plan sufficiently.

Each of my stair risers is 8 inches and there are 14, with a little half landing after the third. So a full ascent raises me 9.33 feet. I need make just 1,225 ascents. Easy. Say I do just 50 a day, then the job is done in a month, with time off

It's early days but I think I shall make my Base Camp at the foot of the stairs, near the living room door. Of course I shall have to acclimatise by walking in from the kitchen a few times and bringing essential supplies for a stockpile. A couple of cereal bars should help. I won't need the Sherpas (a.k.a. Mrs Commuter) for this part which is just as well as she usually mutters something about having to go into the garden when this sort of project surfaces. The little landing can be Camp 1 and one of the stairs further up can be Camp 2. From there I am confident I can push on to the summit and return without hazard, provided the weather holds. I shall make these ascents alone and without oxygen. Out there it will be just me and the mountain stairs.

Cynics may point out that in no way am I simulating the sheer effort of climbing at real altitude, nor the difficulties of traversing huge crevasses and swarming up ice cliffs. In an way, I must concede that technically they are right; however exactly the same objection could be made to the exploits of the man in the Guardian story (one Graham Hoyland). Was he daunted by the criticism? No, he climbed on, through mist and light showers, sometimes more than three whole hours walk from a pub. And, glancing at the very end of the article, I see he got a book deal out of it. That's the spirit. I am expecting no less than a two hour TV documentary, preferably narrated by my fellow extreme climber Brian Blessed, and several chat show appearances on the back of it.

 Ah, I've just been handed a note by my Editor which informs me that Hoyland actually walked the full height of Everest measured from sea level. The bastard. That's a full 3,100 ascents! I'm having second thoughts about all this.

101 Things #5 - Rugby Union

With the Rugby World Cup in full swing in Japan, what better time to add to my growing list of  101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, my determination to dodge any attempt to

Understand the rules of Rugby Union

I played this sport at school. I vividly recall that first day when our PE teacher welcomed his new class of eleven-year-olds into the gym with a sneering sort of snarl, sat us down, pointed at an incomprehensible drawing of dots on the blackboard and in one sentence established for ever my relationship with the game.
"Right, you fairies, get out there into the mud and start tackling, anyone not covered in blood after ten minutes gets a slippering".¹
Oh, I forgot to mention he was Welsh. And known as "Killer" Williams.

Somehow against the odds I survived, mainly by hanging around near to the other players, but not so near that I needed to tackle anyone, and the clever tactic of falling over before anyone else could tackle me, on those rare occasions that the ball came anywhere near me. I never had the slightest idea of what was going on during play, it was always cold, the ground either treacherously sticky or gripped by an iron frost, and if there was a player from the other side coming towards me he was always, always, bigger and faster than me. You couldn't kick the blasted ball straight because of its stupid shape and anyway, even as you aimed the kick, someone else would (quite legally) jump on you. Every so often a huddle of boys got together and stuck their heads between each others legs and pushed and shoved while someone else threw the ball into the huddle and the teacher screamed out instructions. If you, quite fairly, pointed out that a bigger boy had knocked you over and trampled you into the mud and that was the reason you were trying to avoid it happening again, you would be called a "fairy" and other contemptuous terms.


I am obliged to say that I have always felt nothing but ill-will toward the Welsh rugby team ever since.

Let us turn our attention, should there be any of it left after the heart-rending stuff above, to the rules of Rugby, specifically of Rugby Union (I mention Rugby League later on). Rugby Union, where the "forwards" are the men who make up the scrums, the general idea of which is to get the ball out to the "backs" who then run past the scrum and go forward and try to score, is the sport where virtually every time anyone does anything it is an infringement and someone gets a sort of free kick whilst the other side line up about twenty yards away and then rush out as it is taken even though it always goes high over their heads, and where, if someone kicks the ball out of touch, his team is not penalised as they would be in every other sport, oh no, there is a "line-out" in which the teams line up facing each other and the ball is chucked back in and the team that booted it out has a fair chance of getting it back again. So great chunks of the game is one team kicking the ball out of play, everything stopping while they form the line-outs, then whoever gets it kicks it out again.

And now we turn to the scrum. I genuinely have no idea why scrums are awarded and why they bother. All these huge men lock their heads down and arms round each other and heave and strain while waiting for the ball to be thrown into the middle. Half the time the ref will spot an infringement (God knows how amidst those thrashing limbs) and they'll do it again, taking ages to set it up each time while absolutely nothing else is going on the field, or else it will be another sodding free kick.

By the way, here is an example of one of the rules (thanks to Wikipedia)

When the kicker moves forward with the intention of kicking the ball they may run at the kicker in an attempt to charge the ball down or put the kicker off. They cannot shout while doing this....

Is there another game where shouting is prohibited during a particular play? Are they allowed to make quiet comments or to snigger suggestively? May they indulge in a brief snatch of some popular song? Alas the rules do not specify. Clearly they are allowed to "put the kicker off" though, so perhaps a suggestion about his parentage or sexual habits is permissible. If done nicely.

Rugby League does not have scrums. If something dodgy happens then one team gets the ball and can instantly pass it and resume play. It's fast and fluid and makes sense. For this reason it is exempt from inclusion in my anti-bucket list.

Now and then I catch a bit of rugby on television. If Wales happen to be losing then I may refrain from switching channels for a few gloating moments. But as soon as the whistle blows and the commentators start mumbling about "The ref's spotted something there" and play grinds to a halt while they start doing yet another scrum or whatever, I find myself wondering if there might not be a decent Western, or a Poirot rerun or, well, almost anything really.



Footnote:
1: [This seemed to be an exaggeration, coloured by the memories of many years ago, but after rigorous checking it is actually an understatement. The original has been toned down sharply to ensure this column is not banned on grounds of extreme horror: Ed]

Fire in the Deep

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Dame Jane Francis, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, discussed the launch of the scientific research vessel Sir David Attenborough. This ship is equipped with some submarines including one named Boaty McBoatface, the name originally voted by the public for the research ship itself. Asked about the cutting edge science that the submarines could do she explained that

... They'll be launched from the ship and will go off under their own steam...

And there was me thinking that these wonders of technical innovation would surely be powered by a couple of banks of sweating oarsmen working to the monotonous beating of a gong as they work out their criminal sentences. I really must get more up to date.

101 Things #4 - Extreme Bungee

Some of the things on my anti-bucket list 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die are those that many others find desirable. Some, which may not be specifically on someone else's bucket list, are intended to satirise fashionable trends [Surely all fashionable things are trends? Ed] and one such is the craze for bungee jumping. I have no particular wish to hurl myself into a deep hole at the end of a length of elastic but I do get that some find this fun. I therefore took this to the next level [Horrible cliche alert! Ed]  and thought that what I really would not want to do is

Bungee Jump from a helicopter

Imagine my surprise when on doing some further extensive and detailed research [Quick lookup on Google: Ed], I at once came across this riveting news item that had sadly slipped my attention the first time around.

Will Smith is not a name feted in Ramblings' circles but, be that as it may, it seems that bungee jumping from a helicopter is more than a stupid idea to be mocked, it is a real thing that you can do. And I mean you. Not me. Mr Smith may dangle beneath a flying machine high above the Grand Canyon, bouncing gaily up and down and drawing curious glances from the buzzards, and no doubt from freelance undertakers of Flagstaff calculating how long it will take three stout men and a couple of mules to descend into the Canyon to retrieve the horribly mangled body, should the worst occur, but I intend to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground and the contents of my breakfast firmly within my stomach.

For the sake of the record, I have been in a helicopter (with grateful thanks to the Air Ambulance service of the Scottish highlands) and I have swarmed up a rope and jumped off (with grateful thanks to my PE teacher back in primary school a long long time ago) so I know what I am talking about.I don't mind contemplating these two actions as long as they are separate and distinct. I do not wish them to mix.