Tag Archives: Norwich

Life Is Landing Safely I Think.

Posted on by

During my visit to Den Hague last month a few of us shared a cab to get to dinner. We were talking about books we had read, found influential, and enjoyed. One of the party mentioned a book by the Harvard President, Professor Faust, on ‘death in the American Civil War’. I decided it sounded worth reading and ordered it from our local library. It took only a matter of a very few days before I got the email informing me the book had arrived and I should collect it. The reason for the speed: Norfolk has a strong link with the American air force, during the Second World War the county was the base for Americans bombers, indeed there are disused airfields dotting the countryside. I think there were two main reasons for this: first it is quite close to the continent; second the county is mostly flat so it was easy to lay the concrete and there are no mountains to fly into. To commemorate this link, the 2nd Air Division Association set up a Memorial Library in part of main Norfolk library. The book was one of their donations. It is indeed remarkably interesting and it is one of the books I review at the end of this post.

Time to read has been fantastic and I have written to a number of the authors whose work I have been impressed by. Faust wrote a gracious response to my gush of praise. Also reviewed is a Canadian detective writer Louise Penny whose book I thoroughly enjoyed, until page 395 where she described how one of the characters had been host on TV on a cookery programme on “Radio Canada”. In my view you listen to radio and watch television so I was disappointed by the apparent inaccuracy. I sent Penny an email saying I thought this was odd. She wrote back and explained that in Quebec this is accepted term for the national broadcaster – you watch Radio Canada. As an aside a British detective writer, Stuart Pawson, had a Swazi prince as a character in one of his books, but he did the man and the country justice. I wrote and asked him how he had managed this and he told me his sister had lived there in the 1970s so we exchanged a few emails.

The events of the past few weeks: landings; articles; and dogs. Let me do this in reverse order. We had one planned and one unplanned house guest a few weekends ago. Ailsa fetched her mother from Yorkshire on Thursday and she stayed until Monday. She is 84 and was good company, an easy guest. There is a ‘theory of relativity’ that says the further away and the less you see of relatives the better you get on. This may be true in some families, or even for some relations in all families. (As I write this I realize that it may be impossible to do write about events in my day life and not offend someone. That is assuming it is read! So if you are offended then first let me thank you for reading this).

The unplanned house guest was a young little white West Highland terrier called Daisy. Her owners had gone to the (second) wedding of a brother. Ailsa offered to look after the dog although they had expected the father-in-law to do this, at least at night. It seems when he heard they had a dog sitter he decided that he could abdicate all responsibility, we had Daisy for most of the weekend. On Friday she arrived. Initially our dog, Deedee, thought it quite fun and they chased around the garden. As the weekend went on Deedee found it harder and harder to be nice! The growling and lip curling increased in frequency and duration. It was funny to see her slinking off upstairs to her bed as soon as she could get away. This is, of course, something I tend to do as well. She was not impressed at all by a quintessentially doggy dog. Daisy chewed Deedee’s food bowl; yapped for no reason; and farted the most pungent doggy farts.

Of course it was not just Deedee who found this difficult; the cat stayed well clear, coming in only to eat and sleep in the back room. Unfortunately we also had some of the heaviest rain of the year, so I suspect she was a rather wet cat. I managed to step in dog shit three times in one day! No one was impressed by this, especially since I did not realize until I had walked round the house. There are no comparisons with Granny who was more than welcome, appreciated the food, helped clear up, talked to Douglas and Rowan, and, I think, enjoyed her visit.

This is the last week of my sabbatical and I have been doing some reflection on what I have actually achieved, both in terms of what I wanted and what was possible: these are not necessarily the same. It has been an excellent period for writing articles. A number came out of the ‘Is AIDS exceptional?’ paper I prepared for the aids2031 project in March and April. This was serious research and thinking, and it means I am clear what my position is on the issue. The original work is available at http://www.aids2031.org . My co-authors on the papers are Julia Smith, who was at HEARD as part of Rotary Peace Fellowship, and Khaled Ahmed the ODI Fellow. They have helped me turn my paper into articles and we hope we will get three published. When I actually sat down and worked out what I have produced and done I was very pleased! On the other hand I have not gotten as far as I wanted with either the ‘Political Economy of Swaziland’ or the novel.

Sabbaticals are a chance to read, think, and do things which one would otherwise not have time for. Learning to fly definitely falls into the last category, and I have moved ahead on this. About two weeks ago I was called up by the owner of the school: the weather was unexpectedly good, did I want to go and do my stalling lesson – which is something you have to do before you are allowed to learn to land. My reply was, “Of course”. The advantage of going up with Brian is he likes flying to the south of Norwich, David always goes north, apart from anything, else I got to see a different part of the county.

As I had the stalls done, we were ready to begin the circuits. This means learning to land, which is, of course, how every flight should end, ideally with the gentle kiss of tyres on the concrete. So the procedure, which has four stages, (if this is too much technical detail skip to the next paragraph)is: take off with full power, nose up, climb to 500 feet, turn right (in Norwich it is a right hand circuit) while climbing to 1000 feet; get the attitude of the nose right, bring back the power, trim the plane so it stays level and turn onto the downwind leg; call air traffic control and get clearance to land; when you have gone far enough turn back towards the runway, reduce power, trim wheel back four turns, first stage of flap, carb heat on, turn for final approach, second stage of flap; and then, gulp, the fun begins, you land. At this point the runway is in front of you and the goal is to bring the plane in at a 3 degree angle. Just above the runway you are meant to lift the nose and cut the power and keep the plane flying until it gently touches down in what is called ‘a flare’. If you are too high you bounce, if you are too low you break the airplane. Better bounce than break!

I have now landed five times by myself, four times with some help, and once the instructor said, “I have control”, and took us round again. So you are travelling at about 90 kph (which does not sound very much), and you have to put the plane onto hard concrete. Fortunately the Piper is a slow, stable plane and Norwich airport has a runway that is wide and long enough to land jets, I am very grateful for this. I have found landing to be really challenging. The next bit though is great: flaps up, full power, and off into the air again – this is called ‘touch and go’ or ‘circuit and bumps’.

The instructor said, “I can teach you how to fly but no one can teach you how to land. This is something that you only learn with practice.” He is right, and this is what I will be doing for the next little while until I have mastered the entire process including radio call and clearances. Apart from fear, my biggest challenge is to remember to keep my hand on the throttle, during both take off and landing. It seems counterintuitive to take one hand off the ‘wheel’.

On Monday 19th October I leave to return to Durban via a conference in Brussels. The plan is to spend about four weeks in Southern Africa and then head for Vancouver for an International AIDS Society governing council retreat, then to the UK until early January. Once I am back in Durban in the new year then I will be there for a concerted period.

Books and website:

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2008 364 pages. The Civil War lased from 1861 to 1865 and tore America apart. The author tells of how the country and people dealt with death on a massive scale. As she says Americans had never and still have not experienced anything like the losses. Two percent of the US population died in uniform, 620,000 men, from both the Union and the Confederate sides. This is roughly the same number as those lost in all of America’s other wars from the Revolution to Korea. The equivalent death toll in a war today would see six million deaths. Faust argues that this sacrifice was to have lasting but little-understood impact. “Death created the modern American union,” she writes, “not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments.”

While I found the description and thought put into this book to be extraordinarily moving and thought provoking, there was one thing which really surprised me. She describes the lengths the US government went to, gathering the Union dead and ensuring they were buried and commemorated after the conclusion of hostilities. To the victor the spoils, and the respect it seems. The same thing was not done for the Confederate fallen, this was left to private initiatives in the south. How much would more quickly would the wound have healed if it been done, would it have speeded reconciliation if this. I wonder which was the first war when the dead of both sides were treated with respected by both sides. This is book is well worth reading content 10, style 8.

Alan and Barbara Pease, Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love: Unravelling the Simple Truth: Understanding What He Wants and What She Wants from a Relationship, Orion 2009 288 pages. The strap line is ‘Sex is like air: it’s not important unless you aren’t getting any’. I found their book, Body language, to be perceptive and useful. This is disappointing; it is trite and probably inaccurate. It is true that there are differences between men and women but the interpretation they put forward are way too simplistic and even offensive at times.

Louise Penny, Murder stone, Headline 2009 416 pages My escape genre of literature is detective fiction and Penny has developed a delightful Québécoise Chief Inspector called Gamache. Her first few books were set in an idyllic village in rural Quebec called Three Pines. In this book she moves the action and some of the characters to a hotel in the same area. This is a good move, after all how many murders can you have in a small village. She continues to develop the chief characters and the dénouement is quite unexpected. The family at the centre of the book is mostly odious. The Chief Inspector supposedly on holiday suddenly finds himself in the middle of a murder enquiry. Well worth reading also she has an excellent website.a

Taxis In Holland And Germany And Smiles At Airports

Posted on by

I begin with taxi cab experiences in Holland and Germany, destinations in late September. I spent two days in The Hague in Holland for a meeting of The AIDS, Security and Conflict Initiative (ASCI) a research project convened by the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ and the US Social Science Research Council. The final report and other information are on the web athttp://asci.researchhub.ssrc.org/rdb/asci-hub.
The flight from Norwich to Amsterdam is about 35 minutes if KLM uses their Fokker F70 jet and 55 minutes if the aircraft is smaller, creaky, propeller driven Fokker F50. That is a name to the company probably regretted when they became an international brand, but as they went bankrupt in 1997 it not that relevant. Getting the train from the airport was not easy as it seems the Dutch railway system does not accept most major credit or debit cards and the machines need coins for most tickets.

The meeting was being held at a hotel in Scheveningen, an attractive seaside resort just north of The Hague so I took a cab to the hotel. It isn’t far and there are trams, but when one does not know a city it is easiest to be driven. The taxi drivers I had were all young, foreign men, (sample 3, 100% accurate.) The first driver told me he worked two jobs and wanted to complete his education. He spent the entire journey telling me how tough his life is; how many of his passengers are mentally disturbed (presumably when they get into the cab because I could well understand it if they got out feeling unsettled); and finally how dangerous it is to be a cab driver in Holland. He took the view that drivers should be in cages and have cameras in the cabs for additional security. A depressing experience!

The second cabby drove far too fast. As this was from the hotel to the station, I can only assume he thought, correctly, that I had a train to catch. But the trains leave every 15 minutes so it was quite unnecessary. He went through at least two red lights leaving in his wake, numbers of shocked and shaken cyclists. In the end, I asked him to slow down which rather surprised him, commenting on taxi drivers’ skills is a no-no.

By contrast, the drivers in Berlin were fast, did not speak English, and drove safely. There was a degree of precision and accuracy to their driving which was, well, Germanic. It was easy and cheap to use the U-Bahn and the bus in Berlin. I managed to negotiate both. On the Saturday I caught the airport bus from the romantically named boulevard, ‘Unter-den-Linden’, to Tegel airport, very simple and comfortable. Not being able to get on an earlier flight, I sat in the lounge and edited an article. That was boring but productive. Two loud Americans came in and talked about their Blackberries and families in that order!

On the journey from the Hague I also ended up spending a couple of hours at the airport, Schipol this time. The check-in was supposed to be self-service. The automatic passport reader did not like my passport so I was obliged to enter details manually. I managed this until it asked for the first three letters of the home country. So, what was it to be? ENG (for England) or GRE (for Great Britain) or indeed UNI , (United Kingdom) Naturally, it was the last of the three options. Before I solved it I turned to a KLM staff member and asked for help. She was talking to two other passenger and the following conversation ensued.

“Hang on” she said, “I can only do one thing at a time.”
“I thought women could multi task.” I teased her.
“No.” she responded, “Only knitting and talking!”

In the departure area, the microphones were not working, so the person on duty had to round up all the passengers by shouting across the hall. It was clearly a day of equipment failure. Still, the plane did take off on time and so was into Norwich 20 minutes early. It really was a beautiful day to be in the air: clear and sunny with the whole of Norfolk spread out below us at its best. I managed to spot Coltishall Airfield, an old Royal Air force base. I now recognise it as a useful landmark before coming into Norwich from the North when I am in the flying school plane. Really interesting! Now I have to start working at spotting it from the other side.

The trip to Berlin was to a talk to a sub-group of the German Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association and also to GTZ on of the main German aid giving bodies. Berlin is such an interesting city. One of the striking things is how little of ‘The Wall’ is left, and what there is, is rotting, with concrete falling off and steel reinforcing rods exposed. My assigned seat was 6C and next to me was a German woman, Cordelia Marten, who is one of two or three people running an art book company owned by a friend of hers. What an interesting position, the idea is to take artists out more broadly into society and to the public. It is better than one person having a one picture on a wall or a gallery which depends on people coming in. It is also highly specialised. It fitted very neatly into my books read and reviewed category at the end of this news.

The company has a great website and the books are in both English and German. The one I found most interesting on the site was by Michael John Whelan, ‘RED SKY MORNING’, Berlin 2009, So often I feel extraordinarily privileged to travel and meet such a range of out-of-the-ordinary people that I learn from.

I have just three weeks of sabbatical left. It has been good to be in Norwich through a spring, summer and now an autumn. The garden has been magnificent although at the moment it is terribly dry. Despite the general view of England as a constantly damp isle we have not seen rain for at least six weeks.

As I prepare to leave my final reflections are flying and the range of wildlife that this patch of garden attracts. The weather has been perfect for spiders and there are webs in every location that will support one. It seems unlikely that there is enough insect life to keep them all going. Perhaps they become cannibals, although my experiments of introducing one spider to another’s web show the intruder scurries off as fast its eight legs will carry it. (Sample 2 confidence 100%).

The pond beside the shed has been home to a batch of fearsome mosquitoes. Mowing the lawn the other evening I was really bitten. I could actually feel each bite, and as the little beast got caught in the hair on my legs I was able to kill them, but that was cold comfort. The result of the bite, even interrupted by death, was great itchy wheals (sample 5, and two spider’s bites, the difference being a black spot at the centre of the spider bite and not as irritable). The pond has also been home to tadpoles. At the moment there are at least big frogs living in it, when I went round this morning there were three plops as they leapt in. Curiously if they are in the water they feel confident enough to sit with their head out and watch me, but if they are outside they want to get in as fast as they can.

More flying stories September 2009

It has been a frustrating few weeks as far as flying goes. I booked a lesson a couple of Sundays ago. I went to the Flying School (this sounds grand, but is just an office with a white board at the end of one on the runways) for my pre-flight briefing. My instructor warned me that it was rather windy and we might not be able to fly, but we went ahead. This lesson was to be about low flying, higher than 500 feet but less than 1000. (One of the rules of flying is that you should not go nearer than 500 feet of a person animal or vehicle).

After the briefing we went out to the plane and on to the next step which is the pre-flight check list. This takes me about 15 minutes, and includes opening the engine cowlings and checking for dead birds. This done we got into the plane, did the next checks, started the engine and taxied to the end of the runway. At the holding point the instructor called the tower to get the latest weather and clearance for take-off. The wind strength had increased and so he decided that we should not fly. The main reason is if anything went wrong the insurance would be invalid. Flying is about margins and making sure they are as wide as possible. On the whole I fully approve of this.

The school does not charge when this happens, so effectively I got an hour and half of time and 20 minutes taxiing. This was no bad thing because I have finally mastered that to a degree. The moment that made a difference was realizing how the plane is steered. There are two peddles on the floor that control the rudder (a bit on the tail which turns left and right). They also control the nose wheel which I had not understood! It made a huge difference to me to realize that what I was doing with my feet had an immediate effect just in front of me, rather than being transmitted to the tail and then effecting the angle of the plane – or something. Also, and I don’t know if this is only true of the Piper or if it is the case with most small planes, the controls require a lot of effort to make them work at low speed. If you think of a car without power steering, and how much exertion it takes to turn the steering wheel when it is stationary, you have a sense of what I have to do.

My sense of frustration was that I could not do what I wanted, for the instructor it meant no pay! The reason for becoming an instructor for younger men is to build up the hours of flying to allow them to get commercial licenses. If they don’t fly they don’t get paid and it is pretty minimum wages for them anyway. I think I am going to have to give this plane a name as it seems to becoming a part of my life. If you have moment, look at the picture and give me your nomination. It is a Piper Tomahawk, as they say ‘ideas on a postcard please’.

Books and things 

Chris Anderson ‘The Longer Long Tail‘ Business Books 2006, 267 pages

This is about the fact that there are a few hits and then many other products. The essence is niche interests have come together on a global scale and create a substantial market. The author (editor of ‘Wired’ begins with the effects of the internet. The simple version of his argument is if you lower the cost of production and distribution you can offer more variety and if this happens people will start to look for the product that most closely meets their needs. The best example at the moment are the media products available on the internet. One key point is this does not mean the end of hits, there will still be the big blockbuster films, but there may be fewer of them and not as big. The major issue that he does not address is around quality. There are some products that need investment otherwise quality suffers. In other words there is a level at which what is good cannot be left to the market.

A movie recommendation in this letter District 9 is a South African film that is full of dark humour and is really astutely observed. I took Douglas and a friend and we all enjoyed it. I wont say more- other than do go see it, and the website www.argobooks.de

Lions In Lusaka And Down In Durban

Posted on by

Mercifully planes usually leave on time, so I am feeling slightly hard done by at the moment. I travelled from Norwich to Amsterdam on Sunday 31st May. The check-in for the flight from Norwich is at 05h10 in the morning, a brutal time to have to be awake and functioning. The plane leaving Amsterdam was about an hour late, a pain because we only got to Joburg at 10pm. Although I was spending the night at the Intercontinental Hotel right next to the terminal,I had to be up again the next morning at 05h00, the Monday flight to Lusaka was at 06h30!

Then coming travelling back to Joburg and Durban two days later we had to leave the hotel at 06h45, so I had my share of early mornings.

All the other flights were on time, and so when I left Durban a few days ago on Sunday I felt quite good.  I need to keep my Gold frequent flyer card on South African Airways so decided I would travel with them, instead of the usual KLM flight to Amsterdam followed by the short hop to Norwich. It means taking a trains and tubes from Heathrow to Norwich.

The trip back did not start well. I worked at the University in the morning, up to about 11h30 and then went home to pack. I was booked on the 16h55 flight to Joburg. As I had arranged to meet the Principal of Waterford School for dinner, at 17h00, I knew I had to get an earlier flight – and decided the 15h40 would work. My planned steady, measured packing, with a shower at the end and a reasonably early arrival at the airport to change my ticket was thrown into complete disarray. I know, to deal with failing memory and the fact I travel so much, have a checklist of things I must take. Running through it I realised I had left my flash disk with all the documents I was working on, at the office. Under normal circumstances it is a 35 minute round trip. I did it in 22 minutes. I left the flat in a cab at 14h45. I made it, albeit drenched in sweat!

However things really deteriorated in Joburg. Laurence and I had our meeting, and very useful it was too. He drove from Swaziland just for this, although we also had a meal, which turned out, with hindsight, to be a good decision. I then wandered through to the departures lounge in our magnificent new airport.

For the past three years, or more, O. R. Tambo airport has been undergoing massive renovations and expansion. This is in part to cater for the 2010 soccer cup. It has been amazing, and impressive as the airport has continued to function without too many hitches, albeit a degree of dust, noise and inconvenience. It has been worth it, the new facilities are magnificent. The arrivals halls are huge, clean, airy, and efficient. This has had a knock on effect on the staff. They are friendly, helpful, smiling, and happy, so unlike any airport I have been to in the last few years. Normally the attitude is that you have done something wrong until proven otherwise.

“Why do you’, said with contempt, “want to come into our country. How are you going to exploit us and misuse us?”  We seem to have a virtuous circle developing in South Africa, long may it continue. There is still work to be done, in particular there is a temporary international Business Class lounge, which is crowded and has no toilets on site.

The boarding time for the London flight was scheduled for 19h35. I did some shopping and wandered to the gate. A great deal of nothing was happening. After half an hour I went up to the First Class lounge and asked the receptionist if she knew what was going on, explaining at the same time that the business lounge was not particularly pleasant.

“That is OK, sir “, she said understandingly, “We are not busy you can sit here”.

And that is where I was until we boarded at 23h00. The problem was a ‘relay’ controlling power to the business class cabin and it meant there was no in-flight entertainment, nor would the seats recline. It was finally fixed for almost all the seats but not 5D or 5E. I, of course, was in 5D!!

So what were the good things? Well I normally travel on KLM and I was cursing my decision to go on SAA, until looking at the screens, I saw that KLM’s flight had been cancelled. If I had been doing my normal route I would have had a 24 hour delay! I was in business class and that meant that I slept on a fully reclining seat. I was not travelling with babies or rug rats, although there was a small infestation at the front of the cabin. There are such swings and roundabouts in travel and most of it is not anything one can control.  One has to grab what pleasure you can, and the fact that my bag was among the first off the plane at both Joburg and Heathrow was a small victory!

The Swedish International Development Agency reference group meeting was held at Chimanuka lodge about  30 minutes drive from Lusaka http://www.chimanuka.com . It is a delightful spot. The owners have excellent rooms and conference facilities. They have farm land in the area, but the lodge is centred in a game farm. On the property there is also a cheese factory. It is possible to have a game drive and a tours of the cheese factory. They also have, in a separate, and one hopes, very secure enclosure.

I have to digress here and tell of an event that happened when I was about four years old. We lived on a cattle farm outside Nairobi in an areas close to game reserves. One of the lions developed a taste for, easy to catch cattle, and so the young British farmers decided that said lion had to be shot. The story goes that they sat in a hide near the carcase of the last kill all night. Just before dawn, at the time the first birds start clearing their throats, they gave up. Walking along the road they were swinging the torch and suddenly, caught in the light, was the lion, eyes and teeth gleaming. Somehow one of the chaps managed to get his rifle up, and with a lucky shot, killed the lion stone dead.

There was much excitement in the community. The staff of the little pre-primary school I was at, decided that it would be fun if we were taken to see the dead lion. Indeed I recall being placed on its back and having my photograph taken. I would like to think I was an unusually sensitive child, but that may not be the case, just my wistful thinking. This outing made a deep impression on me. When I have nightmares involving animals it is always lions that feature prominently.

So back to events in Zambia. After a day of meetings we decided to go for a walk. It was dusk, a beautiful African evening. We walked down toward the lion enclosure – and I could hear them roaring quietly in the distance. We got as far as the dam and watched the dying sun. It was idyllic, thorn trees and clouds reflected in the water, standing listening to the chirp and croak of the frogs and the various noise of the African night. Suddenly the lion roared about 20 metres away on the other side of the fence. I leapt two metres into the air and my pulse was racing. I managed to play cool, and we nonchalantly walked back, with me taking comfort from the knowledge that while I could not outrun a lion, I was pretty confident that I was faster than at least two of our party.

It was really good to be back in Southern Africa and I felt so comfortable, which is probably a bad sign I need a challenge and a change.