The bird

I am nearly home. I have been driving since six o’clock this morning, and now it is nearly four in the afternoon. I am dosed up on Red Bull and have the music turned up loud, the Ting Tings to keep me awake. I am vaguely aware of the car behind me, slightly too close, but this is acceptable as we are both travelling at roughly the same speed. Sometimes he overtakes me, and sometimes I overtake him. These are not competitive manouvres, this is simply yet another strategy for staying alert on long drives; engage with your fellow road user.

At a distance of about 200 metres, I spot the bird, a large hawk, a beautiful specimen sitting on a low post in the central reservation. As I get closer, I become aware of what is about to happen. It is as if I can physically sense the bird flexing its muscles, preparing itself for flight. At about 100 metres, I see it rise, a couple of metres into the air, and wheel slowly across the motorway. I have read somewhere that birds have a problem with parallax. They assume that objects that are distant to them, such as cars, are motionless and discard them as a source of possible danger. The bird swoops in a low trajectory across one lane on a perfect course for collision.

There is a thought that is half formulated in my mind; this is a large bird, a magnificent creature, and one I would prefer not to join me, via the windscreen, in the car. It could do some real damage and possibly cause me to crash. There are so many reasons I do not want to kill the bird, not least self-preservation. Yet the bird is slow, like one of those aeroplanes you see landing at airports that just seem to hover in the sky without making any progress. At 30 metres a collision seems inevitable.

I prepare myself for the dull thump of beast and feathers against my windscreen, and in that instance, the bird and I seem to exchange our fates. I am swooping across the road towards the fields while the bird is causing the car to plunge forward. We momentarily share the conviction that we are destined to occupy space and time together. Our mutual fates are teamed in death. But in that instance, not daring to brake with the car so close behind me, I nevertheless take my foot off the gas, slowing my momentum so that the bird sails past at a distance of about three metres, taunting me with the feathers underneath its wings. The creature avoids my vehicle and its slipstream, and I see it in my rearview mirror continuing its flight across the fields. The car overtakes me, and the journey continues.

We didn’t grow up in a musical household. There was a piano, but it wasn’t often played as I remember, except for my sister going through her scales or rattling out 'fuer Elise'. But there was never spontaneous or exuberant music; I think our parents simply didn’t have the time for it. They were children of the late 40s/early 50s, steeped in (post)wartime austerity and work ethic, and apart from the occasional Flanders & Swan record, and a very rare excursion into the New Seekers, our record player gathered dust.

Yet sometime in the early seventies, a couple of Top of the Pops ‘Best of’ LPs found their way into the house. I suppose my father picked them up on one of his lunchtime wanders up Portsmouth’s Commercial Road. I remember these records for two reasons. Firstly, the Pan’s People dancing girls on the cover were quite unlike the girls we met anywhere else in our rather insular lives (we literally lived on an island), and this didn’t escape my attention even at the age of 11 or 12. Secondly, some of the music on these albums, as we called these 33 inch records, was quite outstanding.

There was Ike and Tina Turner banging away on Nutbush City Limits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipOz_k9zvzo&feature=PlayList&p=33A8293A88D8A67F

David Bowie’s Sorrow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkfmPmaTnKg&feature=PlayList&p=FD5B4F7E300284EF&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=55

and Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rains’ Gonna Fall (ed. my memory may be deceiving me here as it long pre-dates, unless it was re-released, possibly as a cover?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FriUd27sBCA

Given enough time, I could possibly come up with more classics from those two or three LPs, but these examples should be sufficient to make my point that this music stands the test of time, and it was of an intensity quite outside our daily experience.

This reflection about parental taste in music (and its influence on the unformed mind of the child) is rooted in a conversation I had yesterday with Leon. There I was casually listening on YouTube to All Saints version of Never Ever, when Leon accused me of lack of taste, although I suspect these were not his exact words.

Now forgive me for having an opinion about music at ‘my age’ but however trite All Saints may appear, they are surely the absolute pinnacle of the genre they represent, which is record-company-girl/boy-band-Motown-borrowed-or-influenced-easy-listening appropriate to male or female audience age 13 or 45+ (which means Leon is too old to judge, being outside the target audience?). Roughly speaking, there’s the obligatory blonde, a brunette (Hispanic?), a black girl and a jewish girl, which just about covers the American market. Presumably this was before the Asian markets really opened up or there would have been an Asian girl there too. This isn’t exactly true of All Saints, as the Appleton girls are sisters, but you get the idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEMULtNW-Hs&feature=PlayList&p=33A8293A88D8A67F&index=61

They are rather unashamedly what they are, and I still think this is the epitomy of the genre. Having recorded this number, there was no musical need for any girl or boy band to ever make a record ever again, although there was obviously plenty of commercial incentive.

There may of course be some things one should never admit, and this is almost certainly one of them, but I’m glad to be able to provide the evidence that my lack of musical taste compared to Leon's (in the case of All Saints, but not I suppose n the case of Tina Turner…) is at least equal to our parents supposed lack of musical taste compared to ours. Which reminds me that when I was about 11, I once sent my father on one of his lunchtimes (what are lunchtimes and when did they cease to exist?) up Commercial Road to buy me a 45 inch copy of Kenny’s The Bump. Only, both the M and the P being labial plosives, I couldn’t hear the P and convinced my father that the record was called the Bum. This must have been incredibly entertaining for the girls behind the counter at the record store, but in my father’s own words, or perhaps they are those of my grandfather, he 'didn’t half look a right chump'.

Brother Nick and I played our most recent leg of the Haines chess medal in London on 14th November. The medal in question is our late father's 1950-51 chess medal. Much to my surprise, I won for the first time since, we think, 2005.

Anyway, obviously it is not the winning that matters but the event, the doing, together in a small way keeping alive something of the spirit of our father who I know would have absolutely loved this evening (not least the chance to tell us both where we were going wrong, particularly in the development of our pawns, I believe...).

Sister Sarah presented the medal to me:



And then handed it over to Nick for safe-keeping:



After which, a celebratory Laphroaig:

I think today's plantsoenloop is my favourite local run. It takes place in the park just 100 metres from our house, and the course consists of four 2km circuits. Would be straightforward if it weren't for the landscaped hills which you encounter, logically, four times and the mud if it's been raining, like today. The first hill is short but steep; the second is longer and less steep and the third is a longish gentle climb with sizable trees alongside the path which you can grab onto if unsure of your foothold.



After the third descent, through the mud with arms flailing and first aid volunteers on either side waiting for casualties, it's a 200 metre flat run to the finish, which is an excellent distance to sprint on the final lap if you've still got it in you a la Usain Bolt. There are also two moderate hills at the other end of the course to give you an early impression of what's in store for you after the start, and a lovely meander along the ancient city wall, which is buried within a tree-lined dike.



Tree roots abound, so you have to watch your step, although the organisers do clear the leaves and put down a sandy grit on the steepest ascents and descents to prevent them from becoming intolerably slippery. Basically, it's great, there's a fair crowd and a lovely atmosphere - there's a kids run before the 8km and people tend to hang around and watch.

Reality check: discovered to my pleasant surprise that I finished 5th, despite running a slower time than last year. Must have been the muddy conditions underfoot? Then I noticed that I was 5th in the men 45+ race, which kind of puts me in my place. Yes, I did finish 5th out of 31 in my 'age group' but some of these guys are really exceptionally old, like 48 and 49 - I feel like I should be giving them a 100 metre head start :-). On the positive side, when I am 50, I'll be in the 50+ category and competing against guys who are practically ancient (58/59), so I might even win then...!

When I got back from SA, Leon was all ready to party. Halloween.



I don't know what the witches on broomsticks thought, but he scared the life out of me....

The bookends to our working visit to South Africa were (1) a visit to the Pilanesburg, an ancient volcanic crater which is now a home to wildlife. As well as giraffes, which I love, we saw elehants, hippos, rhinos, and the back end of one very sleepy lion sleeping off a hangover under a tree:



and (2) a drive through Soweto on our way home. In between I promise that we worked really hard. It is difficult not to work hard because (a) the need is so obvious and our input so obviously appreciated and (b) there is unfortunately little scope to wander, security being high, especially around computers. As you see, it was very thirsty work.



We arrived in Soweto after dark. Traffic is horrendous as they are constructing all sorts of highways in preparation for the World Cup and also we had a torrential thunder storm on the way in. In a way, I think we were lucky to arrive after dark. There were no other 'tourists' around the Mandela home, which was closed, and which I guess we could 'imagine'. It is a simple family house with a big fence built around it, and the other houses in the area show us what this house must once have looked like (before it was turned into a museum). And the restaurant across the road was entirely local in the evening - and served a buffet of excellent African food.



We had a good meal in Soweto and then drove back past the Orlando Pirates football (soccer) ground, which is too small to be a world cup venue (only seats 40,000). One day later and we could have watched the Pirates (Mandela's team!) against the Kaizer Chiefs, the local Joburg derby, which I would have loved (it turned out to be a drab goalless draw - ed).

Just returned from Aurich, a small town in northern Germany, where Leon and his friends have been skateboarding. This is what remains of a once-flourishing Jewish community, ordinary families that ceased to exist. I count no fewer than nine members of the Hartog family, for starters:



Why allow a neo-Nazi a platform like this? Television is essentially a form of entertainment, and at the end of the day it is about viewing figures. Let's not confuse entertainment and genocide.

Project Mala is an educational charity working with children in the carpet weaving villages of India.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yA1dR0VcWI

End of the 4 miles: uphill on the Hereweg, main shopping street in Groningen. I appear on the left with black gloves and white headband at 23 seconds until 17 seconds:

(recommended to skip commercials twice at the start)

http://www.runnersweb.nl/runnerstv?e=VM09R&n=Kevin%20Haines&r=941&ct_s1=13:34:07&nt_s1=&ct_s2=13:48:32&nt_s2=00:14:25&ct_f=14:02:34&nt_f=00:28:26&l=NL&player=1&random=7717&k=heren&index=2&cct=0000110000000000000000000000000000000000