WEATHER AND CLIMATE

Clouds over Mexico (photograph from Wikimedia)

They are rwo separate things, sayCLIMATE CHANGE campaigners. Weather is temporary, what you experience when you walk out the door. Climate, on the other hand, is more permanent, and affects us all, As Britain is engulfed by one heat wave after another and both France and Spain are experiencing devastating wildfires “‘the worst crisis that France has experienced since the second world war” according to Emmanuel Macron, the French President.

Even allowing for the usual politician’s tendency to exaggerate, it is surely undeniable that there is a relationship between the two. Surely we cannot deny that our climate is changing and we are facing the consequences of human activity in a planet that feels increasingly heated. As a matter of fact, I do not use the words ‘climate crisis’ to describe it. A crisis is something that affects you immediately and urgently. Global warming is more gradual/

 

That does not mean it is not happening and should be ignored, as conservative leaders seem increasingly to suggest. President Trump, that arch climate-change denier, describes global warming as “the biggest con people have been subjected to in history”. That is not an exact quotation but there s no doubt that Trump does not believe in the idea. Just look at the evidence, I say, and stop turning away from the evidence.

 

The trouble with global warming is that there is little the individual can do about it on his or her own. I realise that, by joining the tourist business, I have been encouraging people to dig into the ground, find some black stuff – coal or oil, usually – and start burning it to make their travel plans easier to realise. It is too late to change now and I support attempts to move away from petrol, diesel and other forms of fuel that come out of the ground.

 

The problem is making a living, to put it bluntly. A man and a woman’s primary responsibility is to support his or her family and failure to do so (ie relying on benefits and other hand-outs) does not cut the mustard, a phrase originating in late nineteenth century America, apparently, and popularised by the now-neglected writer of short stories O Henry.  How can you support a family and not contribute to global warming is the dilemma facing many of us.

 

Of course, there is work going on that convinces is that net-zero is the way forward both economically and socially. Making climate friendly progress is all very well, however, but in practice it means deciding, ‘Can we afford an electric car, now?’ In fact, dumping your gas-guzzler and going for a new electric car may not be such a good idea as it uses a lot of carbon dioxide to produce a new car, so changing it frequently may not be a good idea.   

 

What people need is a list of ‘things to do to combat climate change’ instead of  a lot of hand-wringing about how awful things are. Short, sharp practical advice on what an ordinary person with a living to earn and a family to support can do to help the situation and try at least to make a difference. First, of course, we have to convince the doubters that something has to be done. Which may be more difficult than we imagine.

 

You should never underestimate the power of self-delusion. People like the idea that they can see a happy ending at the end of the story. This, incidentally, is why film producers insist on happy endings – they want people to leave the cinema with the feeling that everything will be alright in the end, even if that means a miraculous escape from seemingly fatal wounds. It also explains why bad guys can never shoot straight

 

People don’t like bad news and will do anything to avoid it, including blocking their ears. They respond to people like Donald Trump, who swamp them with good news, and tell them that jobs in traditional heat-producing industries are safe and they had better be ready to work their socks off because people will always want electricity, right? The message of the need to work hard is actually quite welcome because people like to be employed.

 

They may buy tickets to the lottery to avoid work but given the choice between working and being unemployed the majority of people will choose work. The problem is ensuring they have jobs but that these jobs do not contribute to global warming. Some hope. The health of the planet is usually well down the list of things that affect the decision of whether to take a job or not. People theoretically think that it is important. In practice, they just want a job.

 

Is making a living automatically a way of heating the planet some more? Not necessarily but it often is. There is a role for government here, who can bring a more long term view of the situation into play. Capitalism cannot be expected to take a long-term view. It is concerned solely with the bottom line, ie making a profit, and the long-term future is something that others can worry about.

 

Those ‘others’ are, of course, our politicians. They may be widely despised but they are voted in every five years or so to take a longer-term view than the bottom-liners. We get the politicians we deserve when we vote. Some of them are in politics to look after themselves and some of them are in because of their conscience. All of them hold our long-term future in their hands, however. The question is, can they act fast enough to save us?

Edwin Lerner (My other blog is diaryofatouristguide,blogspot,com)

 

 

ON BECOMING AN EARLY RISER

Swift identified the curse of living forever
(Picture from Wikimedia)

It is partly the heat which gets me out of bed early now. I used to be a late sleeper (if I could) but these days the lower temperatures early in the morning get me out of bed at six – or sometimes earlier. I start to get tired at about ten o’clock at night, so I am not spending less time in bed or asleep but, instead of going to bed between eleven and midnight and getting up at seven, I tend to go to bed between ten and eleven and get up at six.

It is not much of a change, admittedly, just an hour or so, but it makes me like an early riser with that rather irritating smugness which goes with the condition, even if the change is practical rather than moral. Nevertheless, my alarm goes off at six every day and I start the day with my exercises. (I have dodgy knees so I need to do them.) Admittedly I do sometimes go back to sleep afterwards, so I usually get around eight hours in bed - with a few loo breaks.

 

I have always said that you have no right to work in the tourist business if you are a duvet addict. It is often necessary to get up early to go to the airport or catch a train to meet a cruise ship at Tilbury or some other port. It is a matter of pride to me that, if I say I will be at a certain place at a requested time, I will be there come what may. In the past, on the says I was not working, I would often take the opportunity to sleep longer – but not anymore.

 

I am not quite sure why I am writing about my sleeping habits, but such things seem important now. Going around in my head is a postcard I saw long ago with the saying on it:

 

“Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise!”

 

I am not sure it does but there is no escaping the smugness of the early rising proselytisers. It is both a sexist (note the ‘man’ in the saying) and work-oriented, promoting the virtues of earning a buck in a world where early-rising is seen as advantageous. 

 

The world of entertainment, where you stay up late to look after your clients is a long way from this, one of go-getting and money-making. It is taken as read that such activities are best conducted in daylight hours before the sun goes down and you are (briefly) allowed to enjoy yourself before you go back to work. In fact, you can make money just as well at night time but somehow it is the days that count when it comes to making a penny or a pound.

 

Anyway, I have somewhat belatedly joined the early risers in my old age. I am at the stage now where an early night is preferable to a lie-in in the morning. I suppose it comes with age along with declungung physical and sexual powers, needing to get up to pee in the middle of the night. It is curious that, although I have no trouble peeing (yet) I suffer from consultation and find it harder as I grew older to bring to put the other way.

Anyway, enough of my declining body and physical powers. At least my mind is nor going, so thank heaven for small mercies. As I said in my last post on this site, I want my body to go before my mind.We hear sometimes of the possibility of extending life almost indefinitely but I remain sceptical and always remember Jonathan Swift, in one of the less well known parts of Gulliver's Travels, finding that those who live forever were regarded as cursed not blessed.

It may seem strange, with fewer people (including me) not believing in an afterlife, to decide not to cheat death but the struldbuggs, who Gulliver came across in Laputa, were generally pitied as being condemned to a friendless, old age in which they could not even enjoy their food and were not immune from the savages of old age like dementia but were simply unable to die. Swift lived a long life, almost reaching eighty, but he was probably as relieved as anyone when it ended.

The memory of the struldbuggs stayed with me and remembering them and the curse of the mark on the forehead which meant that they could never die meant that I was more prepared to accept my imminent death. I do not know when it will come - and am not in any hurry - but I have more of my life behind me than ahead of me now and I am busy getting ready for my imminent demise. If I know nothing else I know it will come eventually,

Edwin Lerner My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

BODY AND SOUL

A human skull (Wikimedia)

I have always said that I want my body to go before my mind does. Having seen Alzheimer’s at home – or dementia as we used to call it – I was determined that I would not suffer from it. I even responded to an advert on Facebook from Bill Gates, whose own father suffered from dementia towards the end. I bought some tablets that he said would ward off senility.  If Bill Gates promises it, I have no good reason to doubt their efficacy. He does need the money.

That does not mean they are guaranteed to work. I have always thought that the best hedge against dementia was to keep active and involved in what is around you. So, I have not (yet) given up work – although I do take on fewer jobs than before. I stay in touch with jobs on the internet but am usually too slow to respond and someone else gets what is offered. I have enough work and some guides, with bigger bills to pay, do not and need what is going more. 

 

Anyway the jury on out on the efficacy of the anti-dementia pills. They are based on the diet that people live on in areas that have low rates of Alzheimer’s and I suppose it is impossible to tell if the pills are working or not. You are enjoying a reasonably coherent form of life. Maybe the pills really are warding off Alzheimer’s – or maybe your active lifestyle is protecting you and the pills are worthless. I will finish the pills I have and then come to a decision.

 

The anti-Alzheimer’s pills (as I shall call them from now) join a series I take every day – statins, pills for diabetes, even anti-constipation powders, which I take only when I feel they are needed. Every time I visit the doctor I seem to have another pill to take. I used to show people the pills that the average person took in their life at the British Museum, often reflecting that I did not need to take as many myself. Those days now are sadly gone.

 

One pill I would not mind taking is one that would make me see straight. I got knocked over by a car a couple of years ago and it has affected my eyesight ever since. I read more slowly than before and my eyes often get tired by seeing double. Even writing these monthly essays is becoming an effort as a result so, if one does not appear in a future month, you will know why. However, at present I intend to keep with my self-imposed timetable of one every month.

 

And, although I go to church sometimes, I find it impossible to believe in any form of afterlife. Apart from anything else, I would find it fairly dull. Being confined to a life without a body and only a soul does not strike me as very exciting or satisfying and I am forced to agree with those who think of it as a reward for leading a good life on this earth, which is probably shorthand for knowing your place and not rocking the boat too hard.

 

There is nothing like the promise of reward in the next world as a prize for behaving yourself in this one. In that, I am probably not that different from most others in this modern society where you are able to lead a well-rewarded life in this world without thinking of the next too much. Although, I am fairly sure of this, I sometimes wonder if my point of view is just a reflection of my background as a late twentieth/early twenty-first century sceptic.

 

We think that we know it all in our society but maybe we are just a product of that society as much as believers in salvation in the afterlife were products of a pious society in the past. What if we were just as blinkered as we think people in the past were? Food for thought in a sceptical age certainly. It might upset a few Dawkins-like atheists but I am not such a dedicated modern atheist that I would mourn this if it turned out to be true.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

RELYING ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT

A Transport for London Routemaster bus

I take a lot of pride on being on time for work. If I say I will be at a certain place at a certain time it is a matter of professional pride that I fulfil that commitment. I have always said that reliability is a more important factor in finding work than brilliance. If the person at the end of the line can rely on your appearing when you say you will, that is the major factor in his booking you for the job. No matter that you will be brilliant, you just have to be there,  

 

For this reason, I got up early to catch the first train to Victoria from Brixton tube station during April when I was going for a job in Newhaven – only to find that the early trains had been cancelled by British Rail. You can take a lot of trains and taxis for the cost of running a car but you are at the mercy of public transport if you do. Since my beloved Jaguar (which was starting to cost me a lot money) had died I have relied on trains and buses.

 

The story of the death of my Jag may be worth a paragraph or two. In what was turning out to be a wet rather than a white Christmas, I drove through a puddle, which runed out to be a pool, To be more accurate, I was able to drive in but not out. Since then Wexford Council (for we were there) has prevented a pool forming in the road – but it was too late for us, we had to rely on the kindly Irish to help us out of the jam we found ourselves in.

 

It was my fault entirely. Maybe not entirely, but I had driven into the pool thinking that, because I had driven through others, this would not be a problem for the car. Big mistake – as we saw (and felt) the water entering it with us unable to do anything. The car was a write-off and we were grateful to a salvage man who rescued us (not charging anything extra for working on Christmas day) and to some firemen who moved the car to safety. 

 

Say what you like about the Irish. but they will always come to your assistance and rarely charge you much for it. We knocked on the door of some strangers who took us home and would not accept any of the money we tried to force on them. This was while the car was being taken to the garage, I have noticed how friendly they are – certainly compared to the English who are much more reserved and distant,

 

Anyway, since that fateful Christmas I have been a pedestrian and public transport user. I can still drive but never do so in London, which is not a car-friendly city but has a good public transport system that I use when I am working, I even have spare Oyster cards that I give to people I am showing around, charging the tour operator for their cost. I like travelling on busses where you can see things and the tube trains which move you around quickly.

 

However, the unions are all powerful on public transport and, if they do not like the way that British Rail or Transport for London )the new name for London Transport) operate, they have little hesitation is downing tools. To make matters more complicated, there are multiple unions that train drivers and other employees can join so, if one is unhappy with the management, it affects your ability to get around easily.

 

The train cancellations were actually caused (according to the information we were given) by a faulty signal. However, I suspect that British Rail cancels the first trains in the morning, often because the drivers have not showed up, preferring a warm duvet to a cold journey to work. Maybe I am being overly cynical but is it coincidence that it is always the early train that are cancelled? 

 

Anyway, to cut along story short, I was unable to reach the ship in Newhaven Harbour on time (which I hate doing) and had to change three times at Gatwick, Brighton and somewhere else to reach Newhaven, Then I had to find the ship, which also proved difficult, and relied on a local guide who drove me there. It would – as I later said to the person organising the tour 0 to have given me a hotel room to be safe,

   

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide,blogspot,com

Edwin Lerner

NOT REPRESENTATIONAL ART IS ALL VERY WELL, BUT ...

Scrubs from a free, small exhibition at the NG.

It does enhance your knowledge of the world around you, Most western art has the effect of ‘making the familiar new or the new familiar’, which Doctor Johnson said was the main purpose of art. I always think, incidentally, that this is the difference between Lennon and McCartney. John was always escaping into new areas making them familiar to us, while Paul relied on close observation of the everyday world and bringing it into new life.

I have been thinking about this having just come back from Istanbul which, being the capital of a Moslem country, does not allow representational art, which is banned in Islamic art. The effect of this is to make buildings like mosques sometimes jaw-droppingly impressive from the outside but rather disappointing inside. The blue mosque in the centre of the city is undoubtedly memorable when seen from the outside but the interior is a but ‘samey’.

 

Before we went to Turkey, I popped into the National Gallery to see a small exhibition of paintings by the artist George Stubbs, who revolutionised the painting of horses by spending about eighteen months locked away with them in a barn. His most famous painting is of Whistlejacket, which is not only on of the gallery’s most viewed works but also the first time a horse without a rider was the main focus of a painting in this (or any other) country.

 

Whistlejacket is still in its original position and the exhibition focuses on another prize-winning horse called Scrubs (above) who Stubbs was commissioned to portray by its owner the wealthy second Earl of Rockingham. Stubbs was not sentimental about horses and was quite prepared to sacrifice them in order to understand their anatomy better, Whistlejacket probably died of natural causes but other horses were not so fortunate.

 

I have long had a preference for representation art over the kind which fills almost every available space with what are essentially pretty patterns on tiles. Likewise, I do not care much for abstract art, although I can see that the works of abstract artists fulfils the making the new familiar part of the art definition while representational works make the familiar new by helping us to look at again at what we thought we already knew.

 

I is probably why I like representational art - ie paintings that show you something you know (or think you know) nut make you look at it afresh. It occurs to me that societies that are religious in nature often prefer non-representational work because they have confidence in a benevolent God and do not need to look at his creations again, while secular and doubting societies that have doubts about God want to examine nature more closely.

 

Of course, this us a broad generalisation, possibly so broad that it has little value. Medieval art in Europe and Britain was both religious and representational – offering views of the annunciation (the announcement to Mary that she would become the mother of Jesus); Christ himself and scenes from his life from his birth and later baptism by John the Baptist to his death at the cross in the crucifixion and to scenes from the lives of his followers.

The Baptism of Christ by Fra Angelico
- another favourite of mine at the NG

What I like about paintings like Fra Angelico’s Baptism of Christ, however, are the faces obviously from life, of the everyday observers of scenes that are holy in nature but in which the artists could not resist putting in literally down to earth details that make the painting come to life. As someone wryly observed in The New Yorker, the problem with paradise is that it might be a bit dull – being stuck in the afterlife forever with nothing much to do.

 

Let us concentrate on what is around us and not worry too much about eternal things. ‘God is good,’ say pious people even after a natural disaster that has claimed dozens of innocent lives. Perhaps but we will never know until it is too late for most of us. Give me the everyday and eternity can look after itself. That is why I orefer art that represents the world around us – and not something more abstract.

Edwin Lerner My other blog is diaryofatouristguide,blogspot.com

The National Gallery Stubbs exhibition is open until the 31st May.R

TRUMPISM AND TOURISM

Donald and Melania Trump (from Wikipedia) 

The last time politics affected the tourist industry was back in the days when American tourists were attacked in a random fashion by terrorists while at airports around the world and people from the states stopped flying to Europe on planes because they were afraid they might be subjected to the same treatment. 

 

Never mind that they had more chance of slipping in the bath than being shot at by terrorists, they booked a holiday to feel safe and they were not reassured but frightened by pictures of armed police at airports in Britain where bobbies on the beat rely on truncheons to apprehend villains (or ‘bad guys’ as the Americans call them).

 

Nowadays it is the other way around and an article in the paper on Saturday described how bookings from around the world have gone down since Trump came to office. So keen is he to give almost unchecked powers to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers that people are scared of being arrested if set foot in America.

 

We have all heard about the virtual execution of people who do not do exactly as the ICE officers tell them and are quick to lock up anybody – often in horrendous conditions – who have outstayed their visas or have the wrong sort of paperwork. Saturday’s Guardian had a story of an inoffensive grandmother whose husband (and her) were imprisoned like this.

 

We simply feel that we will wait until Trump is replaced (possibly by someone who shares his views) in a few years before taking that trip to the USA. I have been a few times but have no inclination to return, certainly not while he is in power. I usually avoid politics in my tours. People do not want to hear my views and, after all, they are paying me for my services.

  

What concerns me more is that many Americans are feeling unloved when they come here. Trump may not last five minutes in British politics but he likes Britain. The feeling, however, is not mutual. Even if one person in Ireland (where I am writing this) said that it is not Americans we dislike, just one of them. It was a good answer but lacking in one aspect.

 

Because a majority of people in the states voted for him, so they have to take a small amount of responsibility for what he has done, which is virtually to gut the American incoming tourist business and to have knock on effect over here. Bookings are down and I think t is is partly because of Trump’s isolationism.

 

We live in an interconnected world and the tourist business is very much a part of that. If people do not feel safe and welcomed when they travel, they will stay at home for their vacation. It is up to tourist guides and others who work in incoming tourism to fight this by making all our visitors, particularly those from the USA, feel welcome when they come here.

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

 

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE TRANSPORT

My much-loved Jaguar, sadly not running now

It all went back to Christmas a couple of years ago. I was driving my much-loved Jaguar to some friends on what proved to be a very wet (not a white) Christmas. I drove into a puddle and, to cut a long and painful story short, found my car being flooded. It was a write off and I never got to drive it again. Incidentally, I was impressed by the fact that someone local gave us a lift back to our cottage and another man turned up to rescue us and did not charge extra for working on Christmas day. Would he have done that in Britain? I doubt it.

Anyway, we became a one-car couple after that. I paid something towards our Toyota which Leena uses mostly. She chose it and is driving it to the stables as I write. Meanwhile, I rely on public transport to get around. It takes about two and a half hours to get to London door to door by train so I do not go early in the morning, but travel the night before and stay in my house in Brixton if I do. It is little too far to commute, although I sometimes go back in the afternoon

if I am doing a half-day tour. I usually enjoy going to London for work on the train.

 

However, sometimes the vagaries of public transport let me down both in and outside the capital. Recently, a points failure meant that the Victoria line was out and I had to take a roundabout journey to get back to Brixton. More seriously, a journey to London involved a roundabout trip via Brighton because of – you guessed it – a points failure. Instead of taking a couple of hours it required a whole morning. Fortunately, at neither time was in a hurry. I am all in favour of train travel but it does require the proper functioning of equipment.

 

I am worried that one day I will have to make an apologetic phone call to an operator saying that I cannot be where I am supposed to be at the appointed time. In fact, now I think about it, I had to do that once a year or so ago. The delay was actually caused by a car breaking down in the tunnel towards Heathrow and, although I had left a couple of hours to get to the airport hotel I was due at, I was running late. Fortunately, so was everyone else and the reason for the delay was accepted by the operator and hardly noticed by the clients.

 

I always leave plenty of time to get to the hotel/airport I am expected at as I factor in possible delays in the public transport system. If they do not occur, I arrive early but I do not mind being early and it is better to be early rather than late, If I have to wait at the lobby of the hotel, there are worse places to read the paper as I do so. Being very early is probably a bit naff, not to say naïve, but I have never quite been able to take a colleague seriously who I felt was cutting her arrival at the hotel too fine – a little close for comfort.

 

In an ideal world we would all take public transpor to get around and people would leave their cars at home. I never take my car into central London these days and rely on buses and the underground system. (Actually two thirds of it is above ground but that is a different story to be told another day.) However, we do not live in an ideal world and, frankly, will never will. It was the attempt to do so that caused communism to fail so dramatically. People preferred the occasional and admitted failures of capitalism to the unadmitted failures of communism in the end.

 

An essential part of building a successful society is learning from your mistakes and that means admitting to them in the first place. One thing I most remember from the film The Death of Stalin is the belief, expressed early in the film, that plane crashes never occur in Russia because socialism has made a perfect society where mistakes never happen. Dream on comrades. We all make mistakes and it is important in learning from them to first of all acknowledge them. Lots of fortunes were made by people who slipped up first.

 

Henry Ford is a name that springs to mind here, He had several false starts before he started he successfully started making cars. Ford, by the way, was a notorious antisemite and a far from admirable man but he had a certain knack. He is reported to have said that you can have any colour you want as long as its black. In fact, he later produced cars in several colours, reasoning that his customers would want more of a choice, but in the early days of mass-production black was both the cheapest and quickest drying type of paint available.

 

The fact is that any free society has to draw a balance between public provision and private choice. You have to wait for public transport but can drive your car whenever you want. However, you have to pay for it, both in parking, which is both difficult and expensive in central London, and because of the congestion charge imposed on car drivers or a combination of the two. The mayor of London might have introduced the congestion charge but he would never have done so without government approval.

 

As a result, as I tell clients, I never take the car into central London. This is partly because  I sometimes end a tour at a different place to where I have begun and it would be a pain to go back to collect the car; partly because it is expensive and difficult to park; and partly because I am now old enough to travel for free on public transport with my freedom pass. Maybe, by the way, we give older people too easy a ride but old people tend to vote and no politician wants to upset them – as good an argument for voting as I have ever heard. 

 

Public transport is socialism in practice, private driving is capitalistic. However, allowing or encouraging everyone to drive cars would not only cause much worse air pollution but clog up the roads more than they are already. Making everyone take public transport may seem fairer but it would always have a hint of ‘we know best’ about it and the chaos caused by the inevitable failure of the system on occasions would never work in a free society where disgruntled people could vote four or five years.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com