The London Book Fair: Sodom Or Shangra-La?

I spent most of this week at the London Book Fair, a massive meeting of agents, publishers, and printers from around the world. It was a truly international fair. Englishmen gave sales pitches in Mandarin, Arabs chatted in Norwegian, and the freebies included everything from Saudi dates to Icelandic postcards. Books can really bring the world together. Or is it money that brings the world together? Whatever.

I must say some aspects of the fair bothered me. Business suits were far more in evidence than tweed jackets, and I didn't see anyone reading anything other than a contract until lunchtime of my second day. Then I saw a woman actually reading a book! Surrounded by this feverish buying and selling of writing talent, I felt like pulling a Christ-in-the-temple move and throwing the moneylenders out, shouting "Get thee to a library!"

Mixed literary metaphors aside, the fair gave me a quick education in the sheer immensity of the publishing world. It also gave me a new appreciation for the business end of the process. If it wasn't for these folks, my books wouldn't be for sale anywhere, and wouldn't be available in several different countries. I had an enjoyable and productive time, as you can read in my other blog, and I'll be posting more about the fair in this blog and that one.

Next time: trying to scam a free press trip without knowing Russian.

Ethiopian Mead

Sorry for not posting for more than a week, but I had a busy trip to England that started with getting diverted to Bornmouth for three hours, getting practically snowed into our hotel in Oxford, and trying to travel around England in the snow and slush while writing an article for British Heritage.

Anyway, I got the article done, got some nice snowy shots of England that I'll post later, and then spent a couple of spare days in London researching my next book proposal and enjoying the city's nightlife.

One place I stopped with my friend/former housemate/drinking buddy Michael was Merkato Restaurant and Wine Bar on 196 Caledonian Rd. This is in the center of one of London's Ethiopian communities and is the best Ethiopian restaurant I've tried. The owner brews his own tej, an Ethiopian honey wine that's a bit different from European mead. It's cloudy, slightly sweeter, and has a bit of a different flavor thanks to some added spices. There's a detailed webpage about tej here, and there's even a Facebook group for tej fans. One wine bottle of tej is plenty for two people, even two seasoned veterans such as Michael and myself. If you get to London, try this restaurant, and try the tej!

It's Official: Kebabs Are Bad For You

In the film Casablanca, the corrupt police captain Louis Renault tells Rick Blaine that he's shocked, shocked, to discover there's gambling going on at Rick's Café Américain. A moment later a croupier hands him his winnings.

Yesterday the BBC reported that British health officials are shocked, shocked, to discover kebabs are high in calories, fat, and salt. The favorite food of binge drinkers, harried commuters, and penny-pinching backpackers, this slime on a stick apparently has an average of just under 1000 calories, the entire daily requirement for salt, and well over daily levels of saturated fat. The kebabs were tested without the rich fatty sauce that's usually slathered on as a final step in preparation.

Officials in 76 councils tested the nutritional value of 494 kebabs. The worst offenders had 1,990 calories, more than twice the daily requirement of salt, and more than three times the daily requirement of fat. More than a third included ingredients not on the labels, including several with pork. Two of the kebabs that included pork were sold by shops that claimed to be halal, meaning that they supposedly followed Muslim dietary rules that forbid pork.

But the question remains--will this make the fattest country in Europe change its dietary habits? Probably not, considering that everyone already knows kebabs are bad for you. This is probably why they are mostly eaten by people who have just been on a bender.

On the positive side, discarded kebabs make great foraging for urban England's growing population of wild animals. When I lived in Elephant and Castle, the local fox, dubbed "smokey", lived well off of kebabs and other junk food he found in the dumpster and on the sidewalk.

After Captain Renault pockets his winnings, he blithely orders Rick's Cafe closed. He's under political pressure to do so. I wonder, after the officials at the Local Authority Coordinators of Regulatory Services made their report and satisfied their bosses, did they light up a fag and pop down to the nearest pub for a pint?

History and Travel in Britain

The Christmas issue of Timetravel Britain is now up. This free webzine about historic British travel has been around for several years and is always fun to read. I've contributed several articles to it, although I don't have anything in this issue. Check it out.

And if you want to see some of my articles, you might want to read about the Imperial War Museum, Southwark Cathedral, and a tour of Roman London. You can find more from yours truly in the site's index.

Armistice/Remembrance Day

Ninety years ago today, on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, World War One ended. Today in London three of the remaining veterans took part in memorial ceremonies at London's Cenotaph. They were Henry Allingham, 112, Royal Air Force; Harry Patch, 110, Army; and Bill Stone, 108, Royal Navy.

My grandfather was a WWI veteran and I've met many others. It's strange to see such an important event pass from living memory into history, but with all of the remaining veterans being well over 100, they won't be with us long.

Here in Madrid there's an exhibition titled "¡1914! The Avant-Garde and the Great War" exploring how World War One affected the art and ideas of Europe. I've blogged about it here.

Twenty million people died in the war, and it changed Western civilization in countless ways. Right now I'm reading Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, which is one of the best books I've seen on this subject. Highly recommended.


Photo courtesy Caroline Ford, from Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under GNU Free Documentation License.

Atheist Ad Campaign

A group of atheists backed by famous atheist writer Richard Dawkins are trying to raise money to put ads on London buses, according to an article in the Guardian. The ads will use the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

I happen to agree with this statement, but there's a problem. They're saying there's probably no God, which means they admit the possibility, however slim, that there is a God. That makes them agnostics, not atheists. I've come across this confusion before among atheists, and I have to say it baffles me.

The campaign is in response to ads by a Christian group whose website says we're all going to burn in a lake of fire if we don't accept Jesus. In support of the atheist ads, Dawkins said, "This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think--and thinking is anathema to religion."

Silly boy, thinking is anathema to fundamentalisms of all sorts, whether fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Communism, or fundamentalist atheism. Intelligent, thinking people come to all sorts of different answers to life's questions, and fighting intolerance with intolerance isn't going to get us anywhere.

How about this for a slogan: "Consider agnosticism, because it's OK to say 'I don't know.'"

Back in Madrid

Whew! I´m finally back in Spain after far too many flights. Missouri was fun and I got all the research done for my next book, but rainstorms on the last two weekends I was there kept me from camping. Ah well, hopefully I´ll get up into the mountains near Madrid soon. There are several routes near the old Roman highway I hiked a while back that I´d like to try.

London was fun too, but I was there for only two days, just long enough to celebrate Oktoberfest in a fake German beer hall with real German waitresses and to visit the amazing Highgate cemetery, which I´ll post on later. Tonight I´m back to my usual writer´s group, something every writer needs.

"I Want To Go To The Science Museum"

When you hear your 2 1/2 year-old son say this, you know you're doing something right. As I mentioned in a previous post, Julian has become obsessed with the Oxford Museum of Natural History. Now when he wakes up he asks to go there. He needs to see the Iguanodon and play with the microscope, after all.

Sad to say, I'm now in Missouri and he and his mother are back in Madrid. Apparently he really liked being home for a couple of days, then started getting upset because he couldn't do all his favorite Oxford activities.

I know what you mean, kid, American microbrews are nothing compared to good, honest English real ales.

Well, at least we'll be back in Oxford for six months next year.

These past two weeks have been interesting from a parenting point of view. Julian has always been an active and observant kid, but being in a different country, and being in a small town instead of in the center of Madrid, really opened his eyes. He got to feed ducks for the first time, climb trees, play by the river, all the stuff country kids take for granted. He was amazingly energetic, ate hugely, slept like a log, and learned a bunch of English. Hopefully we'll be able to schedule some regular periods of fresh air from now on.

The Road Has A New Face

One thing that's really struck me lately is how many Chinese tourists there are now. I first started noticing them a few years ago, and can't recall seeing any before that. I did meet a Chinese Christian pilgrim in Jerusalem in 1990, but he was a different story. It's the peak of the tourist season here in Oxford, and there are Chinese tourist groups everywhere, taking photos with expensive-looking digital cameras (mine's made there too!), trying fish and chips, and blocking the sidewalks as they gape at the beautiful architecture. In other words, they're just like tourists from everywhere else. The new money in China seems to be getting spent on the same kind of vacations as elsewhere.

And then there are all those Russian millionaires at the Sotheby's auctions in London. I didn't used to see them ten years ago either.

Wait, Am I In A Different Country?

The irony of doing a blog partly dedicated to travel is you have less time to do it when you're on the road. I got to England last week and stayed a couple of days in London before heading up to Oxford. On my first full day I went to Bloomsbury to check out the bookshops and get a pint at the Museum Tavern, my favorite pub in the area.

Wandering down Museum Street I discovered an obituary in the window of the Ulysses Bookshop. Peter Jolliffe, a well-known local bookdealer and proprietor of the shop, had died last December. You can read about his interesting life here. The notice said he had left some money for local book dealers and buyers to have a wake at The Plough, a pub just down the road. I was a few months late for the wake, but in honor of Peter I decided to head on down and have a pint in his memory. I never knew the guy, because his shop specializes in modern first editions and I collect in different areas, but part of having a community is to show respect, and he earned plenty of that.

As I was drinking in the Plough, I thought, "I'd forgotten how nice this pub is, I should come here more often."

Then it struck me--I can't come here more often. It's in a different country! I'd been in England for almost 24 hours and it hadn't really sunk in that I'd actually crossed a border. I come to London so frequently that I've begun to think of it as an extension of Madrid. Weird. That's never happened to me before. Does coming to England count as traveling anymore?

Well, Peter, it's probably not the kind of thought you were expecting at your wake, but I'll certainly remember you for it.

Where Have All The English Gone?

I was researching in the British Library last week and went into the cafeteria to get some lunch. The special that day was Cottage Pie. Having spent way too long staring at obscure tomes and not nearly enough talking to actual, live people, I tried to be witty by asking the two women behind the counter, "Is the Cottage Pie made with real cottages?"

They looked at each other in wide-eyed panic. Uh-oh, had I made some English faux pas?

"I'll get the chef," one of them replied in a Polish accent, running off.

"Um, I was just kidding," I said.

"Don't worry, he'll know," the other said in a Caribbean accent.

The chef came out and asked in an English accent, "What would you like to know, sir?"

Too embarrassed to repeat a lame joke twice, I feigned like I didn't know what Cottage Pie was and he patiently told me in his most polite explaining-to-the-clueless-Yank voice that it's made of minced beef and vegetables. Well, yeah.

A couple of days later the wife and I got a taxi to London Bridge station. The Arab taxi driver didn't know how to get there and I had to give directions! OK, I've written a guidebook to London, so it's not a problem, but this guy's a taxi driver!

I don't have anything against immigrants--how could I? I've been an immigrant twice, and so has Almudena--but it is a bit strange to spend a week in London and have the majority of my interactions be with people who aren't English. Even most of my London friends are from elsewhere. Does London even count as an English city anymore?

(I hear a chorus of English voices from the counties shouting "NO!")

A Tour of Roman London

One of my favorite free online magazines, Timetravel-Britain, has just published an article I wrote that gives A Tour of Roman London. It was a fun article to write. The City, which is the heart of London's financial district, stands directly atop the old Roman city of Londinium. Sections of the old city wall and even the temple of Mithras can still be seen today. I've always been fascinated by bits of the past sticking out in the modern world.

Sadly, Madrid is a relatively new city. It didn't become capital until Philip II made it so in 1561. Before that it wasn't much of anything, but successive kings built palaces and churches and made it an important city. Later kings tried to imitate Paris, and tore down a lot of the older buildings to make way for wide avenues and parks, so there's not much left of those early centuries. Ah well, I can always go to London for Roman remains, or Segovia, which is much closer!

Visiting Historic Britain

If you like visiting castles, haunted manors, stone circles, and other historic sites, then check out TimeTravel-Britain, run by friend and fellow writer Moira Allen. There's an ad for it on the sidebar. Yes, I know the link isn't actually attached to the image, I'm still figuring out how to do that. I'm new at this!

Anyway, it's a fun site and I've contributed several articles to it. Check out my articles on the Ely Cathedral and Stained Glass Museum, Southwark Cathedral, the Ashmolean Museum, the London of Samuel Johnson, and much more. There are plenty of great articles by other contributors too.

Travel Tip #2: Slow Down!

I was in the British Museum in London the other day, enjoying its fantastic collection of artifacts from all over the world, when I was yet again struck by how quickly most people rush through the main attractions of their trip. I was on the ground floor looking at some immense stone bas-reliefs from the Assyrian palaces, and people were shooting past like meteors. The scenes are amazingly detailed and well crafted, and although I've looked at them on dozens of visits I always find something new. This time I noticed that in one scene of a cavalry battle, there's a vulture flying overhead with some human entrails in its mouth.

Isn't it a shame that all the people flying past failed to notice this? It's not every day you get to see a vulture eating human entrails, and all those people missed their chance.

When I was in the huge Temple of Karnak in Egypt it was even worse. I got there at dawn in order to avoid the crowds, and for a couple of hours I had the place almost to myself. Even the vendors selling postcards and fake antiquities were still asleep. Soon enough, though, the air-conditions tour buses started pulling up, and the place was inundated with sun burnt Americans and Europeans. I sat down in the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Precinct of Amun-Re, a huge room nearly filled with massive pillars adorned with hieroglyphs. I'd sit admiring some of the pillars, then moved to see others. It was entrancing, and I ended up spending the entire afternoon in that one vast room, watching the shadows move, revealing new hieroglyphs and veiling others. It was the most memorable day of a memorable trip, and not one of those tour groups spent more than five minutes in the Hypostyle Hall. In their rush to see so much, they saw so little.

So when you're on a trip, slow down. It's better to see a few things well then a lot of things poorly. When you're on the road of life, always make sure you take time out to examine the entrails.

Travel Tip #1: Get out of the Capital!

I've been to something like 25 countries, and one thing I've noticed about all of them is that people are much nicer once you get out of the capital. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps the stress of big-city life or the natural arrogance of being from the country's most important city, but people in a capital city are much more likely to be rude, in a hurry, and completely uninterested in meeting foreign visitors. It's a shame so many tourists never venture beyond London or Paris or Cairo. Even Lonely Planet-toting "travelers" are often guilty of this, especially in developing countries where the capitals offer more of the technology and comforts rich visitors are used to.

Nowhere is the capital-countryside divide as pronounced as it is in England. London is a wonderful city, but it's rude, rushed, and often violent. But just an hour's drive away is Oxford, my favorite small city. Not only do you get the dreaming spires of the world's greatest university, but you get people who are much more friendly and relaxed. People even walk slower. So my advice to travelers is. . .get out of the capital!

Another One Bites The Dust

London is one of my favorite cities, and one of the ways I feel at home here and in my other regular cities of Madrid and Columbia (Missouri) is to make sure to go back to a few favorite spots. I like to see what changes may have taken place with my favorite pub, park, or shop. This makes me feel more at home, even if I don't live there any more, because I know what's going on with my "regular" places.

Last night I caught up with an old friend and former flatmate at the Roebuck, which used to be our local pub when we lived together. Sad to say, the two beautiful Indian girls who used to pour our pints are no longer there, but there's still plenty of atmosphere, friendly service, and, of course, real ale.

This morning I went to another of my favorites, Unsworths bookshop. This is one of the best bookshops in London. Specializing in remaindered and antiquarian books on the social sciences, I'm always able to pick up some interesting history or archaeology title here. They carry a complete stock of Loeb's Classical Library, both new and used, and their antiquarian section is awesome, with texts dating back to the 16th century. Yeah baby, hardcore porn for bibliophiles! It's strategically located across the street from the British Library, where I usually spend a day or two doing research while I'm in town, so I'm always tempted to go inside.

But today I find out they're closing at the end of the month! The landlord will be "redeveloping" the area, probably to put in some God-awful Starbucks or Burger King. Ugh! Why can't the bad stuff change and the good things remain the same? Ah well, at least there are a few hundred other good bookshops in town I can go to. Unsworths will keep its antiquarian section at Foyles, and will keep an online presence, so it's not completely dead, but my research trips to the British Library won't be the same.

The Fall of a Luddite

Well, it had to happen. I've been a proud technophobe for years. Besides a laptop and DSL, I have had no techie toys and didn't want any. Then, in the past two months, my wife convinced me to get a mobile, and then bought me an iPod Nano. If that wasn't enough, friend, fellow writer, and now fellow blogger Abha Malpani convinced me to start a blog.


So now that I have this blog, what do I intend to do with it? Well, tell you what I think, of course! I have been an avid traveler since I was in my teens, and have been to more than twenty countries on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. But what I've noticed, as I push on towards forty, is that more and more of my fellow travelers are falling by the wayside, giving up on their true passion for more mundane things such as television. (I still don't have one of those; my wife isn't going to win that battle) I've also noticed that younger travelers are asking me for advice, or for stories about what it was like to trek in Nepal before there were internet cafes along the trails. So, I intend to use this blog to talk about one of my favorite things in the world--independent travel. Oh, and books, real ale, and anything else I feel like, but mostly independent travel.


A bit about me, beyond what you can see in the upper righthand corner. I am a freelance writer dividing my time between Madrid, Spain, and Missouri, USA. I've written various books, including Moon Handbooks London. As I write this I'm up in London working on some magazine articles. More about that in the next post.


Does anyone ever read the first post of a new blog?