They’re Just Words, But…

It is an absolutely stunning and glorious day out here today, and there’s a grasshopper whining in the shed; desperate for a return to the roads; desperate to inflict pain on muscles that have wasted.  But I have to turn a deaf ear for today I am chained to the inbox, with remission only for trips to the post office.  Stress levels are high; blood pressure not far behind.

At the weekend I came across some delightful words, so I thought I’d share them with you:

‘Everyone began chattering at once.  Within a few minutes I’d counted as many as six different languages:  Romanian, Armenian, English, French, Magyar and Turkish.  On my right sat an eighty-two year old man who’d been driven from Konya in 1915.  He was being ribbed about his new wife.

“Give him a new lease of life…..”

“….. sends him to bed early.”

“Or an early grave of there’s too much of that.”

The old man just smiled fondly and threw back his vodka.

“Is she Armenian?”  I asked.

“No, Romanian.  My first two wives were Armenian, but this one came along so I thought, why not?  She’s very pretty and only fifty-three.”

On my other side sat the cricketer, with his news-reel English.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “You’ll have to speak up.  This is my bad’ear.  Stalingrad, you know.”

“Russians or Germans?”

“Germans, the cavalry.  Hell of a campaign.  Rode to Stalingrad, ate my horse and walked back.  Two thousand kilometres, you know.  Damned hell, that was.  Then the Russians came so I fought for them.”

“And who did you prefer?”

“Didn’t like either very much.  But I loved the war – loved the horses, loved the danger.  Know what the greatest danger was?”

“What?”

He leaned towards me, lowering his voice.  “Syphillis, old chap.  Damned hell of a thing.  Father died in the First War, no one to tell me.  But I kept my hands well scrubbed.” ‘

It was of course Philip Marsden who wrote that passage.  It was the type of situation that reminded of Jason Elliot on his travels, or Michael Carroll.  One day, perhaps….  But I was sitting in the car outside the sports centre whilst Urchin the Younger ran around after a football.  Yes I know I said I’d have a gym session, but that was before learning that I had to pay a vast sum to be told how all the machines work, in a pre-booked one hour session, and then wait until some acne-ridden yoof type worked out my personal fitness programme.  And there was me thinking that an ideal way to spend half an hour or so was to try and get a cross-trainer moving at its slowest possible speed.  Fitness progaramme?  I don’t think so, for horror is not my genre.  But the exercise machine is not to be, so I read.

And whilst I read the politcos were on the wireless, but there were precious few wise words there.  I learn that Cameron is the latest recruitment officer for the nationalists, who see new memberships spiking every time the blue tory opens his mouth on matters Scottish.  Today Moribund will no doubt join the same club as he comes to Glasgow to give us the ‘positive case for the union’.  Meanwhile Cameron has said that he will veto more powers, thereby removing from the equation the devo-max option that Moribund wants to talk about.  He didn’t tell his Scottish leader, who refused to believe such a rumour.  She of course is the one who thought Salmond’s propsed question was fair and clear, until London decided otherwise.

Interesting times lie ahead, of that there is no doubt.

Thank goodness for Marsden.  Much as my interest in the path ahead may be, it is great to be able to switch off that radio, and turn a page.  And what pages these ones are.  Now, back to the inbox……

 

One More Thing

I have not taken my eye off the politcal ball.  Rather than my take off things, here’s an article giving a good summary of the last day or two:

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/4200-the-wicked-witch-of-westminster-says-the-independence-referendum-is-not-legal

Much to talk about in the next 1,000 days…….

And All in the Name of…..well what exactly?

An hour or so before dawn the radio burst into life, reminding me that dawn was about to break on Holocaust Memorial Day.  Reminding though, I needed none; for in the previous hour or two I had travelled slowly through the closing chapters of A Train in Winter.

What remained of those 230 French women, and I say ‘what’ advisedly rather than put it into numbers, for they were barely human at that stage, returned to Paris, a Paris alien to them, to try and integrate broken minds and broken bodies into a broken society.  Emaciated faces were unrecognised by what remained of broken families.  And this was after the Red Cross and the Swedes, the Allies and the Red Army, had tried to put some nourishment back into those wrecked shells, before putting them on transports once again.  Three years had passed and the memories of transports remained.

Evidence had to be given at Nuremberg; 45,000 French citizens were yet to be found guilty of collaboration through the years of occupation.  The final words of Moorehead’s superbly researched work are worth repeating:

‘Looking at me, one would think that I’m alive …… I’m not alive.  I died in Auschwitz, but no one knows it.’

And before that radio announcement I started another journey.  It is a journey of deportations, of dismal convoys.  First stop Jerusalem, city now of four quarters, Muslim, Jew, Christian, and one other; in the state of Israel which rose from the ashes, the very pyres, of what had gone before.  But this journey was in 1915, a mere 30 years earlier.  The fourth quarter belongs to the Armenians, and it is their persecutions that grab me know.

This journey though sets off at a cracking pace, for my guide is none other than Philip Marsden and he is at the top of his form.  The Crossing Place – A Journey Among the Armenians was published less than 20 years ago.  Saddam was in Kuwait, the Americans in the Gulf and all hell was on the point of breaking loose.  I left Marsden this morning, having reached Beirut via Anatolia and Aleppo, Venice and Turkish Cyprus, getting back into Lebanon with the assistance of a few bhaksheesh greenbacks, his visa for Syria having been delayed.  The Bekaa Valley looms overhead, and I smell the rich velvet of a Chateau Musar.

In the next few days he will take me to Sofia and Cluj, Odessa, Batum and Tblisi, and many places in between.  Ararat.  Armenia.

Already I learn of displaced Armenians around the world.  King Tradt III it was who was the first ruler to adopt Christianity; the first Parisian cafe was opened by an Armenian, in 1672; Gary Kasparov and G I Gurdieff (now there’s a fantastic book) both had Armenian mothers; the green ink of the dollar bill was invented by an Armenian, so was yoghurt and the MiG jet.  Heavens, even Richard the Lionheart had an Armenian best man.

This is going to be a journey and half, and I’ll tell more later.  Presumptiously it features already on my book list for this year.

But all told these works have me thinking, which is always dangerous.  On my Open Orders list with our favourite online retailer is the soon-to-be-published memoir from Richard Holloway.  He’s a man with wisdom to share.  Once a Bishop, now a Humanist.  And it is humanity that brings all these things together, that perhaps allows us to accept the grave deeds done for and on behalf of one god or another, or not as the case may be.

And here’s another thought – if today we were putting 60,000 countrymen on trial, what would the circus become with instant news and lawyers creaming the legal aid system?  Let’s just make sure we don’t go there again.

The Future Begins Here

With all due respect to Rabbie there is only one show in town today.  As I type the First Minister is speaking in Holyrood, and the world’s press awaits him at Edinburgh Castle.  It is important that we all take the opportunity to air our views on Scotland’s Future, whatever they may be.  We have an opportunity to sahpe our nation for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, an opportunity that many have sought to deny us for far too long.

The Consultation Paper is now available, and you can get all the details here.

Every one of us has thoughts and those of us resident in Scotland have a right to vote when the referendum comes round.  But this three month period of consultation is vital.  You have a chance.  Use it, irrespective of which way you may think we should head.

I will try to set aside that appalling interview last night, the one where Jeremy Paxman aired the views that may have been his, or may have been those of the BBC, the Labour Party or whatever.  I will ignore too the views expressed by Nick Robinson, when he suggested we may have a fight about the ownership of nuclear bases.  Sorry Nick, these will be all yours, if you can ever find somewhere to put the WMDs we currently hold for the Americans.  Overnight the SNP signed up another 96 new members, making it almost 1,500 joining the party since Cameron decided to force the pace.  Tens of thousands will have been added to the Yes campaign.  No doubt the ‘establishment’ will shoot itself in the foot many times in the next couple of years.

But don’t listen to all that nonsense, take the time to read what is set out, and feed back with your own thoughts.  You owe it to the youngsters.

On the subject of WMDs have a look at a post at Moridura, and the views of a former senior member of the forces, as to where the weapons can go, assuming we evict them from the Clyde.

Man’s Inhumanity

The other day, as I became engrossed in the opening chapters of A Train in Winter, by Caroline Moorhead, I realised that there was much more to say than just a few words about a book.  It is a book that was published last year, my interest at the time being noticed, and which appeared in the festive stocking a month or so back.  It may well appear on my list, but more later.

30 years ago it was that Thomas Kenneally’s Schindler’s Ark was published.  Last year I read his latest, Searching for Schindler, giving the background to his long quest in following up tales to publication, and eventually to Spielberg’s movie.  Schindler’s List, as the film was titled, brought black & white to a new generation, but it was Kenneally’s book that first opened my eyes.  Until then I thought the horrors of war revolved around escaping from Colditz, forging papers, or hiding handguns among the onions in a French bicycle basket.  TV dramas such as Colditz and Secret Army certainly had a part to play, but they left an itch I had to scratch.

I realised, as I delved deeper into the world of occupied France in the company of Moorhead, that we recall an Immortal Memory in a few days time.  In comparison to the legacy that is Burns though, Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27), cannot be allowed to pass without comment.  My old pal, the Ghamellawalla, grew up knowing full well precisely where the numbers tattooed on his father’s arm had come from, and what he had endured.  It is close to home and being just seventy years ago, almost yesterday.  Whilst arms were being numbered my parents were older than my children are now.  And it happened in a democratic society.  So the world cannot be allowed to forget, even though there are many today who deny, and deny and deny, that anything ever happened.  I am all for a conspiracy theory, usually about moon landings or aliens, but that is just going too far.

In the three decades since first reading of Schindler I have read a bit more, opened a few doors, and shed a few tears.  The Pianist is another book that made it to the screen.  Kazik too took me to the ghettos of Poland.  Roman’s Journey is another, of survival and success.  But there are two others that left a massive impression.

Before then I had climbed those stairs on the Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam, ‘neath which Anne Frank hid.  I have stood outside the stations in Danzig and Liverpool Street, admiring the bronzes of Frank Meisler, to the kindertransport, that allowed him to tell his tale.  I have walked the cobbles and smashed stones of Prague and Krakow, yarmulche covering my pate.  Whilst the Ghamellawalla found the courage to walk through those gates outside Krakow, I have only a French museum for my first hand horrors.  Pottering around the Citadelle, in Besancon, I was drawn to the museum, outside of which I left the family as I pottered.  Hours late, facing grief of a different type, I emerged, ashen-faced.  The upper floor of the Museum of Resistance and Deportation had it all on display.  From the stake to which the condemned were tied when the citadelle was occupied by the Third Reich, to the shoes and the hair and the letters.  It was utterly grim.

Moorhead takes me back to France, telling as she does of one train leaving Paris for Auschwitz.  On board are 230 women, ages from 15 to 68.  Amazingly 49 survived, and just a couple of years ago her researches found half a dozen still alive.  She promises a tale of Resistance, Friendship and Survival.  So this book is the horror from the womens’ perspective.  I have dipped previously into the account that Rudolf Hoess told whilst awaiting his sentence to be passed.  I may have to refer to Commandant of Auschwitz again as I delve into the world those women faced.  Part of Hoess’ punishment was in having to put into writing his side of events.  It is a tactic that could serve some purpose in trying to understand the workings of the criminal mind; there may be lessons to be learned for the psychologists of tomorrow.

But for today let us not forget.  It is important that these tales are told.  And it is frightening to think that even now there are civilised countries that ban the publication of Anne Frank’s Diary.  One of those civilised countries is the good ol’ US of A.  The book remains banned in Virginia.  Now it was that similar pillar of democracy that, in no small way, knowingly, facilitated the transports that allowed it all to happen.  IBM processed the statistics and, after the company had to leave Germany, the documentation from their punch card machines, the numbers, the people, the ethnicities and the trains, were all carried back and forward in diplomatic bags provided by the White House.  Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust is no conspiracy theory.  There may yet be litigation, in Switzerland I think, but you’ll never find an IBM computer on this desk.

Closer to home though is Treblinka Survivor, about which I may have commented elsewhere.  It is a tale of the repercussions, in the streets of Glasgow, amongst friends and schoolmates, of people I know who grew up with the children of Hershl Sperling, a man whose torment only ended with his suicide in Glasgow just a few years ago.  Mark S Smith is one who grew up with the family and tells their tale with feeling, and more.

Nowadays, with Holocaust Memorial Day firmly on the calendar, our schools have the facility to take parties to Poland, to witness what has been left behind and to learn of what can happen.  I have friends, within the Jewish community, who believe we should forget, but on the other hand I know their views of the current situation in the Middle East.  Me, I believe these tales have to be told, that people cannot be allowed to forget, that lessons have to be learned.  So it is with some grim fascination that I read on.

Golden Hordes

There was a moment yesterday when I had hopes of opening today’s mutterings with a picture of joy.  In dappled sunshine, under the bare branches of the laburnum tree, a woodpecker nibbled at a fat ball.  But he flew off, in the company ofa score or so of mixed finches, tits and sparrows, before the camera could get out of the bag.  So you’ll have to make do with the odd book or two for now.

I enjoyed my sojourn with the sailing ships of Falmouth, Philip Marsden’s hand on the tiller.  His tale was finely mixed with his own childhood and his journey through life in the same area.  But it did not excite me greatly.  Twenty years or so ago Marsden travelled a much more interesting route, through the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, on the trail of the Armenians.  An old paperback of The Crossing Place arrived yesterday, and it just might make that book list of mine.  For now it sits on the shelf, tempting.

I was tempted, by a book review from Amy Sohanpaul, to have a look at One Day I Will Write About This Place.  It comes from Binyavanga Wainaina, an author unknown to me.  He tells of his childhood in Kenya, under Kenyatta, then Moi.

But I have a lot of respect for Amy and what she has to say. 

Our paths cross every year or two and from time to time she is able to send me a prize from the crossword competition at Traveller magazine, undoubetdly the best travel mag around, where she is the editor.  The book arrived with a sticker announcing that it had been Book of the Week on Radio 4.  I really should tune in other than just on Saturday mornings.  Here’s an extract of Amy’s review:

‘And what words they are, luminous, elegant, unexpected, precise to the point of being painful.  And how he crafts them, into patterns, rhythms, swirls and cadences, he writes as a musician plays.’  So I was full of hope.  He tells of dropping out of college, bored rigid with an hour of debuts and credits in an accountancy class and who can blame him.  He had a need to write and it was difficult in those days, when Mandela was incarcerated, bfeore the rugby world cup drove apartheid into history.  His journey to the Caine Prize, and beyond is everything Amy says, but……  But it too doesn’t make my list.  I did warn you that Halliburton had set the bar very high, and there’s another of his waiting.  Perhaps Marsden in the Caucasus will get there.

Meantime I have escaped, and in so doing I have broken all my rules.  I picked up a volume, a festive gift, that has emblazoned beneath the title the legend – The No 1 Bestseller.  Furthermore it is a series, and fourth in line, the predessors being absent from my shelves.  Now I like an epic, and am no stranger to lengthy series, think Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, Donaldson, Horwood and more.  But usually I start at the beginning.

This one promises to be filled with swords and snotters, blood and thundering hooves.  We are in Mongolia, early 13th century, and Genghis is dead.  Immediately I think of various tales of travel in the area, some by train, others on foot and on horseback.  There’s a movie I need to watch again, Mongol, with subtitles, and books to be opened again.With a bit of practice I’ll be able to line up these shots in and around the words, even remove the misposted ones,  but bear with me for the moment.  One of my first sojourns into the world of travelling, seeing the world through the covers of books, was with Stanley Stewart:

Stewart made me taste the fermented mare’s milk, smell the butter lamp in the yurt.  I could almost make the felt.  One person who could is Louisa Waugh, who spent a year there and told us about it, like an artist.  Hearing Birds Fly is a delight.  I will say no more.  Another was the one and only Benedict Allen, who did it with a camera and put it on our screens.

Some of my favourite tales from Mongolia are present day ones, I say present day meaning the last 50 years rather than the era of those Golden Hordes and their legacy across much of the world we now know as mainland Europe, and Asia.  They got about a bit in those days you know.  We need the Trans-Siberian and many favourites have written tales of that.  So I’m going to enjoy my little period of escape, much needed in the midst of some high-intensity pressure on the work front.

I was tempted yesterday when CalMac’s Island Hopscotch brochure for 2012 arrived in the inbox.  Oh that would be nice.  There’s a fine bookshop on Iona, and one as yet unvisited on Colonsay.  I got to Iona recently, writing a little piece for a competition.  That takes me back to Amy for she is one of the organisers and judges of this year’s BGTW competition for the unwashed and unpublished.  Perhaps I’ll post the entry on my scribbling page, but it will have to wait until after the closing date at the end of the month, perhaps even till after the judges have  finished their reviews, for I don’t want to fall foul of any rules and ruin my chances, do I?

War of Words

Oh it’s started all right, so I’ll keep mine brief, for the moment.  Here’s a few nuggets to warm up the start of a frozen day.

Let’s start with Question Time, where Dimbleby has form, especially with the DFM.  A wee clip courtesy of Moridura.  I have to say I agree with Peter Curran’s comments.  I didn’t watch the programme last night and, having seen this clip, I think I’m glad.  I need my sleep and I don’t think The Urchins would have welcomed the smashed screen au matin.

Kenneth Roy has a great summary of the words that have appeared in the written press, all those cliches, and a few more, some of them unpronounceable in these parts.

But by far the best comment on where we are so far comes form Canon Kenyon Wright.  Read it, one and all.

 

Colour

There was a break in the grim weather today and I needed a short break from the ringing of the phone and the pinging of the inbox.  So somewhere around you should find a new page – the promised gallery.  There are a few shots from around the cycle lanes to get started.  One day soon I’ll get back round, on two wheels, and with time to spare.  So more to follow.  And there’s the rain back on, the bus has dropped The Urchins off, and the phone’s ringing again……..

Referenda and all that

Well it’s the topic of the moment, but there is more to be learned than you will find from our beloved state-funded brodcaster.  Just last night, as the world was slowly getting back to normal and The Urchins were having their first swimming lesson for a month – football resumes this weekend, Brownies on Monday – I was having the weekly blether with Mrs UncutGem in the pool cafe.  Having devoured a piece of a certain cake she went on to tell me how she quite liked being in the union, but couldn’t say why.  I nearly choked, there is work to be done.  My dear you really need to switch off that Jeremy Vine chappie and stop reading the Daily Wail.  I’ve a few alternatives to start with.

First up a highly entertaining, light hearted look at events and utterances at the start of the week:

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/4064-westminsters-navel-gazing-referendum

Then a word from the increasingly interesting Huffington Post, from the keyboard of one of Scotland’s brightest young MSPs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/humza-yousaf/scottish-independence-scotland-doesnt-need-cameron_b_1196576.html?ref=uk

What I really enjoy about doing my reading online these days, where the dead tree press are positively archaic, is in the interaction with the readers – the posts and responses.  You get a real variety of opinion from across the country.  As well as the two above have a look at Nick Robinson’s blogs on the BBC this week, and the comments made in response.  Forget BBC Scotland’s Brian Taylor, the local expert on politics in these parts with views on our constitutional dilemma, for comments are denied, debate is stifled.  But we Scots are allowed to post to Nick, and to Betsan Powys in Wales who often has interesting topics of relevance to these parts.  But why not to Taylor?  I think we should be told.

And now we hear that the Westminster leaders are to gang up on us, to force these unruly jocks back into line.  Bit of a crisis for the red tories this one, their various shadow ministers, ‘Team Scotland’, the mob at Holyrood under new leader Rosa Kleb, all having previously refused to share a platform with the blue tories on the subject of the referendum.  Interesting times.  And wee Ruthie Krankie, Cameron’s man in Scotland hasn’t been allowed to see the advice he apparently has which prompted him to shoot himself in the foot at the start of the week.

And then there’s voting eligibility and age.  Let’s have a look at the various elected members who recently have campaigned for, even voted for, the rights of 16 & 17 year olds to have their say.  http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-politics/4066-unionist-parties-hypocrisy-over-1617-year-old-referendum-vote-exposed – what I hear you say, double standards from elected members, surely not!  And remember that today’s 16 & 17 year olds will be 18 come voting time, and they are watching.  It’s their younger siblings we need to be thinking about.

Now there are times in the past when I may have expressed views on radical things like raising the voting age to 25, having an IQ test before being given a ballot paper, a drugs test even, but I could be persuaded on our younger generation for this one.  This is not a vote for the local cooncil, or even a mere four or five years at a parliament or two.  This is a vital vote.  If it is answered in the negative then there will be no similar vote for at least a generation.  If it is positive then it is world changing.

Let’s have a look at the World Prosperity Index.  The mighty UK sits in 13th place.  And who is that riding above us, surely not the much maligned Ireland and Iceland?  Oh yes it is.  And what do you notice about the top prosperous nations in the world – why they’re pretty much all small independents with heaps of natural resources and without nuclear weapons.  It is reckoned that an independent Scotland would be placed in the top ten.  Aspirations for improvement anyone?

Talking of nuclear weapons, I am all too conscious that the UK’s stock of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which of course are really America’s and cannot be used without their consent, sit less than an hour’s drive from here.  Close my eyes and I can see our horizon with a very large mushroom cloud about to stifle all that I love, though at least the yanks have managed to remove Bush’s finger from the trigger.  But they are very capable of electing another nutter, and we are proposing spending more billions updating our/their WMDs.  I did see a wee report yesterday confirming that Scotland bears the financial cost of these too, but I can’t face that at the moment.

An independent Scotland will not send her young men to die in illegal wars waged around the world at the whim of others, and will be no threat to any nation.  A nuclear deterrent will be superfluous.  With devolution we can pass laws on air pistols.  With independence we can rid ourselves of nuclear weapons, and while we’re at it of all the leaking radiation from the submarines at Faslane.

And then there’s the BBC, –  stop you say, no more.  OK that’s an even bigger topic for another day, and you’ve enough to think about with this lot.  Now Mrs UncutGem, another piece of cake?  OK I’ll lie down in a darkened room for a while, perhaps even get rid of this pent up frustration with a session on an exercise machine whilst Boy Urchin is footballing at the sports centre on Sunday rather than sitting in the cafe with a book.  There are some old cycling muscles wasting away these days.  Something should be done about it, and about Cameron.

From Russia……

Of late I have been wandering around the Russia of the early 20th century, in the company of various governesses from these shores.  Author Harvey Pritcher met up with Miss Emmie to hear her tales and he combined those with others who had been around at the time.  They had arrived in Petersburg in the days of the Tsar, leaving in the aftermath of Grand Duke Michael refusing the throne after his brother abdicated.  But much happened before they left.

This was a Russian society in which the lingua franca was French.  The governesses taught English to the the toddlers, and learned their Russian from the streets, in the parks and in the shops.  The worked in fine houses, on estates and spent the summers at the country dachas.  Two revolutions in 1917, the February uprising that deposed the Tsar, and then the October rising of the Bolsheviks, changed all that. We tend to forget that in those days there was a war raging across Europe, including Russia.  The borders were beseiged by Germany, but the internal strife prevailed.

We travel the length and breadth of the country; by overcrowded train to and from the Crimean resorts, along the Volga and the Dvina to Archangel.  The governesses left and were reunited with families.  Jewels and precious metals were hidden in cellars, sewn into clothes (much as the Tasr’s family had down as they were taken to Ekaterinburg), and weapons and gunpowder were hidden in chairs or thrown into ponds as the searches began and assets seized.  In later years many were reunited with former charges.  Interesting times indeed.

I was reminded of another delightful read, in a similar vein.

Eugenie Fraser’s The House by the Dvina is a an utterly charming account of her time in Archangel, before, during and after said Revolution.  She wrote her memoir after returning to her native Broughty Ferry.  I am tempted to revisit those ice-bound rivers, troikas and sledges, but for the time being I will resist.

As always there is some tenuous link from one book to the next.  A previous work on travels in Russia in a previous age that I hugely enjoyed was Philip Marsden’s The Bronski House.  He had gone to Belorissia 20 years or so ago, in the company of exiled poet Zofia Ilinska, to delve into her past; the times spent by her mother in those same revolutionary days.  Marsden’s writing is magnificent, his words singing from the page as he paints pictures of mounted troops and estate workers.  I see that one of his earlier works was a of a journey among the Armenians, and that could find its way to the table before long.

And so when recently I saw Marsden’s latest work on the high street shelves, I could not resist the pull of my arm.  The Levelling Sea therefore is next up.

The subtitle is The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail. We are about to go back to the mid 16th century, those heady days of exploration as the world began to open up, of privateers and mutineers, and religious fervour and dissent.  It is a long time since I have been in Cornwall and I’m looking forward to going back, and back further.