VIEWPOINT
Abroad thoughts from home
GEORGE GALE
For those rich enough to choose or poor enough to have to suffer a life under tropical skies I have mild contempt on the one hand and mild pity on the other. Permanently hot and regularly sunny weather is a bore, whether you laze under a coconut tree getting drunk on vodka or eat bananas. Sun- bathing is a witless occupation, although harmless enough for those who need an excuse for doing nothing, a purpose for lazing, and an occupation for not thinking. Thinking being more often than not a pain- ful process and therefore to be avoided, and it being next to impossible to think out of doors in the blazing sun while lying prone and upside down, the popularity of hot places for holidays is unsurprising. I think the excuse for not thinking came first, before the pretext of getting tanned; but nowadays, such is the success of the not thinking bit, the tan has become an end in itself, a visible proof of holiday, an affirmation of having been away and there done nothing but steep in sun. And the more nigger the tan the longer and hotter and more expensive and indulgent the holiday. Tanning oneself damages none but oneself, and since while getting oneself tanned one can affect to be improving oneself by exposure to the health- giving sun- while doing no actual damage to anybody else, the smug self-satisfaction the curious process induces in its practitioners can be accounted as generally beneficial. Also, it strikes me as probable that the rest of us are better off without the thoughts of the people who might be thinking were they not not-thinking. I approve, therefore, of tropical skies and of people lying and living under them. Invariably, I think, I approve of people for whom I have mild pity or mild contempt, if for no other cause than that to contemplate them is to feel superior.
But sunbathing bores me. Art from the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea I have experienced no natural water warm enough to swim in comfortably, and, any- way, after a few minutes of desultory swim- ming I get as bored with it as I do with sun- bathing, and possibly even more exhausted by it. One of the last times I went swimming I received a very nasty shock. There is an hotel north of Tel Aviv called the Accadia, very much a sunbathing sort of hotel, stand- ing a few feet above the Mediterranean shore. It has its own pool as well as the sea. On the occasion I recall, a woman friend of a friend of mine intercepted me on my way from my room, via the pool, to the bar. She wanted someone to accompany her for a swim in the sea itself, the pool palling. Foolishly I agreed, and no sooner had the silly woman got out of her depth than she Panicked, thinking, rightly, that she was in danger of being swept away by strong currents With assistance from the breakers I managed to haul her out. Promptly she ex- tended to me an invitation to her flat, her Whisky, and, by inescapable inference, her bed. She was a rather flabby and blotchy middle-aged jewess from Panama, and had I possessed the strength I might well have followed my instinctive urge to throw her back in again. As it was, I indicated that I regarded the saving of her life (as she thought) as quite sufficient evil for the day (or year, .come to that). Nevertheless, for the remaining day or two of that weekend
(several of us were holidaying from Jeru- salem, where we were attempting with little success to cover the Eichmanu trial) she seemed to by around wherever I went, not exactly forcing herself upon me but rather, if you can conceive of such a thing, silently whimpering.
Now then, to climates and holidays. The English climate is easily the best I have en- countered, changeable, enterprising, filled with wild and unexpected departures from the forecasted, and yet, miraculously, con- tained within an overall seasonal pattern which is well-balanced, of pleasing form and discipline.- and which accords well with all that I expect out of nature. It may be that what I expect out of nature is a consequence of the weather I have formatively gone through, but no matter: everything comes down to a kind of tautology sooner or later. Although the English weather has its off periods, August usually being one of them, its all-round performance is incomparable. New England's fall may be better than our autumn, or more ostentatious, and there is much to be said for a Cypriot spring except that you know that their summer is not far ahead; a Swiss winter for snow or a Kenyan winter for sun have their points, particularly -the Swiss Alps and the Kenyan fauna; and I cherish the recollection of a Sicilian summer before the post-war tourists had really got going among the Agrigento temples, Monreale's mosaics, and Taor- mina's prospect of Etna. A combination of all these virtues can be found in Nepal, and were I to choose a spot on this earth to which I would escape, then I suppose Kath- mandu would be it: for the Himalayas are finer than the Alps, the tiger is a more mag- nificent animal than the lion, no threat of Greek or Christian myth is posed by the rude and dotty temples of Nepal, and orchids grow wild. It is not that I like orchids, but I prefer them growing wild upon the Himalayan foothills than wilting upon New English bosoms. However. I do not wish to escape, even to Kathmandu; and I
cannot imagine myself for long clowning around with bean rows and honeybee hives in Innisfree, which rules out Ireland. the other principal contender for my putatively alienable affection. At its best—a prematurely hot day in early June, a matured September evening, frost-clarified air in January. the winds of March—England, and especially the north of England, is peerless. It can also be bloody awful, but that's a different story and I'm feeling amiably disposed, and this, after all, is written for a holiday weekend.
If. someone may wonder. I regard the English climate so favourably, why should I go away on holiday? I don't. I go away to work, not to play and laze. Going abroad is working. There are many disadvantages of abroad, among which may be numbered foreigners, foreign languages, foreign cus- toms. foreign food, foreign drink, and English. American and German holiday- makers. These disadvantages are also on the increase in England, and more particu- larly in English holiday places. Why, then, do I go off on holiday in England? I don't. I go to Blackpool and to Brighton to work. usually at party conferences and such like; and I go to London to work; and I don't go to Stratford-upon-Avon. As far as I am concerned, holidays are not working: and it's more comfortable not working at home than it is away.
I confess to occasional fugitive trips, filched from working away and holidaying at home, and not really to be categorised at all, like four marvellous days in the Lake District two years ago, sandwiched between the Labour party conference at Blackpool and the Tory party conference at Blackpool. (They are both back at Blackpool this year, so help them and all political journalists.) For the first time for years I scrambled up a small mountain, drank at a waterfall, sur- prised a sheep, looked far down and not from a skyscraper. Also I went back to places of my schooldays. discovered the same bicycle shop in Penrith that had been there during the war and many years before, recognised the exact shape of the hills about Ullswater, and Blencathra or Saddleback, saw houses I had lived in. I also visited the first public house I ever went to, but it had , changed, had been modernised horribly. These days were a great refreshment and re- juvenation as well as a nostalgic indulgence. I drove up Kirkstone Pass and remembered how several times I had pushed a bicycle up that severe and bleak and twisted road. It made me wish to visit again another place where I several times holidayed, Bamburgh and the marvellous north Northumberland coast, still largely unblemished and un- peopled, and Lindisfarne or Holy Island, and the Coquet and Tweed valleys where we used to camp and cook on fires of gleaned wood, before the advent of Ga7, and pretend to fish for trout in swift and clear water. Once I caught an eel—or perhaps it was my brother or cousin who caught it, for I fancy I have never really caught any fish, even an eel, if an eel be a fish—and there was an occasion when, camping on the banks of Ullswater with my cousin. we dredged a shoal of tiddlers and fried them whole but could not, I think, stomach them. Now, en- tangled with remembrance. I recall that once, at least, I caught some fish, splendid mackerel, spinning for them in a fishing smack in the North Sea off Newbiggin.
Frequently I see holidaymakers—and it's a good word for them, for holidays have to
be made and it's hard work making them— and, filled with Schadenfreude, I rejoice at their discomfiture. I see them sweating with over-filled suitcases on under-portered rail- way platforms, cluttered up with children wretched with exhaustion and stuck up with bits of lollipops, their faces sploched with tear-stains. Usually there is an undertow of dispute seething between husband and wife or everybody's cold or too sunburned or he wants a pint and she wants a cup of tea, and Who's gat the tickets You had them last, and now the kids are fighting over comics. Or there's the winter games crowd, all hearty with sticks and skis and boots and sweaters, at least half of them clutching at their youth which slips away with each New Year. MY natural dislike of holidaymakers is con- tinually reinforced each time I go abroad to work, for each time the hotels seem more filled with holidaymakers and less occupied by workers. They ruin hotels, for workers, for switchboards become neglected, corridors are filled with children running races, break- fasts are noisy, and you cannot get service for people complaining about the water. I tend to prefer pubs which bear the sign 'No coaches'—and once I saw a sign which said 'No double-decker buses'. Hotels at home and abroad should display for the likes of me special rosettes proclaiming, preferably, 'No tourists here' or, failing that, 'Organised
tours not catered for', much as more humble inns declare 'Gypsies not welcome' and 'No fruit-pickers'.
I see that I am getting less amiable now and must replenish my better nature.
Later: I have just been out to the garden, looking at the fish in the pond. Fish are the best pets, silent, requiring no attention, no affection, and no supply of man-made food. They look good, too, golden or speckled or dark brown, flashing away at the touch of a shadow on the surface. Last year a heron came and started eating the fish. I'm not all that fond of birds at the best of times, and at the worst of times, which are hungover dawns, they make a filthy noise called by teetotal bird-watchers 'dawn choruses';_ and herons in particular I dislike, along with gannets, for their greed. I rejoiced when this particular heron came by an untimely and violent end. But the fish, which I thought had alt been eaten, are back again this year: so far there have been no depredations; and the bulrushes and lilies flourish. The estuary is emptying itself, boats are stranded on the shining mud which looks white although I know it's' black, there is some warm sun, the air is still, I smell the smoke of a bonfire of early fallen leaves, and I am reasonably content, and glad that I am not away on holiday, but am instead at home and in England.
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