The snowshoe shuffle

We had been planning a ski day, but my legs were so stiff and weather so good, that I suggested that we did the snowshoe trip that Sam and Lucy had reconnoitred in St Foy. Good weather is important because you walk up for the views and the vistas, so it's just a trudge if the clouds have closed in.

We hired snowshoes for six euros per pair from Intersport in Bourg and then drove to St Foy, which is further up the valley in the direction of Tignes and Val d'Isere. Because Sam and Lucy had done this before, they knew to park as high as possible and close to the start of the trail through the woods, otherwise your snowshoe expedition starts with a trudge up a red run, which is no fun at all.

I was staggered how easy snowshoes are to put on and to walk on; also by how effective they are in snow, although deep powder snow will see you sink a long way. There's a short video here.

The walk is through woods with open sections, so you get wonderful views of Mt Pourri and its numerous glaciers. At present, these are covered in snow with just the ice-blue nose visible. In summer, they would glow blue with the sun on them. Sam could spot off-piste skiers coming down the north side of the mountain having crossed from the Aiguille Rouge, an arete where you can get a cable car up to 3226 metres. There's an exposed black run that follows the ridge line down into Arc 2000 (which Sam and Lucy have done), but the extreme skiers cross the ridge and ski down the unpisted northern side of the mountain, which is what we were seeing..

It's pretty steep and with lots of crags and exposed rock and looks downright scary. It's hard to think that I would ever have the skills to attempt a black run competently, let alone something like that.

Panorama taken by Lucy at about 1860m on the way from Sainte Foy to Le Monal. The big mountain in the centre is Mont Pourri, with its large glacier (covered in snow). To the left (obscured by the sun) is Tignes. To the right of Mont Pourri is the Aiguille Rouge.

The trail is steadily uphill, cutting in and out of a blue ski road and it's not hard walking, although a couple of halts for a puff were required. Margaret was on a mission, I thought she'd struggle with the gradient, but she was steaming up behind Sam and Lucy and leaving me trailing at a slightly slower pace.

The route takes you up to Le Monal, which is a collection of summer chalets and farm buildings. Transhumance is alive and well in the Alps and cattle follow the retreating snow up the hills to eat the lush grass. The bowl of snow which we walked into, would be transformed into rich pasture by June and they’d probably be making cheese in some of the buildings.

We sat and had a drink of water (and wished we'd brought a picnic) in le Monal and it was wonderfully warm and sunny on the south wall of a barn. The route to le monal is part of an off-piste run and there were a handful of skiers coming down, including one man being pulled along at some pace by a huge dog.

The walk down into St Foy was a little quicker and Sam went back to the car to drive round into the ski area, while Margaret, Lucy and I walked down the side of the ski run into the village. There's a nice cafe at the bottom and it was lovely sitting on the terrace enjoying the sun.

We thought we might come back to St Foy and perhaps get a day pass to ski there. It's a very English place, small and without the nightclub madness of the bigger resorts which cater for young people. I'd recommend snowshoeing and it would be hard to imagine a better first experience than the route we did.

A hard life in Sammy Ski School

First day of our ski holiday, so what's the best thing to do? Go skiing of course, which is exactly what we did.

I have reached a certain level of competency skiing which means I can get around most blues without too much difficulty (or so I thought) and so there's no necessity for ski school. I made the mistake of giving Ecole du Ski de France the cold shoulder and signing up for Sammy Ski School instead.

Sammy Ski School is run by an Englishman spending a few months in France for the 2014 season and it's a school of hard knocks. We started up the Cachette lift from Arc 1600 and skied down Belvedere and Arpette back to 1600 then up again and down Belvedere to Arc 1800, where we picked up the Trans Arc cable car to mid point and skied down Plan Bois to Derby which took us up to 2331m.

Ecole du Ski de Sam (or ESF) knows which runs sort out those pupils who lie about their standard. The statement: "yes, I'm comfortable on blues"  would be tried and tested on Renard - a long blue with many steep sections and few level-ish parts to recover your tired thighs. Renard proved I was more "les vert" than "les blue" and nowhere near "les rouge".

At the bottom, I was pooped, so we skied down Maitez back to 1800 then up the Chantelle lift and down Gollet back to Arc 1600. Gollet is a long slow ski road through trees that's so gentle you can hardly gain any speed. Then, just as you're feeling this ski lark is pretty easy, there's a short steep bit where they obviously ran out of gradient.

Oh dear, my legs were shot and I was not skiing well. Being a lazy bum with those squats during the past month was coming back to haunt me.

It had been (for me) a good day's skiing. More distance than I'd done with ESF, but there were some basics to sort out. Body position is the main issue (I tend to lean back), but there other issues. At the moment I feel as if I'm looking like a cross between a zombie and Frankenstein's monster.

The recovery medicine from (for me) a hard day's skiing.

What is it with sat-navs?

I have a love/hate relationship with my sat-nav; they are tremendously useful devices, but they are also massively frustrating.

I had a couple of run-ins with mine on the drive down to Bourg-Saint-Maurice to stay with Lucy and Sam.

We had to make a really early start (up at 2am and leave at 3am) to catch a 6.30am ferry from Dover to Calais, so I wasn't in the best of humours at that time of day. First problem was the M11, which signs on the A1 said was closed, so I had to choose an alternative route. I guess I could have stopped and reprogrammed the sat-nav, but I knew the next fastest route would be to carry on down the A1 and pick up the M25 at South Mimms.

I knew that, but the old sat-nav kept nagging me to turn off, do a U-turn, get myself towards the M11. I can't blame it for that, but we were past Biggleswade before the stupid thing gave up and got on the right track.

It was a miserable journey, raining steadily almost all the way. It has been a very wet January (the wettest on record in some parts of the UK). We got to the ferry port just before 6am and so were in plenty of time. Our ferry was also late due to the poor weather, so we need not have hurried quite so much.

I knew that me and the sat-nav would have a disagreement when we got into France. It is determined to take us to Bourg-Saint-Maurice via the Jura towards Geneva and then down into Annecy. That's a really long dog leg on the map and the roads are much slower.

Perversely, on the way back, the sat-nav takes you a different route (the route I'd like to go) which is via the Lyon ring round. That way, the journey takes eight-and-a-half hours compared to 10 hours via the Jura and Annecy. Basically, you can set the cruise control at 80mph as you leave Calais and switch it off at Chambery. I exaggerate, of course, but it is essentially two fast autoroutes to Lyon and then a fast run to Chambery, decent road to Albertville followed by mountain roads to Moutiers and Bourg. It's really easy and that's the way the sat-nav likes to come back.

So why, does it always want to go almost to the Swiss border and add hours to your outward journey? This time I was ready for it. As we got to Dijon, it said turn off; I kept going and it recalculated. No giving up, it wanted me off at the next exit with an even slower route nationale way back towards Geneva.

This man was not for turning, but it kept wanting me to turn for another couple of exits (perhaps 30 miles closer to Lyon). Then, all of a sudden, it saw the light, knocked 50 miles off the target and took me round the Lyon ring round.

We made really good time and got to Sam and Lucy's chalet at about 6pm. It was not quite dark and we'd also dodged some forecast snow, so a good run.

Getting used to retirement

My first week at home just felt weird; it was as if I was on holiday, but not doing any holiday things. I still had it in my head that I’d be going back to work.

Now I have established a routine of sorts, one that will need some tweaks, but at least I don’t feel like a truant. The biggest problem I have is getting time to read and write. I thought there would be lots of time to do all kinds of things, but there isn’t – not unless you make time for them. I’m not watching daytime TV (or much TV at all) and I’m not lying in bed late, the alarm is no longer set for 5am, but I’m normally up by 6.30am or 7am.

What has been nice is the opportunity to spend more time with Margaret (my wife, for clarity). There was some concern that we would be under each other’s feet and on each other’s nerves. That hasn’t been the case, although we both need to sort out some “me time” in our diaries.

So what have I been doing since December 27? I love lists, so here’s a quick list.

Baking bread: my low-salt, low-sugar, high-fibre diet means that as much of what I eat as possible has to be home made. I’m not a health nut, but I don’t want six spoonfuls of sugar in my morning yoghurt, a spoonful in every slice of bread ... you get the idea. So I’m making my own bread and it’s been working out really well. I’ve made bread before, but now do two or three small loaves per week and I have it down to a fine art. It takes around 20 minutes preparation time and about two hours for the bread to rise.

Cleaning: It was fair that we should share the housework chores, so we have a rota and specific jobs for me. My jobs are to clean the bathroom and downstairs loo, and to mop the floors in the kitchen (tiles) and lounge/front room (wood). We do that Monday, Wednesday and Friday and it takes a couple of hours.

Tree pruning: I’d offered to prune my sister’s fruit trees, lop some branches off her sycamore and also cut down her buddleia, which has got rather out of control. I did the buddleia and Maggie’s trees and cut the wood up for her to burn in her fire, but as we were getting to the end of the job, Margaret said she could smell something burning – was the chainsaw OK. I thought it might have been sawdust in the cogs, but we’d finished anyway, so I put the machine away.

Next day, we started to prune the hornbeam at the bottom of our garden. There were a couple of large branches which were taking light away from the bottom decking, Maggie’s fruit trees and our blackcurrants. I got one branch down, but part-way through the chainsaw was enveloped in blue smoke and stopped mid-cut. It’s an electric chainsaw and I thought I’d had it less than two years so it might still be under guarantee, so put it in the car and went to Peterborough Grass Machinery in Ivatt Way where we’d bought it from.

I went into service reception to find the lad on the desk engaged with a game on his mobile. He was clearly at a crucial part because he avoided eye contact until I was standing right in front of him and even then it took a “good afternoon” to get his attention. I told him my problem; he said he didn’t know what to do, so he scuttled off into the back to bring the manager. It’s good there are still companies giving jobs to hopeless cases like him; with regular bollockings and steady guidance, he’ll be a useful employee in a few years.

PGM said they’d check to see when I bought it and if it was still under guarantee. They also said they’d talk to the manufacturer and call me in two weeks. Two weeks and one day later, I called them to see how things were going and they’d clearly forgotten. The manager said he’d call me back in 10 minutes, which he did (to my surprise). I’d bought the chainsaw two years and four months ago and it was out of warranty. It wasn’t worth repairing, but he’d spoken to the manufacturers and they said they’d supply a new one at cost price - £78.

I’d looked on the internet and you could buy a petrol chainsaw for £85, which might have seemed a better bet, but the problem is that I use a chainsaw so rarely that a petrol one is a faff to store. You’d have to drain it each time to stop the carb getting gummed up and they generally take an age to get started when they’re run just a couple of times a year. Electric ones can just be cleaned and stored and because I use mine only around the garden, I’m not worried about power supply. Anyway, I said go ahead and the new one will be ready in two weeks (everything seems to take two weeks at PGM).

In the meantime, I’d recruited Chris Coakley and his new petrol chainsaw to finish pruning the hornbeam. He’d got his chainsaw from Argos for £100 and it was a Qualcast (made in China, of course). We unpacked it, added oil, petrol and it fired up pretty quickly. After a bit of a puzzle sorting out the chain adjustment, we got the job done very quickly. Chris took the bigger logs for his woodburner and I kept the rest to use around the garden and in the chiminea next year. Hornbeam is good hard wood and it should burn well.

Fix hole in hedge: The hedge has become choked with ivy and starved of light under the acer brilliantissima, some hawthorn had died and some elderberry grown in its place so that a hole had formed. Last year, when I was cutting the hedge, I pulled out some dead wood and ivy, so the gap was now very obvious. I decided I’d try to fill the gap by stretching hawthorn and beech strands across from adjacent plants, also plug holes with pyracantha from the bottom. I planned to use hornbeam branches from my tree pruning to form a frame and temporary fence (to discourage Holly from  nipping into the field).

The pyracantha was planted years ago at the bottom and it has survived conifer felling and summerhouse building as well as poor light from the summerhouse and laurel shading it. I thought if anything can grow here it’s this stuff, so I’ve dug the remainder out from the bottom and managed to get about seven decent plants. Pyracantha spreads very easily by throwing out roots and then shooting up as a new stem, so it’s very easy to divide and very difficult to kill.

I think that might do the trick and, in the summer, I’ll remove a couple of branches from the acer to give the hedge a little more light.

Car problems: We’re off skiing in France soon and I’ve been a little concerned about the car. It’s not been running right and Andy Bunyan had it before Christmas where his diagnosis said problems with glow-plugs and particulate filter. He did the glowplugs, but it was still stalling when cold and not picking up smoothly all the time. So last week Andy had it back, cleaned the particulate filter (which he thought was causing the problem), but it was still not right. He then took it to a centre in Peterborough, which has more advanced test equipment and that showed faults with the throttle body sensor and mass air sensor (there are too many sensors on modern cars). It seems to be running better, but not right; there are still flat spots and issues when you want it to pick up from a constant or trailing throttle.

Anyway, Andy was hoping to get a new mass air sensor and fit it before we left, but it wasn't delivered in time on Monday, so I'll leave it until we get back. Fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong in France.

Bike stuff: Tom is thinking about writing a blog on motorcycle racing and I may contribute a regular column to that. It would be quite nice to be writing something to a deadline once more.

TV: we are not watching a great deal of TV. We're probably watching less now than when I was at work (well, no more). I have knocked off a couple of things that have been sitting on the Sky+ box for some time and last week, we spent all of Friday evening watching a series called Family Tree, which I'd recorded months ago. It was a mockumentary, the premise being that a man had been left a chest by his great aunt and it contained all kinds of family relics.

He got interested and that prompted him to find out about his family. So it was a comedy, along the lines of Best in Show, and starred Chris O'Dowd (an Irish comedian) and Nina Conti, who essentially played herself - a mixed-up woman walking round with a monkey puppet on her arm.

We watched eight half-hour episodes and it was really good, not hilarious, but with a nice steady story and some gentle humour. It had a sort of happy ending, but was clearly left at a stage where a second series would have been the obvious thing.

I was checking on the internet this morning to see if there was any news about Series Two and I found a story saying HBO had decided not to recommission it. What a shame.

Anton du Beke: On Saturday evening, we went to see the ballroom dancer Anton du Beke at the Barbican, London. Pauline and Chris came along too.

I’ve never really watched dance (except ballet, but never really close up) and it was staggering how light on their feet and athletic they were. When du Beke came on for his first piece, he seemed to skim the floor and even leaps and other moves which you’d think required a firm take-off or landing were accomplished without impact.

He did a lovely slow foxtrot, a lightning-fast quickstep and a great tango at a fast tempo to Mein Herr from Cabaret. I loved the way that the two dancers used the leverage of their partner’s body to gain momentum for a lift or fast twist. At the interval, I couldn’t believe the first half had gone so quickly.

Stamford: when Davina and Laura came to stay for Straw Bear, we went to Stamford on the Sunday and discovered a really nice cheese shop in St Mary Street called Stamford Cheese Cellar. Laura did her usual trick of breezing in and immediately becoming best friends with the lady behind the counter (Suzy) who was convinced she’d met Laura before.

Anyway, we had decided to use the shop for cheese from time to time and we went along on Sunday to choose some to take to France. We bought Cote Hill Blue, Stichelton and Wodehill Blue. We also bought some Northamptonshire honey and a relish and a chutney from Castle Bytham just north of Stamford. Suzy is such a good salesman that she also got us to buy Peter’s Yard crispbread, baked to an old Swedish recipe in Scotland. This will all be enjoyed in the cheese capital of the world – France!

Great Garden Birdwatch 2014

Greater Spotted Woodpecker (birdfinders.co.uk)

Another year, another Great Garden Birdwatch, organised by the RSPB. The idea of this is that it is an exercise in mass phenology and by thousands of people counting bird species in their gardens each year, it builds up a picture of what’s happening across time and across the UK.

The birdwatch surveys have illustrated the decline in songbirds and starlings and also threats to once-common birds such as house sparrows, which have reduced dramatically in number in the past decade.

I did my survey yesterday. It was a miserable wet morning, but the birds were very active and I saw 35 birds compared with 23 last year. The idea is that you count the maximum number of each species that are in your garden at any one time within the hour being monitored.

One bird, which we spotted last year, but was absent this time, was a tree creeper. Last year, it was a regular visitor on the conifers, but we haven’t seen it since spring. However, there were some new appearances – a greater spotted woodpecker, which has been a regular visitor to the garden to feed on peanuts – and a couple of goldfinches. The woodpecker  arrived after 15 minutes and spent a good five minutes pecking away before flying up into my sister’s pear tree where he clung on pecking in the ivy, obviously after dessert.

The goldfinches are the most colourful of garden birds and seem to love the winter mix that I’m buying from the pet shop in Whittlesey.

So these are the birds (and numbers) I saw this year. Last year’s figures are in brackets:

Greater Spotted Woodpecker 1 (0)

Blue Tit 4 (2)

Great Tit 3 (2)

Collared Dove 2 (1)

Blackbird 5 (3)

House Sparrow 8 (6)

Robin 1 (2)

Chaffinch 4 (4)

Greenfinch 5 (2)

Goldfinch 2 (0)

Tree Creeper 0 (1)

By the way, some of the house sparrows may be dunnocks or hedge sparrows. I struggle to tell the difference, except in the house sparrow males where their head markings are distinctive.

Books read during 2013

I’ve read 12 books in 2013 – all of them on my Kindle. I started the year with a plain, ordinary Kindle; then upgraded to a Kindle Fire (which my wife Margaret liked so much that I gave it to her) and I upgraded again to a Kindle Fire HD. This is such a good-value tablet and you can also use it to watch TV and Skype (as it has a forward-facing camera).

Kindle is a really good way to read books, but now that I have retired and my reading time will not be on a commuter train, I’ll have a bit more space and won’t have to carry the book around London with me, so I’ll be able to read some of those heavier, bigger books that have been sitting on my shelf for some time, but I’ll still read more on my Kindle.

Osman’s Dream by Caroline Finkel

I was reading this as we entered 2013 and I’d been trawling away at it for weeks. It was hard going. I like my history and a lot of the books I’ve read recently have been academic, but easy reading. I found Finkel a real struggle, but the subject was interesting (although it would have been more interesting if Tom Holland had written it).

I’ve read a few books concerning wars with the Ottomans and my view of them has been pretty much the same as Christian Europe – they were the enemy at the gate, the destroyer of Byzantium, invader, enslaver and alien. After looking at the Ottomans from the opposite trenches of history, I thought I should cross no-man’s land and spend some time revising my perspective.

The book taught me a great deal, although I really needed to view some maps to understand the geography better and here’s a case where the Kindle’s inability to render maps in a good format has meant that I found it much more difficult to follow what’s happening or understand the scale of achievements. The book is long and it’s rather heavy going, not helped by names being unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce, so the temptation is to bleep over them. I would have liked more summary and analysis of periods and themes, but the book plods on chronologically, leaving you to summarise yourself.

It’s fascinating how the Ottomans were quick to harness the cutting-edge technology of warfare - particularly cannon and crack troops (the janissaries), but failed to maintain that technological advantage. In particular, they failed to build a dominant naval force, preferring to franchise that role to a bunch of able, but violent pirates. They came unstuck at Lepanto when floating Venetian gun platforms devastated their rowed galleys, but didn’t learn the lesson.

Their land advantage lasted longer than it should have done mainly due to the divisions and rivalries among their enemies, with Christian kings happy to use the Ottomans to defeat their Christian rivals. When the tide did turn and Ottoman rulers tried to reform the military, they were blocked by vested interests. It didn’t take much to prompt a janissary revolt and as the corps developed from a force comprising Christians converted to Islam to a force where converts were not allowed, which allowed the janissaries to use religious excuses for opposing reform.

The empire’s economic structure meant it was almost always bankrupt, especially when they ran out of rich neighbours to conquer. What is interesting is that many Christians (especially those at the bottom of the heap) were often happier to live under an Islamic absolute ruler than they were as virtual serfs under a Christian regime.

The British have fought wars with most countries in the world, but we rarely came into conflict with the Ottomans; indeed – they were seen as a useful power to block the rise of the Russian empire. Finkel is clearly pro-Ottoman, which isn’t a bad thing, but I did find it uncomfortable that she didn’t seem to address the issues of slavery or acts which could be viewed as war crimes. The Ottoman empire traded in slaves for too long after western European countries – led by Britain – had outlawed the practice, but no judgment is made on this.

I would have liked to have read some analysis and conclusion on the cruelty of the Ottoman wars, especially in Greece and the Balkans, where a legacy of intense hatred remains to this day. The creation of modern Turkey also saw ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. Who knows, maybe millions were killed, but Finkel virtually dismisses this as unproven in scale. It seemed to me as if, being resident in Turkey, she had chosen not to enter this no-go area. If that’s the case, she was the wrong person to write the book.

Justin Marozzi

South from Barbary – Justin Marozzi

I’ve read Justin Marozzi on Heroditus (The Man Who Invented History) and on Tamurlaine (Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World) and he combines two of my favourite genres – history and travel writing. Marozzi's USP is that he walks the land that his historical figures walked and looks at what remains of their legacy. It's a neat trick.

In this book, Marozzi attempts to recreate journeys of camel trains from the interior to the north African coast and he attempts it by camel, even though he has never ridden or led a camel before.

The journey is across Gadaffi's Libya, which is a pretty tricky journey, but he passes deep into the interior and visits cities, towns and oases that are ancient, but much changed in modern Libya. Gadaffi's attempts to modernise have destroyed much and, though a process of dogma and corruption, have left people considerably worse off. Much of it is a sad commentary on political failure and makes you think that we'd be better off without government and rulers.

Marozzi gets his camels and the difficulties he has with them and worries about their welfare, also his developing love for them, is a key part of the book. He also meets some amazing guides and honest, open people who restore your faith in humanity and perhaps give hope that this country will one day be a happy and safe place to live in.

Of course, being an Englishman, he also befriends and feeds a dog, which is called Tuna, and this accompanies him on part of his journey before mysteriously disappearing in one of the larger towns. We'd like to think the dog found a good home, but more likely it was shot.

This is more of a travel book than a history lesson, but Marozzi does cover the history of this part of the world through Carthaginian, Roman, Arab and European colonization. The caravan routes he was attempting to travel were principally used to bring captured slaves from the interior of Africa to the Mediterranean ports to be traded in the Ottoman empire. Their journey would have been on foot, not riding camels, and it would have been incredibly harsh and cruel.

I really enjoyed the book, looking forward to his next one.

House of Earth – Woody Guthrie

I’ve listened to many Woody Guthrie songs, he’s a great writer – but not of novels.

This book, about poor farmers trying to make it against the power and vested interest of banks and the landowners, goes nowhere very slowly. It has one of the more embarrassing and badly written sex scenes that I’ve ever read, which is also right at the beginning of the book and kind of colours your view of the whole work.

Poor man against the big machine: Guthrie is on the side of the poor man, but he’s dogged by his own dogma and we’re used to a more balanced and structured argument these days. If you want downtrodden farmers struggling to survive read Steinbeck, who is a better writer by far.

This is an awful book and if it hadn’t been written by Woody Guthrie it would never have seen the light of day.

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism – Ha-Joon Chang

Is capitalism the best way to run the world? Ha-Joon thinks it is, but he has some reservations about it as well, which are aired in this book. He writes very engagingly (unexpected for an economist) and this list-type format, although perhaps laboured at times, does a good job in keeping the subject interesting to non-experts and also adds a conspiratorial tone. Why he has chosen 23 and not a nice round number like 25 is beyond me – couldn’t he have found another two?

For someone who doesn’t think about capitalism a great deal (I just get on with it), there was plenty to start thinking about. His views on protectionism in trade had some interesting historical perspectives – would the US have gained the industrial strength it has if it had not been able to protect its infant industries in a way that’s denied to many developing countries today?

Are shareholders the best people to say how a company is run? There was an interesting perspective on the short-term approach to investments demanded by many shareholders and the difficulties this presents to companies trying to take a more strategic long-term view.

Some of this was serious economics, some more popularist, such as his challenge of the importance of the internet (often feted as the most important invention of the 20th Century). Ha-Joon suggests the washing machine has had more impact (and labour-saving kitchen devices in general) because it has freed women from domestic drudgery and allowed them to take their economic place in the workforce and economy. The telegraph was a more substantial leap as it shaved weeks off communication, while the internet bettered it only by half an hour or so.

This book won’t foment a revolution, but it will give you pause for thought on some subjects where you may think your opinions are already formed and others where you just haven’t considered the issues.

Winter is coming - Sean Bean in Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones – George RR Martin

A Clash of Kings – George RR Martin

A Storm of Swords – George RR Martin

A Feast for Crows– George RR Martin

A Dance with Dragons – George RR Martin

You’ll see that I’ve had a bit of a blitz on the works of George RR Martin, in particular his seven-part series (still two unwritten) called A Song of Ice and Fire.

Max recommended this to me some time ago and Lucy has also read all the books. I decided to read them after watching some of the televised series at Sam’s and recording the third series from Sky. Some of these books are in two parts, so I’ve invested a lot of time in George RR Martin this year, much to the scorn of Tom, who feels that I could have better spent that time reading a ‘decent’ writer.

I don’t think that Martin is a bad writer, but I know what Tom means. These books have the echoes of many other writers’ ideas, from Anne McCaffrey’s Drangonsong books, through Tolkien and even Bernard Cornwell.

If not wholly original in some of the themes, the story is original in its scale; and even if the writing is popularist (lots of sex and violence), you have to admire Martin’s narrative skills.

I liked the idea of telling the story in stitched sequences experienced by the various characters, so each chapter heading is a character’s name and covers a section of the story as it affects them.

I also liked the fact that Martin is not at all afraid to kill off characters – even his principal characters. He does it consistently; even to those people who you have started to believe will be the ultimate hero/saviour. Sometimes I’m annoyed that he’s killed people who are my favourites, but I have to admire his bravery.

I particularly like two of his characters – the dwarf Tyrion Lannister and also Ayra Stark. Both of these have developed into fascinating subjects, especially Ayra. So I enjoyed my Martin books, but the problem is that there are still two to go and the story has been left hanging in several areas. I suspect that Martin has taken a big fat cheque from HBO for the TV rights and he’s not going to release any more books until the TV series has caught up. That’s likely to be a couple of years; also, I wonder how much editorial control Martin now has (or wants). Has the ending he envisaged been influenced by television money? Certainly some of the events in the TV series are quite different (or a degree different) from the book.

I wanted Jon Snow to be the hero, I thought Brandon might gain powers over the Others, I’ve warmed towards Jamie Lannister, but it’s not looking good for any of them right now and (frankly) anyone knows dragons are not to be trusted.

The Uses of Literacy – Richard Hoggart

Hard for me to know what to make of this uniformly lauded work by Hoggart, an academic from a working class background.

He spends the first half of the book defining and describing the working class. We all recognise the term today, but no-one would recognise the people he classifies as ‘working’.

Nowadays, lots of people say “I’m working class” because they don’t consider themselves rich and they also work for a living. In the 21st century, class is a bit more complicated than that. I recognise people Hoggart defines as working class from my childhood and I know people like that don’t exist any longer.

I found myself increasingly annoyed at the author for the detached and (I felt) patronising way he looked at the working class – almost as if he was studying a lower life form. He managed to do that, but also add a dollop of nostalgia, which made his attitude much worse. He was also focused entirely on the industrial north of England as if the south or the countryside didn’t have a working class at all. Maybe it didn’t for all Hoggart knew, but as an academic talking about Britain, he ought to have ventured to do a little research outside his own sphere of knowledge (anecdotal) and understanding.

The second half of his book looks at popular culture and here the academic Hoggart is damning and belittling. If I want to read George RR Martin (and watch Game of Thrones on TV), I bloody well will! There was no Game of Thrones when Hoggart wrote this, but he zeroes in on popular culture - songs and literature - and damns its qualities.

Personally, I think it’s better that people read trash than read nothing. I can’t start to think what Hoggart would have made of 500 TV channels showing Come Dine With Me, I’m a Celebrity and Made in Essex; or people immersed in video games stealing cars, killing people and having sex (all virtually, of course).

Hoggart thought it would be bad, but he didn’t realise the half of it. And, at the end of the day, who is Hoggart to tell people what they should read or judge what they consume? This book has been overtaken by events and today, it is as outdated as a 1950s atlas of the world.

Cricket – a Modern Anthology – Jonathan Agnew

Cricket is a unique game. Tactically, it's as complex as chess and it's also a team game which depends upon a linked series of individual skills. Also, it stands out among sports as having a requirement of fair play, of playing the game not only to the rules but also in the right spirit. That's not always interpreted properly these days - especially in the professional game - which is a great shame, but it remains a key tenet of cricket.

If you've watched cricket and other sports over a period of time, you understand that cricket produces more drama and great stories than any other sport (with the possible exception of motorcycle racing), so it's no surprise that it also attracts some great writing and reporting.

This book, compiled by BBC Test Match Special commentator (and former England and Leicestershire fast bowler) Jonathan Agnew (Aggers), contains some of the best writing and some of the most dramatic moments in the game worldwide.

Unless you're a cricket fan, this book will be pretty grim reading, but if you do enjoy the game or have more than a passing interest, then it's full of great memories, moments and anecdotes.

Fat Chance, The Bitter Truth About Sugar – Dr Robert Lustig

This book is changing, or at least I hope it's changing my life. It has certainly given me a fresh perspective on what I am eating.

I bought the book after reading a New York Times article about the health dangers of sugar, which quoted heavily from works by Lustig.

The book is about obesity and its causes and Lustig has little doubt that sugar (excess sugar consumption) is to blame.

As I was reading the book, I started to look more closely at the amount of sugar in foods. It was staggering. The pro-biotic health yogurt drink I had each morning actually contained 11g of sugar, the same as you'd find in a Twirl chocolate bar. I was stunned, I don't take sugar in my tea, why would I want it in my yogurt?

The food industry adds sugar to everything, it's impossible to avoid and it's in the most unlikely foods (even savoury foods). I'm trying to limit my sugar intake to 30g per day (half of what the government recommended allowance is for men) and the only way to achieve that is to prepare your own food.

So my retirement diet now includes a limit on sugar as well as a calorie count and also a target of 25g of fibre per day. I also aim to have four alcohol-free days per week, but that's proving rather more difficult than the sugar and the fibre!

Frosty walk

I took Holly for a morning walk at about 8am, while the frost was on the grass and the sun was just coming up. As I walked across the top field in Thorney, the sun and the frost showed the outline of the Roman Road to perfection.