Family antics in the snow

The last time I went skiing with my parents was sometime in the early 90s. My mother is now 70 and my father a little younger.  My mother reckons she has five years of skiing left in her.  I told my Dad that in five years time, we would have to carry a chair with us so we could have a seat while we waited for her to come down the slope.  

As my mother saw an elderly man leading a group of other similarly aged skiers she said she too would like to lead such a group and be in a position of confident leadership. I jested that her leadership would be along the lines of “Everyone, please be careful as the weather is very bad - we are going to wait at the bottom of the slope until it stops snowing!” 

As my father ages, his bladder must be taking its toll and frequent stops need to be made along with disappearances into the trees.  I was on a lift ahead of my parents and all of a sudden I heard a commotion behind me and my mother screeching about something.  Nature apparently had called, and as the urgency increased my father had drawn his knees in together and the tips of his skis got caught in the snow below and as they dug deeper with the forward movement of the lift, they were pulling him off the lift and my mother was desperately trying to hang on to him so that he wouldn’t fall off.   Luckily I did not have to go digging to look for them.  

Rusutsu is a fabulous ski resort in Hokkaido, the northern island of the Japanese archipelago.  It can accommodate up to 3,500 people and even at its highest occupancy, the service delivery is impeccable.  The staff are polite, courteous, helpful and thorough in their attention to detail.  They are dressed immaculately in their uniforms and are always one step ahead in thinking about how to serve the customer in a way that is of least inconvenience to them and of utmost assistance.  There is not one piece of rubbish anywhere....until the other day.... when I noticed a partially eaten bread roll in its plastic packaging sitting on the side table in the lift foyer of our floor.  

An hour later, it was still there as my mother and I were on our way to the onsen (hot spring baths) and it was still there as my parents and I returned later from our evening meal.  There was no garbage bin in the area.  My mother commented on how inconsiderate it was that some guest had left it there.  I said we should take it back to our room and put it in the garbage.  My father said not to touch it because it might be a bomb.  

After we returned to our room, my father said his civic duty was prompting him to go and dispose of the bread roll so he went back out again.  When he returned, I asked him where he had put it.  He said he had gotten rid of it without giving any specifics so I asked him again what exactly he had done with the roll.  He said he had put it in the elevator and had sent it down to the ground floor because he was sure one of the staff would see it and throw it away!  I was aghast.  I told him housekeeping staff would have long gone - it was now 10 pm and the bread roll would be going up and down the lift until the morning.  

My parents are highly intelligent, capable and respectable people but sometimes I do wonder....

The Land of the Rising Sun

Two and a half years since my last visit and two years today since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, I am conscious of a renewed love for my birthplace and a respect and admiration for the spirit of the Japanese people.  

Granted, Tokyo is booming even though Japan is in a recession and struggling with 15 years of deflation.  However, the spirit of possibility is palpable even though the country has suffered a major disaster that has literally left many towns barren and stripped of life.  

As the two year anniversary approaches, NHK, the national television station, has been broadcasting for days now, programs portraying both the hope and despair of people struggling to rebuild a life in northern Japan.  One grandmother has been running an ‘ekiben’ (boxed lunches sold at train stations) business and has been well known for a delicious meal of sea urchin on rice, a local delicacy in the seas off northern Japan.  After the disaster, she lost contact with the fishermen who supplied her with the urchin, and was unable to continue her business.  

She was being interviewed on television saying that it was letters from her supporters who had tasted her lunch boxes that encouraged her to rebuild her business.  Japan has a tradition of rural train stations selling boxed lunches made of local produce and tourists travel from one end of the country specifically to enjoy a train trip and a delicious lunch.  

One might wonder why a story of an old woman makes it onto national TV but there are countless stories like these both uplifting and sad that appear to be creating a fabric of resilience and a sense of community.  A police officer who used to be the chief at one of the police stations near Fukushima regularly makes trips into the contaminated areas which are now off limits to the public and only accessible by police to take photographs of the townscape.  He said it started when he was talking to people who two years on, were still living in evacuation centres who wanted to see what their homes looked like.  He told them he would go and take a photograph and bring it back to show them.  Now he invites requests and visits areas that garner the most interest and takes photos of schools, cherry blossom lined avenues, houses, town squares so that people can stay in touch with their home towns.  

After the disaster, American political philosopher and Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, held a forum inviting 5000 people who had directly experienced the impact of the disaster.  He presented in English which was simultaneously translated so that the audience who had ear pieces could listen to his presentation in Japanese.  The audience commentary was also translated likewise so that he could understand what they were saying.  He facilitated a seamless discussion with these 1000 participants on the ethics and moral dilemmas that residents, emergency services, local services and others had been faced at the time of the disaster in negotiating survival as well as the challenges they currently faced in rebuilding their communities and what learnings they could take from their experiences.  The people in the audience were everyday people, and many of them young - not those in authority or positions of expertise or influence.  Yet, they approached this discussion with the utmost earnestness and seriousness.  They bravely put forth their opinions and feelings, respecting opposing views and ideas from other participants.  Japan has been traditionally known to be a consensus based society where decisions are slow because a consensus needs to be reached before action can be taken.  This has been one of the factors that have hampered the rebuild process of many of these communities affected by the disaster.  Professor Sandel noted in his closing comments how touched he had been by the audience who had come to a point where they posited that perhaps consensus was not what was needed, and was in fact impossible, but what was needed was for decisions to be made after opportunities had been created for people’s voices to be heard and where divergent opinions could be safely expressed and held by the community.  

Incidentally, it is written in Japan’s constitution that she never wage war against another country.  Now what other nation in the world has peace as a mandate?

The Virgin

When I was walking the Camino, I was asked on many occasions if I had ever gone to Lourdes.  And when I would say no, I would invariably be told "you must go and bathe in the waters...the energy is so strong".  So of course I was curious.  What energy??

Lourdes is one stop from Tarbes so I decided on a day trip to make the most of my sojourn in Maubourguet.  In hindsight I could have stayed overnight.

The bathing facilities or 'les piscines' as they were called were open twice a day and bathers were requested to line up an hour before opening.  I had been warned that there would be crowds so I decided to opt for the afternoon session and arrive a few hours before.  Officially known as Sanctuaires Notre Dame de Lourdes, it is a big complex nestled amongst the green valleys of the village of Lourdes just north of the Pyrénées National Park.  To cater for the numbers of pilgrims, the train station was significant compared to the size of the village.  There was also a waiting room - full of people in wheelchairs.  On this particular day, it was grey and rather cold and when I got off at the station, it was quiet.  I found the tourist office where I picked up some maps and made my way through the very commercialised area of cheap shops selling Lourdes merchandise.  October was clearly past the peak summer season.  Some of the shops weren't even open.

The sun started to appear and it turned into a crisp but sunny autumn morning.  I was lucky.  The crowds were not there and as I toured the gardens, the cathedral and the grotto, I could feel a certain energy of grace and calmness.  So here already was this energy.....Naturally Lourdes was a visual celebration of the Virgin, and believers came from all over to be cured, healed and blessed.  She was everywhere.

At 1pm , I made my way to the pools to queue up.  There were two entries - one for men and one for women - and rows of pew like benches under cover and next to a low building.  There were no men and perhaps about twenty women who were waiting before me.  Someone came out to hand out papers with information about the pools and a prayer to the Virgin.  As I was sitting on the wooden bench, a voice from the side asked me if I would keep her bag for her while she went to the bathroom.  I turned as I recognised the familiar but now distant Australian accent.  I of course obliged and when she returned asked her the obvious question.  Debra was from Western Australia and was now living in Northern Ireland. This was her third visit to Lourdes.

As the hour approached for the afternoon session, we were asked by the staff, all female volunteers, to pray and sing to the Virgin.  Then in groups of four or five, we were taken inside the building and I have never seen anything like it.  The interior was separated by curtains that formed square cubicles.  Groups of approximately four or five women were taken inside each cubicle and each person was helped by at least one other volunteer to completely strip as the volunteer held a sheet around you to protect your privacy.  In the process I also had to remove my glasses and from then on it was all a bit of a blur. I then waited my turn when I was taken  into the next area which was separated by another curtain and inside there was a narrow marble pool with two steps going down.  There was a statue of Mary on the other end.  The volunteer told me to step down into the pool.  I still had the sheet wrapped around me.  She then asked me to visualise my intentions or prayers and then make the sign of the cross.  Next, she and another woman helped me walk down into the water which was about knee deep and cold.  They told me to walk through the water to the head of the narrow marble coffin like space, kiss the statue and then they pulled me back quite forcibly, whisking the sheet away as they put me into the water so that all of me apart from my head was immersed.  It was very quick.  They then helped me up, wrapped me up again and I went back to the other side of the curtain and got dressed.  It was an experience like no other.  Having said that I am not so sure of the energy of the water.  It was so quick that I barely had time to feel it.

I am not a Catholic so Lourdes does not have the significance that it might have to a believer but I have no doubt that there is something special about the place.  The volunteer helpers were beautiful people.  They embodied such a quite, gentle, compasssionate grace.  And I did feel different after my cold bath.  It was subtle as if the cobwebs inside of me had been washed away and the world appeared to sparkle.  Perhaps one could argue that it was a fabrication of my mind wishing for something to be different or it was the contrast in the light after stepping outside again.  Somehow I don't think so.

The Church is probably one of the biggest group of 'con' men gathered together but they have been clever and lucky in their assets.  Places of worship, such as Chartres, Santiago de Compostela and Rosslyn Chapel, were often built on sacred ground siezed from pagan believers, ground that over time was known to those who were in touch with the rhythms and cycles of nature to hold  a special 'energy', ancient sites of divination .......The Camino is another  jackpot when you think of the number of people that walk these routes everyday from Spain and beyond to reach Santiago.  I was told at the Pilgrim Office in St Jean Pied de Port that over 240 people set off each day from there.  The numbers have probably increased in the last year, due to the film , The Way.  Interestingly, Fiona McLaren in Da Vinci's Last Commission suggests that it wasn't actually Santiago that the original pilgrims had been heading for.  They were going via Santiago to Iona in Scotland, an ancient Druid and later Culdee place of worship.  The Church not wanting to be associated with pagan beliefs cleverly used the original pilgrimage route but directed its pilgrims  to Santiago.  Perhaps Sant Iago isn't even buried there....

Returning to Lourdes, whatever miracles St Bernadette might have manifested, people continue to pay it homage.  It is a sanctuary and I was fortunate to be there on a quiet day so I could really feel the energy of the place.

After emerging from the pools, Debra suggested we have a cup of tea and as we were on our way to the gawdy tourist shops and cafes, she told me about a statue she had bought the last time she was here. It was a small hand carved wooden representation of the Virgin, as I was to later discover.  Out of curiosity although with no desire to buy anything from these cheap shops, I asked her to point it out to me if she saw it.  I was interested in seeing if there was any craftmanship in the work or whether it was along the lines of most of what was on display.

She took me straight to the shop she had bought it from and it was full of statues.  In her effervescent way, Debra told the shop keeper that she had brought me to see the same Mary she had purchased three months earlier.  I'm not even sure if the woman remembered Debra.

Mary came in many sizes and she was rather expensive.  The woman in the shop took them all out of the cabinet to show me.  I really had no desire to buy any but I felt obliged to look at them seeing they had all come out of the glass case.  I could see why Debra had fallen in love with her statue.  It was very finely carved in a light beech coloured wood.  It was as long as my hand and about half the width.  Mary wore a crown and had roses at her feet.  In spite of my earlier thoughts on the tackiness of the Lourdes merchandise, this statue was different.  And although I really didn't want to spend 50 euros on a carving, I could feel her calling me....  What was this place??

I thanked the shopkeeper and told Debra we could go and have our cup of tea now.  Mary was very nice but I would leave her in her case.  We walked across the road to have a tea and a pastry.  I was aware of the time as I had a train to catch back to Tarbes just after 4pm.  Debra suggested I stay with her for the night.  Thinking back on that day, I don't know why I didn't.  I really had no reason to return to the bed and breakfast except to book my hire car on the internet for the next day.  Had I stayed I would have also been able to see the Torchlight Marian Procession at 9pm which I had been told was beautiful.

After our cup of tea, I decided to go back to the statue shop just to have one more look at Mary.  And then of course I had to buy her.  With 15 minutes to spare before my train was due to depart, Debra and I walked back towards the station.  I said my good byes and left her at her hotel as I ran to the train station with Mary wrapped in tissue in a small box in my backpack.

The Bed and Breakfast

Maubourguet is a small village and like many small French villages there is a town centre with a some basic shops including the post office, a few pharmacies, banks, some restaurants, a couple of bakeries and other food stores.  The market comes to town every Tuesday.  Madame's house which was also the B&B was within walking distance of the town.  There was an infrequent bus service from Maubourguet to the next biggest town centre of Tarbes which is 30 km away.

After settling in at Madame's - it was so lovely to have my own room and bathroom after all the hostelling throughtout the Camino - my first venture into the town was to visit the pharmacy.  I did my best to explain my itching to the pharmacist, suggesting that perhaps I had fleas or bed bugs or some allergic reaction to the ham.  As far as I could understand, he reassured me that the itching was caused by a seasonal insect. I was dubious about the diagnosis but went home with ointment that was supposed to fix it.

Staying with Madame who understandably was very stressed, having sold her house, turned out to be an unusual experience...In the first few hours of my arrival she had confided in me about her divorce and her children who did not visit her enough.  She told me about how she had come to set up her B&B and how she now wanted to do that somewhere closer to Paris.  I had come prepared to work hard in her B&B, helping to care for her guests and hopefully in the process improve my French.  I had not anticipated being a counsellor...

The first day was actually very pleasant.  She welcomed me to her beautiful home and after we arrived from the station, we sat down to a delicious light lunch in her courtyard garden.  The weather was still balmy and the autumn had not yet fully set in.  As the hours passed, little by little, the expectations I had of my stay with her started to come apart.  I wasn't to take any food or drink into my room, the cheese had to be stored in the pantry fridge and not the one in the kitchen but the butter was to go in the kitchen fridge and not the other, the crumbs had to be emptied out of the toaster after each use, she couldn't afford to feed me lunch so I should buy my own ingredients to make my lunches (as it became apparent, the rest of my meals consisted of reheated frozen food so she could empty her fridge out), I wasn't to come into the main house until late morning (my room had its own entrance)  because she was busy and didn't want to be disturbed.  And the stories continued about her ex-husband and her children who were hurtful and disappointing and who did not want to visit.....

In and amongst Madame's idiosyncrasies, there were moments of fun and delight -  I had swims in the swimming pool that was set in a garden of lavender and cosmos.  We went to the market to buy groceries and the French markets are real produce markets and a way of life.  The French have their own chains of supermarkets which all appear to be thriving and yet the market culture is still strong and one can find them throughout the country.  I helped Madame prepare meals for her final guests.  We made a dish which consisted of a whole leg of lamb placed inside a pain de campagne with vegetables and olives and baked in the oven.  It was like making a stuffed pumpkin but out of bread - we cut a lid off the top, scraped out the bread, and then placed the lamb and the vegetables and tied the whole thing up with some string.  It looked quite spectacular.  The only problem was the whole construction was too big for the oven and the door had to be forced shut.  I also had time to write and reflect on my Camino.  It was a restful time for the first few days until it became evident that I couldn't keep this up for two and a half weeks...

And I had no transport except the limited bus service to Tarbes, 30 km away, the nearest airport was Aéroport de Tarbes Lourdes Pyrénées and even further away....I suppose I could have walked and continued my pilgrimage... but by now, I had all of my luggage with me and not just my pack.

Leaving Santiago

The Bus Trip

One of the highlights of 2011.  A road trip in the south of France that took me to the Cathar castles – Peyreperteuse, Queribus and Montsegur.  But I am way ahead of myself.

After walking 1000km across Spain, my next destination was Maubourguet in the Haute-Pyrénées department in the southwest of France.  I had been invited to spend two weeks with a friend of a friend, who owned a bed and breakfast.  The deal was that I would pay €30 a night for food and board in exchange for a cultural experience helping her look after her guests whilst I practised my French.  Something to look forward to.

I rang Madame from Santiago as I was lunching in one of the beautiful squares with Marco, my Italian friend. 

“Hello Madame, this is Lisa.  How are you?  I’m just ringing to make sure it’s still okay for me to stay with you.  I’m boarding an overnight bus to Irun later this afternoon and should be arriving in Tarbes sometime mid morning. “

“Yes, yes, so you had a good Camino?  I have sold my house.  I am not sure what you can do as I am not taking any more guests.  But come anyway, we will somehow manage.”

As I got off the phone and explained to Marco that Madame had sold her house, I started to wonder whether it had been a good idea to purchase a flight out of Lourdes/Tarbes airport to Copenhagen which was my next destination after the bed and breakfast.  Visiting Marco in Turin might have been a better idea. 

At 4pm I boarded a coach from Santiago bus terminal bound for Irun on the border between France and Spain.  It was a 13 hour ride with no rest stops and no toilet on board. I had bought a sandwich for dinner to eat on the bus which later I would find contained the saltiest ham I had ever tasted. 

After the wonders of the Camino, the bus trip was a bit of an anticlimax.  To this day I don’t know if it was the ham sandwich or some kind of lice or mite in the upholstery of the seats but my face broke out into a massive itchy rash accompanied by more itching on my legs.  I was itchy for the whole trip and I looked as if a giant mosquito had bitten the right side of my face.

I found myself seated next to a man who kept spitting up phlegm into a paperbag.  At one of the bus stops a couple of hours into the trip I asked the bus driver if I could use the toilet.  When I returned the man spitting up phlegm was now sitting in my seat.  These had been preallocated seats but I didn’t bother asking him to move over.  I took the seat in front which was next to a man dressed in a suit who seemed normal enough.  By this time, it was dark outside and the lights in  the bus had been turned off, presumably to allow people to sleep.  It was going to be a long itchy ride. 

The bus eventually was full and I fell asleep only to find myself being woken up because the suit man was rubbing himself against me.  How disgusting!  And as soon as I woke up, he straightened himself out as if nothing had happened.  There were no free seats left, everyone else seemed to be asleep and the bus driver didn’t speak any English as I had discovered on my way to the toilet.

So I fell back asleep only to wake to the same scenario again and again.  The bus ride was turning into a nightmare.  Eventually in the early hours of the morning, the suit man got off.

When we finally pulled into Irun, I had no idea how I was go get to Bayonne to catch the train to Tarbes where Madame was supposed to pick me up.  The internet hadn’t been able to tell me my transport options from Irun to Tarbes and the best I could find was that the two stations were only about a kilometer or two apart on Google Maps.  Perhaps I could walk. 

I found a fellow pilgrim from the Camino – they are hard to miss dressed in their walking gear carrying a pack, as I was.  I asked where he was going and he told me he was going to Bayonne.  Perhaps I could go with him?  We jumped on a train with no ticket and after a few minutes I found myself in France. 

It was the start of the next chapter of my trip.  5am in the morning and the town was just waking. 

I bought my tickets to Tarbes station and with 35 minutes to spare, I went across the road to the only cafe/bar that seemed to be open.   Un cafe crème et croissant, s’il vous-plaît. I asked in my uncertain French.  After being spoilt in Spain paying only a couple of euros for a coffee and toast, any sense of sleepiness I had from the previous night was quickly extinguished as I handed over €6 to the barman.   

I boarded the train and the second class seat on the SCNF was a welcome change to the bus from Santiago.  There were toilets on the train, it was clean and no one was sitting next to me.  Two and a half hours later, the train pulled into Tarbes, one stop after Lourdes. 

I found Madame in a white jeep - a sixty-something year old French woman with a good command of the English language. 

An Escape and a Persian Prince

Without naming names, I had to get out.  The energy was weird, like having one foot in the grave.   As soon as I walked in the door it was evident I could no longer stay there.   I had just gotten off a plane a couple of hours earlier, and it was now past 3pm and I wasn't sure how to get myself out.  I had at least 80kg of stuff - my belongings had mushroomed from 23kg almost a year ago to now two suitcases, an additional bag, a backpack, a laptop bag and a handbag.  Where had it all come from?

I rang my friend and left a message - 'could I possibly stay at your house for the next few days?' I told myself to be patient and wait.  But I couldn't, so I rang my friend's mother and left a message - 'I'm in a bit of strife, could you please call me back?'  Next I was tempted to contact another friend, someone I hardly knew, but stopped myself.

Eventually my friend's mother called me back.  I explained that I needed to move out as quickly as I could.  She said that I could stay with her and that she would collect me if the car was free.  I told her I would hire a car if I had to, but by this time it was after 5pm and hire car companies would be shut.  She rang me back to say that her daughter had taken the car and suggested to get a mini cab.  I assumed a mini cab was a rental vehicle and I was trying to explain that the shop is probably shut but she insisted they were open 24 hours.  Our wires were a little crossed over the scratchy mobile line, but eventually I worked out that a mini cab was a taxi service but offered cheaper rates.  I had learned something new.  After I got off the phone from her, as I continued on my way to the supermarket, I saw a sign in the window:

Mini Cab
020 8942 4444
020 8942 3339

Just what I needed!  I rang them and they told me it would cost  £28 to get to Ealing.  They could pick me up with 15 minutes notice.  I raced back to the house and threw everything into my cases.  I didn't care that none of it was in any order.  I just had to be able to zip up the bags.

I called the mini cab and then went to tell my housemates I was leaving.

"I'll be leaving tonight - thank you for your hospitality - you've been most kind....a cab is on its way..."

The cab arrived and a young good-looking man in a long black overcoat stepped out of the car and came to help me put with my luggage.  He didn't look like a taxi driver.  He was fine-boned and slender with sensitive, dark eyes.  He looked like a Persian prince and probably no more than 26 years old.

As he started driving, laughingly I told him I had escaped and how nice it was to be collected in an immaculate red VW estate.  I asked him about the mini cab business and how it differed from a taxi service and did he like his job?  "No," he said sheepishly.  He told me that everytime he had to pick up a new customer he got anxious.  Customers were often obnoxious, rude and racist.  Some were even violent and one had kicked his side mirror so now it was broken and taped to the main body of the car.  He said, if he has one nice customer, it makes his day.

He was from Qatar and had come to London with his father a few years ago.  He had completed a Masters degree two years prior and had been driving mini cabs since because he couldn't find any other work.    His brother was a solicitor.  He too could find no work so they had bought an off-license together but discovered that its location was no good and the income barely covered the rent.  His brother minded the shop and he drove his  mini cab of a night because it was less stressful than driving during the day.  He had brought his mother from Qatar to live with him only a couple of years before because his father had passed away.  His father too had been a solicitor and had sent his two boys to London to be educated.  Driving cabs was probably not what he had intended for his son.

He said if he cannot find work in London, he will go to Dubai.  It was too hard to return to Qatar - there were too many memories of his father.

"I got married last year but I think it was a mistake."

"Why?" I asked.

"I spent all my money on my marriage!"

"But is she a nice girl?"

"Oh yes, she is out of this world!"

And the way he said it warmed my heart.  He was so earnest with so much youthful positivity and optimism.

"Just don't have children right now" I told him half jokingly.

"My wife says the same, " he said with such disappointment, "but I really love them."

"You can have children later, you are still young! - when you've found a job - just not now - you don't need any more mouths to feed".  He was living with his brother, his mother and his wife in the one house.

The conversation turned to GPSs.  London Black Cab drivers are not supposed to use a GPS system but mini cab drivers can.  He said one day he had picked up two ladies and the GPS had taken him through some woods where there was no one around and it was dark at night.    He said he had never been there before and feared what might happen if the GPS broke down.  His two passengers were scared and so was he but he reassured them that they were just fine because he had been through there before and it was no trouble at all, whilst all the while hoping that he could find himself quickly on familiar territory.

As we arrived at my friend's house, I told him he had made my day and what a pleasure it had been to meet him.  He wished me all the best and informed me that I too had made his day.

What a difference from what I had escaped from.

40 years on

This life
Many incarnations
Breathing
Being
Becoming
And more being