The Blank Sheet (or Writer's Block)

Apologies for the delay in producing this blog.  But the blank sheet is exactly what I've been suffering from.  A common condition for all creative people.

Many of you who have contributed tweets or read my blogs are creative people, writers, artists, perhaps musicians too.  So you all know about the blank sheet and understand the hesitancy contemplating that untouched emptiness, like a fresh fall of snow staring at you, and waiting for the first mark to be made.  But it's also exhilarating; that launch into the unknown.  It's what keeps us all buzzing, what life is about.

 For travellers too, the blank corner of the map is worrying.  What's there?  Why hasn't it been filled in with cartographical information.  Or perhaps it's just incorrect guesswork filling the gap, as I sometimes found on my treks in #WalksontheWildSide?  An intriguing opportunity to explore, or a scary void?

The important thing about writing, painting, playing an instrument, or even drawing a map, is that they are all languages.  A way of communicating.  And they are very similar because they all portray an image.  They all tell a story.  They are all different ways of constructing a plot.  Choosing verbs and adjectives is like choosing colours, or juxtaposing harmonies and discords.  Should this description be hot or cold, abrasive or calming?  Building a picture.  Playing with the images being created in the reader/viewer/listener's brain.  It's very exciting.  Creativity is exciting.  And intimidating.  Because it's easy to get it wrong.

Vasari, in his descriptions of the North Italian Renaissance painters, used to talk about 'making' a picture, not painting one, because it's a technical process, in those days also involving grinding the pigments and applying the 'fresco' plaster etc.  So also with writing, not just stringing words together to transmit an idea but filling it with flavours and nuances.  Or for a musician building sounds into a complex structure which colours the airwaves and transcends into the shimmering peace of a flat sea or a raging hurricane.

Every writer knows that the story is the easy bit.  It's how it's told that matters.  The mixing of words, like colours on a palette, is the really important and often complicated bit.  Of course there are technical issues to be respected (or consciously abandoned) like spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.  Every tiny dab of the brush, scrape of the palette knife, the lightest semi quaver, is part of making this vital image.  Creative artists sweat blood over these details.

And it all starts with a blank sheet.  Maybe the brain is teeming with conflicting ideas.  Maybe there's just a vague abstract notion of the eventual colour that is wanted, the rough shapes.  We're in the realms of scouring the imagination, stretching the mind.  Even digging deep into the soul.  Some writers like John Clare went insane.  Some of the best creativity walks a gossamer thin tightrope between brilliance and madness, and can spill over either way.  Or both.  John Dryden wrote, in Absalom and Achitophel, 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide'.  Some creative artists border alcoholic oblivion, like Dylan Thomas who somehow managed to sharpen his perception through whisky, until he destroyed himself.  The creation of beauty, the agonies of birth, the glory of pulling together the impossible. 

But faced with the blank sheet a painter friend insists that it is of paramount importance 'to attend'.  Like any job of work, if you don't 'attend' in your studio, study or music room and worry at it like a dog with a bone, it won't just happen of its own accord.

Although brilliance is rare, most of us do our damnedest to cover the ground with our feet of clay and stretch our fingers towards the unattainable perfection.  It's a journey worth making, a goal to strive for, a secret joy to achieve.  All starting with the same blank sheet. 

And now suddenly I've filled it!

WHO?

The World Health Organisation has made a huge difference to the world, saved and improved countless millions of lives.  But there is a big question-mark. 

Actually, I'd like to throw a bucket-full of question-marks into this blog.  Things to agree with, disagree with, or better still just to chew over.  But most importantly, let's not bury our heads in the sand and ignore them.

So, back to Coronavirus (sorry!)  WHO has recently told us that "the worst is yet to come".  And there is news that another powerful virus has emerged from pigs in a slaughterhouse in China.  No doubt there will be more.  Are we surprised? 

Global warming is now on the brink (over the brink?) of being out of control.  As a result the world is already over a degree hotter, and warming further.  Doesn't sound much?  Good for summer holidays?  Some environmental scientists like Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, believe that after as little as another two degrees world agriculture will be terminally damaged, causing widespread famine.  Only one degree beyond that the Sahara desert will be encroaching over Iberia and southern France.  And just a degree higher still, human life will be fast dying out.  Much above that all life on earth will be unsustainable.  Why?

Amazing that all this damage has been done to the planet since the Industrial Revolution, and most in just the past 60 years.  Only in the last 40 years about 60% of wildlife has been destroyed.  Things are happening fast.  Why?

Not only are wild creatures dying out.  Coronavirus is now killing us too.  As for our planet... recently we have seen terrible forest fires, storms, floods and mud slides engulfing villages, droughts, locusts and now a new pandemic.  Is that because we haven't obeyed the rules and have upset the natural order or balance in the world?  Is a Creative Power or Balancing Force over-riding us? 

Isn't it time that we began to think of ourselves, the wild and domestic creatures and even the plants, as all part of the same 'us' that must be considered together in our attitudes to the world?

As long ago as 1962 Bob Dylan wrote "About a funny old world that’s a-coming along / Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn / It looks like it's a-dying and it's hardly been born."

Organisations like WHO and our own wonderful NHS have been doing a magnificent job looking after us, but who's looking after the planet that we rely on?  A few lonely organisations like WWF do the best they can.  But are we the planet's main problem?  Along with rats and cockroaches are we unstoppable breeding machines?

Every farmer knows that if any crop (animal or vegetable), is closely grown in vast numbers it breeds pests and disease.  So they increasingly have to use all kind of chemicals to control it.  None of which are good for the health of the final consumer... normally us.  And completely alien to the balance of life on earth.  But is this now a necessary evil to feed the increasing numbers of our own species?  Why?  Are there just far far far too many of us?

If the numbers of Homo sapiens were indiscriminately halved, would there be half the disease, half the famine, half the destruction of the environment, half the loss of wildlife, half the crime, half the industry and half the vehicles?  Half the pollution?  And half the global warming?  Sounds like a golden age?  So what's gone wrong?  Politicians wouldn't dare suggest reducing the numbers of their voters who will be tax payers buoying up the economy.  Businesses are equally reticent because more people means more consumers, more investors and more wealth.  So does the wheel spin faster and faster out of control as humanity races to the bottom?  Taking everything else with it?

In past years before modern medicines, mortality, particularly amongst infants, was much much higher.  So families needed to be huge.  Even in this country, as recently as Georgian and Victorian times, eight or nine children was not unusual.  Poor mothers!  But here comes the WHO again.  Good for them, they hugely reduced infant mortality rates.  But the world went on breeding... and surviving.  And expanding exponentially.  Where does it all end? 

We all have a right to life... don't we?  But Richard Meinertzhagen and Wilfred Thesiger both said, "I have no belief in the sanctity of human life".  Were they right?  Are we too cosseted and self obsessed?  Our generation has fortunately not experienced a World War.  Have we grown soft?  In my book Walks on the Wild Side I describe being pursued by bandits determined to kill us.  They weren't bad people.  They just lived in a society with a different ethical code.

After WWI the Spanish Flu infected about 500 million (one third of the population of the world in those days) and killed over 50 million.  (Source: CDC click here)  Have those figures been conveniently forgotten?  Coronavirus is also a flu.  A very dangerous one.

So what can we do about it?  What should we do about it?  And how could it be done?

I don't know.  What do you think?  Something certainly needs to be done.  We are hurtling towards catastrophe.  What?  How?  WHO?

Sorry to be so bloody depressing.  I promise to loosen up in my next blog!  But question-marks are terribly important things.

When is a chicken not a chicken?

Anyone who keeps chickens knows what intelligent, cheeky and individual creatures they are.  Nothing to do with the sad imprisoned birds killed at less than six weeks old, a billion a year in the UK, to recycle into fast food.  So when we lived on Dartmoor with plenty of space, we decided to keep some hens.

We read the guides to keeping chickens and learnt that we must have a hen house with a pop-hole entrance and straw-lined nesting boxes.  We must choose what breed we wanted; rare breed chickens come in all sorts of beautiful colours. First get the hens, as a cockerel is not a necessity (although the hens may disagree with that).

Nearby in Hatherleigh was a wonderful traditional livestock market (sadly no more) which had a weekly poultry auction, always well attended.  Inside the large shed it was bedlam, chicken crates everywhere, a deafening tannoy blasting the auctioneer's high-speed patter over all the chatter and crowing as his three-fingered assistant opened cages in turn, waving startled birds above his head.  The ancient farmers were even more interesting than the chickens, relics of a former age, wellies caked in slurry, threadbare gaberdine raincoats tied up with baler twine, and weather-beaten faces untouched by soap and water, often with ears that would have made an elephant envious. This was glorious old Devon, long since gone.

We wandered round in our ignorance peering into cages.  Chickens are often sold in threes, two hens and a cockerel.  But everyone is always keen to get rid of their unwanted cockerels, so we learnt the old tricks like putting three young cockerels into a cage with a couple of eggs under them to catch out gullible newcomers.  One bird caught our eye, alone in a cage, the most handsome chap in the auction with beautiful dark speckled plumage and we kept returning to look at him.  But the auctioneer received no bids for him and passed on. 

As the sale finished we looked again, and a farmer came over, 'Ya like 'e don't ya?' 'Um, well yes he's very handsome'.  'Why don't ya take 'e.  I come 'ere today wanting five pounds for 'e, but ya give me four and ya can have 'e'.  'But we haven't got a chicken house yet.'  'Ya got a garage 'aven't ya?'  'Well yes.'  'That be fine for 'e'.  'But he needs something to roost on.'  'Ya got a broomstick?'  'Well yes. But we've got nothing to take him home in'.  'I got a cardboard box, perfect for 'e.'  It seems we had just bought a cockerel... what suckers!  The farmer must have chortled all the way home.  But he was a magnificent bird.

We named him Wellington after the Iron Duke and discovered he was a Speckled Sussex, a very old breed traced to Roman times.  We also later discovered that he was sterile.  More chortling from the farmer!  So our chicken history had started, just as it shouldn't.  Eventually we built up a flock of a dozen Speckled Sussex, and later added six white Indian Runner Ducks and six black Cayugas, for whom we dug a large pond in another paddock.

Hens occasionally go broody, so need to sit on eggs for 21 days to hatch them.  Lots of risks there, they are often clumsy and break them, they steal each other's eggs, and hens can even die of hunger and thirst unless forced to leave the nesting box from time to time.  So in the end we learnt to sneak to the henhouse during the night, take out her eggs and slip a couple of day old chicks under her wing.  In the morning triumphant squawking. 'A miracle!'

The ducks also gave us eggs in late spring and summer, but they were hopeless mothers and after sitting for a few days would say, 'I'm bored of this game, I'm going back on the pond'.  So one day we popped a Runner Duck egg under a broody hen.  They take a week longer than hens eggs to incubate as ducklings are a lot bigger.  When they hatch they seem enormous and far too big for the shell they have just broken out of, whereas chicks look as if they could be folded up and put back in the shell.  So within a few days her duckling was far too big for her to sit on, and while her chicks were all cosy under their mum's wing, the duckling would sit beside her with just his head under her!  But the danger is that whatever a duckling or chick first sees is 'imprinted' on it, and is accepted as its mother.  So our duckling thought he was a chicken!

This was amusing to begin with, but when he was an adult he started trying to mate with the hens who were seriously unimpressed.  He couldn't understand the rejection.  We decided he must learn to be a duck, and so carried him over to the duck house.  'What are those hideous creatures?' he screamed and ran for his life.  We thought that when he discovered the pond he would be overjoyed, so we lowered him gently into the water.  'Now they're trying to drown me.  Help!  Mum!  I'm off.'  And he ran for his life over a bank, across our carpark, round the cottage and under a gate, back to his mum. 

We tried several times, but impossible.  It taught us that you should never mess around with Nature.  But unfortunately that is precisely what Mankind has been doing for years, arrogant enough to think we can manage the world we live in, control its wildlife, crossbreed its crops and animals to suit our desires, spreading fertilisers and herbicides.   Look at the mess we are in now.  It doesn't work. 

The hilarious drawing at the top of this blog is one of the sketches drawn on the spot by my wife Mo who also did the wonderful illustrations for my book Walks on the Wild Side, about my lengthy treks in East Africa.  The book is worth having a look at for her drawings alone.

Anyway, the answer to the riddle in the blog title is obviously:  When it's a duck!

Mountain Gorillas

 In 1938 my mother set off for darkest Africa to found a school in south-west Uganda.  In those days, before the war, few Europeans went into the depths of Africa, and certainly not 24 year old girls.  She stayed there for eight years before marrying my father who lived in Zanzibar and joining him there.  Her school, in a tiny village called Kabale, became one of the leading schools in Uganda.  Even Idi Amin sent his children.  

50 years later, in 1994, the headmistress Lilian Kigorogoro invited her, with the first pupils (now a retired surgeon, doctor and architect) to come and celebrate.  My mother was now 80.  The children of the school had spelt out a welcome message in flowers on the grassy bank and celebrated with music, acting and dancing.  The British High Commissioner, and some Ugandan cabinet ministers who were ex-pupils, came down for the day too.  Most of the original school buildings were still there, amazingly well preserved.  It was a great day and very moving.  

Not far from Kabale are the frontiers with Rwanda and the Congo (DRC).  On these borders volcanic mountain ranges surge upwards from the tropical rainforest.  And here live the world's only Mountain Gorillas; highly intelligent, gentle herbivore giants.  Just a year before our visit, small groups of eco-tourists were first allowed to go and watch them, and we felt it was an opportunity not to be missed.  

Their closest habitat to Kabale was The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.  We'd pre-booked a very basic camping site in the forest, which held just about a dozen people.  That was the only place to stay.  From there a guide took two groups of only half a dozen into the forest every day or so, to where the gorillas had last been seen.   Then trackers took over to follow their route through the dense forest.  Wherever the gorillas had gone, we went, crawling under scrub or scrambling up steep gradients.  It took hours and was exhausting.   

In the deep forest were several families of gorillas, but only two families had been naturalised to tolerate human beings.  As they share 98% of our DNA, they are extremely like us and can catch the same diseases, but while we have built up many immunities, a simple cold could wipe them out.  So extreme caution is necessary.  No one with a cough or runny tummy is allowed into the forest, and 15 feet was the closest contact allowed.  

But the gorillas haven't read the rule book and the guide warned us that sometimes a huge silverback might suddenly block the path.  Hmm, we felt nervous.  Sometimes he might charge, but you mustn't ever run.  That would be a disaster, gorillas are a lot faster than you are.  So you drop to your knees in subservience and look at the ground, while making little grunting noises which gorillas find relaxing.  It's easy to feel subservient when you're close to a 200kg mountain gorilla!  

We were lucky.  After hours we found our family group, but only a stay of one hour was permitted.  Some visitors might only see a hairy arm from behind a tree and had to be content with that.  Others, after a long trek, reached the Congo border and had to turn back disappointed.  It was sheer luck.  There were no guarantees.  

We were in a clearing where a huge fallen tree blocked our path.  On the other side was the family, a vast silverback, four females, and several 'children' scampering about, swinging on lianas and climbing over the adults and sliding down their Dad's back.  They noticed us but ignored us, as we watched and photographed them.  They are so very like us!  

Eventually one of the little ones became more and more interested in us and kept approaching until he was far too close for his safety and the trackers had to keep gently whisking him back with leafy sprigs .  He gazed at us all in turn, fascinated, his little amber eyes melting our hearts.  (My photo above)  

When the family moved off we followed, but one of our group stepped forward between the silverback and a little one.  Bad mistake!  Instantly, with a terrifying roar, the whole tree above the silverback was shaken as if torn by a hurricane and he bounded towards us.  Our instinct was to run, but the guide reminded us to drop to our knees and we grunted humbly.  Almost at once he accepted our apology and returned to his tree.  

The gorilla story has been a cautious success with numbers at last back above 1,000.  But that's all that remain.  Their biggest problem isn't just poaching but loss of habitat as human plantations encroach further and further into this last stronghold of irreplaceable tropical rainforest.  Now though, there is a new threat.  Coronavirus, our familiar demon, would be even more dangerous to gorillas than it is to us and could easily wipe them all out.  

I strongly recommend going to see these incredible creatures, who, like chimps, are our closest cousins, but please do what you can to help protect them.  They are so precious.  WWF have lots of information on-line and you can give directly towards their preservation. 

If music be the food of love...

That's an interesting one isn't it?  We all have such divergent tastes in music, and yet we are all drawn together by it.  I stopped listening to pop music about 1980 and have since stuck with classical.  Far and away my favourite instrument is the cello, partly because I love the sound of strings generally, but also because it has the range of the human voice and so is comforting in some way.  For some years I did my best to play it, rather badly, but now the lovely thing sits idle. Still loved but idle.

I saw that the brilliant young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has recently recorded the tragic Elgar concerto, inspired by Jacqueline du Pre's iconic recording.  Written to reflect Elgar's emotional hollowness after WWI, it is in some ways pertinent now during this murderous pandemic. Mo and I followed Sheku's remarkable journey, winning the Young Musician of the Year in 2016, and very much admire him.

I do also enjoy 'world music' of various sorts.  I remember that when Wilfred Thesiger, the explorer, was on Desert Island Discs in 1979 his choices were a curious ascetic mixture of tribal singing and ecclesiastical choral works.  He said to me afterwards that he had wanted to include some singing by the Turkana tribe who were renowned in northern Kenya for their musicality, like the Welsh in the UK.  But the BBC had none.  So when I was with that tribe I occasionally recorded songs around the camp fire, or in their grass huts, which the BBC later bought for their archives.  I wonder if they have ever been aired!  A trifle too esoteric?

Years later Thesiger told me of a time he took some of his tribal protégés to stay at the farm of a friend in Kenya.  While there he told them, 'Now you are going to hear some real music', and put on an LP of Beethoven.  After a few minutes of restlessness, Chukuna said, 'But Mzee Juu, when do they start singing?'!

One night, after we had been the unexpected guests of an entirely traditional Samburu wedding I retired to our tent, mesmerised.  One of my Turkana companions, Netakwang, broke the spell by bursting into raucous song.  Unusually for a Turkana, his voice was not lovely.  In my book Walks on the Wild Side I describe how I told him to shut up. 

'His voice was replaced by the much lovelier rising notes of hyena in the night, their eerie calls soaring like wolf songs in the darkness.'  

Now that really was a thrilling lullaby.

Our wonderful NHS

May 8th 2020 was the VE Day 75th anniversary.  An epic event.   In Europe it has long been celebrated with a public holiday, so it was good at last to have one here.  It was also the birthday of a national hero, Sir David Attenborough, a man who would empathise with my recent book Walks on the Wild Side.

Unimportantly to anyone but me, it was also my birthday!  So, in that glorious sunshine, unable to go anywhere in the lockdown, Mo and I sat in the garden to enjoy lunch of smoked salmon and champagne, with a special supper planned for the evening.

But we didn't get that far.  Half way through the afternoon I had a medical 'blip'.  I had suffered the same thing a couple of times before over the past five years, so knew what it was.  I use the word 'suffer' but there was no suffering, no pain, just a little strangeness.  Friends say it must have been scary.  No, not scary, just a bit unsettling.  I knew what real scariness meant from the adventures related in my book.

I felt better in less than 15 minutes and as I knew what it was, and as it was a holiday weekend in the middle of this awful Covid pandemic, I phoned our surgery at the next opportunity to discuss with a doctor, who decided to arrange a hospital appointment for a check-up.  So, despite the pandemic, two days later they put me through a rigorous programme of tests.  They were incredible, kind, efficient and helpful.  Fortunately the tests all came up clear.

But what really was scary was seeing the colour coding throughout the hospital marking the levels of risk from the virus, and walking down corridors past doors to wards with large yellow warning signs saying COVID, and even 'safe area' green signs sometimes marked MAY CONTAIN COVID.  That brought me up sharp.  Yet throughout all this the NHS staff were going about their work looking relaxed, a normal day.  At one moment, when a trolley was pushed into a ward by masked porters, though still a long way off, the nurse walking with me put out a hand to hold me back.  A very poorly patient.  Very up-close and personal.  The moment when a normal member of the public, 'one of us', suddenly becomes a danger to life, 'one of them', almost like a terrorist?  Yet our nurses and doctors deal with them all day, day after day, literally working on the edge of life.  With devotion and kindness. 

I had felt that I was a distraction from their more important duties, but they were determined that I had the best care and thoroughly pursued every possible test.  In spite of everything, the NHS are still there for all of us

 In my book I often talk about the extraordinary bravery of people in very dangerous situations.  But none showed more courage than our own precious NHS staff.  How brave they are!  Having been so close to the reality, our respect for them has increased beyond measure.  We clap on Thursdays with renewed vigour.  Please honour these magnificent people!

What were you doing 40 years ago?

What were you doing 40 years ago?  I went for a walk.  I'd read about a lake set in the volcanic desert of north-west Kenya nicknamed the Jade Sea which, in certain weather conditions, turned jade green.  The world's biggest desert lake with its densest population of crocodiles.  Lake Turkana.  I wanted to see it.  So I decided to make a walk on its west side in the lands of the Turkana tribe.  It was extraordinarily remote in 1980, a little-explored region where I even came across people who'd never seen a white man before.  I walked with some local tribesmen and loaded donkeys for 150 miles, blisteringly hot and digging in the ground for our water.  The area was also beset with bandits of different kinds!  It was an exciting time, and I was hooked.  Over the next five years I kept going back until I'd walked on all sides of the lake, covering about 1200 miles. It became more and more exciting, and more and more dangerous!

Eventually I had to write a book to describe it all:  Walks on the Wild Side published by Eye Books.  The most important thing for me was absolute truth.  It was exciting enough without any lily-gilding, and the story is told in great detail, including the killing of one of my companions.  But first I had my busy career in the Film Industry, doing Special Effects in movies like Alien and The Empire Strikes Back. So only after I retired did I have the time to write.

Those treks taught me a lot about our relationship with our world, and how penniless and often half naked tribesmen had a dignity which commanded respect.  In many ways they were more honourable than their wealthy Western counterparts.  Who has been destroying this planet?  Not them. 

And of course I leaned a lot about myself, my own reaction to danger and fear.  When planning a trip into remote life-threatening places, the most important lesson to learn is not how to get fit and strong (although important), or even how brave you think you are.  The most important is to understand your own mortality and to accept how small you are.  When we have left our Western props behind, we realise we have no more rights to life than the people we are amongst and we find ourselves absolutely equal to them.  Without that understanding we can never relax in extreme situations or be able to cope with the risks of death, dangerous thirst or sickening diet.  There is no sanctity of human life.