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.