UK Travel

A trip to… Liverpool

The first thing I saw after leaving the train at Liverpool Lime Street was a man, perhaps on his way to a wedding, or perhaps just dressed like an unexploded bomb. Any sudden move and that jacket was going to blow. The trousers were held in place only by a belt and, I presume, a judicious application of glue. It was a fascinating outfit that worked hard to re-introduce me to Liverpool, one of the finest cities in Britain. We were staying at Hatter’s hostel, and immediately my hopes of being able to freshen up after being trapped in a Virgin train, where a light whiff of sewage permeates everything, were dashed by the receptionists. Check in was 2pm, said the desk bureaucrats. With our luggage stowed, we left to explore the city, with that sweet smell of toilets clinging to us.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

In my mind the first port of call for someone who’s never been to Liverpool before is the Metropolitan Cathedral; it’s the sort of place where I could be turned into someone vaguely religious, given enough time and if the services weren’t dreary, long or religious. As cathedrals go, it’s a modern masterpiece on top of a lost masterpiece. The original design was by Edwin Lutyens, with a dome rising to 90 metres. It was planned to be open 24 hours a day, with heated floors so that homeless people would have a place to sleep. Naturally, after World War 2, making enormous cathedrals didn’t fit in with the general vibe of having no money, so the building work ground to a halt. The only part of Lutyens building to be completed was the crypt, which you can visit today. It is a real surprise to go from the technicolour glory of the modern cathedral into the vast space of the crypt. Millions of bricks line the walls and the ceilings curve up into entrancing swirling shapes. Within the crypt was a history of the cathedral, including letters from church bosses to the architects about the need to stick to a miniscule budget of £1,000,000. They chose Frederick Gibberd’s bold design, and it’s a discount version of Oscar Niemeyer’s Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasilia. The result of the penny-pinching was that Gibberd’s building started falling apart almost immediately and fixing it took some ingenuity. The crypt gallery shows a bizarre image of an archer shooting down parts of the rotting ceiling with an arrow. Now it’s all repaired, it is a joy to look at from every angle. The interiors use the space and light to such good effect, I wish every city could have a building so perfect for its purpose. I love how the cathedral was designed to bring the altar into the round, making the congregation a central part of all that happens there. I couldn’t help thinking it’d make a brilliant venue for gigs.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Interior

After the cathedral, we headed to the Philharmonic pub, which is only a short walk away. It’s a wonderful place to spend some time in a degree of elegance, with the men’s toilets being a revered stop on a bog-based tour. Thirty men shuffle into the opulent pee palace, without buying anything from the pub, looking confused and embarrassed by it all, while some chap exclaimed that the taps were from the 1920s. The Phil is so well-regarded that Paul McCartney himself said the thing he misses most about being not being famous is being able to pop in for a pint. But Macca, the toilets still smell bad. I had a coke in the pub, as I was doing Sober October. Everyone looked like a pint of cool, crisp lager. Being near Halloween, it could have been fancy dress.

The Philharmonic Pub

Next we found, alongside everyone else, the Cavern Club. There are entry fees at certain times of the week and we didn’t want to be charged, but when you’re inside, the magic of The Beatles hits hard. There’s no overstating the importance of the band, and seeing the tiny stage where they played 275 times feels quite special. The club is decked out with some incredible Beatles memorabilia including cabinets full of signed guitars, setlists, a flyer signed by iconic legend Jessie J about the Cavern’s printer being shit. Yes, you can tell the glory days are over when you read that China Crisis are performing there for a festive show, but it’s always going to be one of the most important places in music history.

The stage where The Beatles played

Dinner was served by the lovely folk at Oktopus, which is hidden away down an alleyway you’d not venture towards if you didn’t know delicious food was at the other end. The space is as cosy as can be, with standard regulation stripped-back walls and open-plan kitchen. The sourdough bread and beer butter was a major success, and sharing plates make tasty and inventive use of carrots. With firm bites and explosions of flavour, these were special. Topped with pesto, ricotta and walnuts, this was one of the best bits of the meal. The chickpea panisse came with a fabulously rich black olive caramel and the whole fish arrived in foil with fantastic roasted tomatoes and potatoes all cooked to perfection.

Our postprandial stroll took us down to Pier Head and to the three graces, which Liverpool is rightly famous for. The Royal Liver building is the most recognisable, soaring up to just shy of 100 metres, with clock towers at the peak. It is an example of concrete construction done with flair and it has a feeling of a New York skyscraper about it. The Cunard Building is a rectangular beauty, just six storeys high, and The Port of Liverpool Building is full of classical touches, such as the dome, and the building itself is said to be taken from an unused design of Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral. As a trio, they create an instantly recognisable waterfront skyline, making sure you realise that Liverpool, at one time at least, was very important. But god knows, the city doesn’t look after it as much as it ought to. There’s the Mann Island development, which hides the three Graces away with angular glass and metal shards poking about. It’s not pretty, and while no city should be preserved in aspic, it’s always worth caring for your heritage. There are further plans for trashing the area with outsized residential towers, letting affordable housing pledges die on the vine. Just beyond is the rubbish ocean-liner stylings of the Mercure Hotel and another couple of hideous monstrosities lurking behind it like unwelcome party guests. At certain angles, these carbuncles are thankfully out of sight and only then does the sheer glory of the three graces hits you like a gust of wind off the Mersey.

The next morning, sunlight streamed through the crack in the curtain and we were set for a perfect autumn day. I’d had a surprisingly excellent night’s sleep on the Hatter’s Hostel mattress, made of springs with some loo roll strung between them. Refreshed, we had a traditional hostel breakfast. This is usually non-brand name cereal and toast that goes through the bread conveyor belt in a very specific order. First time through = crunchy bread and second time through = ash. I spread some non-brand chocolate derivative onto crunchy bread and sighed. I shouldn’t have been such a cheapskate. After this depressing breakfast, we headed to Bold Street coffee to have breakfast again, but this time in style. After breakfast two, we boarded the train to Formby, just 30 minutes outside Liverpool. In Formby, you can venture into the woods to find red squirrels, making this just the second time I’d seen them, so it was very exciting to walk down the pathway and almost immediately see a family of the critters playing. In the UK, just 140,000 remain, mostly in Scotland. Red squirrels are pocket-sized bundles of cuteness, and their scampering about is very pleasing to watch, knowing that they are so rare in the UK.

The National Trust has red squirrel paths and many other routes around the woods, some signposts leading to a route called the Asparagus trail, which takes you through farmland used to grow delicious asparagus for a short season every year. The history of the area is also apparent in fields labelled Tobacco waste and Nicotine fields. Between the 1950s and 1970s, tobacco leaf waste was dumped by the beach. As you proceed to the sea, you come across sand dunes that seem so incongruous with the surrounding area, but this is what makes the landscape so surprising and wonderful to explore. The dunes are dramatic around Formby Point and this is part of the largest area of sand dunes in England, which is rapidly receding up to as much as four metres a year.

Formby Point

Back to Liverpool and dinner at Maray. I was wise and reserved ahead, but for some reason I did so for the night after. Maray was already busy and looked to be fully booked for the evening, but after some table magic was completed, we were seated for a wonderful meal inspired by the middle east. We had dishes including half a cauliflower slathered with tahini, harissa and yoghurt which was far better than my description would suggest. The scallops in a parsnip puree flew off my plate, as did the buttermilk fried chicken with a red cabbage ketchup. I had a mocktail and loved it, whereas my friend was knocking back a gin cocktail like a monster. Sober for October will turn you against friends and loved ones. The meal, which was too enormous for us to eat didn’t even hit £40 for the both of us. Wonderful service and excellent value for money, Maray is a gem.

Our final exploration of the city was the following day where we wisely ditched the crunchy bread and ersatz coffee, and had breakfast at a local café. We went to the Albert Docks to see what was on at Tate Liverpool. An exhibition of Roy Lichtenstein Pop Art was there and as much as I enjoy his work, I couldn’t help but feel the novelty wore thin after a while. And yet, there’s not much more iconic than this, and it was free. Their main collection holds some fantastic pieces, including photographs by Gillian Wearing and Cindy Sherman. Next door is a museum devoted to Liverpool’s maritime history and, attached to it, a slavery museum. It’s hard to come to terms with how the plight of slaves made Liverpool so important, not to mention so prosperous. One and a half million African slaves were transported from Liverpool to America so a visit to Liverpool, with its fine civic architecture, is loaded with a hideous past.

As our sewage-tainted train pulled out of Liverpool Lime Street back to London, I knew that I’d be coming back to Liverpool. It’s a fantastic city where Conservatives and The Sun newspaper aren’t welcome. These are my sort of people.

Walthamstow Wetlands

“It’s a pleasant day, I’m 35, what else am I supposed to do?”

Inaccessible to all but fisherfolk for 150 years, Walthamstow Wetlands has finally opened to some fanfare and much quacking after £8m of improvements. My first view of this enormous new open space, spanning 211 hectares, is via the Maynard Entrance on Forest Road, a ten-minute walk from Blackhorse Road tube station. This entrance gives you access to the northern reservoirs which are some of the largest and least picturesque on the site. Lockwood Reservoir is a great expanse of water, which you climb an embankment to get to. Up top, you can see clear views for miles and walking around the perimeter of this would take at least twenty minutes or so. To the south you can spot the clusters of skyscrapers at Canary Wharf as well as the city, giving a perspective on the landscape of London as much more than just urban sprawl. As an internationally important site for birds, I expected to see more but in attendance were swans, coots and moorhens in abundance as well as ubiquitous gulls and a few herons.

The landscape undergoes something of a transformation once you cross Forest road and into the sites’ main entrance. Here you can walk to the renovated Engine House which just a few years back was a partially derelict building. Now it’s a stunning visitor centre with a brand new 24-metre tower housing 54 swift nest boxes as well as space for bats and a café serving your standard “how much?!” cups of coffee and snacks. That said, the Wetlands is free to visit and is open 7 days a week so I’ve no business complaining and they don’t have security strip-searching for contraband snacks.

The Engine House

The central reservoirs really show off the beauty of the site, with two hectares of new reedbeds planted which helps encourage lots of wildlife playing hide and seek. In making the site accessible to visitors, many tiny jetties have been installed to sit on, stand on and fish from. It’s easy to get lost amongst the foliage and listen out for the bird song alongside the occasional whine of a police siren. If you are after genuine serenity, you’ll need reminding that the site is close to Tottenham, on the edges of Walthamstow and still very much in an industrial area of London. Richmond Park it ain’t, but there’s something enchanting in the Wetlands where nature abounds amid pylons and chimneys puffing out the pollution that is making our air toxic. This is a surprisingly peaceful patch of London though, especially when you experience the full size of the site.

Pylons and birds

Aside from the obvious birds I can recognise, don’t ask me what specific brand of bird you’ll spot because that’s where I fall down. When I was at uni in Exeter, I regularly went to areas laden with fowl and lived with a naturalist who knew her birds. All that knowledge is now lost to time but the Wetlands may yet bring some of it back. When I thought “bird over there with long beak” was a cormorant, I was entirely wrong. As a 35 year-old, it’s entirely appropriate to learn about birds, especially when a nationally recognised reserve has just opened on my doorstep. It’s not like I’m going to go clubbing.

So, the wetlands. It lives up to its name, being extravagantly wet. And it being east London, there’s an Andrea Arnold-esque beauty in how industrial lands combine with nature to create something surprisingly peaceful. Another win for Walthamstow and a marvellous new amenity for the people.

Top 3 of Edinburgh Festival 2017

Writing about Edinburgh is making me wistful, knowing it’s going on right now makes me both happy and sad. The festival really is the most wonderful bug and it’s a given that i’ll be heading back to Scotland next year for more. Here are my top three shows I saw, in order of totally subjective feelings.

Joseph Morpurgo – Hammerhead. (Pleasance Courtyard, 8pm)

Multimedia comedy is something Jospeh Morpurgo has turned into an art form, and this is the third show I’ve seen from him. Hammerhead is an unhinged masterpiece of stage craft and audience participation. His first show, Odessa, saw him weave a story about a Texan town out of a few minutes of old video footage. His second, Soothing Sounds for Baby, was his take on Desert Island Discs, with an increasingly drunk Kirsty Young. It didn’t win the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2015, which is either a terrible oversight or an indication of how good the competition was. Hammerhead is something of a change in direction as we are invited to a post-show Q&A where Morpurgo plays a monstrous, flailing actor who has just played all the parts in a 9 hour version of Frankenstein, including “the concept of wet”. As audience members are picked out to read questions, the actor’s ego grows at first as adoring fans congratulate him, then rapidly collapses when the questions turn nasty. His fictional Frankenstein production is an unmitigated disaster, and Morpurgo demonstrates this with some painfully funny projections and video pieces, questions from sources as varied as the dark web and defunct messaging services. His explanation of why his flyers were made on Microsoft Excel pushed me over the edge and, having failed to hear some jokes through laughing too much at the previous one, Hammerhead is something I will be seeing again.

In short, Morpurgo is one of the funniest and freshest performers around. Hammerhead is an exquisitely crafted hour of brilliance, where he toys with comedic conventions as easily as a cat would play with a ball of string.

Adam Hess – Cactus. (Heroes at the Hive, 6pm)

Sara Pascoe and John Robins dated, then broke up. This year their shows delve deeply into their breakups, making the most of their misery for all to see. Adam Hess wrote a show loosely about his own breakup, but doesn’t come close to the level of intimacy, choosing to focus the comedy around his own reactions to breaking up. It’s a brilliant hour of one-liners one after the other and a reminder that comics draw energy from the darker edges of life. There’s a tinge of tragedy in how Hess drinks to forget from a “world’s best nephew” mug when we discover the mug was from a charity shop. In this show, he turns every situation into something funny, with a greatly likeable stage presence.

Jon Pointing – Act Natural. (Pleasance Courtyard, 7.15pm)

Another comic monster is born! Pointing plays an hour as the ghastly Kayden Hunter in a drama workshop where his ego is the main star. It’s a brilliant take down of those self-satisfied presenters we’ve surely all seen, reminding me of an inspirational speaker I once saw reduce two woman to tears and piss off an entire room with his bizarre declarations like “I’m an outstanding teacher but none of you here seem to see it” and the like. Excellent stuff.

Edinburgh Festival 2017 part 3

Being at the festival from Sunday through to Friday can be full on, so we split the time by taking a day trip to somewhere where I’m less likely to be covered in flyers. In the first year I went to Leith, via the gorgeous Dean Village. Last year we took a train to Berwick-upon-Tweed and endured a storm and rain shower that reminded us of the glories of British summer holidays. This year we went to North Berwick, a 40 minute train journey away. It’s home to the Scottish Sealife Centre as well as the chance to take boats out to Bass Rock, a volcanic rock home to a large flock of gannets. The beach at North Berwick is wonderful, a soothing counterpoint to the relentless nature of the festival. Photos of the day are at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbutler

Back in the city, we went to see Annie McGrath’s Ambivert. I had previously seen McGrath as part of sketch comedy duo Twins, who performed a great show in 2015 and a luke-warm show in 2016. In 2017, McGrath is not quite firing on all cylinders, perhaps because the audience is just twelve strong; to put this in context, it’s the smallest fringe audience I’ve ever been part of. Her show has a fundamental flaw to it, which is that she feels her generation has it all really good and the best they can complain about is a lack of wifi. If she’s on about the generation who suffer zero hours contracts, student debt, insecure housing and high levels of anxiety and depression, and who will have to go through the nonsense that is Brexit… if she’s on about those, then she’s way out of touch with reality. She plays the posh girl well, but when she plays ignorant, too, the show just can’t work. Another theme is that she is an ambivert , which is neither an extrovert or an introvert. In a sense, she’s right down the middle, which is exactly where this show lies.

Later on, we go from an empty attic to a bustling basement to see Mae Martin’s Dope, which is a superb hour of deeply intimate and hilarious insights into Mae’s life, all going back to a childhood that sounds both loving and unconventional. Martin delivers a show rich in visual imagery, we learn that she was obsessed by Bette Midler as a kid and discover that not only did Martin wear an outfit that makes her sound like a weird Victorian child – all waistcoats and stiff shirts – but she also spent much of her youth sneaking into stand up shows and slowly developing obsessions about the comedians she’s watching. When told she was a “groupie”, she wonders if groupie means peer. Martin’s delivery is so joyful and positive that it’s a surprise when the show starts to venture into the territory of addiction. Addiction comes in many forms, from being addicted to an idea, to people, to substances. Martin confronts all of this brilliantly, and in the process I’m sure she will have reminded many of the audience of their own childhood obsessions. It’s remarkable this show is on as part of the free fringe, but I would expect those days are soon to be over.

North Berwick

Edinburgh Festival 2017 part 2

As you slowly sink into the rhythm of the Fringe, you’ll realise that you can’t do everything, but it’s still worth a try. For me, I can manage about four shows a day as the maximum. I like to give myself time to check out the listings, see what’s getting good reviews and importantly, make time to visit Brew Lab for the best coffee in town.

On our third day, we kicked off with Javaad Alipoor’s Believers are but Brothers (Northern Stage at Summerhall, 12.45pm) a play that tackles the online radicalisation of men, which Alipoor argues, is the only perspective he can truthfully try and explore. The show starts with the audience being asked to join a Whatsapp group so we can communicate via an encrypted message service. At points in the show, we are asked questions by message about the number of Muslims in Britain and then the number that have joined ISIS; we are called out for being a liberal arts audience when we underestimate the number that have been radicalised, yet we’re still way out. Out of three million Muslims in Britain around 300 have gone to explore what ISIS can offer them. Online and in real life, it’s a vile world of men thinking they should have more money, more sex, more influence. We are shown examples of the ISIS media machinery, showing themselves to be constant victors in a war against the West. These lonely men are able to use the web to talk in a way they would never dare to in real life and those that join ISIS are quickly swept up into their world of hyper-violence.

What Alipoor is trying to get across here is the depth of hate and confusion these men have and how easy it can be to fall down the rabbit hole, though it’s also somehow reassuring that when he tried to connect with these people, they could tell he wasn’t one of them straight away and rebuffed his attempts to talk, sometimes using crude Sunni v Shia imagery to make him back off. If the storytelling is at times a bit frantic, it’s understandable when the show is trying to cover so much ground, but at its core, this is a show that is trying to make sense of something we see in the news often, but rarely try to understand and for that it must be applauded. Islamic extremist and the alt-right – fast becoming a cover phrase for Neo-Nazism, are threats of our era that are compared in this show as being very similar. Alipoor is a gifted storyteller, with a sly sense of humour that comes out when things look bleak.

In the afternoon, my friend and I went to a Free Fringe show, Bitchelors (Voodoo Rooms, 3.10pm) by Anna Morris. A good idea that feels spread thin by the hour’s end, Morris plays a former bride of the year and four women competing to be woman of the year. While the ideas are strong and the jokes keep coming, aided by some slick video, the show never quite moved past enjoyable and into memorable, perhaps because Morris failed to make these women as hideous as they could be. Naturally, every one of them had a fatal flaw which unravelled as their presentation wore on, but that feels so obvious as to be fully expected. Despite this, Morris is a skilled performer and can engage with the room well, but at the Fringe, almost everyone can do this. As my friend noted, filling an hour with consistently funny material must be extraordinarily hard and the characters in this show would be a great match for comedy nights across the UK where each act gets 15 minutes to do their sketch, but an hour seems a tad too much.

Adam Hess (Heroes at the Hive, 6pm) on the other hand crams two hours of funny material into one by talking at a speed just short of sound. His performance style is perfectly crafted, allowing each joke to crash into the next, keeping the audience laughing from start to go in a Mexican wave of haha’s. In-between jokes will come lines like “It’s sad that we’ll never know how many chameleons snuck onto the Ark” and stories that push the limits of plausibility but always have enough in them to sound real. His family sound brilliantly twisted and Hess manages to not only keep us laughing but shows us his passion for taking notes, writing jokes always and keeping the burning restlessness of his youth alive. A marvellous comedian.

Staying on at the stinky Hive, we saw Paul Currie (Heroes at the Hive, 6.30PM) for the first time and while he described as it Monty Pythonesque when handing out flyers, I was still left a little dumbstruck by his show. He has the audience in the palm of his hand throughout and drew from the energy and good atmosphere, making us pretend to be horses, ride the dragon from Never Ending Story, act out a song as cats… that’s the sort of thing he does to get us warmed up. Audience participation is a big part of this show and Currie doesn’t just drag people from the front row but actively roams the room looking for participants. As with the best comics, he might put people through ridiculous tasks, but he’s willing to put himself through just as much. Go along with the ride, in short.

Edinburgh Festival 2017 Part 1

Edinburgh in August can easily pass for the centre of the world, and no other city comes close to giving itself up in the way Edinburgh does. Only a World cup or Olympic host city can match the intensity of tourists and events, and to those cities, that generally happens just once. So, Edinburgh in August is where aliens would naturally head if they needed to find the main boss of the earth. More likely than not, they’d be flyered by an improv group who label themselves “witsters” (Oxford Imps, I’m glaring at you), asked if they want to watch “a chat show where a dinosaur is just one of the hilarious guests”, a suggestion which would push any self-respecting alien invader over the edge, or get invited to a show starting in “five minutes” – always, always five minutes – where Peter Pan meets Fatal Attraction. In Penge.

Welcome to the Edinburgh Fringe! It’s just one of the festivals taking place in August. Others include the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Royal Military Tattoo, the International Festival and the Free Fringe. Tickets sold last year for the Fringe reached 2,500,000 and as it’s the 70^th anniversary of the first fringe this year, it’ll surely be even bigger. Cast your mind back to 1947, where a war-ravaged Britain was just recovering from years of hell, under the miserable spell of austerity and still having food rationed and reflect on what a fantastic idea it was to create a festival to give people some excitement. The first festival had its own fringe, where small acts not invited to the main party found venues around the city to perform in. 70 years later, it’s the biggest arts festival in the world and such an enjoyable and enriching experience, I imagine it’ll remain a central part of my summer plans.

This was my third Edinburgh Festival and over six days, I saw fourteen shows and took a day trip to North Berwick. On our first day, sort of fresh from a 4-and-a-half-hour train journey from London, we headed to our first show, Sarah Kendall’s One-Seventeen. Used to shouting, lots of swearing and the standard tricks of comics, Kendall’s work was a gentle introduction to proceedings and it is soon clear that Kendall is a skilled storyteller rather than a comedian and even though the main thread of her story is about divorce, everything in the show is quite low-key. From hamsters on their death beds to her son’s behaviour, this is a well written and at times poetic show, but one that lacks any defining passion.

Tapes! On sale!

Later in the evening, we trekked to the beautiful Assembly Halls, all Harry Potter on the outside and a bit crumbly on the inside to see Mark Steel. His show sets out the template that so many comics seem to do > come on with a massive grin > proceed to tell everyone how shit your life is > go pretty personal about your ex > slap hand against head and go “oh, you know what it’s like” > do some observational comedy. Steel added lots of sharp one-liners and plenty of surreal ideas into the mix but his delivery style showed he was out of touch when talking about transgender people but when he was on topics like politics or unsolicited calls from PPI companies, he really shone. As the show centred on his recent gruesome breakup, some distance from that would probably make the show more funny and less bitter.

The view from the Mound

Our second day included one play and two stand up shows. We started with The Dreamer, by Gecko Theatre Company. Having seen their beautiful show Institute, I was very excited to see what they would do when teamed up with a Chinese theatre company. The results are little less than breathtaking; the show opens with Chinese screen dividers being used to project a visually stunning backstory to the audience. Images come and go, stories are guessed at and the screens are whipped away. We’re suddenly in an office and somehow the performers have tricked us into thinking we know what we’re seeing. The level of precision on display is a constant surprise; the performers are always two steps ahead of the audience in making movements that delight and move everyone in the room. You may not get a chance to see Gecko at Edinburgh, but they perform regularly and are sensational.

Back to comedy for the rest of the day, with Jon Pointing’s debut solo show. Pointing plays Cayden Hunter, a drama coach/guru/mentor who likes to touch himself and demands adoration from the audience, giving irritated glances to us if we aren’t thrilled enough by his work. The show’s format is a drama workshop and he takes us through ways to be better actors, walking us through his life so far as a devised piece of physical theatre that is both cringe-worthy and hilarious. As with all ghastly comic creations, seeing Cayden fall apart is hugely enjoyable and Pointing doesn’t disappoint as the ego comes crashing back down to the room. His ending, another devised theatre piece of his death, leaves the audience wanting more.

Edinburgh is both a great festival city and a beautiful city

In the evening we see Adam Riches, Winner of the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2011. This is his first stand-up show since 2014’s Adam of the Riches and there’s an intensity to Riches’ work that places him in a league of his own, especially when it comes to audience participation. In the past, audience members have been made to play swingball, have fed him food “like starlings do” (for avoidance of doubt, yes, he wanted audience members to feed him food from their mouths) and shower him on stage. Riches pulls up a man onto the stage, to take part in a sketch about sniping, but the audience member is visibly uncomfortable, at one point saying to Riches “I’m not your fucking friend”. But through his charm and command of the room, Riches stops this from becoming a disaster before grabbing another audience member to take over. Audience participation is usually something people hate and while Riches makes the audience do silly things, he is constantly laughing along with them before doing stupid things himself; there’s a generosity and warmth to his show that makes him one of the finest comedians on the circuit. It is wonderful to have him back.

The highlands to the islands

In October 2016, I had planned to go to Andalucia to bask in the sun, thrilled to still be a part of the EU. A few days prior to the vote, I reasoned that in case of emergency, a plan B (B for Brexit, B for Britain) should be made. So, the people revolted and Brexit means Brexit.

As the pound plunged, we swapped Andalucia for the Scottish highlands and it is the only good thing about the shambles thus far. We started in the superb city of Glasgow and travelled to the village of Staffin on Skye. The journey was a greatest hits package that any country would be proud of.

Scotland is a country that punches above its weight, or to give it the correct term, gives a Glasgow kiss above its weight. It is home to just over 5 million people, but the roll call of Scottish fame is intimidating. Sir Alexander Fleming invented penicillin, which is great even if I am allergic to it. Sport is represented by Andy Murray and the thighs of Chris Hoy. The otherworldly Tilda Swinton and the people’s James Bond come from there. There’s the inventiveness of the country, from adhesive postage stamps, Dolly the cloned sheep, TV to the flushing toilet. And breakfast would be poorer if a Scot hadn’t turned bitter Seville oranges into marmalade.

Another star is the Scottish landscape, when autumn is a painter’s palette come to life. The grey mountain tops are scattered with outcrops of greenery clinging on, contrasting with the russet of the deer grass. The landscape glows a deep gold with evergreen pines, glorious beech and oak adding to the view. Framing this, a big sky of blues, whites and greys. The end result is a landscape that can be described as romantic and cinematic. Scotland’s history seems deeply ingrained in the texture of the land and I fell wildly in love with it all.

Our holiday was a cobbled together affair of trains, planes and other people’s automobiles, where the journey from Glasgow to Fort William was by way of one of the greatest railway journeys in the world. That’s not just hyperbole; in 2011 readers of Wanderlust magazine voted it the best railway journey and The Telegraph rated it higher than the Oslo to Bergen line, which I have waxed lyrical about here.

The horseshoe curve

The journey to Fort William takes you along the shores of Loch Lomond, onto Tyndrum with its ‘horseshoe curve’, so-called because the train line has to take a meandering route around a glen in the shadow of three mountains. This is one example where budgetary restraints end up creating accidental beauty and the view from the left-hand side of the train was enchanting. The sun broke through the clouds, beams of light tumbled down the mountain like a torchlight showing us the way ahead. It lit up the small bridge we were gently curving towards, a brief moment of magic.

After some hours, we reached the moor of Rannoch, which the railway crosses for 23 lonely miles of bog, rivers and rocks. Here, the colours became predominantly rusty and a great sense of serenity washed over me as the landscape grew ever more barren. This moor provides ideal thinking time; with such immense emptiness all around you, becoming hypnotised by the sound of the rails and gentle movement is assured. The fact that the trains on the West Highland line are old and the rails are jointed, rather than welded, means you get the clackety-clack sounds. Is there anything more evocative in travel than that? The good news continues for those not fussed by old rails! The trains have a trolley of snacks if you’re in the market for Irn-Bru.

Rannoch Moor

Approaching Fort William, the landscape becomes less barren as Ben Nevis smashes into view. The UK’s biggest mountain is 1,344 metres, which may not be all that impressive in comparison to Mont Blanc’s 4,809 but it’s a beautiful piece of rock. From a distance, it looks like a giant is hiding his head behind his shoulder and arm. As the sun sets, the mountain is lit in a pink hue that makes it hard to look away from. The first part of the train journey is over, so we stayed a night in Fort William.

Ben Nevis – a big rock

We stayed at a hotel I won’t name, because there’s no need to advertise anyone with such an obvious dislike of customers, paying money and such horrible things. We were brusquely checked in, with a sense that we ought to apologise for our behaviour in advance, then we headed to our fabulously chintzy room. It may be the place that taste forgot, but the views of Loch Linnhe were nothing short of sensational. With a few hours of daylight still available, we headed out for a walk to Old Inverlochy castle, via the high street liberally sprinkled with drunk men and the picturesque park caught between two roundabouts and a Morrisons. Looking out onto the water, you are transported to the perfection of nature. Just don’t turn round. We hug the banks of the River Lochy and the town quickly disappears, with Ben Nevis making the occasional cameo through the breaks in the trees to our right. It is very pleasing. Soon, we come to a railway line, walk through the bridge and the castle appears, eerily empty and nestled amongst trees. The population of sheep eye us with vague interest, before continuing their baahing duties by the river. The castle is well worth a visit, the walk there alone is good enough reason to go.

Old Inverlochy Castle

The walk back to town was done at a clip as we had a reservation at Crannog seafood restaurant. As a fairly recent convert to the fishier end of the spectrum, it always feels like a major event going to a place that specialises in that which used to scare me. I had a special of scallops and pork belly, with potatoes and pureed carrots. Washed down with wine and a pudding called Crannog Tipsy Laird (it’s trifle with whisky) I left a very happy man. Such a wonderful evening needs only one thing to top it off, a visit to Wetherspoons. After all of this, we got back to our hotel room to find it was barely ten in the evening. As I succumbed to a mildly boozy slumber, I had a grin on my face from a day of great beauty.

Fort William

Tate Modern – Switch House

The ziggurat

On a visit to Tate Modern a few years ago, my mum reeled out the line that she could make the art on display in front of her. I recall it being some sort of dystopian metalwork thing. My response was what you’d expect from a loving son… “Well, you haven’t made it and you’re not a famous artist so…” which ended that conversation. Without a doubt, art galleries can be difficult places, where the art can seem distant, elitist even. But when they succeed, galleries can become meeting places for people, places to wander about and relax in a stimulating environment. And don’t get me started on the bookshop at Tate Modern.

Tate Modern has redefined the idea of what a modern art gallery can be, and with 5.2 million visitors in its first year, Tate Modern showed there was an intense appetite for a new space for art. Even in 2015, it remains a blockbuster of an attraction, the fifth most visited attraction of its kind in the UK, with 4.7 million visitors.

Tate Tanks

A blockbuster it may be, but when I first saw the designs for the Tate Modern extension, I had to suppress a scream, because on paper it just looked a mess hurled up with no thought to the surrounding environment. With time I have come to love the new bold statement. Starting with the outside, the ziggurat shape is not some fevered dream of the architects as much as it a realistic use of the space available; there are still turbines generating electricity within the old power station and over-priced, under-nice flats have sprung up around the Tate Modern, making the new structure seem like “like a defensive watchtower” in the words of Oliver Wainwright. Unusually, the new structure is built of brick, 336,000 of them, demoting glass to mere strips slashing the buildings surface, yet allowing the interior to feel bright and spacious, which is an impressive feat.

The bright interior is filled with exciting spaces

Heading into The Tanks, an underground cavern where oil used to be stored, there is a genuine sense of excitement at what has been accomplished. Being given the gift of grit and industry, the architects have finished the space off as rough-hewn as imaginable. Above one doorway is a set of concrete steps, leading nowhere. The walls are uneven and the concrete seems to have retained scars from its former use, dank stains are everywhere. The Tanks are said to be the world’s first permanent space for video installation and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Primitive is nine videos set in Thailand. The videos are not seemingly in order and all play over each other, creating an uneasy viewing experience made somewhat surreal by cushions strewn across the gallery floor. People lay down, some looking up at the ceiling, others switching position to see what’s happening on another screen. Couples are inter-twined and a sense of calm pervades.

Cushions and videos inside the Tanks

Robert Morris Untitled

There’s also a massive room filled with interactive art, my favourite being Robert Morris’ Untitled, a series of glass cubes that reflect the room around you, perfect for photography.

The grand staircase leading up to the new floors is reminiscent of Tate Britain’s new staircase. Where Britain’s staircase is a marble wonder with intricate art deco detailing, Modern’s staircase is of gorgeous twisting concrete. You are led up past one of the endless, excellent, shops to the new collections on levels 2-4 where you can appreciate just how much new space there is. I was surprised to see works that were so immersive; Ricardo Basbaum’s Capsules were little nap stations but one couple also took it upon themselves to start spooning, which is one interpretation of the artist’s intention. But also, they could just not.

Capsules

Staircase of dreams

What is particularly impressive about the new levels is that the rooms are so vast and open as well as lit from above, so any future re-hangs can take place with maximum flexibility. Coming across a pile of bricks on the floor, I was struck by my mum’s argument that she could have made the art. Carl Andre’s work, not called A pile of bricks, but Equivalent VIII was controversial when the gutter press got involved, but here it is displayed again, looking like a pile of bricks. Is it art? I guess if someone in art calls it art, it is art.

Chicken Feet

On Level 3, we encounter a load of Chicken Feet by Meschac Gaba, which I must have loved because I took a photo of the artist’s details as well as the picture of the feet. Perhaps I just enjoyed the colour. But if my tone suggests I am losing interest in the art, it’s just down to fatigue. I always get gallery fatigue about 90 minutes into my excursions. With that in mind, it’s straight up to Level 10 for the 360-degree viewing platform. A great new addition to every Londoner’s favourite past-time of looking out over the city, the viewing platform offers outstanding views of St Paul’s, the existing Tate Modern tower and excitingly, right into the glossy flats opposite. I spot a man looking dolefully at a bucket in the sharp corner of his living room. He has become art, and is paying a fortune for it. Luckily for the rest of us, visiting the Tate is free and the new extension is a great new addition to London’s cultural life.

Man and Bucket

View from the top

Chelsea Physic Garden

I’ll never tire of what small treasures London can throw up. As Samuel Johnson said “when you get through all the museums and galleries, it’ll be time to start over again”.

And so to the Chelsea Physic Garden, a 3.5 acre patch of beautifully floral, dazzlingly colourful and enchantingly peaceful London. It’s been around since 1673 and is advertised as London’s secret garden, which suggests to me that London is rather overwhelmed with gardens if this is a secret.

Rockery – flowery

While it costs £10.50 to get in, comparing unfavourably to Kew at £15, the garden is a private charity and offers free guides and tours. the theme for this year is captivating scents and the garden is filled with flowers that smell heavenly, from the Sweet Peas and their summery scent, essential oils from Australia like tea tree bringing back memories of teenage acne. There’s an amphitheatre of perfumed plants with information boards telling you that your expensive aftershave is often based on scents like black pepper, lavender, coriander and cardamom.

As you move around, you can enjoy the garden simply as a stroll that rewards your vision and sense of smell. But there’s so much information here that part of the pleasure is to learn about what plants do for us. There are plants that help fight cancer, parkinson’s disease as well as plants used for childbirth. You can find out how humans have been harnessing the power of plants for thousands of years, but before you get too close, look out for signs warning you of poisonous plants!

One of them is ricin, naturally-occurring in the seeds of the Castor plant. A fatal dose of ricin can be the size of a few grains of salt. There’s the possibility that in the future, cancer will be treated by ricin, but only if the ricin doesn’t go rogue and instead of killing the cancer cells, starts to devour the healthy cells. This is not a plant to mess with!

Near a major road – all this peace!

On the site is a restaurant and gift shop; the restaurant was heaving with people paying princely sums for food that looked outstanding but to my mind, this is where the reality of Chelsea creeps back in. A lunch costing £20 and upwards is not on my to-do list. Instead, we walked to the Royal Court’s restaurant on Sloane Square where I had a marvellous burger and salad.

Royal Court burger. Very, very good.

You can find the garden here: http://chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/

March for Europe

If I had followed through on my plan to write a “Brexit diary” chronicling the tragedy that has befallen the UK and civilisation, I would have become pretty exhausted pretty fast. In meteorological terms, a year’s worth of news fell in a week and the showers continue over a fortnight later. We are sodden. The diary would probably look a little like this:

Thursday 23rd June: I hope this weather doesn’t put people off! Nigel Farage is roaring away on the telly about remain voters being “soft” because he’s such a hard boy – he even went to fee-paying schools, so hard, so in touch with everyone. I bet Gordon brown will be the one to save us yet again. Oh, Gibraltar! Oh, Sunderland, you’ve crossed me. I will never visit you. I never was going to anyway.

Friday 24th June: ….. Ohmygodwhatjusthappened?

Queen’s Birthday flags meet the EU flags

And since that exceptional unspooling of everything that has made Britain the country people thought it was; reliable, a safe pair of hands, good in a disaster, that’s all gone out the window. In its place, we’ve seemingly become a shrieking shack of racist bile, of protectionism, of people quite openly saying their lives were shit, so economic meltdown wouldn’t exactly affect them, of a country almost too neatly split along lines of being comfortably off and those unhappy with their lot.

Brett is the result of a surgeon telling the patient to do all that ails him, before the sober realisation that in the end, something’s going to go wrong. As the surgeon’s scalpel cuts into the patient, it turns out the tumour isn’t nearly as small as imagined. The tumour has spread everywhere. The surgeon, not liking the result of his goading, runs and leaves the split-open patient to a whole bunch of devious surgeons who not liking anything approaching hard work, also run away.

There’s something bad on the table, the tumour is a mess and a sticking plaster isn’t going to fix anything. That’s Brexit. And looking around, the patient realises it has to heal itself, cos nobody else is coming to the rescue.

Parliament Square

Unexpectly, I am sanguine about Brexit. Obviously, it is a gross act of self-sabotage, bought on by a Prime Minister too obsessed with power for his own good. In fact, Prime Minister’s are famous for going mad at some point in their career. It’s around the sixth year of power. Blair took us to war for his sixth year madness. On madness, Cameron said “I’m not saying all prime ministers necessarily definitely go mad or even go mad at the same rate.” Brexit is Cameron’s madness in full throttle; his entire plan was to rescue the economy, and his last roll of the dice led to the most damaging shock to the economy in my life. How much wiped off the world stock market in the first few days after Brexit? That’s £2,000,000,000,000.

Dogs like the EU

There are positives, and they shine out like a diamond in a cow pat. There was the peaceful, almost-joyous March for Europe which I went to on the 2nd July, along with up to 50,000 other people. The rally seemed deadly quiet at the Hyde Park Hilton, but as we slowly weaved our way towards Parliament square, you could sense momentum building up as well as the genuine feeling that we could add something to the national debate. I am not naive enough to think we’d get to Parliament and the vote would be overturned, but the march was offering positive, peaceful protesting that was something akin to a mass counselling session after the shocking bereavement of the Brexit vote. Perhaps like me, people were getting out and stating their feelings for the first time ever, or at least since the Iraq war. It is the easiest thing to tweet a picture of a protest you are not at, but to get out and march is something different altogether.

It is an act of positivity in a country that has felt like an ugly place to be. Odd then that London positively glistened as we marched towards Parliament, knowing people were launching racist attacks on other because the national mood seemed to give this despicable behaviour a hall pass.

The gorgeous St Jame’s Palace

Being able to traverse London’s roads in a convoy of people gave me a chance to see at close quarters how beautiful the city is. London will always be a wonderful place to walk around and here we were, the 48%, the metropolitan elite, walking down Piccadilly, St Jame’s Street and onto Pall Mall. It makes sense to guide people down the less populated routes of central London on a Saturday, but if people in the country felt ignored and left out, this route is only going to bring back the point that the country is in them-and-us mode.

Central Methodist Hall

But I mentioned positives, and there are more. Austerity is now being talked down as something a bit daft, after Osborne unleashed his budget-apocalypse, we don’t have to worry about Boris Johnson or stabber Gove as Prime Minister’s, there may well be attempts to engage the vast swathes of the populace who feel forgotten and, oh, Nigel Farage might not be on the telly with his scabby populism. We’ll deal with Andrea Leadsom in time – the UK might have voted for self-destruction, but we certainly didn’t vote for her type.

And above all else, London remains a tolerant, beautiful city full of joy. It might be a bubble, but it’s one I am happy not to pop.

Green Park nap time

London is beautiful even in the apocalypse

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