Honore starts the book with a good exposition on how time is central to our lives, how our relationship with it has been subtly influenced and made wide-ranging changes on our lives. Early man used the seasons to know when to plant crops and so on. As the centuries progressed, time got broken down into smaller and smaller chunks of time. By the time, the industrial revolution happened, time could be measured in minutes and seconds. Workers clocked in and out. They were paid for how long they worked rather than how much they produced.

Each chapter deals with a different topic (cities, food, sex, work, medicine etc) and he explores what is being done by ‘slow’ advocates around the world. He uses a nice mix of personal and international anecdotes, coupled with not-to-heavy academic research to push his agenda. Agenda may be the wrong word: he is pushing a message but his is more a plea to the reader to, well, slow down. It’s a message that resonates with me considering I’ve just returned from a week’s annual leave.

Sometimes he relies to much on American experiences and this lessens the overall impact. America is such a large country full of (ahem) individuals that you could find one of everything there. Need a grown man who wears nappies all day and believes in UFO’s – go to America.

His website (and blog) is inpraiseofslow.

As I mentioned already, I went for a swim in my local gym this morning. It was the first time I’d been swimming in a pool since I came back from Cornwall. It just reminded me how powerful and relentless the sea is. I used to be a competitive swimmer and I’d spend up to 3 hours a day, every day, training in a pool. You would just swim up and down, up and down. My speciality was backstroke so I knew how many strokes I would take before I’ve had to turn at the wall. I could almost swim my races blindfolded!

It’s an entirely different proposition in the sea and I’ve nearly really been comfortable swimming in the sea. For someone whose second home was the pool (after my swimming career, I played water polo and life-guarded), it’s an bit scary to tread water in the sea yet the sea still pushes you one way or the other.

It’s not too bad when you’re surfing or water-sking because at least you’re out of the water (most of the time!). If you get cramp or whatever, you can hold on to the board or, in the case of watersking, you’ll have a lifejacket. But swimming, it’s just you in a million acres of water. The guy in the picture has a lot of guts.

I’m in awe of those people who swim the English Channel and other mad swims. One time, I read an interview with one of them and part of his training involved swimming through jellyfish swarms to get used to the stings.

I sent a postcard from Lizard Point (Britian’s most Southerly point) to a colleague in which I wrote, ‘I wish I had kept going’. Now I really wish I had.

Visited Plymouth in the afternoon for a very brief stop, including the National Maritime Aquarium. Might revisit tomorrow if there’s time.

I wrote this on Thursday, 22 June 2006, but I couldn’t post it until today.

There was a seal snoozing underwater in the harbour so that delayed me a while. He was kinda snoozing upside down. He was motionless beneath the water and even a school of pilchards were swimming around him. Every couple of minutes, he’d drift motionless to the surface and poke his nose out. His nostrils would flare wide open, allowing him to breathe. I guess he was sleeping as his eyes were shut. Occasionally he’d open his nostrils too soon and exhale into the water. It was funny seeing and hearing a seal blowing bubbles. Made me think of farting in the bath. Oops, did I say that out loud?

Towan Head and Fistral Beach are fully exposed to the might of the Atlantic. Anybody who’s been to the West coast of Ireland will be familar with the foamy white waves that come with the ocean swelling in on the Irish coast. But, here in Newquay, I could well believe that the waves started thousands of miles away before crashing, uninterrupted, in on Fistral Beach. And it was relentless too, crashing time and time again onto the rocks, exposing and wearing down the weak flesh of the coastal rocks.

A similar parellel could be drawn with the surfers. Time is a major part of the surfer’s life. Long term, it’s a ‘waiting game’, searching for the perfect wave. Short term, they have to sit in the water, exposing their bodies to the rolling waves, while they wait for the next best wave wave to take them home to the shore. Inevitably, the sea wears them down and to see a 30yr-old+ surfer is to see proof that the ocean does strip everything from the surfer. All that’s left is a gnarled, knotty, dried-out body with just muscle and bone remaining.

And just as the surfer keeps getting back on his board, so does nature (Far out, man!). On Towan Head, there was a handful of different plant species surviving, and thriving by the looks of things. Admittedly, the kept low to the ground, keeping a low profile as they tried to keep out of sight of the ocean’s power to destroy. Yet, incredibly, I saw a tiny bee feeding on one of the plants. How he kept his balance, or how he got there, I have no idea? Another 2 metres and the sea would have destoyed him and the plant he was sitting on. It’s funny how memories intrude. There’s a derogatory Dublin phrase, ‘F**k you and the horse you rode in on’. It probably comes from 40 years ago when Irish children went to the Saturday and Sunday cinema matinee’s to watch the (earliest?) American cowboy films. 40 years on, I’m was looking at that bee and thinking, F-you and the horse you rode in on. How did you get this far?’

I’m leaving Newquay tomorrow. Would I recommend Newquay to a friend? Yes. I’m sitting in the bar of the Hotel Bristol writing this. If I want to eat dinner here, I would have to wear a shirt. That’s a bit stuffy but I like it. The chef has probably been working for 3 or 4 hours to get my dinner ready so there’s no reason why I can’t make a bit of an effort as well? For breakfast, they make proper scrambled eggs and you get 8 quarters (two whole slices!!) of toast. The staff call me ‘sir’ (without clenching their teeth & cursing my grandchildren). All-in-all, the stuffiness does add to the charm of the hotel. If you can afford it, stay here. Across the road on the green, there’s a mixed group of twenty people practising their karate sparring skills in the open air as I write. To add to the flavour, every few minutes a gaggle of surfers, in full regalia, interrupt the spectacle as they head for the beach for ‘one more wave’. In other words, providing you have a car and/or a surfboard, there’s something here for everyone.

The one thing that detracts from Newquay is the lack of a vibrant artistic scene. St Ives, a few miles down the road, seems to fill that niche & it also explains the car comment in the previous paragraph. With the strong currents around here, you could probably ‘bodyboard’ down to St Ives pretty sharpish but where would one store one’s Panama hat, one asks? Anyway, back to Newquay. I wanted to buy a painting by a local artist that would remind me of Newquay’s wonderful ‘space’ and, especially, it’s ‘pinky’ light. In the past few days, I spent far too much time just looking at the horizon – it’s totally hypnotic here. I couldn’t really find anything that captured my feeling’s for the place until I saw this piece by Michael Goodram. It might look flat on the computer screen but Goodram has used fused glass mirrors in a unique way to achieve a beautiful three-dimensional result. The colours and textures change as you look at it from different angles. It’s the sort of piece that should probably be hung at the top of the stairs (or the hallway), so that your perception of it changes as you get closer and closer. I also have paintings by Simone Walshe (Irish) and Lesley Whelan (English) and they express themselves in three dimensions as well. I only have prints by Fred Tomaselli but, while his work is 3-d, it’s also drug-inspired (hope I’m not libelling him) so it takes a bit more deciphering. I wish I could afford one of his works but there’s never any price displayed on the internet when you go looking. And, as the saying goes, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Will I be back to Newquay? Yes but not for awhile. Emotionally, I’ve been really intrigued by the ‘light’ hereabouts. It’s a different ‘colour’ to what I’ve experienced before so I think the next step for me is to follow the artists (to France?). My favourite painter is William Leech and although my memory is failing me right now, but he was an Anglo-Irish painter (with the emphasis on Irish) who was active at the start of the 20th century. Some of his best paintings were drawn in France. I never attached much significance to the French connection but, blogging yesterday, I noted how nature had overwhelmed my senses when I visited the ‘Lizard Point’ (I couldn’t smell anything). Maybe artists are those who have a higher input-capacity/tolerance for nature/life than the average person and feel compelled to ‘record’ it for others to see. Maybe it’s not about technical skill, maybe it’s about communicating the message that, ‘here’s what I ‘feel’, can you ‘feel’ it too’? If that’s true, then graffitti is art??

Oh yeah, why is the Hotel Bristol named so? The original owner (three generations ago) travelled extensively, and stayed in a lot of Hotel Bristol’s around the world, and he enjoyed each one. Upon establishing his own hotel, he discovered that there was only one other hotel in the UK called the Hotel Bristol (& it’s not in Bristol!). ‘Well then, that’s sorted’, he may have said in a 1920′s sort of way (1927 to be exact).

I wrote this on Wednesday, 21 June 2006, but I couldn’t post it until today.

Visited Lands End and the Lizard Point in Cornwall today. They are, respectively, the most Westerly and the most Southerly parts of Britain. Arguably, Lizard Point was the nicer of the two. It was very remote: there’s a 9 mile road leading to it and that’s all that road does. There were no turn-off’s (a little lie!) It was unspoilt and I had to park in a field. The views, of course, were fantastic but the wild flowers were an added bonus. Apparently they’re unique to the region and it’s one of the reasons people (tourists later) were attracted to the area in the first place. Well worth a visit.

Driving around today, I was struck by a few things:
– I had to turn the radio off after awhile. I’d spent too much time channel-hopping between BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, and 4. And each time I changed the station I had to adjust the volume. Radio 4 was set the loudest at volume 13, Radio 3 at 11, R2 at 9 while R1 was adjusted all the way down to volume 8. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to correlate the level of noise they can tolerate with their age. Someone would make a fortune if they could invent a gadget that would adjust the radio output to a constant level.
– It’s funny how nature can overwhelm the senses. As I got back into my car, I noticed how smelly it was and how I hadn’t smelt anything while on the Lizard Point. Maybe you’re not supposed to smell anything while in the ‘fresh air’? there was plenty to look at (dramatic cliffs, crashing waves etc) but the bravado of the gulls was astonishing. Several times, one gull or a gang of them would hover on the breeze metres in front of me before disappearing kamakaze-like over the cliff. I honestly think they were showing off and I was mildly surprises not to see one of them cap-in-hand at the front gate looking for contributions.
– Midway through my holidays and I’m kinda physically tired, but in a good way. All the strolling, walking, climbing etc that I’ve physically done is good for my ‘constitution’. I’m more calm and the blood pressure has dropped. Maybe too much! For ages today, I was stuck behind a big silage truck carrying a 1,000 litre of you know what. And the motto of the company? ‘Shi-f-ters, 40 years in business and still moving’. And I didn’t mind.

Most people go on holiday but I think I’m on annual leave. Not the annual leave dreamt up by corporate H.R. departments desparate to be P.c By ‘annual leave’, I’m thinking more of a deliberate leaving behind of all my worries and troubles. Maybe what Catholics (& other Christians?) call a ‘retreat’? Whisper it but I didn’t check my Blackberry toay for email. In the ‘real world’, I could probably get into trouble for that.

This retreating from the world is good for the psyche. Usually, people declare themselves ‘exhausted’, or ‘in need of another holiday’ when you ask how their holiday went. For most people, a holiday is two weeks in the sun. But really, all they’re doing is replacing is one set of 3′s with another set. During the working week, you have the daily 7am 3′s – shower, shit ‘n shave. On holidays, you replace those 3′s for another – sun, sea ‘n sex.

Why impose these burdens on ourselves? Most of us have a favourite place where we like to, well, just sit. Maybe it’s a sunny spot in the garden, maybe it’s a public park, or maybe it’s a particular city where you like wandering the streets not understanding the language.

So the next time you’re planning on taking time off work have a think about whether you want a holiday or annual leave?

Two funny signs today!
– ‘This lane is closed to protect the workmen’. I saw this sing on a dual carraigeway as the 2 lanes merged into one at some roadworks. This sign is completely redundant, unless you thought that the roadworks were strategically placed to annoy you.
– The sign had an image of a plane inside a triangular sign with a red border. This was outside Lands End aerodrome. I instinctively slowed down in case I turned the corner and smashed right into the back of a light aircraft. Obviously, I’m not the first to misunderstand because, 50 metres on, there was another sign, ‘Beware of low flying aircraft’. Ahh! And to think I imagined airplanes, wings extending out horizonatally, driving around the highways and byways of Cornwall in the dead of night trimming the hedges. Think about it.

I wrote this on Tuesday, 20 June 2006, but I couldn’t post it until today.

Not too many odd traffic signs today. The strangest set I saw were near Otterhampton, Staffordshire. The set consisted of a cow enclosed in a red triangle with a pair of amber lights beneath and the legend, ‘cows crossing when the lights are flashing’. Funny how the badgers in Wales are fair game while cows get special protection in Staffordshire. Staffordshire seemed very agreeable, as you English might say. All the farms had quaint names like, ‘Old Water farm’, Grisley’s farm’, ‘Claypits’. I used to live in the UK and got into ‘real ale’. I thought I’d hit paydirt when I saw a sign for Burton. If memory serves, Burton is/was the centre of the Universe for real ale drinkers (excellent combination of hops and water). I turned off the main road in great anticipation but, unfortunately, Burton was just a bend in the road. Not even a pub! Where’s the ‘Trading Standards’ when you need them.

I spent an enjoyable few minutes contemplating possible marketing campaigns after I drove past the ‘Castle of Comfort’ hotel, vaguely near Minehead. Maybe you’re thinking of fluffy pillows and scented candles right now. Maybe I’ve a filthy mind because I was thinking of entirely different things (hehe).

The first Spar shop I saw was in St Audries. I haven’t seen too many corner shops, to be honest. And it’s kinda sad because the community, or what’s left of it, has nowhere to go to bind together and communicate with each other. Most of the areas I drove through were agricultural and very rural. How does the farmer, working his 100 acre farm, find out the local gossip? Everyone has to own a car and everyone has to drive 20 miles to a superstore (at least, that’s what the roadsigns call them) to get the shopping. It’s a downward spiral. Think about it. It’s already happening/happened in our towns. When was the last time you said ‘hello’ or acknowledged a stranger as you walked along a city street? As an Irish person, I think it’s odd that the council puts up community noticeboards in the little villages I stopped in (e.g. Watchet). How sad it that the council (whose HQ is 100 miles away?) has to tell you what’s going on in your community.

The first time I saw the sea today was in Kilve.

I didn’t see any McDonalds, which was good. I hope there aren’t any in Cornwall.

Oh yeah, my near-death experience. It’s pretty steep going into Lyntton. It’s even steeper leaving Lyntton and heading across the Exmoor National Park. Leaving Lyntton, the roadsign advised carvans to take the toll road as Lyntton Hill ahead had a gradient of 1:4. I’m not sure what that means but I think it means the road rises 4 metres for every 1 metre you go forward. Oh crap. I going uphill and I’m in second gear. I’ve done U-bends before so what could possibly go wrong as I’m slowly going up a hill in second gear? The road was covered overhead by trees and there must have been some water run-off from the moor and one U-bend turned out to be wet. The front of the car started to go and, sad git that I am, all I could think was, ‘I don’t want to be killed by a caravan coming downhill. I don’t want to be killed by a caravan’. Of course, being a man, I just applied a bit of opposite lock, the car recovered and I continued on my way. However, being mindful that I didn’t want to scare any caravan-drivers, I did slow down until I cleared the moor. One has to be considerate of other road users! Tally-ho.

I finally made it to the Hotel Bristol in Newquay. It looks pretty nice and it offers wireless internet access. It’s part of the ‘Best Western’ network of hotels and that’s usually a good sign. Update: I can’t work out the Internet access. The server is giving me an I.P. address but I can’t log on. My computer diagnostic software is basically saying the access point is playing silly buggers but right now, I don’t care. Newquay awaits.

I wrote this on Monday, 19 June 2006, but I couldn’t post it until today.

Dublin is pretty grim at 7.30 in the morning but then, so are most places. It was pretty overcast as I set out for the ferry terminal but I knew that the weather was better in the UK so I didn’t mind so much. The crossing was pretty much as I expected – bearly tolerable. Due to the length of the drive and an early start this morning, I thought it prudent to break the journey to Cornwall so I’m staying in Birmingham tonight. A Travelodge to rest my head and a Little Chef to fill my belly! Still, mustn’t grumble – if I’m going to experience the UK, I’ll have to endure these indignities (haha).

Tomorrow, breakfast will be an Little Chef ‘Omelette Breakfast’ for a not so little stg£6.49. Its robbery: ‘served with hash browns, mushrooms, and baked beans and a generous sprinkling of grated Cheddar cheese’. Yeah right, I don’t think generous and sprinkling belong in the same sentence. I might cheat and get something made by Cadbury since I’m in that part of the world. Something like a Galaxy bar should provide all the vitamins I need! That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

Driving from Holyhead to Birmingham was a joy, a pure joy. For a start, the further I got from Ireland, the more the weather improved. It’s very well signposted so you couldn’t really go wrong (A55, A49, A51, A500, M6, M5, ‘travelodge’ – simplicity). Ireland could learn a lot from the UK’s road network. They do have the same predisposition as us to putting up way too many traffic signs. On one stretch, there were far too signs warning that badgers may try to kill themselves by crossing the road! The Samaritans have one on the Britannia bridge (near Bangor?) with a freephone number for the suicidal! It felt like the police had signs every 100 metres warning that the national speed limit applied. I guess the logic is you’d have no excuse if you were caught speeding.

Not that there was any chance of that! It’s not often that cars overtake me. Wow, people were driving very enthusiastically today. In Ireland, a Sunday driver is typically an old man/woman out for an hour’s Sunday drive and they go really, really slow and drive everyone (behind them) mad. There were no Irish Sunday drivers today, hehe. I don’t know if the Welsh are speed freaks or whether it was the English getting out before sundown? But it was good.

The section through Staffordshire was the nicest. It looked pretty rural but I don’t reckon anyone does farming here. I reckon most of the people who lived around there were commuters into the nearby large towns. There were lots of pretty villages with quaint pubs but, oddly, not many shops. These were small villages with lovely houses, fancy cars, fancy gardens but no (dirty) 4×4′s, tractors or, god forbid, combine harvestors.

I was tempted to stop at ‘The Headless Woman’ pub in Clotton, Staffordshire. isadub is genetically disposed to stop at pubs anyway but with a name like ‘The Headless Woman’, it was practically irresistable. Unfortunately, I suspected there was an unmarked police car behind me so jamming on the brakes and swerving in a pub carpark would not have been sensible right then! I thought it might be a police car because it was a Vauxhall with two people in it. They maintained a steady speed behind me for ages, and just far enough behind that I couldn’t see their faces or clothing. They didn’t appear to be talking and they appeared not to look at each other. Eventually, they got close behind me at a roundabout and I could see they were a middle-aged married couple!! As the saying goes, I’m not being paranoid but, sometimes they really are out to get you.

My biggest mistake was visiting Newcastle-under-Lyme (?). I saw it signposted before I got to the M6 and for some reason, I had to visit. Whether I read about it somewhere before or whether I mistook it for somewhere similar (with a 3-barreled name) like Stratford-upon-Avon, I just don’t know. i guess the ‘under’ should have warned me but what a dump. I didn’t even stop. The developers had obviously been through the place in the ’60′s so it was full of concrete multi-story carparks and the like.

I’m not sure whether I’d like to live in Clotton with no shops or N-u-L with loads of shops called ‘Bargain Booze’. Hmmm.

Finally, and I’m looking for some help here. BBC Radio 3 made my car journey a distinct pleasure this afternoon. We can’t get BBC3 in Ireland (we have lyricfm.com) but, at 3p.m., the ‘Sunday Gala’ had the violinist, Leonidas Kavakos, as their main guest/musician. The first 40mins were hypnotic and, at times, I thought I’d better turn it off because it was affecting my driving. Anyway, if anyone listened, or could post the playlist for the first 40 minutes, I’d be grateful. I’d do it myself but I’m not sure how reliable or fast my internet connection is, or will be, during the next week.

Tomorrow is Newquay. Oh Sugar, I sound very American when I write that! It’s Sunday, so it must be Birmingham. Monday is Newquay, Thursday is the Eden project. Friday is Torquay (don’t laugh – I’m experiencing ‘English’ culture)/(don’t laugh – I’m experiencing English ‘culture’). Not sure if I should put the inverted commas around the word English or culture – what do you think?. During my 3 days in Newquay, I’m ‘residing’ at the Hotel Bristol and, no, I’ve no idea why a Newquay hotel is called the Hotel Bristol. It looks quite posh on the Internet and, since the Rough Guide to Devon and Cornwall says you get what you pay for, it had better be because I’ve paid a lot more for this hotel than the travelodge. If I find more about the Hotel Bristol, I’ll let you know.

The 5 day weather forecast from the Met Office is looking good so surfing and cliff walking are definite things to do, so are Lands End and Lizard Point – don’t know if I’ll read any books! Even if the weather’s bad, there’s always the Tate St Ives. One can go surfing in the rain as well!

I wrote this on Sunday, 18 June 2006, but I couldn’t post it until today.