Randonne

A short couple of hours stroll from the chapel at Guadalupe to Jaizkibel (543m) the last peak before the Pyrenees tumbles into the Atlantic.  The Bay of Figs and the Bay of Biscay on my right hand side,  La Rhune and the Three Crowns on the right:  Ohri, the western-most 2000m peak visible for just a few minutes before arriving at the look-out point at Jaizkibel.  A short but very enjoyable walk.

The view from Guadalupe across the Bidasoa towards La Rhune, 

possibly the best 'Mirador' on the Bidasoa.

The Three Crowns from Jaizkibel

No taxation without representation

That’s a political philosophy that few can disagree with (although its opposite does not and should hold true).  Yet the right of EU citizens to work, reside and travel in other EU states has resulted in a huge anomaly, where there is a very large gap between the EU’s  guarantee of social and economic rights and individual Member States’ vastly different interpretations of citizens’ (and non-citizen’s) political rights.

According to Eurostat there are some 16 million EU citizens living in EU countries other than the one of which they are a citizen.  16 million!  That’s around 3% of the population of the EU, the equivalent (roughly) of the population of the Netherlands, or more than the population of the EU’s   eight lest populous countries put together.   Let’s assume, at a conservative estimate, that 75% of these people are economically active  paying taxes in their country of residence. 

Yet to my knowledge there is not one single EU country that allows tax-paying, non-citizens, no matter how long established, to vote in its national elections.  This is a scandal.  It means that something like one in forty of the EU population is disenfranchised. 

The level of disenfranchisement may vary.  In many EU countries non-citizens are able to vote in EU, local and sometimes regional elections.  Citizens of some countries permanently retain their right to vote in their home countries.  (The French recognise that their ex-pat communities have specific interests and needs and so deserve dedicated seats in the Senate).  In others such as the UK this right is granted for a limited and somewhat arbitrary period of time (the controversial 15 year rule, which the last two Tory manifestoes have promised to abolish,  a promise that has not (yet) been delivered upon and could have made a decisive difference in  the 2016 referendum).  Germans, I understand, lose their voting rights as soon as they become ‘non-dom’.    I don’t know about the other 25 member states.

The EU seeks to harmonize economic and social rights, yet I believe this needs to be balanced by harmonising political rights, so that every EU citizen has the right to vote in all elections in one country or another.   My preference would be that people have voting rights in the country where they pay taxes (after say a certain qualifying period). ( Again this would have had a profound effect on the 2106 UK referendum).  But failing that they should retain their voting rights in their home countries.

The current situation represents a fundamental breach of human rights.  Yet no-one is talking about it.  And I think it is time we opened the discussion. 

Baratzea – July

Yesterday I was working in the garden when a woman came passing by (as people are wont to do in such a public space).

‘Is that Comfrey (Solidage)? Where did you get it?’

I was impressed. Most people ask me what it is.

‘The guy who sold me my apartment left a potful on the terrace. I’ve been propagating it ever since. It takes really easily ’

‘Do you know where can I get some?’

‘If you wait a moment I will dig you up a root’.

I dug up a young shoot, put in a pot and gave it to her.  My visitor, who I have never met before, was delighted.  So was I.  Comfrey was, symbolically, the first thing I planted on the plot, to build fertility.  Over the past few months I have been given so many plants, seeds, gardening equipment (tools, stakes etc.) and composting materials so it was a real pleasure to start to return those favours. 

Baratzea looked like an ecological disaster zone two months ago.  Nitrogen demanding bacteria were busy consuming the cardboard and straw I had put down to suppress weeds, leaving no N for the plants, no matter what I threw at them.

I have improved that situation somewhat (same plant seven weeks later)

Baratzea naturally falls into four plots. The lower two (2&3) are doing quite well, the upper two (1 &4) require more attention.

Plot 1: Pumpkins and maize 

Plot 2: a little bit of everything that was available in May: though mostly onions, peppers, cabbages and fennel 

Plot 3: tomatoes and potatoes 

Plot 4: mostly beans and cabbage family (still to be planted) 

Plots 1 and 4 seem to be suffering from a fertility/compaction  problem.  The soil on these higher plots seems to have more clay, less loam and opens up less easily .  I’m working on that and will continue to do so over the coming season.  

The main challenge is building ‘an edge zone’ along the fences.  I’ve planted sunflowers, lupins, raspberries and other ‘barrier’ plants, but so far so few of them have taken.  Slowly I am working on that challenge too.  Check out my progress in a few weeks' time. 

Serendipity in the Bibliotheque

One of the books that I found at the Planete Ecole stall yesterday was just what I was looking for: an illustrated history of the Tour de France.  It was true serendipity since a) the tour was in the Pyrenees that very day and b). I was just rewriting a section of my book about the Pyrenees that involved me doing some fact checking about the very first tours to pass through the Pyrenees.  They were fascinating times: the guy charged with reconnoitring  the route spent a night lost on  the Col de Tournalet (the highest paved pass on the French side of the mountains) in freezing conditions having walked across the pass as the car he hired couldn't cross because of the depth of the snow.  He sent a telegram back to L'Auto in Paris saying 'the route is fine.'   Three years later a certain Eugene Christophe who was running just behind the leader, had his bike almost totalled when it was run over by a car.  At that time there were no spare bikes and riders were not allowed to call on outside mechanical help so he carried his bike 14km down the mountain to the nearest village and welded the frame back together himself in the local forge, while officials watched on to make sure the smithy didn't help him.   He wasn't able to gain back the time he lost, but he earnt himself a place in the 'people's history book' . 

But this photo made me smile: Maurice Garin, winner of the first tour de France in 1902. Check that ciggie hanging out of the corner of his mouth! 

memories of Glastonbury

With all the media exposure of Glastonbury this weekend I realised that I was last there in 1997: thirty years ago.  (Sir!) Van Morrison was highlighting and I was very pleased to find bootleg cassettes of his performance for sale about an hour after he finished: impressed by the efficiency of the production system  that could knock out,  I don't know how many, copies of his performance in a field at such short notice.  I still have the cassette, sadly not the means to play it :-(.

Monday morning leaving site I shredded the two back tyres on my beloved Bedford CA ambulance and had to nurse it into the nearest town to get two new ones fitted before driving back to London.


Why was that my last Glastonbury?  It was partly the feeling that it had grown too big, too commercial, but more so, a few weeks later, I moved 'up north': t'Alifax. After ten years as a southerner when I planned my summer activities around the festival circuit I now had access to the Pennines, the Peaks and the Lakes and, on longer weekends, the Highlands.   A new world of OB opened to me and the idea of spending my summer weekends on crowded camp sites queueing for overpriced beer and dirty toilets just its allure.  Or perhaps I was just moving on.  It's not that I never go to festivals any more, but the last I went to less than a thousand people, stunning views and no queues at the bar.  I knew all my camping neighbours by name by the time I left!

Doing the stats on migration

This table is hugely interesting - if you can appreciate, and are fascinated by, statistics. It shows the number and percentage of EU and non EU-citizens living in each member state (+EFTA/Schengen members).  

Looking at this table produced some surprises for me.  One would think from all the current rhetoric that the UK is being overrun by migrants. Yet if you look at column 2 non-native UK residents make up less than 10% of the UK's population. There are 11 countries where this figure is more than 10%, so the UK is an averagely-favoured migration location not the 'honey pot' that some claim. 

If you then look at EU migration figures the proportion of non-native EU residents in the UK is just below 5%, putting in (about) no. 10 in the most favoured locations for EU (and EFTA/Schengen citizens) to relocate to. (I'm doing these calculations in % rather than than real terms). 

Then if you look at column 6 Thirteen EU/EFTA countries have a higher percentage of residents of non EU origin - which is actually quite suprising given Britain's colonial history.

All this makes me wonder: why are the Brits so up in arms about this? It's not a 'being swamped by Johnny-foreigner' things (as I thought might the case). It's something about the British mentality. 

Baratzea: Week 16

Baratzea: Week 16

The next week I made frequent visits to new plot, just to look at it, measure it, see what is there, and work out way is North (it didn’t correspond a tall with my intuitive feel).   There wasn’t much left but was left was of value.  A strawberry bed, a couple of artichoke plants already as tall as me, a couple of rose and hydrangea bushes, a decent amount of compost and most importantly 5x 200 litre water barrels  rain fed from the roof of the garage and interconnected by a series of pipes.   I met the neighbour who gardens the plot above mine (the garden is split into two plots) who mostly grows flowers, together with a few potatoes and strawberries.  One afternoon I met Jean Pierre bringing over a bundle of freshly cut bamboo stakes as a gift for her to use to train her tomatoes and peppers.    Bamboo grows in abundance around here and is a really useful resource for gardeners and other D-i-Y’ers.  The modesty/wind screen on my balcony is largely made out of bamboo stakes and woven matting.    The stakes that Jean Pierre brings are freshly cut, sturdy and green and look fantastic.  

It’s good to meet Jean Pierre.  He tells me a little about the quality of the garden, the variations in soil quality, that he never runs out of rain water, that he has taken three water barrels but left me five and some compost and the strawberries. I get the impression he is angling for something but feel that that debt, imaginary or real, can be repaid later in the year with some harvest.  He says he minimised his use of pesticides, although some more radical bio neighbours disagreed with that.  I am not going into commercial production so I don’t have to worry about conversion periods or past applications too much. 

And while I am thinking about what resources are on the land I am also thinking about what resources I have got and those I ned to find:  there are some seeds that I sowed in March with the intention of planting them on my balcony and on the tiny plat that I have negotiated on my jardin collectif’s terrain across the border by the airport in Hondarribia. But that plot is much smaller and my first year’s seeding programme was set back by torrential rainfall, which drowned many of the pots and my cat scratching out a large number that remained.  Strong winds blew away many of the labels, so although I can see the difference between the surviving tomatoes, pumpkins and beets – I don’t actually know which varieties are which anymore.   It’s going to be speed date, rather than companion planting this year.

The plan is to do a permaculture garden – minimising the digging and building a productive and aesthetically pleasing garden – the later important as it is in such a visible public space.   At the moment the plot is surrounded by bare chain link fencing so it looks quite unloved.  I want to prioritise planting barrier species along the perimeters to slow down wind speeds, reflect heat, reduce any pollution from cars and make the plot look and feel self-contained.   My first tasks are to locate cardboard, from supermarket skips and to recuperate the two bales of hay left over from preparing my plot in Spain.  The latter proves to be hard work as the hay has been out in the rain for three months.  Normally I can lift a bale of hay easily by myself, but being so wet I can only to lift about a sixth a bale at any one time.  It takes a long time to load it, and unload it.  My car which I had swept out a few days ago before its technical control, once again starts to resemble, and smell like, farm machinery.   

My 'Partner': a perfect fit for four bales of hay. 

By the end of the week I have two of the six plots and a third of the perimeter fencing covered with cardboard and bakers’ sacks (there is new organic bakery immediately opposite the land who is willing to supply me with a limitless supply) and mulched over.  I have planted in a few things that I hope will be fast growing and give me and passers- by the illusion of quick progress:  three rhubarb cutting and a sprig of mint (in an otherwise not very useful step on the wall between the gardens where it can spread as much as it likes),  a buddleia  (to attract butterflies) two fig trees, a laurel and an iris that were volunteers on the plot of land around my co-working space at Cocoba and a dozen or so pumpkin and courgette seedlings that were getting too big for their pots.  Hopefully they will all quickly grow and spread and make the garden look less like a desert.      

My system for laying down 'a lasagne garden': first the cardboard - easy to work and place when it comes in one metre square sheets (though it's better to tack the sellotape off before laying it down) with a 'slice' from a hale bay placed on each which i then spread out.  Later the weeds from my neighbours garden will go on top. One bale covers about five square metres , which takes about an hour and half to prepare. 

Baratzea: week 0

There’s a little patch of land in the centre of my quarter, le bas quartier, a triangle enclosed by three roads that is a beautiful and charming garden.  During the winter I noticed that half of it was completely neglected. It looked like nobody had paid it any attention for a long time.  I asked around the neighbourhood to try to find out who owns it and it if I might not be able to use it.   Two people said that they know the owner who lives in Bordeaux but comes back every so often as he has a house here and the former gardener who wanted to give up the plot for health reasons.  Weeks passed by and nothing happened.  

The week before Easter the previous user of   the garden cut back everything on the plot back ready for cultivating this season and then 'handed in his notice'.  Two days later Elizabeth who works in the épicerie that faces directly onto the plot gave me the number of Michel, the owner ,and suggested I call him.  I thought about how to ‘present’ myself before calling him the next day.  He was delighted to find someone interested in taking over the plot as he was planning to post a notice in the local shops to try to find somebody to take over the garden when he next came back to Hendaye. Even better Michel didn’t want rent – just someone who would keep the patch tidy and keep his good standing in the community.  Then he threw in the bonus, telling me that that I could have access to his garage, attached to the plot to keep my tools in – although he wants to retain access to it to park his car whenever he comes back to Hendaye.  He suggested that we meet next time he came down to Hendaye, probably in three to four weeks’ time.  I said that’s fine but it will be really late in the growing season by then.  Michel said he’ll see what he can do. As I put the phone down I felt a sense of joy that the angels had dropped this present into my lap and pride that I had been able to negotiate a ‘contract’ on a piece of land so easily in French. 

But better was yet to come. Two or three hours later I was passing Panxika’s house and she called me over.  ‘I spoke to Michel and he asked about you’.  Apparently my reputation had been preceded me: she had already spoken to Michel (an old, old, friend of hers) about the Englishman who had joined and was supporting the residents’ association.   Michel put two and two together and asked Panxika if we were one and the same person.  She said yes.  ‘So he’s going to let you have the garden.  But don’t tell him I told you so’.   Later that evening Michel called me saying that he heard about me from the neighbours, that he thought I was responsible and that I could pick up the keys to the garage from Panxika  tomorrow, so I could get on with the garden and we could meet when he came back to Hendaye in a few weeks’ time.    Game on!

Easter Saturday I went round to Panxika’s to pick up the keys to the garage.  We went to check out the garage.  Ample space for my tools and Michel’s car, with enough left over for me to store a bike (my last one got stolen when I left it chained to the same lamp-post for three months over the winter and ) and back up supply of wood for the winter months (I live on the third floor of a residence with no lift, so buying wood in bulk is problematic – whenever I explain the situation the price for a cubic metre of wood  doubles from around 50-60 Euro to more than 100 – not surprisingly given the extra work involved in hauling it all up three flights of stairs).  The only downer is that Jean Pierre, who worked the garden before me, has already sold all his tools. But I have the double benefit of a garden 100m away from my home and free storage space.  Having the tools on tap would be like the winning the roll-over ball on the lottery.   Opening and closing the garage doors is in itself a tactile experience – they are old style, concertina-design, wooden doors, the kind I associate with 1930s black and white movies.  I imagine these garages could have been built when people wealthy enough to run a car also had a uniformed chauffeur:  ‘We’ll need the Roller tonight, James’ .  It certainly feels like a new door has opened.   

Doublespeak

George Orwell - whether prophet or stooge (I'll leave that debate for another time) added a very valuable word to the English vocabulary: 'Doublespeak'

This week I have seen two examples of this:

Earlier this week I tracked a post from a governmental source that said 'We continue to believe that no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal. But we want a deal. We want a deep and special partnership with the European Union, and we want the EU to succeed'.   (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/03/theresa-may-accuses-eu-of-meddling-in-uk-general-election)

Today Simon Wolfson, the Tory peer and Next boss who donated £50,000 to Vote Leave said: "The most important thing to come out of Brexit is sending a very clear message to the rest of the world – that Britain is an open country, a free trading country, one that embraces the rest of the world and does not reject it.” ( https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/06/brexit-donor-peter-hargreaves-rights-eu-nationals-theresa-may) 

I don't see any consistency in either of these messages.   

The phrase 'have your cake and eat it' springs to mind 

the wireless society?

Has anyone ever lived in a house or flat with enough sockets to actually plug all the things you use directly into the wall?  Every time I buy a new electrical appliance (which is very very rarely) the packaging warns me that I must never ever plug it into a multi-outlet socket.  So should I get my house rewired or what?

Yesterday I was finishing the job that I started last week: rationalising my 'entertainments corner': the one with the TV, laptop, CD player, tuner, amplifier, modem.  Um that's five sockets I need already.    The first stage in this process is making sure the shelving supports all these various bits and pieces and that all the wires from one instrument are long enough to reach the bits they are supposed to connect with (printer cables are notorious for being too short to put the printer where you actually want it). Having established that they did I then started linking them all together.

I decided to adopt a Permaculture approach and map the system. Here is what is looks like: nine things that need linking to the power  supply: three that need connecting to the modem and nine seven that need connecting to each other.

I've got cabling down to a fine art after too many times doing this (sometimes when moving country it also involves changing the plugs).  Always put the mains leads in first. The most distant first, test each connection is good as you go along. Then do the same for the cables that connect things together, again starting from the most distant. Then the speaker cables.  Finally sweep the whole cable spaghetti under the carpet and hope you won't have to untangle it for a long time.  It took about two hours to do this yesterday, a process prolonged by Laptop (the other one) deciding he fancied an apprenticeship as an electrician.  I eventually locked him out on the terrace for an hour. I had my reward of having a nice tidy entertainment corner  that doesn't take up too much space or have to many visible wires.  I still haven't decided where to hang the speakers yet, or found out if the cables are long enough.