Three old hills and a stolen soul

I went for a walk out of Melrose today. Climbed up through Rhymer's Glen, which namechecks Thomas the Rhymer, local 14th century poet, and subject of the medieval poem which re-tells a much older, possibly Celtic story, of a man who is enchanted by the Queen of Elfland, and stolen away by her to the otherworld. Then over the three Eildon Hills, with fine views across the green Tweed valley. Some versions of the Rhymer story say that the crack between our world and Elfland lay below these hills, but they've been the seat of magic and power for much longer - back through Roman times and the Bronze age and maybe even further. The sun shone and the wind blew, and I walked back down on muddy St Cuthbert's Way into Melrose, and drove home just as the rain started again.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in town

Today I went to hear the Dalai Lama speak at a sell-out gig at Edinburgh's Usher Hall. You could feel the excitement among the audience building up through the hour of warm up acts (some great music from local youth groups and choirs, a bit of Tibetan dancing, and, bizarrely, a perma-tanned Italian opera singer with his shirt open to his navel). HHDL, as he seems to be known in the trade, got a standing ovation as he came onto the stage, and set the tone immediately by refusing to sit down in the big comfy chair set up for him, but preferring to wander round smiling and waving at people he knew. His talk - titled 'Beyond Religion - Ethics for a Whole World - touched on the importance of recognising the interconnectedness of all people, of positive thinking, of not being too serious, of not using the words I and me too often or we probably run a higher risk of heart attack, and of bringing up children with love to become self confident, compassionate people who can change the world into a more peaceful place. He ended up in characteristic form by threatening the schoolchildren listening that he'd be watching them in future from whichever place (heaven or the other) he ended up, so they'd better be trying hard in the improving the world  stakes. 


He was sometimes hard to understand because of the language barrier, but he has a relaxed and totally direct and informal manner that kept people hanging on his words, and laughing along with him. Before I heard him I wondered how a nearly 80 year old has the energy to deliver all the speeches and lectures and Q&A sessions he does, but he seems so relaxed and to really enjoy speaking and answering questions and teaching, that maybe he actually draws energy from doing it. I can also see that at least one reason why he's such a huge international presence and commands such respect is his straightforward, approachable, no-nonsense, egalitarian style. He treats everyone as his friend, and isn't shy about being honest - in a good way! - and that is something of a novelty in the world, whether you're a prince, a president, or a taxi driver.


This wise, funny, outspoken and irreverent man has been one of the largest-looming figures of my age, and a small but positive part of much of my life, from meeting Tibetan refugees in Nepal as a teenager, and coming home and joining the Free Tibet organisation; to reading about his teenage years in Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet; to hearing a Lama in a monastery in Inner Mongolia talk about his pilgrimage to meet the Dalai Lama in Lhasa in the 1950s. I am happy and touched to have been able to see and hear him talk in person. And to top it off it turns out he even has a Facebook page, but I guess these days you're nowhere in the international faith leader community without one - and he does get to post pretty cool photos of his mates.

A new project in Iceland

I'm in Iceland for a few days working on a new project - new for me. Colleagues at BGS have been working here for years, most recently developing a glacial observatory on the Virkisjokull glacier. Lots of good science stuff has been going on here, learning more about how glaciers move, how they create landforms, and how they retreat as the climate warms up. Most recently they've started to look at what happens to the meltwater that flows off the glacier, and this is where I come in. My part is to get some boreholes drilled into the sandur - the huge, thick sand and gravel outwash plain in front of the glacier - to investigate how much groundwater is in the sandur, and how it interacts with the fast-flowing meltwater river that flows across it.

This trip has been a whistlestop one to meet the driller who is going to sink these boreholes for us, for me to get introduced to the glacier and the field site, to do a couple of repair jobs and river-gauging measurements, and to meet the local landowners and national park reps to explain what we're going to be doing. It's going well so far & I've seen plenty of appetite-whetting, impressive glaciers! I'll probably be posting a lot more about this later in the summer when hopefully I'll be here for a few weeks overseeing the drilling and carrying out experiments on the boreholes. 

Cherry

Apsley Cherry-Garrard was one of the last of his particular manifestation of England's landed gentry, and one of the most unlikely heroic explorers of the polar age. Through a family friend, the biologist Edward Wilson, he became the youngest member of Scott's final expedition, as an assistant zoologist. Despite poor eyesight and a background in flitting about Hertfordshire, Cherry's enthusiasm, dedication and sheer grit  made him a key part of Scott's team, both in the scientific work that took up most of their first year in the Antarctic, and in the preparation for, and aftermath of, the Polar Journey. Cherry also wrote the most long-lasting and widely read account of that expedition, and one of the best travel books you'll ever find, The Worst Journey in the World (or see a BBC adaptation of it). Its opening lines set the tone for an entertaining, intelligent and heartfelt telling of a story that's become part of British culture: 

'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised...Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time of it than an Emperor penguin'. 

The title of the book doesn't refer to Scott's fatal Polar Journey, but to an earlier journey of unbelievable endurance made by Cherry, Edward Wilson and the redoubtable Birdie Bowers, who were the first people to sledge across the Antarctic in winter, not for glory but for a tiny little nugget of scientific discovery. They man-hauled sledges for six weeks in darkness, gale force winds and temperatures below -50, in order to find Emperor penguins, the only animals who breed on the Antarctic continent, and collect their eggs so they could investigate the nature of bird embryo development. Now that was science. They did bring back eggs, although as almost unbearably told in Cherry's book, they got little recognition for it (now that's also science!). But you can still see their three miraculous eggs at the Natural History Museum (where up til 2 September you can also see an exhibition marking the centenary of Scott reaching the South Pole).

Sara Wheeler wrote a nice biography of Cherry, with fascinating detail of the politics behind Scott's expedition, as well as a poignant picture of Cherry's later life. He did have more adventures, but most of the rest of his life was spent quietly, trying to come to turns with the changes of the 20th century and the end of the world he'd been brought up in. Neighbour and friend to George Bernard Shaw, he remained a dedicated landlord and steward of the Hertfordshire countryside he loved. I was cycling there a couple of weeks ago and we took a detour to the village of Wheathampstead (bustling with its Jubilee celebrations) to make a pilgrimage to Cherry's grave. Inside St Helen's we also found a poignant memorial: a little statue of him in his sledging gear that sits curiously in the English church, next to the formal plaques and reminders of his grand ancestors who worshipped there for centuries. But it's a fitting tribute to this quiet, unassuming man, who gave so much to adventure and science in the remotest place on earth, and who was probably never happiest than when helping his comrades pull a sledge under Antarctic skies. 

Photo (c) J Martin

Friday at Ashgill

Late morning into lunchtime on Fridays in a dementia care home often goes something like this. I talked to Dad and showed him some photos. He laughed at my jokes. I compared cut fingers with Marcella and tried to make Jeannie smile. Stephanie got me an instant coffee in a plastic cup, with a saucer, and a custard cream. I sang along to Neil Diamond with Jenny, and knitted for a while when Dad fell asleep. Rachel was in a wheelchair, unusually, because her arthritic knees were playing up, and was apparently in a foul mood about it, but she was asleep. George admired my winter boots (the weather was awful today), which was funny, because in five years I've never seen him wear shoes. I admired William's new stylish hairstyle, but he was asleep too. Jean May's sister came to visit for a while, and Isabella's husband. I gave Dad his lunch - home made soup followed by fish and chips - always the same on a Friday. I had a wee dance with Theresa while she sang Danny Boy, then later she fell out with us all and swore a lot. I listened to Mrs Garvie chat away. Sadie made me laugh, as she usually does. I didn't see Gerry, because it was his funeral last week. That's not so usual, thankfully. I'm sad for his family. But an old folks home faces death regularly. Even so, it can be a surprisingly positive place to be for a couple of hours.

Jubilee

I happened to be in London last weekend while the Queen's diamond jubilee was going on. I'm not the most enthusiastic royalist - she seems a lovely lady and hard working and dedicated and proudly independent, which I like, but the royal family have always just seemed irrelevant to my life. But I did quite fancy seeing some of the flotilla of 1000 boats come down the Thames, but quite clearly by jumping on the train in from north London an hour beforehand we weren't going to get the best views. And so it was - we found crowds and crowds of people pouring towards the river, wearing most possible combinations of red, white & blue; a solid mass of spectators who must have been lining the river banks for hours; people waving flags from the windows of every overlooking residential and many office blocks. It was fun to take in the atmosphere, but we quickly got tired of the crowds & went for a walk through the back streets instead, listening to the distant music and cheers, and coming across various street parties in preparation. Later on the heavens opened as we walked through the park, but it didn't seem to dampen people's spirits too much. I'm not used to seeing that much patriotic flag waving and it all seemed a bit American to me, but it was nice to see people's enthusiasm for something big and communal and societal. Maybe the Queen's more useful than I thought. I'll vote for you next time, Ma'am!