Tom Hall: travel, London, other things

Gateway to adventure

1. April 1994

My first visit to Paris reaches its apogee with a few hours in a CRS detention cell in the west of the French capital. Assured by a community of ‘in-the-know’ nuns (Family connections. Useless ones.) that tickets would be freely available on the day of the Paris Saint-Germain versus Arsenal European Cup Winners Cup Semi Final my Dad and I made our way over to Paris for the match.

A pleasant enough morning at the Eiffel Tower turned into a fairly dismal afternoon. Ticketless Arsenal fans were rounded up on the promise of getting entry to the Parc des Princes, then forced into buses and driven away from the stadium. A few hundred of us were kept hostage until the match was over then let out, irritated, into the Parisien night, to find our way back to hotels and transport. I passed the time in these pre-mobile phone days by writing postcards and listening to the game on the radio. The roar when Arsenal scored scared a few French coppers. Not a prawn sandwich in sight.

The game I never saw

I missed a mock A-Level exam to go to Paris that day. My teacher was not amused. Some of my fellow students found it hilarious. Indignant at this travesty of justice (and missing the 1-1 draw) I vowed never to return to Paris. Until inter-railing that summer.

2. July 1994

By this time I considered myself something of a streetwise traveller. Had I not already had a brush with the law and, armed with a GCSE in French nothing would stop me enjoying a triumphant return, this time with my brother as we took a series of trains from London to Rome, via Dover, Calais, Paris and Milan. No Eurostar in these days, either.

We arrived to find the streets outside the Gare du Nord stiflingly hot, and local authorities had water hydrants running to cool things down. We had all the time in the world to saunter across town to Gare de Bercy, from where our sleeper was leaving from. As a tribute to our Gallic hosts my brother had packed the entire contents of our fridge at home into a baguette, the longest we could find, which we ate for the entire journey. We may have enjoyed a glass of vin de table or two – I do not remember. Either way, I had read and re-read our sleeper reservations which clearly said we were leaving at 8.30pm. We strolled into Bercy to see the train was, in fact, leaving at 7.30 and was about to depart. A sweaty sprint to catch a moving train later and we were off.

I don’t know if you’ve ever arrived, out of breath and perspiring, onto an already hot train and sat down in a crowded sleeper compartment, then pulled out a very long and very smelly day-old baguette but if you haven’t then may I tell you it is no way to make friends.

A near miss, but a wonderful one. Sadly we enjoyed an uneventful return trip to England, probably because we travelled via Belgium.

3. May 1995

Having not learnt my lesson at the PSG game, the following season Arsenal again reached the final of the European Cup Winners Cup, to be held in Paris. As the venue was the same stadium I had failed to gain admission to the previous year I was keen to attend, and had managed to get a ticket this time round. Apart from nearly getting arrested again when the air horn I had purchased decided to explode at the foot of an unimpressed-looking member of the gendarmerie, nothing bad happened this time. Unless that is you count losing to a freakish 60-yard lob from an ex-Tottenham player in the last minute of extra time. Trouble is, I do count that. As do fans of both Real Zaragoza, who Nayim won the cup for, and Spurs fans, who delighted in the event when I got back to college the next day.

Fluke

4. July 1995

Inter-railing again, this time with what must have been an optimistic sum of money given some of the places I ended up sleeping. At Gare du Nord a flyer is thrust into my hand advertising beds for 45FF (less than a fiver) for the night. I went in, and spent a terrifying evening listening to what seemed to be two people torturing each other across the airless courtyard. It was too loud and too hot to sleep. The following day small children frolicked in the fountains at the Centre Pompidou. I dozed off and nearly fell in. Very surreal.

5. May 2006

Another European final, and another visit to Paris. More correctly, to St Denis, burial place of the Merovingian and French kings for centuries until our Gallic cousins got tired of all that monarchy malarkey. The Stade de France, built for the 1998 World Cup is a splendid venue, and an apt place for Arsenal’s first European Cup Final, or Champion’s League Final if you’re into modern branding in football.

By this time there were quite a possee of us attending Arsenal matches home and away. The run to this final had seen some exciting jaunts already to Madrid and Turin, both of which had seen positive results. With tickets secured, six of us took a hired people carrier on the cross-channel ferry and parked it in a quiet back street near the Stade de France.

Before the trousers incident

Arsenal (who lose a lot of finals, you may be thinking – and you’d be right) once again lost, in fairly heroic circumstances to Barcelona, who were just beginning their long period of dominance of European football. We nearly had them but conceded two late goals.

So far, so not so good. But things got worse on return to our car which, along with every other British or Spanish vehicle on the street had been broken into. The thieves had got away with some goodies – our sandwiches (rock and roll) for the return trip, some booze we’d packed in case we won and wanted to celebrate, and most strangely of all my best mate’s trousers he was planning to change into as the night chill came on.

We were all keen to get home, and some of us were keener than others to go to sleep and wake up in London, but first we had to negotiate the long drive to Calais. With a broken window. I was at the wheel and one of our group manfully sat by the open window, which only had a t-shirt left on our seat in the stadium covering the gap where glass should have been. At 90MPH, driving through a thunderstorm that suggested someone was unhappy at the performance of Manuel Almunia in the Arsenal goal, the t-shirt did not do much good. We all got wet and cold. Doom, doom, doom.

This trip was much, much worse for the poor unfortunate who had attempted to enter the ground by scaling the spike-topped fence. Losing his balance, he had impaled  himself on one of the spikes. Quite how medics removed him I do not know, nor do I know if he recovered or not.

6. Redemption

I have had some wonderful trips to Paris. Especially when not trying to watch football or be a cheapo Inter Railer. Best of all was a trip on the first Eurostar out of St Pancras International with my wife and infant son. That said, memories of marvellous disasters of the past are always there, and always worth toasting when I find myself in more pleasant circumstances. Paris, as they say, je t’aime.

Planning a visit to London this summer? Seems plenty of you may be.

I recently contributed an interview to CNN with advice for travellers coming to the British capital for the games.

Continuing the American theme, there’s some more advice in this New York Times piece.

Anyone coming over?

The best ideas are usually very silly ones. Riding a bicycle from one end of Africa, the continent of ultimate travel, certainly fits the bill. Designing and leading a tour that allows ordinary men and women to fulfil a dream to do just that takes a silly idea and multiplies the logistical challenges by far more than the number of people there.

That’s where the Tour d’Afrique comes in. This bicycle race and expedition, running over 8,000 miles from Cairo to Cape Town and taking in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa is celebrating its tenth anniversary. I was lucky enough to ride a section of this in 2009, and found it an unforgettable adventure. I won’t go into the details here, but you can have a read about some of the more memorable moments in this post.

The Tour has in some ways come a long way in ten years, and the company behind it has launched tours covering many other parts of the world. The essence, though, remains the same. A spirit of adventure, of making the impossible possible, of pushing the limits of what individual think they can achieve. Most of all the expedition is one long love letter to Africa, to camaraderie and to the human spirit.

Happy trails

As this is all undeniably worth celebrating, hats off to the intrepid crew behind the Tour, who have marked ten years on the road in Africa with a sumptuous hardcover book. Celebrating ten years of the Tour d’Afrique bicycle race and expedition captures the experience of riding brilliantly. The wildlife, scenery, colleagues, kit, bikes, and above all Africa in its mutlicolour glory are all represented here. If you’ve ridden a stage or more – and chapeau in particular to any EFIers out there reading this (you get your own section, naturally) – a glance at this lovely book will bring your long-gone saddle sores back to life in an instant.

Bob Geldof in 2006 said “when I talk about Africa I have a feeling here in my stomach. Sounds stupid, I know. It’s not a romantic thing. It’s almost a physical feeling, which translates as “fuck, I wouldn’t mind being there now”. He couldn’t be more right unless he’d added “on a bike, in 45c heat, with a third night under the canvas and a double helping of tuna pasta ahead of me.”

Click here for more about the book, and the Tour generally.

A strict code of etiquette governs eating on proper* train journeys, and as today is a busy day for travelling I thought it only appropriate to publish these guidelines for the first time.

1.    Train food must either be made at home, or purchased from outlets at the station. No other food can be consumed other than the inferior fare available from the buffet car.

2.    Train food should be more varied than a standard packed or desk lunch. So exotic items such as mango and pineapple chunks can be added to crisps, sandwiches and the like.

3.    Regular calorific regulations do not apply when eating on a train. Large bags of crisps, maxi-packs of chocolate and ‘Percy Pig’ type sweets are essential parts of Train Food. Healthy items like mango and pineapple chunks can be added to give the impression one is eating in a better way, provided the less healthy items are consumed in full.

4.    On boarding, Train Food must be taken out of any plastic bags and carefully arranged on the tray table in front of you. If you have noted rule (3) this will mean your dinner will easily cover the table, and spill over onto the person’s next to you. If you have a proper table, you will end up drawing imaginary lines on the table with the person opposite you. Do not engage in conversation about this. It is you against them. The loser risks having their food pushed onto their laps.

5.     Train Food must not be consumed until the train is moving.  This is the golden rule of Train Food. Anyone opening a can of pop or box sandwich or even scoffing a sneaky crisp should be the subject of hoots of derision from fellow passengers, including strangers. No hooting in the Quiet Zone carriage, where silent mockery is in order.

6.    Due to rule (4), you will find that moving out of your seat while eating, once you have begun, is quite impractical. Therefore expect eating even large amounts of food to take up a reasonably small part of your journey.

7.    Someone near you will have something that looks nicer than yours. The only way to deal with this is to ensure you eat all yours, quantity trumping quality.

8.    You will finish your meal to find that you have a large amount of detritus surrounding you, and no obvious way of disposing of it. The annoying person from rule (7) has probably finished before you and put their empties, which once looked and smelt so nice, in the little bin between two seats. It will now begin to not smell so nice. You can either wait for the man or woman with the enormous bin-bag who thunders down the train as you approach the terminus of the service, or take your empties with you.

9.    Eating a full meal on arrival at your destination is generally still appropriate.

*Those of 60 minutes or more. Less than that and you risk spending more time buying your picnic than riding the rails eating it.

I’m shocked to find that three months have passed since I swapped on bike ride to work for another.  On my last pedal up the ever-chaotic Holloway Road I thought that I should probably write about both rides, so here I go.

Old ride

From outer north London, 020 8 land (any fule no not to write 0208), it is south, south, south to Old Street. The route crossed the North Circular and the isolated oddness of Strawberry Vale, a huge and strange estate that’s cut off by the A406 on one side and Islington & St Pancras Cemetery on the other. It’s best to keep riding, up and over East Finchley, then up Far Highgate bank past Wellington SIdings and on to Highgate Wood.

The downhill stretch of the ride is exhilarating, with views of distant St Paul’s from the relative safety of the Archway Road bus lane. Coming in the opposite direction tough boys and girls ride up and over Highgate Hill, avoiding the crunch of traffic at Jackson’s Lane and testing stamina, achilles tendons and fitness. But Holloway Road is unavoidable, a mash of blind t-junctions, buses and trucks and endless waits at busy junctions. It is a wonder anyone gets on a bike to do this but we do, every day. Once round the roundabout at Highbury Corner New North Road is something of a raceway, where you start to pick up fixie riders heading west from Hackney and beyond. City Road, and journeys end, and glad tidings for not dying en route. 8 miles. 40 minutes.

New ride

From outer north London it is a gently curving south-westerly ride to White City. While there are many better places to ride to, the ride itself is lots of fun. The backstreets of Finchley Church End lead to Regents Park Road and Henley’s Corner. Once past Golders Green the ride starts to feel unusual for someone used to riding into and out of the centre, passing unfamiliar places with new views of London. Wembley’s arch looms omnipresently further west. Sunsets around Child’s Hill and off to the A41 are breathtaking. 

From Finchley Road Fortune Green Road runs fast downhill, with enough kick to make the return leg a leg-stretch. One of London’s oddest places awaits, West Hampstead’s jumble of stations, pedestrians and queuing traffic. It is the one part of the new ride that feels like the old one. Past here and further downhill, West End Lane snakes with antiquity towards Kilburn, once home to a priorty. West End Lane curves off almost unnoticed from the main flow of traffic to the High Road, and after a dog leg a long, straight line leads on past Queens Park and through Brondesbury to Kensal Rise.

Where am I now? I’m not sure. The friendly spirits of the West London Cemetery – my grandmother and Isambard Kingdom Brunel ensure safe passage to Scrub’s Lane and the last coast to journeys end, livened up by a tasty junction and a crossing beneath the Westway, where we hold on for tomorrow as the song goes. White City and journeys end and, usually, less thought to risks en route, more thoughts of other things. 11 miles. 45 minutes.

Or, a day in Athens. Written on location in August. Sorry for not publishing before now. I’ve been a bit busy with the day job!

A stopover in Athens is a treat, and for me was a chance to see again I city I last visited in 1992, and thought the world of despite nay-sayers loudly trumpeting its downsides.

I loved Athens on that fleeting visit: the bright, slippery rock of the Acropolis, the searing heat of the summer streets and best of all my Dad having an enormous tear-up with a taxi driver which resulted in us piling in to the taxi, shouting a lot, then getting out again without having got anywhere. And I was excited to return.

Byzantine in period, not in outlook

Now, like then it is August and Athens is sweltering. The cooling breeze that made Chios (where I’d been for a wedding) delightfully temperate was absent, and I chose the mad-dog Englishman approach to exploring, charging round in the heat of the day, seeking shade where it was offered.

Nearly 20 years on, Athens felt familiar and different. The wide streets were there, as were the street-side caves of Kolonaki and the sense of gentility mixed with raw, youthful energy that I found thrilling last time. I am no longer a slightly awkward teenager wearing a loud shirt and straw hat, but my love of history and charging round cities remains. Athens did not disappoint.

Anthropomorphic olive oil drum in the Benaki

My flight from Chios landed at 8am, leaving me 11 hours before my next hop home to London. I was able to leave my bag at left luggage – €4 for a half-day, and get a metro trip into town and back for €14. The train took 38 minutes to get one stop short of Syntagma, where if the Acropolis is your only goal you an change lines and be whisked to the foot of the legendary rock.

I hopped out Evangelinos, from where the Byzantine Museum is a quick stroll away. It was a treat which skilfully filled in the blanks between Roman and Ottoman occupation, and viewed late antiquity through a Greek prism. The icons were particularly spectacular and it made for a better introduction to the Byzantine World, ironically, than anything to be found in Istanbul. The copies of iconic mosaics from Ravenna and Constantinople, painstakingly recreated by masterful modern scholars of the form were a delight to be able to inspect.

Downtown Athens is dotted with seriously ancient churches like this

After a quick visit to the British Council, where Patrick Leigh Fermor worked for a while and a cafe where you could feel his ghost scribbling away in the sunshine it was on to the Benaki, which for reasons I’m not entirely sure of was huge fun. It was bright and airy with a terrace cafe affording my first glimpse of the Parthenon and Panathenaic Stadium. Among many wonders in a wide-ranging collection they had a drawing of Athens in its classical pomp by Edward Lear. I wanted all their books, especially some stunning bilingual works on Greek architecture.

No surging please, we’re Athenian: the Panathenaic Stadium

From here I must add a note of caution. I’m footsore and a little sunstruck after doing what I did and would recommend an edited version of this. On the other hand I saw a huge amount and made the most of the day. The Panathenaic stadium, venue for the 1896 games was terrific value at €3 including an excellent audio guide. I walk on to Syntagma, Monstiraki and the flea Market (underwhelming) and on to the pedestrian promenade the links the market to the Acropolis via a host of ancient treats. I hopped up the Pnyx, saw the theatre of Herodus Atticus and ogled the Parthenon from a wide variety of angles before diving into the Acropolis Museum. In case you’re wondering, by this point I was sweating profusely and opted out of the hike up to the top in the afternoon sun.

The Parthenon shining in the afternoon sun

The new Acropolis Museum is now 7 years old, which feels scarcely believable. It is a key sight and deals quite marvellously with the Elgin Marbles issue. The museum’s presentation of the friezes eloquently and without hysteria makes the case for their return. It is convincing, informative and above all keeps the constant theme of telling the story of the Parthenon while leaving the visitor to draw their own conclusions. It is another place with a superb viewing terrace.

Outside, it was back to the glorious sweat of the Athenian wanderer. It’s easy to get lost, or lose the tourist crowds, in the backstreets of Plaka, and I loved the walk to the Agora as much as rambling around this huge site. On your way out on the Monastiraki side there are lots of lovely cafes to refuel in.

Lastly, a few other small notes in case you’re wondering: Athens was orderly, clean and friendly. It was not expensive and eating was very reasonable – €4 for a souvlaki and coke at a cafe in a lovely square is a good deal in western Europe in August. Athenians are friendly, proud of their city and seemed delighted I was there. In every room of every museum I went in, even the busy Acropolis Museum, guards grinned and said hello.

It will not be 20 years before I next return.

In search of stout? As a wise man once said...

It is 1991, and Morrissey is at his most handsome, about to surge to the peak of his powers as a solo artist, a post-Smith. From the single My Love Life up until the incomparable Vauxhall and I the Mancunian singer produced an unbroken string of classic records that tower over much of the rest of his work.

The journey is a decidedly odd one. Kill Uncle, his second (proper) solo album after the rightly-revered Viva Hate, is an elusive record. Written with Mark Nevin (best known for recording with Fairground Attraction and Kirsty MacColl) and recorded with session musicians (Andrew Paresi, who documented his experiences in the BBC radio documentary I Was Morrissey’s Drummer) and those roped in from other bands (Madness’ Bedders), the album was short and at times bizarre. The singles (Sing Your Life and Our Frank) were light and breezy, but the rest of the album is loveable in parts and instantly forgettable in others. The first side of the record ends with the enjoyable Mute Witness and, Morrissey’s funniest ever song, King Leer, veering towards music hall, camp and winsome. The flip side, barring the lyrical high of Driving Your Girlfriend Home, can only be described as a palate cleanser for what comes next.

What came immediately next was Morrissey’s return to the live stage for the first time since the legendary free concert at Wolverhampton Civic Hall in December 1988 where he had taken to the stage with his former Smiths, minus Johnny Marr. The extensive Kill Uncle tour was to be different, and an all new band was recruited. Before this tour (if anyone can confirm if first contact was for the video for Sing Your Life, which has both Mark Nevin and Mozzer’s soon-to-be new band playing at Camden Workers Social Club then I’d be grateful, as I’m stumped to be any more precise) Morrissey had met Alain Whyte and through him other rockabilly enthusiasts Boz Boorer, Gary Day and Spencer Cobrin. After Sing Your Life they became his band. The effect of working with these new influences was immediate – compare Pregnant for the Last Time with anything on Kill Uncle. Harder, faster, shorter and with quiffs not harking back to the halcyon 60s but the Psychobilly scene where punk and rock and roll met. Funnily enough, Pregnant for the Last Time stands up well in a chronological listen to Morrissey’s singles, though the fork in the road between a pop past and a rock future is clearly here. Isn’t it?

Pregnant for the Last Time

And yet, the path is laden with wrong turns for the listener, and makes for a confusing journey. Morrissey released Kill Uncle in March, 1991. The second single, Sing Your Life, was released in April. Pregnant For the Last Time follows in July, with Whyte, Boorer and co playing on it but written by Nevin. It whacks along. You feel like you can draw a straight line from this to Your Arsenal’s bolshy bits. Yet what comes next is a blast of melodic loveliness in the shape of My Love Life which came out in September. This near last-gasp of Morrissey’s partnership with Mark Nevin was arguably the best thing they recorded together, though I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday from Your Arsenal runs it close. Nevin also has writing credits on Glamourous Glue, though Alain Whyte has the rest of the tunes on the album in his name.

The incomparable Alain Whyte

Throughout this time the link with Kill Uncle’s distinctive sound weakens, mostly driven by Morrissey bonding on and off stage with his new bandmates and the resulting creative output. I was too young to see any of the Kill Uncle shows, first seeing Morrissey live at Alexandra Palace in December, 1992, after an abortive attempt to see him supporting Madness at Finsbury Park that summer. He had been bottled off by skinheads the day before and had decided against dancing round the stage draped in a Union Flag. My knowledge only comes through Live in Dallas, an easy-to-find document of the Kill Uncle tour, and shows how Boorer, Whyte, Day and Cobrin were shaping up as Morrissey’s band. Rockabilly, fast-paced romps through material that wasn’t their own, with blasts of the sound that was to surface on Your Arsenal. The tour is documented in Linder Sterling’s brilliant Morrissey Shot, which shows a gang of young men on a hysteria-fuelled adventure round the world set to a changing sound.

Your Arsenal: an altogether more masculine Mozzer

Nevin’s contribution to Your Arsenal, that controversial classic, is often overlooked as it suits a linear view of history to assume Whyte, Boorer and producer Mick Ronson gave that lame-coated masterpiece its identity. The truth is more complex, and makes for an enjoyable Saturday night with some of Morrissey’s loveliest record covers and most interesting songs.

I’m not entirely sure why I decided to buy it that day. I could have heard somewhere about a record label that was right up my street. I may have noted something on the radio that caught my ear. It’s just as likely though that on that warm summer’s Saturday in Reckless Records on Camden High Street I picked up Fountain Island, liked the cover and, with a fiver (£5.25 to be precise) in my pocket, took a chance on it and carried it home.

I was hooked before the tube ride had finished and I’d got it on the stereo. Staring at the sleeve of something you’ve just brought while going home did that sometimes. Fountain Island was one of the classic compilation LP’s Sarah Records put out throughout the labels life, collecting songs otherwise only found on singles. The artwork, benefiting from 12-inch rather than 7-inch size covers, reminded me of back gardens and sun-baked suburban streets. Once on the turntable I was quickly hooked by the mix of gentle and more urgent guitar music, which carried a strong antipodean flavour to go with the more expected Bristol fuzzy noise. I now count some of the bands on that LP as my favourites: the Orchids, the Sugargliders and some that only my brother and I seem to know and cherish: Tramway, take a bow.

Fountain Island got me hooked on Sarah. This record label, I quickly learned, was run by Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes, from a PO Box in Bristol. I wrote off to them for some singles and, when they came back I had a hand-written reply with some thoughtful responses to what I’d asked them. Over time, I came to look forward to these notes as much as the music. When I got good enough GCSEs to go to Sixth Form College Matt sent a pat on the back. I still have the note. Record inners came decorated with pictures of branch line services from Bristol. Mini-catalogues backed with hand-cut collages of tight-typed prose about love and loss. Here’s one, in lieu of me being sufficiently organised to scan my own ones. Besides, they’re personal.

Sarah had been going for a few years by the time I had cottoned on to it. Just like every musical movement ever, you should have been here a few years back. I didn’t care. I’d never found anything I liked doing more than going to the football, but rooting round record shops in search of missing Sarah seven-inches came pretty close.

Most other articles about Sarah descend into dullard cliches far too easily, labelling its output fey and winsome. Critics lack the respect and imagination to listen any further. The Field Mice and Heavenly are, to those lazy ears, the sum total of Sarah’s contribution to music, with a caustic nod to Pristine Christine by the Sea Urchins, the very first Sarah single. iTunes will prove the nonsense of this position. By all means have a listen to the Field Mice and Amelia Fletcher’s timelessly sharp lyrics, but also take the time to find Secret Shine, Blueboy, Brighter, Even As We Speak and Tramway. I shall keep mentioning the latter band until anyone reading this buys ‘Maritime City’. I’m not sure there’s ever been a record quite like it. You can hear the b-side here. St Christopher’s blazing rendition of All of a Tremble is another excellent introduction to a wonderful and underrated band.

Matt Haynes went on to produce Smoke: a London Peculiar, a publication as unique and rooted in place as Sarah had been, and I scribbled a few things for that. Thought Clare and Matt have admirably refused to cash in on their cult status you can find lots of Sarah stuff on iTunes. Here’s my top ten in no particular order:

1. All of a Tremble – St Christopher
2. Helmet On – East River Pipe
3. Maritime City – Tramway
4. After Years – Secret Shine (though Loveblind, sometimes known as Spindrifting is wonderful too)
5. You Should All Be Murdered – Another Sunny Day
6. Half-Hearted – Brighter
7. Emma’s House – the Field Mice
8. If I could Shine – the Sweetest Ache
9. Distraction – Boyracer
10. Shadow of a Girl – Gentle Despite

Anyone else have a Sarah favourite to share?