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August 2002 |
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Thursday 1 August We had a really good time visiting relatives on the south coast for the past week. We stayed with Liz and Paul in their house (not a flat, as I said in the previous entry). It is very nearly three years since we last visited Liz. She was living in Bristol then, and she has lived in two places in London between then and now. The big difference that we noticed on this visit is that, for the first time ever, her residence does not look like a student tip. That's probably mainly due to Paul's influence. I really don't know how he puts up with her. She still prefers to leave all the dirty dishes in the sink until they are needed for re-use, whereas Paul prefers to wash them up after each meal and put them away. But I had better not go on griping about things like that, or Bryan will accuse me of being anal. The house in is an attractive terrace in a small town in Hampshire. Liz and Paul are both keen gardeners, and they have done an excellent job of looking after the garden at the front and the yard at the rear of the house. The yard is just a small concreted area surrounded by high walls, but they have filled it with potted plants so that it looks very cheerful and colourful. It was very hot all last week, and we sat out in the yard for most of our meals. While we were staying with them, we visited various other relatives, including Mary's brother and his wife (who had their son and grandson staying with them), my brother and his wife (who run a B&B place by the sea in Dorset, with their daughter and two granddaughters), and a cousin of mine. I'm not allowed to say anything about the cousin, because he works in some kind of hush-hush defence-related job and is very security conscious. We were pleased to have the chance to get to know him and his wife because we have never met them at all before except at family weddings and funerals. The day we spent with my brother Andrew was a particularly good one. I sometimes wonder whether he really wants to keep in touch with us, because he never phones us. I don't like using the phone myself, and I have only called him about twice in the past year. It's kind of discouraging that he never phones back. But Mary found out from one of his granddaughters (Hannah, who is a very bright and perceptive girl although she is only 11) that Andrew is naturally shy, and hates using the phone even more than I do. That surprised me, because I have always thought of him as being much more sociable and outgoing than me. But on reflection, I think Hannah is probably right. Andrew and his wife both seemed very pleased that we had come to visit, and I'm sure that they want to keep in closer touch than we have done in recent years. So I'm going to have to overcome my dislike of the phone and remember to call him more frequently. On our way back from staying with Liz and Paul, we went to the funeral of an elderly aunt of Mary's. She wasn't a true aunt, but a cousin of Mary's mother. But she was very good to Mary and her brother when they were small, and Mary has many happy memories of Auntie Miggs. After the funeral there was a reception, which was another family reunion where we saw several people from that side of Mary's family whom we hadn't met for very many years and in some cases will probably never see again. The family theme continues this coming weekend, because Steve, Jo and Tom are visiting from Spain. They are spending a couple of weeks in England, mainly to visit Jo's family. They will only stay a couple of days with us because we'll be visiting them in September, whereas Jo's mother hates to travel and hasn't seen them for a very long time. But they'll be staying with us from Saturday to Monday, and Liz has arranged to come and stay with us too for those two days. So we'll have our whole family together at home, which hasn't happened for many years.
Tolstoy said that happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The implication is that happy families are not interesting to read about. I think that's probably true, because I can't think of anything interesting to say about the past weekend, when Steve, Jo, Tom and Liz were all staying with us. Unfortunately, Paul couldn't come because of some other commitment, so we didn't quite have our whole family together. We were a bit concerned that our house was not a suitable environment for an excited three year old. We brought down from the attic some of the old Fisher-Price toys that Steve and Liz had when they were small, and we hoped that these would distract Tom from damaging any of the vulnerable ornaments within his reach. By and large, this strategy worked, but of course he managed to knock over a mug of tea onto our new carpet. They all arrived on Saturday evening in time for a big family dinner of roast duck followed by fruit salad. (Mary boiled up the carcasses of the two ducks to make a stock, which she is at this moment converting into a duck and lentil soup. A delicious aroma is wafting through the house as I write this.) Yesterday we arranged to meet Liz's old school friend Catherine and her two small daughters at the Meanwood Valley urban farm, which I had never before visited in the 20+ years that we have lived in Leeds. The kids all enjoyed looking at the animals, and didn't seem to mind getting soaked by a sudden shower. For dinner, we had bought a leg of lamb to roast, but Steve and Liz both wanted to eat out. So we booked a table at the local Chinese restaurant, and had a very good meal there. This morning, I drove Liz to the station to catch the train to London, because she had to be back at work this afternoon. Steve, Jo and Tom stayed for lunch before setting off in their rental car to stay with Jo's parents for the next few days. That's about it. We had a very happy weekend, but as you see, happy families don't make for gripping reading. Mary and I were left with a very large leg of lamb, which we roasted for dinner this evening. After dinner, I carved the leftover meat and Mary packaged it into freezer bags. We now have seven further lamb dinners waiting in the freezer. The house seems very quiet and empty, and the floor is a lot easier to walk on now that Tom's toys are no longer scattered all over it.
I have been editing the digital photos that I took on our recent trip to the south coast, scanning the prints of some of Mary's photos, and posting them on our family web site. I am puzzled by one of the photos that Mary took. On the day that we visited Mary's brother and his family in Bognor, we walked along the sea front, and stopped at a stall where they were selling cheap toys for kids. Mary bought a little plastic windmill on a stick, with strips of coloured ribbon for sails. She wanted to bring it home and plant it in the garden, so as to make a colourful display when the wind caught it and whirled it round. She handed it to me to carry, and we walked along the promenade as far as the entrance to the pier, where we stopped to discuss where to go next. I stood there, holding the windmill up in the hope that it would catch the breeze (but there wasn't any). Suddenly they all started laughing at me, and Mary took this photo. I couldn't work out what they all found so funny, and I still don't see it—maybe you can. Personally, I prefer to see this as my discreet contribution to gay pride: holding up a rainbow flag, sort of.
Every four years, the International Mathematical Union (IMU) organises an International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), a ten-day conference in which there are lectures on the most significant new advances in mathematical research (sounds exciting, doesn't it?). The previous ICM was in Berlin, in August 1998, and I wrote about it soon after I started this online journal. Time passes more quickly as you get older, but even so it seems amazing to me that four years have passed since then, and it's ICM time again. As you'll have noticed if you followed the above link, this year's ICM is being held in Beijing. The Chinese authorities are treating it as a major event, and the opening ceremonies are to be held in the Great Hall of the People, just across Tiananmen Square from the Forbidden City. The London Math Soc will have a stall at the publishers' exhibition for the Congress, and they are paying all my expenses to attend. The extra cost of bringing Mary with me is very small (apart from the additional air fare) so we are getting a heavily subsidised holiday in an exotic environment. In fact, we went to Beijing, as tourists, five years ago, and enjoyed it so much that we are very much looking forward to seeing it again. As an additional bonus, I am one of the UK delegates to the General Assembly of the IMU, which meets in Shanghai on the weekend before the ICM. We have never been to Shanghai before. The IMU delegates are being accommodated at the historic Peace Hotel, which advertises itself as the most famous hotel in China. It should be an interesting experience. We are flying out there tomorrow so as to have a couple of days to adjust to the time zone change and do some sightseeing before the IMU meeting. Mary is very apprehensive about how her chemical sensitivities and food intolerances will respond to the trip. But she has been doing pretty well recently, and I think she will be able to cope with it all. Last summer, she was so ill that she was scarcely able to do anything. Practically all our travel plans had to be cancelled, and I found that time really dragged. This summer, we are making up for lost time, and I have scarcely had a spare moment. For the past few days I have been busy organising hotel reservations and car rentals, not for the China visit of course (travel arrangements for that were made long ago), but for the next trip after that—we are going to Spain in September to see Steve, Jo and Tom and to stay in Seville for a couple of days. Looking further ahead, word has it that the next ICM is going to be in Madrid in 2006. But I guess it's a bit soon to be making preparations for that just yet. Expect me back here around the beginning of September. I'll hope to find time for one or two entries then, in the few days that we have at home before we set off for Spain.
Saturday 31 August China trip: Part I We're back home, after a wonderful visit to China. We flew from Leeds to Amsterdam on 13 August, and from there on an overnight flight to Shanghai, arriving at the huge new Pudong airport. The immigration procedure there was very slick, with an entire Boeing 747 load of 300 or 400 passengers being processed within about 5 minutes - a stark contrast to the appalling inefficiency of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. At the airport I stocked up with the local currency using my debit card. This was our first indication of how China has changed since our previous visit five years ago. Then, the only way to obtain Chinese money was by using travellers' cheques. Now, you can use your debit card in an ATM just like at home. We took a taxi to the Peace Hotel, a 45 minute journey that cost 150 yuan, or about £12. That's one of the good things about China: everything is amazingly cheap. For our five day visit, we treated ourselves to an "executive suite" at the hotel, which was really luxurious. The Peace Hotel is in a prime location on the fashionable stretch of the riverfront known as the Bund. It is about 100 years old, built in an extravagant colonial style but very well maintained and modernised. Mary was feeling dazed and jetlagged when we arrived, so she slept for the morning while I went for a stroll along the Bund, which was crowded with visitors. A few of them were Western tourists, but most of them were Chinese. Everyone looked incredibly young. We saw hardly any old people in Shanghai. And they are all so good looking. Chinese boyz are gorgeous! With their skimpy shorts and sleeveless T-shirts, smooth, hairless limbs and slim bodies, they are a delight to look at. And they are so friendly and tactile. You often see them walking in pairs, with their arms round each other's shoulders. When they talk to you, they are always smiling and flirtatious (though that is usually because they are trying to sell you something). We had a couple of free days in Shanghai before the business part of the trip. This gave us time to visit the famous Yuyuan gardens, and also to explore the pedestrianised shopping area along the Nanjing Road, where Mary chose some silk material to be made into a dress. There is absolutely nothing in Shanghai that would make you realise that you are in an underdeveloped Communist country. The shops and restaurants are as well stocked as in any Western country. In some ways, the city is much too Westernised, with a branch of Macdonalds on every other block, and often a Pizza Hut or Starbucks as well. It is sad and baffling to me that the country with the best cuisine in the world (apart from France, maybe) should have succumbed to junk food in this way. It may account for the fact that we saw some alarmingly obese young Chinese children. Fortunately, there are still plenty of excellent local restaurants, and we had no difficulty in finding good, cheap meals wherever we went. Before we left England, Mary had been worried that she would not be able to eat Chinese food because of her allergic reactions. She had learned how to ask in Chinese for food that contained no MSG or hot spices. We also brought with us a lot of bland food that she could use as emergency supplies. But in fact she didn't need much of this, and every restaurant that we visited was very cooperative in providing dishes that she could eat. I was happy to take advantage of this, because don't like eating MSG if I can help it. And although I like spicy foods, I found that most places used too much hot chilli for my taste. In Shanghai, they told us that this was a feature of Southern Chinese cooking, and that the food in North China would be milder. But when we were in Beijing, they said that hot, spicy food was typical of Northen Chinese cooking and that it was milder in the South. In any case, Mary's request for restaurants to hold back the MSG and chiilis was always respected, and we both benefited from it. I'm still feeling a bit jetlagged, so I'll quit there for today. More travelogue to come in future instalments!
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