Quito, Ecuador

The flight took 21 hours with two stops, the last leg being from Panama to Ecuador on a local airline which landed at midnight. Worries about being in city around 10,000 feet high were unfounded. We both felt lightheaded but otherwise fine. A taxi ride to the Folklore Hostel (picture is of the living room) took another hour and we fell into bed at about 1.30 am, completely exhausted. In the morning I met Principe, the house trained rabbit that wanders into guests' rooms when he feels like it. We got on pretty good for two different animal species. Then I put on my dapper holiday kit including aviator shades and sandals while Annette enhanced the beauty nature had given her and we sallied forth to watch a magnificent changing of the guard at the palace of a bustling South American capital. The president appeared on a balcony and everyone in the plaza went mad with excitement - except us of course - we thought they were about to have a revolution and quickly ducked into the cathedral to seek sanctuary.

Andalucia

Once again, we are off to the South of Spain, to our village on the Granada coast. We have had our small apartment there now for fifteen years and have enjoyed every moment of our time. Now we are thinking of selling and buying a similar place in Turkey, simply for a change of scene. They are both lovely countries in their different ways. I love the rich earthy colours of Spain: the russet fields and coffee coloured hills. The mountains of the Sierra Nevada are rather grim, but the white villages that decorate them are a delight. In the Spring there are wild herbs growing everywhere: the warm clear air is full of their scents. I also admire the Spanish for their tolerance. There must be over a thousand expat holiday home owners in La Herradura, a village around the same size as my village in Suffolk. If that number of Spanish people descended on the Suffolk village, the residents would be up in arms. Not all the residents of La Herradura are dependant on tourists for their income, yet I have never heard any grumbles about 'immigrants'.

Turkey is another country of course and they do things differently there. It appears to me - though I have only been on the South coast - even more rugged and earthy than Spain. The people I have met are polite and welcoming, warm and ready to talk, mostly in English (which always makes me feel guilty, though I do speak reasonable Spanish now it's not much use in Asia Minor). The food is wonderful, the living

inexpensive. Perhaps we will never sell our apartment in Spain, things being very desperate there, but if we do, Turkey will be our destination. They have golden eagles, wild forests, secluded bays, good public transport. One of the pleasures there will be not having to hire a car. 

The first photo was taken near Javea, where my good and ancient friends Trinny and Lorraine live: the almond trees in bloom. The second photo is a long shot of La Herradura and our apartment is one of those white dots on the hill at the back.

iPhones

They say intolerance comes with age, but to be honest I think I have some of it in my genes, which is not a good thing. I would like to say live and let live to everything if my temperament would allow, but sadly for me placidity doesn't always manage to filter down to my liver. Last night I went to the 02 for a performance by Leonard Cohen which was superb. He is around my age but is probably much more laid back than I'll every be. My unhappiness during his singing was with those people who were obsessed with their iphones. While the performance was on there were many in the thousands there taking flash photographs. They are at best, misguided. The distance of a camera flash is anything from 8 to 15 feet, while the person on the brilliantly lit stage was at least a hundred yards or more from most of these would-be photographers. The flashes were distracting, but I realise people get excited and want to record their evening. However, two people right in front of me were texting and emailing for a great deal of the performance and one guy, two rows ahead, was playing Angry Birds on his phone the WHOLE time. Their bright screens were indeed fucking distracting. I think the mobile phone is a great invention - actually a good friend of mine invented a certain lcd which led to their current development - but why do some people have to be glued to the bloody things almost night and day. I see them on the train, on the bus, walking in the street, some of them mothers pushing prams with precious loads in them, even carrying suitcases or halfway over a busy road, their eyes glued to that tiny screen that seems to have beguiled them and keeps them in slavery wherever they are and whatever they're otherwise doing. Sorry for being a grump, but as I say, age and genes combined.

The times they are a changing . . .

Over the last ten years too many of my friends have left me behind. My lifelong friend and then my accountant Stewart Holliday went first, then Ruth and John Murry, Maggie Noach my agent, Rob Holdstock, Bob Nottage a schoolfriend who served alongside me in the RAF and more recently Iain Banks. Iain was not a close friend, but we corresponded on occasion and I liked him a lot, despite our different views on things. He wanted independence for Scotland and he was in his own words a 'militant atheist'. I made him laugh at a recent convention when I countered this with my assertion that I am a 'militant Quaker', Quakers being dedicated to peace of course. The Scots have their right to choose independence from the Union of course, should they wish it, but I think both countries will be the poorer for a parting. Should it happen there will be new flags, some lost politicians since 'foreigners' are not able to serve in another country's parliament. Those Scots who choose to become English, Welsh or Northern Irish will of course be permitted to remain in our parliament, but it will be a difficult emotional choice for them. There will be other changes, many of them, to emerge as the time for choosing gets closer. Iain of course has had the choice wrenched from him on the eve of this momentous event. A very swift and cruel wrenching it was too and the book world's loss is great. I miss all those friends I have listed above, quite desperately at times, and it would be nice if no one else went before I did. Naturally I'd rather that was later than sooner - at least a decade I hope - but I certainly don't want to be, in the vernacular of action movies, Last Man Standing.

The picture was taken on the shores of Lake Bled in Slovenia - a small beautiful country which gained its independence from Yugoslavia and seems to the thriving, so what do I know.

The Other Side of England

Just returned from a revisit to Cornwall. I was there 45 years ago, stationed just outside Newquay, with my then new wife and small shiny kids. We loved the place in those days: the wild cliffs, the quiet beaches, the fresh, clean winds blowing over from the Atlantic. It used to take us 12 hours to drive from Essex to Cornwall at a time when there were no motorways. It still took us almost that long this time, due to the immense amount of traffic. Wadebridge and Padstow had changed only in the number of tourists: thousands of them, thronging the narrow streets, mostly eating Mr Stein's fish and chips. It was a delight to spend a few days with our son Richard and his wife Julie, and our granddaughter, Chloe. They had been our inspiration for choosing this area since Julie is a garden person and the family had not yet been to the Eden Project.

We went back to St Eval, where we once had a married quarter on the cliffs, and found it had altered only in the privatisation of the houses, which now had an individuality about them. Then we seriously set about sightseeing, going to St Michael's on the Mount, the Telegraph Museum, the little theatre on the Lizard, the Eden Project, and many others. One of the pleasures was meeting up with an old friend and the editor of several of my books, Jane. We were shown around Mousehole by Jane and her husband Abdel, and really got to see the roots of the Cornish coastline. They were brilliant hosts and Abdel cooked us a meal which I can still taste on my mind's tongue. It was delicious. The only downside was having to park on a narrow quay with the sea on both sides. I am not the best driver in the world and my heart was thumping a little as I inched my way backwards along the narrow wall past a French Lieutenant's woman, who stood staring bleakly out at the waves . We left the car there overnight. I was told by my hosts that at an earlier time one bunch of cars was actually crushed by mighty storm waves breaking over the wall. I stared out at the placid face of the Atlantic Ocean and wondered whether it was due to have a tantrum. Happily it didn't lose it's temper but I still had to inch my way off that sea wall the next morning. I could never in a million years work for Eddie Stobbart.

Some of my blog followers (may the tribe increase) are aware of my hobby of photographing - or trying to photograph - birds of a feather. I like walking in the countryside, or anywhere, but I also like something to do at the same time. Thus I began snapping birds with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28. A bridge camera that's light to carry and doesn't require a Phd to operate. Annette is very patient with my continued stopping and cocking an ear for a bird sound, or putting my finger to my lips and creeping forward to capture one on the chip. I am always astounded by the beauty of birds, as I was by seashells when I once collected them. I expect flowers do it for some of us too. What a wonderful world is the natural planet, fast diminishing I know and would like it to stop, but somehow humankind thunders on despite good intentions, warnings and attempts to arrest our devastation of the wild and wildlife. Anyway, I don't want to preach, I just want to say how lucky I feel sometimes to be just here, seeing a live thing of beauty - creature or plant - and feeling full of wonder at the astonishing array of natural art we have out there. Above are four of my favourites. The raptor is an Australian Black Kite, the kingfisher I snapped in Bali, the last one is a Red Rumped Swallow taking a sip of a swimming pool in Turkey and the bee-eater, or honey eater, I have no idea what he is but I photographed him outside the town of 1770 in Queensland, Australia. (Yes, that really is what the town is called. apparently Capt Cook ran out of words, so named it after the year.)

I've just re-read an old favourite. Jack Finney's collection of short stories 'About Time'. The tales are all set around the time of the late '50s, early '60s in the USA, JF being an American author with cultural concerns. The hero usually works for an ad company and commutes to the big city with briefcase, suit and, oh yes, trilby hat.
However, in all the stories the main protagonists do not like the time they're living in, but yearn for (and usually get, through some sort of time travel) an earlier period, round about the '20s and 30's when life was a lot slower and by inference, cleaner and better. They speak lovingly of open-topped bullnosed automobiles, dollars that buy a lot more and trams that go dinga-ling-ling. Nostalgia.

Funny thing is - well, not so funny, perhaps pathetic? - the time his heroes are desperate to escape from is the time I send my heroes back to when I write similar stories. To me the '50s and early '60s were a lot slower and cleaner, and by inference, much better than now. I guess the golden time is childhood for many of us - not all, I grant, for some had an unhappy time of it - but certainly for me. The summers were hotter, the winters cold but crisp and snowy, the books I read more amazing, running across the fields and fishing in the streams more exciting than bashing away on a keyboard. JFs heroes go back to their childhood years as adults, but me, I'd like to go back and be a kid again in the same era. Yeah, a bit pathetic.

PS The picture has nothing to do with the text. I just like it.