snippet just before Wilfred Peter arrived.

 snippet

I was.....

travelling to florence, milan, florence, milan,  paris in the first month of 2017
at the end of which I shall have a different name and a different place on the timeline of the family. 

How terribly strange to be seventy said Paul Simon
Even more to be a grandparent  said many others

leaving on a jet plane, a jumbo

I was in the airport at hong kong, one of the few places I know which allows you free wifi/ improves the shining hour anyway. Surrounded by semi comatose australians who are worried about their money having disappeared in the financial crash there this morning, said they might as well turn round and go home/ they have already had a 12 hour journey, of course.

Well it's been a funny solitary week, so I have been walking through Hk as a silent observer. I don't think I like some aspects of it. the Royal College of Art graduate girls were telling me about the lovely bird market today, but their pictures showed a half dozen little birds hopping around (well, they were still pix actually) in a little wicker cages, and some much bigger ones in cages which looked a bit too small to me. They also showed great nets full of crickets which people were buying, persumably to feed to the birds, all writhing about in their chains. not very sentient perhaps but it looks a bit cruel to me, and one of them described a shopkeeper tearing the legs off one, and she laughed about the way the body was still moving about, saying it was very traditional and obviously had been going on for a thousand years. very likely.
I also didn't like the live chicken stuff: before they are taken out to be displayed to the customer, they are cooped up in tiny containers.
In Kowloon yesterday two little Yorkies were trotting along with an old man, each one with a little waxy bag in its mouth with a red sort of torch light winking away in it. every one smiled as he went by. when i came back, the dogs were performing on the pavement to his command, picking up the bags, begging, and leaning their heads together standing on their hind legs, still with the torch bags i their mouths. I thought they cringed every time he came near them to tell them the next trick, they looked a bit uncomfortable, and that was just how I felt. probaby a soft southerner, or northerner in their terms. I can't get past that really, But our ancestors just a few generations ago probably did the same sort of unsentimental things, I am sure, the chickens in Dieppe market a years ago did not look any more happy.
Anyway, the lights and the skyscrapers, a monument to capitalism, stand alongside some very slummy high rises, right alongside, flanked and pushed by massive mirrored gigantic glass towers either side, like the illustration for some strange morality tale. especially with the neon tickertape news flashing along the,  officials loathsome. if they don't want to answer you. they look straight through you as though you don't exist. On the other hand different official tourist contacts are like Disney charactersm  with bright eyes and have a nice days. Most ordinary people I found very courteous and friendly.
I also didn't like the look of the arrogantly arranged owners of the still extant street names everywhere. I was looking through a book at the old colonial types, the namesakes of Nathan street, the Lockharts, the Jaffes, the Hennessys and Johnstons, posing langorously in the Royal this and that club, playing cricket on the green, driving their racing cars and Rolls Royce in the 1930s, taking cent re stage in all the pictures.
The announcements in English are perfectly enunciated, must have recorded some RP survivors, and good for that, sandwiched betweeen Cantonese and Mandarin, which I think I can now distinguish. I know not to call Hong kong China. the doorman thought I said another name, almost the same as Hong Kong, in central China, and said you don't want to go to China, do you? but yes, I think I would like to.It is as foreign as France was when I first went there a hundred years ago,and very exciting.

will put my anti stroke socks on now.

a fairy went to market and she bought herself......

well certainly not a chicken. lovely tawny chickens which were in tiny tiny cages, taken out to be admired and then slaughtered round the back.

Chinese market, have some pix.loads of vegetables and fruit piled up, carcasses covered in shiny red stuff, being carved up, butchers absolutely covered in blood, not like david Lishman or Stuart, great tables full of about 50 pork chops, for example, loads of pills, herbs and medicines, and fish trying to jump out of containers which were like filing shelves on a desk, they were flying fish too, well flying at some point. great racks of fish of all sorts, which I do not recognise, not surprising really. seafood everywhere, tied up in little woven baskets with handles in bamboo. lots of sea snails, whelks I think they are, in and out of their shells.

the most repulsive smell I have ever come across, the drains I can cope with, bit like France, but this was rancid fat and some sort of all pervasive fat or oil smell which hangs around the very poor areas. very interesting. lots of very old, thin, stooped people who are probably much younger than Nanna but are to a man or woman bent double and being escorted round by their 60 year old children, perhaps it's a dietary deficiency? very polite people in the street, always stop if you take a picture and were extremely pleased if I asked to take theirs (butchers etc) I think I should have been photographing the fashion shops, but couldn't face it.

This has been an amazing trip, I want to read Chris Patten's book East and West now. his name comes up all the time, I can't quite tell whether they approve or not but I suspect it is the former, as many of the bosses in these companies are now Chinese and people are careful of what they say. When I said two of my daughters had received their degrees from him Patten, there was much surprise and impressed noises!

a chinese

I had an official and very formal chinese meal today with a Chinese official (woman) and the HK press people plus a motley group of journalists, one Korean,  one Japanese (best of bunch apart from a newly arrived German girl) an oldish Indian bloke with a New York accent blending with Calcutta, most disconcerting. v

Very posh resto. lots of protocol explained, with a circular glass plate which we could push round, and two sets of chopsticks, one to take the food and one to eat it with. spoons only to be used for serving things. loads of Cantonese specialities: dumplings with prawns or chicken or veg in side, mounds of shining greens, leaves with prawns on the top, pork cut into little roasty bits, tiny fish, like threads, only distinguishing feature their tiny black pinprick eyes, fried of course, spring rolls etc. followed at the end by an offer of rice. I was told they did this for guests in case they have not had enough to eat, the answer is that you don't want it, or if you do to take only a spoonful or so. chinese mango coated in coconut which I tried, and other sweetmeats which I did not . interesting and very delicious, plus endlessly replenished cups of tea served from white teapots. 

Then interviewed the German capo di capi of Interstoff, bit arrogant, kept me waiting while a thin hunched financial guy of indeterminate european origin quizzed him endlessly about things which were not relevant to HK. but then I had my turn and got a few answers out of him.

Might go over to Kowloon on star ferry in a minute, Christian gave me the address of a dept store, and I was discussing it with the woman very nice who has come over with the post grad Texprint students, she's going too but did not like to suggest I went too. only found poncy chopsticks so far, $900, 90 pounds, or more, so don't think I want that. was advised to go to Ikea, would you believe it. 

Overall, nice sunny weather today and quite a breeze.

helicopters

just leaving fair now. river traffic still pounding up and down the harbour, including a chinese junk, very exciting. Every so often, police helicopters sweep out of the clouds from the mainland, with headlights blazing, just above the water, and seem to be about to crash into this tall plate glass windowed conference centre.
might go to a 'do' tonight, right next to the harbour; it's next to a golden statue
Have been talking wool to woolmen, spinning a yarn with a twist.

quite cool and breezy here with the roar of the aircon. ventured out at lunchtime and nearly passed out in the stifling heat, because the cloud cover is so low. you just don't realise when you're in a building.
HK girls very smart, you can tell which ones they are because they are stick thin and wearing designer shoes, I am told. all HK residents are slim as far as I can see. in coffee shop last night several little extremely pretty waif-like black haired girls with white t shirts and trendy jeans sat quietly doing their maths homework with hardly two words exchanged,
some people wearing masks to walk about but not many. noticed the cooks last night in the hotel were wearing masks as they worked.

wednesday

walked from the hotel by windowed bridges all the way to the convention centre on the harbour. apparently can get round much of the centre without having to touch the ground, a bit like the bridges for the Medici family in Florence I thought to myself. maganificent 180o views round the harbour.

very cloudy sky but it is warm at the same time. grey seas but a very very warm breeze. very interesting that most HK people correct you if you say it's the first time you've been to China, say no more.
Kowloon is apparently the shopping centre so I might try that later. very little exhibition but some nice stories for me.
lots of traffic on the river, looks abit like london skyscraper wise, but there are huge mountains rising up behind them.
came over azerbaijan and mongolia and there were vast amounts of nothing we traversed, like the moon, no sign of any human habitation, same in China though I could see massive rivers looping around like a snake, and one which might have been the yangtse or the yellow river, (or perhaps they are both the same, or perhaps they are a line from a song,)a huge wide shining silver path across the plains.

it was so hot when I stepped out of the hotel last night I thought there was a fan or an engine on, but it was the warm wind blowing up from the sea.
hope all is going well.

first sight of Hong Kong

well, my lovely ones. sitting in an eastern cafe while it is yet to be midday chez vous, and night is drawing nigh here. Very colourful area, lots of neon signs, but extremely shabby with a bright Novotel in the middle of it. Came through some lovely countryside on the way, like one of those chinese paintings we all know so well, lots of very high, pointed hills, with greenery all the way up, deep chasms and in the mists the rising skyscrapers of hong Kong. Went past Cowloon with about a million containers ready to be shipped out to the shops of the world, quite frightening really.

Loads of Australians en route for oz I presume, looking tanned and fit, and lots of them here in Honkers too. blonde, tall and sheepish. Many David Miliband lookalikes too, for some reason, I think he's a bit like those cyberspace cyphers. I think Angelina Jolie started off as one too, but she actually did.

Don't know what to do now. could go down to the harbour, but that's where the exhibition centre is, so will probably have enough of that. Might make up for last night tonight instead. Not like the Italian hospitality where they lay on a dinner at every opportunity. Shall probably grab a glass of wine out of the minibar.
It's a very odd mixture of British things and real Chinese here , a blocked google, I presume, since it comes up in Chinese all the time, and my commercial traveller has been identified as spam, don't know it that's anything to do with it, and google are having to verify it, so I've gone back to this version, 2007 ad infinitum. Saw an Olympic village, next to some very shabby high rise flats, and my glass and steel hotel looks down on something resembling your new allotment, Pete, but it's on the roof high up.
well, shall try and give you some more interesting news later on.
the lights are the most amazing. Chinese characters lend themselves to the Christmas decoration look, and they are everywhere, green neon placards with bright red and orange characters.
well, signing off now. hope you find it.