Fireworks make us go Chinese

Rambutans plus exotic cartons of juice.

Fireworks are a Chinese invention - stumbled on in the 7th century after a cook spilt saltpeter (a gunpowder ingredient) on to their cooking fire with explosive results. This useful bit of knowledge means that around early November the amount of colourful explosions celebrating Bonfire Night (5 November) make me think of noodles, soaring towerblocks and all things Chinese. It's such a vast country, and in many ways I'm astonishingly ignorant about both it, and the strong links China has to the UK.  You can find out masses about how Chinese people came to the UK - dating from around 1901 - at the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which takes a fascinating look at how the Chinese have become such an important part of the UK economy. The site estimates around 500,000 Chinese are now living in the UK (with the majority in London). This website also suggests that without Chinese students in the very best UK public schools these private schools wouldn't be able to continue economically. Food for thought to say the least.

Of course many countries - and lots of cities including Liverpool (which boasts a massive ceremonial arch imported from Shanghai), Manchester and Newcastle off Stowell Street - have a "Chinatown", so as a half-term treat I took Lola and her friend Freya for a Chinese meal in London's Chinatown. Both girls are 14, but neither seems to have eaten much Chinese food. This is really quite strange seeing as the Chinese take-away was probably the first exotic food that their grandparents probably tried (and Lola's great grandfather spent years soldiering in Hong Kong)... Even now there's a huge number of Chinese take-aways in the UK serving fabulous food. The most popular takeaway dishes according to this site are: 

1. Chow mien
2. Beef in oyster sauce
3. Chicken with cashew nuts
4. Sweet and sour pork
5. Sweet and sour prawn

However we three diners are all vegetarian - so we began our search for a tasty meal near Leicester Square at Yang Guang, the Chinese supermarket on the corner of Newport Court (which also has a branch at Monk Street in Newcastle) to see what might be on offer. The girls were amazed by the huge white Chinese radishes and the plethora of exotic cartons of drink and encouraged me to buy juices labelled as sugar cane, lychee and chrysanthemum as well as a bottle filled with a mix of lurid green jelly-like liquid in which basil seeds seem to float - a dead ringer for frog spawn. Then on Gerrard Street we found New Loon Moon Supermarket and added some rambutans to our goodie bag.

Lola and Freya in London's Chinatown.

Chinatown is a magnet for people wanting a Chinese meal...but it's not necessarily the best place to go. A Chinese friend told me that it's filled with chains now, so a trip there could end up with you eating in the equivalent of McDonalds or Nandos. 

We ended up eating in New Aroma - an old fashioned place at 11 Gerrard Street which serves Fujian and Sichuan dishes at tables covered with white linen table cloths. Lola noticed it had been given a food and hygiene rating of just one, which I rather dismissed seeing as there were plenty of Chinese people enjoying tasty looking, piping-hot dishes -surely the test for whether to eat in a restaurant, or not. We then set to work with chopsticks to demolish vegetable noodles, broccoli in chilli sauce, aubergines and various rather snail-textured mushrooms and water chestnuts. The girls loved it, and it made me very happy that a short tube ride from our home we can find a completely different food world.

Over to you
Do you ever cook Chinese food at home - have you figured out the difference between a Chinese fast food set up (as many now are on Gerrard Street in London) and expert regional cooking? Any tips how I can work it out? Or where to go without leaving the UK...

Can anyone - even you - do good travelling?

Nell coping without a watch...

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post asks if travelling does anyone any good? Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).  

Nell, 11, is upset that at the start of the summer holidays her watch stopped. Seemed symbolic to me, but it's easy to replace the battery, especially as the shop owner of Raymonds in nearby Highbury Barn loves fiddling with watches. It's his original trade, the one he learnt in India. Seeing the lifeless watch he seized his magnifying glass, prized off the back and located another battery. "That's £5," he said. "all this money, all the watch money goes to charity. To an Indian charity that feeds blind people. The £1 is so strong that this brings about 80 rupees - that can give four people dinner, a lot of food."


As my own children and relatives get older I seem to see more appeals for help with overseas projects, like this one my cousin Nick sent from his pet project in Sierra Leone. What's agreed is that everyone needs money, the question is, how to give it? Does it involve going to a country, or can the money be sent in more imaginative ways? Offering up a skill - as a friend say helping to install an app or cut a hedge, or as I did 20 plus years ago as a volunteer working in Solomon Islands for VSO - is definitely generous.

Or is it? The early VSOs were unskilled school leavers, often on a gap year before university (although they have been skilled experts willing to pass on knowledge for years now). But I know a 14 year old who is doing wonderful fundraising (odd jobs, babysitting and saving her own birthday money) to travel to an African country and help with building projects. Even so I don't think she is old enough to be able to help. And even if she was I think it would be much better if local people were given that training in their own locale. Keep these UK kids out of it.

I know that what I got back from the experience of working for a NGO (Solomon Islands Development Trust) overseas was surely greater than what I put in. Just a quick calculation includes a new language, friendships that have really lasted, a new way of thinking that's more cooperative (sort of the pacific way, but not quite), a love of having children around, ideas for my novel Coconut Wireless. That's a big list, if I hadn't gone to the Solomons my life would have been considerably less rich in experiences.

My watch-loving newsagent takes this further: "People in India have nothing, and expect nothing," he says. "That's why they sleep. They sleep soundly, anywhere, even in the street. But here in the UK everyone's worried, so worried they can't sleep. They have everything but they need pills to sleep. You can be happy with nothing."

Over to you
I've noticed that people with strong Hindu beliefs often come to a similar conclusion - but for me it's another rich reward for just popping into my local shop for a battery. My question is do you listen more because you've travelled? Or is this an age thing? Of course travelling is a lot of fun, but do you think it does anyone - but the traveller - any good?

Water source: canal and river exploration

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post sees our family dreaming up two winter projects to help us explore the world and get to know two river routes out of London. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).  

New River appears at Clissold Park - here it is allowed to be an area for dogs to splash around.

This blog has done it: it's just gone over 25,000 views. This year it's also included our efforts to finish off the Hadrian's Wall walk, and the Capital Ring which encircles London. Great achievements... but I had a restless feeling that we needed another family project.  Strangely after a few months struggling to think what to do, two plans burst into mind which will keep us occupied and offer fascinating contrasts. 

Find this in Finsbury Park.

The plan is to walk the New River - which is famously neither new, nor a river - but a canal that brings water up to London from Hertfordshire. Its source is Ware, not so far from where I grew up, and  the route ends up  Sadler's Wells, Islington not so far from where I live now. Amazingly the New River was completed in 1613, nearly 400 years ago (anniversary in 2013) but it now brings water to the East and West Reservoirs on the edge of Green Lanes, Hackney - from there the water for London either goes into a massive great pipe called the London Ring, or looks set to be doing this. I only found out this thing existed when we looked at plans of our house when we were buying it and saw that there was a huge tunnel that wasn't a tube marked as crossing under our cellar some 30m, maybe 50m down. A journey down the New River has to take us via the world's biggest canals - Suez, Panama and the Grand Canal of China. There are loads more which I hope to discover things about during our time plodding along beside the New River.

We also intend to walk from the sea to the source of The River Thames - an exploration made possible by the fact that this is a very well-trod long distance path with an extremely tidy ending: a pub and station at Kemble just a couple of fields from the spring that is the surprisingly unspectacular source of this great river. This journey will give us the chance to replicate some of the amazing explorers' journeys to find the Nile, the Congo, the Amazon etc. Here's hoping.

is there a river or canal near you that you could explore? If so, do join in with your own river trip. Let me know how you go - or what are the best parts of river exploration.

Here is another post I've written about river exploration.
http://aroundbritainnoplane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/journey-to-end-of-nile.html

Not refuge but sanctuary

Brain twister: She searches for sanctuary on the seashore.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post sees our family living it up at a Pacific party in the Holiday Inn, London (£15 a ticket, bargain for dinner, quiz and Pacific chat). Nell was allowed to give a garland to the Fijian high commissioner and won a raffle prize, so results all round.  But the take home message for our family was all about how to offer a safe home for those whose homes will be destroyed by climate change. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).  

Left to right: Chris and Agnes.

Words matter - everyone knows that. But at a fantastic Pacific Islands party at the end of September 2012 - run by Agnes Benson from Kiribati (via the Herts/Bucks co-ordinating committee) and Chris Luxton, who used to live in Papua New Guinea and is the leading light, well chairwoman, of Pacific Islands Society UK and Ireland (PISUKI) -  I found out just how much words matter.

The talk at our table turned to climate change and the impacts this will have on Pacific islanders who are in line to lose their homes. Those in Tuvalu and Kiribati are at the front line of sea level rise, but of course that's the drama. Earlier problems are changes to the water table - which makes drinking water harder to find and salinates the soil. If you can't grow food, or get water (other than from rainwater), you're starting to be on an island that's not fit for human habitation.

So what will happen to those nations?

The Pacific has some experience of resettlement. In 1946 the Banabans were forced off their island (in Kiribati) and resettled in Rabi island, Fiji (many also live near the airport at Nadi) so the phosphate could be strip-mined by the British (who only years later paid compensation for this piece of mineral terrorism).

Kiribati has enshrined in its constitution minority rights for Banabans. How long can that last if  more Kirbati people are obliged to upsticks? It is after all a very flat place, one where there is nowhere to go if the unthinkable happens. Ditto Tuvalu.

Can you imagine a generous country like New Zealand allowing a state within a state? Could part of Auckland be turned into Tuvalu, say? Will Tuvalu be allowed a UN vote (it only became a member in 2000)? Or an Olympic team (they first competed in 2008 at Beijing, and here is a video of their proud weightlifter at London 2012)? Will Tuvalu still be allowed a government? And what will those exiled Tuvalu people be known as, "climate refugees" perhaps?

Absolutely wrong word say several people at the event. The countries that have caused these problems, predominantly those that developed their industries the earliest, have to learn to offer "sanctuary". It is simply an accident of geography that the disastrous impacts of climate change on nations happens to them, rather than us.

Over to you
I'm going to be thinking about this for a while, sanctuary not refugee, but wondered what readers of this blog thought?

Glastonbury god and goddesses

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post finds a way to feel like a deity - and then gets a bit mixed up with rabbits and religion (in Melbourne).  Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).   

Glastonbury's presence has been even bigger than usual thanks to the amazing Olympic opening ceremony with the green hill far away brought to London (well a removable replica). By luck our family was visiting Somerset the next day and on the hunt for a picnic lunch ended up in Morrisons supermarket under the shadow of the Glastonbury tor. It felt all wrong.

A day or so later we're back at Glastonbury, this time to look around. The market - selling clothes you just don't see anywhere else, lots of hippy stock, tie dye and crystals - was on. Every lamp post was festooned with a yellow plastic bunch of sunflowers. At the meeting room there's a Goddess Conference - this theme's colour seemed to be yellow as all Goddesses were kitted out with something of that shade (they wore blue in 2011). I wanted to find three rubber two-headed dragons, but they didn't seem to be available despite a huge number of hard magic and priestess kit shops. Want a bird's wing, a dragon cup or a wand? Easy. Vegetables were also impossible to find.

At Glastonbury Abbey - which hogs one side of the main street behind a row of crystal, green man booklets and incense selling shops - a wonderful gentleman kitted out in black Tudor garb introduces himself as Robert Pollard. Glastonbury is billed as the earliest Christian sanctuary in Britain - possibly Jesus was brought here by Joseph of Arimathea... (I think this is rather a big possibly). It's still a place people like to make pilgrimages too - for god and goddesses.

But Pollard (see photo below) has a different story. He did the dodgy dirty work for Henry VIII and his adviser Thomas Cromwell to ensure that the abbey was closed. Obviously Henry wanted the cash, not sure what Cromwell's motivations were - power I suppose - but the result was the unfortunate Glastonbury Abbot, already in his 80s, was given a traitor's death. He was hung, drawn (your guts are slipped out and dipped in boiling oil), then quartered. It made nobody look good, but also made it clear that no one was to mess with Henry VIII.

Years later the ruins were included in businessman James Austin's garden  - which still has the most lovely views. Austin is infamous for introducing rabbits to Australia (he wanted better sport). He has another legacy - his Oz property was named Avalon (another Glastonbury link as the abbey grounds also boast the legend that King Arthur's bones were found there, see pic). Avalon is now part of Melbourne.

Over to you
What's a place you've visited that's offered a terrific tour?

When you want a book

Swap a book on platform 2 at Bath Spa train station.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post locates a book swap at Bath Spa train station and then visits a library that looks like part of Stonehenge - in Colombia.  Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).   

One of the problems with travelling light is how to include books. Everyone in my family reads too fast which means we either stagger around with bags of books or have that uncomfortable feeling that we may not have brought enough reading matter.  Having a kindle has helped. But not as much as you might think - especially if a queue starts forming for whose turn it is.  My new phone has helped too - it came ready loaded with three classics so until Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland and Three Musketeers are finished off I can at least guarantee to have a book for 11-year-old Nell.

Of course you can swap books at places (though not nearly enough places, and this is utterly no good if you've already read Dan Brown). It was a great thrill to be on Bath Spa station recently and find a coffee shop (Dashi Sushi) selling a few newspapers along with snacks; plus a bookshelf designed for readers to pass on what they'd read and pick up a new title. That's a fantastic idea.

Which made me think about libraries - many are hard to use if you are in a place for just a short time, and fair point as new users might not be good at returning books. Some libraries around the world - just look here if you want to see what I mean - are far more than just book stores. They are the coolest places to visit boasting fabulous architecture. There's even one on a hilltop in Medellin, Colombia that from a distance looks like three giant rocks (see pic above). Up close it's more obvious that it's a building. More about this building and how it hopes to help stop drug related crime here. Picture credit here.

Another option is book crossing, or plain old swapping. Just make sure you leave the book in a place that someone is likely to find it. Bus and coach stations are obvious. So are places travellers and tourists stay. It's not just generous of course, it's also a way to lighten your bags...

Over to you
Where's your favourite place to find a new-to-you read?

New Holland in Essex (without lions)

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post takes a tour of Essex taking in Holland and Australia.  Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).   

Essex: it's got spray tans, hair extensions, wicked heels, new gleaming teeth and can boast at being the county with the (arguably) longest coast line in the UK. Pete writes endlessly about Essex (expect a new book in October) so sometimes the family is caught up in his Joy of Essex research. Turns out this stop off is roughly where the non-lion of 2012 August bank holiday was hanging out... see here

If you go to that mostly North Sea coast line you can be in all sorts of worlds and enjoy:

• Wildlife - from seals to wading birds - see here
• End of the pier attractions at Southend, Walton on the Naze and Clacton
• 1950s beach fun on the greensward at Frinton
• The best fish grazing (winkles! cockles! fish and chips!) at Leigh on Sea's pubs and fish stalls
• Oil refineries at Canvey Island
• Tasty English wine at Mersea Island

Pete, Nell, the dog and I took a little trip to flat Dutch landscapes at New Holland - midway between Clacton and Frinton (reach via a train to the seaside towns and then take bus 7, 7x or 8 on to alight at the Roaring Donkey pub). Once in New Holland it's really not got a cliche Dutch feel at all. Instead the bungalows, neat gardens, low walls and big vehicles parked in most drives give a strong sense of being in olde worlde Australia, a Perth suburb like Scarborough.

If you're in Australia then you'll expect really good food. So get back on the bus and head to Frinton where the Mouse and Hat Restaurant (pic of menu sourcing board above) offers stunning deli treats. Stunning for the UK that is. It's midway down Connaught Avenue (once known as Essex's Bond Street, but now rather more like a Country Living magazine fantasy of bookshops, galleries, material stores, ice cream parlour and a friendly green grocer).