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~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 30th 2012

Two weeks ago a political columnist suggested there were two David Camerons, the rural one and the urban one, and the urban one was winning out. The two other most senior figures in the cabinet—Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and George Osborne, the chancellor—were resolutely urban.

This observation was prompted by the news that the government had come out in favour of HS2 (or High Speed Two), a £33 billion rail link from London to Birmingham, which would divide at Birmingham, and head on to Manchester and Leeds. The new route would save 20 minutes of journey time. It would also  damage beautiful stretches of English countryside.

The economic argument goes that if you cut journey time, you increase productivity. But The Economist pointed out that “a large part of the supposed benefits rest on assumptions that businessmen are unproductive in transit”. If business people are happily productive when in transit, the most effective way of assisting that productivity would be not to disturb them.  read more »

"I am a person who routinely writes lists of things I've already done, just to make myself feel more accomplished," writes Catherine Price in the introduction to her new book. Ah yes, we all know the type. Price is the consumer to whom guides like "100 Places to See in Your Lifetime" and "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" are marketed: a compulsive list-maker, an organiser, an ambitious gatherer of experiences. So it makes some sense that Price, a contributing editor at Popular Science, would take hold of this imperative device and subvert it, as she does in her new anti-manual, "101 Places Not To See Before You Die".

The concept is simple: pick 101 terrible places or situations, explore them and live to tell the tale. The table of contents reveal the creative leeway within these confines, with chapters devoted to everything from a Chinese coal mine to a vomitorium to "Amateur Night at a Shooting Range" and "An AA Meeting When You're Drunk". Clearly, the concept contains a multitude, and Price's choices range from the psychologically humiliating to the sexually discomfiting to the physically painful. The entries themselves are short, sweet and sometimes entirely imagined for comic effect (as in the case of "The Room Where SPAM Subject Lines Are Created").

In a chapter devoted to nyotaimori, or "female body presentation", Price explains the technicalities of a practice known to laypeople as "Naked Sushi":  read more »

We arrive in the coastal village of Combe Martin in mid-afternoon, having picked up the hire car at Bristol airport and motored 90 miles over the rolling moors to the farthest reaches of North Devon. We navigate the twisty road into the village and catch our first glimpse of the sea. We are here, in prime hiking country, among the moors and rugged coast, for a long weekend of winter walks. Combe Martin will be our base. We are excited to take lungfuls of the air, but the walking boots will wait until tomorrow. This evening we must rest and re-fuel. We hole up in a bayside restaurant and fill our bellies with steak. After a long lie-in we take a slow breakfast and review the Ordnance Survey map. We work out a route, traced vaguely with toast crumbs and butter smudges, gulp down tea, grab coats, hats and patiently-waiting boots, and set out. We take a frozen muddy footpath between the fields. A mischievous bramble reaches down and steals my friend’s woolly hat. He puts hands to head with a look of surprise, then turns and growls disdainfully at the offending hedgerow. It dangles the headgear mockingly. Hat retrieved, we move on. A pheasant pops out of the shrubbery ahead of us and obligingly leads the way to the end of the footpath before popping back. We emerge onto open moorland stretching outwards and upwards. I start to run. “Don’t hills just make you want to run up them?” I shout gleefully to my friend. He gives me a sideways glance and starts singing, “The bear climbed over the mountain...” “…And all that he could see,” he sings on, “Was the other side of the mountain.” I retort, “Well, there’s plenty to see on the other side of this hill.” And I speed up.  read more »

“We are making our descent to Keflavík, where the local time is 6am,” the captain announces. “The weather is overcast with light drizzle and the temperature is seven degrees Celsius.” I shiver.

The sun must be up by the time I catch the airport shuttle bus into Reykjavík, but not a ray pierces the clouds. Through the rain-spattered windows I see an undulating volcanic terrain stretching out to the sea. The land is charcoal grey, matching the sky, and it resembles the cracked crust of a freshly baked muffin.

In geological terms, of course, the terrain is freshly baked. Iceland is thought to have bubbled up some 20-odd million years ago and it is continuing to grow. It sits on the divide of two tectonic plates–the North American and Eurasian–which are slowly shifting apart. When I visit the seven-kilometre-wide geological stretch mark, a guide says the plates are diverging at a rate of two centimetres per year.

We drive across the rift-valley scar tissue, observing the ripples in once-liquid rock, and reach the wet, glistening face of the North American plate. It looks angry, despite the fleecy comfort of creeping moss. Perhaps it resents having been ripped asunder from its Eurasian counterpart, its underbelly exposed to gawping tourists. 

When the sun finally breaks through the clouds, it seems like an act of heroism. The countryside is transformed, and its colours are illuminated. The reds, oranges and yellows of early autumn look like splashes of lava against the green foliage. Interspersed are vivid lime green mosses. All are intensified by a backdrop of black rock.  read more »