Call me a creature of habit, but I’m unashamed of doing most of the same things here in February this year as I did last May. I enjoyed knowing where the mugs were kept, where was the best place for a coffee and where to go for my morning martial arts practice. There is a small park, a perfect dojo, on the corner of the street and a little café, La Petite Place, on the next corner. Why change if it works?

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It is early September in 2023, I am sitting in a rocking chair in a cottage, a converted 19th century log house, in a little village called Virtaa, 7.7 kilometres from a small town called Sysmä. The cottage is in the grounds of an old manor house, Virtaan Kartano, owned by Juhani and Tiina Stjernvall. It is a working farm for Juhani and Tiina, but for me, left to my own devices, just here to find peace in the magnificent vastness of the Finnish countryside, it was an oasis – one haunted by the voice of Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957), whose music, at the annual Sibelius Festival in Lahti, first brought me to this hypnotic country. I spent a week here, before doing south to Lahti for the annual Sibelius Festival and, during most of that time, a piece of Sibelius’ music kept up its persistent call.

Tapiola (1926) is a one movement tone poem for orchestra, loosely about Tapio, the spirit of the forest as found in Finland’s epic creation poem, Kalevala. Sibelius wasn’t usually cooperative about the ‘meaning’ of his work, but his publisher asked him to explain the legend behind Tapiola, and then converted the composer’s reluctant reply into a poem:

Wide-spread they stand, the Northland’s dusky forests,
Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;
Within them dwells the Forest’s mighty God,
And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.

If there is a mighty god in Sibelius’s tone poem, it is an ambiguous one, it probably is more brooding dream than god, but, believe me, if you go walking in Finland’s forests, you will feel the presence of Tapio. I did.

Virtaan Kartano, the farm, is in a typical Finnish landscape of forest and lakes, with the River Tainionvirta leading to Lake Päijänne. This was the first week in September and, therefore, the beginning of the end of the summer season, maybe a few weeks earlier there would have been more people around. The god Tapio may have scared them away, making the place a silent haven – just for me. I doubt it, but that is how if felt. I was under his spell, and could only have left my rocking chair for another chair outside on the porch to sit there all day looking and not looking at the fields and the trees beyond them, and wondering what forces really hide in these forests.

I did move back inside later to have a sauna, the Finnish way, eat some food from Sysmä’s supermarket – like a farmers’ market in terms of quality. A glass of wine and then I’d read some of the Kalevala on my Kindle – then it was back to watching and listening on the next day, and so on.

Juhani, drove past a couple of times on his tractor, and our conversations flowed in an impressively economic Finnish use of friendly monosyllables. Mostly he was occupied in another part of the forest,.

The splendid cockerel and his harem of hens, were a constant clucking murmur, heard like a day-time lullaby from across the yard…

…and of course, there was always an alarm call in the morning.

There were eggs too – warm from the hens, a present from them, via Juhani, for the breakfast table.

From the Sysmä supermarket there was reindeer cheese. It was delicious on hot toast. I didn’t see any reindeer, but knew they were out there somewhere, probably further North, and I send them my thanks.

In case you are wondering, and I didn’t know this, female reindeer, like the males, have antlers, but they keep them through the winter, unlike the males. Don’t ask about Father Christmas’ Rudolph, he is probably a she.

Virtaan Kartano is a wonderful place and, if you want to find out more, here is the link: https://www.virtaankartano.fi/en

There was no problem finding somewhere for my morning martial arts practice here. This must be one of the most tranquil dojos I have ever had for my Chinese-style White Crane Kung-fu. The style I try to learn has moves inspired by the movements of the white cranes still common in China.

I was in the middle of the tai-chi move called the golden cockerel stands on one leg, when an extraordinary sound came from behind me. It wasn’t a Chinese white crane, but a group of Common Cranes, the first I had seen in the wild.

I had never heard their calls before, and I had no idea they could be so loud. I know they can be found in other countries too, but those Finnish cranes were thrilling when they came flying over the forest calling out like instruments in a Sibelius symphony before landing in the field behind me.

This is the land of forests and lakes, a tenth of Finland’s land area is covered by water, and 73.9%, or 66%, but definitely a lot more than half of the land is forested. It really is one of the biggest rural spaces in Europe.

The river here, River Tainionvirta, is rich in salmon, and the furthest river south in Finland for salmon fishing. It was also a bathing spot for the inhabitants of my log cabin.

It wasn’t hot in there, but I’m sure it get a lot colder when the snows arrive. I suspect you can’t have the full experience of Finland without going in for some wild swimming, even better if there is a sauna nearby. It was my first time swimming in a Finnish river, to the fish seemed as interested in watching me as I was watching them. When I say fish, I mean big fish. Honestly. As big as this.

The main activity for me in this inspiring place was just to go walking, breathing in the clean air, listening for crane calls, and watching the occasional jumping fish. I took a lot of photographs and was pleased I had packed my old Canon EOS. For much of each day, I was the typical one man and his camera. Here are some of my shots. They are not exaggerating when they say Finland is the land of forests and lakes.

After a week in this spiritually uplifting place, I could genuinely salute the sun in gratitude every morning before starting my tai-chi, feeling that I had grounded myself here in Finland, set down some roots, literally under my feet, but also, if I dare say this, I felt that I had put down roots into my soul here too. It might have been Tapio, the Finnish god of the forests, he was there in the low-lying sun, it might have been Sibelius, he was always playing in my head, but I think coming here, I was simply opened up to spirit of the Nordic world that opens for us if we imbue its spirit in silence.

Here is Sibelius’ tone poem, played by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, a worthy addition to the cannon of his seven completed symphonies, and a major consolation for the absence of his destroyed eighth symphony. The opening phrase that encircles the whole piece, one way or another, haunted me during my wanderings through the Finnish countryside – and it still does. It is possibly describing what you might find in the forest if you are bold enough to go there. I felt I was getting a glimpse out there of the ‘silence’ of the natural world in the sense that Sibelius meant in his long search to empty classical music down, or, more properly, up, to its profound and ideal of union with that silence. In this music there is beauty, but also fear, and a sense of the inexplicable intercommunication between us as individuals and the great mysteries of the other. It is almost enough to frighten us so much that we daren’t walk into that forest. I’m glad that I did.

The post Away from it all at the centre of all things in rural Finland. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

My first sighting of Finland, land of lakes, forests, saunas and music, seen from the air on a scheduled flight to Helsinki.

It all started six months earlier, in the Runaway Cafe on platform two at Lewes Station, UK, my home town. I am not talking about my journey to catch the plane to Finland. It was March 2022, I was having a coffee before the London train arrived and the radio behind the counter was playing Sibelius’ most well-known piece, Finlandia. I was going to London for a day at the British Museum for The Stonehenge exhibition, which I truly enjoyed. The only trouble was that tune. I could not get rid of Finlandia all day.

In all honesty, I was wishing I could hear the whole piece on my home sound system and I didn’t want to wait until I got back, but I had to. Of course, being an obsessive kind of man, it wasn’t good enough just to listen to Finlandia, love it though I do, especially as played by an orchestra called The Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Sinfonia Lahti), conducted by Osmo Vänskä. No, I decided that I had to listen to all seven of Sibelius’ symphonies again, in numerical order, of course. It had to be the versions by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra too. If you don’t know these recordings, please find them somewhere, they are truly inspiring and, I thought, without any proof or even any knowledge what that actually means, they are very Finnish.

I hadn’t given the orchestra’s name a lot of thought, but it had occurred to me that Lahti was a strange sort of word and, of course, I couldn’t speak Finnish. I didn’t know what a Lahti was, maybe a type of milky coffee, or who Lahti was, or where Lahti was. So, with Sibelius fully enthroned in his rightful place back in my brain, I decided to google Lahti. Ah, yes, it’s a relatively small town in Finland which has its own symphony orchestra, famous for its recordings of Sibelius’ music. They had a state of the art orchestral hall too, by a lake, The Sibelius Hall, which, I now read, had first class, world class, acoustics. And then the big moment. Drum-roll, please Lahti Symphony Orchestra: every year Lahti holds a Sibelius Festival with its resident orchestra, in the Sibelius Hall and playing only Sibelius’ music.

So there I was, heading North, sitting on a Norwegian Airways flight from London Gatwick to Helsinki Airport at the end of August 2022. It was my first visit to any of the Nordic countries and, for someone who had been going on holiday every year to Italy, this was definitely going to be something different.

Helsinki from the air and, beyond it, the Baltic Sea.

This is the impressive modern building that is the Sibelius Hall in Lahti. I was truly excited to get here, but I was knocked out by the architecture and its setting.

The Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Lahti Sinfonia) with its principal conductor Dalia Stasevska, who is also the festival director, gave three concerts of Sibelius’ music. His Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7 and the great late work, Tapiola, a tone poem that some people call his 8th symphony. There were also a number of the composer’s other tone poems and two rare performances of his music for narrator and orchestra, The Wood-Nymph and Snöfrid.

The Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska is already known for her passionate, dramatic and rhythmically exciting interpretations of a whole range of composers’ works – including many contemporary Finnish composers. As well as being the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor, from 2021 until 2025, her first principal conductor’s post, she is also the principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra where she became better known to British audiences after she conducted the Last Night of The Proms in 2020.

Now she is even on the cover. of this month’s Gramophone Magazine (April 2024), and it is, by now, patently obvious that she will soon be taking a giant, and well-deserved, leap into the top ranks of international conductors.

I will remember particularly her emotional commitment and her ability to transmit that feeling to us in the audience, especially in profoundly serious performances of Sibelius’ great twin other-worldly masterpieces, Symphony No 7 and Tapiola. Look carefully, if you can be bothered, I am sitting, transfixed, four rows back, on the left, feeling privileged and moved to have been there.

The opening concert of the festival was impressive too, with the Estonian Festival Orchestra conducted by the Estonian-American conductor, Paavo Järvi, the orchestra’s chief conductor and founder, but also chief conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. They played Sibelius’ thrillingly late Romantic Symphony No. 2 and his dramatic quasi-symphony, Lemminkäinen, setting some episodes from the life of Lemminkäinen, the reckless, flawed and deeply human hero from Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala, with its mystical Isle of the Dead guarded by the black swan of Tuonela.

 Lemminkäinen : Thus became a mighty hero. In his veins the blood of ages, 
Read erect and form commanding, Growth of mind and body perfect 
But alas! he had his failings, Bad indeed his heart and morals, 
Roaming in unworthy places, Staying days and nights in sequences 
At the homes of merry maidens, At the dances of the virgins, 
With the maids of braided tresses (Rune IX, The Kalevala)

During the intervals to the concerts, the audience retreated to enjoy the appropriately inspiring architecture of the Sibelius Hall (Sibeliustalo), completed in 2000, it is the work of Finnish architects, Kimmo Lintula and Hannu Tikka, continuing what is by now Finland’s international reputation for great architecture.

The concert hall’s acoustics are, as I had read, as good as you get, and its pin-drop clarity encouraged the audience to sit silently and it also allowed the orchestras to play to their full range – from fortissimo to pianissimo with no loss of detail. In the interval, we could also catch those famous Finnish sunsets over the lake. I know that Sibelius is much more than just a Finnish composer, he’s one of the greatest masters of music, and his works are not really ‘about’ Finland, but the Sibelius Hall in this setting, after some great performances of his music, can’t help but remind us that his inspiration wherever it came from, can’t have been unaffected by the Nordic beauty of his homeland.

Up these intriguing musical stairs, on the other side of town, is the Lahti Conservatory of Music, (Lahden konservatorio), where there was also a piano recital given as part of the festival and, this year, focusing on Sibelius’ less well-known genre, piano music.

The young Danish pianist, David Munk-Nielsen (born 1998), still studying for his master’s degree at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, and was already an award-winning pianist He won first prize in the Tampere Piano Competition as well as the Tallinn Piano Competition – and in both competitions he played Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto, not for the faint-hearted, in the finals. In his Lahti Sibelius recital, he played three sets of piano pieces from the beginning and the towards the end of the composer’s creative life. Ten Pieces, Op 24, are examples of Sibelius’ early, Liszt-inspired virtuoso works; Five Pieces, Op. 75, The Trees, and Five Pieces, Op. 85, The Flowers, are sets of often gnomic miniatures, each title the name of a tree or a flower, and the music is, well this is Sibelius, a lot more interesting than their names suggest. David Munk-Nielsen played them with the seriousness they deserve and, where necessary, the virtuosity that says much for his future.

You have to take trees seriously in Finland, it is the most forested country in Europe, the great northern forest. A small piece of this forest, in southern Finland they are a mix of deciduous and evergreen, spreads down almost as far as the Sibelius Hall in Lahti in what is called Kariniemi Park, which also contains the Lanu Sculpture Park, featuring the work of Finnish sculptor Olavi Lanu (1925 – 2015), who took trees seriously too. His works are often made in concrete but disguised as if they are growing in the forest – which in Kariniemi Park, they are, if you see what I mean.

Walking in the park, I felt that I had a real if small-scale taste of what that the Finnish forest, further north, is truly like. A desire was born to explore further into Finland’s natural landscape while I walking down wooded paths to the equally Finnish landscape of lakes.

Also bordering onto trees in the centre of Lahti is the Lahti Museum of Visual Arts Malva – mostly known simply as Marva. It was obvious from my first visit that the people who run it have just the right attitude to the modern and the historic and that they have very good taste too. Their main exhibition, when I was there, was by the Dutch conceptual artist, Maarten Baas.

Dutch artist, Maarten Baas’ exhibition, Hide and Seek, was full of surprises, jokes and insights into what we sometimes call, wrongly, the everyday.

Maarten Baas does some amazing things with smoke and mirrors too. His burnt objects, many of them of iconic pieces, was truly dramatic and not a little disturbing….I can still smell the burning.

Lahti is not just a place for great music and art, forested walks and lakes, it is also, yes, a nice town. I suspect it is also a very Finnish town – orderly, organised, efficient and modern – an extremely pleasant place. I like its understated charm a lot. Finland feels like a modern place to me, and I really like the way that the oldest buildings in Lahti all seem to be 20th century. It feels like Lahti lives in the present and the future – that gives me hope. It is also a great place for a coffee or a drink in civilised surroundings.

Lahti’s main church, the Church of the Cross (Ristinkirkkko), was built in 1978. Another piece of fine modern architecture. Today, it was holding a wedding. So simple but so effective this display of sunflowers – no happy couple could help. but me moved by its simple but profund statement of hope and good wishes. The church, by the way, has been the location for a lot of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s highly-regarded Sibelius recordings.

Home for this week, was a modern apartment in a modern apartment block, in a modern apartment estate, right in the middle of town and a short walk from Sibelius Hall.

I know that the Finnish winter is harsh but the Finns are ready for that. They are natural designers. The doors fit, the locks lock with a delightful clunk, they stay shut too in a gale. Here, in my temporary home, the obsessive in me loved the way everything worked and looked smart as well as functional. This lift, for example, nicely lit, smoothly opening and closing doors and a purring swish gave me great pleasure every time I used it.

A lot of Lahti citizens live in these type of developments and, unlike many other apartment blocks I’ve seen in other countries, here I think , you are lucky citizens to live here.

There was even a place for me at the back, in that nicely designed communal garden, so I began each day, as I try to wherever I go, doing my kungfu and tai-chi practice – overlooked by some curious residents who only registered their surprise with a slight flicker of a smile and a friendly Hei.

After tai-chi, what better, most Finns would agree, than a hot sauna back in the apartment. Sauna is the only Finnish word to enter the international vocabulary. It means, yes, sauna and it is genuinely a part of every day life in Finland. You feel great afterwards, believe me.

Down the street, turn right and five minutes away is another world. Well, as you can see below, a themed restaurant that isn’t into the idea of hiding its ideas. Viking Restaurant Harald (Viikinkinkiravintola Harald) is just what it says the moment you see it. At first I was reluctant to go in. I suspected it would be all embarrassing theme park entertainment with terrible theme park food, but I was wrong. The decor has a sense of humour. I know that Vikings were not exactly what the comic books portray. My father’s family came from the Scottish Hebrides and some of our ancestors have Viking names, so I am a softy for my Viking heritage, even if I do know for a fact that Viking never wore two-horned helmets, and I certainly never thought I would wear one, but….

…never say never. When in Lahti’s Viikinkinkiravintola Harald, after a few Viking beers, and a very good meal (honestly, the food is first class), almost anything can happen. But, before I go, let me leave you with members of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, who have given me so much pleasure here in Lahti. They are performing their Covid lockdown version of Sibelius’ Finlandia, each musician in his or her own home studio. Kiitos ja kippis! I shall be back!

The post Flying to Lahti in Finland for Sibelius appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

This was in June 2022, my first foreign trip after Covid decided to keep us all home for a couple of years. I had been going on holiday to Italy annually for ten years. I love the place, the culture and the language. Cerco di fare uno sforza per parlare italiano ogni volta che posso. (I try to make an effort to speak Italian whenever it is possible). I don’t always get it right – far from it – but I get great pleasure trying to speak to Italians in their own language. I think I began to understand Italy a whole lot more after I managed to hold conversations about more things than ‘excuse me where is the station?’ ‘a beer, please’ or ‘can I have the bill?’ One day, I hope to understand everything Italians say to me.

So I missed the place during the pandemic and was impatient to return to this wonderful country at the first opportunity. Apart from the culture, the people, the landscape and the language, I feel so much better in the Italian sunshine. The coffee tastes better there too.

So, in June 2022, I packed my bags with hot weather clothes, a Panama hat, and my kindle loaded with Italian fiction, and made the journey to Tropea, in Calabria in Southern Italy, determined to relax and absorb Italy’s healing vibes.

Tropea is a small town by the sea in a part of the Italian south that hasn’t been so over-run as some of the other more famous Italian seaside resorts. Consequently perhaps, amiability, humour and relaxed hospitality are still important here, where a favourite restaurant or bar can soon become home.

I know I’m sounding like a brainless hedonist, maybe that’s who I am. In all honesty, it’s one of the many attractions of coming to Italy every summer. Forgive me, everyone, for I have sinned. No, it’s not a sin to appreciate the good things about the world, it’s a duty, I believe.

Tropea isn’t Rome or Naples, but it has most of the essentials for a quintessentially Italian experience.

Tropea is a beautiful place, one of the most beautiful in Italy, according to its award as one of I Borghi più belli d’Italia (‘The most beautiful villages of Italy’). The town itself sits on the cliff tops over-looking the Gulf of Saint Euphemia, part of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

There were a number of concerts here while I was in Tropea, at the medieval Auditorium Santa Chiara – a recital of operatic arias by the Calabrian composer, Francesco Cilea (1866 – 1950), performed by the sumptuously voiced soprano Lenny Lorenzani with pianist David Boldrini, a part of the Tropea Summer Music Festival

There was also a saxophone quintet concert with the Argentinian saxophonist and composer, Javier Girotto. (Javier Girotto – who played a variety of saxophones with Mattia Catarinozzi – soprano sax Alfredo Santoloci – alto sax – Maurizio Schifitto – tenor sax and Giovanni De Luca – baritone sax)

There’s a legend that Tropea was founded by Hercules, no less, when he was returning home to Greece after completing his ‘twelve labours’ – I don’t expect to rival his super-human strength, as in the Farnese Hercules that I saw in Naples in 2020…

…but I do my best to keep as fit and as strong as I can – even when I’m on holiday. The apartment in Tropea had a large terrace, over-looking the town and the bay and, every morning, it became my own private gym for exercises suggested by Gyles Abbott, my personal trainer, and my kung-fu and taichi practise as drummed into me by Kungfu instructor supreme, my friend Neil Johnson.

There was even a handy impromptu pull-arm bar in the bedroom.

At night, the terrace took on a considerably more relaxed mood, a look-out post to watch the festivities below accompanied by a vigilant moon, a glass of wine and a cooling breeze from the Tyrrhenian sea.

It wasn’t all about sun, sea and sand, but I have to confess, after two years away, I felt like Adam and Eve might have felt if they had been invited back to the Garden of Eden.

This blog, with its obligatory Tropea sunset, brings to an end my record of my Italian holidays between 2017 and 2022 – in Puglia, on the Amalfi Coast, in Naples, Sorrento and Milan. I planned to write them at the time but managed to neglect doing so while my website was being remastered. My apologies to those readers who missed the fact that these were separate past trips….if only I could have done this just now as a grand tour as some of you imagined.

I have mentioned Enrico Caruso a lot in these posts, so it seems right to finish them with his voice. In 1902, when this recording was made, Enrico Caruso had just created the role in Maurizio in Calabrian-born Francesco Cilea’s most famous opera, Adriana Lecouvreur at the Teatro Lirico in Milan (1902). Here is Caruso fresh from one of his early triumphs.

A reminder too of Francesco Cilea, whose operas are not performed as much as they deserve.

The post Tropea – taking it easy in Calabria appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

The first portrait photograph of me was honest, I thought, no frills, just me as I was that day. sitting in front of the Georgian fireplace in my Lewes home. It was as true an image as photography can deliver. The idea to replicate the photograph only occurred when Facebook reminded me that it had been taken exactly ten years ago. Facebook, for all its faults, acts as a useful diary of our lives. Earlier this month, I had just recovered from an annoying cold which had lowered my spirits and made me feel like I had one foot in the grave. It was then that my photographer friend David Stacey, who had taken the original photograph, suggested making a new portrait to match. I hesitated thinking hang on a minute, it’s bad enough feeling old let alone advertising the fact. We had lunch, our regular monthly meet up, and I was persuaded – what the heck! We arranged my living room to match how it had looked ten years earlier and I sat down in that chair. I’m glad we did it not just because time hasn’t been that cruel to me so far – well not as much as I’d imagined, and also because it was an interesting project in itself – letting the camera record a life. Dave threatens to take another one in ten years time – let’s see about that.

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I have been reluctant to post my blogs over the last few months of lockdown and its aftermath here in Lewes, UK. I didn’t feel I had much to add to the millions of comments about the pandemic over the last eighteen months as I am convinced that no one would be interested in what it was like to be a privileged, white, no-longer young, middle class European male during the.time when so many people suffered so much more than I have locked-in here in my two-hundred year old terraced house with lots of narrow stairs in a beautiful historic town in south-east England.

And anyway, not much really changed for a writer like me. Like most of my kind, I don’t really go out much anyway and I mostly work alone in a small room with a computer and some books. So there aren’t many dramas here. OK, I shaved off my beard for a bit and then regrew it.

I tended my small urban garden and watched the seasons change out there in my small piece of England.

I was able to not just carry on keeping fit with my personal trainer Gyles Abbott at Soulfit Studios https://www.wearesoulfit.com/about-soulfit but I have got fitter than I have been for years.

I actually took on extra fitness training too with Soulfit’s Kieran Brooks, an enthusiastic and dynamic former baller-dancer, who is now giving me regular one-to-one classical ballet lessons. It began as a bit of a ‘could-I-dare-I’ challenge to myself and it has turned out to be more than a short-term experiment. I’m loving finding something so different and so inspirational at a time in my life when I’d thought I already knew all of my abilities and limitations.

I have also been carrying on with learning Italian and, after reaching a 687 day streak with the online languages app Duolingo have taken on a new online teacher, an excellent Sicilian, based in Venice, called Elio Ministeri – he is taking me through my paces and picking up on my many errors.

And, as I did before the pandemic, I’ve carried on writing poetry and fiction – some publication dates have slipped because of lockdown, but, even with the pandemic, I had some more Fibonacci poetry published in the online journal The Fib Review http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

One of the poems even commemorated my beard – the other one was about life, age and death. I suppose that was inevitable after the passing of my mother in April at the grand age of 106. I locked down a bit after her death, not just in mourning for an extraordinary woman, but also for an end to an era in my life and the life of my family and, inevitably, all the duties that fell to me in sorting out her estate. I will honour her memory and her long interesting life in a later blog, I hope.

Here in the UK, we are seeing the ending of the pandemic restrictions, and the beginnings of hope for the future. I share that hope and I am beginning to celebrate the feeling of coming out of my cage. I haven’t seen many of you for a long time now, but lets get back together soon and, I promise, I shall come back to this website which has been masterfully restored and improved by an amazingly patient man called Matt Artley.

So much remains the same and much has changed during this difficult time. The season is changing again too as we move towards September so, for today, I will leave you with signs of fruition – the apples and tomatoes are ripening with high summer flowers outside by my dustbins. See you all soon.

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The hot days of the summer lockdown here in the UK have passed but now it’s second time round for the covid-19 precautions and, in classic English autumn style, it has been raining and, more importantly, it has got cold. No excuse to stop my fitness regime though. Back in July I started doing 25 pressups a day and I have carried on ever since – rain or shine.

I do a different variation on the basic pressup every day each week – now I have seven favourites which target different muscles. I plan to do a blog about these some time soon. For now, just let me say that pressups are perfect for daily no-nonsense fitness-training and I can really feel the difference since I’ve been doing them.

I’m a member of a martial arts club here in Lewes, White Crane Fighting Arts http://www.whitecranefightingarts.com/ but the club has had to close down during lockdown. At home, I have continued my daily 66-moves Tai-chi practice which in our White Crane form is really a soft form of kungfu known as Shuang Yang Bai Hè Rou Ruan Quan or White Crane Soft Boxing. The aim is not just to look gracefully elegant (unlikely in my case) but also to use the soft martial techniques not just for self-defence but for fitness. It is a method I have been doing for a long time now and, hopefully, I will be able to carry on (and improve) for the rest of my life, even into extreme old age.

I am not allowed to do Kungfu full-contact sparring any longer because of the brain haemorrhage I suffered 12 years ago, but I have continued to practice my four White Crane Kungfu patterns and hope, one day, to learn a few more. I go through them every morning after Tai-chi and my 25 pressups. I have never been much good at it, but I have done it and enjoyed it for so long now, that it is a permanent part of my self-image. It is still useful too – a few years ago, I used a lower crane block to dispatch a pick-pocket on the Pont du Nord bridge in Paris.

I end my morning sessions with a set of fourteen moving-meditation exercises said to have been invented by a 5th or 6th century Buddhist monk known as Da Mo (or Bodhidharma) who is said to have brought Buddhism and martial arts from India to China. These exercises, are a bit like Tai-chi in that they are supposed to look calm and gentle but they are, in fact, really difficult and what your muscles would recognise as hard work. The fourteen exercises involve doing various stretches and moves which use the whole body, in horse stance, knees bent, whilst regulating the breath and letting the mind focus on abstraction. I’m far from getting the posture right, but I’m still trying. One day, I might get to the abstraction bit, but, for now, it’s enough to get through them in a state of calm while those leg muscles are screaming stop this madness now.

These morning exercises are a supplement to my two hour-long personal trainer sessions a week with Gyles Abbott of Soul Fit in Lewes who has been putting me through a custom-built fitness routine which has grown incrementally now for nearly three years as I have got fitter. https://www.wearesoulfit.com/personal-training During lockdown we are meeting either in the park or on Zoom. It is really enjoyable if you like to feel your body performing in the way it was designed. I am getting there, I think.

When each morning session is over, I promise you, breakfast and coffee taste better than you can imagine. And I don’t feel so guilty about spending so much time writing at my computer these days…the other advantage of lockdown, is that there are few distractions from getting on with the 5th draft of my fourth novel.

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In July this year, while the UK was still locked down, I was challenged by a friend on Facebook to do the 25 Day Pushup Challenge and, because I can’t resist challenges, I did it.

The idea was to do 25 pushups every day for 25 days, to film the process and to post it on Facebook in a campaign to help raise awareness about the growing cases of people, often young, and mostly male, who are suffering from depression, anxiety and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). A condition which contributes to, again, mostly young male, suicides in this country.

I am no athlete but after leaving the hell that was my compulsory school sports experiences behind me, I have always tried to stay fit and, yes, to challenge myself by doing what has never come naturally to me. Like going to the gym or even roller-blading along the promenade at Brighton or in Hyde Park, London, where people, wisely, dodged out of my way.

I thought if I took part in the pushup challenge, I could be more encouraging as an example to others than elite sportsmen and women who can inspire by their skills but also, maybe, put the rest of us off with their unachievable brilliance and those rows of medals, silver cups and champagne showers that we will never win. Very nice to watch, of course, and great for them, but they can leave the rest of us feeling like, well, also-rans.

Talking about these issues is good, of course, but also, there is just a chance that regular exercise, no matter how athletic or not you are, can raise your endorphin levels and significantly effect, to use a modern catch-phrase, your mental well-being.

There have been difficult times in my life (as with many people) and I can talk first-hand about the effects of fitness-training when life gets tough.

I was lucky with some of my physical challenges when I was definitely old enough to know better. I found Kungfu, and an excellent instructor, the world-class martial artist, Neil Johnson. http://www.whitecranefightingarts.com/

Neil is also a brilliant and patient teacher who challenged my lack of co-ordination and lack of natural talent, into doing things that I would never have believed possible. Like training with kungfu masters in China, for example. Amazing!

I got fitter than I had ever been and even learnt how to win, at least a few times, in combat. The feeling was unbelievably exhilarating.

I trained hard and saw and felt the results of working the body to its limits. It was really good fun. I did kungfu weapons-training too….the seven and a half foot staff…

and the straight sword. Martial patterns I could practice wherever I was on holiday, like this rooftop in Santorini, Greece where an old broom handle made a good weapon.

Even the smallest spaces – like home – have space for martial arts training and, of course, for push-ups. So no excuse not to practise.

In the last ten years I had two life-threatening illnesses which challenged not just my life and my fitness but also, yes, that phrase again, my mental well-being. Doctors told me that I probably survived from the brain haemorrhage because I was very fit.

So I have continued in my efforts to stay that way, with a lot of help from my kungfu instructor, Neil, even though I was told I would have to give up full-contact kungfu sparring.

I also owe my gradual return to fitness to two personal trainers too. First, Ritxar Magee Atxukarro, whom I trained with on my doctor’s referral – UK prime minister Gordon Brown’s initiative which died with the change of government. Ritxar got me back into the gym here in Lewes and gave me the confidence to push back against illness and to get me going again.

For the last two years I have had a new trainer, Gyles Abbott, at Soulfit, http://wearesoulfit who has taken me back to fitness a second time after my recovery from a second illness, pulmonary embolism, when even walking up a hill was a struggle…now I can run up that hill.

My fitness has returned, or is returning, thanks to these three gentlemen and, yes, by a lot of personal effort. I have often felt down about health problems but I found that pushing back really helps. Exercise really does make you feel good about yourself.

Most of us usually discover pushups as a kind of school punishment, but, hey, they are a great form of exercise. You don’t need any equipment, just your body and a bit of will-power. I can vouch for the fact that doing them on a regular basis, why not every day, will really make you feel better. Honestly, if I can do them, so can you. Good luck!

Here’s the short movie I edited to show you how I did it.

I didn’t stop at 25 days – this morning, day 41, I am still going strong and hope to keep it going with new variations.

One last thing, if you don’t believe I did all 25 pushups on those 25 days, the full film is available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-hFwwf5QDc

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I’ve been trying to get back to full fitness now for twenty months, nearly two years, after a difficult eight or so years of ill-health. A brain haemorrhage in 2008, and a pulmonary embolism a few years later, in 2013/14, left me pretty winded and it’s was often effort enough to walk, let alone run, but I was determined to fight back even though the going has often been tough.

There were three or so years when I struggled but managed to keep going with my Tai-chi form even though I didn’t go back to my Kungfu Club on a regular basis until last year. The doctor said I shouldn’t return to Kungfu because of the post brain haemorrhage risk, this was a blow, as I owed a lot of my pre-haemorrhage fitness to my martial arts training. But, I still practice my Kungfu patterns and Tai-chi has been always been there, like a helping hand leading me onwards. For over a year now, I have been going back to Neil Johnson’s White Cane Fighting Arts Club, http://www.whitecranefightingarts.com/ in Lewes, for Tai-chi classes. OI have been a member here, with a few dramatic interruptions, for over fifteen years. It was quite a struggle at first, but recently, I have started to get back to somewhere like ‘not bad’.

Tai-chi has become one of my three weekly fitness sessions, the second class is a vigorous hour with a personal trainer at Soul Fit, https://www.wearesoulfit.com/the-studio also in Lewes.

I started to get back to aerobic fitness by taking on a personal trainer, Gyles Abbott, in January 2018, who has been putting me through my paces once a week for an hour a session. I am amazed, even if no one else is, by the results I (or rather Gyles and I) have achieved in that time in his well-equipped torture-chamber.

The third of my weekly sessions is more recent – for five weeks now, I’ve returned to running, an old enthusiasm that I feared will now be beyond me. Well, ‘not bad’ is probably how I’d describe my progress so far. Actually, I’m doing much better than I dared predict.

My last run, on Sunday, had me running 3.487 kilometres in 30 minutes without stopping. It might not be Olympic standard, but, for me, this is mercurial. See my mobile phone’ app record below. It was all going swingingly until the last minute just as I was going for my finishing point. Then my legs started to complain and I should’ve stopped. Only a few steps to go, I heard myself say, and then my legs ran out of control and I went crashing onto concrete. Look away, if you don’t like the sight of blood – the result wasn’t a pretty sight.

It was truly surprising how much you can hurt yourself by falling while running – I have a grand collection of cuts and bruises as well as an unpleasant sensation in my head. I’m feeling better today but the doctor says I’ve have a mild concussion.

I hope, I’ve learnt an important lesson about knowing when to stop when you’re pushing yourself towards a goal.

I shall be back. Don’t laugh, but under these minor injuries, I’m feeling great! I haven’t felt as fit for over ten years.

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Going to the gym is enjoyable enough. I try to go at least three times a week to the pleasantly eccentric one at the White Hart Hotel, near to where I live in Lewes, UK. The treadmill run can seem at times like the kind of punishment  once doled out on a prison sentence with hard labour, but, mostly, I enjoy the adrenalin flow you get from pushing yourself that bit further each time and, of course the feeling you get when it’s over. My companion in these adventures is my iPod – already old technology, it seems, but one of my best friends, when I’m travelling or when I’m running.

I always take time to plan what I am going to listen to at the gym each week – usually deciding on one album that I will get to know all the better from these repeat performances. At times it turns the gym into a sacred temple – maybe that is what gyms are in modern times.

Last week my album was the hypnotic and quietly melancholy new album, Pagan, from a young English one-man band known as Palmistry. Palmistry is quintessentially English with his lightly limpid  voice and gentle sensitivity but where he is musically new to my ears is the way he uses and transforms Caribbean traditions into an exquisite hybrid, substituting tightly controlled but delicate rhythms for the more extroverted beat we associate with reggae.

I’ve loved this music. It has helped too when I was reaching exhaustion point at the end of a run.

Over the weekend, I found time to sit in the garden and read the latest issue of The New Yorker, always a pleasure even though the US, just like us here in the UK, is going through a difficult and worrying time in its history. Part of me felt guilty, the bit that wasn’t happy to be soaking up the sun in my small  urban garden. Guilty to be enjoying a lifestyle so different from many of the people described within those pages this week. I have made many enjoyable, stimulating and eye-opening trips to America over the years and, sitting there in my garden, I was taken back specifically to the time I spent in New York City in the 1990s (in my Sony Discman days) when I used to listen to what was a new phenomenon to my ears, American hip-hop.

I have been to the States a lot in my life as a TV producer and I haven’t always been there for its beauty or its excitement. I have seen, and photographed, many things in the USA that showed me that even my favourite countries have their downsides.

1990s rap music now reminds me of some difficult times over there but also the thrill of being out there on the streets where danger and excitement are often edgy companions.

So this week, my album has to be illmatic by the artist knowns as nas. Surely one of the best hip-hop albums ever – well certainly in my experience. I was reading about nas in a previous issue of The New Yorker and just had to dig it out again. It will, I hope, keep me running this week.

So if you want to hear something of what I’ve been talking about, here are two tracks from these two wonderful albums. Enjoy:

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