3 dives. This really is it. My fantasy of what scuba diving is, happens in the seas around er T????????????. Ben and I are picked up by a pick-up and off to the port. H???????? and G??????????? are our guides. We hammer off in the boat which is of a design peculiar to Japan. High prow, very narrow and very long.

Down we go into the gin clarity water. Above, the sun is shining, the sea is speckled with islets with arches and bizarre shaped rocks. Below, the sea is a Paisley  design of brilliant fish and coral.  It is of course perfectly warm. Every fish you have seen in tropical fish stores or in aquaria infancy hotels are here. At one point a turtle swims up to us and just hangs out. Er I mean, like um kinda, you know.

The last dive of the day is around a pillar of rock a long way out. Different from anything I have done. Strong currents, big fish , more turtles, vodka water, goes very deep, slabs of rock, tuna flash by.

Why are fish in Scotland all silver whereas fish here come in every possible colour and every possible combination of colours?

It is a great thing to be able to remember stuff, especially in Japan. Unfortunately I can’t. Well to be precise I cannot remember names. Ben and I go away for the weekend to an island some miles to the West of Okinawa. I can remember the name of the group of islands, the Keramas, but  I cannot remember the name of the island we are going to. This becomes tricky when we get to the port from which we are to take the boat. This is the weekend of Obon – big festival when your ancestors come back to visit. The place is teeming with people. We go to the terminal place to get tickets. There are lines everywhere, very civilized Japanese lines, but which one to join?  Everything is in Japanese and I cannot remember the name of the place we are going to- neither can Ben. I spy an Anglo Saxon and after a conversation of confusion he suggests we stand in this line. I get tickets and we get on a boat. The one thing I do remember is that the boat leaves at 10:00. At 10:00 the boat next to ours leaves, ours does not. Oh well, let’s just see where all this will lead and some minutes later our boat takes off and we head West. Great trip with flying fish terminates in a port on an island. Is this where we are supposed to be? I cannot remember the name of the guest house we are going to stay at but we get onto a mini bus the sports a vaguely familiar combination of syllables. The driver keeps up a narrative as we drives across the hills and rice fields of this tropical isle but neither of us have a clue of what he is saying. We arrive at a guest house on a beautiful beach and are greeted by smiling faces.

” Neil San, I am Kinjo San’s sister, my name is K????????? , this is Kinjo San ‘s mother, her name is K???????????’ these are Kinjo San’s brothers, their names are H?????????? and G????????. Welcome, we are so happy!”

I cannot remember their names. I do not remember the name of the island. ” What is the name of this village?” Bad move. “It is A??????????.”

The people are wonderful, A?????????? is idyllic, but I feel guilt because I manifest disrespect by not knowing the name of the island, the village or any of the people’s names.

So as London burns, here in Okinawa the burning is more restrained – essentially it is limited to big trees stuffed into the nobori-gama  – check previous post: https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/harry-potter/

Fortunes smiles as, now quite good buddy Yamada san, asks Ben to do er pottery and help with the firing.

It is one of the three firings of the year and Ben has been there for the last 2 days.

 

Sorry for long silence but we have just been through one big Typhoon, which amongst other stuff cut the internet connection for several days. This was a schoolboy dream as at 11:30 0n Thursday there was an announcement at work telling us all to go home as the typhoon was a coming.  We go back tomorrow – Monday.  Amazing rain, check:

http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/91267.php

Incredible wind, check Ben’s movie for full insight. Standing out in that wind was like riding a motorbike at 120 mph – watch the fat wobble:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FTJTQ_8LjY

Destroyed my garden

Okinawa is the best place to own a barograph. After 30 years of around and around you get this.

More about MacWhirr :

“Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply comprehension.”

Don’t you love Conrad

So son Ben comes to stay. Straight off the plane into the sea and he completes his open water diving training in record time. He is like a, er, fish to batter, um snail to garlic, like lobster to creel, you know,  a Zulu to Ukweshwama, a Scotsman to the MacBraynes’ bus.

 

Congratulations Ben

So I set off for the airport in a big  “I am going to miss my plane ” rush. I remember that on leaving Okinawa nearly all the French community and Jan the Man, with the wild eyed look of Ben Gunn begged me to bring back cheese.

I screech into a handy cheese shop and buy two beautiful Camemberts,

two delicious Munsters

and three like  totally awesome Banons.

 

I get to the check in/security check with seconds to spare but I am busted. “you can’t take those cheeses onto the plane.”

“Why not?”

“Because they are liquids.”

“Say what?”

They take my beautiful cheeses and bin them.

I have to say that this is Marseille. The people involved were French and there was  mutual recognition of the tragedy of the situation.

We hugged, cried on each others shoulders and went away sadder and wiser.

A brief stay in France to try to tie up the many loose ends that were left over since my departure last year. Anyone who has been around me recently will have noticed how I drone on relentlessly about how awful the French are. Well, I take it back  er some of it.

It starts really badly in Aix when I wait for 15 mins in a Cafe before being served. The waiter is talking to his friends, doing the crossword, brushing his hair, picking his nose until he finally decides to come to my table. He puts one hand on my table, leans forward and raises his eyebrows. This is his translation of, ” Hi, how’s it going? What can I get you?”

Today however I head towards the lavender fields of Valensole. It is warm, windy and big white clouds slide across the blue, blue sky. I stop for lunch in Le Grand Cafe in Valensole. As soon as I sit down a man comes over and greets me. It is Laurent who  owned a restaurant I used to frequent in St Paul Lez Durance and is now the patron of Le Grand Cafe. He seems genuinely happy to see me. We chew the lard for a while until my meal arrives.

The service was excellent, the food had been cooked rather than microwaved and what’s more it wasn’t Pizza.  The starter was homemade terrine, followed by canard avec ratatouille, tarte tatin, cafe, cafe, un demi de rose – sorry no accents.  The wine was cold, the weather was warm, the sun was bright and I was invaded by a powerful sense of wellbeing. My table was just beside the road and I looked up to spy a very beautiful women with shades cruise by in a brand new, white, BMW. It all made sense. Paying my bill and chatting with Laurent someone taps me on the shoulder and lo it is the beautiful woman from the BMW. She kisses me on the cheeks and all the men in the bar go “Shnurt.” I used to work with her. She had seen me as she drove by, parked her amazing car and come to see me. Shucks – sun, fine food, cool wine, old friends, beautiful women, all in an obscure resto in a tiny town in Provence.

This is the restaurant. Go there – it is what France is best at!

http://www.valensole-grandcafe.fr/

If you can’t go there then send Laurent an email thanking him for being a great guy and for cooking such wonderful food.

le-grand-cafe@valensole-grandcafe.fr

I then proceed to lavender and sunflower fields.

 

So you will probably guess fairly rapidly that I am not in Okinawa. I will leave you to guess in which country I am. Some clues; 23 hours travel from Okinawa, limited diving, people hacked off, police and politicians either in resignation or denial mode.

Big family wedding celebration at the extraordinary home of my sister and brother in law. It is the perfect English country house with the perfect English country house gardens, at their best on a damp July day.

The dampness initially causes trepidation but as the afternoon progresses the precipitation decreases and blue sky breaks through. The English really know how to put on English country house weddings. Champagne, hors d’oeuvres on the lawns, piper leads us to the speech marquee,

inventive and sincere oratory,

dinner marquee in the paddock and attached to the barn, check the menu,

fine wines a gogo,

singing, Scottish country dance band, much dancing, Fish and Chip van turns up at 11:30.

The wedding is a Anglo/Danish mingle

and the Danish guests are excellent. There is good sprinkling of babies which causes grandparental yearning amongst the older contingent.

What a great event! Congratulations to Lara and Thilde! Many thanks to Barry and Rosie for their superb generosity and hospitality.

This is how it should be done.

Is the noise that a can of ice cold coffee makes as it tumbles into the dispatching zone of a drinks dispenser.

Okinawa is the land of a thousand drink dispensers. On nearly every street corner there is a machine that will kerklunk cold drinks. Out in the sugar cane, beside the diving access, next to the tomb, yea there thou shalt find me.

The one above is just across the street from my garden. After a hard session rubbing soil into my scalp in the suffocating heat I tend to wander over there.

 

So I like Okinawa as it is a  backwards gateway to childhood culinary delight. What I mean is that folks here eat a lot of SPAM and Corned Beef without shame. In grey, green, greasy 1950’s Britain where I spent my early years both of these were staples. I loved them. I do not think there is much to beat Fried Spam and Eggs. Then there is Splosh which is a carefully crafted mix of Corned Beef and mashed potatoes whose name derives from Onomatapoeia.

Then there was Westbourne Stew  – delicate mix of canned peas, beans, SPAM, meat paste and canned soup – tomate de preference. My Mother would balk when implored to prepare it, claiming high expense as defence.

Now I am so rich I can eat Westbourne Stew  every night. I have made it.

I went to a banquet the other night and was served an Okinawan delicacy of scrambled eggs, goya and SPAM.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;	10
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.