Reluctant Irishman

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Hoping for audacity

George Bernard Shaw is reported to have once said "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize." I don't know if he said this before or after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Regardless of this, however, he makes a valid point in relation to the hype that surrounds the variousNobel Pprizes, above all the Peace Prize.


It's funny that it's the controversial choices that stick in the memory. Looking back over the list of Laureates, in fact, no-one could quibble with most of them (incidentally, we in WWF are morning the loss this week of one Laureate, Wangara Maathai). A few of the choices were questionable, however, and a very small number were downright bad choices. When Henry Kissinger shared the prize in 1973, he was already partly responsible for the wreckage of Cambodia and was engaged in fomenting a bloodbath in Chile (Le Duc Tho, who shared the award, for negotiation of the Vietnam Peace Accord, had the decency to decline it - perhaps because his Government never intended honouring the accord anyway, and who could blame them?). After sharing the prize with Anwar Sadat in 1978, Menachem Begin went on to undertake a costly and futile invasion of Lebanon, which reached its obscene nadir when Phalangist allies of the Israelis carried out the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Eyebrows were raised when Barack Obama was awarded the prize so soon after his election. Of course, the Republican Right were predictably incensed and I have no sympathy for them. However, many people - including me - who welcomed his election said "Hang on, he hasn't actually done anything yet". To me, it was like the cliché that, when a newly wed couple are featured in Hello magazine, their marriage won't last. I was worried that awarding the prize to him at that juncture was tempting fate. Nearly three years on, I can only say that my fears have been realised.

With one or two exceptions (like healthcare) he has been wary of any major change of course, especially on foreign policy and he has bought into the morrally bankrupt framework created by his predecssor. There are still American Forces in Afghanistan (and Iraq), America is still toeing Israel's line (rather than the other way around), the country still has its collective head in the sand on global warming, Guantanamo Bar remains open and his predecessor's blatantly clientalist tax breaks for the wealthy remain in place.

To be fair, he arrived in office at the worst possible time. He could have been forgiven for saying "Yes I'd love to be President but not now - I'm not going to take responsibility for cleaning up the massive mess left by my predecssor." No matter what he did, it was almost inevitable that the economy would not improve in within the two years which were all he had before the mid-term Congressional elections. And the resurgence in Republican power in those elections (the monster raving looney wing of the Republican Party at that) has massively compunded his headaches.

However, it is the gap between his early record and his actual achievements that make the disappointment so bitter. Take Palestine, for example. He won massive applause early on in the UN General Assembly when he looked forward to the day when Palestine would join the Assembly as an independent nation. Now, having allowed himself to be bullied by an irredentist Israeli régime on the settlement-building issue, he is blocking Palestine's bid for UN membership and thus undermining a moderate Palestinian leader.

It is not surprising, therefore, that he was cold-shouldered yesterday by the Hollywood celebrities who contributed so much to his election in 2008. Rober Redford, Matt Damon and others openly expressed their disillusion.

One thing that Damon said sums it up best: "A friend of mine said to me, and I thought it was a great line, 'I no longer hope for audacity'."




Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Spain's underrated tipple

For many Irish (and English) people, sherry is a drink that is seen as staid and old-fashioned. There is the stereotype image of the bottle in the cupboard, to be taken out on special occasions in order for small measures to be sipped at room temperature, mostly by old ladies, before being put away again for months on end. Usually it was sweet cream sherry, which is now scoffed at by wine snobs (although I like it). However, in the worst case, it was dry sherry, which tastes bitter and rancid when drunk warm (as white wine would), especially if the bottle has been opened a long time previously.

In Spain, dry sherry, called fino, is drunk chilled, in measures that are larger than our traditional sherry glasses but smaller than ordinary wine glasses. And a bottle never lasts long enough to go rancid in someone's cupboard!

Like all true sherries, it comes from Jerez (near Cadiz) and the surrounding towns. One variety comes specifically from Sanlucar de Barrameda, and is known as manzanilla. And there is no better drink to accompany salty tapas, such as manchego cheese, the delicious pata negra ham (from free-range pigs that consume a lot of acorns in the diet, giving the meet a sweeter flavour), or fried fish. It's the drink that Carmen sings of in Bizet's opera when she lures Don Jose, her guard, into letting her escape.

Unlike most other types of wine, the sherry casks are stored above ground in the bodegas where it is made from the locally-grown palomino grapes. According to popular myth, since Sanlucar is on the sea, the salt spray in the air imparts an especially dry flavour to manzanilla, compared to other fino sherries. I can't say that I have noticed a difference but I still tend to ask for manzanilla, rather than fino, as a matter of course.

The first time I visited Sanlucar, I was privileged to visit the Barbadillo bodegas, where manzanilla and other types of sherry are made. The manzanilla was taken straight from the cask via ladles that looked like steel test-tubes on the ends of long handles, and poured from a height into the sherry glass with effortless precision. We also got to taste the what the Spaniards prefer as sweet shery, the delciously caramelly pedro ximenez, which is far more complex than cream sherry but which should also be served chilled. The Barbadillo family also bottle some of the white wine that forms the basis of fino without fortifying it and this, too, is excellent - a light, crisp wine that goes very well with summer seafood.

So, if you haven't tasted fino (manzanilla or other), go out and get some, chill it and drink it in within a few days. Trust me, it's delicious.

In Spain you also find a camomile tea called manzanilla and it is foul.

Spain's wildlife treasure












For our 50th birthday this year in WWF we put together a book and a set of web pages on 50 headline issues from the last five decades. Originally, they were to be billed as 50 "big wins" but it became evidence that a lot of the issues still hang in the balance. Moreover, we didn't want to take all the credit for achievements that were the result of concerted effort from many quarters - the negotiation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, for example.

One of the achievements listed that can legitimately be regarded as a "win", however, and where we can take a major part of the credit, is the creation of Donana National Park, near Sanlucar de Barrameda, on the mouth of the Guadalquivir, in Spain. WWF founder members, including Luc Hoffmann, worked with other naturalists, starting in 1961, to buy 10,000 hectares of land in Donana. The primary object was to protect the site as a key bottleneck for migratory birds flying south in the winter. Six million birds pass through the area each winter, with 400,000 staying there until spring, while a further 30,000 breed there. The site was declared a National park in 1969 and now covers an area of 542 square miles. It is also a refuge for the very rare Iberian lynx.

We visited the park last week; not the best time for seeing the birds (although we did see avocets, spoonbills and an imperial eagle, not to mention feral horses, fallow deer and red deer, but not lynx). However, we did have the opportunity to see the other reason why the park has become famous; namely, it's habitats, which include forests (stone pine and cork oak), spectacular sand dunes and saline wetlands (mostly dried out to a salty crust after the summer, it must be said). For me, the sald dunes were the best part, having worked on Irish sand dunes for many years. It was also interesting to see the traditional houses that existed in the park, when people still lived there.

Donana is one of the biggest and most spectacular national parks and it's conservation in the political climate that existed in Spain in the 1960s was a major achievement. There are ongoing issues that still threaten it - the lowering of the water table through extraction of water for agriculture in neighbouring areas, the risks from nearby mines and a recent oil spill, which, thankfully, was diverted into the Guadalquivir river. Above all, it's future in a changing climate is uncertain.

I would hope to go back in the winter sometime but at any time of the year it's worth a visit.

In the coming days I'm going to write a bit more about our holiday in Spain, and after Christmas I hoe to write about another of Europe's most spectacular parks - Bialowieza, in Poland - when I visit it in the snow.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

A property owner again?

Things have been hectic of late, which is why I am not posting as frequently on this blog as I did at the beginning (no, it's not lack of enthusiasm!). Apart from work being busy, I'm also preparing a new version of my story, which I hope to enter for the Chicken House competition (http://www.doublecluck.com/submissions). I'll also shop this version around other agents and publishers over the coming months, after which it's time to put the project aside for good if it doesn't get anywhere. Istill have to rewrite the synopsys and plot plan but I wanted at least to get the edits finished this week because tomorrow we're going on holidays to Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain, thanks to my brother, Seamus, and his partner, Evelyn. And, since I haven't done any painting for a while, I want to do some while I am there.

In the middle of all this, I am acquiring an apartment in France, in the lovely village of Mieussy. We started this property lark by considering buying somewhere in Gex, which is much nearer to where I live in Nyon, as well as the WWF office in Gland. The idea was that the place would be a weekend retreat. However, prices in Gex are higher (although still much lower than Switzerland), while the number of available properties is much less. Then, having answered an advert in a local free newspaper, we looked at a schoolhouse in a village called Messy (no, I am not joking!) about 45 minutes on the other side of Geneva (so about 90 minutes from me). We were aware that it would not be a feasible location for commuting but it would be feasible as a weekend retreat and, since it is in the mountains near the ski slopes, is amenable to holiday rental as well.

We loved the schoolhouse, which was quaint and had lots of space but it was outside our budget. Moreover, while the garden and the upstairs rooms were nice, we would have been paying for a large classroom on the ground floor which was really wasted space from a residential point of view. On top of that, we would have had to install a new kitchen.

So, after looking at several other farmhouses and apartments, we've settled on a 3-bedroom, first floor apartment in the nearby, larger village of Mieussy. It doesn't need anything done to it and we can even buy the furnishings. It also come with a grage. True, we won't have our own garden but we will have a big balcony, complete with gas barbecue. And the view of the Alps is superb.

So watch this space as I will take pictures on my next visit, after I come back from holdays!