The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  ‘To honour the brave people, I award the George Cross

  to the island fortress of Malta to bear witness to a

  heroism and devotion that will be famous in history.’

  April 15th, 1942 George R I

  Malta well deserves its nickname – Superbissima, ‘Most Proud’.

  The architectural styles ranged from severe classical to runaway baroque with a smattering of mannerist and belle époque. The majority of the public buildings date from renaissance and very fine some of them were. “A city built by gentlemen for gentlemen,” as Disraeli declared. The standard and extent of decoration diminished in proportion to their distance from the backbone, Republic Street, but everywhere the residential façades were hung about with balconies. All no more than three feet wide, enough for a chair perhaps but in an astounding variety of lengths, colours and materials and all enclosed with glass from waist level, like little slimline conservatories clinging to a cliff face. Avert the eyes from street level and it could have been Aleppo or Damascus. I never saw anyone in these balconies; with streets so narrow they must have compromised privacy – perhaps they were just for pot plants.

  On a Sunday morning, I hurried to catch the sung Eucharist at the cathedral of St Paul, the HQ of the Anglican Church of Malta and Gozo. Its neo-classical exterior with a robust portico of ionic columns, was matched by an interior plainness that made a restful contrast to the overwhelming elaboration of its Catholic cousins. Opposite was a modest and severe building for the accommodation of Carmelite nuns whose adjoining domed church towered hypocritically over St Pauls and St Johns. Beside the convent cowered a tiny shop whose hand-painted notice read ‘Joe Agius – Coffin Maker’. On the cathedral doors a notice read ‘Go to church now and beat the Christmas rush!’ I had tried to beat the rush but there was no 9.30 am service. I told the verger of the disparity between the Times of Services pinned outside and reality but he only opened his arms, shrugged his shoulders and smiled, as though in acknowledgement of human frailty. Wandering away, I came across a small band of banner waving, musket toting, helmeted men clad in doublet and hose and marching to the solemn beat of a muffled drum. Expecting an enactment of the changing of 18th century guard duties, I followed them to Freedom Square, where they disappeared into a bakery, placed their helmets on a table, leant their pikes against the door and ordered coffee and cake.

  On the other side of the square, was the bus terminal from which 98 routes were served by a fleet of assorted buses. They seemed to be the last survivors of manufacturers long gone. They were all here: Daff, BMC, AEC, Reliance and Cummins. MAN was well represented, there were a dozen Leyland and as many Reliance. One had ‘Premble Beach, NSW’ across its rear. They were not as old as those of Rangoon or as flamboyant as Karachi’s but each had clearly seen 40 years or more of service and each was a ‘transport of delight’. Universally painted bright yellow, they looked like a box of bruised bananas.

  The Maltese language is a strange blend of several others having a base of Semitic, a layer of Sicilian and topped up with Arabic. Oddly, those from the Levant of the eastern Mediterranean are alleged to understand the language. Discussing its origins with the captain of the little ferry boat that runs between Valletta and Sliema, he sadly but accurately explained, “We have been the football of so many jealous countries that we have a little of them all.” ‘Good morning’ is bonju, ‘thank you’ is gratsi, while ‘how are you?’ is keef intee? So there is French, Italian and Arabic for a start. But to throw you off course, the road out of the banana bus depot was Vral Dwardu VII. How fortunate that the friendly, helpful and charming Maltese all speak English.

  Under the Mosta dome of the cathedral, one of the largest in the world, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra did their best. Every note ricocheted around the marble walls, every square foot of the floor had not less than two feet on it, side chapels were crammed and the tombs were swamped. The free performance (churches are not allowed to charge) may have boosted the numbers – apart, of course, from the reputation of the choir. Brian Kay, our brave conductor, triumphed against the odds and alleluiahs and applause reached to the top of the dome and rattled the chandeliers. In 1942, a bomb was accidently dropped on the cathedral when 300 worshipers were gathered there. By a miracle, no one suffered even a scratch.

  On our last day, a storm swept in from the west and we holed up for a farewell meal in the British Hotel, a modest establishment that smelt of Dettol and stale cooking oil. A local resident had described it as having the best view and the worst food in Malta. He was right on both counts and the grey meat and warm beer were forgiven for the panorama of Grand Harbour from the dress circle of St Barbara’s Bastion.

  Postcard Home

  It’s springtime here in gay Valletta,

  Put on the shades, discard the sweater.

  I’m here with members of my choir

  In this cathedral – for Messiah.

  Let’s hope our notes succeed to please the

  Congregation of Maltesers.

  We’re safe with Brian Kay as boss,

  Mishandling Handel can make a Maltese cross.

  Kamchatka

  August 2010

  ‘I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth’

  – Steve McQueen

  The goodies bag on Aeroflot’s Boeing, the Anton Chekhov, contained only a pair of slippers whose soles were substantial enough for a country walk; there was no room for anything else. My neighbour had a florid complexion, a snub nose, a hideous shirt of lime green horizontal stripes and a plate sized watch. He was flicking through ‘Elite’ – The Private Jet Life Style Magazine – and regularly summoned a stewardess by waving a chubby hand; courtesy was not a word he had yet encountered. He seemed an unlikely visitor to Kamchatka.

  At the north western corner of ‘The Ring of Fire’ – the girdle of volcanoes that is spread around the rim of the Pacific Ocean and nine time zones east of Moscow, lies a peninsular that dangles off the end of Siberia. By a freak of geophysics its capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, and Chipping Norton are on the same latitude of 51 degrees 56 minutes. To those familiar with P-K and Chippy, that is all they have in common. Residents of Chipping Norton are used to wind and cold but here, arctic winds from the Siberian Anticyclone combine with the cold Oya-Shio Sea current to produce a bitter winter that extends from October to June. ‘Summer is short with only a few snow showers.’ The peninsular is 620 miles (1,000kms) long (about the size of the United Kingdom) and 245 miles (400kms) wide at the broadest part of its spear head that plunges into the convulsion of the Bering Sea and the Seas of Okhotsk. At its tip, like dripping drops of blood, are the string of volcanic Kuril Islands that reach to Japan. There is a single dirt road that reaches half way up the spine; 300,000 inhabitants – most of whom live in P-K; the population density is .02 per square kilometre (the equivalent in Hongkong is 28,000) and there are 300 hundred volcanoes, of which 29 are active and include Kluchevskoy, the most active in Eurasia. The cones rupture the surface like boils on a careworn face, some suppurating in steam, others waiting their time, but nevertheless it is also a land of spectacular beauty. The International Dendrology Society, to which I belong, thought it was an interesting place to visit and so did I.

  It was high summer but snow lay in all the crevices of the rumpled landscape and crowned the higher volcanoes. Flying in from the west, the sun reflected off lakes that sat in the numerous calderas so that the land was dressed in a scattering of sequins from mineral waters of green, blue, red and yellow. We flew over the dusty line of the province’s only road as it snaked through the central valley following the path of the Kamchatka River before this spread its limbs into a delta of 1,000 curled fingers, exhausted by its journey. Our hotel, the best in town, had peeling paint outside and dazzled with the glitter of mirror and chrome inside. ‘Your cosy home when far from home’ was its slogan. ‘Seventy rooms with all the necessary stuff’. Its restaurant diners were breakfasting on dump
lings, several varieties of pickled vegetables and tiny cups of instant coffee. Several were drinking beer. In my bedroom, the instructions ran to 18 pages in Russian and four lines in English; these set out the procedure in case of fire: ‘Inform the administration and wear out the fire on the balcony’. There was no balcony. The whole town was without water for two days while the annual maintenance was carried out so buckets proliferated. It was as though the roof was leaking in 100 places. Perhaps it was.

  On the first evening (actually the morning to those who had flown from London and were on a 12 hour time difference), I and a fellow traveller (an elderly, eccentric and distinguished aristocratic Scottish lady with an impressive knowledge of trees and an inexhaustible stamina), stumbled upon a 30th birthday party where tables had been spread around the bar area with an extravagant array of champagne, wine, brandy and vodka and great platters of soused herring, salmon caviar and blinis. Spontaneously and generously we were invited in and we joined the birthday boy (a helicopter pilot), his glamorous wife (a banker) and their friends, only leaving when the music changed from ’60s Western to ’90s Slavic. The floor shook with stamping, the tables rattled with the clapping and the glasses clinked as the toasts moved from shots to tumblers and occasionally over a shoulder. The previous week, President Medvedev, shocked by the average weekly consumption of almost a litre of vodka, had declared War on Alcohol; in Siberia, the war would be lost in a week.

  On a glorious day whose cerulean sky showed off the cloud-capped Kronotskay volcano (11,574 ft, 3,528m), we took a boat to Starichkov Island, a celebrated bird sanctuary passing by immense floating docks of the ship repair industry. Outside the protection of the headlands, the swell deepened and we pitched and rolled our way accompanied by tufted puffins, guillemots and redfaced and pelagic cormorants. Vertical slabs of rock supported large colonies of slaty backed gulls and black legged kittiwakes. We had a diver with us incongruously clad for the boat trip in a suit of cream linen who, when introduced as a scuba diver, was quick to correct this. “I am a free diver, is that clear?” The message and his English were perfectly clear. Later he brought up a net full of sea urchins, some inedible starfish and a couple of sea slugs – horrible slimy, spongy creatures which he kept to sell to the Japanese. The urchins were split open and scarlet mucous was scattered over the deck while those who like sucking out the entrails of strange sea creatures indulged themselves.

  The town was drab, ill-kempt and unloved. Weeds flourished in every crack and waste ground accumulated the worn out and the thrown out – the discards of a careless society. Cheerless men in felt trilbies and grey anoraks were camouflaged against this urban desolation but a few young women sported high heels, long legs and bright colours in defiance of soviet conformity. Like townspeople throughout Russia, their dachas provide an escape from the tedium of life; nothing grand or substantial but simply a wooden shack with a stove pipe through the roof and a plot large enough to grow potatoes, some beans and a bower of flowers. The rural roots of the Russian people run deep and the soil of Mother Russia nurtures their soul. Communities of these dachas were scattered around the town’s perimeter.

  The lone road ends its journey north at the whimsically named Esso (meaning ‘larch tree’ in the language of the indigenous Even people). After ten hours on this desolate dirt track, unfurnished with any habitation, we tumbled out to an enthusiastic welcome from Tatiania, as substantial a fairy as ever could be imagined. We squeezed into her ramshackle guesthouse that spread itself over a weedy patch of land in three buildings of dubious stability and eccentric plumbing (cold only on the ground floor, hot only on the top). Tatiana’s jolly demeanour and carefree attitude were infectious and her establishment was clearly her own idiosyncratic design. The swimming pool was unrefreshingly warm, heated by the town wide geothermal hot water system that blasted out central heating even in August. It was a shame that it did not run to ground floor showers. The kitchen she presided over produced delicious, though unusual breakfast fare including tvorog – a patty of fried cottage cheese and semolina served with sour cream and wild honey, rice pudding with a substantial lump of butter and best of all, crepes smothered in sweetened condensed milk. There was a sofa of palace proportions on the veranda and in the morning, before others stirred, I sat on a tenth of it writing in the early sunshine. The resident tom cat snuggled the back of my neck and scratched my shoulders with sharp claws to demand attention. From this vantage point he was able to control his territory and he frequently leapt off to chase away any furry intruder, knocking my tvorog in his haste.

  As might be expected from members of the International Dendrology Society, the accumulation of expertise was formidable. Trees, of course, but also woody plants and herbaceous perennials were studied, photographed and discussed, hand lenses brought out for minute examination and adaptability and taxonomy vigorously debated. Victor Kuzevanov, the Director of the Irkutsk Botanical Garden, botanical boffin and polymath, fielded questions on everything from habitat to politics and his delightful wife Elena, herself an experienced ecologist, soothed the temperamental and provided a constant ear for worries. Amongst us we had representatives from Scotland, Wales, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Russia, America, South Africa and Australia. English was the common conversational denominator, although the European aristocrats (of which there were six) could never make up their mind as to whether French, English or Italian suited their mood best. These aristos behaved true to their lifestyle, interrupted conversations, expected attention, were unprepared with maps or money (one had brought seven copies of Country Life just to read the bridge column) but nevertheless were impressively knowledgeable on flora of all kinds.

  We flew into the Valley of the Geyers in a rattling army M20 helicopter. On the way, there had been spectacular views of the snow covered summits of volcanoes whose icy slopes were patched with bare shale areas that released steam from their centrally heated interior. At 13,000 ft (4,000m), the helicopter must have been flying at its maximum altitude but to those inside, crouched on the metal deck and jockeying for a view from the open portholes, this was of no concern. The rear double doors were done up with string and there were cracked panes in the forward cabin but, as if to compensate, there were three pilots. Unaccountably, all the military helicopters was painted bright orange so there was some measure of comfort that hostilities were not expected. The valley – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – is apparently frequented by 155 species of bird, several hundred brown bears, wolves, marmots and red foxes. I saw only a few insignificant birds and a single squirrel.

  But all around us and very visible were the elements of volcanic activity. Blue ice slid into fumarole fields, asphyxiating gases seeped out of the earth, streaks of aluminium sulphate, iron, calcium and magnesium stained the valley. Billowing clouds of sulphur poisoned the air as though yellow dragons had vented their wrath with open jaws and decaying fangs. Tiny vents in the crust of soil whistled like boiling kettles, larger fumaroles roared like the Flying Scotsman tackling a gradient and mud pots slurped their ooze like grey suppurating sores. Pyroclastic blasts from 18 miles (30kms) below the surface brought up iron hydroxides that flowed in hot streams of orange, red, maroon and violet and tainted the air. Black foam covered boiling pots and on a greater scale, all this hydrothermal activity produced acidic lakes of startlingly coloured azure, carmine or yolk yellow. It was as though these mountainous hillsides, so verdant and in August still shaking off winter’s deep blanket, had caught some dreadful disease which, ebola-like, threatened to gnaw at its flesh. It was all malodorous, rather disgusting, strangely fascinating and oddly attractive.

  In this land of natural plenty on which the indigenous people have lived for a few hundred years, it seemed odd that there was little evidence of any introduced animal. Travelling up the 310 mile (500kms) road, I saw six cows (two of which freely grazed the verges of Esso’s dirt streets) and two sheep. But there were no goats or pigs or herds or anything on four legs. Perhaps the climate
defeated them or the inhabitants were content with fish and potatoes; the diet was certainly plain but the people were undoubtedly healthy.

  For three hours we climbed up from Paratunka in first gear. Our intended six wheeled, cross-country, altitude-defiant, insulated, go-anywhere vehicle had broken down so instead, a school bus was requisitioned. This gallant little 20-seater, piled with luggage underneath, on the top and inside down the aisle, took us from sea level to 3,350 ft (1,000m) without a hint of trouble. It wheezed and groaned, its gears grated, its springs sprang and it complained every step of the rutted way but it did its job and its duty and earned our applause when we finally reached our destination of the geothermal station whose turbines supplied Petropavrosk with its electricity. Here were other leaking hillsides and great pipes snaked around carrying steam gathered from deep, subterranean sources. Steam escaped from every pore, sulphur stenched the air and there was a vaguely sinister, experimental feel to the place enhanced by military men on the gates and on patrol around the perimeter wire.

  The chatelaine of the hotel attached to this explosive complex (possibly the only female on the establishment), had close-cropped banana yellow hair and wore a tunic (to call it a dress would give it a fashionable sophistication it did not deserve) patterned like a large chequer board; already broad, this emphasized her stoutness in all directions. She was emphatic in her instructions to remove our boots and glowered in the way that is reserved for Russian hotel managers who adopt the attitude that guests are privileged to be in their establishment. Dinner was precision cut wedges of pressed grey mincemeat – a variation from the minced theme of rissoles, meatballs, hamburgers or spoonfuls of grey grit. But the pancakes, smothered in sweetened condensed milk and honey, were so deliciously decadent that they obliterated all the previous horrors. Banana Hair gave a talk one evening on the geothermal station and the facts were impressive: the supply of all of the electricity for Petrovpavlosk, the steam brought up from 980 ft (3,000m) below ground, 300 tons (31,300kgs) of super-heated water per hour through turbines manufactured to a tolerance of one micron and the whole plant buried under 40 ft (12m) of snow in winter. For all this, the whole place resembled the HQ of a scrap metal merchant and traction engine enthusiast.