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I've really been enjoying being busy helping with the MAF flight operations in Liberia. Shortly after I landed at a remote location one day, our other aircraft, piloted by Ulrich Müeller, also landed (below) at the same airstrip. I was about to load up two medical patients into my aircraft. But since Uli had just arrived, he gratefully offered to help with the loading, so that I could take some photos. Don't worry... we had previously already acquired permissions from all involved to be photographed. Personally I do not like to 'stage' photos, and I don't like to ask people to slow down, or pose, or whatever. It just feels fake. So if I'm photographing, I like to do my best to blend into the background, or at least out of the way, and then just shoot whatever is truly happening, as it happens in real time. Practically speaking, that means that it's often very difficult or impossible for me to get good photos of the activities around a plane, when I'm the only pilot--because my first priority is of course always the safety and security of the plane/flight. So it's a rare but great opportunity when I have the chance to photograph another one of our pilots in action. And again, just in case you might think it would be awkward for a patient, or medical personnel to be photographed, I'll put your mind at ease by saying that we always explain that MAF is a not-for-profit mission, and there are many people who pray and give to help make these flights possible. It is important that we can also share with those folks how the aircraft are being used to bless people in remote locations. And most people are very understanding of that, and very thankful for the help, and very happy to be in the photographs. Even-so, I always try to be respectful and discreet in the way I photograph or show people (especially patients) and of course, that we always do have their permission first. So don't worry. ;-) There was an additional patient, already loaded, and seated in front of the stretcher patient. Here, Uli is carefully strapping in the 2nd patient for the 1.5 hour flight that I would make to take both patients and the medical personnel accompanying them, to the capital city for treatment. Upon landing in Monrovia, I was met and assisted, as usual, by the very capable MAF team. Most patients are very happy for us to pray with/for them, which we did both before and after this flight. Here, the serving MAF country director, Leon Prinsloo, prays with the two medical patients after they have been loaded into the ambulance, and before they go to the hospital. It's worth noting that I had previously asked some of the local people in the remote town where I had picked up these two patients, "how long would it take to drive from there to Monrovia?" They laughed at the question and told me that it is not even possible to do that--not at this time of year anyway--not during the rainy season. They said that sometimes it might be possible, but it would be many days of tough travel, but right now they said the jungle roads are totally impassible. And it's also worth noting that both of these patients were actually in quite serious condition. I was very glad that MAF was able to provide help to transport them! Switching gears... here is a shot of downtown Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia. And here's a shot from just nearby the above one, which shows markets along the roads where people are buying and selling stuff. This is not at all an unusual scene on departure from our 'home' airport here. The rainy season offers some challenging flying! But it has the potential to look like this!... although, in the past 5 weeks of flying here, I've only had about 2 days like this. Here's a few more shots from the air showing the remote and rugged terrain over which we fly... And I'll end with a nice sunset after the rains cleared out a few nights ago...
A few weeks ago I was asked to pop over to Liberia (on the west coast of Africa) to help with their flying for six weeks. Our Liberia program has been short on pilots and very busy with flying, so of course I was happy to help! Above is a shot of a bunch of Covid vaccines and other medicines and medical supplies that I delivered to a remote hospital in a town at the very southeastern tip of Liberia. Below I'm unloading cargo before picking up two serious medical patients (you can see the stretcher behind me.) This is one of the airstrips that we frequently fly to... as you can see it is very close to the ocean. There are a number of towns/villages situated just along the coast, but frankly I've seen virtually no roads along the coast. Occasionally, near a town I'll see a few muddy narrow 'roads' branching out a few miles from the town, but then they seem to vanish. So, for the most part it's just rugged coastline that merges into jungle. And I've also seen no large ships, though I'm sure they must come to/from the capital city from time to time. But up and down the coast I've seen nothing other than a few small canoes and very small wooden boats. And if you pan the camera just a few miles in from the coast, then it's nothing but dense, sopping wet jungle. In short, it's definitely a place with vast geological barriers where the need for the plane is obvious! Now that I've shown you the 'nice' shots of what it can look like when the sun is shining (which in my short time here seems to almost never happen) now let me show you what it usually looks like... Actually, even the above two shots are not really accurate, because most of the time I can't see the ground at all once I'm at an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) altitude. It's rainy season here right now and it's an understatement to say that it rains a lot. I've lived and flown/worked in a lot of places around the world, but I've never seen a place that can put out so much relentless, pounding rain day after day after day, most of which is not even tied to thunderstorms. It's just sopping wet atmospheric stuff. Incidentally, it seems that this is where the brewing begins for those storms that build into monster hurricanes that cross the Atlantic and eventually slam into the Americas this time of year. Fun fact: Monrovia (where MAF Liberia is based) is the wettest capital city in the world! They apparently get about 15 feet of rain a year, and I believe it! It's obviously challenging weather to fly in, but frankly, I've been enjoying it. It reminds me a bit of some of the flying I used to do in Indonesia. I've definitely done quite a number of low-pass runway inspections before landing here, just to make sure of the condition of the surface--b/c of all the mud/rain. But if you maintain margins and are careful, it can still be done safely in the rain. And a little rain never hurt anyone, right? I've enjoyed seeing, and being a part of, the wide variety of strategic flights that MAF does here--from 'traditional' mission flying to critical medical transport flights, to humanitarian and community development etc. This past week I was the only MAF pilot in the country so I was flying every day and really enjoying it. Earlier this week Henk Jan (below, right) who is the MAF-International Africa Regional Director, dropped in for a two-day program visit. He has an extensive and distinguished background/career in aviation, including (but not limited to) many years in MAF. I was privileged to have him join me for a flight interior, and I was glad that the weather cooperated that day--in fact it was the nicest day, by far, since I've been here. (Below, Henk Jan talks to missionary, Kim Smith, about his ministry while I was waiting for my return load/passengers back to Monrovia.) One rare evening when the sun popped out for a few minutes before it set, I walked down the beach. No, I haven't jumped in yet, but I'm guessing I will before I leave in a month. That said, because of the nearly constant storms, the surf is really rough, and there are also many hidden rocks in the surf, and I'm told there are also strong undertows and rip currents in this area. Plus, the water is muddy brown and full of seaweed because of the winds/storms. So I need to wait for the right place/time so that I don't become shark or shrimp food.
Here's some random shots from the flight line. First, one of our Cessna 208B Grand Caravans taking off from our home airstrip in Kajjansi, Uganda. This aircraft is now serving in Liberia. I've always loved watching the sky and the weather. Last week I was out of the city and had a chance to see the milky way in all it's glory. Maybe sometime I'll share some of those pics too. But in the meantime, here are a few shots related to the sky/weather, from the flight line, as I was pre-flighting airplanes in Kajjansi. These first two are photos of the rising son, through fog. I obviously took (and am sharing) two versions of this, b/c as you can see, in the first one I focused on the sun and intentionally threw the MAF logo out of focus, whereas in the second one I made the focus the MAF logo itself. And here's one taken only a few weeks apart, and it is also in the morning, but this time it's obviously the moon. Haze and smoke are quite common here in our part of Uganda, but fog in our area is not so common. Here's another shot of the flight line in some very thick morning fog. And here's what it looks like on a more typical morning, with nice skies, and a dissipating thunderstorm out over Lake Victoria in the distance. Here's a shot of the Karamojang landscape in Northeastern Uganda. And here's a shot of the steep, lush slopes of the eastern edge of East DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and the western edge of Lake Albert which separates EDRC from Uganda. And here's a young chap who was eager to have his photo taken in front of the plane... just like I'm sure I would have done if I had the chance at his age. :-)
Well, it's been forever since I've posted and I won't even begin to make excuses. But before I try to start posting stuff from East Africa, I figured I'd finish that series I had started over a year ago about Way Back When we used to live just north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska. In the small village where we lived, subsistence living was the way of life. There was a small store in the village, but it had very limited items--canned or pre-packaged stuff that had no shelf life, or at least a very long shelf life. There was rarely fresh produce available, or anything like fresh milk or stuff like that. And there was no fresh meat. Instead, we had to go find our own meat to eat. I realize that there are lots of strong opinions out there regarding hunting, but let me just say this--what I'm talking about in this village was not 'trophy hunting'. This was hunting for food. Below, a shot of me, on my snow machine, with my rifle, far out in the wilderness. During the very short summer, folks stocked up on salmon, cleaning and drying/smoking it to put away in large quantities for the long winter. We were a very, very long way from the ocean, so the salmon were extremely tired by the time they got to us. What that means is that they were not as fat/rich/tasty as the salmon down on the Yukon, or other places closer to the sea, so often these salmon became the main source of food for the dog teams that require a lot of protein throughout the winter. Then, folks in our village would often trade other types of meat that we could get more easily, with friends/relatives further down river, or out near the coast, and in exchange they would be given the nice, fat salmon for eating. In the winter I helped some men build a fish trap that was frozen into the river ice. Then we would go check it at least once (or often twice) a day and almost without fail we'd find a good number of large fish in there. Depending on how cold the temperatures were, we would have to chip away several inches to even a foot of ice from the hole, before we could peer into the fast moving water. And yes, that is me gaffing the fish, and no, it is not in the middle of the night--it's just dark most of the time there in the middle of winter since it's so far north. A very big source of food there was moose. It basically served as the 'beef' of the far north. And caribou was a real tasty treat when they came through the area. We also hunted bear (which is what we are doing below)... And trapped beaver (below) and other fur animals. The folks would sell the furs and/or tan the hides and prepare the furs themselves, which they would then turn into the best winter clothing, mittens, mukluks, etc. Even though it was extremely cold, and often dark, I was blessed to often be out in very remote, rugged and beautiful wilderness, which had an astounding surreal beauty. In the far distance (in the picture below) you can see some snowcapped mountains. Those are the foothills the to Brooks Mountain Range and the Gates of the Arctic National Park... the most remote National Park in the U.S. Well, that finally concludes my "Way Back When" series. Now I will try to post some much more current stuff soon...
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For twenty-two consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You therefore won't be surprised to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year, indeed you'd be more surprised if I didn't. Expect to read a post of comparisons and contrasts at the end of the month. I kicked off this annual exercise back in 2003 which means I already have over two decades of thrilling historical data to analyse and this'll be a 23rd datapoint. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2025. Count 1: Number of visits to this blog (Feb 2024 total: 93789) Count 2: Number of comments on this blog (Feb 2024 total: 861) Count 3: Number of words I write on this blog (Feb 2024 total: 38040) Count 4: Number of hours I spend out of the house (Feb 2024 total: 150) Count 5: Number of nights I go out and am vaguely sociable (Feb 2024 total: 3) Count 6: Number of bottles of lager I drink (Feb 2024 total: 0) Count 7: Number of cups of tea I drink (Feb 2024 total: 123) Count 8: Number of trains I travel on (Feb 2024 total: 265) Count 9: Number of steps I walk (Feb 2024 total: 452000) Count 10: The Mystery Count (Feb 2024 total: 0) (again) Error Count: (Jan 2025 total: 33) I can't promise February will be better but I won't be counting because once you know I'm counting you might get deliberately pernickety. Also if you are going to point out an error please try not to phrase it as a question ("don't you mean Andersen?"), don't be patronising ("I really enjoyed this but...") and never risk a surely, thanks.
Quite often all you need to know about a restaurant is the smell that greets you as you walk through the door. The smoke and fat of a busy ocakbaşı, The burned onions and masala spices that cling to your clothes after an evening at Tayyabs, the intoxicating mix of funky aged steak and charred lobster shell that fill the upper dining rooms of the Devonshire, these are all indicators enough that you're in for a good time even before you see a menu. amazing, the kind of smell that gets you immediately vowing to order whichever the menu items are responsible for it (hint: it's the lamb skewers) and let anything else be a side order. So let's start with those skewers, which are, needless to say, an absolute must-order. Expertly grilled with touches of salty crunch on the extremities but beautifully tender inside, they come resting on fluffy flatbread to soak up any escaping juices, and two little mounds of spice (don't ask me what they were) for dipping. At £3.95 each they weren't quite the same budget as Silk Road v1, but in terms of form and flavour they were right up there. Spicy chicken was indeed commendably spicy, consisting of ugly-cute chunks of soft potato and bone-in chicken (I hope I don't create some kind of international incident by noting that Chinese 'butchery' seems to consist of hacking at a carcass with a machete with your eyes closed) soaked in a deep, rich, heavily five-spiced and chillified sauce. Add to this ribbons of thick, home made belt noodles which had a lovely bouncy, tacky texture, and you have an absolute classic northern Chinese dish. Manti (advertised with a 20min wait but which speeds by if you're distracted by fresh lamb skewers and belt chicken) were also fabulous things, soft but robust and packed full of minced meat ("usually lamb" the menu rather noncommittedly states) and with an addictive vinegar-chilli dip. But quite unexpectedly given the otherwise quite meaty focus of the menu (I'm not sure I'd bring a vegetarian here), Tarim have quite a way with salads, too. This is lampung, in which giant sticks of wobbly beancurd are topped with pickled carrots, beansprouts and chilli, all soaked in a very wonderful vinegar-soy dressing. I can honestly say I've never had anything like this before, and anywhere that can surprise a jaded diner like me with a new type of salad deserves all the praise it can get. The bill, for two people, came to just over £42, which although not rock-bottom basement pricing still seems fair given the quality of the food and the area of town (about 5 min walk from Holborn tube). I have noticed the pricing at a lot of Chinese places in Holborn/Bloomsbury creeping up over the past few years - nobody is exempt from food inflation after all - so this is just perhaps the New Normal that we all have to get used to. Instead of spending £12 on your hot lunch, it's now more like £20. Still not bad, though. Gosh Nan (fried stuffed flatbread) and perhaps most intriguingly the Uyghur Polo, a rice dish which looks like it comes with some kind of offal. And you know how I love my offal. A charming and exciting ambassador for Xinjiang food, think of Tarim Uyghur as the Silk Road of Central London, a comparison I hope they take as the huge compliment that it's intended to be. Why should Camberwell get all the fun, anyway? 8/10
It's time to tackle one of London's great unanswered questions. Where is London's most central sheep? I don't believe Charles III keeps sheep at Buckingham Palace, nor has anybody else nearby got a large enough back garden. London Zoo's website does not reveal the existence of any sheep - at best llamas. Also none of the armed forces based in London have a regimental sheep, the UK's sole ovine mascot being a ram called Pte Derby XXXIII owned by the Mercian Regiment in Lichfield. So, city farms it is. Where is London's most central city farm? Vauxhall City Farm which is just over a mile south of Trafalgar Square. It's been here on the edge of the Pleasure Gardens since 1976 so is one of London's oldest city farms and receives over 60,000 visitors a year. Some of its residents live out front in wooden pens but they're not sheep, they're goats as any self-respecting three year old could tell you. The entrance is off to the left past an outdoor desk staffed by cheery volunteers who'll grin, sell you feed and encourage you to make a donation. The City Farm is 50 next year so has an anniversary appeal underway, should you have part of £250,000 to spare. For the sheep turn right. Where is London's most central sheep? Shetland, a hardy breed with a good-natured temperament, so ideal for pottering around with toddlers in a confined space. There were many such underage visitors during my visit, all overexcited to be right up close to a sheep's head nuzzling through railings. Crossing the divide into the yard itself is more of a paid-for activity, or if you're a volunteer just part and parcel of your dung-sweeping duties. Alas I don't know what this sheep's name is, the City Farm isn't as keen as some in pinning biographical details to the railings, but there is no closer sheep to Trafalgar Square so she is London's most central sheep. Where is London's second most central sheep? alpacas called Rolo, Toffee and Cookie. I suspect sometimes Daffy hops up the steps to the top platform and surveys her domain like a woolly empress. She is thus not always the second most central sheep in the capital, sometimes she's first depending on the precise location of the other sheep. Where is London's third most central sheep? Where is London's fifth most central sheep? Where is London's sixth most central sheep? Where is London's eighth most central sheep? Where is London's second most central city farm? Spitalfields. It took some working out to confirm that this was the second closest to Trafalgar Square, I had to make myself a map using the extremely helpful list of London's city farms at londonfarmsandgardens.org.uk. They reckon there are twelve city farms in London but I reckon one of those is just over the border in Essex so it's eleven. The map's interesting because eight of the city farms form a near straight line running diagonally from Kentish Town through Hackney and Mudchute to the foot of Shooters Hill, but I think that's a coincidence. Spitalfields City Farm is on the site of a former railway depot and was also born in the 1970s, but is less cramped, easier to walk round and less pungent. Where is London's eighth most central sheep? Beatrix, another Herdwick ewe, here at Spitalfields City Farm. Their information game is strong so I know she used to graze on the North Downs in Surrey but lost an ear in a dog attack when she was young and moved here in August 2020. Her enclosure is a much better size, with scattered wood and the inevitable spare tyre, even room for gambolling. Don't expect to get close enough for feeding but that's fine because feeding's not permitted here anyway. Where is London's ninth most central sheep? Castlemilk Moorits, a rare breed with brownish wool originally from Scotland. They're 37% Shetland, 28% Soay, 18% Manx and 17% Wiltshire Horn and all descended from a single ram on Sir Jock Buchanan-Jardine's estate, apparently. The information board also confirms there are nine of them here altogether with names like Twiglet, Lavender, Samphire and Rolo. Rolo is occasionally London's seventeenth most central sheep when he stands over by the polytunnels. London's most central donkeys are two pens away, one of whom is called Derek, but that's another story.
Hove is a very acceptable place to spend a day. I was last in the area when visiting the Urchin, a seafood-specialist gastropub and microbrewery (I bet there aren't too many of them around) which made the (pretty easy actually) journey down from Battersea more than worth my while. Since then, I've discovered that we paid way too much for our train tickets (apparently we should have gone Thameslink, not Southern) and also that etch by Steven Edwards has opened, thus giving me another great excuse to travel. This time on a much cheaper train. The fact that Hove is so well connected to the capital city has a couple of main effects. Firstly, it means etch's catchment area is a few million or so people who can make it there and back for lunch (or dinner I suppose if you don't mind getting back too late) in a very sensible amount of time. And secondly, it means that the astonishing £55 they charge at etch for 7 exquisitely constructed courses (or another £28 for 9) is even more mind-blowing for day-trippers from the big smoke as it is for lucky locals. We shall start at the beginning. Amuses - in fact extras of any kind - are more than you've any right to expect on a £55 menu but these dainty little things, one a Lord of the Hundreds biscuit topped with cream cheese and chive, the other a mushroom and truffle affair shot through with pickle, were an excellent introduction to the way etch goes about things. Beautiful inside and out, generous of flavour and a delight to eat, from this point we knew we were in safe hands. Cute little glazed buns formed the bread course alongside seaweed butter. Perhaps the idea was for these to accompany the next couple or so courses, but I'm afraid because they were so addictive they disappeared way before anything else arrived. Still, no regrets. "Soup of the day" was a bit of a misnomer as this consisted of two courses that arrived as a pair. One a gorgeously rich and fluffy winter vegetable soup - chervil and cauliflower with some irresistible chunks of roasted cauliflower hiding underneath and topped with toasted pine nuts - and a couple of beef tartare tartlets on the side (tartartlets?) to provide a nice companion to the soup. I'm not 100% sure if the tartare was just a blogger's bonus or if they really did come with the soup as standard, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they do - I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, and it was all paired with a Retsina, which was a touch of genius. Halibut could have perhaps been taken off the heat a minute or two earlier but I'm only really saying this out of a dearth of anything else to complain about. It was still clearly a very good fish, with a bright white flesh and nicely bronzed skin, and the parsnip underneath made a remarkably good pairing as well as being nicely seasonal. The crunchy, seaweed-y, noodle-y bits on tops were fun to eat, too. Of all the dishes, perhaps the crisp hen's egg made the least to write home about. It was perfectly nice, with some good texture provided by croutons and cubes of pickled veg, but the egg itself was...well, an egg yolk in breadcrumbs, decent enough but compared to everything else a bit familiar. Although having said that, I'm very aware I do have slightly more likelihood of getting 'familiar' with tasting menu classics than some people, and there's every chance this could be someone else's favourite course. Such is life's rich tapestry. Scallop next, a good sweet specimen that had been given a nice firm crust, then sliced and shot through with pumpkin. It's in restaurants like these where you don't have to worry about waiting until the more abundant seasons begin before committing to a meal out - their skill is such that the dishes will be equally exciting and imaginative at every time of the year. My own personal heaven was embodied in the next course, though, and I'm sorry to be so predictable but there's nothing I can do about that. Beef arrived brilliantly charred from the grill but beautifully tender inside, both as a neat medallion of fillet and - joy of joys - a slice of ox heart with a texture equally dazzling as the fillet but with an extra note of funky offal. Next to it, a little finger of celeriac and a cluster of enoji mushrooms which soaked up a glossy, beefy sauce that made the whole trip worthwhile on its own. I would have paid £55 just for this dish, then gone home happy, it was that good. More was to come though - firstly a gently flametorched (can you gently flametorch anything? I can't think of any other way of describing it sorry) piece of Tunworth, with a red grape sorbet and bit of pickled endive. After having moaned for years about places trying to gussy-up the traditional cheese course by piling things on top or heating things up (I still have a bit of a problem with baked Camembert) I've realised that with a bit of sensitivity, applying (gentle) heat to a cheese is just a way of presenting its charms in a slightly different way. Think of when a sushi master briefly torches a nigiri before presentation. And finally dessert, beetroot mousse topped with apple sorbet and with a little red hat of beetroot crisp on top. Colourful and cleverly presented, like a kind of miniature Miro sculpture, it was a lovely coda to the meal, which had ended with the same technical ability and attention to detail as it had begun. But look, enough hand-wringing. You will know by know if this is the kind of food you like to eat, and whether you think £55 (or more realistically £120-£150 ish if you have matching wine and supplemental courses) is the right amount to pay for it. All I can tell you is that this is the kind of food I like to eat, and Steven Edwards and the team at etch are exactly the people I want to bring it to me. And I would have no hesitation in going back to Hove later in the year, paying in full and seeing what other delights the seasons bring. This is a place worth revisiting. I was invited to etch and didn't see a bill. As above, expect to pay between £55-£155 +service depending on what time of day you go, how many courses you choose and what you drink.
Earlier this week I spotted this 40 year-old poster at Leytonstone station. It's an original from January 1985, unexpectedly uncovered. come loose in the bottom left hand corner and half a dozen even older posters were lurking underneath. Travelcards only allowed travel on the Underground and buses, but the more expensive Capitalcard allowed travel on British Rail services too. You can see an example of a Capitalcard here. They remained in use until 1989 when Travelcards gained BR validity and the Capitalcard brand was phased out. fare-related posters might be in the stack, before and after... 1900: Pay the clerk at the ticket office window, there's a good chap 1913: Please be patient while we locate the correct paper ticket from our rack 1932: Let our new automated ticket machines speed you on your way 1947: Riding the Underground is cheaper than half a pound of brisket 1955: Your Central line journey now costs a ha'penny more 1968: Yellow flat fare tickets are fair for all 1971: Use your new pennies to take a ride to Bank 1981: Fare zones make travel cheaper and more flexible 1982: Your fare has doubled, sorry, blame Bromley 1983: The new Travelcard means more convenience and less queueing 1985: The power of London's Bus, Rail and underground services from just one card 1988: Don't be afraid, stick your ticket in the electronic gate 1995: You should absolutely definitely buy a One Day Travelcard 2003: Embrace the future, get your Oyster card today 2005: Daily capping is a proper gamechanger innit? 2010: Oh go on, we'll let you use Oyster on rail services now 2014: Why not go contactless, but avoid card clash at all costs! 2015: Are you still using Oyster? Loser 2023: Please stop buying One Day Travelcards, we hate them now 2025: Just swipe your device and let us worry about how much it costs
