Author Archives: Robert Ryan

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About Robert Ryan

Author and Journalist

THE GEEKY TRAVELLER: HOLLY SMALE

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Holly Smale, 32, started modeling at 15 before leaving the industry to study English Literature and an M.A. at Bristol University. She is the author of the very successful blog The Write Girl and the novel, Geek Girl (Harper Collins), is out now. Single, she lives in South London. Geek Girl: Model Misfit is published by HarperCollins at £6.99 RRP.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI have this terrible urge to travel that builds and builds inside me until it just goes pop and I have to leave. It’s a very powerful drive. When I finished Geek Girl I turned to my parents — I was living at home at the time — and said: ‘I’m going travelling to India and Nepal. In three days.’ They were used to it by then and I could see them steeling themselves for the phone calls in the small hours because the truth is I am a very klutzy traveller. I do things like leave my bank card on a bus or get mugged – I’ve been mugged twice, once in Hollywood, which rather took the edge of the glamour, and once in Australia. I realise I am meant to be a grown up now, so I have to stop relying on my parents to bail me out – I’ve recently discovered travel insurance, much to their relief.
I probably get my love of travelling from my dad. My mum doesn’t like it at all, which is probably why when we were little we stuck relatively close to home, France and Italy, but once my sister and I got a little older my dad insisted on something more adventurous – Egypt, Dubai, Morocco.

Unknown-1 So, after Geek Girl, I did head off three days later to Delhi and it turned out to be more of a culture shock than I was prepared for and I did have a little bit of a weepy meltdown. I had lived in Japan for two years, working as a teacher, and I thought I could cope with any alien culture after that. But India was on another level. But the meltdown passed, I began to enjoy myself and the country, and I travelled to Varanasi on the Ganges, which is about as remote from clean, ordered Japan as you can get, and on to Goa and then flew to Nepal where I sat in the rain for three weeks. It wasn’t the wet season – it was meant to be dry. But it just poured every day. The teahouses were full of miserable looking climbers in their fleeces and hiking boots. It was like waiting for a bus – I should have given up but after a few days I thought, I’ve invested so much time in this, what if I leave now and tomorrow it clears up? And every weather forecast always said it would. I went to Pokara with its lake and the Anapurna range as a backdrop, which is meant to be stunning – and the mist was down to the water. In the end I left Nepal without seeing a mountain, which must be some sort of record. I think I got my taste for travelling alone from a school trip to Moscow, which actually allowed us a lot more freedom than that suggests, it certainly seemed freer than travelling with parents. So once I finished school I took a gap year and headed for Australia by myself. To be honest, I am not sure I really plugged into the country, more the backpacker trail, meeting other people from home. But I was eighteen, so it was first steps.

I did get to see the Whitsunday Islands, perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life. And seven years later, I was living at home again and trying to write a very serious book about, well, about death and I think I was driving my parents mad being terribly artistic. My dad thrust a newspaper and under my nose for ‘the best job in the world’, as ‘caretaker’ of Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays. So I applied and I did get to the last batch of fifty but then in interview admitted I really wanted somewhere to finish a book. Which, quite rightly, scuppered my chances.

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So having not got that I decided I had to do something and I went off to Japan. I was offered a chance to go there when I was modelling, but my mum said no and I was secretly relieved – I was only 15. I spent some time teaching English through drama in Yokohama but then moved way south to Nichinan, a little fishing village and I taught the children of the fishermen and rice farmers English. The nearest city was Myazaki, over an hour’s drive away and it was also the closest Starbucks. So every few weeks I’d get on my scooter and do a Starbucks run along the coast road. It is a fabulous part of Japan – the climate is Mediterranean, there are palm trees and my parents came to visit and thought it was like the Riviera. And the beautiful beaches are all empty. The Japanese do not sunbathe, it is culturally unacceptable – only surfers get away with a suntan — so if you saw anyone laid out on a towel on the beach, you could bet it was a foreigner, of which there were about twelve in the whole region.
The problem with having spent so long in Japan is that it has spoiled me for everywhere else. By the time I left after two years I felt I was finally getting under the skin and it’s made me realise what a superficial experience most of our travelling is. I really want to go to China, but I don’t want to just tick off the sightseeing boxes. Still, I can’t let that put me off – I added up recently that I’d been to 21 countries so far and I started hyperventilating in panic – it’s just not enough. I’ve got to get travelling again, I can feel my inner nomad ready to pop.

THE (SLIGHTLY) NERVOUS TRAVELLER: KIMBERLY McCREIGHT

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Kimberly McCreight, 40, is the author of Reconstructing Amelia (Simon & Schuster), which has been compared (by The Sunday Times and Jodi Picault) to ‘Gone Girl’. She originally trained as a lawyer but realized she was in denial about being a writer, so left to pursue that career. Reconstructing Amelia is her fifth written novel, but the first to be published. Married with two daughters (6 and 9), she lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York.

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I never travelled as a child. I was brought up in the Tri-State area around New York, my parents were divorced, and we just didn’t get away much. So, as an adult, I was determined to make travelling a part of my life. The first chance I had to go abroad was to Japan when I was at college, to a small town between Osaka and Kyoto. Talk about a baptism of fire. But it was a fabulous experience. I was studying, but also got to do some touristy things – I climbed Mount Fuji. What I didn’t realise was, it’s a proper mountain. It was in the guidebook as a ‘must-do’, so I thought: how hard can it be? Well, it’s a tough climb and there is snow at the top and you really shouldn’t do it in running sneakers. My feet ached for days. I was walking like a Geisha. Lesson one of travelling for me: always double-check whatever the guidebook recommends.
I lived in London for a year when my then fiancé and now husband came to study. What I loved about being in the UK was how you could zip off to other countries so easily. I don’t think you appreciate that here. So we went to France, Italy, even Russia. That’s another thing I learned: don’t try and do St Petersburg on a budget. It was beautiful and fascinating, but we definitely weren’t prepared for the expense.
I am also trying to give my kids the chance to travel, because I do feel I missed out on seeing other cultures when I was young. One of my daughters has a fear of flying, which I think she got from me – I have a mild form. When we were on honeymoon in South Africa, I realised how small the plane was going to be taking us up to the Kruger – you could wind the windows down, for goodness sake – and I had to go to the doctor and get tranquilizers to get onboard. It was worth it, though. I have never been to a place that made me feel so insignificant. Not just the animals, but also the scale of it – one tree standing on an enormous horizon beneath an even larger sky. I can’t wait to go back.
We’ve fortunate in that neither of the girls are ‘Princess’ types, so we don’t get Disney pressure. It’s not much talked about as school, which is just as well – it’s such an expensive vacation. I looked at how much and then said: you know, we can go to the South of France for the same number of dollars. So we’ve just come back from Provence, although it was a challenge persuading my daughter about the flight. But by the time we got there, she was ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ She is also a very picky eater and I think it’s great to get children out of their comfort zone and into eating different foods. I told her she couldn’t afford to be fussy in France. Neither my husband nor I speak very good French, so I said we’ll be lucky if we get something that isn’t snails, and it worked, she tucked in.
We also try and go skiing every year. My husband is a very good skier and I’m.. not. But I try and hide that from the kids when we are teaching them. ‘You follow, dad, I’ll be right behind’ kind of thing. Normally, we ski on the East Coast, but last year we went to Vail in Colorado. It’s better in a number of ways. It’s less icy than the in East and it’s much less crowded on the slopes. Which means I can look like I know what I am doing – it’s much easier to fool the kids on the wide, empty slopes.
We are lucky because we can leave the children with the in-laws and get away by ourselves for short breaks. Often, though, we just stay in the city and do a show and restaurants. But a few years back we went to Costa Rica, which I love – it’s so lush and both the animals and the people are wonderful. We didn’t make the coast, but stayed in the centre, around the volcano. It was actually my second time there. After college I had backpacked there down through Mexico with a friend. Two girls backpacking alone in Central America – what were we thinking? Nothing bad happened, but the hassle was constant and relentless. We definitely had hassle fatigue by the time we had finished the trip. And again I made the mistake of believing the guidebook, that climbing the Chichen Itza pyramid on the Yucatan was easy. That thing is steep. I got to the top and thought: there’s no way I am ever going to get down.
I’m not very good with beaches. My husband is OK. In St Thomas in the Caribbean I kept insisting we go into town for dinner. Which was usually disappointing for one reason or another – I simply didn’t realise, that’s not really what you do in the Caribbean. It’s a beach holiday. Just stay put at the hotel. But I like a little adventure. So the next big trip is probably Macchu Picchu or possibly Kilimanjaro. That’s more climbing iconic sites – but this time, I’ll check what footwear I need.

* Kimberly McCraight talked to Robert Ryan

IT’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF

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I recently interviewed Ian Burrell, a (possible the only) “Global Rum Ambassador” for a piece in the Sunday Times Travel Magazine about rum in the Caribbean at Cottons his bar/restaurant in Camden (cottonscamden.co.uk). That will be out in the December issue (available in November), but in the meantime Ian’s RumFest is taking places next weekend (October 12-13, 12-5pm) at Excel, with over 400 rums, including dozens you’ll never had heard of. Tickets cost from £25, which includes tastings and seminars, see http://www.rumfest.co.uk. Meanwhile, here is a rough outtake from the filmed interview, where Ian explains the legend of ‘overproof’ rum. There’s a little slip of the tongue (Spain captured Jamaica, not vice-versa), but watch for a different, more polished version when the ST Travel Magazine comes out. For more on Ian see http://www.rumexperience.com.

THE LYRICAL TRAVELLER: DON BLACK

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Don Black, 75, has written the lyrics to more than 2,000 songs, including the Oscar-winning Born Free and the classic James Bond themes such as Diamonds are Forever and Thunderball, as well as for many theatre shows. He is currently working with Andrew Lloyd Weber on the musical Stephen Ward. A concert featuring his songs, Lyrics by Don Black, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and guest vocalists, is at the Royal Festival Hall on October 3 (www.southbankcentre.co.uk). He also has a Sunday morning show on Radio 2. Married with two grown-up children, he lives in London with his wife, Shirley. Here he talks to me about his travels.
But first watch David McAlmont/David Arnold’s brilliant version of Diamonds are Forever. Dame Shirley who?

DON BLACK: “I used to manage Matt Munro and we went round the world together. Everywhere, from Sao Paolo to Sydney. Didn’t see any of it. I’d say, Matt, Ipanema beach is out there, let’s go. He’d say: “Relax, it’s just sand, have a drink”. Or in New York, it’d be: Let’s go shopping up 5th Avenue and he’d reply: “Don, it’s Crown Court today and they’re giving the verdict. I’ve got to find a TV.” Hopeless. It was ironic he used to open his act with ‘Around the World.’ Like he’d know anything about it. I’m all for combining work and travel, but you have to get the balance right. Matt’s wasn’t.
I’ve just got back from Barbados, working with Andrew Lloyd Weber, who has a place there, and the balance was about right. I lie by the pool all day, scribbling a few ideas once in a while. Then Andrew sits at the piano and plays something and says: what do you think of this? And we’ll work on that for a bit. Perfect.
We used to go to Barbados every year when the children were young. We’d stay at Treasure Beach, which is right next to Sandy Lane, and it was always fun to watch my neighbor Michael Winner hold court on the beach, deciding who he would deign to talk to or not. The kids loved it, but one thing I have instilled in my children is the love of a good deli. No, really, what can beat a good corned beef sandwich with pickle? So we were in Barbados one year and the weather was awful and we were miserable. Then, a nest of some sort fell out of a tree and hit Shirley on the head. That was the last straw., I said: how about we go to Miami? The kids said – is the weather better there? I don’t know, I said, but they’ve got great delis in Miami. That was good enough, off we went for corned beef and pickle.
Mind you, Miami hasn’t got much else going for it. It’s nice, sure. I once stayed at the Delano, Madonna’s favourite, and I’ve never felt so old in my life. Miami’s OK if you are young, but beyond the party scene there’s no ‘there there’, as Gertrude Stein once said.
New York, though, is my favourite city in the world. You know you are alive – I love the energy and optimism. You can walk forever and never get lost, as long as you can count. And the Rodgers and Hart song sums it all up: ‘I’ll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too..’ Just going through the song is magic.
I know a lot of the appeal is nostalgia, but it gets me every time. I used to love the Waldorf Astoria, for instance, but I’m sure that was partly because it has Cole Porter’s piano.
I also had some the very best times of my life in Las Vegas, although it’s changed. When I went I saw Sammy Davies Jr and Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Incredible entertainers. Now it’s all shows like Cirque du Soleil and fancy illusionists, which isn’t quite the same. And I suppose I should mention Los Angeles. We used to live there but I went back recently for a James Bond 50th anniversary tribute. Stayed at the Four Seasons, had dinner with the Broccolis – a little work mixed with pleasure, very nice. But LA is the capital of showbusiness – it’s great to visit if you are in the business, not so much if you aren’t. As someone said, it’s the only city where you can die of encouragement, because there is no such thing as a bad meeting. There is a shallowness to it – but on the other hand you’ve got places like Route One to Big Sur and great weather. It’s hard to hate, really. I always look forward to going back.
Growing up in Hackney, we didn’t do holidays. A day trip to Southend was about it. I didn’t go abroad until I started work at the New Musical Express in Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street – two hundred yards of hokum, as someone called it – meeting stars like Frankie Vaughan and Frankie Lane – old fashioned now, but the Robbie Williams of their day. Paris was my first trip out of the country and my first flight and I thought it was wonderful. Taking off and coming down over a necklace of twinkling lights. After that I became a stand-up comic for a bit and most of my travelling was to die in places like Bradford and Glasgow. I always say I wrote my first song while waiting for a laugh in Darlington.
I know this sounds terrible, but there aren’t many wonders of the world that would tempt me away, just to visit. Sightseeing doesn’t interest me and the thought of three weeks on a perfect beach would drive me mad. Besides, Shirley doesn’t swim. Shallow end in pools, only. The places I want to go to are towns like Sag Harbor, where Hemingway went to write. I’d like to copy that. And New England. I read a lot of poets like Edna St Vincent Millay, who was born in Maine, and Robert Lowell, who was from Boston, a city I would love to visit. I get this world of diners and liquor stores from them and, although it might have gone now, I’d really enjoy trying to find it.”

MORBID CURIOSITIES

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You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to find St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum, near Smithfield Market in London, but you might have to do some detective work to get inside it. Because, like Scotland Yard’s famous Black Museum, this repository of the weird, the wonderful and the medically morbid (which does have a connection to Holmes, of which more in a later blog) is not usually open to the public, unless you attend one of its regular evening seminars, which begin their new season on Wednesday, September 25th with Sarah Tobias talking about “Death & Mourning in Victorian England”.
However, no matter who is talking about what, the actual venue is a constant star of the show. Grade II listed, it dates from 1879 and is a stunningly dramatic Victorian room, an open space with three galleries or mezzanine levels, topped off with a vaulted glass roof. On the shelves that line this hall are endless jars of specimens, some five thousand in all, dating back to the 18th century, of everything from a ravaged scrotum (a cancer known as chimney sweep’s disease) to various foreign bodies pulled out of people (you’ll have to find out where the artillery shell was found and what it was doing there for yourself).
The museum’s original purpose was as a teaching aid for training doctors in the various pathologies of the human body, but as more hands-on techniques for training became fashionable, the collection fell into disrepair. It is now being re-catalogued and conserved by Carla Valentine, the Technical Assistant Curator, who has advised on TV shows such as Silent Witness and films like Resident Evil and is prone to utterances such as: ‘I’ve always been interested in death’ and ‘I’ve wanted a job in pathology since I was ten.’ Whatever her motives, the collection is looking decidedly healthy – if that’s not a strange term to apply – these days.
Here she picks some of her favourites from the collection:

I have been asked to give a talk about Watson and his medical career on 13th November, alongside a new short, silent film featuring the world’s most famous sidekick. So if you want to see the soaring inside of the building and those endlessly fascinating specimens, book in to one of the events, especially October 23rd when Carla Valentine herself with be discussing some of the stories behind the specimens that line the shelves. Who knows, she might even mention that artillery shell.

* St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum, 3rd Floor,
Robin Brook Centre,
West Smithfield,
London 
EC1A 7BE. Not open to the public except for its seminars (tickets from £5.95, including glass of wine) and various workshops. Details on: http://potts-pots.blogspot.co.uk/.

Filming and recording by Bella and Gina Ryan; edit by Bella Ryan.

Dead Man’s Land with Alison Balsom

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Alison Balsom (above, picture by Maker) won the Gramophone Artist of the Year this week – a hugely prestigious prize, made all the more special by her being the first female recipient. There has been some odd press about her and her marketing (‘trumpet crumpet’ is the cliche most often trotted out) in the past few months, most of which misses the point that she plays like a dream. Anyone who saw and heard her tackling the tricky natural trumpet in Gabriel at the Globe this summer won’t need convincing of that. Anyway, more of Alison will follow in this blog, but for the moment below is a sneak preview of a trailer for Dead Man’s Land (to be released on The Dark Pages, http://www.thedarkpages.com, next month), which features her beautifully toned trumpet, recorded at Abbey Road. Thanks to Alison, Vicki Corley-Smith, Bella Ryan, Guy Barker and Warner Classics for this.

Risky Business in Miami

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The Freehand Miami is perhaps the most unlikely of fashionable hangouts in South Beach. For a start it’s a hostel, not a hotel. You won’t find a Kardashian or a Beckham within miles. It is also pretty far north of the Collins Ave/17th nexus of beautiful people and snooty doormen. However, this boho enclave – the garden/pool/games area is a prime hipster hangout – does have a secret weapon: The Broken Shaker.

When the former Indian Creek Hotel was being transformed into the Freehand, the restaurant packed up and left, leaving an empty space and three months’ free lease. So a group of young local mixers and cocktail consultants decided to open a pop-up bar. The bar, The Broken Shaker, became so popular, it’s still there almost a year later and thriving. Cocktails cost about £9-10 – about the same as in the bars on Collins and Ocean Drive, but are far more inventive, with lots of homemade syrups and extracts. The spirits are off-the-beaten-bottle, too: I came away with a new affection for Latin American rum from Guatemala and Nicaragua. The cocktail list changes every two weeks.  Below is Gui Joroschy, bar manager, creating a Risky Business. When the piece I wrote on new Miami hotels runs in the Sunday Times, we hope to bring you his take on a Tiki dark rum cocktail.

I travelled to Miami as a guest of British Airways (0844 493 0758, http://www.ba.com) and Starwood Hotels (www.starwoodhotels.com). The Freehand Miami is at 2727 Indian Creek Drive (001 305 531 2727, http://www.freehand.com)

FIRST TRAILER FOR DEAD MAN’S LAND

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This is the first of several short trailers put together for Dead Man’s Land, the novel about Dr Watson’s medical career in WW1. Best played on full screen. The images are from Great War Photos (www.gwpda.org/photos), used with permission. It was put together by Bella Ryan (relation). The paperback of Dead Man’s Land is out at the end of October, hardback available now.

Where Watson Met Holmes

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I spent yesterday morning at Bart’s Pathology Museum, making a couple of short films with Technical Assistant Curator Carla Valentine, one of which will eventually make its way to this site. In discussing the relationship between Holmes and Barts (it is where Watson and Holmes encounter each other in a Study in Scarlet and where Benedict Cumberbatch plunged from the roof in BBC’s Sherlock) she mentioned the plaque below:

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This was once to be found on the wall in her office, where ACD is rumoured to have penned a number of Holmes stories, but was moved to the main Bart’s Museum, so it could be seen by the general public. The phrase ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive’ happens to be the official greeting of the new John H Watson Society (www.johnhwatsonsociety.com) which was founded earlier this year. More on the museum follows later.

I PODDED

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A combination of factors – the unearthly hour, an inability to read small print, the herding of cats that constitutes trying to get the family in the car at dawn – meant that I was cutting it very fine on a recent trip to France. Unable to locate my pre-booked parking spot (yes, tempers did fray), I ended up trying Long Term at Terminal 5. Full. They did give me an upgrade to Business, which promised to be expensive, but not as eye-wateringly so as the daily rack rate. However, it did give me a chance to try the Heathrow Pod, a personal transport system that, a few years ago, you might have considered a prop out of Minority Report. Basically they are individual, driverless little metal cylinder, like a miniature light railway, which take you from the Business area right to T5. Which means no waiting around for transfer buses and a positive wow for the kids.
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They were even looking forward to the return trip on the way back all the way through the holiday. It was, I have to say, the most expensive little rollercoaster I have ever been on, but if you can stretch to Business, it’s the best transfer, walking apart, I have ever experienced. The normal rate is about £31 a day, but you can save on that with Holiday Extras (0800-083 8754), which has Business T5 for a three-day weekend for £50; a week is £115.