Reflections on The Hobbit

"Is Martin Freeman too ordinary to play the title role of The Hobbit?"

This question posed by an anonymous author in the Telegraph Online got me thinking not just about Tolkien's book but also about something his friend C.S. Lewis once wrote:

"... the more unusual the scenes and events of a story are, the slighter, the more ordinary, the more typical the writer's persons should be. Hence Gulliver is a commonplace little man and Alice a commonplace little girl. It they had been more remarkable they would have wrecked their books ... To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much. He who is to see strange sights must not himself be strange." (from the essay "On science fiction" with minor adaptations)

Is this why outrageously improbable films starring James Stewart and Matt Damon work so much better than those with Jim Carrey or Robin Williams? Is is that just because Carrey and Williams are irritating?

Going back to Tolkien's 1937 book, even at the time it was written, the author was well on the way to inventing a complex make-belief world with its own history, its own languages, its own geneaologies. As Lewis puts it in his book review for the Times Literary Supplement of the same year, Tolkien "obviously knows much more about [his characters] than he needs for this tale".

And yet, this doesn't alter the fact that the tone of the earlier book is quite different from that of the three volumes that were later (17 years later) to be published as The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, as Lewis writes in his review of The Fellowship of the Ring for Time and Tide in 1954, "The Hobbit was merely a fragment torn from the author's huge myth and adapted for children; inevitably losing something by the adaptation".

The hobbits are simple folk living an idealised life (smoking their pipes, eating, drinking, quarelling with each other and, naturally, being waited on hand and foot by their womenfolk) in the type of rural paradise that Tolkien ached for as he saw large swathes of the English midlands being chewed up for development by machines. (It's not difficult to see the inspiration for his Orcs and super-Orcs, the Uruk-hai, and for their evil human and sub-human masters.)

So, taking the straight man from The Office and making him Bilbo Baggins seems good casting to me. What matters is whether this Everyman can act, and that he undoubtedly can.

Kiwi Hobbit Delight

Mount Sunday, S Island, New Zealand (AKA Edoras, capital of Rohan)

New Zealanders are on the streets rejoicing that the film version of Tolkien's Hobbit will be made in New Zealand after Warner Bros. played "hardball" with, i.e. screwed, Kiwi PM John Key.

Only a visit to the land of 50 million sheep, four million of whom think they are human beings, can make a non-Kiwi appreciate just how important all things Tolkien (who was born in South Africa, incidentally) are to the natives. Not only did the Lord of the Rings trilogy put the country on the map, it also gave them something to talk about besides the All Blacks and all the reasons why their national rugby union team has failed to win the World Cup since its inaugural edition in 1987, viz. referees, linesmen, food-poisoning, the French. And they call Brits whingers.

Actually, as anyone investing in a road map of New Zealand will find out, LOTR sites are dotted throughout the country, from "Hobbiton" in the North Island to "Lothlorien" in the South. One of the more interesting ones is to be found at Twizel, a remote outpost 80 miles south of Mount Cook, where we spent a couple of days two years ago.

As we walked across the tussocky plain where Théoden had led the Rohirrim to the aid of Gondor at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, our guide filled us in with a few details that make me unsurprised that a row has been brewing over union representation for actors involved in the Hobbit film project.

Bernard Hill, who played King Théoden in the films, is a fine horseman himself and was able to do all his own stunts. A consummate professional and very popular with cast and crew alike, Hill came up with the idea of following up his famous rousing speech by riding in front of the serried ranks of horsemen and knocking his sword against their spears. This suggestion turned out to be something of a rod for his own back, due to the fact that he is left-handed and the topography and light would allow him to be filmed riding in one direction only.

The sword Hill was carrying, being real and heavy, meant that he became very tired, very quickly wielding the weapon in his weaker hand. They tried doing the scene with him using a lighter, wooden sword, only for it to shatter and splinter at the first contact with the spears. So, in the end, Hill had to do the scene with the original sword, holding on for grim death as he approached the end of the line.

Other interesting tidbits concerned the horse and their riders. The 150 plus animals were recruited from farms and riding schools in the South Island together with their regular riders, 80% of whom were women. So, Théoden’s warrior niece Éowyn was not the only female who had sneaked into the final showdown with the evil forces of Sauron.

Éowyn Does For the Witch-king of Angmar

Further hold-ups to the assembling-for-battle scene were caused by the fact that when you put 150 horses into a straight line, they are bred to take that as a signal to start racing, which they did on numerous occasions before order could be restored.

Then there are the Orcs into whom Bernard Hill led the charge. These were extras who had been in costume and make-up for many hours before they were finally pitched into the fray, and they were getting crotchety. Added to that, pay was nothing to write home about and the insurance cover they had signed up to minimal. (While the injured horses were whisked away for the best treatment, the injured humans were just patched up on the spot and sent home. No wonder they stick up a caption saying "No animals were injured in the making of this film", but none saying the same of human beings.)

What this all meant was that when the time came for the two sides to lock arms on that lonely field outside Twizel, there were a bunch of irritable extras who were only too willing to behave like Orcs and take out any Hollywood film star that might be coming their way. Hence, the realism of the battle scenes and, presumably, the determination of the thespians to make sure that next time round they receive better protection.

Does BWG Have the X Factor?

Among all the stage-managed spats and carefully rehearsed raillery that constitute ITV's megahit, The X Factor, it takes just one ostensibly genuine comment to escape from a judge's lips to stand out like a Hong Kong motorcyclist who doesn't overtake on the double white lines between the two lanes of traffic at the entrance to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.

The comment came from Cheryl Cole, the girl-group gyrator and one time England football team WAG, who casts a shadow so long that she forced fellow female panellist Dannii Minogue, who has a time-share on the family brain cell with big sister Kylie, into the list of ten people most admired by the British middle class, my compatriots thereby proving once for all that being talentless, stupid, nasty and overpaid is okay just so long as you're also an underdog.

Cheryl's post-divorce hemlines have been getting so high that it came as no surprise when she chose to lip-synch her latest hit on Sunday's programme in a high crotched swimsuit. The pint-sized mimer told one of the acts they should consider a career in children's television, where, if we are lucky, they would be joined by Louis Walsh, the hapless Irishman whose day job is to manage Westlife. Louis's sole contribution to the show is to lean forward in his chair, gesticulate with his biro and say "One hundred and ten per cent, yes!", while the audience does the sensible thing and drowns him out until it's Cheryl's turn.

Talking of children's shows, there used to be one in Britain called Play School, where the presenters would take schoolkids, though not literally, of course – those were more innocent days – through windows of various shapes: the round, the square, and – on very special days – the arched.

Reading Big White Guy gives me that type of through-the-arched-door feeling. From the glowing references from readers ("... count me in as a member of the world wide BWG fan club", "it's a pleasure to read your perspective on life ... I get a good laugh out of many of your articles" [a little ambivalent, that one], "unlike other bloggers, you don't brag that you know everything about Hong Kong" [ditto]), which sound as if they might have been composed by one of Simon Cowell's focus groups, through the "tales" with their faintly disturbing passive-aggressive air, to the extraordinary Mabelisms, a series of transcripts of sub-mundane conversations with his wife that may yet provoke Hong Kongers into coining a Cantonese word for "condescending", to visit Randall J. van der Woning's world is to give a vigorous workout to your willing suspension of disbelief.

One of Randall's recent posts is a variation on a theme that is for many people synonymous with the Canadian: scams. Whether it's dodgy types sticking flags on you on a Saturday morning outside the MTR, or conmen pretending to be beggars – the theme of an earlier post – it's all of a piece to the "BWG", who secured himself a place in cyber history with his ardent advocacy of a beautiful blonde cancer patient that turned out to be the invention of a Kansan housewife with an overactive imagination.

Now, I ask you, can you imagine anyone more improbably named than Kaycee Nicole Swenson? Dannii Minogue excepted, of course ...

Typhoon with Hong Kong Characteristics

Old China hands will have noted how Super Typhoon Megi conformed to the Hong Kong stereotype. Having set off from the Philippines for Hainan Island, it veered off at the last moment, ending up in Fujian.

Just Go to the Y - M - C - A!

At least while the restaurants (Serenade and Muse) that serve the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Kowloon (an oxymoron for some, I know) are being done up. (Post-posting note: I see that Serenade has just re-opened.)

We tried the dinner buffet at the Salisbury Dining Room on the 4th Floor before watching La Bohème earlier in the month and it was pretty good. Get there early – they open at 6.15pm – so you can eat stuff while it's still relatively freshly cooked. Friday nights the charge is HK$258 per head, while on regular weekdays it's a little less.

As with most buffets, the salad is better than the hot food, but this salad is really very good. I guess we were unlucky to choose the night when the carvery featured suckling pig, but that didn't bother my wife, who said it was fine – and stuffed with something or other, which I've now forgotten. Why does this happen with so much that she tells me?

You were expecting this, and you were going to get it until the embedding was disabled. But I still want to see you all doing those callisthenics above your head.

And a mere 15,855 YouTube comments. I'm sure you lot can beat that …

Shanghai World Expo Blooper

You can forgive the guys who produce the expo website making the odd mistake, given that there have been over a million visitors to the shindig on a couple of occasions recently. But who'd have thought they'd have got their photo captions mixed up, incorrectly giving this photo the tag "Donald Tsang, chief executive of Hong Kong, adds a final touch to a dragon at an official ceremony of the Hong Kong Week at the Expo", when the correct caption accompanies a thoroughly irrelevant picture further down the page:

"A Hong Kong clown welcomes visitors in front of the Baosteel Stage"

Fez Things First

That's my contribution to the funniest joke of all time competition. No, seriously, my favourite has to be the one about the Irishman, Neil Dunne, who hadn't been in touch with his mum for ages, so his mum sends this bloke to find him, the bloke tracks him down in a pub, is told he's in the toilet, sees a stall occupied, asks him "Are you Neilly Dunne?", to which he responds, "Yes, but I’ve run of paper", to which the bloke replies, "That’s no excuse for not writing to your mother".

My daughter's a fan of the BBC show Mock The Week, which we watch religiously every weekend on YouTube just before The X Factor. The best reason for watching Mock The Week, Frankie Boyle, is sadly no longer on it, since he upset some prigs by saying that Rebecca Adlington resembled someone looking at themselves in the back of a spoon, surely a description whose blend of accuracy and originality ought to have earned him a permanent spot on any bona fide satirical show.

Here's Frankie on:

Animals



and:

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

First Lady Shoots Hoops with Ghetto Kids

You may be underprivileged, but you sure as hell ain't underfed, honey.

Red Sox Owner Buys Soccer Team

Hey, see that sign ‘Thanks But No Yanks’?

Pay no mind to that, sir. Scousers will get into bed with anyone.

Eating out in Saigon

Part of the fun of a trip to Saigon is finding new places to eat. This year, in addition to eating as a group at two places just two doors apart round the corner from the Caravelle Hotel, I discovered a jewel of a restaurant just a stone's throw away in the other direction.

Choir favourite Lemongrass’s three floors are often crowded, as this year's advanced party of choristers found out as we climbed the stairs to the top level for lunch on Friday. The rest of us on my table devolved the ordering responsibilities on one of the old Saigon hands among us, as we got down to the serious business of gossiping about the Chairman over bottles of Tiger beer, but not before we had regaled him with our orders. For local fare in a bustling cha chaan teng atmosphere, the Lemongrass is worth a try.

An hour and a half later and the table of four Bajan women at the entrance downstairs whom we had already earmarked as targets for our rendition of "Can't help falling in love" were still there, obviously awaiting our serenade. I'm not sure if they were expecting two balding 50-something men to kneel down and take them by the hand as the rest of us crooned "Take my hand, take my whole life too", but they didn’t seem too fazed. Perhaps it was all pretty tame in comparison to what goes down in Bridgetown during the carnival.

The couple from Colorado who had come to Vietnam to celebrate their second honeymoon, on the other hand, must have been wondering just what it took to enjoy a romantic meal in Saigon. What they wouldn't have known when they booked their table for two at Augustin was that their dream of a candlelit dinner for two in a French (sort of) restaurant was about to be shattered by the entry of 40 ageing men in scarlet T-shirts with green and white trim.

Not content with running through a good part of our repertoire, including, appropriately enough, the Franglais "Vive l’Amour", the writing was on the wall for the Andie MacDowell lookalike and her square-jawed, mile-high husband from the moment we moved onto our other schmaltzy number, "Unchained melody". From there, it was a short, if rather stumbling step to the full monty of our version of "Falling in love" - more UB-over-40 than Elvis Presley - as a chair was placed in the centre of the restaurant for Andie to lap it up from a couple of sloshed sexagenarians.

And how regal she looked, as she showed off her perfect American teeth for two and a half minutes, captured on video by her husband, who seemed, somewhat perversely, I thought, to be enjoying it rather more than his spouse – and certainly a lot more than the chap at the bar who whisked his girlfriend straight out of the door by her rather generous love-handles after she had become the third, and final, dedicatee of the day.

But, I save the best for last, and that best is to be found at a gem of a restaurant tucked away in a cul-de-sac just a stone’s throw from the Caravelle, Nghi Xuan. The UD$6.50 four-course set lunch was a thing of beauty, something to savour over the complementary free lemon juice. From the sauté shrimp and pork tapioca-flour ravioli through the mouth-watering mussel salad served on rice paper to the spicy beef noodle soup with fresh vegetables, it was heavenly, as was the service, which was attentive and alert, shapely and attractive.

I thought it would be difficult to conclude this feast with a desert that would do it justice but that proved no problem for Nghi Xuan – the steamed banana cake with coconut milk rounding things off perfectly.

As a bonus, here is the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus with their version of "Vive l’Amour". What I want to know is, what’s that woman doing in there?

Fag hag? How I hate tokenism …

Saigon: Making Money from the War

If it strikes you as strange that Saigon's major tourist attractions are monuments to the Vietnam War, then you'd be in good company. Both the quaintly named War Remnants Museum (formerly the Museum of American War Crimes) and the Cu Chi Tunnels attract visitors from around the world, with a German-speaking Vietnamese tour guide passing you on one side and a Cantonese-speaking local giving the lowdown on the triumph over the forces of imperialism on the other.

Of the two, the museum – crusty and static as it might sound – is by far the better option. So keen are the Communist authorities to attract visitors, local and foreign, that they have set the entry price at just 75 US cents. Open from 7.30am to noon and then from 1.30-5.00pm, it's well worth getting there early. I arrived at the venue (a 20-minute walk from the Caravelle, Continental, Park Hyatt hotel area) at eight o' clock and was on my own for the first half hour, which I spent walking around the outdoor exhibits of various American hardware (Chinook helicopter, tank and jet plane included). The pristine condition of these machines testified more eloquently than any words could to the precipitous withdrawal of American forces 35 years ago.

For me, the most moving part of the complex was the area over to the side of the courtyard devoted to the confinement and torture of Vietcong and enemy suspects by means of tiger cages and other fearful devices. The wall charts provide a vivid and yet concise commentary in words and pictures on the fate of those who were sent to the prison islands off the south coast of Vietnam.

The museum proper has been upgraded recently. The three-storey air-conditioned building provides a photographic account of the conflict with the Americans – William Calley, My Lai and the iconic image of the girl running naked along the road between the paddy fields are supplemented by many interesting shots taken by American GIs. Like the photographs taken by German soldiers in World War II, the latter impress with their unaffected and unembarrassed portrayal of the humilities routinely inflicted on the enemy in the dog-eat-dog jungle hell. On the first floor, there is a brief history of modern Vietnam from the perspective of the winners.

The "Agent Orange Area" at the entrance provides a grim and rather surreal reminder of the continued effects of the dioxin that was dumped on the land to strip the trees of their leaves, as what appears at first sight to be a children's play area turns out to be a school Open Day with a difference. All the pupils making handicrafts under the patient tuition of able-bodied teachers are deformed – some of them quite hideously – as a larger child with no eyes and no discernible eye sockets provides an ironically jaunty musical accompaniment from the keyboard of an electric piano.

At US$25, the trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels at Ben Dinh, 60 kilometres from the centre of Saigon, doesn't burn a hole in the pockets but is still a bit of a damp squib. The coach journey (around 80 minutes each way) isn't much to write home about and the actual tour, which consists of a 500-metre walk through the woods, interspersed with stops to inspect entry holes, breathing holes and traps, culminating in the chance to squeeze through a 10-metre section of specially widened tunnel 5 metres underground, is something that does not need to be experienced to be understood.

For an extra US$17, you can fire off ten bullets in less than a second from an AK47 (I think) at a specially constructed firing range. I'm happy to report that none of the 15 people in my tour group had a craving to ruin the morning by acting like a latter-day John Wayne. The visit ends with a 15-minute propaganda film made by the Communists in 1967 (with a recently added English commentary). Triumph of the Will it isn’t.

To appreciate the horrors of this particular war, you can do no better than walk in the grounds of the War Museum in the early morning light and reflect on the immense futility of it all in glorious isolation.

Mad World

Remember those synthpoppers from the early 80s, Tears for Fears? Yes, you do – "Everybody wants to rule the world". You'll be humming it now for the rest of the day.

They also released a song called "Mad world", a cover of which was sung by a lad from Blackpool called Aiden Grimshaw on the X Factor last weekend.

This boy could go far.

When David Heard

Thomas Tomkins' great anthem, written around the turn of the seventeenth century:



The text is based on 2 Samuel 18:33:

"When David heard that Absalom* was slain, he went up to his chamber and wept. And thus he said: 'Oh, my son! Absalom my son. Would God I had died for you'."

* His third son, who had rebelled against him

Indian Officials Respond to Prince Edward’s Athletes Village Criticism

Well, you see, it was quite habitable for the kids who built it.

Prince Edward Expresses Reservations about Commonwealth Games Village

It does seem a bit cramped.

Lewis on Liu

Well, it could be C S Lewis commenting on the furor over Liu Xiao-bo's award of the Nobel Peace Prize by those mischievous Norwegians. In 1958, C S Lewis had a cracking essay called "Willing slaves of the welfare state" published in The Observer. Here are the concluding paragraphs.

"The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State’s honey and avoiding the sting?

Let us make no mistake about the sting. The Swedish sadness is only a foretaste. To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death – these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilized man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.

All this threatens us even if the form of society which our needs point to should prove an unparalleled success. But is that certain? What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny’. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?"

A few pages earlier, we have the part that first set me thinking about people like Liu, who get thrown in jail for 11 years for saying what’s on their mind.

"Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance ... The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good – anyway, to do something to us or to make us something ... We are less our leaders' subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business."

Hats off to all those like Liu who are sticking to their guns in the hope that one day China will be a country where the individual's life is his or her own business.

World's Youngest Male Voice Choir Set to Take Wan Chai by Storm

It doesn't get much better than this. On Saturday 23 October, the world's youngest Welsh male voice choir will be bringing you hits by César Franck ("Panis angelicus"), Rodgers and Hammerstein ("There is nothing like a dame"), The Righteous Brothers (they only had two hits, and we're not doing "You've lost that loving feelin'"), Westlife ("You raise me up" – is it only me, or is there a bit of a Wan Chai theme developing here?) and Susan Boyle ("I dreamed a dream" – as if you could dream anything else).

Does it get any better? Well, that's debatable, But, we're also doing three Welsh numbers, including one of my favourites, Myfanwy (pronounced MeVANoy), here sung by the old fellows in the Morriston Orpheus Male Voice Choir:



Tickets (but not many - they're going faster than a red minibus through a red traffic light) are available from Hong Kong Ticketing at the ridiculous price of HK$220/150 for adults and just HK$100 for old-timers and kids.

Though I can scarcely believe anyone will want to listen to (or look at) anyone else, a number of APA students will be joining us, including Zhao Ning, who recently won first prize in the Bratislava international piano competition, and the excellent Academy Brass.

Tart with a Heart

Every Italian opera must have one, especially if it's set in Paris with starving artists and garrets. (Why always garrets? Why never lofts or attics?)

Here's a 23-year-old Anna Moffo, joined by, among others, Rolando Panerai (Marcello), Maria Callas (Mimi) and Giuseppe di Stefano (Rodolfo) in "Quando me'n vò soletta per la via" ("When I stroll out alone along the street", or Musetta’s Waltz) from Act II of La Bohème in the 1956 La Scala production.

Beats Julia Roberts any day.



If you're interested in what they're on about, scroll down to Quando me n'vò in the bilingual libretto.

La Bohème

We went to see this Puccini melodrama – the first of his four big hits – last night at the Cultural Centre. A good production with the two leads, Jesus Garcia (Rodolfo) and Sabina Cvilak (Mimi), giving strong and suitably lyrical performances. The plot's nothing to tax the brain: boy meets girl, they go to the pub with their mates, girl gets TB, girl spends a long time dying. (Plus, there's a tart with a heart – more of that tomorrow.)

Here's Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni in the duet from Act I, "O, soave fanciulla" ("Oh, sweet maiden") from the 1969 Rome production. It's a live recording, but you'd never know that until the applause at the end. Unlike yesterday's show in Hong Kong, where the woman two rows in front of us (Stalls P2) was singing along for most of the first act, until someone told her we hadn't paid to listen to her.

Her response? To turn to the man who asked her to be quiet and tell him “how rude” he was. All in front of her daughter. And people wonder why the younger generation grow up such brats.

A Week Nowhere Near Provence

The hamlet of Arboliz, nr. Ibarrangelu: Merrutxu is second from the left

Before we said goodbye to our hosts on the Basque coast, I promised I'd give them a plug here, so that they could reap the benefits of all those people searching for "casa rural(e)s in the Basque Country". Who knows? – they might have to build another wing next to their vineyard, which produces a decent white, a bottle of which we received from hosts Kaldo and Arantza.

Besides the fact that every other letter is a k or a z, there's only one thing you need to know to be fluent in Basque (Europe's bizarrest language) and that is that x's are pronounced "ch" as in church. It's a pity that I only cottoned on to this towards the end of our week at Merrutxu, and just as well that we had a rental car rather than having to rely on taxis.

Room with a view?

Because the house is set in such a remote location – the Biosphere Reserve in the Urdaibai Natural Park, no less – it is generally so quiet that you can hear the two local church bells striking the midnight hour antiphonally, each from a mile or so away, one at Ibarrangelu, the other at Natxitua. Of course, this being Spain (though feeling very much like a foreign country – the only Spanish flag we saw during our week in Basqueland was the one in the Ministry of the Interior compound in Gernika), things could be a bit hit and miss tranquillity and smoking wise, especially with the house accommodating not just the host family but also three apartments upstairs and three rooms downstairs.

All six living quarters are named after local landmarks. Upstairs you get the hills (Atxarre – the biggest and best (room, that is) – Ogoño and Ereñozar), while down below day trippers are accommodated on the beaches (Laga, Laida and Lapatza). We managed to visit all bar one of these spots and each was delightful in its own way, Laida not being much of a beach but the place at the mouth of the Gernika River from which you set out on your kayak trip to Gautegiz-Arteaga.

The walk to Atxarre

The river journey is a beauty: up-river but down-tide, with plenty of time to take in the stunning scenery. The seven-kilometre journey, which ought to take just a couple of hours, actually took us nearer three, as we managed to go wrong three times – these estuarine rivers have a nasty habit of having many channels – including at the end, where we paddled past the finishing post and realised we must have overshot the mark when we were engulfed, like latter-day Moseses, in a jungle of bulrushes.

Atxarre from Laida beach

The food, as everywhere in Spain, is also a bit hit and miss, but, as in many other aspects, the Basques outshine their southern neighbours. Breakfast at the casa rural was more than serviceable, with the most important component, the coffee, hitting the mark and the homemade almond-based pastel vasco coming highly recommended.

For dinner, the restaurant at Laga beach is cheap and cheerful, while those in search of fine dining options can try Jokin across the river in Bermeo or Meson Arropain in Lekeitio, home to a spectacular lighthouse, twenty minutes along the coast the other way. The latter was a particularly memorable experience, as the proprietor, who speaks decent English – though we conversed mainly in Spanish – made a deep impression on my daughter by turning his nose up at her request for "ketchup", returning with a dish of – horror of horrors! – real tomato sauce.

She wasn't happy, but my wife and I thought it the best entertainment of the holiday.

Peak Café: More SoHo than SoSo

You'll have to excuse the dreadful title, but today has been one of those days. You know what I mean. The maid leaves your toast in the toaster too long (why doesn't she check whether the knob is in the right place before she puts the bread in?), another hamster's leapt to its death from the 14th floor because someone left the cage open again, a motorcyclist cuts you up on the Tai Po Road before dismounting to put his rain gear on and then pursuing you like a harpy with his headlights (why do they need two anyway?) on full beam, and then you get to work and there's hell to pay because the cleaners' new uniform, which the press releases (why we need press releases about this is beyond me too) say is "lucite green", turns out to be as blue as one of Bernard Manning's jokes.

It's days like this when I wish I had never come to Hong Kong. I like to joke I didn't come here for the money – I stayed for the money – but today is one of those days which come around every few months (if you're lucky) when the absurdity of it all leaps out from the shiny imperial clothing with which all this nonsense is customarily covered.

Which is all by way of giving a plug to one of the better places where you can spend a lazy Sunday morning, the Peak Café, AKA the Peak Bar, AKA the Peak Café Bar, all of which are to be found nowhere near Victoria Peak but next to the travellator that takes drones back up to the Mid-Levels ghetto from the Central workhouse every evening.

Fortunately, the food is a lot better than the prose on their website, which appears to be the work of a committee of failed hack journalists who found a new career freelancing for Peter Sherwood and Ted Thomas. Thus, "nestled on the busy slopes of Soho ... Peak Bar cascades alongside the world's longest escalator across a 3,500 sq ft area comprised of ..."

When I read the stuff about the three and a half thousand square feet, the burning question I had was why in that case they had to stick couples at tables which are so narrow that the average gweipo would only be able to accommodate one cheek on the benchlet with the other one providing target practice for waiters going back and forth to the kitchens and customers going back and forth to the bogs.

However, being of a naturally smart disposition, I had booked our party into the inner sanctum (or "indoor bistro", as they call it rather chavvishly), away from the construction noise and the cha chaan teng style cramped area at the front. There, in a tranquil setting illumined by natural light coming from the "garden courtyard", we were able to enjoy some decent tucker, with several of my friends – and my health conscious daughter – being tempted by the full English, while I fell back on the Eggs Florentine.

As brunch places go in Hong Kong, the Peak Café/Bar/Café Bar is as good as it gets and pretty reasonable too. I let my daughter use the credit card slip to write the name of the new Maroon 5 album on so I don't remember exactly how much it came to, but around HK$130-150 a head, I reckon. Reservations can be made on 2140-6877 and the place is on Shelley Street just down from the junction with Elgin Street. Unless it's cascaded down to Staunton Street, of course.

Chinese Trawler Captain Gives Orders on Return to Motherland

Make mine a double brandy with a double Maotai chaser

Chinese Trawler Captain Demands Action from Japan

I … hic … want my other flip … hic … flop