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– and next week Rafael Nadal will probably win Wimbledon. Meanwhile, all across London for the next few hours, cute, charming, Spanish boys
Spain are the top scorers in the tournament with nine. Switzerland are the only side who haven't conceded a goal. Spanish attack and Swiss defence. We've been here before.
Team news
The big question . What happened to Renato Buso? I love look at the list of top scorers and the Golden Ball winner at youth tournaments. I have no idea why. I have no idea why I thought it was worth.
Mind you, I'm wondering what to do now Fode Camara.
A handful of these players is straight up, but most disappear. That 's game. It 's one of the most poignant aspects of sport and life. Who are your talents bittersweet lost the election? The stories of Billy Kenny and Nii Lamptey - Joy of Six featured in this - are very sad, and I always had a soft spot for Giuliano Maiorana.
"Hanging around a hostel in Copacabana, doubt the match is on here so your MBM is something to do on a lazy afternoon, arrived in Rio in the middle of the night, slept too little, have already had a wander around the area and am too tired for more right now," pants Bjorn Fridgeir Bjornsson. "Bet there's no one else near me following the MBM. As for lost talents, from an Icelandic perspective, Siggi Jonsson was generally considered the most skilled Icelander to emerge, didn't make it at Arsenal, moved to Sheffield Wednesday under Wilkinson and spent the next 15 years being a midfield clogger. The Souness tackle that broke his leg at around the same time probably helped. Feyenoord fans from around 1979 may want to chip in with stories of Petur Petursson who topped the Dutch scoring charts and then went on to wander around Europe not scoring very much."
Switzerland have to get Beyonce on the ball more. He is clearly the best player and looks completely unaware of the importance of the game.
26 min The ball comes back to Switzerland a bit too fast for comfort right now. Mehmedi is from the area of ??treatment after twisting something a couple of minutes.
28 min Lustenberger, the Swiss midfielder was very impressive, hard-working fire-fighters were all over the pitch. "I 've got a poignant story of lost talent," says Jonah Gadsby. "In 2004 I had predicted to win over Greece to the euro, and later against Portugal 1-0 in the final. In the same year I predicted Porto victory over Monaco in the Champions League final before the tournament. Four years, In 2008, I predicted Romania to go all the way and defeating Croatia in the finals of this year 's €. I have predicted, Switzerland for the tournament, so it can be a bit of a revival, but it is probably only one be Keeganesque \. "
Half-time links, from Philip Podolsky
46 min
A double substitution for Switzerland. Mario Gavranovic and Amir Abrashi replace Fabian Frei and Innocent Emeghara.
Spain have been a bit absent-minded since half time, and Switzerland are in the ascendancy at the moment. Mind you, there is a lingering sense that, if Switzerland do equalise, Spain will just wake up and score another 12 goals.
60 min
61 min This was clearly a foul by Berardi on Montoya, wide on the right side. A yellow card was inevitable, because that was a desperate hack by Berardi.
64 minThiago pulls back the resulting free kick in the direction of Martinez, 15 yards, and he lashes the first time effort over the crossbar. The ball kicked a little awkward.
65 min Spain has woken up and begin to pass through Switzerland ragged. It must be absolutely humiliating to be on the wrong end of this.
75 min
Another Spanish substitution: Daniel Parejo replaces Iker Muniain.
Ed Miliband urgently needs a story to understand what actually happens in reality in our classrooms shows to find - a reality at a time can be reduced budgets classroom assistants harder to find that a lot of hard work and responsibility, a kind of which sometimes requires on-the-spot, hands in her heart she support.If to understand more about everyday pressures within the class, could Ed Miliband and colleagues find it easier to articulate in their minds, what must be done to to resolve issues in these changing circumstances.
H?l?ne Mulholland writes of central London rally:
Paul Gardner, English lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire, is on his first strike. The reason? Both personally and 'social'. Be "the personal is that it involves an attack on my immediate living space of standards, because I pay with a ? 100 more in my pension per month. My pension is reduced, and I will have to work longer. The social reason is that the cuts are completely unnecessary. "
"People will look back on this situation in 50-100 years time and think how crazy that people in the middle and the bottom were being asked to pay for mistakes made by those at the top."
The Scottish parliament and the Scottish government's headquarters in Edinburgh, Faslane nuclear submarine base, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports, museums and job centres were affected by the strike, although there was little reported impact on the public.
"Radical hairdressers" The Haircut Before The Party have been giving demonstrators free haircuts at the demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
Polly Curtis is also at the rally in central London. She says strikers attending the Methodist Central Hall rally are angry about their pensions, public spending cuts, and the government's handling of the union negotiations – but judging by their reaction to the speeches, they are angriest with the Labour leadership.
Michael White, who is with me, said, ". \ In politics, people usually hate their side more than the other It's the old politician 'joke: that' s opposition, the rest are behind you ".
Jessica Shepherd writes that Joe Davies, the master of Haileybury, a leading public school in Hertfordshire, has a message on the school 's website.
. There is a section 60 in place meaning officers can stop and search, the Met said.
writes from the London rally near the Houses of Parliament. She writes:
This tweeter posts an image of a young man being put into a police van – alleging his arrest was for violent language.
Another poster says she has heard of a girl being arrested for having camouflage found in her bag.
Here's a gallery of the strikes so far today.
writes from the London march:
Under the new government plans, teachers will have to pay more into their pension scheme, work longer and receive less when they retire. Members of the teaching staff who belong to the unions are very much aware of the impact strike action could have on students' learning, and they are conscious that as a boarding school we have a duty of care towards our boarders. We are also very aware that our dispute is with the government and not with Trent College.
BMA Chairman Hamish Meldrum said the voice, supported by 87% of the representatives did not mean, doctors are taking industrial action, but expressed an intention to vote "in the event that there is a plan of government for final salary scheme to replace stop and it with an unfavorable career average scheme for doctors '...
Manchester consultant paediatrician Andrew Rowland said: "This does not mean it has to be a strike. It could be sticking to job plans, not doing unpaid overtime or working without enthusiasm."
At work without enthusiasm is as action I know a number of people who should be voting members every day.
I just spoke with H?l?ne Mulholland
_
Members of the NUT are holding a rally in George Street in Liverpool city centre.
Schluessel said there was not a great police presence, but four policeman on horse back to control the crowds – which were made up of members of the UCU, ATL and NUT. Many members on strike had brought along their children too.
"We're a bit worried about the possibility of rain, but everyone is smiling and chatting with friends and there's a feeling of support for the strikes – people were driving past the picket lines honking their horns this morning."
_
H?l?ne Mulholland, who is with the march in central London, just listened to an update on the police radio: ". A few suspects have been taken from the set"
Some of our readers on Facebook have to tell us whether they favor or strike in our survey, Hannah Waldram are reporting. Out of 445 votes to be saying as much, 358, which they support the strike in any way actually striking and 87 said they won 't obvious. Gordon commented on the poll, writes:
I am unable now to a vigil, as I am a member of the NASUWT! The greatest teacher 'Union has decided on a strike today. On the basis that the negotiations would be hindered by such a step with the government? I am angry and disappointed with my trade union, as I feel that it does not correctly reflect the feelings of its membership!
The London march is peaceful and buoyant so far, H?l?ne Mulholland reports. The turn-out seems very big; she has not been able to get out of Lincoln's Inn Fields yet. A lot of people have brought their children, she reports.
Eddie Garner, Manchester branch secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said that most court staff had walked out.
H?l?ne Mulholland has more miles from central London, where the march is only setting is disabled, a bit late.
She just walked past five police officers stopping and searching two non-white 17-year-old sixth formers, Aamir Kadir and Jean-Claude Goddard, in Lincoln's Inn Fields to the dismay of onlookers. They were searched because of their keffiyeh scarves. A police officer said they were searching them under section 60 of the Criminal Public Order Act. H?l?ne asked him why he had chosen to stop and search two young non-white people when surrounded by white women with scarves round their necks. He said because of violence at previous anti-government protests, the police were watching people who were wearing scarves in case they were using them to commit violence. Another protester called Greg Muttitt asked an inspector why the police were doing this. He said it was an empirical judgment - people used keffieyehs to mask their identity.
Aamir said: "I 'm just a young man with government cutbacks and disgusted I wanted to show a little support". He seemed a little shaken.
The movement of a large majority of the 500 delegates at the conference confirmed 'calls for the BMA, in the event that there is a government plan to stop the final salary pension scheme and replace it with an unfavorable Career Average (CARE) scheme for doctors, the voting membership of the BMA in relation to all forms of industrial action. "
Speakers argued for that, if the government 's changes went through, doctors would have to work longer, do more of their income and receive fewer benefits. Dr Jan Wise, a psychiatrist, who proposed the motion said, "must be available at this moment all options" to exert pressure on the government to change its stance.
Dr Andrew Dearden, the chairman of the BMA's pensions committee, warned ministers that "there is a great deal of anger and fear among doctors and medical students" over the plans, adding: "we will use every means at our disposal to fight these changes and to fight for our pensions".
The reform of the NHS pension scheme was unnecessary, because it was superseded only in 2008 and provided a ? 2 billion surplus every year - money that the Treasury can borrow - Dearden added.
Speakers against the motion noted that industrial action could mean, doctors lost the confidence of patients and the public.
My impression is that the disputes are strongly supported, and the real sense of anger that is felt so strongly across all public services is coming across loud and clear today. Given the barrage of propaganda against the union position, I think the fact that [support] is about half and half is not a bad position.
Inside Housing is reporting a picket line outside the Department for Communities and Local Government.
says no independent schools are likely to close.
reports. The education secretary used the word "disappointed" three times to express his feelings towards those taking action:
I have \ disappointed 'm the man decided to go on strike today. We want to ensure that all public sector has in the ordinary pensions.
Children actually lose as a result of today 's strike, and in particular parents were a lot of inconvenience as a result of the strike.
Talks have not go a long way to go yet. The largest union [Unison] isn 't go on strike today. It seems to me a little disappointing that some people have decided to go on strike.
Gove is at his child's school (he has two children) as a parent today – putting into practice his plea earlier in the week for parents to help keep their schools open.
Denis Campbell
Manc judges have written the defendant not show up when they have a hearing today. Happy times. Besides loads didn 't get the ... Message and turned anyway
We have a look at the.
H?l?ne Mulholland is at the heart of London with the demonstrators.
On the Times Educational Supplement's forum, teachers are asking each other what they hope to gain from striking today. One has this to say:
Pickets gathered outside "the Ministry" as the big Department of Work and Pensions offices in Longbenton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, are known, cheerfully set up for the day with flasks of tea, sandwiches and placards. Hoots were encouraged from passing drivers and the strikers hope for more public support at rallies in Newcastle, at 1pm at Grey's Monument, and Middlesbrough, at 12.15pm on Linthorpe Road.
The Driving Standards Agency expects to cancel testing in both regions, is now offered with the customer transfers.
On his blog policy Andrew Sparrow
_
Tina Hale, another union rep, said: "My members will be working longer and paying higher contributions for a smaller pension. They did not cause this crisis - the bankers did. Yet they are being made to pay for something that they had no control over. They should not be made to suffer when there is a workable alternative to the coalition's swinging cuts policy."
Hundreds, possibly thousands, are expected to attend a rally in the town later. There will be a brass band and Merthyr TUC will host speakers from unions, community leaders and Labour party activists.
Staff cuts are an underlying concern, in the midst of the publicity, the pension reform in recent weeks. Sue Smith, vice president of PCS Home Office Group, said, "many" UKBA staff of the strike had come today.
"They are absolutely outraged at the cuts that have already taken place in the border violence, including severance pay at Heathrow, where people have left and were not replaced \." She added: "Usually there are fewer staff and longer delays, passengers are always stressed out and screamed staff \."
Boris Johnson (left), mayor of London, was on Radio 4 's Today program this morning, where he renewed his call for changes in labor so should the unions a degree of voter participation in a strike to secure ballot valid for the industrial action.
He complained of "low" course for industrial action ballots by about one third of the voters, and said he would like to see legislation in areas where workers had a monopoly, such as public transport.
Sending love, best wishes and solidarity to all of you engaged in industrial action today. Let's send a loud and clear message to this government that we'll not lie back and allow them to pick away at everything that matters in this country. We are ready to fight!
Moutier Abraham, 42, who flew in on packed BA flight from Cape Town, said he endured much worse queues when he visited London two months ago. "We came here two months and we were standing in queues for a really long time today it was much faster \ .." He added: ".. In South Africa our strikes are more efficient, you would still be there" \
Were BAA, Heathrow 's owners said that all passport control queues within government targets, although some non-EU passengers at the terminal three, the home of Qantas and Singapore Airlines have had to wait as long as 45 minutes - the Government mandated limit. When T5 is the longest wait time of 25 minutes. "At the moment it is good. There is no significant queues, no more than you expect in a normal peak times," said a spokesman for BAA, added appear to have more reported UKBA staff to work as expected. UKBA and BAA were concerned that the closure of schools participating would have taken because the parents could be forced to stay home for child care.
Heathrow itself is operating normally, with nine out of ten flights arriving and departing on time.
Jessica Shepherd
The senior civil service as soon as the government 's Rolls-Royce purring taken for a joy-ride through the major professions
What is the difference between an Athens bus driver and the chairman of the British Medical Association? The answer is not much. Right now they are both threatening to do nasty things with other people in the defense of their wallets. They do not say so, of course, but we can spade a spade. No one is as determined as in the search to earn money by working.
Voted a former Lord Chancellor, Lord Havers, he said only once against his party. It was on a matter so serious, so immoral, so damaging to the national interest that he "\ no option." This issue was the attempt of the Thatcher government, the lawyers 'monopoly in the high court. As a lawyer, he shuddered at the narrow end so terrible a wedge. Could government scandals, inequities and incompetence could come and go, without batting an eyelash his rule, but a reform that sully the charges of the bar, was a moral issue. He fought, and succeeded.
We all owe loyalty to our profession and all professions are conspiracies against the laity. But in an era of cutbacks George Bernard Shaw 's maxim takes a peculiar ferocity. This week, Liam Fox showed a rare fit of ministerial pique and banned the service chiefs from the inner sanctum of the defense priorities. Generals, admirals and air vice-marshals - the largest party fraud on taxpayers in the modern era (defense budget) - are excluded from the new Defence Board. They boasted they could pacify Helmand and to overthrow Gaddafi. Now Fox has finally called their bluff. For him and his fellow defense chiefs are an expensive bunch of professional opportunity.
Other professions are also on the warpath, with more success. NHS consultants have been fighting against the threat of competition loosening their grip at the hospitals, especially by private specialist clinics. "The protection of NHS" is the code to pay for protection. Family doctors are "considering strike" in defense of their final salary pensions. On Thursday, teachers are striking in the same matter, with head teachers threatened to participate in the fall. None of this has to do with the public interest, with only money, public money.
David Cameron came to office on a cloud of goodwill. Officials busied themselves with the coalition agreement. The cuts programme was clearly set out and given strong political leadership. "At long last, I get up in the morning knowing exactly what I have to do," reported one senior civil servant.
Back to Paul White who brings us news of Weezer's love for the USA team and Andrew Shillito who points out Ash's Kung Fu features a famous kick by Eric Cantona.
"To help settle a discussion with some friends," asks Alex Woolhouse, "could you answer whether a manager has ever left his role to become an assistant at another club? There are rumours that Colin Calderwood is to leave Hibernian to become Steve McClaren's assistant at Nottingham Forest. Also, has a manager ever returned to a club he was fired from to become an assistant?
"In researching the 1965-1966 season saw Everton, I know that they played Sheffield United in the league in games two and four so their home and away games had met each other before the end of August," Notes Conan Jal. "Was this a freak occurrence or a joint holder rarity?"
John Chapman has this answer for you, Conan: "For many years, at home and once away midweek lights planned for the first and second week of the season, and they would occur sometimes both in August, depending on the time of the season started.
"In 1947, Arsenal played Charlton in the first two Wednesdays of the season, 27 August and 3 September, but the season only began on August 23. The 1949-1950 season began on August 20, so Arsenal 's two games were both v Chelsea in August. The earliest (I can find), the two clubs played their second lamp is 19 August 1969, when Arsenal played Leeds for the second time the 1969-1970 season began on August 9 \. "
It was the same for all First Division clubs that year, Conan. Liverpool fulfilled their league fixtures against Manchester City on 20 August, Everton and Manchester United played for a second time on 19 August, ditto Tottenham and Burnley; Wolves and Southampton did it a day later as did Newcastle and Sheffield Wednesday.
"Sepahan Novin are the reserve team of Sepahan FC. Sepahan Novin actually wanted to participate in the Persian Gulf Cup the next season but this was rejected by the Iranian football federation. The IFF ruled that both clubs are part of the same organisation.
There are a fair few, John, arguably the most famous of which was given to a regular guest of the Knowledge pages: one Paul Gascoigne. While playing for Rangers in the 7-0 rout of Hibernian in December, 1995, Gazza was jogging back towards the halfway line at a goal-kick. Spotting that rookie referee Dougie Smith had dropped his yellow card, Gascoigne picked it up, before cheekily waving it at the official – who waved it right back in his face. The booking took the jovial Geordie over the disciplinary maximum points, earning him a two-match ban. As former Scottish referee David Syme said: "If it had happened to me, I'd have p***** myself laughing, patted him on the backside and told him to run along."
Another to fall foul of a humourless official was Crystal Palace midfielder Joonas Kolkka last season. During the 3-2 defeat at Liverpool, the Finn grew tired of what he perceived to be Milan Baros's propensity for going down with a bout of play-acting. After one such incident, he attempted to make his point by theatrically throwing himself to the floor in front of referee Phil Dowd. End result: Kolkka booked and Baros scoring from the resultant free-kick.
"With Roberto Carlos now turning out for Russian Premier League outfit Anzhi Makhachkala (founded 1991), it got me wondering whether any other high-profile professional footballers have played for clubs that didn't exist when they began their professional careers (Roberto Carlos made his debut in 1990)?" asks Alex Tucker.
More on a musical bent from Brian Buckley: "Following on from both the football-inspired band names and football-inspired album covers, can we complete the circle and ask for footballers mentioned in songs? And yes, this is a thinly veiled attempt to shoehorn Los Campesinos' line from All Your Kayfabe Friends: 'You asked if I'd be anyone from history, fact or fiction, dead or alive. I said I'd be Tony Cascarino circa 1995' into the Knowledge.
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I'm pretty sure that it's not going to persuade the unions to call off the strikes planned for Thursday. But that was never really the point. This is about winning the battle for public opinion, and in that regard Cameron's messages are very clear
A question by James Landale of the BBC: When the Clock change course on pension reforms, as he NHS?
No, says Cameron. Britain 's deficit to be addressed. He believes it is tackled in a fair manner. He says:
It 's not to undermine public sector pensions, it' s about good public sector pensions affordable right into the future.
No one should doubt the absolute commitment we have with this topic quite a bit of public sector workers and taxpayers.
Any reasonable person would say this is a sensible way to go about reforming the public sector pensions.
The PM is now taking questions, but these won't necessarily be about pensions. So there you have it: the pension reforms are necessary, fair and right for taxpayers and public servants. Do you agree?
So to those considering strike action, at a time when discussions are ongoing, I would say to you: these strikes are wrong – for you, for the people you serve, for the good of the country.
That's because, under a final salary scheme, it's the people who reach very high salaries at the end of their careers who benefit the most.
This is not about saving money. It's about doing what's right and fair.
But he decries "scare stories" about public workers losing out.
The PM has set out three key messages to clear up some "misconceptions":
I will tell you who need to know three things, the people.
One - reform is essential.
Two - our proposals are fair to the taxpayers.
Three - our suggestions are in the public sector employees fairly.
aren 't Walk out? Conservative Home Blog is this piece by Martin Parsons, the teacher and union member ATL seems to be. Here 's an excerpt:
"I joined ATL specifically because it is a union that was not politicized and was not to strike over pay. When I was working abroad a few years ago and came back ATL I was shocked to learn that the political neutrality that such a mark had had gone out the window. "
Anyone persuaded?
Andy Burnham, Labour 's shadow education secretary, has submitted a parliamentary question to the strike, says my colleague Jessica Shepherd me. He asks the Government this afternoon, what they do to the strike, what will be the effects and what advice they give parents avert.
He added:
The problem I have with Voice's position is that (I think) a failure to fight this kind of attack on teacher's pay and conditions is far more damaging to the profession as a whole than the reputational damage caused by striking. The cost of your reputation is the future of your profession, which kind of renders the value of your reputation worthless.
bombaysapphire responded:
Here's a lunchtime round-up:
• All eyes are on David Cameron 's speech to the Local Government Association this afternoon: he' s are expected to \ accept "non-confrontational" line, arguing that public pension reform is necessary and reasonable. But how long will the Tory right, the spoiling for a fight, is to accept this approach? We 'll be following the speech live at 3.30pm.
• Airports are likely to be difficult as a result of Thursday 's industrial action by immigration officials to be disturbed. Courts and police stations are also likely to be affected.
• The mother has claimed in the Daily Telegraph this morning that it 'bullying "rejected headmaster in the closure of schools on Thursday. NUT head Christine Blower said: "We are not bullying anybody, we give the normal rates, we give each member, we would not have forced on someone \ ..."
Courts will also be disrupted, with sitting cancelled or delayed, and there will be backlogs in police station cells.
On the issue of relevant data which we discussed before, Martin Freedman from ATL adds:
A paragraph highlighting the NUT advice with a web link was also included in a publication sent to all schools.
She said the guidance is broadly similar to the one made available by the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) to its members. The NAHT, which represents the bulk of heads in the country, is currently ballotting members for strike action over pensions.
The government has yet to undertake a valuation of the scheme which was due in 2010 so we simply don't know the financial health of the scheme
If we have this information, we can take forward discussions.
hrwaldram adds:
Some readers have the education of the impact on education and the children 'will miss out on a day of school - some believe it' s only one day and just before the end of exams / holidays anyway, so it 's not really a big loss - others argue it will have a long-term impact and influence education as a whole. What are your views and @ @ MartinFreedmanATL PhilipParkinVoice?
philipparkinvoice answers:
Obviously the strike is both a short-and long-term effects have \ on children's education. In the short term, one could argue that one day will be removed from the school have little impact. In the longer term is what tells the children about how we sort out our differences as members of a civilized society. Vote believes in the power of argument and the argument of force. We believe that to try to get the professional standing of teachers by the ineffective use of industrial muscle, what they want is decreased.
MartinFreedmanATL also comments:
Join the debate here.
He works four days a week and looks after his three children one day a week. He earns ?29,856 gross per year and says he stands to lose ?135,346 over the course of a 25-year retirement. Sixth-form college teachers were given an 0.75% pay rise this year and are being threatened with a pay freeze next year.
The strike action on Thursday involves three education unions in sectors with twice as many women as men and each with a female leader. They are professional and articulate middle class women. ATL's Mary Bousted is no Arthur Scargill. Put her in front of a TV camera and she'll speak directly to millions of other middle class women in a reasonable but determined manner.
You may have seen Melanie Phillips' comment piece in yesterday's Daily Mail which claims that "the harm the striking teachers will cause children by disrupting their education is, of course, not acknowledged". My colleague Jessica Shepherd points out that in fact, it is near the end of term and year 11 and year 13 will have finished their GCSE and A-level exams, while year 12 may well be on work experience away from school. For many schools, now is the ideal time to strike and cause a minimum amount of disruption.
Essendon Primary School in Hertfordshire, three of the four teachers on strike Thursday. It is written for parents, explaining that only the reception and nursery classes will be held on Thursday.
Essendon 's head Rod Woodhouse , Said: "A few parents have responded" well done 'to the teachers say strike, except that it hasn' t much reaction, "he said \." This is unprecedented - we have never been on strike I have absolute sympathy for the teachers who are striking ..
"We will be paying more and getting less of our pensions."
If we can keep classrooms open it will be an historic victory against Neanderthal union militancy.
Welcome to
• Throughout the day we'll be debating and analysing some of the key strikes issues: who is winning the war for public opinion, ministers or unions? Strike breaking - is it desirable or even legal that parents should stand in for striking teachers on Thursday? Should teachers and civil servants be threatened, as reported, with disciplinary action over the strikes.
Bruno looked the same as he did when I first met him, many years before, in the hotel lobby of the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. He was a cameraman for the main French channel, France 2, and I worked for a major British newspaper. We were easily impressed, very green, and young enough to have real passion for what we believed in. I believed then, as I sometimes do now, that occasionally what you write or photograph or film can reach someone somewhere, and make some kind of difference. But I did it with more fire in those days.
Dr Anthony Feinstein
While I was actually there, I felt nothing. I never talked about what happened in those places, but I wrote about them. I disagreed that reporters suffered from trauma; after all, I argued, we were the ones who got out. It was the people we left behind that suffered, that died. I did not suffer the syndromes, I did not have the shakes. I did not have psychotic tendencies. I was not an alcoholic or drug addict who needed to blot out memories. I was, I thought, perfectly fine and functioning.
I began to hide cash around the house and took copies of our passports. I made lists of what I would grab if we had to flee, and I made Bruno make an exit plan if we had to leave Paris in an instant. Where would we meet? How would we get out? Bruno finally said, "Maybe you should talk to someone about this?"
I knew I had to fight it. I desperately wanted to feel at home, at ease, and I wanted to try to make this city – where everyone buzzed around so quickly and knocked into you with their skinny elbows – my home.
But I often feel as if I was in exile. One day I realized that the war with all its dangers, seemed perfectly normal to me.
My real life, my history with Bruno was behind closed doors in some conflict areas, safe from everything else, where we have our own history. It was what I understood about him best of all: falling in love in chaos.
The real life with all its sharp edges, was terribly difficult.
"Where do you think you would die? Where the fear was the greatest?" The Canadian psychiatrist, looked at me like a flea under a microscope. This was a while ago, and we had signs of post traumatic stress disorder meeting. We were in London, I had some lying on a couch, where close to Hyde Park, a few years before my son came into the world.
I told him about the cattle market in Abidjan, on 19 September 2002. I had changed my clothes in two days and they were stained with dirt and sweat. A government soldier stood a foot away from me out with an automatic gun at my heart. It was in the first days of the coup.
There was an African man near my foot, groaning in pain, bullet wounds in his legs. A moment before, I'd squatted in the dirt and tried to drag him into my taxi. I wanted to get him to a hospital. The soldier said the man on the ground was a rebel, and I knew if I left him behind, he would kill him.
"This is Africa," he said. "Are you crazy?" He dragged me back to the car, silently fuming. And I was angry too; because I knew they were going to kill that man, because I had not been able to do anything, and because it was so easy and so senseless, the way people's lives were extinguished as if they meant nothing at all.
"I wanted to tell you," she said, "that I am here with your husband and I am keeping him here under orders for several weeks." She said it was her belief that he was exhausted and suicidal.
I went to see my husband in hospital. He was on the bed. When he had grown so thin? When he saw me, his eyes did not quite register his wife. He was on Thorazine or something so powerful that when I looked at him it was not his eyes drugged and it was not his mouth or hands. He was somebody else.
He came home, that within a few weeks, but he was never really the same again, nor was our household. It was not that broken something, but contain the bubble of joy, the small unit in which we exist, was divided into two halves. The ghosts of the past, we were hunting. And she had managed to catch him.
"Inside, I feel like ash," said my husband
On the night Bruno did not sleep. Either he stayed awake at his computer playing a war game called Age of Empires – "Why is it that I only like films that are either completely violent or for children?" he asked me one night – or sat on the sofa smoking and watching television.
"Do you think," I said to Bruno one night, "that this stuff really fucked us up for good?"
"What stuff?"
He wove in and out of cars.
He saw a few people apart from Luca, he was the most wonderful and loving father and me. But when he spoke it was to speak at AA. His life was on the work that he attend meetings within the walls of the Church on the Quai d 'Orsay has centered.
I knew, in a sense, we would never be free of each other.
Even if I were a different life, a healthy, chose one, not by war or disease or disorder, or even Paris was spoiled, I always in my life: He was in Sarajevo, swore he would never lose me. And it was our son. But we were separated. We could no longer live together, not as a couple. He had changed and so had I.
One day on the road keeps Luca 's hand, I realized how to tell if the sun through a thick woolly cloud, that I no longer afraid. Maybe it was because my son was older, and I knew he would not keep his fingers in electrical outlets, or that I could tell him to be careful of cars, and not to go with stran-gers, but suddenly the metallic fear that seemed to me everywhere since his birth had disappeared. In its place was a lightness, a joy and a habitable place where I did without thinking about the backyard wars in the Balkans or Africa, where neighbors are neighbors with machetes or guns could rise. I was like everyone else. At a party I met a psychiatrist who I know can occur, such as trauma said - something happened in your past lies dormant, and then is activated by an event. Said Bruno 's trauma came with the wars, because something must be done with it sooner, unhealed wound.
But on the 41st day, life begins again. I decided that I had cried and mourned enough, that the funeral was over.
There was this child. What we had given could never be taken away.
On Wednesday Cameron got his desired reward. "Right at last," thundered the Daily Mail, hailing the prime minister's "new sense of direction". The Sun cried, "Cameron shows welcome steel," and claimed credit for stopping the "soft justice secretary", otherwise "Crackers Ken, the paedophile's pal". The Daily Telegraph welcomed "Humiliation for Clarke," as Cameron was "forced to get a grip on the government's agenda." Thus was the fatted calf prepared for the repentant hoodie-hugger.
To make matters worse, Cameron suddenly proved sensitive to the tabloid press, the hysteria over crime series with celebrity infidelity and banker-bashing as stock trading. For decades all attempts by the courts, juries, sentencing, drug laws, rehabilitation or reform the treatment of women has a vertical cliff face of the tabloid reaction. Around the Sun, the Daily Mail and Daily Express are all in all, judge and justice minister wimps whose dangerous tendency to liberalism can be limited only by media vigilance, in strong alliance with the police and prison unions and victims 'rights groups. Their policy is simple: Bang 'em up forever.
Most people are naturally paranoid about crime, especially when they fed on a daily diet of horror. Three-quarters of the nation thinks crime is rising when it falls. Men are twice as "concerned" plays on crime at the national level than on crime in their area, suggesting the media have an important role in creating misunderstanding. But then most people think taxes are too high, the immigration too simple and the cost of their chosen public service too low. Sensible politicians put those views in context, but to crimes that they capitulate.
Money is spent fighting crime as any aspect of security. There is never enough, and most will be wasted, but nobody knows how much is wasted and where. The only way to measure, advances to the test of any policy towards improvement. Clarke 's message was radical - that too much money goes to prison for many non-violent offenders and not enough attention is paid to cutting reoffending. This is not a question of "Sending messages". Every visitor to British prisons with an ounce of humanity know that they have no place in a civilized society. If they had a deterrent effect, there would be no recidivism. You just ruined lives and promote crime.
As long as politicians appeal to media-fed paranoia instead of publishing facts calmly, and as long as they delegate policy to the worst openings of the press, will be money wasted. Families are destroyed will increase drug and criminal political atrophy. Cameron can scream "advice is good," but the crushing of Clarke was not consultation, it was panic. Be drawn, there is only one lesson from this sad story. Those who live by the tabloid press, die by them.
• Central St Martins is about to leave arty Soho and the Guardian 's neighbors here in a rather less adorable Kings Cross. Time to think about what the move and \ look back at the famous art school 's greatest successes. Love the quote by Phoebe Philo, the now-famous designer of French fashion house Celine:
"I just wanted a pair of pants that my ass look good, but as a pair, that the Holocaust or to do something responsible."
• David Cameron promises action on flood of errors in GCSE and A-level examination papers, said Ofqual the "toughest action" will be taken to ensure that no more mistakes and a request to start as soon as exams are over . The audit committee must brace themselves for a flood of complaints and challenges, once the results are announced. A physics Oxbridge candidate who has struggled with a faulty paper Vasagar Jeevan said he 'll definitely call if he doesn' t get an A *.
• Our colleagues in politics are invited Guardian \ Reader ongoing 's review of the policy to participate. Tom Clark 's blog is the place to let Labour know what you think should be their attitude to education.
• Activists have called on Michael Gove, the problem of violence against girls meet in the schools. The education minister should inform all schools that the prevention of such violence is a "national priority", says the End Violence Against Women Coalition.
"More than 400 school leavers plan to desert the British university system and head for Maastricht University in the Netherlands this autumn - 10 times the number who did last year."
Insight into Journalism: investigative and features journalism
text:
The universities will compete in the market, if they withdraw from the competition and meaningful to stakeholders. The Guardian 's half-day seminar in cooperation with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education to explore what it takes to develop and maintain a distinctive brand that students, staff and supporters continues. Participants will hear from experts, to examine case studies and have the opportunity to network with colleagues.
28th June, London.
Make the most of media opportunities to \ your school's profile to raise
Whether it 's sharing the good news or dealing with a crisis that must be principals and school leadership teams will be able to handle the media in all its forms. This one day seminar in cooperation with the SEAM is important for new and aspiring heads and established principals who wish to update their knowledge. It includes a session on social media.
September 20, London.
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Relations between unions and government have suddenly soured. As ministers warn that public sector staff can no longer enjoy the 'perks' of the past, union leaders promise confrontation. On the south coast the battle has begun
After a week in which unions at national level have threatened a rolling programme of industrial action over threats to their pensions and jobs, Southampton is leading the way in a battle of public sector workers against Tory rule.
There were some concessions to lower earners. Those earning less than ?15,000 would not pay more in contributions and those with salaries of between ?15,000 and ?18,000 would have their increases capped at 1.5%. But for some on middle and higher salaries the rises could be 5% of salary. This would mean ?1,500 in extra pension contributions for someone on ?30,000 a year.
This weekendhe went further: "I want to see this resolved by negotiation, but if the government are determined to push through a huge attack on people's pension entitlement, they are not prepared to negotiate in a sensible, reasonable, fair-minded way, then the unions will have no option open to them other than to try to defend their members through industrial action."
The consequences of a sharp rise in opt-outs are potentially catastrophic for the funding of schemes in the short and medium term. In the long term those who have opted out are left more dependent on state benefits in retirement, meaning an additional drain on resources. Eaton warned chancellor George Osborne in February that an average increase of three percentage points in contributions at a time of pay freezes and rising inflation was "likely to lead to a significant worsening in industrial relations". Her warning, it seems, was not heeded.
In Southampton, a straw poll of 20 shoppers had three-quarters backing the binmen. Peter Benson, 38 who used to be a refuse collector but now works for Mind, the mental health charity, said: "They are punishing the weak, the less well-paid." Bob Mallon, a pensioner born in the city, said that targeting those earning under ?20,000 was symptomatic of Britain's widening wealth disparity: "The rich are getting richer, the poorer are getting left behind. It's like we are heading back to Victorian times."
"The people that we represent are facing redundancy, a two-year pay freeze, while inflation is 5% and gas prices are going up 20%, and they are desperately worried about privatisation of the services they have committed their working lives to," he said
this morning. It said Libyan government denied that Gaddafi 's forces shot down an Apache helicopter (12.16). David Cameron has a claim from one of his military leaders who could jeopardize the future of Libya campaign missions RAF rejected.
Reuters has more on Jordan 's Information Minister Taher Adwan, which met today in protest against proposals to limit freedom of expression.
"We were working on democratic laws, and I was involved in the drafting of new laws that restrict freedom of expression surprised and lowers the ceiling of freedom of the press," Taher Adwan told Reuters.
Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit 's government had a new session of Parliament, sent on Wednesday, changes tightening penalties for libel and defamation begins.
Speaking at press conference Bracken repeated Nato's claim that a compound attacked on Monday was a legitimate target. Libyan officials said at least 15 civilians were killed in the attack.
Libya claimed its forces had downed an Apache helicopter (see 10.24am). Nato denied this, but it has just announced that a helicopter drone has gone down over Libya, according to a Twitter update from Reuters:
Syria
@ BBCWORLD Tweets:
Jordan's Information Minister Taher Adwan # ruled by laws, he says there 'for the freedom of expression \ restrictive "- AFP # Jo
AFP 's offices were targeted pro-government supporters last week after he reported details of an attack on the King Abdullah' s motorcade. The government denied the reports.
Libya
@RAGreeneCNN:
Syria's
An editorial in Lebanon's Daily Star said:
The reforms were promised, but in a manner so free to make such a promise of specificity seem meaningless. The world has heard before this two months ago in fact.
Confidence in Assad has fallen so low that it is now almost mandatory to verify the authenticity of his desire to make good on vows to reform question.
Turkish politicians and officials were unimpressed, according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet.
Diplomats said many of the reforms, Assad promised in line with what Ankara had already proposed to Damascus, but added that Assad 's accusation that opposition groups were with foreign powers, plotting, and the vagueness of his reform plan, were negative.
"Assad is working with these groups, so his description of the opposition is not true," a diplomatic source speaking on condition of anonymity to the Hurriyet Daily News on Monday. "This is not a declaration that a climate of confidence between rival groups could build" ...
In the meantime, President Abdullah Gul 's special adviser Er?at H?rm?zl? has controversy after consultation with Dubai-based news channel al-Arabiya caused said, has "Al-Assad called for less than a week to start to implement long-promised political reforms Syrian protesters against foreign intervention begins. "
This is the most serious and perhaps most critical crisis in four decades that the Assad family's reign has been entrenched in – and much more than a fatherly speech will be needed to put a stop to it.
Much of Assad's speech could easily have been made by Ben Ali, Mubarak or Gaddafi, writes the Guardian's diplomatic editor Julian Borger.
The Roberts court decision to block the class action lawsuit for sex discrimination effectively defines Walmart as 'too big to sue'
Let's get this right: the world's biggest boss, supported by companies as diverse as Altria, Bank of America, Microsoft and General Electric and backed up by the godfather of big business (the US Chamber of Commerce) has persuaded the US supreme court that thousands of women workers can't possibly share enough of an interest to constitute a class?
Dividing 5-4, in Dukes v Walmart, the supreme court on Monday dismissed the plaintiffs' claim that companywide policy gave local managers too much discretion in pay and promotion decisions, leaving Walmart employees at thousands of Walmart and Sam's Club stores vulnerable to gender stereotypes. (The company changed the format of its name since the case was filed.) The plaintiffs "provide no convincing proof of a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority.
in every job classification in every region
The Roberts court has already been hostile to just about every consumer class action. Going forward, the impact of Monday's decision goes well beyond the 1.6 million workers in the Walmart case. "It means it's going to be much harder to bring class action suits against big companies," says Lawrence.
To argue this case, you would probably need more than just behavioural evidence; you might need to understand some of the mechanisms which produced the trillion-dollar bad decision-making that led to what happened in 2008. In recent years, and particularly since the crash, a new science of such decision-making – neuroeconomics – has become fashionable in universities and beyond. It proposes the idea that you will create a better understanding of how people make economic choices if you bring to bear advances in neurobiology and brain chemistry and behavioural psychology alongside traditional economic maths models. Not surprisingly, neuroeconomics has plenty to say about the question of whether decision-making, in high-pressure situations, divides on gender lines.
The problem is that most scenarios will be used to investigate this gap artificially. It's one thing to someone installing an MRI scanner and told him that a million pounds for the decision rests in a game, it's another when that person is actually one million pounds to lose. Only one study, as far as I could learn, had access to brain chemistry, neurobiology, the young men are actually working on the trading floor. But the results it produced were still surprising.
The study was led by a pair of Cambridge researcher. One, Joe Herbert, professor of endocrinology, and the other, John Coates, a researcher in neuroscience and finance. Herbert, a specialist on the effects of hormones on depression, was fascinated to implement some of his theories on the role of chemicals on the decision-making in practice. The strange thing about banks, he said to me, "was that they all know about computers and systems and markets, but they know almost nothing about the man-machine sitting in the chair in front of screens to make decisions. Nothing. We wanted to correct the only slightly. "
It was Coates, though, who made the experiment possible. Having met Herbert at his lab in Cambridge, I met Coates in a pub in west London. He had a special advantage in gaining access to bond traders' brains, he explained: he used to possess one himself. Sharp-eyed and fit-looking, Coates retains the intensity of a man who used to run a trading desk on Wall Street during the dotcom bubble. He started off at Goldman Sachs and went on to Deutsche Bank. After some years trading, and making a lot of money out of a lot of money, he became increasingly fascinated by the way, during the dotcom years, the traders he worked alongside radically changed behaviour. They became, he says, "euphoric and delusional. They were taking far more risks, and were putting up trades with terrible risk-reward profiles". The dotcom was fun, in a way, he suggests; it was like the roaring 20s. "But I don't think anyone looks back on the housing bubble and laughs."
Coates was a relatively cautious traders themselves, but there were times when he felt this increase was the euphoria: "When I had what a lot of money to me, I felt incredibly strong," he recalls. '. T help, Michael Lewis spoke of' \ swaggering "You are to carry yourself like a rooster, and \ can be Big Swinging Dicks ', spoke about Tom Wolfe' Masters of the Universe '- they were right a dealer . acts exactly on a winning series so \. "
The second thing that Coates noticed was even more revelatory to him. "I noticed that women did not buy into the dotcom bubble at all," he says. "You couldn't find one who did, hardly. And that seemed like a pretty cool fact to me."
With this cool fact in mind, Coates began splitting his time between his trading desk and the Rockefeller University in Manhattan, which is perhaps \ the world's leading institute for the study of chemicals in the brain. There he became interested steroids, in particular so-called "the winner effect". This happens when two males get a competitive and their testosterone levels, increases muscle mass and the ability of blood to give to transport oxygen. It increases their risk appetite. Much of this testosterone remains in the system, the winner of a competition while the loser 's testosterone melts quickly, in evolutionary terms, the loser moves into the forest, to lick his wounds. In the next round of competition, but the winner already has a high level of testosterone, he starts with an advantage, and this continues to reinforce itself.
"Steroids," says Coates, "as most chemicals show in your body, what an inverted U-shaped curve called." This means that if you have a low lack you have vitality, and do very bad mental and physical tasks. But since the values ??you get sharper and more focused, until you reach an optimum. Most importantly: \ win "If you, your testosterone level goes past that peak and sliding on the other hand, you start doing stupid things that happen in the animals, they go into the open too much ... take too many fights you neglect parenting duties and they patrol areas that are too large "In short, they like to behave dealers on a roll ... it cocky.
To most experienced, male, investment bankers, of course, this sounds like fighting talk. An old friend of mine, who traded his Cambridge English degree for an extremely lucrative life as a bond dealer, offered this, when I presented Coates's evidence to him. "It would be nice to think that having more female traders on the floor would make for less volatility," he said, "but that's wishful thinking. Financial markets are now global, so while we in the west might decide not to chase trends or react instinctively to breaking news because there are mature mothering types in boardrooms and sitting on risk committees, the rest of the world will, and our banks would lose out." And that's not all. "Many of the women I know who have managed money or have put capital at risk for banks have tended to be even more aggressive with risk than their male counterparts, as if perhaps to compensate for their supposed diffidence. Fighting their way through a male-dominated environment to a position in which they can invest/punt/ risk-manage, many women develop an ultra-masculine persona so as to be thought of as ballsy…"
The country that has attempted most radically to change this balance is Norway, where a Conservative minister imposed a quota of 40% female directors in every boardroom. Most of the data suggests the initiative has been a great success, both culturally and commercially (though some, male, commentators argue that the turnaround is better explained by the spike in oil prices).
? If groups of young men are shown pornographic pictures of women and then asked to choose between safe and risky investments, compared with men shown non-pornographic pictures they choose far riskier portfolios.
England were going to the semifinals, and two dramatic late goals by the Czechs ended their tournament
Evening all. Stuart Pearce has spent the last few hours trying to memorizing the St. Crispin 's Day Speech watched Any Given Sunday and Forgotten everything he learned at Manchester City Remember his penalty against Spain at Euro 96 in preparation for tonight 's team-talk. It 's crunch time, everything is fine. England were pretty bleak in the first two games - so what 's new? - And have to beat to reach the Czech Republic in the semifinals. It 's not going to be easy. In fact, it could well be ugly. The Czechs are barely roll over. They beat the Ukraine, which comfortably held England to a 0-0, but lost to Spain, you must defeat in order to prevent progress. Passion, pride, honor: you can set the house on England possesses all these qualities. Whether you 'll keep the ability me awake for the next few hours remains to be seen.
England couldn't cope with a summer in Germany five years ago; they might as well not bother with this one. Give the place to someone else, like Scotland.
The teams are off. There are about 12 people in the stands. What else to do in Viborg on a Sunday evening though? Not much, apparently.
On this day: Apropos nothing, on this day in 1996, the Czech Republic drew 3-3 with Russia in the Euro 96 and Gianfranco Zola missed a penalty for Italy against Germany.
Someone in the England team has an unusually squeaky voice, judging by the singing of the anthem while.
Sturridge tries to clip a pass over the top for Sinclair but his radar's off, and Vaclik collects comfortably.
36 min: Jones allows himself to be bumped out of the way by Kozak as the pair go for a high ball forward. That's far too easy for Kozak. Kozak rolls away and scampers forward before lashing a shot well over the top from 25 yards out.
38 min: Walker curling a cross to the far post who heads Celustka behind a corner on the left. Sinclair and Jones takes it makes a nuisance of himself, cleared the ball at the top to bottom, but with some difficulty, it 's.
40 min: Henderson needs to be taken off at half time. As in the previous two games, he is a little stinker. Under no pressure in the Czech Republic 's \ half, he turned around and knocked a pass behind Smalling and play almost by Kozak. He 's already learning from Steven Gerrard then.
England get us going again. If they don't score, they're out. I had a charming email from a Mr. David Pascoe at half time. It involved use of the Bad Word. He's a bit sensitive because Liverpool spent TWENTY MILLION POUNDS on Jordan Henderson and he doesn't want us to mention that Jordan Henderson cost TWENTY MILLION POUNDS. To start the second half, Jordan "?20m" Henderson backheels the ball to Dockal. You can't put a price on that.
Muamba nearly gets hustled off the ball by Moravek, who would have been clean through on goal. Muamba does enough to outmuscle Moravek though. He was living dangerously there.
56 min:
England crowd a bit. It 's not very convincing to be honest. They just seem to hope that they 'll get a windfall in the pits.
59 min: On the right side Sturridge plays a pass into the area for Cleverley 's. He 's well marked and with his back to goal, but a nice turn creates room for the shot, but he' s leaning back, when they meet, and the ball floats harmlessly over the top.
60 min: "Let \ s inability 's the hilariousness put ? 20m of Mr.' in this tournament for a second aside," says Phill Wainwright. "How much is Modric worth in comparison?" Forget that, how much Clock I
From the right, Kovarik curls a teasing free-kick into the six-yard box. For a moment, it looks like it might cause England a spot of bother, but it's headed clear. There's not much wrong with England's defending.
73 min:
80 min:
Two changes for the Czech Republic: Pekhart Chramosta come on and for Kozak and Moravek.
85 min: Jones stems back a distance equal to the Czechs, but Pekhart 's up to Chramosta Pass is deleted from the beautiful Smalling.
88 min: Chramosta send a tame header from a cross from Dockal. The Czechs, remember to pick up points now. Danny Rose is for Scott Sinclair.
Anna Karenina on the beach, The Corrections in Patagonia, Death in Venice overlooking the Lido ... Writers recall their memorable holiday reads - what are yours?
Geoff Dyer
I bought Theodor Adorno 's Minima Moraliain June 1986 by Compendium in Camden, London (Mecca, then the theory-hungry free radicals) and read it, with interruptions during the summer in Brixton. Given the diversity of this "Reflections on Damaged Life" - put together in the molten core of the 20th Century - it 's not surprising that what I remember is less the specific content of the book as the experience of reading it, the current coursing through the pages. Dialectical thinking - 'an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means, but because it must use these means, it is at every moment in danger of acquiring a compelling character \. " - If taken to extremes, that aesthetics (the first section is "For Marcel Proust ') as well as cerebral. Needless to say, I was able to 'understand t, all of it; still can' \ t to be honest, but this passage really means, more than they did 25 years ago: "are slippers designed to be inserted without the help of the out of hand. They are monuments of hate to stoop to. "
Jennifer Egan
I read Donna Tartt 's The Secret History
A Dance to the Music of Time
, and my first acquaintance with one of the most wonderful books I've ever come across,
Anna Karenina
, and on the urging of the friend who had recommended that, I began
John Gray
I can 't remember exactly when or where I first read John Cowper Powys' s Wolf Solent from cover to cover. I remember the book with me on a summer trip along the California coast, about 30 years ago, and completely absorbed in it, while standing on a cliff north of San Francisco. Few places have the rest wild, coast, and yet I found myself to Powys 's protagonists back to the fields and hedgerows of the West Country - part of the world that I barely knew at the time. The imaginative intensity with which the Powys landscape in which he (the book he wrote while living in upstate New York) had almost wiped out once again presented the beauty of the place I come to been seen.
Powys came to his life as seen by a collector of memories. Like his character Solent, "he chased her like a mad botanist, as a crazed butterfly collector '. To preserve those that have been Powys / Solent pursued more like Proust 's distilled sensations, the moments of natural beauty and poetry of the human, consumed by the time - not any memories. The novel tells how Solent returns to his Dorset home, where he finds himself lost in a maze of family secrets and complex relationships. He has never gives out of the maze, but on the way he collected a cache of memories - torn leaves, rain-soaked roads, banked-up clouds, "casual little things" a substantial and durable than the external events of his life. Contained in a number of battered paperbacks, Powys \ ve done since this summer, 30-odd years' s brilliant to have many other almost-forgotten rides I \ lit ".
The Admirable Crichton
Andrew Motion
The Odyssey at Ithaca. Whenever I looked up from the side, I saw the ruins of Odysseus 's Palace (so called), the beach, where he finally landed, the empty cave, where his cult flourished once described the barren rocky hills in the poem - and also saw myth and reality staggering upset.
Joseph O 'Connor
When I was 17, my first girlfriend gave me a tattered copy of a novel she loved. I read it on vacation this summer in Connemara. The encounter with the first set of JD Salinger 's The Catcher in the Rye was like waking up in a new world. "If you really want to hear about it, is the first thing you 'll probably want to know where I was born and what my lousy childhood looked, and how my parents were occupied and all before me, and everything don David Copperfield kind of crap, but I 't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. "There was never occurred to me that someone with such a joy to write-causing fatigue. It was like hearing Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols for the first time
She felt Holden was talking with you - perhaps you alone - and that your answers were somehow a part of history. She even felt he was listening. That was something special as a friendship-fiction claim. I go to every three or four summers, the next thing in my life a pilgrimage, and whenever I do, I 'm reading a different novel, but as fresh and funny and oddly irritating as the book that was connected to the lights of my youth.
Jonathan Raban
Venice, the end of the summer of 1971. Not really, because the holiday was New Statesman asked me to fill in their regular film critic (John Coleman, the dehydration of some alcoholic clinic) at the film festival. My hotel room on the Lido was small and hot. He was filled with mosquitoes, if the window was open, and reeked of insecticide when it was closed. I've read Death in Venice For the first time, and the second and the third and fourth. The smell of Flit, or what ever it was turned into the disinfectant stench of the city in a cholera epidemic, as I said in the Von Aschenbach, guilty of the boy Tadzio enchants on. I neglected my movie-going tasks, in Thomas Mann 's Venice, a world so much alive that the real thing to be poor shadow seemed to be alive. Remember I can 't, a movie that I saw, but the book remains a touchstone. I wouldn 't read it in Venice, though, if I wanted to hide in my surroundings, more secure and to keep it for a wet Sunday afternoon in, say, Catford or Slough.
Ian Rankin
A few years back went, my wife and I holiday in Kenya. Her brother was working in Nairobi and arranged for a week "Safari" to us. No newspapers or laptop or cell phone signal, no TV or radio - we would be camping. I knew I needed a nice long book with me (as well as a torch) to take. I chose War and Peace. It had been sitting unread on my bookshelves a few years. I started reading it on the flight over and was soon engrossed. It was a random value of the book, but - as we lay in the tent in 30-degree heat, I would read the descriptions winter Miranda. It has become our virtual "air con". (The book was also useful for crushing insects Bitey.) 'T think it' I don \ s the largest that has ever written - there 's too much concentration on the "haves" and nothing about the disenfranchised. But it was a good choice of book for Kenya in the heat.
Will Self
When I was 18 I took a bus to Lisbon - They are used in order to do this again in the day. Magic Bus by a dusty parking lot next to Gloucester Road underground - I think it cost 25 pounds. I had an army surplus duffel bag, some hash hidden in a toothpaste tube - she took near the end of the tube with plyers, pushed into the dope, then rolled it up, as if it was used by half - and John Fowles 's The Magus . I 'd like Fowles' s other books ( The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Collector, and so on), although they do not exactly consider them as members of the literary bon ton - more, I think what today would be a \ are called "Guilty Pleasure '. Anyway, go out on the bus, for those of us was waaay uncomfortable - but Fowles has done its job, thwarted the bumps and lozenges. I can not forget 't that much about it except that they all have some young, romantic, sex-obsessed man, and as was his cruel and useless treatment of a beautiful girl - in the Father Ted sense – was punished by the eponymous Magus with a series of real-life psycho-dramas staged in the Cyclades. It was – if I remember rightly – one of those books with huge narrative pulsion, and I couldn't stop reading. I read to the Channel, I read on the ferry, I read south on the autoroute, I read through the Pyrenees, I read through Spain. I arrived in Lisbon and read all night in a fleapit hotel. I entrained for the south and read on the train. I arrived at the Algarve and walked along a cliff, reading. I got the toothpaste tube out, unrolled it, got out the hash, skinned up, lit up, and finished the book on a high that then plummeted. There I was: not in the Cyclades being punished for sexual amorality, but in Portugal being approached by a German hippy for a toke. A German hippy who then strummed "Stairway to Heaven" on his guitar and suggested I sing along.
Tom Stoppard
About 50 years ago, I have two books by Edmund Wilson on a solo trip to Spain by rail, bus and thumb. One of the books was Classics and advertising , A thick collection of book reviews. The other was Axel 's Castle , Long term papers on "the makers of modern literature". Wilson remains the best critics for me. I missed a lot of Spain on the way to Gibraltar, for hours on my bed and read instead of looking around. I 've forgotten all about my trip only ever bitten by bedbugs in Wilson and from Algeciras.
Colm T?ib?n
I have the book still. I wrote a date on the title page: July 1972. I got a summer job as a barman in the Grand Hotel in Tramore in County Waterford that summer, when I was 17. I was the worst barman who ever lived. My pints of Guinness were unholy. Even the vodkas I poured (and vodka was all the rage in Tramore than summer) had something wrong with them. I worked from six in the evening to two in the morning. I spent the fine days on the big long beach. My copy of The Essential Hemingway has colored pages with sea water. I've read The Sun Also Rises on that beach in Tramore and I read the great Hemingway short stories for the first time. It made me dream about going to Spain, but it also gave me something else – an idea of prose as something glamorous, smart and shaped, and the idea of character in fiction as something oddly mysterious, worthy of sympathy and admiration, but also elusive. And more than anything, the sheer pleasure of the sentences and their rhythms, and the amount of emotion living in what was not said, what was between the words and the sentences.
Rose Tremain
In 1967, the year I left university I spent most of the summer in an isolated house in Corsica, built over a deep, winding river. I used to spend hours with this river, reading, sunbathing and swimming and I wonder where my life was headed.
The book, which I was reading Patrick White 's Voss , The charts the journey of a German exile in the Australian Outback unmapped in the 1840s. Voss runs deeper than in the boundless wilderness, cause of any trouble this arid terrain to humans can pursue, he struggles to understand the nature of his sudden love for Laura Trevelyan, an orphaned young woman shunned by society for their stubborn wisdom. To increase even as Voss moved further and further away from Laura, with little hope of return, his dreams of "normal" domestic happiness and lightness.
This tension - between the solitary travel and the longing for love and companionship - that makes this book as a masterpiece. And in 1967, before I had written something worth publishing, but already hurting, but to be successful writers, I understand that these conflicting desires are the focus of most writers 'life and would lie at the heart of me.
Sarah Waters
My first adult trip was in 1987: my girlfriend and I had just finished our finals and wanted to celebrate with a budget trip to somewhere sunny. By chance we have for Dubrovnik - and it was a wonderful, unforgettable trip to Dubrovnik, there 's hot stone streets and blue sea that pop into my head whenever I hear the word "Summer". The book I have been an unforgettable experience, to: John Fowles 's The Magus . With its lively Greek island setting was an ideal holiday read, and at 21 I was just the perfect age for them, because it 'sa book about the terrible arrogance, but also the wonderful vulnerability of youth.
Re-reading the novel, recently I was struck by their essential craziness, and by his deep dubious sexual politics. But I was still taken and impressed: Fowles is a fabulous storyteller, and The Magus is brilliant twisty and the children, with some really creepy moments. It 's one of the few novels I' ve read that surprised me gasping for air. I 'd recommend it as an interesting read, for a holiday or for any time.
Compiled by Ginny Hooker.