In My Mind's Eye Page 18

  Great God! On one level we are seeing the entire balance of political power shifting day by day, as proud old nations give way to brilliantly ambitious newcomers, armed with new ideas and ambitions and revolutionary weapons. Don’t the tank, the battleship, the submarine and even the bomb already begin to feel obsolete, challenged by the cyber-armoury? Couldn’t a rocket from one State destroy the capital of another with the mere touch of a button? The loftiest Powers of our time are humiliated already, deprived of their certainties, and the Trumps and Putins of our day already seem out of date.

  And looming over everything, in my view, is the gigantic advance of artificial intelligence. I read today that in China they have cloned a couple of macaque monkeys, pictured, poor little souls, looking like wan and bewildered orphans. Be not afraid, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, you will not be alone for long. And if man can create a monkey, soon he will be able to create himself – or if he won’t, no doubt some created monkey will!

  Good morning, all. It’s a pleasant day in Wales.

  DAY 186

  When the skies are clear, once or twice a day I see the silent white streaks of vapour trails high among the clouds, and they never fail to move me. They always seem to travel in couples, one after the other like pairs of faithful friends, and they are always flying purposefully to the west. I assume they are airliners from England, or perhaps from the continent of Europe, on their way to America, but it is the silent enigma of their passage that fascinates me.

  I get the same sense of mystery from birds. Day after day I wonder, as I watch the birds in our garden, or down by the seashore, what on earth they are all up to, and what enables or obliges them to do whatever it is they are doing. Today, for instance, a small flock of terns flew over my head and settled on the sea’s surface a few hundred yards out. I watched them attentively through my binoculars, and what do you think they were doing? They were doing absolutely nothing at all. They simply sat there, gently bobbing up and down with the tide. They were not eating anything, or foraging, or even apparently communicating with each other. They simply sat there on the sea, until quite suddenly, for no apparent reason, they rose from the water as one and flew back over my head into the fields behind.

  What were their purposes? Were they preparing for some immense migratory flight later in the year? Were they obeying some celestial instructions? Whatever their intentions or obligations, I saw them as remote ancillaries of those high white vapour trails, silently, silently navigating the empyrean …

  DAY 187

  Today, a review of a book of beautiful aerial photographs of Wales:

  In Miami the sunshine is better,

  In Venice hyperbole fails.

  There’s probably nowhere much wetter

  Than perpetually waterlogged Wales.

  But the old place can seem quite marvellously fair

  From viewpoints sufficiently high in the air …

  Bless its heart. That’s art!

  DAY 188

  A Day in Old Age!

  Here’s how it went:

  I decided yesterday that I would have my dear old car professionally washed and cleaned (for the first time, as it happens, during the long happy years of our association – I prefer a well-worn Honda).

  I would spend the rest of the day knocking off various humdrum duties too. So after breakfast I drove along the coast to our nearest town with my dear Elizabeth – who is, as the saying goes, beginning to show her age, and likes a ride.

  First we went to the offices of my accountants, where I left a grubby envelope of bills, receipts and such, enabling them, I hope, to estimate my taxable income to the Inland Revenue for the year before last (I think). They wanly accepted it, and Elizabeth and I drove on to the public waste dump dutifully to relieve ourselves of a vast black bag of miscellaneous rubbish. Much of this Elizabeth would not consider rubbish at all, so I handed it over to the foreman, an old friend of mine, without letting her see, before moving hastily on to our second-nearest town, where we proposed to get the car done. I dropped it off with some agreeable Poles who run a car-washing business, and they told us to be back in an hour.

  We then walked the half-mile or so to a pleasant restaurant we know to have some lunch. It was closed. So we walked another mile or so to another coffee shop for a snack instead. While we were there I discovered my credit card was missing, so we hurried back to the car washers to see if I had left it there. I hadn’t, so we walked another five miles or so across town to the local branch of my bank to get some cash to pay the car washers with, and then retraced our steps back to the closed restaurant in case I had dropped the card on the way.

  I hadn’t, so we walked back the ten miles to the coffee shop, and while I emptied my bag and wallet in a last search for the card, my beloved Elizabeth looked in her bag and found it had been there all the time. We walked in sultry silence the twenty-five miles back to the car-wash place, where the Poles were very welcoming and gave me back my car.

  It looked unnaturally new, but never mind, it will soon look itself again – we must all recognize our ages, must we not? Anyway, it went very well on the drive home, and we ended the day delightfully with mussels and white wine by the sea.

  And so to bed.

  About the Author

  Jan Morris was born in 1926 of a Welsh father and an English mother, and when she is not travelling she lives with her partner Elizabeth Morris in the top left-hand corner of Wales, between the mountains and the sea. Her books include Coronation Everest, Venice, The Pax Britannica Trilogy (Heaven’s Command, Pax Britannica, and Farewell the Trumpets), and Conundrum. She is also the author of six books about cities and countries, two autobiographical books, several volumes of collected travel essays and, more recently, the unclassifiable Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. A Writer’s World, a collection of her travel writing and reportage from over five decades, was published in 2003.

  Also by the Author

  HEAVEN’S COMMAND: AN IMPERIAL PROGRESS

  PAX BRITANNICA: THE CLIMAX OF AN EMPIRE

  FAREWELL THE TRUMPETS: AN IMPERIAL RETREAT

  COAST TO COAST

  CORONATION EVEREST

  VENICE

  OXFORD

  CONUNDRUM

  TRIESTE AND THE MEANING OF NOWHERE

  A WRITER’S HOUSE IN WALES

  A WRITER’S WORLD

  EUROPE: AN INTIMATE JOURNEY

  HAV

  FISHER’S FACE

  DESTINATIONS

  A VENETIAN BESTIARY

  SPAIN

  AMONG THE CITIES

  THE GREAT PORT

  THE HASHEMITE KINGS

  HONG KONG

  LINCOLN

  THE MATTER OF WALES

  MANHATTAN ’45

  THE MARKET OF SELEUKIA

  SOUTH AFRICAN WINTER

  THE SPECTACLE OF EMPIRE

  CONTACT!

  CIAO, CARPACCIO!

  BATTLESHIP YAMATO

  Copyright

  First published in 2018

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2018

  All rights reserved

  © Jan Morris, 2018

  Cover design by Faber

  Photograph of Jan Morris at home in North Wales in 2007 © Colin McPherson / Getty Images

  The right of Jan Morris to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and
those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–34093–4