When I was young, my proudest possession was a pop-up book called "Little Lil's Book of the Countryside." I was so fond of it, more possessive of this simple thing than my more expensive toys (no, I didn't have many). I couldn't bear to be parted from the book, and even (to my mother's fury) took it on trains and buses and stared at it in fascination.

Yesterday, on a train journey, another woman passenger had a computer tablet (like an i-Pad, but some other model). She looked very studious and in deep concentration as her forefinger glided easily over the screen. I happened to sit behind her, and saw she was playing "Robinson Crusoe's Big Adventure".

Were the two things any different?

On the road in Salaj

After what has seemed like an eternity, I finally got out on the road with a flock of sheep. My host was Ghita Danulet and together with his three hired shepherds and at least 1000 animals we walked for ten to 12 hours a day for six days until my things got so soaked I could bear it no longer. It was an incredible, extraordinary experience, a huge test of human and animal endurance and I never want to eat lamb again.

Ghita and his men - and his girlfriend - are still out there while I have retreated to Cluj.

My bivvi bag, bought from eBay and said to be almost new, ex-army Gortex and rainproof, wasn't. Last Friday afternoon, after months without any appreciable rain, the skies darkened, the thunder clapped and the lightning flashed and we were drenched. After 'parking' the flock in a beautiful dell surrounded by oak and beech woods - with eyes narrowed it could have been somewhere in Leicestershire - the ten dogs exploded into paroxysms of barking, shot off into the dusk, and the shepherds shouted one word, 'Lupi!' (Wolves). It was still pouring. Hugging the fire to dry off, I searched the gloom but my glasses were dripping and through their windscreen I could just make out a moving form, no more.

The scare continued all night and I was the only one able to doss down: every few minutes the dogs broke out into another roar of alarm and the night sky was lit with the crossbeams of four powerful head torches like antiaircraft lights in a war. Ghita was nowhere to be seen: he spent the entire night checking and rechecking the restless sheep. At 1.20 pm while I was buried in my bivvi, Marcel, a 14 year old Rrom, raced from the woods to the fire screaming, 'A luat un magar!' (It's taken a donkey!' It hadn't; one of the donkeys had either slipped over or was rolling.) Ghita was furious; his stress levels were incredibly high due to the enormous responsibility he carried, and we all felt the sharp side of his tongue from time to time.

I might have dropped off peacefully after that but for the aforementioned Marcel who at 2.10 am yelled right in my ear, 'Tanti, tanti, umbla ursi!!!' ('Auntie, auntie, there are bears about!!!'). There weren't of course - we were too low down - but I didn't know that and his electrifying news got me out of bed in seconds flat.

No sheep were lost to wolves but during the downpour one of the ewes slipped down a steep bank into a stream and drowned. We found her in the morning, when the rain had eased and we were off again on the quest for grass. My jeans, boots and socks were sopping and cold; it was time to withdraw to rethink the equipment.

I also found it hard going without breakfast, no coffee or tea, sometimes we only had one meal a day and we never knew when it was going to be. When there was food, though, it was wonderful: mamaliga and branza de burduf, delicious soups, and slanina all cooked in a cauldron or grilled on an open fire. Water, when we had it, came from wells, in varying degrees of purity. Not my usual fare, but at the time it tasted ambrosial.

Ghita can't afford to withdraw: he faces another four to five weeks on the road until he can reach the relative safety of his home village, enclosed fields and then there will be the dangers of the summer pastures in the mountains of the Cindrel Massif. Gadina (monsters) are everywhere: he will often travel at night so as to avoid traffic in town centres; he will have to cross railway lines and main roads; he will have to face angry farmers who don't want sheep on their land and keep his animals from trampling new crops.

If I had time to sort my gear I would go back to the flock but my time has run out and any return visit will have to wait for the autumn or next spring. Who knows if Ghita will go on the road again; if I were him I might shrink from the idea but he's made of much stronger stuff.

My overall impression? One of huge respect and liking for this courageous 29 year old. Spor la treaba, Ghita!

Vote for Johnny's Retirement Package

What makes the politicians think we’d be even remotely interested in voting for ‘police commissioners’? We can’t even be interested in voting for themselves. I see that John Prescott is putting himself forward for one of new positions. He’d become a figure of fun long before he retired from the ludicrous position of ‘Deputy Prime Minister’. Apparently, he’s not even going to be the official Labour Party Candidate. No doubt they’ll wheel out some other has-been or never-was for thr election, just as will the Tories Party and the LDs.

Aiding Arthur

There will be howls of protest from both right and left at the news that ARTHUR SCARGILL has won a legal case against what used to be the National Coal Board. The right will vilify him as an old-fashioned class warrior and the left will continue to blame him for the demise of the coal industry caused by his imbecile strategies at the time of the Miners’ Strike in the nineteen-eighties.

I don’t know the merits or demerits of this case, but surely Scargill isn’t to be denied legal assistance just because he’s Scargill?

In a similar vein, I hope the Government won’t be too blinded by the £ signs in its eyes in efforts to tackle the burgeoning legal aid bill. The ‘no win, no fee’ culture has a lot to answer for, not least in the legal firms touting for business and defiling our streets and TV screens in the process.

But a phase with the following words in it comes to mind: ‘bathwater’, ‘throwing’ and ‘baby’.

Bums on seats

Last month I spent a week in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad). I went to a performance of Tosca at the Volgograd Opera House, a concert given by an orchestra of traditional folk instruments (and believe me, you haven't lived unless you have heard 40 balalaikas played together), and another concert of classical music; orchestra, Mozart pianist, and a joint choir of Russians and Welsh singers premiering Karl Jenkins' "Stabat Mater". The latter performed in the Volgograd Philharmonia Concert Hall, a huge modern building alongside an almost frozen Volga river.

What connected the three evenings? Sold out performances with audiences of all ages, unlike in this country where the majority of the audience is over 60. Complete attention from the audience; no sweet paper rustling, no mobile phones ringing, no shuffling, coughing or loud whispers. And at the end, people rushing on stage with bouquets for their favourite performer.

And this in temperatures of minus 28c, struggling through deep snow, braving icy roads and steps. Heartwarming.

language-lite

Daily newspaper reading provides many joys but the one I like the best is where a politician coins a shiny neologism, proudly uses it in a flourishing final sentence but is seemingly unaware of its implications........

Thus, in an article about the overestimation of a nuclear threat from Iran; "Iran doesn't come across as a particularly powerful country" a statement unsupported by anything resembling critical insight or evidence, we have the last line, "We need to RIGHTSIZE the Iranian challenge."

What size would that be?

Sloppy language, sloppy thinking.

Misused Words

The fashion for misusing particular words comes and goes, but there are always at least a few with us. EFFICIENCY is a long-standing favourite, but the current one is SPRING, as in ARAB SPRING. The Prague Spring of 1968 really meant something, even though in the event it proved to be no more than a temporary thaw in a long winter. But can journalists compare rifles being fired into the air (at best) and the exchange of one dictatorship for another at a cost of hundreds or thousands of lives with this?

By the way, Blair believes...

With the tenth  anniversary of the World Trade Centre murders coming up, the BBC had Blair on the radio this morning to be interviewed. I had the misfortune to hear it.

I found the way Blair repeated 'by the way' literally dozens of times very irritating. No, Mr Blair, it's not 'by the way' that the world has taken such an ugly turn of events over the last ten years. You bear a major part of the responsibility for this, just as you bear a major part of the responsibilty for the deaths of half-a-million people.

But what really infuriated me was the way Blair met every sensible point put to him by the interviewer by saying things like 'I fundamentally disagree...' or 'I believe...' As if this made everything all right! Why was this man given air-time?  I blame:

• the BBC for taking the lazy way out and wheeling Blair out for 'interview' at this time
• all the Labour and Tory MPs (especially the members of the Labour Cabinet) who allowed themselves to be taken in by Blair's words. 
• all the people (this includes me) who put Blair in power in 1997.    

Words are the new........... (fill in as desired )

It's so easy to have fun with quotes from people who are not thinking properly about what they are saying. I like these. Jack Straw on recently released documents from Libya concerning the possible implication of our Government in the torture of prisoners....."they say what they say..". Helpful?

A recently reported death by strangling of a blind imam outside a mosque. "This was not a hate crime." It's that juxtaposition of 'strangling' and 'hate' that worries me.

Finally some frivolity from the National section of The Guardian on Saturday. Following articles on the EDL - "not an extremist organisation", more on Wikileaks and Darling's hatchet memoirs, comes the "Manicure Boom". "Nails are an art form." "Nails are the new art." "They are the new handbag." Men need not feel excluded. "It's an intimate expression of art and culture" Ryan L.

Perhaps we should revert to that time of grunts and hand gestures.

I did like this though, from a former Gang Leader debating the causes of recent riots. "The Welfare state started off as a safety net, it's now a hammock and will become a noose."

TWO MEETINGS WITH JORGE LUIS BORGES

The fact of living in the same city as a writer we admire does not mean a huge advantage in relation to the possibility of meeting him beyond what his pages offer.

In the event, Icould only see him a couple of times, both very briefly. The first occasion,was  in 1975, when he unexpectedly showed up at an art gallery I attended. He was extremely polite and even shy in his social behaviour. I do not remember who introduced us but he told me something about his latest book La rosa profunda (The Deep Rose), just published. He was very reticent in talking about himself or his work unless directly asked. By that time. I had not read him thoroughly nor was I particularly interested in his poetical or narrative work. Six years later I had devoured his complete works and had the chance of meeting him again at the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (Argentinian Society of Writers).

As I had published my first book — in which Dylan Thomas had left a deep trace — I wanted to give Borges a copy with an inscription. I remember he took my book very politely. Listening to the reading of my inscription  —Borges had been blind since 1955 — he told me he did not deserve those words of sincere admiration; nobody did. When I told him I also admired Dylan Thomas and that the Welsh poet had had a powerful influence on my first book, he said that if I liked Dylan Thomas so much, I would also like Walt Whitman, "an author of other epiphanies", as he then defined it. I answered that I had read Whitman — with that certainty only allowed by the age of 20 and a first book published — and was not too enthusiastic about him.

Borges retorted that something similar had happened to Ezra Pound, who only came to appreciate Whitman's great work at an older age and that, if Pound had had that perception, it was probable the same would be happening to me: that I might be needing some more time to enter Whitman's poetics.

 I never saw Borges again but I kept on reading and re-reading his poems and narrations. Later these became a major influence in my writing. By then I already believed that a new author should try to premeditatively seek the influence of other writers, to counterbalance the influence received from one author with the reading of another.  LUIS BENITEZ

Vorderman doesn't add up

That deeply unpleasant woman, Carol Vorderman, has seen fit to publicise her views on mathematics teaching. Apparently she believes, or says she believes, that everybody in school should study maths until the age of eighteen. On behalf of my sixteen-year-old self (I was one once, though admittedly this was a long time ago) I shuddered at this suggestion. Strangely enough, I have retained the greater part of the mathematics I struggled with so long ago.

But why should we take the opinions of a TV presenter seriously? And why, in particular, should we pay heed to Vorderman? Her doubtful claim to fame is based on her time as front woman of Countdown, a daytime TV show, but I remember her better as the front woman for a loan company's advertisements. Her job was to give this usurer some kind of credence, and to pretend that the extortionate repayment rates added up.

In the magazine-based predecessor to Stray Blogs, Stray Thoughts, I identified Vorderman as one of the three most ill-matched people to jobs. The others were Tony Blair as 'peace ambassador' in the Middle East and Jeffrey Archer as a 'TV jurist'. Would we take anything they said seriously? I hope not.

Why did Charlene cry?

If you watched Prince Albert's wedding you certainly saw the bride crying in the church. Was it the solemnity of the moment? The lyrics of the song? Indeed, the singer seemed to be doing her job most convincingly. Or was it the idea of freedom being lost forever? Charlene used to be an athlete and athletes, we well know, have strong personalities, their will cannot be bent as easily as Albert might think, although he's spent quite a while in their company. In the past few months Charlene must have got acquainted with the strict rules of monarchy and with how demanding Albert himself probably is. Think of how he reacted to her crying. A long face that spoke volumes. To say nothing of the age gap. History will probably repeat itself for the House of Grimaldi: another unhappy Grace Kelly. Princess Diana, another victim of the same circumstances, must look as sad now as Charlene did yesterday.

See you later, Talibangater!

NATO's decision to leave Afghanistan is most welcome. They should have done it much earlier if they had given more thought to the lesson the Russians learnt there years ago. One thing is for certain: Afghanistan or any other country, one can't impose their own system on them. It simply doesn't work. They should be left to their own devices. I know it's the ordinary people that carry the burden but, basically, it's their job to get rid of their own evil. The Taliban are probably wining and dining now - once the NATO forces are out, they'll do whatever they want in the country. The same thing will most probably happen in Iraq.

Weddings

Who said Romanians can't afford a wedding as big as the royal one? The other day a twenty-eight-year-old MP married the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a local baron, their wedding being attended by exactly one thousand guests. The gifts were worth one million Euros. That should definitely change the British perception of Romania - there are rich people there too, not only beggars that cross the Channel to fill the streets of London and other important cities. The trouble is the former's wealth and snobbery are based on the latter's poverty and despair.

Communism, Here I Come

The communists have just won the local elections in the Republic of Moldova. So what, some of the Westerners might say. Moldova is such a small country, with next to none chances to join the EU, just two million disoriented people. The trouble is the older generation has managed to pass on its communist nostalgia - nourished by the sort of wild capitalism that has replaced the former regime - to the younger generation. And that hasn't happened only in Moldova. It's also happened in Romania and all the other ex-communist countries. With a deeply dissatisfied younger generation I think the resurrection of communism is just around the corner. With the global crisis which doesn't seem to end, even the EU and the Western World in general are facing the danger. Greece, as part of the EU, is likely to be the first to say hello to communism - not that it would be a first in its history. The bottom line is the filthy rich of the world should move fast if they want to avoid waking up some day and seeing red flags outside their mansions.