Clive Limpkin

Ogoh,Ogoh? Oh no, Oh no!

clive — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:52:19 +0000

We had a yeah-yeah approach to Nyepi, the Balinese New Year’s Day of Silence, (Alex exempt on medical grounds), but as the locals gave more details we realised this was for real – no transport, airport closed, police patrols ensuring no traffic nor pedestrians on the street, no lights, no work, no barking dogs as no passers-by to bark at. And no entertainment, (whoa, whoa, you mean no internet? They rocked their hands; as long as we stayed indoors, there’s no problem).

The good news picture-wise was that on the eve of the Day of Silence each village goes nuts by parading their home-made Ogoh-Ogohs, grotesque statues which are ceremonially burnt next morning, though in the case of our village it might have come a little earlier thanks to a local fire eater with a cough and poor aim.

The Day of Silence is intended for meditation, but for a newsnerd it proved a chance to catch up on the world. Just think – being link-distracted for a whole day, to savour the magic of Syrian TV’s conspiracy theory that Messi and his Barcelona mates had used their attacking passing as a code to plot the route for arms smugglers, to scroll through past entries of the Washington Post’s reader competition to create new words, (my favourite: Frisbeetarian, (n.) member of sect which believes that after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there).

In truth the Day just flew by and next morning, pushing open the front door of our little teak house and seeing the volcanic Mount Batur as a backdrop to the paddy fields, I was moved to break the Silence with a poetic, “Wow.”

Low Tea

clive — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:57:44 +0000

A rare typhoon warning yesterday, but instead of having to weather it out lashed to our bed at Bonzu in a show of solidarity for Zissou, we’d fortunately checked into the Panchoran Retreat owned by Linda Garland, the pioneer of bamboo technology and research in Bali who’s spent thirty years creating a spectacular 20-hectare estate of bamboo gardens on the banks of a mountain river. It’s where they shot scenes for ‘Eat, Pray, Love.’

The typhoon downgraded to a severe mistral but enough to rip away our lunchtime salad on the lawn so we decided on tea in her reception hall, the wind still whipping through the open doors but merely upping the Mandalay factor. As Alex read on the chaise longue, I knelt to pour the tea from the tray they’d placed on the decorative floor mat, (this being Bali).

“Read this about her,” she said, passing a magazine in which Linda extolled the life-enhancing qualities of bamboo; as I lent back to take it, a bamboo pole snapped that had been supporting the six-foot centrepiece lampshade of ceramics and latticed bamboo lathes which smashed down on the teatray, missing me by a foot.

It was a lucky escape as it took two men to carry it away; when Zissou arrived from his evening run he checked its weight and pronounced it wouldn’t have killed me but probably broken bones.

All that aside, Linda Garland is inspiring but sadly in the throes of selling the estate through ill-health and is desperate the buyer will continue her research work – no it isn’t Richard Branson, yesterday’s Evening Standard got it wrong.

Herewith a snap of the centrepiece as a workman awaits his colleague to help lift it – not pin-sharp but my hands were a little shaky.

As for today, it ended with us holding onto valuables as Cyclone Lua ripped through our open villa in Canggu but we are now Bali-proof, finally recognising that this isn’t Henley on Thames where a stiff breeze can make the local paper.

It’s a jungle out there.

clive — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:43:55 +0000

Eager to prove our eco cred, we slept at Zissou’s last night, (now called ‘Bonzu’ – half the village name Bongkasa and half Zissou). OK, hardly eager –we insisted he slept in the adjoining structure while we equipped ourselves with two brands of mosquito spray, a five-foot pole on Alex’s side for possible monkey invasion and a rolled umbrella on mine for anything lower in the food chain. It proved a surreal evening lying in a jungle hut with no walls, watching ‘Margin Call’ on Zissou’s laptop while struggling to hear Kevin Spacey over the raging Ayung river below.
As he forecast, our weapons were not needed in the night, but the manic laughter call of the geckos can be unnerving to the uninitiated. Looking for them with a torch in the intricate rafters above our heads, it’s hard to believe that Zissou’s nine-inch models were the only reference the builders used, employing stretched hands for measurement of the bamboo poles.
Our first visitor of the morning was the local coconut cutter who shinned up the twenty palms with his bare feet tied with frayed sisal rope, cut off the older nuts whilst swatting biting ants, netted the remainder to limit litigation, and offered the ripest three to us with homemade straws.
But did our host have a surprise breakfast up his sleeve? Well, his brick pizza oven is yet to be mud-rendered and the promised omelettes on the induction hotplate we brought out will have to wait as the septic tank is not yet on song to provide the biomass to fuel it - remember, we’re on jungle time here. So we decided to return to our rented teak gladak, (walls and breakfast included), only to find the exit barred by a passing ceremony, two hundred strong and ornately dressed. Was it a special occasion? Zissou shrugged and said there were about three a week like this passing through.
Back at base, we guiltily checked the internet for world news – to hell with our eco cred, anything could have happened during our night in the jungle. Sure enough, we learnt that plans to place Rapier surface-to-air missiles in South-East London to protect the Olympics from aerial terrorism could be thwarted because they risk damaging a Site of Special Scientific Interest containing the Corky-Fruited Water Dropwort.

Time for Bonzu to get wi-fi’d up – and sharpish.

House on the Hill

clive — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:54:51 +0000

All preconceptions went out the window yesterday when our son Zissou had a brunch to unveil the new home he’s had built in Bali. Well, no windows actually – and no walls come to that – just two all-bamboo structures with grass roofs built by forty-five craftsmen in ten weeks – planning permission waved through as it has no foundations and can be moved when the ten-year lease expires.
Both houses have living areas with hidden uplighting in the bamboo beams - one with a bamboo kitchen, the other with a bed, hammock, and adjoining open air bathroom. The furniture was built from 4.30 pm the previous day and delivered in time for the first guests at 11am, though you’d never guess it from the workmanship of his six-seat settee you lie on, looking out through coconut palms at the terraced paddy fields half a mile away.
But the show-stopping, jaw-dropping moment comes when you walk to the end of his lawn and find yourself on the edge of a vertical cliff looking down at a tropical canyon with an ox-bow whitewater river 100 metres below your feet. Clinging to a coconut palm at the very edge eased my vertigo until advised not to stand beneath it till he’d had remaining nuts netted for safety.
I say ‘remaining’ as each of the thirty guests was given one their first drink to go with the exotic food served on banana leaves. He has an eclectic circle that includes a Venezuelan architect, a male American app. creator and musician called Beryl, a Japanese film-maker whose documentary on Happiness opens next week, a Czech/German glass artist, a Russian former PA to Berezovsky, a Singaporean manager of Como Shambala spas with her partner who handles Indonesian pop groups, a British girl surfer mastering in coral reef pollution and an Australian sunglass designer, the remainder being mainly Italian clothes designers.
As Zissou slept there for the first time last night, we called this morning for news of any nocturnal wildlife; he reported being woken at 3 am during a tropical storm by water splashing on his face and was certain his roofing team had blundered till he realised the water was boiling – the hot tap washer had blown in the adjoining bathroom, water pressure had fired the tap to the ground and he was being soaked by a ten-foot spray. I said a light blanching was a small price to pay for going native, though we may have second thoughts when we stay there for two nights later next week.

Zissou awaits guests, sitting on his unwrapped mattress….

If you see this when cutting his lawn, it’s time to turn the mower round…….

Zissou relaxes with the last guest gone, comforted by the cheap bar bill…..

Indian driving

clive — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:25:40 +0000

The number of Indian motorists injured each day is less remarkable than the extraordinary number who aren’t; surviving this mayhem last week whilst shooting in Mumbai and Goa confirmed my harboured suspicion that Indians aren’t taught to drive but are actually taught to avoid.
After cursory avoidance lessons, they take the Avoidance Test to qualify for the official Indian Avoidance Licence. Theoretically this would work but many, through incompetence or laziness, avoid avoidance lessons and the Avoidance Test by paying a bribe for their Avoidance Licence, thereby causing chaos by avoiding less than others on the open road.
Our cab driver on Monday appeared a case in point with two collisions within the space of an hour – both mild until he tried to kick the victim’s coachwork back into shape during heated verbal exchanges.
This might seem at odds with the nation’s renowned sweet karma spirit which views this life as a mere passage to the Next World, but put a steering wheel in the hand of any Indian and he feels duty bound to reach it first.
Best take your mind off the above by shooting incidentals from the car………

Surprisingly few American tourists are deceived by this subtle retail ruse in Panjim…..

Urgent re-branding needed for this Mumbai water supplier….

Exclusive shot of Goa’s prototype solar-powered motorcycle….

Delivery men await first bread batch of the morning at Mumbai’s Hygienic Bakery Company…….

Christmas Prezzie

clive — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:03:04 +0000

Last week I bought an iPhone cover from an assistant at White City’s Apple Store where we small talked briefly, wished each other well and I drove home. He emailed me next day after seeing my name on the receipt and looking at the photographs on my website, writing……..

‘As the cultural and historical zeitgeist changes and alters how we perceive reality, your pictures document and speak a language transcending the twisted form of rhetoric often served up as narrative.’

Blimey. The compliment of the Season.

Keep off the Crass

clive — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:20:47 +0000

With only twenty one days to go, Andrew Robathan MP is a shoo-in for the Crassest Comment of the Year title when comparing the Arctic Convoy veterans’ claim for an Arctic Star medal with authoritarian regimes such as North Korea, Libya and Iraq which “throw around” medals.
“We have taken the view in this country, traditionally, that medals will only be awarded for campaigns that show risk and rigour.”

Perhaps the Tory defence minister – and Minister for Veterans – needs reminding that in the four years of the Arctic convoys that supplied Stalin on the Eastern Front and arguably turned the tide of World War II, three thousand men were lost in freezing waters as over 100 merchant and Navy ships were sunk by German bombers, battleships and U-boats.

Rest assured he will mouth weasel words of ‘clarification’ once he’s removed his foot, but the worthy burghers of South Leicestershire should remember such crassness when the Minister next appears on their doorstep to silkily enquire if he can rely upon their vote.

Quivering Lips

clive — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:11:42 +0000

They’ve just re-buried Frank Wild beside Ernest Shackleton in South Georgia, who was Shackleton’s right hand man through all the Antarctic heroics. When their boat was crushed by pack ice and Shackleton began his epic rescue mission, he left Wild behind with twenty one crewmen who survived on penguin, seal and seaweed for four months till Shackleton’s return, prompting Wild’s Woosterish comment, “I felt jolly near blubbering.”

He didn’t of course as it was the days when men were men, unlike today when our shadow chancellor Ed Balls admits to blubbering – not for polar privations but when watching the Antiques Roadshow.

Straightening Spaghetti

clive — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:57:08 +0000

The Leveson Inquiry current witnesses remain grotesquely watchable, as if some dark force fries their moral compass as they take the stand.

Yesterday, Paul McMullan, the former deputy features editor of the NoW described the hacking of Milly Dowler’s mobile as an “honourable” act, a “perfectably acceptable tool……for the good of our readers, for the public good,” claiming the NoW needed to step in to find her as the police were a “bunch of Inspector Clouseaus.”

Revealing how reporters traded ex-directory numbers, he recalled having swapped that of Sylvester Stallone’s mother for David Beckham’s which may be one of his smarter moves at the paper- while Beckham maintains his stainless global image, Sly’s Mum is reduced to selling rumpology readings of clients’ buttock prints at $300 per cheek – admittedly a higher calling than that of Mr. McMullan’s.

Suspicion that the whole bowl of spaghetti is about to unravel was highlighted yesterday when former NoW reporter Bethany Usher, now Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Teesside University, twittered, “For god sake paul Mcmullen, shut your sickening trap.”

Today she was arrested – not for her grammar but by police investigating phone hacking by the media.

Photographer Unknown

clive — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:53:37 +0000

Phaidon Press have followed up their best-selling brick ‘Century’, with a smaller brick called ‘Decade,’ billed correctly as ’500 painstakingly selected photographs, an extraordinary photographic history of the first decade of the twenty-first century.’

Yes, but who painstakingly took these photographs? There’s no mention in the first eleven pages of ‘thematic essays’ covering everything but photojournalism. So do the photographers get a mention in the accompanying captions? No. Then maybe up the side of the photographs? Nope. Instead, you must go to page 502, right at the end, where all the photographers are credited in type smaller than a telephone directory, crammed into less than a page so dense it is virtually impossible to discover who took what – and these are guys who’ve risked life and limb, marriages and relationships, to make the book possible.

What you do get is a couple of pages of potted biogs. Not of the photographers, of course, but the painstaking editor and authors of the waffle essays shipped in to lend gravitas.

And why are these photographers treated this way, by a publisher specialising in photographic books? The answer, I guess, is aesthetics – stick their identities away at the back and the rest of the pages look sort of…. cleaner.

Phaidon, who describe themselves as the world’s leading publisher of books on the visual arts, should be ashamed of themselves.