I was last in Montréal in 2008, so another trip was long overdue.  Something had happened in the intervening years that erased almost all the memories of that earlier visit.  I had very young kids with me at the time, so perhaps it was exhaustion.  On this occasion it was adults only, so I’m hoping this time the memories will stick.  If they do, I’ve a hunch some of them will be memories of the gastronomic kind, because we had some wonderful food, as you might expect in a city with such strong French influences.  Top of the pile was dinner at Damas, a restaurant in Outremont serving outstanding Syrian food.  The cuisine of the Middle East is one of my all-time favorites and it’s done superbly at Damas.  I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget the fattet mozat I had there – layers of lamb, rice, yoghurt, pita, and nuts, accompanied by an amazing Lebanese red wine (Chateau Kefraya, 2011).  Montréal has a vibrant Arab community and it was great to be among French-speaking Lebanese and Syrians enjoying the traditional dishes of the Middle East.

Not all my memories will be of food and wine.  I was very impressed by the city’s investment in its art and cultural history.  All over the city, even in its subway stations, I found publicly-funded artworks being installed and celebrated, and it was impossible to overlook the sense of civic pride in its artists and craftspeople.  The use of technology and social media to educate visitors about the city’s history is impressive, and I loved the Cité Mémoire app which allows users to trigger the projection of videos onto historic buildings and monuments at night (see below).  I loved my short visit to Montréal and look forward to going back.

Forty years ago.  That’s when it started.  London, Salzburg, Belgrade, Thessaloniki, Thassos, Istanbul, and back.  That’s when I first realized.  To experience the world, all I had to do was move.  To put one foot in front of the other, to get on a bus or a train.  That’s all it took.  Mozart’s birthplace, a deserted beach in the Aegean, Hagia Sophia.  The world and its wonders wouldn’t come to me, but with a little effort and and occasional discomfort I could reach them.  Everything was so accessible.  All I had to do was move.  Forty years, six continents, sixty-five countries, and millions of miles later, I’m still moving.  Now more than ever, I’m in thrall to the simple experiences of exploring, discovering, moving around.

Like almost everyone who travels, I have sometimes traveled to see something specific: a building, monument, or place.  Angkor Wat, Petra, Luxor.   This kind of traveling – let’s call it focused, functional tourism – has occasionally been rewarding.  It has also been hideous sometimes.  I remember particularly a horrible visit to the Parthenon a few years ago. Moving around the monument with hundreds of others, I felt I was part of something destructive.  Bruce Chatwin’s famous remark “Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin” felt right that morning.  I notice as I get older that I can arrive somewhere, for example a new city, and have no desire whatsoever to visit its “sights”.  That’s partly because I don’t like crowds and organized tours, but mostly because I don’t want my experiences to be defined by someone else’s checklists.  More than ever, mass tourism is about checking boxes, recording one’s presence with a tweet or selfie, and moving on to the next place on the itinerary.  The destructive impact of this type of “hit-and-run” traveling on fragile, precious places (Venice, the Great Barrier Reef, and so on) is incalculable, to the point that some governments, such as Iceland’s, are doing something that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago – discouraging tourists.  It’s not simply a question of the visible, physical damage that can be inflicted.  There’s also the less apparent, and therefore more insidious, impact of organizing the world and its environment to suit the needs of this type of tourist.  This can be seen in parts of Africa where entirely artificial environments are created, at the expense of naturally occurring habitats, to meet the Disney-esque expectations of those on safari holidays.

Much better (at least for me) is the wandering around, the serendipity, the follow-my-nose meandering, the sitting-and-watching that has led to so many unforgettable encounters with places and people.  That’s my particular strain of wanderlust, the itch that only moving can soothe, the kind of traveling I love.

I was surprised and puzzled when Amazon announced it would open a number of traditional bookshops.   Having just visited one of the stores (in Lynnfield, MA), I’m no less puzzled.

Pretty much from the day it sold its first book online in 1995, Amazon.com has been the reliable bogeyman of the book industry.  Publishers admire its success grudgingly and reluctantly, but they also fear Amazon’s overwhelming dominance of the online bookselling market and the negotiating power it gives the company.  Other booksellers tend to have a less nuanced approach to their giant competitor: they simply loathe it.  Ask any independent bookshop owner to identify the greatest threat to their existence and you’ll get the same one-word answer every time: Amazon.

I think my own attitudes to Amazon are fairly typical of those who love books and bookstores, and those attitudes are riddled with inconsistency and hypocrisy.  I love the range it offers.  I like the prices.  Who doesn’t?  But I recognize that every time I buy a book from Amazon.com, I’m contributing to the demise of something I love and cherish: independent bookshops.

The Amazon bookstore in Lynnfield, which I’ve now visited several times, is innovative in one respect.  It makes extensive and very explicit use of the data acquired via Amazon.com about customer buying habits.  One section of the store is devoted to titles with the largest number of online reviews, another to what’s selling online to consumers in Massachusetts.  You get the idea: this is a store constantly reminding you that there’s a much better store somewhere else online.  This isn’t a bookshop promoting reading, authors, or books.  This is a bookshop promoting Amazon.   I don’t think Amazon is fooling anyone.  The Lynnfield store was practically empty on every occasion I visited it.  Unless these stores drive customers to Amazon.com – and you can be sure Amazon will be measuring that very carefully – maybe, just maybe they’re going to fail.  One thing’s for sure.  Local booksellers won’t be shedding any tears.

I wasn’t aware of Sarah Moss’s work until I came across The Tidal Zone when browsing in a bookshop in London.  It’s an impressive, well-received novel that’s likely to tug at the heart strings of any parent.  Adam Goldschmidt lives in a town in the Midlands of England with his wife, an overworked and stressed family doctor.  Adam, an occasional and very part-time university teacher, is the primary carer for his two daughters, Miriam and Rose.  He does all the things a stay-at-home parent does – cooks the meals, washes the clothes, tidies the house, arranges the birthday parties – while his wife makes the money.  His is a good, solid, secure and predictable middle class life.  Secure and predictable until teenage Miriam collapses at school, her heart temporarily stopped by exercise-induced anaphylaxis.  That’s all I’m prepared to divulge about the plot.  This is a spoiler-free zone.

This is a story about the fragility of daily life, the thinness of the shell that protects our happiness and the suddenness with which that shell can be cracked.  It’s also an intensely English, state-of-the-nation novel, a sharp satire on everything from the National Health Service to gender politics.  Although by no means perfect, The Tidal Zone portrays family life acutely and brilliantly: its joys and terrors, its compromises and treasures.