You couldn’t see very far because of the clouds but you could climb a short way down into the crater on this rickety
Posted in General on 07. Aug, 2010
“You couldn’t see very far because of the clouds, but you could climb a short way down into the crater on this rickety iron ladder. It gave him the confidence and inspiration to write his first novel. They got to know the locals and also noticed the number of small fincas – garden-farms and orchards – abandoned along the river. They managed to buy a river bank wilderness of apricots, figs, peaches and olives.Accommodation for guests was simple. A large hammock heaped with Moroccan blankets swung in the cool shade of a bower made by the arched and ground- brushing branches of a giant fig. The pan-piping of orioles and bee-eaters began at dawn, but so diffidently that, along with the growing heat, all encouragement was to lounge and read or to flop into the river’s barely cool waters.
Only with dusk and the first “churrings” and broken-wing flights of the nightjars did the heat ease. It was the hour for opening bottles of wine, and digging out jars of home-grown olives and salted almonds. A time, even, for reciting poetry or picking up a mandola.Heat and simplicity and few clothes, fresh foods for picnics and day- sails up the river: a paradise for the likes of you and me. But not so much of a paradise for the locals, who had nowhere else to go for their entertainment.The bars of Sanlcar and Alcoutim were fundamentally different from each other.
Sanlcar was glaring white – perhaps it really was hotter – and its four bars were resonant chambers of chrome and smoked glass and ceramic tiles. “I left my wife sleeping in the hotel room at 6.30am and just headed off to the railway station in Tokyo. I’d be interested in the journey part of it, rather than just white-water rafting bits.”He is a bit of an intrepid explorer himself On a trip to Japan he had an urge to climb Mount Fuji. I’m interested in following the route of John Wesley Powell the explorer who lost half his crew when he first made the trip. “I got to see the Grand Canyon, and what I’d really like to do now is go down the Colorado River in a boat. “We’ve been there quite a few times on fly-drive holidays.” Just before all the publicity for his book blew up – he was door-stepped in true paparazzi-style at the south London bus garage where he works – Magnus squeezed in a holiday in Arizona and New Mexico. “The car was brilliant, it just kept going without any problems The guy I sold it to still had it, last time I heard from him.”His ideal holiday, he says, is touring in America.
I hitchhiked from Sydney to Perth where I bought this 1970 Holden station wagon It was the first car I saw when I hit the car yards. I ended up clocking up over 13,000 miles.” He left Western Australia, drove up through the Northern Territory, back down through Victoria and then up through New South Wales to Queensland. Although he is keen to distance himself from being the PR novelty of a literary bus driver, it’s harder for Magnus Mills to disassociate himself from his interest with travelling by road “A few years ago I was on holiday in New York. We went to eat at this restaurant which was up some back streets and near all these warehouses When we came out, there was a bus waiting outside. The driver had got off to get some coffee and I just couldn’t resist stopping to have a chat with him.
We talked about where we lived and the hours we worked on the buses. A couple of days later we were walking down one of the main avenues in New York and he passed us and tooted his horn. I thought that was quite cool, being beeped by a New York bus driver.”
You will probably have spotted Magnus, splashed across the media as the bus driver-turned-novelist whose debut novel The Restraint of Beasts has received rave reviews, even before publication.
“I like driving full stop. In1981 I drove around Australia, working along the way doing casual jobs. No doubt the blood would be a special treat for the rats that evening.On our return, friends would ask: “Have a nice time?” “Ghastly,” we would reply and their faces would instantly brighten.When we mentioned the rat poison, a farmer friend said: “You were fooled Those rat runs have been there for over 400 years It was they who tolerated you, not the other way round.”. Fortunately, Dave had entered first so he was able to steer the children away before they saw anything. On our sixth day, the table was gone and from the roof hung the carcass of a deer, its blood dripping slowly onto the floor.