FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF NORMAN WISDOM

NORTHERN ECHO ARTICLE

PEACE WALKER FINDS FAME IN ALBANIA

A NORTH-EAST lord on a 3,500-mile truce walk has found himself as popular as Norman Wisdom in Albania.

Lord Michael Bates is 700 miles and two months into his walk from the site of the ancient Olympic Games, in Greece, to London, for the start of the 2012 games to raise awareness of the Olympic truce.

Lord Bates, the former MP for Langbaurgh who hails from Gateshead and lives in Durham City, was praised last week at Prime Minister’s Questions by David Cameron who inadvertently punned: “The whole House will want to congratulate Lord Bates on his great feat – I am sorry about that, it was accidental.

“We will promote a fresh resolution at the United Nations calling for the continued observance of the Olympic truce for the 2012 games. We wish to make the most of that historic opportunity.”

Speaking from Tirana, the capital of Albania, Lord Bates said: “It’s the first time the PM has said publicly that the truce is an historic opportunity and that he’s going to implement it. I’m very encouraged.”

In ancient times, a “sacred truce” enabled competitors and spectators to travel safely to the Olympics. In modern times, the UN passes regulations calling for the spirit of the truce to be adhered to, but few practical efforts are made.

Through raising awareness, Lord Bates hopes “humanitarian windows” will open.

“There are a dozen conflicts around the world where fighting is so intense that aid workers cannot get in to deliver aid or vaccinate children,” he said, referring to places such as Somalia, Congo, southern Sudan, the Yemen and the Afghan/Pakistan border.

“The idea is that we fund that aid if they agree to a ceasefire during the Olympics.”

He continued: “There was not a huge amount of interest in Greece because they have got so many other major problems, but I’ve been very surprised in Albania there’s been this upsurge of interest.”

He has made it onto the front page of newspapers, is pipped at by passing cars and has appeared on the most popular late-night chatshow watched by two-thirds of the three million population. This led to an audience with the Albanian PM, who promised that the 300 Albanians in Afghanistan would improve women’s educational facilities during the truce.

“Albanians like to laugh,” said Lord Bates who, as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party was in charge of the 2010 election campaign in the region, “and they find my dry North-East sense of humour tremendously funny.

Norman Wisdom’s a hero here because his were the only films that the dictator Enver Hoxha allowed them to watch.”

Lord Bates starts walking at 6am.

“It’s 35 to 37 degrees most days and carrying 40lb rucksack is pretty hard going for someone of my years,” he said. “At 11am I try to find a local taverna and ask around about rooms – I’ve only got a budget of £35 to £40-a-day.

“I have stayed in everything from a five-star hotel, which my parents paid for for my 50th birthday in Lamia, in Greece, to church floors. I even spent one night on a bench.”

This week, he is heading into Kosovo and Montenegro, where he has ministerial appointments, and onto Sarajevo.

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/9119179.Peace_walker_finds_fame_in_Albania/

DAY 63 - NORTH OF KAVAJE TO DURRES: 9.2 MILES (18,059 STEPS)

June 25, 2011

North of Kavaje to Durres 9.2 miles (Total: 691.9) 18,059 (Total: 1,317,115)

I want a brand new house
on an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in…..

I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair and change my name….
‘Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We’ll all stay skinny ’cause we just won’t eat

‘Rockstar’ by Nickelback

After my late night hanging out with ‘the stars” at ‘Zone-e’  and resisting the temptation to ask them to turn the volume of the music down as it might disturb the neighbours, I allow myself a few extra hours to lie in bed and eventually get going at 9.30am. There is a major road construction underway on the section of road up to Durres and the dust and heat made me think of those scenes from David Lean’s classic ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.  Although dressed in a t-shirt, shorts, black socks and white legs whilst being passed by lorries, is not nearly as ‘cool’ as being sat on a camel and dressed in flowing white robes.

Someone asked a really interesting question of me the other day; they asked, “When you are walking all of these miles what on earth do you think about?” At first it seemed an odd question—practical things; am I on the right road; has that lorry driver smoking a cigarette and chatting on the phone seen me?; where am I going to eat?; where am I going to sleep? The more I thought about it, I realised that actually I think a great deal—daydream—happily so. I chew thoughts over and over in my mind again and again till they lose all their flavour, and then insert some new ones. It reminded me of my parents favourite story about my school reports and parents evening as they would go along and wait in line to hear the same thing: “Ah yes, Michael, a nice little boy. Just sits and looks out the window in a world of his own all day. Doesn’t do anything, but he’s no trouble at all.”

Who was it who said, ‘show me the boy and I will show you the man’—could have been the Jesuits? I don’t think they are fully right, as areas of the brain and personality develop at different speeds and it isn’t until later years that the fully rounded person becomes visible—as Rob Parsons says when talking about raising teenagers—“don’t announce the score at half-time”.

Anyway, my primary school teachers wouldn’t have been totally wrong if they saw me walking ‘in a world of my own’ along the highways and by-ways of Albania, but in that world, I am dreaming about the truce—a world in which state ‘killing’ in war becomes as unacceptable and widely rejected in civilised international society, as racism, capital punishment, abusing human rights, discrimination against women, money laundering or slavery.

T.E. Lawrence, or “Lawrence of Arabia”, grew up in Oxford, “the city of dreaming spires.” Lawrence had a dream of an Arabia for the Arabs free from the imperialism.  In the introduction to his classic work, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he writes:  “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible” and then he concludes with this telling phrase “This I did.”

PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON COMMENTS ON THE OLYMPIC TRUCE

29 June 2011

Gary Streeter today asked a question during Prime Minister’s Questions regarding Michael Bates and the Olympic Truce:

Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con): My right hon. Friend will know that our colleague Lord Bates is walking from Olympia in Greece to London, a journey of some 4,000 miles, to raise awareness of the Olympic truce. Will the Prime Minister ensure that when the UK Government table their resolution for observance of the Olympic truce to the United Nations General Assembly later this year, we will add specific proposals for peace and reconciliation so that we can maximise this historic opportunity?

The Prime Minister: The whole House will want to congratulate Lord Bates on his great feat. We will promote a fresh resolution at the UN calling for the continued observance of the Olympic truce for the 2012 games. We wish to make the most of that historic opportunity, we are considering other international initiatives to promote the spirit of the truce and it says here that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is engaging with our embassies worldwide.

The exchange can be watched at: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9524000/9524699.stm