We are driving up to Hull today. What to do on the way…?

Filling the Void

The young are bound by age restrictions when it comes to gambling, drugs or booze, though there are no such restrictions for Facebook, Twitter and video games – which are, of course, highly addictive too.

These addictions are having a disastrous effect on our young. It has been shown that the more youngsters look at Facebook, the more depressed they are likely to be. When will the young find the time to form proper non-Facebook friendships and talk properly?  How can they find the time to read the likes of Middlemarch or write poetry or pray? Since they don’t spend time developing lasting relationships with real people, what will happen when they feel lonely – will they find comfort in Facebook?  When will they find time to talk to the old? Or, as delayed gratification is today a rarity, when will they become expert in something? There are apps for every darn thing these days but none for the tackling the roots of loneliness: forming deep loving relationships or finding real job satisfaction takes effort.

Modern Plague

Today, the number of youngsters on anti-depressants and committing suicide is spiralling upwards. As machines go faster and faster and devour our attention, and as families disconnect, people are growing ever more isolated and lonely.  And some of the unlikeliest people grow miserable and isolated.

For loneliness is one of the miseries of our time and its blight stretches its tentacles throughout society. A picture taken years ago shows Baroness Thatcher hunched on a bench outside the House of Lords three hours before the doors opened. It was said that, after she was defenestrated as PM, she never knew another day of happiness. When the caravan stopped, as stop it always does, she was desperately lonely.

Seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote about loneliness in his Pensées. Cheerful old soul that he was (but a very perceptive one), he claims that humankind seeks to be busy to avoid facing the reality that life always ends in sickness and death.

Pascal tells us that busyness as an end in itself seems to be the key to much human activity from stamp collecting to buying houses to playing sport. Take “the chase” (hunting). Pascal claims that if the hunter were to be given the quarry before the chase, he would not thank you; if the gambler were to be given his winnings before the game is played, he would be angered. The business of travelling helps us forget the misery of the end game.

When American humourist Dorothy Parker was writing Hollywood film scripts, producer Cecil B. DeMille asked why her films always ended unhappily? “Because it’s true to life,” she replied. “Out of the 18 billion people born since Adam, not a single one has ever had a happy ending!”

Pascal reminds us that there is nothing so insufferable for man than to be completely at rest, he gets bored and welcomes strife. “All troubles arise,” he claims, “because of man’s inability to sit quietly with his own company in his own room.”

So Pascal would understand modern addictions: he knew why people leave their mobiles on the dinner table; they are waiting for someone – anyone – to ring with an “important” message, all to assuage loneliness.

But much activity is empty vanity. Malcolm Muggeridge called one of his autobiographies Chronicles of Wasted Time, and Prime Minister Balfour said: “Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.” Anyone with a modicum of self-awareness must agree with these old saws, yet few dare to dwell on it because we want to kid ourselves that the trivia we are working on really matters. In this often joyless universe, we need such assurances or we’d go potty. But when politicians talk of their “legacy”, I recall that long-serving deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine admitting that most of the things he has done will be forgotten; he’ll be remembered only for the trees he carefully plants on his estate.

To the Ends of the Earth

I’ll bet it was fear of loneliness that motivated explorers rather than practising their navigational skills. After all, when Christopher Columbus sailed away on Santa Maria he had no idea where he was going, when he reached America he had no idea where he was, and when he got back, he had no idea where he had been.  But still he went!

And speed doesn’t help. I read somewhere that when the great explorer Sir Richard Burton (not the actor) sought the source of the Nile, he went at such a pace that soon his porters firmly refused to budge. When he angrily commanded them to move, the headman answered: “We have walked fast for three days, Master; we are waiting for our souls to catch up.”

No Time to be Idle

Jane and I don’t have much time to be lonely. We are privileged to look after a never-ending series of grandchildren, and are in fact so busy we are tempted to add the following message to our answerphone:

“Thank you for ringing Tom and Jane. Press one for babysitting services, two for marriage advice, three for money. Your call will be answered shortly. Please do not hang up for your call is very important to us. Please note that this call may be recorded for training purposes.”

It’s interesting that for much of history, idleness was the hallmark of wealth and class. Beyond needlework and water colouring, classy people didn’t work much but spent time having tea with friends and going to concerts. When Lady Violet Bonham Carter asked her nanny in the early 1900s what life would be like when she grew up, she received this reply: “Until you are 18, you will do lessons. And after 18 you will do nothing.”

That was then, and it sounds very lonely. But I wonder what Pascal would make of our lives today?

Like hitting your head on the brick wall, it’s great when you stop. It’s a blessed and sunny day and it’s a great day not for walking.

We stay once again with kind and indulgent friends: we get up late and drive slowly home. We calculate how many thank you letters we will be delighted to write to so many kind people who have put themselves out for us.

But is saying “thank you” now a rarity?

Our two younger hosts told us that when they had eight friends of their eldest daughter to stay for a weekend – all under seventeen – and worked hard to give them a good time (preparing meals, making beds, more washing up,  the cost, you now what it all entails), not a single one of them wrote to thank their hosts, not a single call, not an email, just nothing. Other friends tell us that when they had a big wedding for their daughter, at least ten people failed to show  and not a word of apology afterwards. Others tell me that that many gifts to his and her relatives go “un thanked”.

When I was a little boy the need for “thank you” letters and saying:  “Thank you for having me”, was drilled into me. I suspect most of my generation were awarded the same treatment.

We recently had a party for Jane’s birthday; about fifty of our greatest friends came; around fifty warm and appreciative thank you letters awaited us when we got home today. It’s not that we asked our friends to supper so they would say “thank you”, of course not, but these letters are a loving response to an act of hospitality; saying “thanks” makes the cold world a little bit warmer, a touch less hostile and more friendly: expressing gratitude for dinners, overnight stays and birthday presents is a gentle and courteous thing to do and it makes the world a little less lonely too.

I’ll bet that all ZANE donors are “of an age” and we were all taught to “thanks”. I’ll bet you are also rather shocked at the casual brutality of today’s ungracious young who seem to take kindness, gifts and hospitality for granted.

Have today’s parents stopped teaching their children manners?

It’s great to be back home.

End Game

We never saw a signpost to “Ipswich” until today, our final day. I was beginning to think the place was bewitched and did not actually exist,  but at long last we found ourselves crawling through the suburbs  towards our finishing point, the  Grammar School. It is a fine place perched atop a series of hills so steep my eyes popped as  we staggered towards it. Well done Jane for leading the way. And to our dog Moses who has been a delight, and to Markus our driver who has flown from Bulawayo to be at the service of the people of Zimbabwe, to whom he is fiercely loyal.

Reaping the Rewards

A few years back, a British ambassador’s wife caused a raised eyebrow or two when she started to flog her handmade jewellery from a spare room in the Embassy. No one cared sufficiently to stop her on the grounds, I suppose, that the ambassador’s wife is not the ambassador.

Now we read of the vast sums of money being made by Blair and Mandelson through the exploitation of their contacts established while in office. Perhaps we are so used to our rulers touting their little black contact books composed at the taxpayer’s expense that we have ceased to notice it. And it is an international phenomenon; there are agencies flogging the speech-making abilities of these “celebrities” and a list of their prices to anyone with a fat chequebook.

We can read of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s vast fortunes from their tax returns: Hillary alone made some $22m from speeches to the business community during the last year. So we just shrug and get on with our lives for everybody’s apparently doing it.

How Quaint!

It was not always thus. When Harry Truman retired in 1953 after an honourable eight-year stint as US president, he went back to Missouri, threw his suitcase in the attic of the house that he and his wife shared with her mother, and started writing his memoirs to make a living. Astonishingly, there was no presidential pension of any kind in the fifties and all he had was $112.30 per month through a military pension.

The Bank of America then asked Truman if he would serve on their board as a director. He replied saying that on reflection he had to refuse. His reason was that the only commercial experience he had was as a failed haberdasher (his shop went bust during the recession in 1921) and therefore it was obvious that the only reason the bank had asked him to serve was because he had been President of the United States – “And taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation’s highest office”.

What a silly, old-fashioned man!  I wonder what Bill and Hillary and Tony and Peter would make of such nonsense?

Well, only one more day to go and then our own bed. Not that today’s experience was anything to carp about: a beautiful warm and sunny day where the cows all smile milkily at us as we pass by. We travel through some of the loveliest countryside we are blessed with in this blessed plot, this England. We spent too short a time in Long Melford church, a jewel with heavenly light cascading towards us through mellow, stained glass windows.

Francie walked with us, a lovely person and a friend from way back. She is commonsensical and kind in equal measure and runs a business where tact and diplomacy stand at a premium. She has forged an enviable reputation advising clients who seek her assistance in how to furnish their houses. Amazinly she manages to bring together her expertise and their opinions without causing ructions. Anyone who has tried to chose wallpaper with a partner will know how hard that can be!

Back to Basics

I recently stayed at the excellent Nuffield Hospital in Oxford. It was my second hip operation, and I have to say that the sheer quality of the medical experience, at no direct cost to any of us, has to be one of the major reasons why so many of the have-nots in the world are scrambling to come to the UK. The care in the Nuffield is as excellent as anyone could reasonably hope for: professional, attentive and kind.

But I had forgotten just how basic life gets when the rubber hits the road. Mothers, of course, will know the full extent of the raw indignities of childbirth, but to be frank I managed to confine myself to the exhortatory and head-end side of the business. I never had any ambitions to be an active participant.

Pleased to Meet You

So there I was, well into my prime and reasonably respected in the community, and well used to looking after myself. Shortly after coming round from my operation, I found myself in a tent with lots of people staring down at me: apparently my blood pressure had dropped and I had fainted, a not uncommon experience after recovery from anaesthetic.

A nurse told me insistently I was to empty my bladder. “How,” I pleaded, “am I to do this when I am numb from the waist down?” How, to be frank, would I know if the process was underway or not?

Another nurse appeared and in a flash ripped up my nighty and rammed a catheter up (or is it down?) my willy. And we hadn’t even been introduced. What is the world coming to?

A couple of days later, I awoke to hear a stranger hissing in my ear: “Have you peed?”

I nodded dumbly. The catheter was now but a sordid memory and I was meant to be going it alone in that department, if you know what I mean. The nurse stared fixedly at me, and her voice hardened.

“Are… you… telling… me… the… truth? It… is… very… important.”

How on earth can you convince a sceptic that such an event has occurred? I crossed my heart in a imploring sort of a way and she thankfully vanished.

August Words

Before I could leave hospital, a couple of occupational therapists demanded that I had to first demonstrate my versatility at sitting on and rising from the loo! I kid you not – and they claimed they had to watch my performance in order to tick various boxes. So there I was ascending and descending on the loo like an aged yo-yo in response to the encouragement of a couple of immensely earnest young women.

Let us hope we never cross each other’s paths again. Imagine the small talk if we did: “Oh yes, I’m sure we have met before, now where was it exactly?” And then the grim reality will dawn on us.

I recall the time that Jane and I were out hunting when we ran into her gynaecologist just a few months after he delivered our last baby.

“I’m sure we’ve met before?” he cried with a glint in his eye. Jane cantered away at speed.

There is an old Catholic saying: Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. When I first read it, I was unsure why the great Augustine favoured it so much. I won’t translate it, but I imagine that even the most rudimentary grasp of Latin will allow you to guess more or less what it means.

So when you are next in hospital, brace yourself, leave your dignity at home and remember good old Augustine.

Possessions

The other day was one of those days where the wind stripped the flesh from my bones and then came back to collect the marrow. It set me thinking, what’s it all about? I haven’t a clue!

Someone suggested that to start with we should go round our houses with labels saying “temporary” and stick them onto furniture, paintings, jewellery, stamp collections and cars.

Then we should dash back to our family and the friends we love with labels saying “permanent”.

That might set our priorities straight anyway.

A very long walk today, or at least  so it seemed to be! Never ending plodding through ploughed fields, all slightly tilted upwards, managed  to exhaust and drain us of breath and humour in equal measure; we were faced with several hooded paths and collapsing styles all smothered with brambles and vicious thorns that all left vivid stigmata on my arms and legs. We were accompanied by our kind hosts which was kind of them. We stay the night with relations that are kind and fun. Looking back, the beginning of the walk seems a lifetime ago. It’s been a long way!

I cannot over exaggerate the delight of a welcome, an iced gin and tonic and a hot bath at the end of the day.

Long Live Prudery

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty three
(Which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first  LP.

Philip Larkin

Maybe sex is more important nowadays than it used to be, or perhaps my generation was more inhibited, restrained, pious and timid than today’s? Looking back, of course we weren’t saints but when I was in my last year at school and then Sandhurst, I guess only a tiny minority of us were sexually experienced. Hardly anyone “slept around”. Of course we all drank and smoked, we danced with great abandon, we eyed the “talent”, and often made crude comments and used foul language – for soldiers will always be soldiers – but that was about the extent of it. The pill was still in the future, clap was a badge of shame and unwanted pregnancies were a real fear. Also, we were taught to be gentle to women as they were the weaker sex.

Flashman

One of my Sandhurst chums, George Mason – our resident Flashman – used to hint that his sexual exploits were of the extent and variety to make Playboy’s Hefner envious. When we watched him charging off to Camberley like Ferdinand the Bull, we knew instinctively that the various sexual activities he was forecasting were a bad thing: frowned on by the Church, family and society at large. On one occasion, Mason tottered back grinning at his sexual prowess, unaware that when our crowd had visited the local flick-house he could be seen sitting in the front row innocently eating crisps.

Although we didn’t always live up to our standards, we did know when we were behaving badly and we knew right from wrong.

These were the sexual drag ages. In 1960, a 22-year old University College Oxford student was caught in bed with a friend from St Hilda’s. They were both suspended, and although this may sound bizarre today, their student chums thought quite right too. A friend at Christ Church told me that his one sexually active colleague was universally regarded as being rather contemptable.

Everyone’s Doing It

Recently, a private-school teacher buddy told me that today practically all seventeen-year-old students are involved in more or less constant sexual activity – heterosexual and homosexual – and anyone abstaining is regarded as abnormal. Apparently the peer pressure that faces today’s young is simply overwhelming. Most of it is one-on-one and not “promiscuous”, but it is universal.

Canute showed us all the futility of trying to turn back the tide, and so today’s parents just shrug and accept the reality that their children will be participants in this brave new world of unlimited sex, often without strings. Few politicians or churchmen or judges would dare highlight the damage caused to family values and the coarsening effects caused by today’s behaviour. They know that if they spoke out, a dollop of the contumely that was poured onto the head of the late Mary Whitehouse would drench them. And, of course, few – if any – of their colleagues would support them. Mary was trolled as an old fashioned prude, slightly deranged, bigoted and guilty of “being judgemental”.

But not everyone accepts that wide sexual experience leads to happiness. To my certain knowledge, a minority of today’s young realise that chastity and virginity have advantages – and not just religious ones. Just because you are jeered at for being a prude does not mean that your critic isn’t secretly impressed by your resolution. A lack of confidence is often crouching behind the sneers.

I know several young people who married in a state of innocence and today the marriages appear supremely happy. The idea that sexual practice and living for years together before marriage is more likely to lead to a more happy and permanent union is drivel. And not everyone thinks that flirting and adultery within marriage is acceptable behaviour either.

Here is a counter-cultural statement made by world-class singer Dame Janet Baker, quoted by Anthony Clare from the programme, In the Psychiatrist’s Chair:

“I don’t feel attractive to the opposite sex. I consider myself married. A married woman is a married woman and that’s how I think of myself and I don’t want to go anywhere this can be placed in jeopardy. I was brought up in the north of England and that’s how it was then and how I am. I’m not available in any way to a man. I don’t like men telling dirty stories. I hate it. I’m not available to a man and I don’t like men looking down the front of my frock or anything like that – it makes me feel awkward.”

Brave that.

We walk along the ‘Fleam Dyke”, astoundingly dug by hand by Saxons sometime in the fifth century. We read on the council notice boards that it was constructed in order to enable the authorities “to monitor the countryside”. Perhaps an early and forlorn attempt to control Roman immigration and seemingly so it has been ever since!

The dyke consists of vast mounds of compacted clay several hundred feet high with a tiny track perched on top that makes walking troublesome. It seems the ancients have strewn the route with slyly hidden holes designed to throw strangers like us off balance with a parting gift of a twisted ankle. Donald Trump should take a look. It might give him a few new ideas as how to control his Mexican neighbours. The trouble is that he would need thousands of slaves and about two hundred years to complete it.

Then we found ourselves in fields and were blessed with easier walking. The grey skies were huge with clouds forming around the size of trucks that as we watched slowly morphed into black lorries; then came the squalls of wind that blew slanting rain in our faces. Each time we struggled into our waterproof jackets a watery sun came out.

Tea Party

Jane and I were in Boston in February this year seeing American ZANE donors. We spent a happy couple of spare hours at the Boston Tea Party Museum.

There was a drama production commemorating the act of rebellion in 1773. This protest against the despised “Taxation without Representation” – a tax which had been imposed by George III and his “iniquitous” government – involved rebels throwing chests of tea from three cargo ships into Boston harbour.

Actors playing the rebels – disguised as Native Americans – made inflammatory speeches about the monstrous rule of the unfeeling king and his crass ministers, and about how they were being exploited by cruel repression and the presence of licentious soldiery. We, the audience – made up mainly of tourists – were handed cards with the actual names of townspeople known to have taken part, and were encouraged to make sympathetic public protest by banging the floor with our feet, and shouting “Up the rebels!” and “Down with the King!” It was the start of the new American Republic.

Going Off Script

It all became too much for me. When it was my turn to speak, I rose to my feet and all fell silent.

“I am the direct descendent of Lord North,” I declaimed to the astonished audience. “On my paternal grandmother’s side I am his great-great-great grandson. As the prime minister in George III’s government, North was responsible for taxing your tea, keeping the peace, and maintaining law and order. I have read the papers and listened to your bleating about unfair taxation and repression. But you have failed to take into account the vast costs incurred in defending you militarily from the greedy French. In fact, unless our General Wolfe had beaten General Montcalm in 1757 at the Battle of Quebec on the Heights of Abraham and stopped the growth of the French Empire, you would all be part of it and would today be speaking French!

So ladies and gentlemen, I think you are all traitors.… You should be taken from this place and banged up in jail. And after your trial for treason, you will undoubtedly be found guilty and hanged.”

A strange silence fell, as no one knew if I was being serious or not! To be frank I was a tad unsure myself… and then I began to laugh. The mood relaxed, and I confessed that on balance, as a supporter of the great Thomas Paine, I rather agreed with the rebels! The show continued, and after it was over I gave a brief interview because the history I spouted is true. I am indeed a direct descendent of Lord North, and there was a perfectly good Crown case that went more or less unheard. The majority of the Bostonians at the time were royalists and against the insurrection. It was only because of the crass way in which George III behaved, and the fact that Lord North was rather an ass, that the mood turned sour and war started.

However most of the time I do not parade my relationship with North. All things considered, he was an inadequate prime minister even by the standards of the time. He once dreamed he was in the House of Commons and gave the worst speech in parliamentary history; and then he woke up and found it was true!

However, you can’t let those pesky colonists get away with it without some sort of a corrective comment.

Gypsy Rose Lee

Pundits are still trying to forecast the future. Why on earth they bother beats me, you would have thought they might have learned the futility of ball gazing by now. The forecasts at the last election were an absolute farce… All the parties spent substantial sums on polls and stared nightly at the results of the modern equivalent of chicken entrails. On the back of those, they made all sorts of decisions…. And then, oops, oh dear, everyone got it wrong didn’t they just.

If anyone had forecast at the beginning of last year that the Tories would win an overall majority, that the Lib Dems would be reduced to a mere eight seats in the Commons, that Labour would hang on to just one seat in Scotland, or that the Scottish National Party would be dominating Scotland and that far-left Jeremy Corbyn would become Labour’s leader – well, everyone would have thought the pundit was on day release. And who forecast BREXIT?

The polls were in La La Land. It was ever thus.

Imagine if 2,000 years ago, scholars had been invited to predict what would last longer: the Greek and Roman Empires with their vast might, wealth, culture, and powerful armies; or Jesus, who was crucified on the cross, and his ill-educated, inarticulate disciples who never wrote anything down?

The answer would have been, “what’s the point of the question?”

Well the empires have been totally swept away. And Jesus’s movement, “Christianity”, is the fastest growing “revelation” (not a “religion”) ever – if you think the Word is dying in the UK, just take a look at its incredible growth in Africa, China, South America and in the Far East.

And “Christian” names such as Peter, Paul, Thomas, Mary, Joseph, Christopher, James, Ruth, Esther and Elizabeth are the names of choice across the Western world and have been for centuries.

And we call our dogs “Caesar” and “Nero”, and throw bones to them!

Want to make a forecast anyone?

We stay with old friends bang smack in the middle of Cambridge, delightful conversation and great company. Today we walked through Cambridge, the second time we have done this, the last time three years ago while we were walking from York to Canterbury.

In the morning we tottered over freshly ploughed fields as the farmer had thoughtfully reduced the path to the consistency of Weetabix. May his tractor rust away and his fields all turn to set-aside.

We buzzed around Cambridge trying to find somewhere that accepts dogs; at last we found one that sneers at Health and Safety, and Moses was allowed in .

This afternoon we were joined by four supporters who galvanised our walk, particularly Joanna who allowed me to bang on about the five subjects that form the basis of my walk commentaries: sex, politics, money, death and religion. I was fearful of being boring as I wheezed along but bless you Joanna for allowing me to talk. Thank you Christopher and Anthea for loyally walking with us five times. Always a joy to have you with us.

Hamlet and a Lot of Questions

Benedict Cumberbatch was a fine Hamlet but for me he spoiled his performance by announcing that leading UK politicians were “f… useless” because of their inadequate response to the Syrian refugee saga. In terms of virtue signalling and grandstanding on a topic, which he clearly knew nothing about, he is a high scorer. Why does an actor think his views on a subject outside his field of competence are worth hearing? The arrogance of such an intelligent man is breathtaking. As Stanley Baldwin once said (in another context), “Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

Readers of an earlier blog will know that we were once royally entertained as guests of Angela Honeyford, widow of the great late headmaster Ray Honeyford. He lost his career when the attack dogs of political correctness bit his reputation to death after he pointed out that you cannot decant scores of Pakistani hill farmers to Bradford without there being deep social repercussions. What Ray wrote in the mid-eighties is today regarded as simple common sense.

Now we can turn to Sir Andrew Green (now Lord), once UK Ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia. After Green retired from the diplomatic service, he founded Migration Watch, because he just knew that the government was out of control on immigration and grossly misleading the public with more or less invented statistics. Of course the default position of the media and politicians was to brand him “racist”.

If you doubt that, just remember the 2010 election campaign when Gordon Brown, questioned by constituent Gillian Duffy on immigration, instantly branded her a “bigot.”  So that was the default position of the liberal virtue-signalling establishment.

Andrew Green was obliged to endure endless media attacks that Migration Watch was a cover to the likes of the National Front, or that he was a bigot. He was obliged to sue the Guardian and the Independent for defamation, and of course he won. As a mark of his integrity, he gave his personal winnings to Migration Watch.

It is now clear that the Migration Watch has always been consistently right and that the number of people coming to the UK has long been spiralling out of control. Green forecast that the numbers of arrivals will prove to be an increasing burden on our schools, the NHS and our housing stock, and may well lead to social unrest.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel invited nearly a million “refugees” to live in Germany. Well of course these “refugees” have no passports, but how long do you think it will take for political pressure to build so they are granted full German citizenship? Then they will be able to invite their aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters to come and live with them.

Does it matter? What are the social consequences?  Recently thousands of women in major cities in Germany gathered in central squares to watch fireworks. Many claim they were grossly sexually assaulted apparently by Arab / African-looking young males. The German authorities were slow to point fingers as to who were the perpetrators of these crimes on the grounds of political correctness. It was the same when the UK authorities covered up over the Rotherham and Oxford rapes of young vulnerable girls.

These assaults are not the first and they won’t be the last. In October 2014, a group of Libyan cadets stationed near Cambridge ran amok. Four young women were assaulted and a young man was raped. The rapists were jailed for 12 years and the men who groped the women were deported. What was amazing was that a Libyan spokesman appeared on television to say that he was sorry but Libyan men didn’t realise that you weren’t allowed to do such things in the UK. This was an unfortunate case of cultural misunderstanding.

Doubtless it was also “cultural misunderstandings” behind the assaults in Germany. It is said that the men looked angry. Why are they angry?

If you come from a society that is doctrinally commanded to cover up women, the sight of attractive and socially liberated women brings temptation to young men and this makes them angry. This anger is not directed where it should go – at their crazy belief system that says that women should be forbidden for behaving as they wish – but at the temptress. In order that male pride can be rescued, the temptress must be humiliated and terrorised, thereby restoring power and dominance to where it properly belongs: to the men.

This is the root of the problem – but it’s hard to raise any of this without being accused of “Islamophobia”.

It seems to me that our new migrants had better wise up and learn that when they are in Rome etc.

In the meantime, we had better brace ourselves for the next tranche of people where the men think that women are inferior, that our society and our values are degenerate, and that it would be better run under Sharia law.

I wonder what that oracle, Benedict Cumberbatch, thinks about that?

We walk our miles in record time over flat country with huge grey skies. Moses, (the dog) goes mad with ecstasy as he rolls in the wheat stubble that scratches his tummy.

We sit in the pub Marcus has chosen with trepidation as all his choices thus far have been poor.

But we are greeted by Rachel’s smile in the Willow Tree in Bourn, an excellent restaurant, to discover that she is a true English Rose, attentive and cheerful. The food is top notch and all in all we are all set to rip off the last five miles in record time.

Life on Mars

David Bowie’s death attracted vast publicity – 13 pages in The Times, no less – as if he had been a reigning monarch. But although he was clearly prodigiously talented and successful, and his message was obviously a potent one, it all soared many miles below my radar. Bowie sought to torpedo just about everything I believed in as a child. I was brought up just after the war, and my heroes were Monty, Slim and Churchill. The films we watched were Reach for the Sky, The Cruel Sea and Lawrence of Arabia. We believed in courage, emotional reticence, decency, fidelity, honour, the family and the CoE.

Bowie shrieked instead that we should be bisexual, wear luminous clothes and paint stripes on our faces. He tried to persuade us all that it’s okay not to work hard or be faithful: and that it’s okay to be sexually incontinent and to be a different person every 10 minutes.

He appeared to try to subvert everything I had ever believed in, so I tried to shut him out of my consciousness. I thought that most of my generation wanted to find meaning, genuine love, and something to do with a purpose – and to grow old knowing roughly who we all were.

Tweets to Heaven

The reaction to his death was akin to the emotional tsunami that swept many away during the days after Princess Diana’s death.

Millions of tweets were apparently sent to heaven asking God to allow Bowie to come back to earth. How spooky is that? And what’s healthy about 4.3 million tweets, mainly from celebrities, banging on about how they once spent three seconds (by chance) in the presence of the great Bowie?

In fact, Diana and Bowie had a lot in common: they were both deeply into themselves, and both sad and melancholic. Both personalities were deeply hysterical, and they appeared not to know who they were from one minute to the next. And what does reinventing yourself really mean? What sort of credulous ass thinks that this sort of behaviour could ever possibly lead to happiness? Go figure: the reality is that it’s bound to lead to marital breakdown, unemployment, stranded kids, crime, unhappiness and an early death.

Then came the “sob signalling”, a conceited, narcissistic and artificial practice that was paraded on social media. It was contrived rather to draw attention to the emotional state of the author than the dead Bowie. Sob signalling demonstrates that the more I weep, the more sensitive, caring, and loving I am. It’s runny nose, knicker-wetting, self-indulgent whiffle.

One Times headline screamed, “Debauchery seven days a week!” That’s the sort of wet dream I had when I was 14. Why should such behaviour be celebrated? It’s what happened at the end of the Roman Empire. Would you like that headline above your grave? Or above the graves of your children?

The whole thing lacked humour, although I did find one story I read quite amusing. Bowie was playing live at the Hammersmith Empire and during the interval he tottered backstage on his high heels to take a pee. The production manager showed him a stained sink.

“My good man,” said Bowie, “I am not pissing in a sink.”

The man snarled, “If it was good enough for Shirley Bassey last week, it’s good enough for you.”

Great news all round. We are staying just outside Cambridge. A blessed day away from my Plod as guests of one of my favourite people, our younger son, Oliver and his wife Lois and their not so baby girls, Amelie and Annabel. I visited Kings  College Chapel, one of the wondrous things  you should mark high on your Bucket List.

We discover that Oli and Lois are now expecting their third child, our eleventh grandchild so, God willing, in a little time we will be Mr and Mrs Quiverful. I love the grandchildren experience, all Jane and I have are the good bits: the games and the stories and the fun and when they start to smell or cost lots of money they get handed back to their struggling parents.

We read of the English football manager being caught in a sting whereby he was offering to sell influence for £400k to Overseas buyers of his team and other favours that I didn’t understand. Poor man. Why did he need more than the three million pounds he was already getting? What would he have spent it on? It seems that vast piles of cash have ruined the game and so it is no longer just fun but an international industry. It seems the whole bang shoot is riven with corruption and the UK were meant to be setting an example. What a sad day for football lovers.

My Good Name

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before the police attracted strong criticism for neglecting the vast number of young girls in Rochdale who were being sexually abused by Muslim men. For years the police decided to ignore complaints for fear of attracting criticism of “institutional racism”.

It was only after a Times journalist and a courageous abused girl persisted that the awful truth flowered into a vast scandal. Then there was the horror of the abuses of the grotesque Jimmy Savile who for years managed to rape vulnerable people, wherever he found an opportunity, on an industrial scale.

Open Season

The police sought to avoid more damage by pronouncing that the words of those claiming to have been molested would henceforth be taken “seriously”. This offered open season not only to genuine claimants, but also to every fantasist, opportunist and ambulance-chasing lawyer going.

The disastrous “Operation Midland” included rigorously investigating the late Ted Heath, war hero Lord Bramall, politician Leon Britain and former MP Harvey Proctor for sexual abuse based on the accusations of a single man – whose outpourings were deemed by one senior cop to be “credible and true”. Then Cliff Richard was smeared. In each case the police called the accusers “victims” with the implication that everyone who had been fingered in the enquiry was probably guilty. In each case, the police apparently tipped off the press. The allegations were supported by publicity-seeking MPs (such as the appalling Tom Watson), and an army of solicitors who smell money like sharks scent blood. Allegations where sex is involved are toxic for there is “no smoke without fire”. Of course, the damage to the reputations of the accused is terrible and lasting.

Despite vigorous attempts by the police to generate sufficient evidence to get the cases to stand up they dribbled away to an embarrassing… nothing.

There is a Chinese proverb quoted by Jung Chang, in her book Wild Swans: “Where there is a will to convict, there is always evidence.”

If you want to believe something bad about someone, you will usually find something to justify your prejudice if you look hard enough. We are all fallen and we all make mistakes.

I knew a man once who was responsible for recruiting his company’s graduate intake. He was an odd choice for he nurtured a cluster of prejudices about universities, which he took pleasure in sharing with each new intake. “Graduates,” he claimed flatly, “are by definition work-shy, impractical, prone to lateness with dubious moral behaviour and worst of all… they are always socialists!”

It has to be admitted that granted the strength of his will to convict, he could always find some evidence to convince himself that he was right.

Ruining Reputations

This man’s prejudice is played out every day. When it’s played out by the media, the outcome can be ruinous for the lives of its victims. Once the media have the will to convict then it’s only a matter of time before the “evidence” is collected and backed up by pictures. Should a person be grieving over some disaster, then find a picture of him with a drink in hand. Should he be showing some gravitas, then find one where he is acting the clown, even if taken at a party years ago.

When it’s played out by heads of State (Hitler, or in recent times Donald Trump) it can lead to nations going to war with lives destroyed. When it’s played out by the police and the Director of Prosecutions, reputations can be shredded.

It’s an unfair world and we all have to plead guilty to convicting people we know – and celebrities we don’t – without evidence in the court of our own personal judgements. How do we react to the names of Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, Rupert Murdoch or Tony Blair? Do we really know all the facts or are we just quoting Daily Mail headlines? Are we joining in the prejudice of the crowd?

We should be careful: take heed of these words from Othello:

“Who steals my purse steals trash…’tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.”

Now we approach the outskirts of Cambridge, facing flat, straight walks where I imagine Roman soldiers tramped their extra mile all those centuries ago. Moses (our dog) stirred up a fox and then an otter by the River Ouse and we are fortunate that Moses didn’t see it. We lunched in a garden centre – no pretension there – and we were served by the washer woman from Wind in the Willows: stout, red faced with a white apron and a relentlessly cheerful manner. We chose egg, beans and chips served on a large white plate – no fancy slates there! All washed down with a mug of workman’s tea and at a fraction of the price in the naff pubs.

I am bothered that the Conservative government is all that stands between us and Corbyn’s chaos! Let’s hope that Theresa isn’t gripped by hubris as a heavy responsibility rests on her and her team to rule in a balanced, middle ground way. She looks like my old Latin teacher: severe, perhaps a tad humourless, yet thoroughly decent. When she was around I always felt like an inky fingered schoolboy caught having a fag in the loo, but I knew that deep down she was tough, yet scrupulously fair. Let’s hope she hasn’t changed. Has there ever been a time before when we had a greater need for our political leaders to have competence and high integrity?

The Thin Blue Line

Of course we should all support the police, for they are the body that keeps us one blue line away from anarchy. I always wince when I hear yobs screaming “pigs” at them, they really can have no idea how tough being a good policeman must be.

But my admiration for them is not unqualified when they get things wrong. They seem on occasion to lack wisdom.

Honours for Sale!

Ten years ago, the Blair government was mired in allegations of “cash for honours”. It says a lot about the speed of events today that most people have to scratch their heads to recall what this fuss was all about.

Put simply there were serious allegations that the Blair government, under the guidance of its henchman, Lord Levy, was offering knighthoods, gongs and peerages for cash – just like the bad old days when prime minister David Lloyd George wanted to hoover up some cash following the First World War.

Lloyd George commissioned shady businessman Maundy Gregory to do the spade work. He hove to with enthusiasm and was duly offering knighthoods for £1.24m each and baronetcies for around £2m a time in today’s money. The scheme was a roaring success and the cash raised – about £40m – went to fund the Tory and Liberal parties (alongside a good deal of commission for Gregory).

In 1927, Gregory’s scam was rumbled and he was jailed for two months under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925, which is still in force. No one really knows how Lloyd George escaped censure but wily old sod that he was, of course he managed to do so.

Yates of the Yard

Fast forward to 2006. There were allegations that the Blair government was offering honours for cash and allegedly oiling the wheels by using “loans” instead of cash donations: loans did not have to be reported, while yes, you guessed it, cash donations did.

Assistant Commissioner John Yates was instructed to investigate criminality: had a crime been committed or not? In the process, Blair’s one-time friend Lord Levy was arrested and questioned. The headlines were lurid, the great and the good ran for cover, and everyone waited to see if the government might fall. It was as tense as that.

I could have told Yates how the system works or that he was totally wasting his time. In Gregory’s day, there was a firm link between the payment of cash and the award of an honour. The Blair government (and all governments and political parties since) are far more sophisticated and have learned a lot over the years.

What happens today is that the seriously rich are told by the politicians, “Just give us your money, and wait and see”. So, Mr Big Wallet writes a cheque for a couple of million, and – lo and behold – a year or so later, a recommendation is likely to be made and John Bloggins becomes Lord Bloggins. Of course, if the Lords Appointments Commission rejects the recommendation then Bloggins has no comeback. He has blown his cash for there are no cast-iron guarantees.

So the police had the thankless task of investigating a system that was more or less fool- proof. All the political parties are involved in this soft-core corruption, and no one has any incentive to blow the whistle. The great Denis Healey once scornfully said, “Well I suppose it’s a bit better than shuffling brown envelopes.”

The police were obliged to spend months in the full glare of unfavourable publicity and parliamentary hostility, and poor old Yates of the Yard was never heard of again.