We walked from Kington to outside Alchester. Warm and muggy. We had lunch in yet another pub that clearly buys bulk food from a wholesaler who guarantees that none of the recipes need cooking, so the food – if you can call it that – just requires slapping on a plate by anyone.  No skill or preparation needed.  Only the non-complaining English tolerate this sort of thing.

I was hugely complimented by International Rotary who awarded me the Paul Harris Medal of honour for ZAN’E`s work in Zimbabwe. What a friendly charity Rotary is. We walked on with a spring in our steps.

Eyewitness

Readers may have read the sad story concerning saintly war hero Bishop George Bell of Chichester. Damages have now been paid by the Church on the assumption he sexually molested a five-year-old girl.

So far, so commonplace: after all, the papers are full of this sort of thing these days. So what’s odd about this case? Well the woman complained recently of Bell’s abuse, which occurred over 60 years ago, and Bell died in 1958.

Fearing criticism if it was seen to do nothing, the Church dealt with the civil action without “due process”. The assumption was made that in all probability Bell had carried out the alleged abuse and a financial settlement was made. The Church then tried to bury the scandal as best it could. But appalled parishioners started to strip Bell’s name from various church buildings, while others have tried to win a modicum of justice for Bell’s memory. This story isn’t over.

Rough Justice?

Let’s take into account that saintly people can do appalling things (look at Abraham, Jacob, David and so on – the list is vast), and remember how many thought that Jimmy Savile was a (albeit very weird) hero until we found out he was a horror story.

Let’s assume that the complainant’s motive is genuinely to right a wrong and that she is not driven by financial reward – not easy for I have been around a bit, but of course I may be wrong.

I worry that Bell’s reputation can be trashed when he’s not around to defend himself. And is it justice to rely on the word of one complainant concerning memories dating back to when she was just five years old – without third party endorsement – to prove guilt, and thereby comprehensively destroy a man’s reputation?  I understand that there are thousands of cases trundling through the courts on the word of one complainant with no witnesses. This worries me.

The great Russian theatre director Meyerhold used to tell a story from his days as a Moscow law student. One of the professors would arrange for a powerful thug to rush into a busy lecture hall and start a fight. The police would be called and the troublemaker removed. The students would be asked to recount what had happened, and each would tell a slightly different tale. Some would even insist there had been two thugs rather than one.

“Hence,” the professor would explain, “the old Russian saying, “He lies like an eyewitness.”

Capitalism: Red in Tooth and Claw

You can tell the difference between businesses that are run by the state ostensibly “for nothing” (by tax payers actually!) and those operating under the lash of making a profit.

For example, I used to be a member of a “Virgin” Health Club – as you’d expect, it’s run ruthlessly on business lines. Newcomers are sternly interviewed and members mercilessly and routinely sifted by a martinet. I was frequently asked if I wanted to ”upgrade” my already expensive season ticket: “No!”

The club must make a fortune. One day after your subscription is out of date, you are barred until the next dollop of cash has been paid. Quite right too.

I then discovered another gym 400 yards away run by the council: same facilities, newer machines and fees at a quarter of the price set by the private gym.

However, I notice that the entry gates in my council-run gym are forever open, there are no checks to see whether or not my membership is valid, and no one ever asks whether I want to upgrade my membership, pay more or buy any other services?

Who cares? It’s only taxpayer money, so it’s a commercial bombsite. There are happy users of the services of course, but the poor sucker-rate payers pick up the bill caused by unmotivated and lazy staff.

While I am on about it, without serious market discipline, the NHS will bankrupt us all in the end. It’s the nearest thing to God we have in our deeply secular society, and of course it’s run on financially incontinent, communist lines, and no politician dares touch it without ruining their party’s electoral chances.

The NHS is a haven of waste. But if I am wrong and if the principle of a free NHS is such a wonderful idea, why don’t we nationalise the provision of food as well?

Message from the Bank

Lloyds Bank in Oxford’s Summertown sends a clear message to its customers.

As you drive into its small car park, you are faced with the sign, “Bank employees only!”

I often wonder why they don’t add a few words to round off the message: “Customers can get stuffed!”

Sent from Tom Benyon Jnr to the Benyon family this morning:

—

There have been some amazing fund raising feats for Zane this month in the family.

Milly and the boys have conquered  the three peaks (https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Milly-Sinclair)
Granny and Bubba are hiking the pathways of the UK as I write.

But as we know these have been warm up acts, hors d’oeuvres to whet the appetite  for the main meal to come. Which is of course Zac (5) and Eli’s (8) three legged hike from Wellow to Bath!! This is no ordinary walk family. That would be a bit predictable. This is walking whilst lashed to another human being. Think about that. Imagine How hard it would be for you, lashed to your sibling for hours on end whilst they prattle incessantly.

This is x-treme walking,  the like Zane has never seen before. It will no doubt  change all Zane  fundraising in the future.

Donors are already calling for Tom and Jane to raise their game now that Zac and Eli have raised the bar to dizzying heights. So. Tom and Jane,  it’s time to unleash Moses and use the lead to  bind your legs together for the remainder of the walk. It’s the least you can do.  Anyone can walk… But three legged? Now that’s a true test of human endurance.

Okay okay….. ,  here’s the link below!

You can help Eli and Zac raise money for this great cause by donating directly to their fundraising page – https://www.justgiving.com/eliandzac?utm_source=Sharethis&utm_medium=fundraisingpage&utm_content=eliandzac&utm_campaign=pfp-email.

JustGiving sends your donation straight to ZANE and automatically reclaims Gift Aid if you are a UK taxpayer, so your donation is worth even more.

Thank you for your support!

We walk from Worcester where we have been right royally hosted for two days in a lovely house bang in the middle of the town. Off we trot on a muggy, overheated day towards Kington accompanied by Clendon and Camilla Daukes, loyal walkers over the years and fun to be with for we never stop laughing. I have to stop at a chemist to see to a sore mouth to discover I have an infection in my jaw. An infernal nuisance and I worry about the side effects of antibiotics.

So David Cameron has resigned as an MP. It now seems to be open season for the weevils to hurl abuse at him. Blog  readers will recall that one of the things that triggers my anger is unthinking and toxic criticism of our national  leaders by people who have never met them and can have no idea how hard it is to lead a nation; and if they were to be catapulted into the top job would last thirty seconds, if that!  All these armchair critics are doing is to recycle stale abuse culled from the tabloids and when I hear it I reach for the sick bag. It’s so naff. Of course it’s  much more interesting to say rude things about people rather than offer praise. But throwing abuse by saying that “David Cameron is a good guy” is far less interesting than muttering “he is a corrupt bastard!” But offering armchair abuse about strangers  is a cheap and nasty way of spending time.

Parroting unthinking abuse when you have never even met the person and don’t know the facts says far more about the gossip who says it than his or her victim.

However tedious this may be I think David Cameron is a first class, highly moral and a decent family man who led this country safely through extraordinarily difficult times with consummate  skill and integrity. Of course he has made mistakes, everyone does that, but he should be given great credit for his substantial achievements; for just one  example:  in the reform of our public services and schools. Okay,  the referendum could be regarded as a mistake by the “remainers”  but at least  he delivered a referendum on a key constitutional and democratic issue which is more than any of his predecessors did.

He has been a good friend to ZANE. I for one am sorry to see him go and wish him well.

Confession

I was asked to take the collection at our local church service recently. I thought things needed livening up so I cheerfully growled at startled congregants, “Come on: stump up!” Jane was ashamed of my sales-pitch and says the CoE should put me on commission.

Why is it that everyone at church puts on a funny voice? For heaven’s sake, it’s supposed to be Good News surely – so why do people mope around with faces that indicate they have just received a final tax demand?

Communion that day bothered me. I knelt there and my mind went blank! I couldn’t recall anything I had done that was especially wrong – was I wasting God’s time? What on earth was I doing on my knees anyway? Jane told me that I should be ashamed of myself (she says this a lot), and if it would help my contrition she is quite prepared to draw up a list of my iniquities – of which she has first–hand knowledge – for future reference.

Dog Tales

I saw the Rev’d Kate Bottley on a TV programme called Gogglebox in which the reaction of participants watching various programmes is recorded to review their variances. In a session when a dog died, the bulk of viewers wept copiously but this dry-eyed vicar sensibly remarked that since the dog was only a small one, “they only would need a small hole to bury it”. Not an unreasonable observation from someone who spends a good deal of her time comforting people who have been bereaved, sometimes in ghastly circumstances. But apparently the poor vicar was the subject of vicious trolling by the kind of bores who barrack anyone who has fallen short in the political correctness stakes, or who has failed to weep at the correct moment.

This reminds me that some time ago I ran a series of advertisements for ZANE showing a woman living in Harare with two dogs she could no longer afford to feed. I thought that the great British public, with its well-known love of animals, would deeply sympathise with her plight and stump up right royally. Not a bit of it: the prevailing reaction seemed to be, “Why doesn’t this daft woman just eat her dogs?!”

A Tangled Web           

Of course, we’re out of the EU now, but I can’t help reflecting on how years ago – when I was an MP – I went round the parliament in Brussels with journalist John Sergeant. It was hugely confusing then, and it must be far worse now; and it’s all made worse by the fact the whole outfit shifts from Brussels to Strasbourg each six months. What a waste of time and money that is for starters. What do they do all day in all those offices other than allow faceless and unaccountable people to spout vast, confusing directives?

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is a mere 278 words of timeless and immortal prose and the last EU directive on the size of eggs ran to 40 closely worded pages!

The one thing that made me laugh hung in the men’s lavatory in the Parliament building at eye height: “Do you know you are the only person in this building who knows exactly what you are doing!”

In Praise of Monty

It was Kipling who said that as God couldn’t be everywhere at the same time, he created mothers.

I may laugh at Jane for playing General Montgomery from time to time, but she is a remarkable mother and granny. In fact, all mothers surely deserve a medal for the sacrifices they make but of course I only know about Jane’s qualities at first hand. She has focused on our children and grandchildren’s needs for years with laser dedication, allowing them to take reasonable risks yet rescuing them from the various dangers that lurk throughout childhood. She’s told them “don’t shout”, “button it up”, and “don’t sit on wet grass, or you know what will happen”. We’ve heard, “Eat that now and it’ll spoil your appetite,” or “Who cares what Mrs Jenkins children are doing, you’re not going out dressed like that?” Or how about, “Were you born in a barn?”, “This  isn’t an hotel”, or her speciality – said with a glinting eye – “Just because I say so”?

Jane was brilliant at knowing what not to say and allowing our children space to make their own mistakes. She never told off our daughter for smoking behind the stables because she guessed the phase would pass. (In fact, when the children were teenagers I took them to a prison and a home for the mentally ill. They soon worked out what the crooks and mentally unstable often had in common – chain-smoking. End of lesson!)

Jane didn’t say a word when one of our daughters brought home a man with a pigtail and a dog on a rope (I did). She said nothing about the children coming back late at night because she thought that if they were trusted, all would be well in the end. To my astonishment, this worked.

Jane carried the maze of family life in her head and she performed the great, unpaid duties in the home as well. She usually played tough cop, while I got to be the nice one. As Madonna once said, “I’m the disciplinarian with the school runs, making the doctor appointments and ensuring the homework gets done. He does the fun things, the treats, ice creams and rowdy games.” Jane played Cinderella, while I always sought the popularity of Gladiator.

Motherhood is the only job where if you do it really well you get demoted. Jane’s profound works of love won’t make the obituary pages but she has helped form the characters of the wonderful people that are our children and grandchildren. Jane lives in them, not just by her DNA but by the subtle process of osmosis: thousands of baths run, meals prepared and eaten, school runs completed, clothing ironed, homework improved, tears kissed better, stories related, gentle advice given. Jane lives on in their capacity to love greatly. They in turn will pass all this on as the ball rolls steadily forward.

In this way, as the old song goes, “Love never dies”.

We took the day off which us just as well as it has deluged! This was the day we were reliably informed would be the warmest ever, so it sounds as if the forecasters are the same folk who forecast the Brexit result!

We went in search of an iPad charger, having left the last one like spoor in the drawing room of the last host’s house. A highlight of the day was a joyous lunch with Liz Landale, a lovely person we have known for many years. She lives in elegant style in a beautiful house she and her husband Sandy developed over half a century. Sandy was a gentleman, a lay reader and an accomplished poet. He died not long ago. He had one of those faces I can picture still and if I don’t want to believe he is dead I don’t have to.

Piggy Wig

When I was a little boy, I was often persuaded to recite the Lear nonsense poem “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” to an assortment of doting aunts. It has a couple of lines that have always intrigued me:

“And there in a wood, a Piggy-Wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.”

Then we come to the complicated bit (when you are aged five lots of things are complicated).

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling,
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” (See what I mean!)

I knew about the pigs on the local farm close to where we lived, but none of them had any rings. So why on earth did this pig have a ring in its nose? When I asked the question, my aunts were undoubtedly impressed with my precocity but none of them had a clue.

I have now learned that a nose ring makes leading a pig rather easier than it would be otherwise: the pig can’t escape – its will is dominated and it follows obediently.

I never thought until recently that Lear’s innocent little poem had any serious meaning until I saw a crack den (and don’t ask me why I was in one, for it’s a long – and innocent! – story and nothing to do with this tale). As soon as I saw it, I was reminded of Lear’s pig and its ring.

Drug addiction means being led by the nose with one’s will suspended, in this case towards chemical substances. In their ghastly way, drugs command the purest form of “worship” ever invented by Old Nick. The hellish room I saw, with its smeared windows, discoloured wallpaper, dirty bed, and floor littered with discarded needles, was a shrine. A strange, sweet smell hung everywhere, the sort of odour that marinates your clothes and makes you feel tainted.

Addicts will sacrifice anything to get their next “fix” – their money, their bodies, literally anything. Their ring has led them to an altar that is destroying all who worship there with cruel efficiency.

So my dear readers, we may not be crack addicts but like the piggy wig we all have a nose ring. Where is it leading us? A quote that bothers me more than any other is from US bestselling author David Foster Wallace. He wasn’t a Christian but he wrote:

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reasons for choosing some sort of God… to worship… is pretty much everything else will eat you alive. If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before your loved ones bury you. …Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your owns fear. Worship your intellect… and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful, it is that they are unconscious. They are our default settings.”

Wallace committed suicide in 2008.

The Roaring Lion
Wallace’s words tie in with the Bible (1 Peter 5:8) where we are told, “Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to snare.” I heard somewhere that you rarely get bitten when you pick up a snake: you only get bitten when you try to put it down.

I read that former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy drifted into alcoholism. There was no great white blinding moment when he crossed a line from moderation into addiction. Indeed, addictions are all around us. And as Wallace says, it ain’t just about booze and heroin. At the last Olympics, a friend’s daughter was living with an athlete who had previously won an Olympic bronze. What a great achievement, but his passion was to win gold to the degree that it became an obsession – which is I suppose another word for addiction. When he finally won another bronze – missing out on silver or gold by a milo-second – he was consumed by a profound anger that finally destroyed the relationship. Poor man and poor couple. It would seem there is a high chance that unless you become obsessed by your sport, you are unlikely to succeed.

Addictions come in all shapes and sizes. Addicts worship but they are bowing down before the wrong thing. G.K. Chesterton wrote somewhere that when a man visited a brothel he was in fact calling out to God. That idea takes a bit of thinking about, but when you understand the pull of raw addiction then you can more readily understand why the likes of Sir John Gielgud have felt driven to solicit sex in public places in order to satisfy their needs. Twenty years ago, the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Allan Green, ruined his career after he was caught soliciting sex in King’s Cross. His wife, the poor woman, later killed herself. Forty years ago, Lord Lambton wrecked his ministerial career for consorting with prostitutes, and broadcaster Frank Bough suffered a similar fate when he was caught out in the same way. So it has always been. The exposers used to be the Church; today it is the tabloids. I wonder if those who were caught were in fact relieved. Perhaps they found the mask of respectability too heavy to carry?

Best stick to God. On we trudge tomorrow…

Worcester Sores

A miserable morning when everything seemed to go wrong: the fields were wired up, the gateways blocked with nettles, the paths in the Suckley wood eight miles from Worcester appeared to be circular and we were both convinced we were going in ever decreasing circles and would end up our backsides. Then after we had staggered out and lunched in the “Bank Hotel” we found it as boring as a dentist’s waiting room with nasty food: a hamburger with at least three inches of substitute meat packets of tomato sauce and a rather elderly pickle is not enough for a growing boy.

After lunch tore the three miles into Worcester and calmed down in the eleventh century cathedral for that, in part, is what cathedrals are for.

All’s Well That Ends Well

Jane and I recently enjoyed a dramatic production of Hamlet at Stratford played by an all-black cast. I studied the play at school and so I know it well enough, but great slabs of the prose still wafted over my head. However, I nodded wisely and pretended that I understood exactly what was going on.

I’ll bet I am not alone in this incomprehension. Years ago, a friend went to see a provincial production where the spoken words were indistinct.

“Not that it really mattered,” he later proclaimed, “because I know the play so well.”

What a pseud! He lieth.

Forsooth!

In his biography, Lawrence Oliver said that he was once in a production of Richard III where an actor called Dan Cunningham was playing a messenger. One matinee, Cunningham was having a fag in the wings and Olivier was on stage.

Cunningham suddenly realised that things had gone very quiet. Believing he’d missed his cue, he stubbed out his fag, rushed on stage and flung himself at Larry’s feet: “My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is slain this hour.”

Now this presented problems because the Duke of Buckingham hadn’t even been on stage yet. So Larry gripped him very firmly by the arm and hissed, “Thou liest Sirrah!”

“Oh sod, Larry’s dried!” Cunningham thought to himself. He quickly came up with some Shakespearean doggerel: “Nay, my liege, I swear, by yonder thicket he lies all covered in gore!”

So Larry applied a real tourniquet to his arm and snarled, “Is’t positive Sirrah?”

Quick as a flash, back came Cunningham: “Yea my liege, I swear by all that is holy, the Duke of Buckingham is slain this hour.”

Larry gripped him by the throat, turned him upstage and cried:

“Then by my troth, thou hast fucketh the entire play!”

Suffice to say that nobody in the audience even seemed to notice…

Drem Station

Jane wasn’t always the confident Christian lady she is today. When she was a little girl she used to live in East Lothian near North Berwick, and the local train to Edinburgh started in the local “Drem” Station.

One day her parents overheard her saying her prayers as follows: “And lead me not into Drem Station…”

Summer Nights

The British appear to be immune to cold. I suppose this is just as well, as most of the time living in the UK is a bit like inhabiting the bottom of a well…

Sixty years ago, Noel Coward memorably sang to his fellow colonials, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” But he failed to comment on the fact that Englishmen at home are also mad about throwing outdoor parties when the weather is wet, freezing and foul.

Cold Comfort Farm
On a number of occasions, I have been invited to parties by kindly yet insanely optimistic hosts who seem to forget that the British weather is rarely conducive to outdoor merrymaking.

A few months ago, we celebrated a friend’s wedding in Scotland. The party was held in a farmyard with icy rain trickling down our necks. To get a drink, we were forced to wade through mud while the meal was eaten in an open barn, which doubled as a wind tunnel. There weren’t enough chairs, either, come to think about it.

Out of politeness and affection, around seventy of Scotland’s finest chose not to say to our hosts, “It’s good to see you out on day release, when are you being taken back in?” Instead we shivered in our huskies and greatcoats, eating rubbery chicken off plastic plates while pretending we were in the Bahamas – or anywhere else. By the end of the celebration, I was close to hypothermia and it was at least two hours before I could feel my feet again.

Last week, we were guests at an evening birthday party in Reading. We knew were in for it when the host announced: “What a glorious day it’s been, and what a lovely evening too!”. Although the day had been fairly warm, any fool knows that in the UK, the temperature automatically drops at least six degrees and goes on diving. By eight, guests were shivering trying to keep warm, and I saw one poor soul who had stopped moving altogether.

Of course, the last word must go to Winston Churchill. When he was prime minister, his chief whip brought him the ghastly news that one of his ministers had been caught on a bench in St James’ Park in flagrante delicto with a guardsman.

Noting that this particular February night had been the coldest of the winter, Churchill jovially announced: “And below freezing too! Makes you proud to be British.”

Master of My Destiny?
Nelson Mandela claimed that the short poem “Invictus” by the Victorian poet William Ernest Henley encouraged him to go on fighting for his life. The poem ends:

“I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”

Churchill quoted the poem in the Commons in September 1941, as did “Captain Renault” in the totemic film Casablanca, and Barack Obama at Mandela’s memorial service in 2013. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of the poem’s influence on her late father, Aung Sang, and then there is the film Invictus too.

The worry I have is that the sentiments don’t quite ring true. Okay, it’s good never to surrender or give up, but we have all been around a bit and we know that what makes God laugh is “people making plans”.

Try quoting this poem to someone who’s just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and hear what they have to say about being master of their destiny. Or what about someone caught up in a messy divorce – not of their own making – or someone involved in a company bankruptcy, when their involvement is limited to being an employee? Or someone who’s lost a child in, say, a hit-and-run accident?

We are all too often leaves blowing in the wind. Of course, as our secular society has removed God from the equation, vanity – or desperation – tries to persuade us that we are in charge.

Death in Teheran
Perhaps this story best makes my point:

A rich and mighty Persian prince once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death who had threatened him. The servant begged his master to give him his fastest horse to enable him to flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The Prince graciously consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the Prince himself met Death in the garden and questioned him.

“Why did you threaten and terrify my servant?” the Prince asked.

“I did not threaten him,” answered Death. “I only showed surprise in still finding him there when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran.”

Disaster fell! I awoke with the impression that my left knee cap had been kicked by a horse and when I arose I was hobbling and unable to bend it and I was no use to anyone.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I was suffering an acute attack of gout. If any of my blog readers have ever suffered gout they will know how disabling and painful it can be. And it was my fault! Simply, I hadn’t drunk enough water. Gout happens when crystals form around a joint and they have to be washed away; so I drank copious pints of water and took some simple painkillers and the pain receded as fast as it had occurred. What a relief.

So up and down the hills we we tottered, clambering over tiny styles apparently built for athletic pygmies. We walked all day in a drizzle so I spent the time dreaming up a list of the best movies I have ever seen: “Blow up” (David Hemmings), “A Man for all Seasons” ( Paul Scofield), “The Third Man” ( Orson Welles), “Cinema Paradiso”, “Manon De Source and Jean De Fleurette”, “Il Postino” “Leaving Las Vegas”, ” Apocalypto”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “The Night Porter” (Dirk Bogarde), “Gladiator”, “The Graduate”, “Schindler’s List”, “Casino”, “The Scent of a Woman” (Al Pacino), “Marathon Man”, “The Pianist”, “Fargo” and “Ladies in Lavender” for starters.

Class Wars

A rather dingy pub and I have never seen the man with the sad, porpoise face lounging at the bar before. I can tell he’s straining to listen as my friend – whom I admit has a rather braying voice – and I discuss the futility of the hunting ban and how the hunts are thriving anyway.

Suddenly the porpoise leans towards us and through a whiff of tobacco and stale beer, hisses, “F*** off the pair of you, you pigs are a total disgrace.”

Just like that. Then he gives us the finger and shuffles off. We had done nothing to provoke him, and were just sitting there talking.

Toffs and Tattoos
What’s this all about? I suppose he thinks we’re Tory bastards – you know, Bullingdon boys and all that rubbish. There seems no point in trying to change his tiny mind that he’s just plumb wrong.

What’s his problem? Let me guess. Oh yes, we are middle-class, Tory-voting scum. He thinks to himself, “I just don’t want to have to look at you bastards anymore, but I know what you are. You’re filth and I hate the very idea of you!

Each time I look at you I am reminded of my limitations. Your friend looks like a rich toff and you’re clearly a fit old sod! You’re probably doing useful things – a member of that tribe of productive people who make me feel wholly inadequate. I just hate looking at your smooth, polished faces because you remind me of my failures and shortcomings.

You’re raising money for a charity walking round bloody Britain. Why don’t you sit on your sodding backside, smoking, drinking and watching daytime porn like me, eh? Why don’t you join Labour and do away with wealth creation, good management and hard-won profit?

Why don’t you devote your time to what you can screw out of the system, join a few “Stop the War” rallies, litter the streets with McDonald’s cartons, get drunk on Saturdays and snarl at everyone like a joyless left-wing, tattooed piss artist like me? I hate you! Do you get it?

Havana Blues
Years ago, I went to Cuba on a charitable mission. I arrived in Havana on a Sunday and as I am a churchy sort of person, I went to a service in a jumbo church in the middle of the city.

I am sure that many of my blog readers are churchgoers, and I’ll bet that many of you find it hard going following the order of service. Usually there are at least four pieces of paper to navigate! But the really important question is when to stand up and sit down? How can you get through any Anglican service without making a pluperfect fool of yourself?

Imagine then trying to do all this when the proceedings are conducted in Spanish! The Havana church was crammed with about 800 worshippers and I was jammed smack in the middle. I decided just to follow what the man sitting in front of me was doing: when he got up, so would I, and if he sat down, I would follow suit.

All went smoothly enough until around halfway through the service: I stood up when he did before realising that we were the only two people on our feet. What had gone wrong? The entire congregation began to laugh: they didn’t just snigger, the laughter rolled round the church and gathered momentum until the tears were literally pouring down people’s faces.

I had no idea what they all found so funny, and so I stood like a fool until thankfully my man sat down and so did I.

When at the end of the service I shuffled out, people were still grinning and pointing at me. I asked the pastor, “Please tell me why they were all laughing?”

“My poor man, he said, “I put in a baptism notice halfway through the service and I asked the father of the child to stand up – and you both did!”

Random Question
Why is it that I spy Jeremy Corbyn look-alikes everywhere, all beetling along on bikes, all sporting straggly, little white beards?

Another lovely day’s walking, on our own this time. We passed a vast fruit farm and a small army of Bulgarian fruit pickers, all scurrying along and gesturing that they don’t speak English.

Marcus, our Zimbabwean driver was surprised that whenever he stops in a village and parks by a verge, a spry pensioner often dashes out of a cottage and demands – often aggressively – that he moves at once and what did he think he’s doing parking there anyway!

Marcus is one if the most well mannered and gentle people I have ever met (that’s why he is our driver) and he always tries to disarm them with an apology and a smile and then off he drives. I wonder whether these folk spend their day just building aggression and waiting for the opportunity to have a go at someone. They say that in an uneventful life there is no such thing an an unimportant event and maybe Marcus and his parking is making their day! They are able to say to their friends – if they have any – “Disgraceful behaviour so told him, good and proper.”

Out of Sight, Out of Mind…

Some time ago a Zimbabwean friend of mine died suddenly. I knew him and his wife well and noted that they were the proud parents of two sons: one a lecturer at Durham university, and the other a professor at Exeter. Within six months, my friend’s widow mas making applications to ZANE for financial assistance.

I was astounded and rang both of the sons (readers, you can be proud of me: I was the epitome of discretion itself). It soon became clear that neither had any idea that their mother was facing acute hardship. They both expressed genteel surprise and told me that they would attend to her financial needs.

Go figure as they say. How rubbish is that? But ZANE is not in the business of assisting families who cannot communicate properly, and we often have to ring relatives to explain the harsh facts of life to them so that we do not waste donor money.

Time and again, our staff have to remind relatives who have left Zimbabwe to forge new lives – be it in Edinburgh, London, Toronto or Hobart – that the people they have left behind are having a hard time and need assistance. Experience shows me that the speed at which people forget their friends and relatives as they forge a new furrow someplace else is truly astonishing.

Longing for the Limelight
There is a poem by W.H. Auden called “Musée des Beaux Arts” that deals with this theme. Based on the famous painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, it describes how Icarus plummets from the sky while a ploughman carries on with his work and a ship sails calmly by. Wholly unconcerned by his plight, they presumably have more important things to do and worry about.

We are all guilty of being self-focused. I suppose growing up means trying to hide this iron fact as far as we are able.

There is a story about how an actress playing the nurse in Romeo and Juliet was asked what the play was all about? You will recall that the nurse is a great part for an older woman. She’s been around for a while, she says things that the audience wants to hear, and she raises a few laughs. But the fact remains that she is not Juliet, and she only is in a very few scenes. She probably appears in just one costume like a green bin bag, and she has a rather insane sort of headdress, a vast construction with horns and a veil.

Anyway the actress thinks very carefully about how best to summarise the plot of Romeo and Juliet: “Well, it’s about this nurse…”

So on we go. We are the stars of our own stories and sometimes we forget we are not at the centre of other people’s as well… and that other people can forget about us altogether.

One of my vital roles is to ensure that the forgotten people of Zimbabwe are remembered against the background of the many other worthy causes that battle to gain our attention. It isn’t easy.

—

As we go round the subject of “Brexit” arises. Interestingly, Theresa May is a popular choice as Prime Minister in both camps. Apparently she voted a reluctant “remain” and makes encouraging noises about “Brexit”. She is firm, honest, hard working, tough, competent with no small talk. Many people try to compare her with Margaret Thatcher, which I think is a touch silly as Mrs T was a Titan whose talents were suited for her time, whilst Prime Minister May is her own woman. And able women who play their cards right have an advantage in a man’s world, particularly if Chancellor Merkel’s career ends later this year in the aftermath of foolishly allowing one million refugees into her country against the heartfelt wishes of so many of her people.

But I think May has an advantage over Thatcher in that she has no children to distract her, no son Mark to be helplessly stranded in a desert somewhere. No teenage son to be found helplessly drunk in Trafalgar Square (Tony Blair’s lot). No worries as to which school to send them to. She can just get on with the job without distraction.

We can’t complain about the start of the walk.

We were welcomed in Hay on Wye by the newly elected Chris Davies, MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a leading Conservative luminary, Roger White.

The loon who devised out first day walking is clearly out on day release and the sooner he is incarcerated again the better. Just looking at the hills he made us climb made me feel sea sick. We wheezed up and down with some difficulty but I managed partly because I was stung into overdrive by Roger who to my astonishment told me that he is eight years older than I am and he shot up the highest gradient as if he was jet propelled. So I gloomily plodded on in his wake. It was a glorious day and we agreed that there is nowhere on earth so beautiful than good old England from Easter to late September.

Can anyone tell me why there are 10,000 people waiting in this nasty camp in Calais trying to get to England? Why don’t they learn French and settle down in France? What’s wrong with France? What a dilemma:  if the UK authorities were to we accept the present campers, another 10,000 would appear trying to climb into lorries and so on. If we gave way to the Greens all we would be doing is to encourage the people smugglers.

A Tale of Two Dogs

So we are out of the EU.

I know that ZANE members will be on different sides of this argument, and I am heedful that the topic is toxic. I had not realised until recently how emotive this issue has become. Just like our seventeenth-century civil war between Cavaliers and Roundheads, the issue appears to have divided marriages, families and communities. In a family I know well, a son is refusing to speak to his mother because she voted “out”. He has told her seriously that their hitherto loving relationship is over for good.

But there are two sides to every issue. Jeffrey Archer once told me that he asked the Israeli ambassador to lunch along with that of the Palestinians.

He asked them both, “Are you 100 per cent sure you are right, or only 98 per cent?”

They agreed with the lower percentage.

“Okay”, he said, “then we have 4 per cent wiggle room.”

The Brexit issue has generated so much rage. My daughter Clare – a ZANE trustee and the chaplain of Christ Church in Oxford – recently gave a talk on anger. One of her stories was as follows:

A grandfather was taking his grandson for a walk, but as they walked the old man fell silent. After some time the little boy asked him why he was not talking.

“I have two dogs fighting savagely in my mind,” replied the old man.

“Gosh,” said the boy, “please tell me about them?”

“One is named peace, love, tranquillity, gentleness, kindness and obedience.”

“That’s nice,” said the boy. “What about the other?”

“The other is called anger, rage, violence, jealousy, retribution and pride.”

“And which one will win?” asked the child.

“It all depends on which one I am feeding.”

Happy Holidays

You will have seen the adverts proclaiming how wonderful Scotland is as a holiday destination. And so it is – but if you’re going there, do take care!

Friends of mine Michael and Ann went to Edinburgh for the weekend with their eight-year-old son, Henry. On arriving, they stopped off at a cafe in Castle Street. For those of you who don’t know the area, Castle Street is smack in the city centre, connecting George Street and Princes Street.

My friends were enjoying their coffee, when Henry decided to play up – you know how ghastly eight-year-old boys can be when tired. He screamed and shouted, then spattered his ice cream on the table, just for the hell of it.

With no more ado, Michael turned him over, spanked him and then plonked him back in his seat. End of row.

After ten minutes, a police car pulled up outside the cafe. Two policemen and a policewoman appeared, briefly talked to the owner, and then promptly arrested Michael. Despite vigorous protests from Ann, little Henry was taken into care.

Michael was taken to the police station and charged with assault. Purple with rage and protesting furiously, he was banged up for the weekend, and there he stayed until Monday morning when he was released on bail.

The family then flew back to London, vowing never to visit Scotland ever again. But some time later, Michael was obliged to fly back to Edinburgh to stand trial for assaulting a minor. He was fined and bound over.

Happy holidays in Scotland, but don’t belt your kids – well, not in public anyway.

—

We are spending the night with an old friend in a delightful house in Kinnersley near Kington.

Cathy is a long-standing friend of ZANE

Dear Tom and Jane,

As you set out on your latest walk for ZANE I thought this story might be of interest to you and the people you meet along the way who may want to know what life’s like in Zimbabwe in 2016.

On a recent weekend away we went to a spot along the banks of a river in the hot, dry lowveld of Zimbabwe. We had a rare and unexpected treat and sat in the shade to be entertained by a group of traditional musicians from a nearby village.

There were ten members of the mbira band sitting along the narrow wooden bench: six men and four boys. The band leader, the oldest in the group, addressed the small audience on a sweltering afternoon under a dazzling blue sky. The sun was slowly heading towards the horizon when the band leader stood up to speak. First the older members of the band would play, followed by the youngsters he said.
The young ones were still learning, but they were already very good, he said. As the old get older and prepare to move on, so the young ones move in to take over; that is the way it should be, the band leader said, a huge smile across his face. You couldn’t help but look for double meaning in his words. And then they began: clear tones of the mbira’s, rhythmic clapping, shaking rattles and hypnotic, repetitive song, taking you instantly to another place and time. Then the young ones came on.

On his head the youngster wore a green cardboard biscuit box; once containing lemon creams now the box made perfect headgear, decorated with feathers stuck into the corrugations. For six minutes the youngster danced to the accompaniment of the mbira band; half way through another youngster joined him, rattles in his hands, he too danced and stomped. A third youngster came to the centre to dance, strings of large,round wooden beads around his neck and waist, a stout stick in his hand. On and on the mbira band played and later, as the sun touched the horizon, the hippo in the muddy brown river beyond grunted and snorted before disappearing beneath the surface, waiting for their time to emerge. Men playing mbira’s, youngsters dancing, everyone tapping, clapping and smiling: aaah this is the Zimbabwe we love and yearn for: filled with richness, diversity and happiness.

This is one face of Zimbabwe but look the other way and the image is completely different. Our leaders seem to have forgotten about these good, rich, beautiful aspects of our country and forgotten about us, the ordinary people.

We see hunger, drought, poverty and water shortages while our leaders argue about diamonds, gold and mines.

We see companies going bankrupt and people losing their jobs while our leaders post bullets to each other, make threats, shout insults and scramble for positions.

We see thousands heading for the border in search of jobs in other countries while our leaders say they want pay rises and new cars.

We see clinics without drugs, hospitals without equipment and doctors on strike while our leaders jet off to Singapore for medical treatment.

We see unemployment of over 90% and pavements filled with unemployed people selling their wares while our leaders say they will close all companies who haven’t ceded 51% of their shareholdings to indigenous Zimbabweans.

We see thousands living in hovels and plastic shacks on the outskirts of all our towns while our Vice President continues to live in a 5 star hotel where he’s been since December 2014, at tax payers’ expense.

While monkeys play in our trees, hippos grunt in our rivers and mbira bands play in the sunset, our leaders are in a dark and dangerous political frenzy that is threatening the very fabric of our country. There is a growing fear of what lies ahead for Zimbabwe and so we watch and wait: longing for the day when Zimbabwe will be great again and where we are all welcome, regardless of our differences.

I wish you and Jane warm and dry days on your walk and hope that Moses can keep up with your pace and indefatigable spirit.

With love,

Cathy