Stupid Boys

I have asked countless, intelligent women how many men ask them , say at dinner, about their lives and the answer is always:

“None!  They never do anything other than talk about themselves! They bore us rigid with their stupid views and stories about their tedious careers and they even yap across us to the man on our right or left.”

Let me tell you some more about my views and stories…

Icebergs on a Sunny Day

Walked from Brockenhurst through the New Forest on what must surely be the hottest day of the year. Yet again I try to outwalk my friends Anthea and Christopher Piggins, and once again Chris’ cantilever legs make mincemeat of me. Also in the party is a new friend from Zimbabwe – an escapee from illegal farm seizures – Nicky Millbank, and delightful company. We lunch at the New Forest Inn. I see above the cloakroom door a plaque that proudly proclaims that this inn was the last stop of Captain Edward Smith before he boarded the Titanic to command its only voyage. I don’t think I want to know that somehow, particularly when I see another sign in the car park wishing passengers a cheery “Good luck on your trip.”

Makes me think, we are always only a step away from tragedy.

There but by the Grace of God…

Along with millions of parents, I have always been desperately sorry for families whose beloved children suddenly disappear. The default position of some people appears to be to condemn parents of missing kids as seriously negligent. I disagree, for I cannot see how anyone who has ever been involved in bringing up children could do anything other than admit how easy it is to lose them.

Hide and Seek

We all have our own horror stories of near misses and lucky escapes. Here are couple of ours. At more or less the same time as the tragic case of Madeleine McCann was playing out in the news headlines, our youngest daughter, Milly, was visiting friends in Kensington. At the height of the rush hour, she led her two young sons, Isaac and Silas, down the teeming escalator and towards the crowded platform. Trains were coming and going and Milly was stressed. She arrived on the platform with Isaac in one hand, Silas holding the other – and then she suddenly realised with horror that two-year old Silas had let go and she could no longer see him. She called his name, but no reply. She then shouted with increasing tempo, as he failed to appear. The crowd parted as if she was carrying the plague, and then officials materialised. They tried to calm Milly down as she rapidly approached full-flowered despair.

The tube manager searched the platform, exits were closed and trains were stopped: station officials were sent up and down the tracks in case Silas had gone for a walk. The police arrived: by this time Milly was seated in the station master’s office head in hands, silently weeping and fearing the worst. Then – at last – a phone rang. The spokesperson from Gloucester Square Tube station (one station down the track) said that a little lost boy with red hair had been just been presented to the station manager by a kindly passenger. Silas had stepped onto the train just as its doors were closing and for the next few minutes had been walking up and down the crowded tube politely asking passengers for his mummy.

Last Boxing Day, my son Oliver and his French wife, Lois, were shopping in a crowded mall in Perpignon. After they left a clothing shop, four-year-old Amelie was missing. They called and searched, and as their anxiety levels rose they called again; then they shouted. The police were alerted. No Amelie. More police arrived, the mall was closed, and footage from various CCTV cameras was fetched. More shops were visited, questions were asked, and announcements made.

Half an hour later, the entire mall was at a standstill. Then as if by magic, a smiling Amelie suddenly appeared from the clothes shop. It transpired that as Mummy and Daddy were shopping, she had decided to play her favourite game of hide and seek. She thought that a clothes box sited under a counter where returned goods were occasionally collected was as good a place to hide as any, so she opened the lid and snuggled down. She grinned to herself when she heard Mummy and Daddy calling her name, then she had a snooze.

Amelie wasn’t in the least surprised by the throng of police and people. And she informed her parents, “You never found me, so I won. Can we go on playing?”

Well of course, all’s well that ends well, and now the stories have entered Benyon folklore. But all self-aware parents who read this may also reflect, “There but by the grace of God go I.”

Euro Visions

We walk from Freshwater Bay to Yarmouth keeping the sea to our left. The path leads through several miles of dappled tunnel lined with trees crouching to attention and nodding in the breeze to greet us like a parade of elderly veterans. On the outskirts of the port we meet a group of biking holidaymakers from Holland, the Dekkers, and a delightful lady with a wholly unpronounceable name. We swopped family gossip and thankfully kept away from Grexit and the Euro! Their English was excellent so good it puts us to shame.

Catholic Tastes

A generous lunch provided by my cousin Giles. a dear man who knew Zimbabwe – and indeed married in “Salisbury”. It was then in its glory days. We discussed how curious it was that our great grandparents suddenly converted to Catholicism in the eighteen fifties when Catholicism was said to be “fashionable”! Perhaps Cardinal Newman’s influence was to do with it. Fashion is a funny reason to change your faith but there’s nowt so queer as folk.  Anyway I don’t think they were very serious about it as I was born a Catholic and no one told me anything about it at all except I should feel guilty, which I duly did, for a while at least. Anyway I have long since ceased to be sectarian, but some people take the differences very seriously indeed. In fact when one of my conservative Presbyterian pals heard I had been baptised Catholic he said that if I was to be ever baptised an Anglican by total immersion, they would have to hold me under the water for at least ten minutes to get rid of it all! I hope he was joking.

Giles and I couldn’t help but compare the Zimbabwe situation then and now…

Exodus

Since about 1980, Zimbabwe’s greatest export to the developed world has been around four million of its most talented young workers. This exodus has been as much of a tragedy for Zimbabwe as it has been a boon to the rest of the civilised world, for few will return.

A One-Way Ticket

The UK’s National Health Service relies on a steady supply of talented Zimbabwean nurses and cleaners. Thousands of businesses and restaurants round the world find Zimbabwean waiters, managers and shop assistants a valuable resource.

Of course, millions remain trapped in Zimbabwe and today live lives of repression and destitution. But who left the country and why? Well let’s start with about 4,500 farmers whose land was stolen, followed by hundreds of senior farm managers who faced destitution; then there was a queue of politicians of the wrong stripe who feared that a single misplaced word might involve them in a fatal car accident, people of the wrong tribe who faced cruel persecution, and thousands of young who discovered that they were born the wrong colour to win jobs.

All these people did what humankind has always done when life has become intolerable; it’s what the Huguenots did when faced with religious persecution, it’s what the Pilgrim Fathers did in the early seventeenth century; it’s what the Scottish and Irish farmers decided to do when faced with land seizures. Zimbaweans did what escaping Jews did when facing Nazi genocide in the 1930s. They looked abroad for freedom to live free lives as people have always done throughout the generations.

They left.

Modern Entertaining

When Jane and I were young, we used to entertain a great deal. Although we still throw parties, the times we are invited back seems to be falling. I thought perhaps it was us! But my children tell me the same story – the Benyons are a hospitable lot, we all derive great fun from entertaining, but it seems that many people find it a strain. Perhaps their mothers did not like to entertain and so the tradition has never been passed on. My children tell me that when they are asked to dinner, nine times out of 10 they are asked to bring a course with them, or the wine for the meal or something. Why is this? Are we all growing stingier and becoming more inhospitable?

One of the most majestic sea fronts in the world and it’s deserted; miles of tortuous and heathery track with occasional isolated clusters of caravans. Then we walk through the most serious competition to the good old C of E and its Sunday services:  a full scale car boot sale where the burghers of Shanklin are selling the most extraordinary junk.

The spiritual aspect of possessions fascinates me…

Clumber

In John Huston’s 1948 film, Key Largo, Rocco, the grasping crook (played by Edward G. Robinson) is asked by Major Frank McCloud (played by Humphrey Bogart) why he is so unscrupulous and greedy? The unreflective Rocco hasn’t a clue why.

McCloud guesses, “Is it because you want more?”

“Yes,” snarls Rocco, “That’s it: I want more.”

Stuff and More Stuff

The greed of man (and women!) is timeless. A friend told me he hasn’t spoken to his sister for 20 years because he alleges she stole some Tupperware – worth a few pounds at best – from their mother’s house just before she died. My wife, Jane, tells me that when she was a practising social worker she became used to people stealing money from their aged relatives’ handbags.

One of my lawyer friends always tells me that greed is at the heart of his clients’ motives: “Where there’s a will there’s a relative!” and “say ‘cash’, and a corpse rises to dance”.

When Jane and I visited New York a few months back, we saw a window sticker in a white stretch Mercedes that read: “The guy who dies with the most toys wins.” We live in a deeply materialistic, money-grubbing society. Why are we all so greedy? Do we love things more than we love the people around us? In the early Church it was said, “there were no needy persons among them”. If they had stuff they shared it.

Still, of course, that was 2,000 years ago…

And still we want more stuff. Over the past couple of days, we have walked past several charity shops selling out-of-date stuff; then we trailed a stop-go rubbish van carrying discarded stuff. After that we saw a yellow sign offering to hoard stuff in “self-storage facilities”.

William Penn (he founded Pennsylvania) called all the objects we cram into our houses “clumber”: the word’s a mix of the words “lumber” and “cloying”, and it seems to sum things up perfectly. We all have clumber: we see it, then we want it, so we buy it; then we show it to our neighbours and silently compare it with their clumber, and then we tire of it and throw it away, and look for more. In this way we often end up buying things we don’t really need with money we haven’t got in order to impress people we don’t really like. We imagine that if our clumber keeps accumulating, we’ll feel safe and secure. If our head says that’s nonsense, our hearts argue differently. Recall the Black Friday shopping day in the run up to Christmas when hundreds of shoppers belted each other as they fought for the best bargains.

US psychologist Paul Pearsall has the following to say to people who find it hard to part with possessions that they haven’t used for years. “You may require a ‘closet exorcist’, a trusted friend,” he suggests, “who can help prevent the ‘re-stuffing’ phenomenon. Re-stuffing happens when in the process of clearing out junk we are stimulated to acquire new stuff.” And beware the stuff addicts who see your cupboard cleaning exercise as an opportunity to acquire more stuff for themselves!

Chasing the Wind

We are obsessed with houses. Comedian George Carlin said that a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it – and some really quite successful people have managed to get by without ever owning one. Mother Teresa for starters, and what about Ghandi and Jesus?

I read about Hearst Castle recently. Apparently Randolph William Hearst was a “stuffaholic”. He built a vast house and filled it with antiques. He then bought chunks of the Californian coastline. And then… he died. Silly old Randolph.

When we die, we leave all out stuff behind – then our children (chanting how sad they are), pick over it like vultures and argue about what stuff they want to add to their stuff. Then they die and another vulture comes along to sift through the pile and so the process goes on. Nations go to war over stuff, and some families stop talking for generations because of it.

The book of Ecclesiastes has something to say about it all: “Meaningless! Meaningless!….Utterly meaningless… a chasing after the wind.”

For the Love of Money

Getting loads of wonga has its own problems. Recently I came across some quotes from some really rich people who found that out through bitter experience.

“The care of $200m is too great a load for any back or brain to bear. It is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.”

William Henry Vanderbilt

“I am the most miserable man on earth.”

J.J. Astor

“Millionaires seldom smile.”

Andrew Carnegie

“I have made millions but they have brought me no happiness.”

John D. Rockefeller

“I was happier doing a mechanic’s job.”

Henry Ford

Consider the tragic end of billionaire Howard Hughes. John Ortberg tells us that he was “a gothic horror. Emaciated, only 120 pounds stretched over his six-foot-four frame…a thin straggly beard that reached down his sunken chest. Hideous long nails in grotesque yellowed corkscrews….Many of this teeth were black stumps and a tumour was beginning to emerge from the side of his head. ….innumerable needle marks in his arms. He was an addict, a billionaire junkie.”

Would even more money have satisfied him? Would more money have satisfied Philip Seymour Hoffman who was found dead some time ago with a needle sticking out of his arm?

It was Henry Vanderbilt who, when asked, “How rich do you need to be for you to be satisfied”, answered “just a little bit more.”

I suppose the last laugh about money has to belong to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Moore remarked that if he were Rockefeller, he would end up richer than Rockefeller.

“How will you do that?” asked Cook.

“I’d do a little bit of window cleaning on the side”.

Having and Being

When Malcolm Muggeridge was an old man he wrote: “When I look back on my life, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed to me at the time most significant and seductive seems now to be futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises, being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women….In retrospect, all those exercise in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal calls licking the earth.”

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf claims there are two kinds of wealth in life. “Richness of being,” and “richness of having”. Richness of having is an external experience and richness of being is an inner experience. We usually focus on richness of having. We think true happiness lies there. If only I had a dream house, fame, a bigger salary, financial security, a satisfying sex life – and so on – then I would be contented. We seek richness of having, but what we really want is richness of being. We want to be happy, joyful, contented, and free from anxiety, but in chasing “having”, the bottomless pit of our desires can never be filled.

Perhaps we should all try and get our priorities into some sort of perspective and not wait until we are old. I suggest that wealth, fame and possessions are gossamer stuff compared to Beloc’s philosophy: “There’s nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.”

No Going Back

I learned a bitter lesson in not seeing and loving my mother more before she died. In fact, I can’t bring myself to read her later diaries, but I am told by family that she felt desperately hurt by me in many ways. I hope she found it in her heart to forgive me before she died.

There is a sad story about the historian Thomas Carlyle that resonates vividly with me and I am sure you will see why. He wrote beautifully and with great insight about possessions: “Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, but at the heart of them what increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, more beautiful, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call ‘happier’? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in this God’s Earth; do more things and human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so.”

But knowing the theory of love and folly is one thing; it does not mean that we live by this wisdom.

Carlyle married his secretary Jane Welsh and during their quite happy marriage she became ill with cancer. Carlyle was working hard and failed to notice his wife’s deteriorating health very much. Eventually she was confined to her bed. Although Carlyle loved her, he gave her little time. After some years, Jane died and then Carlyle was obliged to return to a house that was bleakly empty and shatteringly lonely.

Sometime later, he discovered her diary on a shelf. On one entire page she had written a single line: “Yesterday he spent an hour with me and it was like heaven. I love him so.”

He understood the shattering reality that he had been too busy really to see how much he had meant to Jane. When he was preoccupied with work, he simply failed to notice her suffering or her great love for him

Then he read the words he could never forget. “I have listened all day for his steps in the hall but it is late and I doubt he will come today.”

Later that night, friends found him weeping and crouching by Jane’s grave. “If I had only known, if only I had known,” he cried to a silent heaven.

Jane’s death terminated Carlyle’s writing career. His last years were lonely and sad, and he died a bored and partial recluse.

Poor Thomas. Of course the moments whirl by and there is no rewind button for any of us. Thankfully since my mother’s death I have cherished my family. I recall, for example, the precious occasions when I drove our two daughters to the church altar to marry good, kind and faithful men. I vividly remember saying to myself then that I wished I could freeze those treasured moments forever.

One day the end will come and we can’t control that date either. But it isn’t all bad news. Unless we are no more than walking plumbing machines, each day we live, and each act of kindness and love moves from potential good to realised good, and will stay fixed in eternity – and will never be lost.

Italian Dreams

We talked to two delightful Italian girls, Carlotta and Julia, both formidably bright. One was studying for her PHD in economics in Germany, the other working for Unilever in London. They were both adamant that Italy’s future lies in the Eurozone and they regaded the idea that Italy might revert to the Lira as risible. They hope their homeland will become more effcient and grow into the EU. In my opinion they are living in a dream world and so we will just have to see what happens after the Greek situation is finally resolved.

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A Tail of Three Dogs

I watch our young Cockapoo Moses bound along and it sets me thinking…

I suppose Oscar Wilde might have said that to lose one dog might be regarded as misfortune but to lose two looks like sheer carelessness. And I’m afraid the old sod would be as right as ever, for we appear to have “lost” two dogs inside a mere 15 months.

Readers of my past walk commentaries will recall that for four of our walks we were accompanied by our loyal Staffie Leah. However, after she contracted incurable cancer of the womb, we were forced to have her “put to sleep”. How I hate that euphemism, for there is no getting away from the reality of her end – because, dear reader, in the manner of Stalin, we ordered her to be killed and it was a truly harrowing experience. Leah must have walked well over 1,200 miles for the great cause of ZANE and, as I wrote in my last blog, at the end we condemned her to death.

Lovely Dinah

In order to recover from that ghastly experience we quickly rescued another two-month-old “champagne” Staffie from her birthplace sited in a smelly tenement just outside Birmingham. When we arrived, her owners and their two small children – who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight – were clustered round the telly watching an “adult movie” called Horny Housewives (I kid you not). In fact the film makers should be prosecuted for misrepresentation because these movies aren’t “adult”, but juvenile.

As we drove away, I grew convinced we were saving this poor little dog from a fate worse than death. When you take a look at what many of our nation’s children are allowed to watch you don’t have to ask why the number of alcoholics, drug abusers and sexual predators is rising. The Good Book tells us that the sins of the fathers are visited on future generations, especially if they watch crap on the box. Okay I invented the last eight words of that sentence, and yes I am becoming a curmudgeon – and increasingly proud of it as well – but I am convinced that people can corrupt dogs as well as children; their noble characters are often ruined by vicious, degenerate and drunken owners. Dogs don’t just end up looking like their masters, they can reflect their natures too.

Anyway, we called our new dog Dinah – I don’t really know why, but the name seemed to reflect the hint of wildness that shone from her amber eyes. She spent the first six months of her joyous existence destroying everything she could get her sharp little snappers into: £20 notes, treasured rugs and computer wires were her speciality, but of course she ripped into everything and anything she discovered at snout level. Last July, on our recent trek, she towed us from Ambleside to Oxford and it was a privilege to totter along in her churning wake. Dinah was a joy to behold with a broad head, a finely chiselled body, and markings so delicate I’m convinced the Almighty had plucked her from his vast production line to craft her to His special glory.

Dinah was perfect in every way. She did more or less exactly what she pleased and at frenzied speed. On our last golden holiday in Chichester, she spent hours running furiously by the seashore attempting to out-manoeuvre the zigzagging seabirds as they curved and swooped against the dark, grey-flecked sky. At night, she would crawl exhausted on the sofa, lazily turn onto her back and lick my face. As a special privilege, I would be allowed to tickle her tummy.

Under My Skin

On the afternoon of 5 October last year, I was in the office and Jane was outside gardening. Then I heard a shattering scream. We found Dinah hiding under a car. Her frightened eyes told me she had been mortally injured by a passing vehicle. I pulled her out and cradled her into my car. The vet told us that her spine was fractured and once again we were obliged to have a pet put to sleep. Of course it was the right thing to do but I wept at her passing. And I was furious with myself that I had failed to mend the hole in the bloody fence that I’d been too idle/stupid to do before Dinah went on her escapade.

So third time lucky with Moses, the new Cockapoo. Black and furry, he’s a real character – and a boy. But it’s a bit like owning a Ford Focus after a Maserati! I am sure I’ll grow to love him in time. It’s just that as the great Sinatra sang – I’m sure with Dinah in mind – “I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me…”

Well of course dogs like Dinah are all gifts, aren’t they? Gifts come to us undeserved and to enjoy for a time, and then they go. The sages advise us that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Having said all this, recovering from the loss of a companion as beautiful as Dinah will take some time.

Hello Constable

We travelled from Fishbourne to Shanklin, about twelve miles. Constable country with the old world feeling about the place as if Dad’s Army might potter into sight at any time. The last three miles were traversed the sea shore. We spend the night in a couple of Victorian cottages sited in a large glade as guests of a couple of kind folk who lived much of their lives in South Africa. A friend living in the south told our hosts (who had never heard of ZANE) about our charity and they offered us hospitality on the off chance we were “fun people doing useful work.” I can only hope we lived up to expectations!

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Yacht a Lovely View!

It was that mouldy old philosopher Goethe who claimed that all views grow tedious in 15 minutes, but I think even he would want to revise this gloomy prognosis if he had watched the Isle of Wight yacht race today. I last saw 1700 yachts with multi coloured sales in a lovely picture by Edward Seago.

One minute the horizon was dotted by this teeming armada and then suddenly the sea was empty and glassy as if an artist had dragged a rag across his canvas.

We were passed by a team of young runners sweating their way around the island. One, James, managed funds for the fund management firm Blackrock in London.

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Filling the Void

As I wandered along I pondered that loneliness is a terrible blight. It is estimated that well over half of those over the age of 75 in the UK are living alone and do not speak to anyone other than their carers for months on end. My vicar friends tell me that at a great many funerals there is no one present other than the local vicar and the undertaker.

When she visited the UK, Mother Teresa declaimed that although we are “rich” in the West when compared to the ghastly poverty of the Calcutta slums, we have little community. “You are all so rich yet isolated,” she said. “The poor may have no material wealth but the extended family teems everywhere.” It would seem that the richer we grow materially, in terms of our friendships and love for our neighbours, the poorer we become.

Modern Connections

Family life is so important, yet it is under threat. Do Facebook and Twitter fill the void of loneliness? Well of course they serve us well by facilitating and speeding up social exchanges, but they have a darker side: social media simulates community and at the same time erodes family ties. Here’s an example of what I mean.

Until recently, if a boy wanted to take out a girl he was obliged to ring her home. Nine times out of 10, her parents would answer. The boy would then be obliged to demonstrate his manners and pass the time of day… and only then would he ask to speak to so and so. If he were favoured, the connection would be made, and if not, excuses – contrived or otherwise – would flow. Usually he would be the subject of amused family discussion – some occasionally negative, but more often than not, friendly and positive.

In this way, Jane and I got to know most of our children’s friends over the years. I suppose that for a time, in their teens, we acted as “gatekeepers” to their social lives. As a result, to this day we are still on good terms with many of these friends. Some, aged 40 plus, still charmingly call us “Mr and Mrs Benyon” as they did at parties or on the phone all those years ago. Despite the passage of time, the age gap of course has never melted away.

The advent of the mobile phone, Facebook and Twitter has changed all this, not I submit, for the better. Now when contact is made between girls and boys, the family is easily cut from the loop. No longer will parents necessarily know their children’s circle of friends – unless they are asked to teenage parties, which is highly unlikely! I do not mean that in our day we “guarded” our children in a heavy handed way, for I cannot think of a single occasion when we tried to censor whom our children wanted to meet. However, it was good to know who their friends were – and it was fun for us as a family to be involved in our children’s comings and goings, as well as the highs and the lows of them finding their wings with new friends and preparing to fly the nest.

I wonder if today the young ever have anything to do with people outside of their age group (other than schoolteachers)? Do the old know any young? If so, when do they meet?

The growth of social media means that maintaining opportunities for generations to mix outside of their age bands is vitally important. Long live churches, the hunting communities and other societies!

All You Who Pass By

I met the great Sir Michael Mayne after his retirement as Dean of Westminster when he was living in Salisbury. He once mightily irritated Margaret Thatcher by holding a service for the mining community when the pits were closed in 1991. He also set up a remembrance stone for the innocent victims of violence and persecution, which reads, “Is it nothing to you all you who pass by?”

Michael told of how his vicar father committed suicide when his son was three by throwing himself down from the roof of his church. Sixty years afterwards Michael preached in the church where his father died. After he had finished an old lady told him that she had known his father: “such a jolly man”. How little we reveal. How little we know of others’ lives.

Michael was a great man who writes beautifully about the mysteries of faith. In Pray, Love, Remember he recollects when he was strongly criticised for holding an interfaith service in Westminster Abbey on grounds of John 14:6 “No one can come to the father except by me”. In other words, his critics thought all other faiths are plain wrong, whilst Christians have a monopoly on being right!

I have always been bothered by the concept that the Christians have it all right and everyone else is wrong.

Mayne argues: “This text relates specifically to the fatherhood of God: it is not simply a question of coming ‘to God’ but of coming to the father. There is but one God, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’ and when we worship, we stand before the mystery of that deep and eternal reality to whom we give different names. From the Jews we learn of his faithfulness; from Muslims of his sovereignty and mercy; from the wonders of the natural world, a realisation of his mystery and power. Christians speak of something more intimate: of his fatherhood, for only in Jesus can we begin to experience the truth of a God as father. The presence of those from the commonwealth of other faiths, each person praying to God as that faith conceived him to be, did nothing to compromise our belief that in Jesus Christ we see the ultimate expression of God’s nature, for that belief does not deny the truth of other revelations of God, nor our hope that in Christ all may ultimately find their fulfilment.”

This sets me thinking. I suppose we will never know for sure until we confront the recording angel!

Win/ win

A successful businessman and ZANE donor told me that he made his money by stealing from the rich and selling to the blind!  You have been warned!

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Wilde Speculation

When Oscar  Wilde was asked if he believed other planets harboured life, he said that he did,

“Why?” they asked.

“Because we are their insane asylum.”

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Hosts with the Most

We stayed last night in the happy home of a Bill and Penny Evershed. Apparently they built their own house and very nice it is too. I have to say that I find the extraordinary talents of my hosts overwhelming. I can’t do any of the things they can do so feel rather useless.  Bill – who is a retired naval officer- walked steadily with us the whole day and he was the ideal guest. He was quiet and he only talked when he had something interesting to say.

We arrived at the Isle of Wight ferry with literally ten seconds to spare.

We are staying tonight in a glorious house in the Isle of Wight. Peter and Johanna Truman were generous hosts and they gave a dinner party for us and asked some of their buddies -all delightful and interested in Zimbabwe.

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His Term Has Ended

I see that the great educationalist Sir Chris Woodhead has died. He spent most of his professional life battling against what Michael Gove called “the blob” that is the cloud of educationalist lefties who seek to protect useless teachers often at the expense of  pupils.

Chris pointed out that there were at least 15,000 useless teachers working in the state system.

When one of our daughters attended our local grammar school we noticed with some incredulity that her history homework was unmarked. We  complained to the head teacher to be told that the history teacher suffered domestic “problems.” I said why should  domestic problems affect the educational future  of the entire class. I was then invited to see the teacher in question with the head teacher.

I protested that this was beyond the absurd and this was not my job. The education went from bad to worse.

As our daughter’s  education was suffering so we bit the bullet and sent her to a local public school. From day one she improved.

Chris Woodhead knew great vilification in his life when he tried to take on the blob and at the hands of cowardly politicians who failed to back him. May he rest in peace.

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Royals and Rackets

I am an ardent royalist but that doesn’t stop me from pondering on some of the less appealing aspects of the monarchy! For example, have you ever wondered at the sick-puppy expressions on the faces of those in proximity to anyone with royal blood? I am sure that most members of the royal family are pleasant and able people, but what special personal qualities do they possess to garner such adoration? They must wonder why the good Lord created humanity with faces permanently puckered in an ingratiating smile, for that’s all they ever see when they meet ordinary mortals.

The Royal Effect

Why do people turn to glue when there is a royal within a hundred yards? As the effect of the monarchy is socially crippling, do the royals have any “real” friends? Surely they must always wonder at people’s motivations? We have an admiral friend who tells us that when he was at sea people used to laugh at his jokes whether they were funny or not… but the laughter stopped dead when he retired. How much more amplified must false mirth be for those in the Queen’s tiny circle; they must have noticed that all their vaguely funny comments are greeted with shrieks of hilarity. Who dares to tell the royals when they are talking balls? Or inform them they’ve told the same tedious story twice – and that it wasn’t funny the first time round?

Can you really be close friends with an HRH? And please don’t believe the fiction that ladies in waiting or equerries form close friendships with their royal employers, for that’s highly improbable. How many of the tailored suits and frocks are sufficiently brave to chance the royal scowl and speak an occasional unvarnished truth? This is sad for the royals, sad for everyone.

Why is it like this? It’s nothing to do with the fact that the present Queen has served the country with rare distinction. I know we live in a celebrity culture – most people live relatively tedious lives and so royalty adds a touch of spice to the mix. But I’m sure there’s a darker reason… perhaps it’s because when Charles I was executed, the “divine right of kings” nonsense never fell into the basket along with his head. So today, deep down in people’s psyches – so far buried, they’re probably unaware of it – is the idea that the royals are semi-divine. I am sure if they were to be challenged, people would see this idea as risible, but if you think I’m wrong then please come up with a more convincing explanation!

A Brilliant Wheeze

And while I am on about my theories, here’s another one. Do you recall being taught about Martin Luther, the original whistle blower and the total outrage of “indulgences”?

It was dangerous blowing whistles then. To remind you, indulgences were part of a Catholic racket that guaranteed that if, for example, you paid say £10,000, you could avoid the fires of Hades despite that little spot of adultery you committed. And your bribe could ensure a shorter time in purgatory too. And what about a package of, say, £50,000 to absolve you if you wanted to go on committing the same crime! It was a sort of spiritual extortion and hugely successful. On top of this, the good old Catholic Church had the monopoly on forgiveness. The whole thing was such a brilliant wheeze that the Mafia’s Don Corleone would have given his mother and her spaghetti sauce recipes for even two per cent of the gross.

To the vast irritation of the Catholic Church, on 31 October 1513, one-time monk Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral; amongst his trenchant criticisms was a claim that indulgences were a disgraceful fraud. Only God, he proclaimed, could forgive sins through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and his blood spilled on the cross.

Are you paying attention, class? Sit up straight!

The Church had another monopoly: deciding who was to be regarded as a heretic. Luther was sentenced and they immediately began to stoke the faggots for his bonfire; so he went into hiding and who can blame him? To cut to the chase, Luther had influential pals and survived. Then came the Reformation and after a time indulgences were scrapped.

Today, no one in authority in any Christian church would be daft enough to formally reintroduce indulgences as such. But has the notion completely gone away?

What are the motives of the faithful, for example, when they help to fund church building projects? Perhaps the idea that if I donate £20k towards a loo extension, then somehow God – never mind the vicar – will be pleased, and my gift might still prove to serve as penance for that derring-do (or don’t)?

If churches are facing financial difficulties, perhaps they might bring indulgences back. It was such a good idea until dear old Luther blew his whistle.

Lame Excuse

I sat and stared dismally at my red and rather swollen left foot.

“I don’t think I can walk today dear,” I said to Jane.

She strode over to take a look then she grabbed it and gave it a squeeze. I yelped. Jane stared at me with narrowed eyes,

then she gave me her medical opinion

” Just shut up and start walking.”

So I did.

I was more or less fine. In fact this episode illustrates “Benyon’s law of do it yourself medicine”. It says: Usually when you pull a muscle or something relatively minor, if you walk through it the pain will recede. It’s as simple as that.

—

Painted Ladies

Some years ago I told my daughters at dinner that any woman with tattoos was clearly a hooker. They jeered abuse at me and went shopping. That evening to my horror they reappeared covered in garish pictures all over their arms. They then told me they were only stick on wash off transfers.

In our wanderings round the UK over the past 4 years or so I am in the position of being able to assess the state of my countrymen. I have to say they are even larger and I reckon 25 per cent more tattooed than four years ago. And, no, I still don’t like it.

—

Taxi Assessment

Do you recall the abuse and scorn poured out on the hapless David Mellor, culture secretary in the Major government, after he had vented his spleen at a taxi driver a few months back? Yet when Boris Johnson told his taxi driver to “eff off and die but not in that order” everyone said “good for old Boris, attaboy!” , but what’s sauce for the Goose should be sauce for the Gander and, if it isn’t, then it should be. Mellor is an excellent cove – as I am told is Boris – and he was much defamed by the scurillous Max Clifford who is now languishing in the nick. Mellor deserved better from the media.

—

Reality Bites

Last August, I nearly sent a letter to the Telegraph asking if there was anyone alive in the UK whose grandfather was born before June 1840. My grandfather was 54 when my father was born, and my father 52 when I was born.

I was just about to send the letter off when I spotted a letter from an aged man living in Devon. He wrote that his grandfather had been born in 1797! That’s years before Napoleon even became consul! His grandfather was 70 when he sired his father, and his father was 68 when he was born. And there was no Viagra in those days either!

I’ll wait a little while before I send off my letter…

Mental Gymnastics

It’s all so arbitrary. One of my friend’s mothers is in her early 80s, and she is fast developing dementia. Although the queen is three years her senior, she – and of course thousands like her – are still going like bullets.

I wonder if there is a lucid moment when we can tell we are in the process of losing it? The moment of icy truth. Can we face it?

T.S. Eliot wrote in “Burnt Norton” that humankind “cannot bear very much reality”. If he is right, when facing the hideous reality of one-way street madness, we go into denial.

Some face it head on. I recall when the great and lamented Bernard Levin knew he was developing dementia, he is said to have shouted at his partner: “Go, just go… run for the hills and don’t come back. You have to leave me for I am going mad!”

Levin’s wonderfully lucid articles simply fell off a cliff, for either you are writing world-class articles or you aren’t! There’s no halfway house. One of my friends – now dead – was a High Court judge when he suffered a massive stroke in his early 60s. He recovered his mental capacity pretty well but he immediately retired. How can you be a judge when you hesitate to identify which day of the week it is? How do you reinvent yourself then? How do you stop turning your face to the wall?

Clement Freud once told me: “When you go into the kitchen and you cannot remember why you went there, don’t worry, for we all do that… but if you go into a kitchen and you cannot remember what a kitchen is for, then you know you have a problem!”

Actress Maureen Lipman believes that there are hardly any actors with dementia. She thinks this is because working and aged actors are continually undergoing mental gymnastics in learning lines and brooding how they are to embrace this or that role. The moral may be that if you want to keep your marbles in the right order, don’t retire – but if you have to, immediately start to learn Mandarin!

Get Rich Quick

We have Brazilian cleaners, quick, honest and efficient, and they speak not a single coherent word of English. We know they clean at least 20 houses each week and their car is far newer and smarter than ours. My car is (occasionally) cleaned by a group of Bulgarians who speak no English, and they do at least five cars a time for £15 pounds each. I am told by our accountant that one of her dog-walking clients earns £60k per year and another does forecourt car cleaning for about £50k per year.

OK, of course there is “poverty” in the UK, but with a bit of initiative anyone can make a decent living provided they are prepared to do cleaning work: you don’t even need to speak English, a few gestures will suffice.

And I’ll bet there are no British youngsters cleaning houses and cars in Rio or in Sofia.

My Left Foot

I am in Chichester A&E with a swollen rather painful left foot. The local doctor suggested I should have it X-rayed to ensure nothing is broken.

After the X-ray – and what an efficient hospital it is – I walked, or rather shuffled, down a corridor barefoot carrying my socks and shoes. I was greeted by a small group of nurses who anxiously asked me if I was all right? One took me by the arm and started patting me.

I then realised they thought that I was demented.

Perhaps they are right?

—

Well, I took a knife to my walking boot and cut half of it away to take the pressure off my left foot. This seems to be working a treat which is rather more important than the fact that the result makes me look even more like a down and out than I nomally do.

As we walked from Chichester to Havant we were joined by three guests – all delightful people, quiet yet informed. Hazel claims to be a retired teacher and all I can say is that I wish I had been in her class. Then there was Timothy a delightful young man from Oxford Brookes University and his father, Julian. Both walked like troupers.

—-

Scrooge

Last Christmas, it was decided that alongside the traditional turning on of lights ceremony, the Woodstock community would celebrate the start of the festive season with a brief sketch portraying a scene from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In terms of character and looks, I was – so the organizers cried – born to the role of Scrooge. All I needed was a nightcap!

The Ghost of Christmas Future

As an incentive, I was informed that I could add a few lines to the part, so I set to work with enthusiasm. The ghosts of Christmas past and future were an excellent back up. My Scrooge decided that Woodstock was a dull place (it isn’t), and that it needed livening up. To achieve this, comprehensive planning permissions should be sought: and to start off with, consent for a McDonalds to be sited bang in the middle of the town opposite the Bear Hotel. Then all the craft shops should be gutted and turned into amusement arcades with fruit machines, and the town hall changed into a casino – Las Vegas comes to Woodstock! Finally, I decided that the church should be changed into a squash court, and added that I had heard that the curate was said to be a woman called Clare Hayns. “How ridiculous is that?!” exclaimed old Scrooge. “The next absurdity will be women bishops!”

That evening, a number of outraged people anxiously questioned the curate, the saintly Reverend Clare Hayns, who that “dreadful old man” was who had the temerity to abuse her by name?

“Oh, that was my father!” she answered sweetly.

A Day at the Races

When we visited a small town to the north east of Bulawayo (security prevents me from naming it) in March this year, the services veterans ran a series of races.

As all the contestants were aged over 65, it was an unusual event to say the least. Each veteran was given a dollar just for taking part, so needless to say there were a great many contestants who started and then stopped after about 10 yards. It was a roasting hot day and the event went on for hours. Then came the 2-km race for the over 70s. I was placed under considerable pressure to take part. In my youth, I was a fairly decent cross-country runner, though admittedly that was some time ago. However, I was sorely tempted – and then caution kicked in. I might win, and that would be disastrous – a white man dominating his hosts! Or I might take part and then die and that would be worse. Then the worst possible denouement of all – I might win and then die. That would be the double whammy! So I gracefully declined, presented the prizes and made an encouraging speech instead.

A Racy Tale

Reader, I am about to make a shameful confession. I was caught speeding and because my excess was relatively modest (34 mph in a 30 zone) I was given the choice of accepting points on my otherwise pristine licence or attending a speed awareness course.

The course, run by the Institute of Advanced Motoring or some such body, was excellent. The group looked downcast at the outset when the lead speaker said in a hushed voice that our attendance as potential offenders was a secret, and that no one need ever know we had been there.

On the way out I asked the course leader to give his sister my fond wishes because his name’s a rare one and I was almost certain she had been a girlfriend of mine before I was married to Jane.

“But I can’t do that without disclosing the fact that you were an attendee on a speed awareness course”, he cried anxiously.

I nearly told him that she wouldn’t mind. As I recall, she was the fastest lady I ever met. But discretion kicked in and so I thought I had better keep that fact to myself.

Fat Nation

If you want to know why our nation is clogged up with fatties, all you have to do is look at what Costa sells with its creamy coffee to hungry punters. The choice is apparently limited to cup cakes, cream-filled buns, nutty topped sweet bars and sugary drinks. What hope has the public got of staying lean and slim?

My Pain, Her Gain

Miles walked through a weather forecaster’s nightmare. Each time we put on our waterproofs the sun blazed down and then more or less instantly starts a Noah scale downpour.

Eight miles in I told Jane that I was stiff all over like an ancient cart horse just taken from the summer’s corn. Each muscle shrieked, “Forget about collecting £200, I want to return to go!”

Jane then voluntered with an irritatiing smile:

“I feel totally fine,. No discomfort at all”

“Thanks very much! That’s all I need.”

Great wife I have.

—

The Selfish Gene

We are a profoundly selfish species. Incurvatus in se is the fancy Latin phrase that underlines this fact. The idea was identified by Augustine and developed by Luther. The fact is, dear reader, that we are all bent inward towards ourselves and are only really interested in furthering our own interests.

Luther concludes we are so totally obsessed with number one that we consider this state of profound selfishness to be perfectly normal. Dawkins would agree. He calls it the “selfish gene”. This is why the Christian commandment “to love your neighbour as yourself” is so revolutionary – easy to say and more or less impossible to follow.

There’s None So Blind…

The theme is explored by the poet Auden in his poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”– in it he claims that the old masters knew all about this bleak aspect of the human condition. Auden tells us there is a painting that demonstrates the fact by the sixteenth-century painter, Brueghel. In Greek myth, Icarus flew too near to the sun and his wax wings melted – Brueghel depicts him falling into the sea. In the foreground there are various people busy and seemingly oblivious: one is ploughing, another is fishing and there is a ship sailing along. All are preoccupied and don’t give poor old drowning Icarus a second glance.

I see this bleak prognosis of man’s selfishness working out in Zimbabwe. Pensioners are more likely to seek ZANE’s help than to ask their children or family for support. Of course, at root that’s all about pride. The default position of an elderly person is often to seek help from an anonymous charity rather than approach their family. The sad fact is that the children often don’t want to see what’s bang under their noses. Apart from paying occasional lip service or indulging in the odd spasm of nostalgia, they often choose to more or less forget the people they left behind in Zimbabwe – particularly, it so often seems, their aged parents.

Picture the scene: the children ring at Christmas and after discussing the weather they might enquire: “How are you Mum?”

“I’m fine,” comes the answer.

The parents don’t want to admit their desperation to their children because they “don’t want to be a burden”. How sad is that?

After the brief call, the children convince themselves that everything is fine and leave it there. There’s none so blind as those who don’t wish to see: often these children just don’t want to read between the lines and discover a desperately lonely and aged pensioner who is stranded with no food in the house, no medicines for, say, a heart condition or prostate problems… and no money to pay the bills.

When ZANE workers come across someone in need, their first step is to contact the children. Why do that? Well ZANE is not serving our generous donors by ignoring dysfunctional families who don’t communicate, and we hunt for cash from wherever we can find it. If there are any close relatives, we track them down to wherever they may be living to gently tell them that their father or mother – or whoever it is – is more or less destitute. They often express astonishment – and I am pleased to say that nine times out of 10, they accept their responsibilities.

Incurvatus in se about sums it up. Bloody stupid selfishness I call it.

Everybody’s Doin’ It

We all need ceremony at the great punctuation points in our lives – birth, marriage and death. One of the great sadnesses of our time is that many do not understand the crucial significance and value of ceremony to the family and community.

Our neighbour’s children left home to go to university. The next thing our friends knew was that Emily was living with someone – just like that and before they had even met him (never mind approved of him!). Then – a number of partners later – Emily announced that she was in (yet) another relationship, likely (but not certainly) to be long lasting – though no marriage was in sight. Then sometime later, she introduced Fred, her “partner” as a sort of fait accompli. Then a baby just appeared and a family had simply and seamlessly morphed into being.

We are told that this “informality” is the new way of doing things, the implication being that the old ways are old hat and presumably restrictive to the liberty of the young. Today it seems that the measured introduction of the intended to the family or the carefully planned dinners so that everyone could get to know the potential new member have vanished. Also swept aside is the announcement of a formal engagement, and out goes yet another excuse for a party. Often there is no marriage ceremony or any celebration of the couple’s union. Perhaps some time afterwards, a baby is born – there is no baptism, and yet another opportunity to mark the occasion and have fun is lost.

You don’t have to be a hand-waving Christian believer to mourn the loss of the ancient customs of our tribe. And the scrapping has been swift and comprehensive. There was a song by Irving Berlin with the chorus, “Everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, everybody’s doin’ it now” – and so it seems that without much thought at all, traditional ceremonies –deemed now to be old fashioned and stuffy – are simply ignored. Yet the new ways of doing things lose opportunities for a vast amount of fun. Does dumping custom make anyone any happier? Do relationships last longer as a result? Are any of the children that arrive from “morphed” relationships any more secure or settled than hitherto? I doubt it – and in fact I am sure the reverse is often the case.

When children drift into relationships with no parental involvement or approval sought, and when there is no engagement party, marriage ceremony or baptisms, family cohesion becomes unglued: uncles, aunts, cousins and family friends (and parents!) feel sidelined and remain uninvolved. It’s all very sad. And for what purpose?

The great poet Yeats understood all this. In “Prayer for my Daughter”, he writes:

“And may her bridegroom bring her to a house

Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;…

How but in custom and in ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born?

Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn

And custom for the spreading laurel tree.”

Wilde and Beautiful

We stayed last night with the Lears; they are old friends we have known well for thirty years. They live in a glorious farm surrounded by assorted ducks, hens and bees and some of their adult children; they have the rare gift of effortless hospitality.

On through the endless suburbia of Worthing: the only interesting thing I can recall about the place is that Ernest was found in a handbag in Wilde’s great play: “The Importance of Being Ernest”. Then we plod on through lush countryside so glorious that heaven will have a serious problem in trying to surpass it. Nowhere on earth can match this Sceptered isle, this England, set in a silver sea especially in the months of late May and June. One feature unique to our land is that because of our wet climate all long views are seen shrouded through a very faint mist. No wonder so many of the world’s poorest are clamouring to get here.

We walk through Poling and then Angmering – where I asked a delightful passer-by called Alison where the name came from: she hadn’t a clue. On through Arundel and to Petworth where we spend the night in a house built at the time of Cromwell and is today owned by renaissance man (and women) called Raymond and Rosemary Harris. What an immaculate garden and blow me down we learn that the beautiful furniture was in fact built by our hosts. they are both retired architects. Very capable and kind and generous people who now tirelessly work for the community.

—

Through a Glass, Darkly

In last year’s Christmas mailing, I included a First World War letter from nursemaid Amy Harding to her lover Jack Clifton. She wrote: “ …my Jack – my same, same heart-mate….Oh! let me feel you crushing my life into yours! Jack, Jack, I live for you, always my own.” However, I can’t help thinking that even had Jack lived, however much Amy might have tried to achieve total intimacy, Jack would always have remained something of a stranger to her.

Can we really ever get to know a person? At funerals I often wonder whether I actually knew the departed, even when he or she had been a close friend. The reality is that all we can ever really have is an impression, an outline, some bits of detail and experience that we may have been privileged to share – and even from time to time helped to shape. However, we are all so complex, I wonder if we ever really know even ourselves? Sometimes I look back at some incident or other in my life and reflect, “I must have been quite mad to have done that!”

Plumbing the Depths

However much we delude ourselves that we are all as one flesh, the infinite variety of unrepeated snowflake patterns against a winter sky reminds us that we are always destined to remain separate from one another. Even those whom we love deeply will always remain something of a mystery, for they have had experiences that we can never really share – we cannot know what their world looked like at the age of eight, or how they felt when they first heard the Beetles or Beethoven’s Pastoral. And what’s more, they may even have forgotten the experience themselves. This forms part of the acute frustration of loving someone deeply: we can never see the whole or plumb the deepest depths of their heart, and are privileged only to snatch flickering glimpses of the personality we love.

Only God can really know each one of us, and plumb the millions of our passing thoughts and actions that combine to make an individual life; only God can know each of us in the deepest sense, in the muscle and the bone and the sinew, and the racing blood and the workings of our brain cells; and only He can know the real reasons that lie behind our actions – some virtuous, and others deeply flawed.

For as St Paul wrote, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

In Search of Lost Time

We make the division between life and death a matter of dates, being born on one date and dying on another years later. But we are asleep for half our lives and often when we are awake, we are often only half alive… wasting time, day dreaming, waiting for trains, sitting in traffic jams on hot days, waiting at airports for late arrivals, standing in queues, watching meaningless telly, wasting time in the wrong job, arguing, filling in forms, hanging on to call-centre calls and being told endlessly, “your call is important to us.”

Life is a quality, not just a quantity. Malcolm Muggeridge called one of his autobiographies Chronicles of Wasted Time. It is tragic we cannot refine our lives and drain away the waste, and leave the pure gold behind. Those golden moments of say listening to Mozart’s Great Mass for the first time, seeing our daughters marrying good and loving men, watching our children being ordained, or sharing laughter with our grandchildren: all moments of 22-carat gold. If such wonderful times could be preserved and the rest of the dross drained away, who could hope for anything better? And just as those times of great ecstasy and joy highlight our lives, so too might they be preserved in the lives of our friends and close family. Perhaps this is what is meant by eternal life?

Wilder tells us that our dead friends will be loved for a while and then forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love – the only survival, the only meaning.

Soul Talk

Some time ago I read a book by the late US philosopher and Christian thinker Dallas Willard. The book was primarily about how to stay spiritually healthy. One piece of advice particularly has stayed with me: “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life”, he wrote. “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”

He went on to say then that the other important thing in your life is not what you do, but rather who you become. That is what you will take into eternity. “You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” Then he repeated it: “You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” That’s the most important thing to know about you. You should write that down and repeat it regularly. You may think you have something more to do or need to be someplace else to find peace, but its right here. Your soul is not just something that lives on after your body dies. It’s the most important thing about you: it’s your life.

Dallas was an extraordinary man. He once wrote about a tiny child who crept into his father’s bed to sleep. In the dark, knowing that his father was present was enough to take away his sense of aloneness.

“Is your face turned toward me, father?” he would ask.

“Yes, his father replied. “My face is turned toward you.”

Only then would the child sleep.