Jun 21

Day 1 – The Heart of Darkness – Brighton to Sompting

Brighton (didn’t) Rock

We trail through Brighton keeping to the
rather tatty sea-shore. I don’t much like touristy seaside resorts in the
sunshine but in the grey mizzle that passes for an English summer, the sea
road out of Brighton is not a pretty picture. Our walk is punctuated by
cheap eateries and second hand car lots. The harsh cries of the shrieking
sea gulls fill me with gloom. After a mile of identical swimming huts we
pass the unremarkable appartment that used to be the home of music hall
diva, Vesta Tilley. I wonder if she rests easy in her grave? She seduced so
many fresh faced innocents to their death in WW1, with the brilliant
recruiting song; “We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go”,
Vesta would stand on stage flanked by recruiting sergeants and as the young
men filed up she would give them a kiss as they signed their lives away..

I suppose she would say she was only doing her duty, and so she was…. but
yet it was a desperately sad business..

—

You may recall the terrible event of little over a year ago when, without warning, 15-year old William Cornick murdered his teacher in a Leeds school. Afterwards, Cornick claimed that everything was “fine and dandy” and that he was “proud” of what he had done.

The boy’s background looks spotless. He was a gifted student who had achieved five GCSEs a year early, and prior to the murder seemed “amicable” and “enthusiastic”. Social workers described his parents as “entirely responsible and caring people” and his family life was marked with “love and respect.” We are told that none of the usual characteristics – such as manipulative behaviour, dishonesty, cruelty, or impulsive risk-taking – were apparent at an early age to indicate that here was a psychopath in the making. Cornick was reported to be “a delightful pupil” with 100 per cent school attendance, and “polite, cooperative and helpful.”

Searching for Reasons
I read that research psychologist Professor Kevin Dutton reckons that 15-year old Cornick “defies diagnosis”. Mr Dutton concludes that the “malevolent fog” that descended on Cornick’s brain may eventually condense into a “full-blown personality disorder”. So, in other words the murder may not be Cornick’s fault, and is instead the fault of a malevolent fog and perhaps a personality disorder.

I think Mr Dutton is probably plain wrong. In our atheistic society, the professionals always seem to conclude that when someone has done something terrible, “society” must somehow establish the reason precisely why it ever happened; then we must stick labels all over it to prevent the same thing ever happening again. We are left with the impression that whatever the crime, had there been superior housing, improved teaching, better care and more social workers, then society could have prevented it.

In Thomas Harris’s book The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lector challenges Officer Starling who is trying to psychoanalyse him thus:

“Nothing happened to me… I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences. You’ve given up good and evil for behaviourism… nothing is ever anybody’s fault. Look at me Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I’m evil?”

I know of a number of cases where young people with ostensibly enviable backgrounds have done terrible things; and other cases where people with apparently ghastly backgrounds are living lives of great virtue. Does extreme youth matter here, for we are pretty much cast as people by the time we are five?

Perhaps one day we may face the reality that we will never know what twisted the black hearts of the likes of Pol Pot, Saddam, Hitler, Stalin and probably young William Cornick – and that innate evil is not a medieval concept, but still exists.

—

We were joined by a delightful ZANE supporter, John Haskey, and we put
much of the world to rights as we walked. We are getting into the swing of
the old routines again, Moses behaved well enough at least when compared to
dear late Dinah whose parting gift to us we find was to have eaten the
chuggles from our drinking octopus rendering them more or less useless!

Jun 20

Day 0 – Nobody Knows (the Trouble I’ve Seen)

The Day before – where to begin?

The worst possible trip to the start line. Sod’s law kicked In snd what could go wrong did go wrong. Never ending trafic snarl ups and our drivelling sat nav suddenly rebooted itself and decided to take us to Wales! That’s the cost of relying on what my old Aunt Daisy would have called “new fangled gadgets”

Come back maps; all is forgiven.

Two hours late we end up arriving at he home of Nigel and Maggie Kay who ten years ago created “Homes in Zimbabwe” today absorbed under the ZANE banner. We first met the Kays when our daughters were at school together half a lifetime ago. We have since forged a warm friendship; they are hugely supportive of the work we jointly undertake in Zimbabwe.

—-

I am a member of a serious men’s group. We were all members of parliament at one time
or another, and we have met at least monthly over the past 20 years or so. We talk about
our lives and problems, and we do all we can to help and encourage one another. As the
old saw goes, a problem shared is a problem halved – and so it proves to be.
I realise I am fortunate since I know that few men enjoy the blessing of such support –
and for all I know, many would regard such a group intrusive and unnecessary. But I
need my friends and we all dislike small talk. Over the years, we have grown to trust one
another and we allow an occasional torch to shine into the dark places in our lives. We
run our meetings according to the so-called Chatham House Rule, and so none of us
discusses individual problems with anyone else.

Timely Kicking

A few weeks ago, we discussed our lives in general terms and those of our often-troubled
offspring. I said that I was saddened that for career reasons, some of my children were
moving out of Oxford and to posts up to a couple of hours away. I said I was also upset
that our two sons were to be ordained on the same day and in separate places, 300 miles
apart – meaning that our family and its celebrations to mark the occasions would have to
be split.
A grave silence fell upon the group. Then one of my friends mused: “In past months, we
have discussed financial difficulties and various serious illnesses. One of our brothers has
a bad drink problem. Two of our children are living in South America, and one has
emigrated to Tasmania; another of our children faces imprisonment for attacking
someone in the street and yet another is suffering from bulimia. And then there are the
two children who refuse to talk to their parents civilly, and instead communicate via foul
and angry text messages and emails.
You, dear Tom, expect us to sympathise with you because two of your children are being
ordained on the same day. Gentlemen, a two-minute silence for poor Tom – how on earth
will he cope with the stress of such a burden?”

We all need a kicking sometimes to allow us to see things in proportion and in
perspective, and believe me – that felt like quite a kicking…

* Please note that the problems in this item have been altered so as not to betray confidences

—

A murkey warm day. We start with a new car and a new cockerpoo dog called Moses. The poor animal has no idea of the ups and down of what lies ahead. We also have a new driver (Markus) from Bulawayo. Markus is of German extraction and electrified us all at dinner last night by telling us that his nickname at school was “Kraut!” Clearly political correctness was not a strong suit in Zimbabwean schools. Markus tells us he rather enjoyed the name.

Off we go to our first start point in Brighton.

Jul 25

The Day After – Fifty Shades of Name

It’s funny to be back. The tension of the last three weeks has been acute and I keep wondering when I have to start packing or walking or be polite to strangers again.

I find it hard to relax and I am finding it to difficult to sleep. I don’t really feel much like sitting at my desk and I wonder what I should do. The dog keeps staring at me expectantly and whining. She is making it clear she she prefers the vagabond life to cosseted respectability in Oxfordshire. Dinah wants the open road and the wide blue sky with the sun beating down on her head. She wants to chase rabits and leap up and down hills…

–

Georgie Knaggs, freelance journalist and great friend of Zane, has written a couple of lovely articles on her blog about the walk. Please read them by clicking these links:

http://thephraser.com/2014/07/18/ambleside-to-oxford-walking-for-those-who-cant/

http://thephraser.com/2014/07/23/theyve-done-it-again/

—

E Ba Gum

I’m glad we chose the name ZANE: Zimbabwe A National Emergency for the charity. It sort of sums the situation up somehow, and an “emergency” is exactly what Zimbabwe is. It’s one of the few countries in the worlds – apart from the likes of Burma – where the government seems to have turned against its people, and regards them as assets to be exploited rather than people to serve.

Contrary to various articles in the media – amongst others, ones written by Peter Oborne and Matthew Parris – the situation in Zimbabwe is in fact getting no better. The people we serve are in any event “outside” the economy, and so whatever the long-term future holds for the country, it will make no difference to them. In the new proposed constitution, the government plans to cancel the right of Zimbabweans to appeal to a supreme legal body to protect their fundamental rights. This monstrous limitation to the rights of oppressed Zimbabweans has apparently been agreed by both the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as well as Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

It’s not as if oppressed Zimbabweans can appeal for help from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Last year, after pressure from Mugabe, the SADC Tribunal was suspended and then dissolved. This means that people have no access to justice or protection of their human rights when legal systems fail in their own countries (as is, of course, the case in Zimbabwe). By dissolving this tribunal, the leaders of the nations that make up the SADC have colluded with Mr Mugabe in denying justice to Zimbabwe’s citizens.

I see that the reverse of Mugabe’s name is E Ba Gum. That more or less sums him up.

Linga Longa
Not so long ago, I nearly had lunch in the “effing Sandwich Joint” just to see if it lived up to its name, but Jane persuaded me not to. Of course, names are important. “Romeo and Maude” would never have worked, and “Anna Karenina” would never have sold as well if the protagonist’s name had been Marlene Peabody. Nor do “Mon Repos” or “Linga Longa” (yes, I’ve seen places named thus) have quite the same resonance as “Wuthering Heights”.

Of course, the abdication of Kind Edward VIII was, in part, about names. Churchill was one of the king’s supporters in this saga, and said that he thought that Edward should be allowed his “cutie”.  Noel Coward growled, “No one wants “Queen Cutie”. But in any event, “Queen Wallace” didn’t have much of a regal ring either.

Treats and Treatments
One of our oldest friends, Jean Metcalfe, joins us. She’s a delight and always makes us laugh. We discuss whether we are old enough to sympathise with the late Archbishop Runcie who once said that he had reached the stage of life when he was either receiving “treats” or “treatments”.

Jean then tells us that she has a friend whose husband has grown grossly fat. “Making love,” her friend had confided, “is like being flattened by a very large wardrobe with a very small key sticking out.”

Jean apparently saw Jane Fonda on TV some time ago. She is convinced the actress has had a face lift along with various other body tucks and lifts in an attempt to make time stand still. What tickled Jean was that Fonda announced that, at 76, her sex life had never been better.

“If she really thinks that’s true,” cried Jean with gusto, “then the dear lady can only have started to have intercourse aged 69!” Jean told us that she still enjoyed sex, provided she remembered to take her strong painkillers beforehand.

A Shady Business
I answered my phone this morning and was surprised by a voice from the past. The caller was keen to recruit my assistance in raising money to fund an online casino. I used to raise funds for start-up businesses, but not anymore – however attractive the proposition might be to the promoters, gaming is addictive and I really don’t want to be involved in that sort of thing. Nor do I really trust this person. His sense of right and wrong seems always to be shifting, and I just don’t want the hassle or to take the risk.

A year or two ago, the same man asked me if I would assist him in a new enterprise: raising money for a new contraception company. He told me excitedly that he had a contract with the NHS. In our sex-saturated society, I thought the market was already awash with condoms – I even saw a condom vending machine in Christchurch College loo in Oxford so nowhere appears to be sacred – and I turned the proposition down flat. Even if the business booms, I have no interest in flogging French letters at my age.

I expect that’s the last I will hear from this man and, truth to tell, I’m not really sorry. He was involved in a dreadful divorce some time back where his wife sold the secrets of his offshore accounts and trusts to the taxman as well as the newspapers. He told me of his misery and I was rather sorry for him, but on reflection and knowing him as I do, perhaps he and his wife were meant for one another.

“I have learned my lesson. Next time, I’ll play marriage differently,” he said bitterly after the divorce was over. “I’ll find a woman who is a vengeful bitch and deeply sexually unattractive. Then I’ll give her a six-million-pound house in Kensington and I’ll miss out the 15 years of misery in between!”

Fifty Shades of… Something
Just before my departure for this walk, I learned to my astonishment that two ladies of a certain age – the pillars of ZANE’s small administrative staff – have both read Fifty Shades of Grey.

“We didn’t want to read it”, they both protested.

“It was pressed on me by a friend” said one, while the other claimed she had only read it “out of curiosity”. Blah blah blah! One of them suggested that I try it.

I told them that I will suggest nipple clamps to Jane and see what she says, but I don’t think we are into that sort of thing somehow. However, it was a neat sales exercise. It all goes to prove my theory – any fool can write a book, but it takes a genius to sell one.

I’ll be giving this one away!

Jul 23

Day 23 – Walking with the End in Sight

Jane and I have walked 265 miles from Ambleside to Oxford. We were given a warm welcome at St John’s College in the heart of Oxford. The walk has taken us over three weeks to complete and at times we have been close to exhaustion, when the high hills and the extreme heat proved to be more than challenging. I am particularly grateful to our support driver, Richard Warren, for his kindness, his encoragement and his humour. Also the Zane back office staff who have all worked very hard to ensure the walk was a success.

Why did Jane and I undertake this walk?
We walked for the forgotten people of Zimbabwe: those ruined, lonely and frail pensioners who find themselves trapped in what is often a terryfying country and who are forced to live out their lives on the very edge of existence. These proud people are often forced to rely on Zane for all their needs. Then there are those poorest of the poor who eke out an existence in the high density areas. They need support, in particular clean water, basic medical supplies and education for their children.

We are walking to further our clubfoot programme (450 operations to date). We are walking to eliminate the waiting lists of desperate people who need help.

Zane recieves no assistsnce from the goverernment – we rely on private donations for our aid.

We are grateful to our generous donors who have so kindly sponsored us. It is never too late!

Last and most important of all, thanks to my triumphant and wonderful wife who walked every yard with me. Words are an inadequate medium to express my heartfelt thanks and my gratitude to her.

I hope you enjoy my blog. It was often written late at night when I was tired. Any mistakes are mine alone.

Jul 22

Day 22 – Dis-Content Management

Some people find it hard to say “sorry”.

For my part I spend a good deal of time apologising. I find it saves time. It takes an act of grace to say “sorry” when you are wrong. It takes even more grace to say “sorry” when you are not sorry in the least…

–

The Games People Play

The day is overcast and clouds hang over us like a dirty grey roof. Malcom, who I have not seen for some years, joins us. As we walk, our last painful conversation comes flooding back, though nothing is said. Despite my advice, Malcolm left his wife; not long after that, his new relationship failed too. The funny thing – though it’s not really funny at all – is that his first wife was a star: kind, funny, intelligent and attractive. When the fracture occurred, all their mutual friends were flabbergasted.

The issue for my friend was profound discontent. Dissatisfaction is a low-level virus that has a habit of flaring up to wreck happiness and destroy family harmony. Years ago, I saw a cartoon of two newly married couples dancing. Both couples held each other close, but one man was gazing hungrily over his wife’s shoulder into the eyes of the other man’s wife – who was greedily returning the look.

Discontent and the reluctance to settle for what we have tears away at our peace of mind. Sometimes the pull is so strong, that we reach for what we cannot honestly have and thereby destroy the fabric of our lives and the happiness of others, particularly children.

Spinning the Truth
The Bible is full of examples of this phenomenon, starting with Adam and Eve who reflect the human capacity for tragic self-destruction. David lusts after Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and destroys his peace of mind and his career; Cain murders Abel; Jacob defrauds Esau; and we are shown the tragic insecurity of King Saul and the cupidity of King Ahab who cannot rest until he has stolen from a small farmer called Naboth. All those who think the Bible is out of date are profoundly wrong. It’s spot on.

Malcolm chatted away about the army – we served together – and we kept the conversation light. It was just as well really, for the painful memories of our last talk burned just beneath the surface.

Discontent rides with shame. So when a man leaves his wife for another woman, there will be a vicious battle going on inside his head. Nietzsche turned it into a well-known phenomenon. On one side stands the image the man has of himself: basically decent and honourable; on the other side is the harsh reality: the man is behaving like a total shit. In order to maintain his equilibrium, he simply buries the memory deep so he can kid himself it didn’t happen and the act morphs into a sort of dream. Neat the games we can play, eh?

Before he left his wife, Malcolm asked me for “advice”. But proffering advice was a pointless exercise because what he really wanted was not my guidance but an endorsement of the battle plan he had already decided to follow. His request for counsel was really a means of allowing him to parade his embattled conscience so I might understand that at heart he remained a fundamentally decent and sensitive man.

We are masters at fooling ourselves. The self-serving slant of our minds tilts favourable information our way and efficiently screens out the difficult bits best avoided. We have our own spin doctors – our private Alastair Campbells – who stuff all criticisms of the preferred plan down the throat of the nearest naysayer and instead present a highly enamelled, favourable version of the “truth” to the world.

The arguments are usually similar: “the fire in our marriage has gone out”, “we owe it to ourselves to be honest”, “I am now truly in love and the new lady makes me come alive”, or “I am convinced the children will get over it quickly and it’s just as well for them.” Oh yes, and last, “It will all be kept amicable, I am convinced that when it is all over she will remain a loyal and trusting friend.”

In all the infidelity cases I know of, my friends have been unfaithful with their secretaries – like plots straight from a Jilly Cooper bonk-buster. In each case, the only people wholly unaware of what was going on were the wife and children.

Till Death Us Do Part?
On the few occasions I have been asked to give my view, I have suggested that the man should (a) immediately tell his wife and ask for forgiveness; (b) gently extract himself from the situation and hire another secretary, preferably one with a moustache; (c) take a cold shower, and get on with his life.

The great sin today is to be “judgemental”, as if one were playing God – which I patently am not. But since these friends asked for my advice, I suggested also that they might revisit their marriage vows because, however badly they claim to have been treated, divorce is a deadly serious issue involving bitter hurt. However it is dressed up, there will usually be accusations of betrayal. Oh yes, and I stress that from what I have read and observed at first hand, however much we try to kid ourselves otherwise, children always suffer tremendously and this is long-lasting.

With regard to Malcolm, my advice was ignored and it all ended in tears. His eldest son was expelled from Eton for taking drugs and went from bad to worse, and his twins refused to speak to him for years. From what I understand, nobody ended up particularly happy.

Sometimes of course divorce is the best way forward, the lesser of the evils and who am I to judge? I have been profoundly fortunate in my marriage and I know it. But it does seem a strange thing that whenever my advice has been sought on such matters, it has never, ever been taken.

Jul 21

Day 21 – Post Script

We recently sent letter to our ZANE donors soliciting support for its clubfoot programme. To remind you, ZANE has been party to transforming the lives of 400 children by correcting their clubfoot conditions; we are embarking on another 400 operations this year. We are hugely proud of this work which is making a real change at a grassroots level in Zimbabwean communities.

I have to admit that this year, because of our merger with another charity, we have been obliged to send an unusually high number of letters. However, we have been very busy highlighting the cause of those in Zimbabwe that we seek to help.

ZANE is, to the best of my knowledge, unique in sending donors anthologies of Christmas verse. We have found this to be greatly appreciated and highly effective in raising money and awareness. The poems sit around in donors’ houses for a long time, meaning that more people get to find out about Zane and its work.

 

The same applies to the printed version of the walk blog.

 

A Modest Fellow

For various reasons, over the last few years Jane and I have seen a good deal of John and Elizabeth Gittins, and we are proud they have become such good friends. I am ashamed to say that only last week I discovered that John is in fact the author of several books and an Emeritus Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. He is a professor of statistics and has just returned from a lecture tour in America where he was described as a “legend in his own time”.

Well, if I had written half of what John has written and had achieved even a fraction of what he has, everyone, but everyone, would certainly know! I had to Google him to find out! John and his dear wife are modest and retiring, and a delight to all who know them.

Jul 20

Day 20- (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

I refuse to believe we are merely walking plumbing machines. For much of my life, I have been searching for something, a way of making a difference and a means of finding some purpose within the chaos. I have no idea why I am driven to seek while others seem happy with their lot. I suppose it’s simply the way we’re made.

I’ve found that whenever I have achieved some goal or other, the prize has proved to be a mirage. It’s always been the same: I travelled from school to Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; from graduating to becoming an officer in a “smart” regiment, then to becoming an MP; from relative poverty to wealth; from being single to being married; and from one strata of our class-ridden society to another. Each time, I thought that my arrival in a new and, from a distance, glittering place would bring some kind of satisfaction, but I was wrong.

Being Somebody
The Germans have a word for this king of seeking and that is “sehnsucht”. Apparently there is no neat English equivalent; it translates as a yearning with transcendent overtones. That probably sounds pretentious but it’s not complicated. In John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, he says of the mountains of Central California that he wanted “to climb into the warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother.” I think that’s as good a description of my yearning I’m likely to find. Often, I remember crying out to myself whenever I arrived somewhere new: “Here it is! I’ve found it at last”, only to discover that once again my prize was slipping away through my fingers like ashes.

My self-awareness tells me that my drive in life is forged from a profound fear of being mediocre and boring. That fear has always pushed me remorselessly onwards because even when I knew I had become somebody, I still had to prove I was somebody. Each time I achieved something or other, in a short while I realised that unless I kept going, it was not enough. My sense of self, my desire for self-worth and my need to be sure I am somebody remained unsatisfied. No matter how much I threw into my cupboard, the next day I found it to be empty.

Alfie
Those of a certain age will recall the iconic 1966 film Alfie starring Michael Caine. It was a dark movie, and the question asked in the theme song, “What’s it all about?”, has remained –  not surprisingly – unanswered.

Over the last few decades, we’ve seen the relatively early deaths of a number of celebrities who in terms of prodigious talent and looks, and the possession of vast sums of money, had scooped the pool. Yet despite this, just reflect on some of their fates. We have Elvis sitting dead on his loo from substance-abuse; Marilyn Monroe’s tragic overdose; the lonely death of alcoholic Tony Hancock in an Australian hotel room; the untimely death of Richard Burton, who apparently spent a good deal of his career trying to drown his vast talents in vodka; the suicide of star singer Kurt Kubain, father to a young baby, who said “I’m a stain, I hate myself, I want to die”; and the death of singer Amy Winehouse from alcohol intoxication. Recently, Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose, a needle sticking out of his arm, Mick Jagger’s fashion designer girlfriend, L’Wren Scott, hanged herself, and 25-year-old Peaches Geldolf – mother to two small boys – was found dead after taking drugs.

Common sense tells us that what we had read previously of these celebrities’ manicured lives was PR flannel, but we didn’t know that hiding behind the candelabra was chaos and despair.

Tim Keller, founder of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, writes of a local downtown cafe that employs aspiring film actors as waiters while they wait to secure their call to fame. Very occasionally, one or two of them make it big and grow rich and famous. “And then,” he tells us, “their wrath is terrible.”

So what’s going on here? Did they find that instead of “arriving” with a passport to happiness, the devil had instead pulled the ultimate con trick and that it was all a mirage? Did they discover that when they had reached the summit of their ambition, they were even more lonely and fearful than they were before they started the ascent?

Soren Kierkegaard wrote that ever since men crawled out of the slime, they have conducted an endless experiment to prove that money, sex and power will bring happiness in their wake. Yet, he opined, there has never been a single case in which this experiment is known to have succeeded: “In any other scientific field such a failed experiment would long since have been abandoned, yet men [and women] are still ploughing on trying to make this hopeless experiment work.”

What’s It All About?
It seems that when the feet of the golden idols of our culture finally decay, Alfie’s question will remain playing on a loop. What’s it all about then, this toil, worry and striving, for what exactly? Does anything in this world satisfy us?

Heck… Hoffman had great talent, money and success, a wife and three children, a crowd of friends and a universe of fans who thought he was brilliant, yet he still felt compelled to ring the local scumbag to supply him with a bag of heroin so he could escape to la-la land. If he wasn’t happy and fulfilled, then what hope have the rest of us who may be striving to get just a little bit of what Hoffman had? How many of us are trying to prove today that making money and winning admiration are the same things as peace of mind and contentment?

For many years I thought Hilaire Belloc was spot on when he wrote: “There’s nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends”, but even this satisfaction can only go so far, a pointer towards the goal and not the goal itself.

So, where can we go from here? G.A. Studdert Kennedy, MC, the famous World-War-One poet and priest known as Woodbine Willie who comforted dying soldiers, wrote, “You cannot be sane unless you are crazy about Christ. You are then mad upon the highest cause of sanity.”

Only a few years ago, I would have thought that was pure drivel. Today, to my utter astonishment, I find I agree.

Jul 19

Day 19 – All’s Fair in Love and Dinner

A Salty Tale

Some time ago, our daughter Clare asked us to supper on the spur of the moment. There was no special occasion – John was away and it was just a last-minute thing. Her three sons were there, and we ate chicken and drank some wine.

Just for the record, we eat informally with no telly to distract us. It was an evening with lots of laughter, particularly fresh because it was wholly unexpected and unplanned. We talked endlessly, the conversation bouncing around between each of us: bits of gossip, politics, churchy stuff, films we had seen. Each contribution triggered another anecdote and yet another, with no one dominating or feeling left out.

Sweet Revenge
One of the stories related involved one of Micah’s friends – lets call him Robbie. He recently “borrowed” Micah’s Blackberry just to see who it was Micah had been ringing. (Robbie is clearly a disgraceful journalist in the making!) The boy saw that one of Micah’s contacts was a certain “Milly”. Fourteen-year-old Robbie then texted Milly, crudely suggesting what he would like to do to her if he got the chance, and signed it off in Micah’s name. Unfortunately Milly is Micah’s mother’s sister (his aunt) who is a married woman with two sons herself, and she was riveted to receive the text. Micah was accused of sending porno messages to his aunt and the mortified boy was thus obliged to relate to both his mother and Milly what had happened.

Poor Robbie was unprepared for our salty family and an ambush was laid. The next time Micah’s aunt met the boy, she announced “I’m Milly! What exactly was it you wanted to do to me? What about telling me face to face?”

For some time Robbie was in emotional intensive care. Of course, the story is now embedded in our family folklore.

Fair’s Fair
The boys chattered on about “fairness”, a concept that worries them as much as anything. Micah told us that the week before, a teacher had blamed him for singing in class when in fact the culprit was sitting behind him. It was, he said, “very unfair”.

I reminded Micah of all the things he had done for which he had not been found out and suggested that perhaps on balance he was getting off lightly? After a pause, he agreed.

Perhaps we look forward and worry too much about things that may go wrong. Who knows what the future may hold? I was told once that the acronym for the word “fear” is “False Expectations Assumed Real”. I like that. So stop worrying and remember that in the long term we will all be dead!

Someone once wrote about the sacrament of the present moment and I am sure we should thank God for it. We can do nothing about the past, it has gone, and we should place the future in God’s hands.

On reflection, I am convinced that life doesn’t get much better than that family supper. I reckon – at this precious moment in time anyway – that I am a hugely fortunate man.

The Flying Dutchman
I’m fascinated by the current tradition where dinner party guests feel obliged to present a profusion of gifts to their host and hostess on arrival. Last month we had four couples to dinner and I calculate we darned nearly made a profit on the evening – I counted four bottles of wine, three boxes of chocolates and two pot plants. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I’m not quite sure when this tradition began, for when we were young, none of us thought it necessary to give one another anything but a fine dinner when our turn came around to play host. But that was then and this is now, and of course we have joined in the merry-go-round of gifts.

You have to be careful though – one of our recent guests unwittingly presented us with a bottle of wine I had given them before Christmas. It’s now become something rather like the Flying Dutchman, destined to sail around our social set forever – it’s become a bottle for giving and not for drinking.

Jul 19

Day 18 – Witch Hunts, Fit as a Flea and Modern Termites

Salem

In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” his plot recreated incidents that occurred in the 1700’s in Salem, Massachusetts. In short, there was a witch hunt that only ended after all those who looked odd and had rumours circulating about them had been executed.

Now to today’s Westminster. There is to be an “investigation” into allegations of a paedophilia ring and cover up at Westminster in the early eighties. These allegations have been fuelled by rumours that over a hundred files, prepared by the late Geoffrey Dickens M.P., relating to illegal activities and handed to the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, have been wilfully destroyed.

I knew Geoffrey well and he stayed in my house once to celebrate my birthday. He was great fun and he made me laugh. He told me that when he was starting out in business in Manchester he bought thousands of pairs of ladies tights at an astonishingly attractive price. Only after he sold them off a barrow did he discover the reason for the cheapness of the tights: one leg of each of the tights was six inches shorter than the other.

“There were hundreds of women all lurching along angrily looking for me and we had to move house!”

He was that sort of a man. He was a man of great mischief and he was always seeking emotionally charged issues to make his name. He loved conspiracies and he was known by the media for being “rent a quote.”. But he was not a serious politician and I I would place no reliance on his so called files whatsoever. I suspect he is laughing in paradise over all the fuss he has caused.

We should let the emotion cool. There were rumours of sexual derring do and don’t in my day but ’twas ever thus. If all M.P.’s were to be condemnned because they looked odd then there would be very few people at Westminster left! And forget rumours! If everyone knew what everyone said about everyone, no one would be talking to anyone.

Also that there was no conspiracy to destroy files. The administrative authorities are always trying to clear out ancient files of no great value and it is probable that the “Dickens files” went as part of a routine cull as matter of no significance.

–

I have proved my theory which is that anyone of “ age” who is in reasonable physical condition can build up to strenuous exercise, lose weight and get fit.

When I started the walk I was feeling generally out of sorts. I had a few sore muscles. I was generally not in great physical trim. In the last three weeks I have lost a quarter of a stone and I feel better than I have for months. I have found that sore muscles ease and restore themselves if you just ignore the problem and walk through the discomfort.

Its a pity our health authorities can’t stop patronisding us with drivel about staying out of the sun and the ice and, instead, offer an incentive of, say £1000 to all the obese to walk from Ambleside to Oxford. The money saved by the NHS would be massive.

But I know they won’t do it. No one in authority would have the courage to tell fat people that they must lose weight or die an early death.

–

Modern Times

The Saatchi family drama has made us all think. What was it all about? Well in part, I’m sure that Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson didn’t want to be stuffy and high-handed, and went to the opposite extreme and treated their assistants (the Grillos) as friends rather than servants. So the friends – who were really the assistants – went of with the credit cards they had been given and spent nearly half a million pounds of their “friends’” money before Saatchi noticed something was awry. Not surprisingly outraged, he turned into an aggrieved employer and took the Grillos to court to get his boodle back.

So there was a court action in which everyone lost (apart from the lawyers and the public who apparently enjoyed it all enormously).

No one is likely to employ the Grillos again, and both Charles and Nigella look totally bonkers to me. Part of the reason they ended up in court with a ghastly action round their necks was that this “modern” couple allowed the divisions between their employees and themselves to morph into confusion.

Yes, Prime Minister
We have never employed staff on the scale of the Saatchis, but some years ago when we were into riding and breeding horses – in a modest sort of way – we employed a groom and his wife, as well as a nanny for the children, for we were both working. Pete and Lynn Teale were from the old school, and from the outset they chose to address us as “Sir” and “Madam”, because that’s the way they were. We never asked them to do this, and in no way did that formality diminish our affection for one another. Everyone knew where they stood in the relationship, and for years it worked as sweet as a nut from all our points of view.

The nanny, however, was a thoroughly modern Milly, and she called us Tom and Jane. Over time, despite the fact that we were responsible employers and we made her duties crystal clear, she determined to confuse her role with that of our daughters, and she began to borrow their clothes and makeup without asking. This led to a series of modest difficulties and no one was sorry to see her go.

In an earlier blog, I railed against the gross informality that is the norm in our society. Whose idea is it that people who you have never met before should call you by your Christian name, and who benefits? Why do so many people sign off with “love” at the end of their letters when they don’t even begin to mean the sentiment? What do you say to those you really love?

David Cameron came to our house to discuss Jane’s brilliant food bank (we are his constituents). Although he is young enough to be my son, I called him “Prime Minister”, because I am an old fashioned sort of guy and think that (a) he is not a friend of mine, (b) the office of Prime Minister should be respected, and (c) I know my place.

I am convinced that no one benefits if employer/staff relationships are allowed to turn into messy, personal relationships where the boundaries are unclear. And if they didn’t before, I have a feeling that Nigella and Charles would agree with me.

Termite World
We stopped for a coffee when we were in the centre of Coventry. The place was swarming with busy people. Everyone looks anxious, and nobody smiles or says “hello”.

I had a look inside a termites’ nest once. All these insects were scurrying around – carrying eggs, feeding the queen, removing faeces and collecting food. Each was frantically busy and not one of them seemed to be standing still. They had no idea I was watching them because they are blind. I often wonder, are we rather like them?

Jul 17

Day 17 – Sent from Coventry

We have now flogged through Coventry in a heat wave. I suppose I wasn’t really surprised to hear warnings in the media by the authorities that it was unwise to go out in the sun! How nannyish is this and what a silly waste of money? What have we come to when the authorities lecture presumably sentient people as to when they should and should not go out in the hot and cold. It’s beyond parody!

We visited the magnificent cathedral. It reminded me of the skilll of architect Basil Spence in demonstrating in stone and glass the resurrection of holiness over the dark powers of darkness.

We lunched in the Shepherd’s Arms. Our visit was unerringly timed, for we found we had joined a bevy of patients from the local mentally disabled home. They were all rather old, and they spent their time enoying the sun, jerkily gesticulating and quietly talking or shouting to themselves. The senior carer asked Jane and me what we were doing, walking in a heat wave? When we told her the story of where we have come from and where we are going she looked at us curiously. I think she thought we were out on day release from a competing institution! She may be right.

As it was so hot neither of us wanted to eat much, so we enjoyed a cup of tea and a bun at a cafe staffed by a Greek Cypriot called Stefanos. He told me he married his “angel” Abigail in a Greek Orthodox ceremony about a month ago. Then the delightful Abbey appeared and told us that she is a social worker specialising in the mentally ill. She said she was delighted to be part of a Greek family because they are far more social and “family” than the reticent English that she had been used to. It’s exciting to see such a fine young couple relishing to the full what life has to offer.

—

A Family Business

I am sure that when I mention “religion”, some of my readers may switch off. Perhaps they think that faith should be popped into the box marked “the tooth fairy and other myths”, or maybe they would prefer to spend their valuable time studying the 3:10 at Cheltenham races.

However, please trust me and read on… We have to agree that religion is a topic that makes many people deeply anxious, as does any serious discussion of sex. Humour is often the only medium through which people are able to release their anxieties on either subject. If you doubt the truth of that, just listen to the patter of stand-up comics and you’ll see what I mean.

Holier Than Thou?
My views on religion as such may come as something of a surprise. Because three out of our four children have decided that their careers lie in preaching the Good News – I have to concede they are doing this on an industrial scale – many of our non-Christian friends have concluded that Jane and I have to be deeply “religious”. I watch old friends edging away in some astonishment at parties when they realise that the Anglican Church has become our family business. They think religion is contagious and that if they keep us as pals, they risk losing their other more balanced friends. One of our non-Christian relatives proclaimed in astonishment when she heard of the number of vicars our immediate family has inadvertently produced: “But you’ve always been such party people”. The implication was that overnight we must have morphed into killjoy, holier-than-thou, swivel-eyed bores.

Sad to say, I know what these sceptics mean. I think it was Ghandi who said that while he loved Christ, he was less than impressed by those who claimed to be Christian. Although a good many of our lovely Christian friends live Godly and apparently happy lives – and I know a good many non-Christians living similarly virtuous lives as well – I have to say that I have seen a good many “Christians” who do not appear to be happy advertisements to those who may be wondering whether or not to turn to faith.

Some Christians confuse being “salt and light” with being weird and downright obnoxious. Christians are not commanded to wear funny clothes, speak in “churchy” voices, or accost people in lifts. We are not instructed to talk in jargon about our pilgrimages, missions or visions, or to announce that God has just provided us with a parking space in Oxford’s city centre. Equally, we are not told to sniff at other people’s lifestyles or disapprove of parties and fun. We do not have to look down on profit-making businesses or bang on about “sins” – usually sexual – and nor are we instructed to oppose change as a matter of principle, parade obscene banners at gay marches, or imply to the sick that their illness is due to unconfessed sin. And the Christian faith does not teach that those who admit to doubts are somehow defective and should try harder.

So neither Jane nor I regard ourselves as “religious”, for the fact is that Christ was crucified by the “religious” people. In fact, Jesus was the most exiting revolutionary who ever lived; he died to make all things new and to release us from bondage to freedom and life. It is a profound paradox that so many people appear to have dedicated their lives to trying to tame Him, thus turning their faith into an ultra-respectable charade that bears no relevance to real life.

The Real Show
Jesus spent most of his ministry with hookers, dope addicts and deeply flawed people like me. In fact, as you study the Gospels, you are bound to notice a pattern so consistent it appears to be a formula. The more ungodly, unpleasant and unattractive a person, the more they are attracted to Jesus. And the more righteous and self assured a person, the more that individual feels threatened by Jesus. It’s just the polar opposite of what most people think of as the ideal believer: a rounded, solid citizen who holds family values close to his heart and socialises with the “right” sort of people. Just remember those whom Jesus consorted with: a prostitute, a moral outcast, a Roman centurion, a mixed-race woman with five wrecked marriages and an unclean man with leprosy. At the same time, the Pharisees who had lived upright lives, studied the scriptures rigorously, and obeyed the law, all saw Jesus as a threat.

Jesus kept his harshest words for the “religious” people. So the party poopers have an uphill job but sadly they keep on trying hard to wreck the whole thing in the name of religiosity. Jane and I pray that our children and some of their magnificent friends will be able to help keep the real show on the road. Knowing them as we do, we expect they shall.