Jul 06

Day 6 – Sorry, Blackburn, I’ve changed…

On Friday evening we arrived at the Nelson’s delightful house tired and sodden. The rain that fell relentlessly managed to leak into every cranny. It’s amazing what a hot bath and a good meal can do and I have to say we were shown great hospitality.

 

On Saturday we walked across the River Ribble on a glorious day that was so sparkling even the outskirts of Blackburn look quite civilised.

We ended up lost, charging through the lush vast gardens of an Indian magnate who owns Blackburn Plumbing and numerous other businesses besides. We were met by various daughters and other ladies who looked rather distraught when we suddenly arose from their herbaceous borders. When I explained who we were they relaxed and kept their huge dog tethered which, by the look of it, was just as well. The trouble is that we look like derelicts. Dinah our fool of a dog has eaten, with ferocious efficiency all the straps that hold our equipment on to our backs. General Jane has improvised “Heath Robinson” substitutes from bits of string which she keeps for a rainy day. This works well enough but makes us look like walking cat’s cradles and decidedly eccentric. Jane’s aunt collected string and when she died we found a box of bits of string labelled “too small to use” so perhaps Jane gets her string talents from her.

My right knee is giving me trouble. I strained it slightly at the outset of the walk and it has never really recovered. It is said that is you wake up over the age of sixty-five and you’re not hurting it means you are dead! But old age is creeping up inexorably and the best is not yet to come! The constant limitations and physical drawbacks of ageing are like being constantly punished for a series of crimes I have not committed.

Saying sorry

It’s not often you hear people saying “sorry” I recall a film “Love Story” with sumptuous Ali MacGraw years ago which said drivellingly that “being in love means never having to say you’re sorry”. It sounded great in that soppy film but, on reflection, what sort of bunkum is that? Being in love may mean never having to say sorry but being married means never saying anything else!

But when mistakes are made by people in business, hearing someone admit they “have cocked it up” and saying “sorry” is as rare as hen’s teeth.

It’s maddening! It’s not that I want to humiliate people; it’s just that, unless they say “sorry”, what guarantee is there that they have learned a lesson and won’t do it again?

I think they believe that if they publicly admit error and say “sorry” that deep down inside, fundamentally they are somehow diminished as a person. Perhaps pride is the problem? It usually is. The reality is that saying “sorry” is a strong and confident thing to do. Refusing to do so is weak.

 

 

Blackburn Rovers

 

We walk through Blackburn. I had no idea that it makes hilly San Francisco seem as flat as a billiard table. We wheezed up and down the streets like a couple of ancient cart horses.

An entire section of the city is apparently Muslim. I wonder if politicians intended that or whether it has occurred in a fit of an absence of mind? For the last thirty years few observers dared comment about the ability of communities to absorb the substantial numbers of new immigrants or question what was happening for fear of being labelled “raaacist!” Or a “Powelite.” Sir Andrew Green, past U.K. ambassador to Syria and in his retirement founder of the excellent “Migration Watch”, was routinely and disgracefully criticised whenever he pointed out the accurate immigration numbers and pinpointed where the new people were collecting. Let me be clear. Over the years immigration has been an excellent benefit for the U.K. Many of the Ugandan Asians for example have created fortunes to the benefit of the U.K. But the last Labour government simply lost control of the numbers of immigrants and so it now appears that there is confusion as to how many people came in and when. No one really knows. There is a vast statue of the great and one time M.P. Gladstone in the city centre. I wonder what he would say if he could see the city today?

 

An Englishman Abroad

 

Richard Ekins will be joining us for a day’s walking and that’s great news. He is a lecturer in law at St John’s College, Oxford and by his early thirties had written a number of learned books. Richard and his wife, Rebecca – just as bright as he is – wear their intellect lightly and are delightful company.

 

When I was a young man, I thought that only weak and stupid people were Christians. Then in time, I was privileged to befriend Michael Green (double first from Oxford), Alastair McGrath (double first in mathematics from Oxford), Donald Hay (Oxford Fellow and Tutor in economics) and Richard Ekins. I realised I had to review my prejudices. I am friends with four brilliant men who do not think that faith is something rather nice in a wishy-washy sort of way, but that it is the truth at the very core of their lives.

 

Shifting Sands

I was the odd man out. I spent well over half my life as a non-believer. For a long time, I was lost without knowing it. Of course, I thought I was free. Why would I adopt a set of rules that I thought would inhibit my life and limit my fun? I wanted a life that allowed fornication as a weekend recreation, so why would I voluntarily adopt rules that regard casual sex as a sin? As a non-believer, I rejoiced that I faced no questions of conscience:  no rules, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law. And I knew that for most purposes, these could be bent sufficiently to allow me ample leeway.

 

It was not until much later that fear began to shred what was left of my conscience. I knew I was free but I found that this freedom was causing me to walk in circles in an arid land from which there was no escape but inward – and this path led inexorably to a void in my heart. There were no foundations in my life, nothing but shifting sands: a nothing based on nothing. What was I? An accident of disorder, a walking plumbing machine ever going round and round…

 

How does one find belief? I knew no one who could tell me the secret. I asked several vicars with increasing desperation for the key; a number regarded me blankly and one foolishly chattered about the social Gospel. I grew ever more frantic. Was I lost? Had God forsaken me? Would he do so forever? Did he love me? This is the real terror. It’s terrible to be lost, finally abandoned.

 

A Curious Tale

My salvation came in the form of Kwaku Boateng, one-time Home Office Minister in Ghana. He was the father of Paul Boateng, a senior minister in the Blair Government, now Lord Boateng and once the UK’s High Commissioner to South Africa. Kwaku was then living in England and I met him on a flight to Washington D.C. In our stratified and class-ridden society, it had to be an uninhibited foreigner who had the perception to see my need, the courage to roundly humiliate me, and then the raw nerve to savagely kick-start me into belief. No Englishman could have done this. We are just too polite, too deferential, too nice and constrained by manners and overwhelmed by inhibition.

 

We should remember that Jesus never said “Blessed be the nice”, and Kwaku was anything but nice. He screamed at me relentlessly about sin and salvation. I was astonished and embarrassed but then I knew instinctively the man was right – it was as if the bits of a jigsaw were falling into place. He stuck his face into mine, and made me repent and make a commitment. He refused to let me rest until I had grovelled to his satisfaction. In fact, I think that at the time I said what he wanted just to shut him up. I didn’t realise that his ministry would have the most profound effect on me. It may sound very strange (it is strange), but Kawaku proved to be the catalyst that radically changed my life and the life of my family.

 

A few years ago, I was on a business trip to Ghana and was asked to preach in the cathedral in Accra. During my talk, I mentioned the role Kwaku had played in my life, though I had not seen him for 20 years. After the service, a young man told me he knew where Kwaku lived and would I like to see him again? I was led to the far reaches of Accra’s back streets and a scruffy men’s lodging house. When Kwaku saw me, a vast smile crossed his face. I thanked him profoundly and we prayed. It became clear he was ill and I heard soon after my visit that he had died. His son Paul later told me that each time he gave his father money, Kwaku simply gave it away. He may not have been the best family man in the world but he performed a remarkable service for me.

 

It’s a curious and very un-English story! But it’s one that happens to be true…

 

 

 

 

Jul 04

Day 5 – Manners Maketh Man

As soon as we set off a team of flies like paparazzi home in on me and zip about my head – not Jane’s – for the rest of the day, why not Jane? I edge towards her. In the hope a few will be attracted to her but no such luck. What do the flies know that I don’t?
The first part of the morning was spent in Arcadia. We walked through a beautiful farm straight out of one of my childhood dream books: “Pinner Potter Meadow”.

 

Pinner Potter Meadow
We travelled through the Entwhistle farms, through light green and lush fields on which jigged a scattering of lambs on spindly legs; cows stood waiting to be stroked; we scrambled down small thickly shrouded valleys; thickly tufted emerald coloured trees stood proudly like sentinels as they nodded a whispered greeting to one another.

Then the landscape radically changed; we walked under vast rapidly darkening slatey skies. We forked left onto a road that divided light green and brown speckled moorland that stretched to the horizon. On my left stood dark and gloomy buildings like the set in Jamaica Inn. On each side of the flat moor sprouted shapeless bastard shrubs like acne: thousands of anaemic thistles like tiny triffids shivered in the soft air. We crawled up Grizedale Fell and then, chests heaving, we strode towards Calder Fell.

One of the Zane donors told me that he had decided not to continue to support  us because he had met a beneficiary of ours and didn’t like him!

What an extraordinary admission. The good Samaritan didn’t make the man who had been set on by thieves complete a questionnaire to establish whether he was politically correct and “likeable” before helping him. He helped him because he needed help. When Oxfam assists, say, the Syrian families they don’t only help the deserving ones. They help all who are in need irrespective of their alleged moral standing. If only help is to be given to worthy and kind and virtuous people, who will help us when we are in need?

A Formidable Lady

Jane is remarkable. When I married her Humphrey Scott Plummer, her father, told me that he had set up the so called JD Club named after his Johnston Douglas female aunts who were like Scottish versions of Wilde’s lady Bracknell.

Jane is a formidable organiser and tends, dare I say it, to take after them. In other words, she is a tad bossy. In fact she gets to be more like General Montgomery each day that passes.

If David Cameron wants to use her as, for example, an EU envoy then she would surprise us all. She would charge into the office of Herr Junker and out would go all his gin bottles for starters. Then she would grab president Hollande and out would go all his mistresses. She would then get him to lose a couple of stone. It’s a good job Berlasconi has already bitten the dust or she would set about him. She would do all this with great charm.

It’s a good job much of her focus is spent on our fool dog or she might spend even more time sorting me out!

 

  

Manners Maketh Man

 

We live in rude times. Occasionally, I make gifts of money to members of the younger generation – probably not much in the scheme of things, but every little helps. Usually I receive an enthusiastic thank you letter, but not always. From time to time, I hear sweet nothing.

 

Imagine that! I was brought up strictly, and made – absolutely made – to write thank you letters, so much so that thanking is part of my DNA. But some of the young (and it is almost always the young) do not bother. They should reply even for the most selfish of reasons, because the gifts will certainly stop if they don’t! So that is one example of bad manners.

 

Henry Who?

My phone rang as we were walking today. A soon as I answered, a voice started speaking on the presumption that I was bound to know the caller’s identity. I realised who it was as the conversation developed, but just to make a point I asked who was speaking? “Henry of course!” said the voice. But why should Henry presume he is unique in my life?

 

Of course, the trouble is that Henry doesn’t know how irritating he is. He’s all of a pattern with the people who arrive at a meeting, dump their miserable mobiles on the table and then wait expectantly for a call. This is a statement proclaiming, “I am far more important than you are.” Just as annoying is the theatre or train station clerk who suddenly answers a ringing phone while speaking to you. I am always tempted to lean over and cut off the call, though I am sure that would be regarded as committing some sort of assault.

 

How brutalised gentle manners have become. A vicar friend told me that he was used to phones ringing during memorial services. “But,” he went on, “I can never get used to people answering calls during the eulogy!”

 

Then there are the maddening people who come up to you at a party and say, “I’ll bet you won’t remember me?” The trouble is they do mind when I have to admit they are quite right. I am not good at matching names with faces when I see people out of context. It’s far better when you meet someone to presume they are as mentally challenged as yourself, and to put them out of their misery by immediately volunteering your name.

 

Each year, we receive Christmas cards from John and Mary? Who the heck are they? And why do they presume they are so famous? I suppose it’s a sort of vanity. I recall when I was an MP, aged crones used to fix me with an ancient eye and demand that I hazard a guess at their age? “At least 110,” I would say (if I knew they were Labour voters, that is).

 

Edith Sitwell once told a friend, “We arrived in the Cafe Royal and, my dear, it became absolutely clear that the head waiter had no idea who we were! We were forced to tell him.”

 

“And who were you?” came the cold reply.

 

Who’s Name-Dropping?

Former head of the army Lord Inge once told me that in a meeting he was interrupted by a secretary saying, “Number 10 on the line!”

 

“Number 10 where?” he replied testily.

 

I wish I had such speed of mind. I always think of neat replies weeks later.

 

Name-dropping can backfire. Noel Coward once strode into the Savoy Grill with a friend. He spotted an acquaintance at a table and introduced his friend with the words, “Harry, meet my very good friend, the King of Norway”.

 

The king leant forward with a lazy smile and said, “King of Sweden actually!”

 

Here to Help

As you may already know, Jane founded the Community Emergency Foodbank (CEF) in Oxford some six years ago. Since then, Jane and her team have provided food for over 11,000 people.

 

Food banks have become a political hot potato. Inevitably, there are some who want to beat the government round the head on grounds of “growing food poverty”, the implication being that if benefits were increased then the need for food banks would diminish. I’m not so sure. Food banks have been a vital and growing service in Germany for many years, so the need is not unique to the UK.

 

But the political row rumbles on for politics is often not so much about issues as about making noises. To blame the increasing need for food banks on an “uncaring” government is a convenient sound bite.

 

In fact, the reasons for the growth of food banks are complex. In 2012/13, Jane and her team fed some 3,300 people and distributed 40,000 items of food, an increase of 70 per cent on the previous year. Welfare reform has left gaps and I hope these will be corrected in time. However, in the unlikely event that the provision of welfare benefits was to be substantially increased, the need for food banks would continue unabated because no government of any stripe could create a system of relief that caters for the many human dramas – prison, gambling, drugs, desertion, sudden job loss and the gaps in benefit provision created by changing circumstances – that afflict families. Further, the substantial publicity surrounding the rise of food banks in general means that people are now more aware of the service, leading to increased demand.

 

In fact the provision of food is a very efficient way of distributing emergency aid. It cannot be smoked, drunk or gambled away and I reckon that CEF is here to stay.

 

We have been asked if it would be a good idea for government to become directly involved, but I think that would be disastrous. Great movements like Alcoholics Anonymous, the Salvation Army – and ZANE – should grow from the ground up, not from the top down. Ronald Reagan’s old line, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’” has an element of truth in it.

 

This is one service much best left to volunteers.

 

 

Jul 03

Day 4 – No Offence!

We have just walked from Quernmore to Abbeystead. We climbed over high moorland and at the high point we could see Blackpool tower on the far left towards Barrow in Furness on the right. To our front was spread a magnificent view of Morecambe Bay. We squelched through acres of farmyard muck and up and down numerous fields with Janet Kenyon a lovely person. She works as a nurse for half of each year in Bulawayo and she knows our team who works there well .

 

An Altercation

 

Jane and I had an altercation. We walked in parallel down the Lune and it was a delight, miles of beautiful gunmetal water flecked with silver. After four or so miles we needed to cross.

Jane found a crossing place and I went on a few hundred yards and found another. Dinah, our fool dog, for some reason came with me. Jane had the dog lead.

There were cows and sheep in front of me so I was stuck. Jane was nowhere to be seen. She rang me repeatedly but the ring tone on my Blackberry is clearly defective.

I waited for her with growing impatience. She waited for me with growing irritation!

When we finally met up Jane tore into me for being a fool. I tore into her for being a fool. We ranted away until we were purple, so I said:

“That’s it. I propose never to speak to you again!” Just like a child. Jane looked rather surprised.

Then we started to laugh. Then a kiss. That was it.

Good thing laughter. It sorts out nonsense. Nothing matters very much and most things don’t matter at all.

 

 

A Good Book

 

I have just finished a fine, insightful and sensitive book called “No Place to Belong”by Ann Warren, it is a must read for all of us who had problems when young. It is a miracle that Ann, who was more or less abandoned, has survived with a sense of forgiveness and humour. You can get it on Amazon.

 

No Offence!

 

It’s so easy to either bless or offend people without realising the effect of your words and actions. For example, some time ago I was flying back from Washington D.C. – on the terminal bus at Heathrow, I struck up a conversation with a man who told me about a problem he had. Of course, other people’s difficulties are so much easier to resolve then your own, and although I can’t remember the precise details, I recall suggesting a few novel ways of sorting out the matter. I then forgot all about it, as one does.

 

Months later, a total stranger approached me at a party and said, “I’ve been looking for you because you were so kind and wise, and the advice you gave me helped me enormously – so thank you!” I walked tall for weeks.

 

On another occasion, I was hosting an official party at the Milton Keynes Health Authority where I was chairman. Out of the blue, a stranger pinned me with a laser eye and announced, “I’ve been looking for you to tell you what a rude prick you are! You walked into my surgery the other day with a group of people and you totally ignored me. You never even said hullo! You are the rudest person I’ve ever met.”

 

Boom boom! On one occasion, I was the cause of some good, while on the other, well, to put it politely, wholly the reverse. Each time, I was wholly unaware of the “Tom effect”.

 

The Art of Banter

Years ago, Julian Critchley, an MP colleague of mine, told me that the only safe pastime in public life is to suck boiled sweeties. I have a complementary point: the only safe conversation you can have with strangers is to discuss the weather.

 

Banter is designed to kick-start dead conversations or new relationships into some sort of life. Each time it is deployed, you can’t avoid running a risk. This kind of raillery may cement a relationship, or it might blow one apart. It involves living dangerously, and this is especially true for the British – after all, we are probably the most reticent nation on Earth. However, the world would be a far poorer place without banter and we would laugh much less.

 

I am an enthusiastic banterer, an art I learned at school and during my army days. In the past, it has protected me from shyness, but these days, I usually turn to banter just to liven up living. On the whole, it’s a gentle affair, just an attempt to make a stranger smile and respond. Most of the time, it goes down well… but sometimes it can be woefully misunderstood, and then I am obliged to send yet another bunch of flowers and do a bit of grovelling.

 

A Biblical Blunder

A while ago, I sat next to a pleasant young lady at a group lunch following a lecture. She is the wife of a vicar and we had an inconsequential conversation, discussing various people we both vaguely knew.

 

Then perhaps the discussion flagged, for I asked her about the circumstances in which she had met her husband. She replied, “We’ve been married for two years, and I have known him for four.”

 

I then reposted part of an old line from the television sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News: “But I am sure you did not know him then in the Biblical sense.” The remark seemed funny when I first heard it and it must have stuck in my Teflon mind. There the conversation ended – I thought happily – and we both turned to talk to other people.

 

A few days later, I received an indignant email from this lady’s husband implying that I had questioned her over matters that no man should ever question a young woman, i.e. her sex life. For several minutes, I was completely nonplussed, and then slowly I resurrected the conversation and worked out where the misunderstanding lay. My joke had clearly backfired and morphed into my asking a complete stranger as to when she started to have sex. If this had been the case, it would have been the grossest possible intrusion, and why on earth would I choose to be so bad mannered?

 

Of course, if someone does not get a harmless joke, there’s no point trying to explain it. You can wonder why the woman hadn’t the wit to ask me to explain the comment at the time. However, if you want to get out of a hole, stop digging. I immediately apologised.

 

Naff Dad

On another occasion, I was out shopping with my daughter Clare, looking for a present for Jane. I think I would rather commit ritual suicide rather than shop regularly, but sometimes I have to brace myself, think of England and just carry on.

 

In order to alleviate the boredom of it all, I asked the two perfectly ordinary assistants at the till, “Who’s the boss?” They both looked blank, so I (unwisely) raised the gear. “And which of you has the brains?”

 

It was hopeless. One of the ladies gave me a cold stare. All she had to do was to say, “I do and my friend is daft,” and perhaps her friend might say, “Rubbish, I have the brains,” and off we would go with a bit of banter – something, anything, to liven up a dull interlude. But no, it was like talking to a brace of prison warders.

 

Outside the shop, Clare put the boot in: “God, you are an embarrassing father! How could you be so naff? They both thought you were out on day release!”

 

Perhaps she was right – she usually is.

 

The Duke Effect

You have to be careful, for banter can be woefully misunderstood – as the poor Duke of Edinburgh discovered when he once talked about “slitty-eyed Chinese”. On another occasion, he saw a tangle of electrical wires and remarked, “It must have been an Indian who put that together”. A minor international dispute resulted. It was only banter but the Duke found himself in the headlines. When you have to talk to thousands of people you are bound to make the occasional slip-up.

 

Nicknames are a form of banter. One of my friends was a member of a polo club and one of the leading players was an Indian nicknamed “Dusty”. No one minded, and apparently Dusty had been called that all his life. But when the Daily Mail picked up on it, the nickname morphed into a racial slur. How I hate political correctness.

 

The late Sir Robin Day, the so called “Grand Inquisitor” and the Jeremy Paxman of 30 years ago, used to cause considerable offence at dinner parties when, to get a conversation going, he was known to turn to the lady sitting next to him and ask, “Do you prefer sexual intercourse first thing in the morning or last thing at night?”

 

Now, I wonder what the vicar’s reaction would have been if I’d put that question to his wife?

 

 

 

Jul 02

Day 3 – Ozzies, Hacking and Horses

We had supper at the Wheatsheaf in Beetham and we were served by a delightful waitress called Jacqueline (Jax). Jax is the heroine of the day. She looks about 38 and she is a high class copper-bottomed grafter. To pay her way she works full time in a “Help the Aged” charity shop in Milnthorpe and serving us in the pub is her second job. She is amusing and uncomplaining and hard working and a credit to society. I hope her boyfriend realises how lucky he is to have her in his life and binds her to him with hoops of steel.

 

Our new dog is bounding along and to our surprise she seemed happy to walk the whole way. I still find I call her “Leah” from time to time and not “Dinah”.

 

ZANE Down Under

 

Two years ago Michael Carter, Jane and I flogged our way round Australia drumming up support from the diaspora who had left Zimbabwe or fled. Since then Michael, and an excellent team working with Steve Pullman, have worked hard and built a worthwhile network and a steady stream of funding. We are very grateful to all ZANE supporters “down under “. Could we also ask any of our donors in the UK who may have family or friends in Australia to suggest that they consider supporting the ZANE Australia initiative.

ZANE Australia has its own logo and website so please see: www.zaneaustralia.org.au

 

Hacking the Dinner Party Conversation

 

I knew I was in for trouble a few nights ago when I said at dinner that I was sorry for Andy Coulson! It’s not that I condone illegality, because I don’t. It’s rather “There but for the grace of God go I”. Hacking has been going on for decades- remember squidgygate when Diana and James Gilbey’s rather odd mobile conversations were crudely hacked- few complained about hacking then because they were laughing too much. But suddenly after the Milly Dowler case it all went too far, water turned to ice and hacking became a hot issue. Poor Coulson has been left holding the package in pass the parcel with a stony-faced world staring at him, and all of them are out to condemn him.

Hypocritical sods, most of them. Take this for a sample: at an Oxfordshire dinner party a woman hissed that crime doesn’t pay and that Coulson deserves everything he gets.

“I have no sympathy for law breakers,” she hissed to approving nods around the table.

I happen to know that this twice-divorced lady boasted to me once (when she was half-pissed) that she shunted her speeding points to her last husband-but-one as a matter of routine. I also know that when her mother died the old lady’s precious porcelain collection mysteriously went missing, neatly avoiding inheritance tax.

I hope her deserted husband does not spill the beans about the points and the china.

If he does, she can be assured I will stay by her as I hope Coulson’s pals stay by him.

We all fall short, some of us by miles.

 

Kicking the Can

 

Whilst on a legal theme, last night we discussed why people who must know at the outset of their trials that they have no chance of a “not guilty” verdict string out the agony for as long as possible. Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce are clearly cases in point. Why did they play it so long? You may also wonder at the length of time the cases regarding phone hacking have taken to come to conclusion. Why didn’t the guilty just throw in the towel and face the music?

 

From the Horse’s Mouth

I will tell you why. There once was a king who was a sour old thing. More than anything this miserable monarch longed to laugh, so he commanded that all the comics in his kingdom be rounded up and each be allowed 10 minutes to amuse him. As an added incentive, the comedians were warned that if they failed to elicit laughter, their heads would be immediately cut off.

 

The comedians performed all day, and after each attempt the king sat po-faced and sullen on his throne. Meanwhile, the gruesome pile of heads grew higher and higher. At the day’s end, just one comic – accompanied by a horse – remained.

 

“Oh king,” the man proclaimed, “I have no wish to die. May I suggest a deal. If my horse can be persuaded to tell you a funny story within 24 hours, will you spare my life?”

 

The king’s lips twitched with some appreciation at this offer and he agreed. “Yes, that sounds amusing,” he growled. “You have 24 hours. Set the clocks!”

 

The comic and his horse were dragged into a cellar. The gaoler, who had listened to the exchange, scratched his head with wonder and asked: “What on earth are you playing at? It’s crystal clear to anyone that your horse is a horse, and dozy one at that, and it will never speak. Why are you such a time-wasting fool?”

 

The comic replied, “It’s easy. I have bought 24 hours. In that time, the king might die, I might die… or the horse might talk.”

 

Now you know why people with apparently no hope choose to kick the can down the road. And remember you read it here first.

 

War and Peace

 

A few miles along our route, we pass through Kirkby Lonsdale. The town’s war memorial declares, “They shall never be forgotten.” Oh really? The single wreath on display is old and tattered. Of course, 2014 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the 1914 war, the so-called Great War. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, though it shattered a generation whose memories have now glided into history. I can’t help wondering if “we will remember them” is a reality or a cliché?

 

Could such a war happen again? Of course, not in the same way – but man is every bit as violent and wicked as he ever has been. What are the potential Hitlers, Stalins and bin Ladens doing with their lives now? Psychopaths are still being born, and when they grow up will they be content as building society managers? It’s a tad unlikely. How can we ensure their lives will not generate carnage on an industrial scale? Is there any evidence that man has grown wiser with the passing of time? From time to time, I read commentaries on ghastly catastrophes such as the Syrian war: “That should not happen in the twenty-first century,” say some. How fatuous is that? Why on earth shouldn’t it happen today?

 

We pass a lovely church and find a shop in a nearby street selling crosses and small statues. I suppose that nowadays many people who visit churches have no idea what they are really for, so instead of making time for prayer or reflection they buy tat instead.

 

I double back and enter the church. A guide is chattering to a disinterested group, half of them studying mobile devices as they fumble up the aisle. A girl at the back of the group is flicking through Hello! I watch her poring over the magazine’s airbrushed celebrities, the eleventh-century church ignored. Such are her preferences.

 

Suddenly, I am overcome by the need to get away from people, and dart into the Lady Chapel. A sign on the wall reads, “And underneath are the everlasting arms.” The truth of these words leaps out at me, rising above the murmur of noisy street traffic and muttering voices. I feel the assurance of a peace so profound that the madness of the world seems absorbed by it.

 

 

Jul 01

Day 2 – Gone with the Wind

Hunt the Slipper

 

Each time we try and start to walk on time we are disadvantaged to find our shoes have been liberated by Dinah so we have to hunt the slipper all over the garden. Dinah thinks this a great game! She has also perfected the skill of tripping me up, which she does simply by winding the long lead round my legs so I am swaying unsteadily and immobile while she stares challengingly at me with her vast red tongue hanging out,

 

The highlight of today was Ruskin’s view outside Kirkby Lonsdale which has to be one of the most attractive small towns in Merrie England,

 

Two lovely walkers come with us and one drove all the way from Newcastle to do so

 

 

Gone with the Wind

 

Jane and I are now at an age when we could host rooms full of friends and relatives whom we have loved deeply and who are now dead. This culling appears to be a slow but inexorable process. The cast list of our lives remains static for a long time then suddenly the grim reaper plays catch-up and cuts down half a dozen with a single swish of his scythe. And these individuals have not “passed away” or been “gathered” – they are bloody well dead. Dickens was not being morbid when he described Scrooge’s late business partner, Marley, as “dead as a doornail”.

 

Yet, I find the absence of these loved ones an outrage. I can see their faces sometimes and we speak in my dreams. At unexpected moments, a voice catches me unawares, or a place, a smell, a picture or a snatch of music triggers a vivid memory. I can feel a presence so powerfully, it’s as if that person was with me still. But of course, I’m dreaming – they have gone with the wind.

 

Dying and Done For…

When people die, what happens to all their work and activity? Where does it go? I have a small photograph of my mother set in a silver frame. She must have been about 11 or so when it was taken; she is playing with a straw and giving a half smile. She was a deeply emotional woman and perhaps the fact she grew up without a father made it hard for her to express her feelings. In her youth, she was beautiful, talented and carefree until the experiences of wartime, betrayal and a broken marriage conspired to batter some of the innocence and joy from her.

 

After my father died relatively young – few fully recovered after being gassed during the First World War – there was little money to go around. In order to pay for schooling and the rest of the bills, Mum morphed into a highly successful scriptwriter and crossword compiler. For 25 years, she wrote the music and scripts for the Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle pantomimes. Today her scripts lie forgotten, filed away in slim, neat envelopes buried in a grey trunk. Yet in her day, Mum’s clever scripts filled theatres and she made thousands of people laugh. She achieved all this as well as bringing up three children. This was before she coughed her lungs and life away in a slow and hideous death by courtesy of British American Tobacco (the outfit which, now I think of it, comprehensively did for my father too.)

 

Just before she died, when I was very busy being an MP, I managed to find a little time to fly to Edinburgh to see her. It was a shocking trip. My once magnificent and very able mother lay in a room surrounded by the ghastly apparatus of cancer: ranks of pills, bottles and potions. She had shrunk from nine to about four stone, and lay inert like a large bird as the illness pitilessly scraped the flesh away from her body. She was half drunk on morphine and her frightened, grey eyes stared large from her ravaged, parchment face. My mother was mentally acute and she knew exactly what was happening. She would gather herself for an immense effort, muttering softly between harsh breaths; then a fit of coughing would silence her and she would slump exhausted between the pillows. I heard a few whispers. In my despair at her plight, I wanted to give her a morphine overdose but I didn’t know how. If I could, though, I think I would have helped to end her suffering, for she was dying and to hell with the consequences. Then I wept, for it was far too late for me to restore our relationship to what it might have been. I could do nothing for Mum, for dying is a lonely business. As I watched her lying there, all the laughter, struggles and the achievements of her life seemed to slip away.

 

Now of course my mother is dead, but where have the laughter and love gone? Do the lines from Betjeman’s poem “Song of Nightclub Proprietess” sum it up?

 

But I’m dying now and done for,

What on earth was all the fun for?

For I’m old and ill and terrified and tight.

 

Does my mother’s striving and achievements make any difference to anything at all? Of course it’s now family history and of no interest to anyone except me, but I want to know. No wonder people drink and take drugs in order to hide the pain, despair and the utter randomness of it all. And then at Mum’s funeral, the bloody vicar got her name wrong.

 

Rage, Rage…

Some years ago, I went to Las Vegas and I saw an astonishing act where someone managed to make an elephant disappear on the stage. I am not a complete fool and of course I understand that the elephant disappears once a night on weekdays and twice on Saturdays, and that we are happy participants in a neat illusion. But the vanishing act of my parents, my relatives and so many of my friends troubles me. Are they such stuff as dreams are made of and is our little life really rounded in a sleep?

 

What happens in the great unknown to people with no faith? My mother was not a “believer” as tidy-minded Christians would have it, and I suppose some of them will think at worst she has gone to hell, or at best tell me, “God in His wisdom knows best.” But I don’t think Mum ever met anyone who knew the first thing about the Gospel so she ended up as a sort of wishy-washy, hand-me-down Anglican. So, where is she now? It’s as if God has pulled off a monstrous vanishing trick and I worry about it more than words can express. Dylan Thomas wrote, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” – if anything, he understates my anguish for my mother by a country mile.

 

I told Jane about my sense of outrage. Being the Scottish farmer’s daughter with Presbyterian instincts that she is, she finds my anguish ludicrous. She never wastes time fretting about such “nonsense” and acknowledges that since so much is wrapped in a mystery, we are best to shut up and just get on with it.

 

“What’s the point in agonising about this sort of thing?” Jane asks. “The grandchildren have to be picked up from school and there are bills to be paid. We all do the best we can Dear, so stop wittering on in such a self-indulgent way.”

 

Okay, okay… to some extent, of course Jane is right. Life is as it is, and death completes the circle. All this I know… but still, I find the absence of the people I love an outrage. Perhaps the final paragraph of George Eliot’s Middlemarch sums it up well enough:

 

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as the might have been, is half owing to the numbers who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

 

That will have to do for the time being… have another drink?

Jun 30

Day 1 – Mad Dogs Beginnings, Sad Dog Endings

And so it begins…Recall if you will the ski jumps at the winter Olympics whereby the skier hurtles down what appears to be a cliff and then climbs precipitately up the other side. This is roughly what we have been negotiating as we leave Ambleside on the first leg of “Mad Dogs”. I have been muttering about the paternity of the psychopath who constructed the route!

In mitigation it is achingly beautiful and reminds me of the Venetian doge who said, “Why should I travel when I have already arrived?”

Leah and DinahMany ZANE supporters who have been kind enough to follow our walks will remember that we had a much loved Staffie – Leah – who walked with us from Edinburgh to London, from Land’s End to London, from York to Canterbury, and then from Holyhead to Oxford.

Loyal little Leah flogged a total of over 1,200 miles for the poorest of the poor in Zimbabwe. However, it became horribly clear during the last walk that she was unwell and struggling to keep up. She made it to the aptly named Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford, but was squatting unsuccessfully to pee every couple of minutes and was obviously in growing discomfort. On our return home, we took Leah to the vet only to be told she was dying from cancer of the womb. Leah was in a lot of pain and we had to make an awful decision.

Jane and I are sure that Leah instinctively knew when her final day arrived on 9 August last year. She walked gently round the house sniffing all her old haunts, and then she lay down in our sitting room and waited patiently for us to take her to the vet. She seemed resigned and forgiving. It was a ghastly drive as we made our way into Woodstock with Leah slowly licking my hands. Once there, she lay in the back of my car with her head on my knees. Her brown, liquid eyes looked up at me trustingly as the vet injected her. Leah collapsed at once, so her death was more or less instantaneous.

Jane and I felt like traitors. Leah trusted us implicitly and look what we arranged for her. Dog lovers will understand these feelings – although ending our pet’s suffering was the right thing to do, her death was a profoundly miserable occasion and I felt that we were somehow betraying her trust. All those joyful memories and happy times, all that unquestioning loyalty and affection, all those walks crowded in to make us weep at her passing. We buried her deep by the big tree at the bottom of our garden.


The Young Pretender 

We now have Dinah, another Staffie (champagne in colour). The first thing I did after she skittered into the house was to take her to Leah’s grave and she explored it with some interest. Silly really, but I think she might have felt in the core of her tiny being by a sort of doggy osmosis that she was next in a strong line of considerable nobility. She has a lot to live up to.

Dinah started her life here as the mistress of destruction. She managed to disconnect our internet connection by chewing through the cable, trimmed a valuable rug, nibbled my wallet and destroyed two 20-pound notes. She also ate through what we foolishly believed was an indestructible dog bed. However, Dinah is a joy. She stares at me with such concentrated adoration that I pray I will live up to her high opinion of me.

For Dinah’s first few walks, I called out, “Leah! Leah, Come here!” before pausing as the memories flooded back. Then I had to shake myself.

Oh get on with it you big girl’s blouse. Leah is dead: long live Dinah!

Jun 30

The Day Before – A Breath of Fresh Eyre

Subaltern days

I attended a regimental dinner the other day, it was memorable on a number of counts. The first is that I was breathalised on the way home by a couple of smirking cops who saw an old geezer in a dinner jacket. I knew I had had nothing to drink but one always has a guilty feeling nonetheless and the fear that rather like the Scottish referendum, something might go wrong. .

Of course it is true that “the past is a foreign country and they do things differently there”. It is comforting that all the regimental traditions that must seem absurd to many of the young are still in place. It was good to see some people I have not seen for many yeays, a tad stooped and sprouting hearing aids, yet still more or less recognisable.
Looking back I served in Kenya in the army in the dying days of empire.
I recall well the totemic moment of the assassination of Jack Kennedy – all of those of a certain age will recall where you were at that moment, and where you were at Diana’s death too – and those were carefree days. I met Murray Naylor at the dinner, he was then the adjutant and in charge of discipline and later rose to the rank of general. I recall I was seeing him for disorderly conduct when the news of the death occurred.
I was serving in Kenya during “Uhuru”  the hand over of power from the U.K. to the new independent country.
The Duke of Edinburgh represented the queen at the handover ceremony.  Apparently at the key moment when the Union Jack was to be lowered and the new Kenyan flag was to be raised, the new flag stuck. The duke then told the new Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta:
“It’s not too late to change your mind”
We are staying with Mary. A delightful widow who lives in a lovely house  on the edge of the lakes. She has just become a new church warden. She was hugely hospitable and kind to us. My knees and ankles are playing up slightly so I am having to reprove my theory that if you simply ignore mild discomfort and walk through it the pain will gently subside.

Changing Times
 
Today, the day before we set off on this walk, we visited William Wordsworth’s beautiful home in Ambleside. The poet’s letters with his crabbed writing are on display; he wrote much about walks, nature and country living. Life seemed more innocent then, with far less clutter and noise.
 
After experiencing the turbulence of France during the revolution, Wordsworth devoted his time to reading, tending his beautiful garden, talking and corresponding with his friends, and of course writing his immortal poems. There were no newspapers, emails, mobiles, television or radio; no cars or planes; and no advertising industry to persuade him to buy things he didn’t want with money he didn’t have to impress people he didn’t like. A trip to the local village was an adventure in itself. Wordsworth was absorbed in nature and he seemed content. Although he wasn’t a traditional Christian but a pantheist, everyone in those days had the basics of our Judeo/Christian inheritance settled deep in their DNA.
 
Judge Not!
Are we happier now we have swept moral teaching away from children as prejudiced rubbish? I doubt it. A couple of weeks ago, old friends told us at supper that their daughter was mother to three boys from two different fathers and married to neither.
 
My friend – Winchester, Trinity, Oxford and a retired banker – grunted darkly, “I really don’t like it, I have no idea what to say to her. But that’s the way it is these days. Of course times have changed, and I don’t want to be judgemental.”
 
Being judgemental is of course the great sin of our times. I made sympathetic noises, for what’s there to say? The implication is that living without rules is better than suffering the stuffy inhibitions that constrained the lives of previous generations. It’s a given today that people will be happier without moral teaching so we can invent our own rules as we go along. My friend’s story has become commonplace, but what’s to be done? And does it matter anyway?    
 
How we have changed. We visited a church earlier today – an inscription on the memorial read, “They paid the ultimate sacrifice”. Sacrifice – that seems a rare word these days. There are a great many such words that would have been daily currency to the likes of Wordsworth or those who fought during the First World War that now seem quaint and old-fashioned. They are the words that crop up in satirical TV shows like Blackadder – how about service, courage, selflessness, nobility, duty, virtue, chastity and modesty. If people didn’t always live up to these values, then at least everyone understood their importance as part of the very fabric of society. And when people sinned, at least they knew they were sinning.
 
A Game With No Rules
Is our ancient moral code nothing but a series of tedious rules promoted by old killjoys, designed to stamp on the fun and pleasure of being young? Can we live happily whilst abandoning the precious wisdom handed down from generation to generation? Can we live without these age-old teachings and not suffer dire consequences? What are we putting in their place? I’m not convinced that you can play football without rules for it sounds like total chaos to me, but what do I know?
 
So “moral teaching” does not seem to be taught much either in schools or at home. One consequence of this is the dismay and contempt of our neighbours from different cultures. Who can blame them for wanting to protect their young from some of the grosser manifestations of our permissive society? I recall Ghandi who, when asked what he thought of Western civilisation, retorted, “It would be nice.”
 
Veins Running Fire
I have been re-reading Charlotte Bronte’s classic Jane Eyre. Parts of it have leapt out at me. As is well known, Jane falls passionately in love with Mr Rochester. Then she learns he is married and that his mentally ill wife is living in the attic of his manor house. Mr Rochester urges Jane to become his mistress. She is poor and lonely while he is rich and attractive. His offer sets off a storm of passion and conflict in her heart. She desperately wants to comply:
 
“…soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do?”
 
Then she identifies different rooms or faculties in her soul. There is reason and conscience, and there is feeling, and they all argue that she should do what Rochester asks. He is lonely and miserable and she could comfort him. He is rich and adores her. After a life of misery and hardship, surely this is her due?
 
But still she resists. “The more solitary, the more friendless… the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.”
 
Then this is the bit that gets to me and it’s never detailed in the TV dramas or films. Jane ruminates thus:
 
“I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the time when there is no temptation; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be… they have a worth – so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane – quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
 
Wow! Come on, silly old Jane Eyre! We’ve all been mad in our time, with our veins on fire… so why doesn’t she just give in to her feelings, hop into bed with Rochester and bam! We only live once, so why on earth not? Who would be harmed, or even know?
 
Today, in our “enlightened” times, Jane Eyre’s reasoning seems incomprehensible, a load of moralistic, ancient tosh! But is it? At least Jane Eyre had a choice. Christian teaching was part of her make-up. Charlotte Bronte’s father was a vicar, so Charlotte gave her heroine options: reasons to give in to Rochester and crystal-clear reasons why she should not. Jane made her choice.
 
Today’s young appear to know nothing of “preconceived opinions” or “foregone determinations” – it’s all about pleasing oneself. However, it seems to me that this so-called freedom limits choice. I reckon the young are far less free today than they were in Charlotte Bronte’s time.
 

Jun 29

Pre-Walk Check-Up

Never Too Young to Die

It all began after the last walk.

I decided it would be prudent to see my doctor before contemplating any further marathon treks, so I booked in for a check-up. I had spotted a few symptoms that I will not detail in a family commentary; suffice it to say, they were enough to set me worrying. A cheerful soul recently quipped, “You’re never too young to die.” I suppose that since a good deal of my time is now spent traipsing round funerals and memorial services, I can hardly say I hadn’t been warned…

Dr Death

I thought it would be wise to do some homework before my appointment, so I Googled some of my symptoms. Have you ever done this? It’s definitely not for the faint-hearted – anyone venturing down this path had better be sitting comfortably and braced for bad news!

I was profoundly shocked to discover things looked grave. All the signs pointed towards Tourette’s syndrome and Parkinson’s, and I was clearly in the early stages of prostate and bowel cancer. The beginnings of a brain tumour were evident and I became convinced I had recently suffered a mild stroke. Blindness was a looming possibility and it was only too obvious that I was trotting gently up the lower foothills of dementia.

I also noted that I had almost certainly suffered from tick bite fever and mild malaria in the past. In fact, for each illness studied, it was clear that I had either already had it or was about to get it: all bar the clap, that is. (Jane will be pleased to hear that). Incidentally, I have no idea why I have been spared this particular affliction – it seems less than complete and rather unfair somehow.

After I recovered my poise, I dusted down my will. Letters were written to loved ones and duly sent to my solicitor for despatch after my just-around-the corner-death. I then set about planning my funeral in some detail.

When I saw the doctor, I declaimed the bad news and offered myself at Barts Medical School as a sort of one-stop exhibit. (All students would have to do to get their degree is determine what illnesses and diseases I didn’t have.)

The doctor’s rubber gloves snapped ominously and there was a faint squelch of lubricant. Lying back, I tried to think of England as the examination got underway. Suffice to say, I was spared nothing. The doctor peered into my ears and eyes, and tapped my knees; I was commanded to balance on one leg then hold out my hands for inspection. After my heart and chest had been listened to, I was then asked to name members of the cabinet, recite the alphabet and whistle a tune. And I thought I was the one threatened with dementia…

The doctor’s face looked stern as he prepared to deliver his diagnosis.

“How long do I have?” I asked tremulously.

“At your age you should know better than to drink wine and slugs of whisky in the same evening,” he replied brusquely. “May I advise you, too, that if you choose to consume beetroot, you should be prepared for some unusual symptoms. All in all, though, you are amazingly fit for your age. In future, please refrain from researching illnesses and symptoms on your computer, and stop wasting my time. Next patient!”

Dear reader, there’s no getting away from it – it seems I am in rude health, and quite fit enough to face the challenge of another walk.

Out With the Old

I have purchased a new car and it’s been a dreadful mistake. It may sound foolish, but I miss the old one terribly. However, it had completed 180,000 miles and generally I do need to get to where I’m aiming for – and, of course, we need a reliable car for the walks.

I failed to see that the new car had such complicated controls though – I have no idea how to turn the heater on and off, or the side lights for that matter. These days, it seems that a degree in electronics would come in handy just to navigate around a car’s basic functions.

Worst of all, though, I didn’t notice that the car had tinted windows until it was too late. My children jeered. “It’s a drug dealer’s car,” they whooped. “How much for some weed?”

The producer of the Woodstock Passion Play is a leading undertaker. In fact, last year he was honoured with the “Undertaker of the Year” award (I know, it’s beyond parody). He swooped on me as I arrived for rehearsal. “Can we hire you and your car? I will have a child walk in front of you with a top hat and a silver stick. We’ll make a fortune!”

I do miss my old car.
 

Jun 26

Tom’s Walk Blog 2014: Ambleside to Oxford

Tom writes his blog at night with fat fingers on an iPad and it is then spell-checked and posted online each day. You will be able to read entries day-by-day as they are posted.

A fully edited and illustrated version will be printed and sent to all donors after the walk, so if you are a ZANE donor you should receive one towards the middle of September 2014.