Oh, it’s a Hat!

I was amazed that the pub sign was a flag that contained quite clearly male genitalia: I was surprised because the village simply didn’t look that sort of a place! The last time I saw such a sign was in Pompeii, for brothels were the sort of thing the Romans went in for big time. Then one of the walkers spoiled my day by telling me primly that the sign was of a chef’s hat: a disappointing end to my story.

A great walk through Stratford, and we walked miles with a delightful couple called Liz and Malcolm- 150 years of marriage between us.

Brown and Clown

I dislike violent criticism aimed at senior politicians, often levied by otherwise rather quiet and gentle people. One of our walkers claimed former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to be “the most useless politician of modern times”. I pointed out that, in fact, under Blair, Brown was a first-class chancellor who kept us out of the Euro in the face of wild and continuous exhortations to join by leaders of every other political party, media pundits and the likes of the CBI. I told my friend that if he didn’t understand the implications of that stroke of genius, then he needed urgent therapy! I also told him that PM Gordon Brown and his Chancellor Alistair Darling managed to save the entire world banking system at the time of the banking crash in 2009: rather a useful thing to do!

In my view, Brown is a very great man.

I read Max Hastings describes Boris as a “clown”. I don’t know either Hastings or Johnson personally other than what I have read about them. I know Hastings to be a fine writer and journalist, and I enjoy his work. I am aware also that he has had his fair share of personal disasters and career setbacks. I wonder why he thinks he has the right to be so gratuitously offensive. Hastings’ style is patronising and disdainful, the head boy of Pop: wearing a fancy waistcoat and a sense of entitlement, scornfully dismissing inky fingered dunces like Boris of the lower fourth.

Now to Boris. I am deeply relieved Boris isn’t my son in law, but give the devil his due. He was twice mayor of Labour-dominated London. An extraordinary political feat. And when were any of us acclaimed columnists in the Telegraph?

A mere two years ago, the country was more or less ungovernable with rebelling MPs seeking to take over the levers of power in order to thwart Brexit. Whether you were a Remainer or a Brexiteer, you must surely concede that this shambles was dangerous to our democracy. We couldn’t go on as we were. Johnson threw out 25 rebels and managed to get an (admittedly pretty rotten) deal with the EU. Then he managed to get an election called – not easy when a fixed-term Parliament Act was in place. He then went on to win the general election with a generous majority. Since then, I submit he has managed COVID as well – or as poorly – as any other government anywhere as far as I can tell.

You may disagree with my list of accomplishments and think I am being wildly over-generous; that is your prerogative. But whatever you may think of Johnson or his politics, to call him a “clown” is more than absurd.

Party Time

To celebrate the easing of Covid restrictions, we decided to throw a party for friends. What a lunatic idea because of course, since it was a personal matter, I had to do the organising myself (and not make use of the excellent ZANE and CEF administration). Jane was adamant!

“You are a fool for even trying… you are a walking chaos at this sort of thing.”

I was determined to prove how wrong she was.

“Oh no, just leave it all to me.”

I booked the venue, arranged the catering, prepared lists of chums, got the invitations printed and proudly posted them myself. Then I carefully noted who was coming – and of course who could not come – on a list.   

Organised Chaos

Then, dear reader, I lost my list. It was totally gone. Zap! It was nowhere to be seen.

I informed Jane and she intoned words never before heard in our marriage. “You are total fool! I told you so. How on earth did anyone as inept as you ever manage to start up a successful business or charity? It totally defeats me!” And on it went – for some considerable time.

Then Jane announced she would handle the list side of things. So, I tried to recall who I had invited and who had replied, with both of us occasionally wondering, “Oh, not them… for goodness’ sake. She’s a drunk and he’s the biggest bore yet unhung.” (You know, the sort of remarks people make about friends when they aren’t there.) 

Two weeks later, Jane told me she had lost her list. (I promise you this really did happen!) I was surprisingly kind – taking advantage is simply not in my nature.

“Oh well, dear, we will just have to rely on our joint defective memories to work out who’s coming.”

Party With a Swing

A party at our ages! After the invitations had been sent out, I was asked by one invitee if the party was to celebrate Britain leaving the EU, while another wondered if we were in mourning for having left! I said, “no” on both counts – either reason would be plain crass, and would upset at least 50 per cent of the guests!

Another wondered what the tickets cost for it didn’t say on the invitation. That was a thought! I have never considered charging a fee for one of our parties. What a novel idea. Perhaps I might ask our grandchildren to wander round with buckets… that would really make the party go with a swing!   

Someone else asked why I was choosing to throw a party now – why not wait for a significant birthday? The answer to that is bleeding obvious – wait any longer and most of my contemporaries will be dead!

I am reminded of the party held by the redoubtable Daphne Park (Baroness Park of Monmouth), which took place in a Lord’s tearoom to celebrate her ninetieth birthday. She announced to her elderly guests, “The trouble with holding a party at my age is that all my lovers are dead!”   

There was a long silence before a shaky hand went up at the back of the room. A quavering voice called out, “No, no! Daphne, dearest – I’m still here!”

Daphne peered long and hard at him through her lorgnette before saying sternly, “Good heavens, Henry… But I thought you were dead!”  

Tub-thumping Pub

Hooray… a great pub at last. Just as well after yesterday’s ill-tempered rant at down at heel pubs with which the UK is infested. We lunched at “The Bridge” at Bidford-on-Avon. This pub is excellent. . The staff seem genuinely pleased to see us. It’s clear someone had taken trouble with the decor -,and a first-class menu. It was, of course, crowded as quality always attracts customers, so we lunched in style. Two friends walked with us.

Discussing Death

We discussed “living wills” … no small talk this time. We agreed we find “assisted dying “distasteful. Who is to stop us from refusing, say, chemotherapy after a certain age if we so wish?

Two friends have died in the last few months. In each case, the funeral was limited to “close family only.” Sad that! Jane and I are thereby denied the chance to roar out a few hymns, shed a tear, and say a fond farewell to our old mate. Surely simple ceremonies serve a vital social function punctuating key occasions in our lives – births, marriages and deaths. They are important because they are the glue that keeps our communities together, and they remind us powerfully that we all need each other.

A family I know faced the tragic death of a daughter who was crushed in a riding accident. She had massive head injuries. She was on life support for a month: then, the family met to decide whether or not to turn off the life support system. The family of nine all voted to turn off the machine, bar one. The mother tearfully begged to allow one more week. On the fourth day, the daughter opened her eyes…the next day, she was reading normally. Today she is back on a horse. No one in the family has told her the detail of the family conference!

You can hardly blame them.

The Mystery of Faith

I wonder if you know of American poet Don Marquis and the toad “Warty Bliggens”?

Warty is convinced that the world was created especially for him. We are told that the sun was made “to give him light by day”, and the moon and wheeling constellations designed “to make beautiful the night for the sake of Warty Bliggens”.

The poem ends with Warty being asked, “to what act of yours do you impute this interest on the part of the creator of the universe? Why is it that you are so greatly favoured?”

“Ask rather,” replies Warty “what the universe has done to deserve me.”

I know lots of self-centred folk just like Warty Bliggens. If people regard themselves as being at the centre of the universe, what’s the point of church? To the likes of Warty, church is an irrelevance. Sad that, for time marches on and it’s later than you might think…

A Sense of Awe

So why do I go to church?

It’s precisely because I don’t see myself as Warty Bliggens. Far from being at the centre of the universe, I am hanging on at the edge and my knuckles are white – so give me the drama of a high church service to whisk me away from tedious reality. I favour a style of service far removed from my day-to-day existence. I like the soft-coloured light that slants through stained-glass windows, rich robes, singing that soars to the roof, and the spectacle of the solemn procession where clerics solemnly carry crosses and Bibles. I like the mystery of it all – the choir, a cleric expounding something wonderful (no jokes for it’s too serious for that, and anyway, vicar jokes are never funny) and a transcendent sense of awe. 

I don’t expect something profound to happen every time I go to church because I rarely have an illuminating revelation. Nor do I think being distracted matters much for the service will happen anyway. I need somewhere calm, and I want to be taken out of myself and away from my absurd worries. My preoccupations don’t matter. What’s important is being somewhere where people throughout the ages have said prayers of joy and thanksgiving or expressed remorse and guilt. This is where prayers are valid.

I relish the ancient ritual, the handing out of bits of paper, the singing with others, the standing up and kneeling down, the offering of peace to people you have never met before, the democracy of the queue for communion. I repeat words I did not compose, and only ever say in church.

None of us are expected to do anything, nor do our opinions matter much, if at all. The words were all agreed by clerics long since and the poetry has been repeated endlessly throughout the ages.

Calm in a Storm

The mystery of faith reminds me to forgive others, however difficult that may be, and I am commanded to love others whether I feel like it or not. I am told of the promise of life after death. I listen once again to the stories I have heard so many times before – to the radical absurdity of the Gospel where my world is turned upside down, where the rich and powerful stand little chance of entering heaven, where the winners are losers, and the losers – the hopeless and weak, people like me – are, miraculously, the favoured ones. I am reminded of the place just over the horizon where injustices, small as well as monstrous, can be reconciled.

Whatever my mood, the service calms my chaotic soul, and it calms others as well. It’s the routine of little acts, the repetition of the same words that bring a comforting harmony. The service interrupts my deadly doing. It makes politics less cruel and less relevant because I am reminded that deep in the root of my being is the knowledge that the ultimate questions that face us all, the ones that really matter, can never be resolved on Earth and it’s plain stupid to even try.      

These are some of the reasons why I go to church. So sad for those who don’t. 

Pub Grub Grumble

Another lunch in yet what sadly turned out to be yet another bog-standard pub. It was sited by a river with all the natural romance of Wind in the Willows: you could imagine mole and ratty rowing lazily by on their way to their famous picnic. Anyone with even the beginnings of design sense – any sense – could have made the interior far more interesting than it turned out to be. Instead, we had the same old swirly carpet that makes your eyes water, and the rest of the decor was like a down market old persons home in Scunthorpe.

To get over the national shortage of cooks, today’s pub food appears to be manufactured in a vast shed somewhere in the UK North and thence delivered weekly to pubs. Therefore, pub cooking is reduced to waiters shoving frozen food into a microwave and banging it on tables. Complaints are pointless: any shortcomings are the fault of COVID. So Pub menus are the same everywhere. The waiters are masked with muffled voices so that no one can understand a word.

We walk towards Evesham. The town is doughnutted by estates of new-build. Despite the fact all these new houses are tiny and exactly the same, they are overhyped as “stunning”: the estates are called grand names like “Simon De Montford Estate” that fools no one.

Evesham smells of poverty and is suffering the collapse of retail chains: empty shops that will probably end up filled with charity shops scar the High street.

A great deal of political capital is being spent on the so-called “red wall” constituencies that turned Tory at the last election. We are told a great deal of money will be spent to “level” them with the richer south of England. I wonder how the voters of the likes of Evesham will feel about this promise at the next election.

A New Jerusalem 

How sad to see the Labour Party in steady decline, for all governments need vigorous opposition.

I suspect there is little chance that Labour will form a future government. This is in part because it has lost nearly all its Scottish seats to the SNP – and to be blunt, without them, that’s it. It’s an irony that Blair, who had so many gifts, was the agent of his party’s destruction – it was his government that introduced devolution and created Sturgeon. It’s the law of unintended consequences biting viciously.

Labour’s forlorn election tally is lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, lose, lose, lose, lose. And there is no return to the Blair years. Though there are plenty of voters who loathe Boris and all he stands for, many are now totally opposed to Labour. Meanwhile, the Liberals are often seen as sitting to the left of old Labour. Sadly, Labour will produce another lefty who will fail yet again. What can be done?

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man – or Woman!

I believe that somewhere, in a school or college perhaps, a bright, young person has the Mandela, Obama, Clinton, Blair, Thatcher and Boris qualities needed to form and lead a new centrist party (not easy in our first-past-the-post system). Perhaps this individual hasn’t even been born yet, but when he or she arrives on the political stage, they will understand that many voters aren’t instinctively Liberal but right of centre. They will see that such voters intuitively distrust those who tarnish British history or who spend their time indulging in national flagellation and running down our heritage – and that in the broad sweep of things, Britain has been a force for good in the world.

This new leader will distrust those who bang on about “my truth versus your truth” vapidity (dear old Meghan) that is endemic amongst Labour’s youth wing and the default position of many universities. This is the idea that “lived experience” counts for more than objective reality.

They will understand that many voters distrust “cancel culture”, whereby people of opposing views are denied a platform. Such voters do not believe that culture wars should be all-or-nothing fights to the death, and nor do they agree that people with opposing views must be destroyed. Most want to eradicate racism and other forms of discrimination, but calmly please – they are unimpressed with people who “take the knee’ and they distrust change that is brought about by hatred and confrontation. Instead, they believe in the nation state and look for a feeling of national solidarity. They seek controlled borders, pride in Britain and free market economics.

Cometh the need, cometh the talent! We need a fresh young leader with foresight and brains – someone with a stout heart and a short sword.

I forecast that he or she would in time sweep the pool. All today’s political parties should beware. This new party would change the face of Britain!

The Man’s Not for Turning…

“Darling! You have to turn round. Now!”

Please note the way she weaponizes the word “Darling!” so it crunches my skull like a sledgehammer. 

So commanded General Jane after a lunch near Watford.  

“Why”?

“My satnav says there are crashes on the M4… If we continue on this route, it will take us five hours to get home instead of 40 minutes!”

Readers of my past blogs may recall that one of my beloved’s little endearing ways is to double-guess the car satnav with two competing satnavs and sometimes a map. Then she argues with them all.

Something about it all emboldened me to ignore Jane, so I drove on trusting my instincts and praying.

She repeated her instructions rather like Montgomery before the Battle of Alamein.

I ignored her and kept praying.  

Suddenly the traffic melted. We soared along the empty road and then onto the uncluttered M4.     

There was a sulky silence from the passenger seat. “I have to admit,” she eventually conceded, “that I inadvertently clicked a bike timing on the satnav.”

I promised to say nothing.

Going Round in Circles

Once again, Jane and I – and of course, Moses the dog – are setting off on a “circular” walk. And as was the case last year, rather than staying in the homes of kind ZANE supporters, we will be sleeping in our own bed at home for much of the trip. (That’s Covid for you!)

But before we begin, a reminder… Many of my pieces are written late in the evening when I am tired. I try to stick to the topics that interest me most: sex, politics, religion, money and death (though not necessarily in that order). Occasionally, though, I stray off the beaten track into uncharted territory – you’ve been warned!

Please note that the views expressed in this commentary are mine and mine alone: they do not represent the views of anyone else working for ZANE, or the body of the trustees or council of reference. 

I can have no idea of the political stripe of ZANE’s supporters, so I try to take some – though not excessive – care. If living in a free country means anything at all, then freedom of speech is vital as is the right to give offence. If you don’t agree with my sentiments, then of course, that’s fine – but please don’t take anything personally. I used to be on the centre left, but the tide and mood have shifted. Astonishingly, all political parties are today liberal, leaving me stranded on the centre right. I try not to do party politics, but as a former Conservative MP, sometimes I cannot resist the temptation to growl the odd sour comment.

As ever, I have been influenced by others, including Richard Holloway, Rev’d Professor Nigel Biggar and Douglas Murray, and stimulated by Rod Liddle. 

I am also indebted to my UK co-workers who do most of the work (and put up with me), and to the ZANE trustees for their tolerance. Thanks to Brigadier Clendon Daukes for his friendship and candour, our design team under Tom Van Aurich and our wonderful cartoonist, Tony Husband.

Warm congratulations to the leader of the ZANE team in Zimbabwe, Lynda Crafter, on her well-earned OBE, and much credit must go to the other members of the ZANE team in Zimbabwe who work tirelessly and bravely in often challenging circumstances. 

Starting How We Don’t Mean to Go On

Miles of spider’s web tracks, all guaranteed to make me irritate map-reading Jane who is going the wrong way – I’ve been writing about it and muttering: “Here we go again!”

Poor Jane. It wasn’t her day. I charged on and didn’t know she had fallen flat on her face breaking her vastly costly specs in half and bruising her eye. She will have a multi-coloured black eye tomorrow, and people will think I thumped her!

It’s fascinating walking through the Cheltenham suburbs to count the number of expensive cars parked by modest houses. The cars must cost around £60,000 each, and I wonder at the strange – to me anyway- priorities. Why buy a new car? So people really admire their neighbours more if they have a new car? If so, why?

The Forgotten Legion

Ahead of the walk, we spent some time pondering the work of which ZANE supporters can be most proud. It is a difficult contest with so much valuable work completed over the years. It includes the work assisting pensioners, including food aid to care homes; the “pop-up” classrooms; the work to assist damaged women; and, of course, our clubfoot programme, where some 4,300 previously disabled children can today jump for joy. 

ZANE supporters generously supplied funds that paid for medical supplies and additional food for the many veterans who form the “Forgotten Legion”. Prior to April 2018, some 600 pre-Independence veterans and their widows living in Zimbabwe were struggling on just one meal a day. They received no medical aid whatsoever. Can you imagine living in a country with no medical state aid of any kind? Despite serving the Crown and being promised an entirely different retirement, all these old soldiers were living in extreme poverty. Through the generosity of ZANE supporters, we were able to increase food provision to two meals plus a snack each day, and we implemented a life-saving medical programme.

It is this programme of which ZANE supporters should be proudest. As a direct result of your generosity, ZANE was able to fund over 3,800 medical claims. Our dedicated team in Zimbabwe encountered tragic and desperate stories, mass hunger in their communities, and children and grandchildren struggling through a lack of work and hunger. But today, veterans who were previously exhausted and malnourished are thriving with the right medication and increased calories.

The ZANE medical fund has provided diagnosis and treatment to save and prolong lives. Over the course of three years, it has provided over 280 hypertension prescriptions, 135 diabetes treatments, 99 rounds of prostate cancer drugs and 36 cataract operations. (In many cases, veterans claimed for treatment more than once).

Take the life of 80-year-old Corporal Enoch Moses. He was enlisted into the Signals Corp in 1961 and discharged in 1966. He suffers from severe asthma and is prone to pneumonia, especially during the winter months. Funded by the ZANE medical programme, he was at last seen by a doctor. Being able to procure a regular supply of asthma medication saved his life.

I have witnessed first-hand the life-changing impact of the medical fund for these veterans and widows – the weight gain, the change in complexion from a deathly pallor to a healthy glow, and pride and dignity restored. Best of all, I have seen lives saved and the quality of lives enhanced.

From all of these veterans, their message is that they have not been forgotten, that their service has been recognised.

ZANE will continue to provide a medical fund for these veterans who assisted us in our hour of need; we owe it to them to help them in the evening of their lives.

Thank You…

Please note that this commentary is not a self-important indulgence on my part. To my surprise, it generates far more income than the cost of its printing and despatch. 

If you have already sponsored this walk, then thank you. And if not please do so.

Hedge Hogging

Some of the paths were a bit overgrown today. Here is a video, taken by my daughter Milly, who joined us on the walk:

Everyone is being suspiciously kind to me (and Jane and Moses) as we set off. I see them staring with a look tinged with disapproval as they wonder: “why isn’t he an exhibit on the Antiques Roadshow rather than tottering out like Captain Tom on yet another trek, at his age?

They can think what they like – if we didn’t think we could do the walk we wouldn’t start. Of course, TS Eliot was right, “humankind cannot bear very much reality”. Our obduracy to continue walking is probably our attempt to deny the harsh reality that we are scaling at speed the foothills of senility, but we have thought it through; if we fall over and slowly expire in a ditch,  then bring it on. We would rather burn out than rust out, and so what,  it’s been a heap of fun!

As Cold as Charity

A friend of mine set up a charity in South Africa. He raised a substantial sum to support street children in Addis Ababa and hired a local couple to do the work. A couple of years later, he paid a flying visit to look at the progress: he found the couple had built a lovely house and a large swimming pool: the street children were still begging and hungry.

Running a charity is complex. You can easily find that you are doing damage and not helping the poor at all; all you are doing is making yourself feel virtuous. ZANE is frequently asked if we would assist in, say, financing a school a donor has fallen in love with, sited in a remote village they visited on a recent trip to Zimbabwe. We are told that the local managers are truly wonderful, the need is acute, the teachers excellent, and if a little money is provided, the school will thrive: the generous couple offer to match whatever ZANE is prepared to fund.

The first thing we ask (kindly) is, “Are you prepared to put up the same sum of money every year for, say, ten years”? They often look askance at this request until we explain that unless the work is “sustainable”, that is, the same support is provided year after year, and suddenly one fine day the donor money vanishes, ZANE will be left with a large unbudgeted commitment. If we are hard-nosed and refuse to continue alone, the money will dry up, and the school’s expectation of continued support will be thwarted. Therefore, unless we can be reasonably sure that we can continue the work for at least a decade, then it makes sense not to start in the first place. The second issue is that if we did proceed, what about the dozens of other schools in the area that will remain poor? If this school is given the “special treatment”, the other schools will lose their brightest pupils to the favoured school, and we will have created an enormous and growing pool of resentment in the locality.

A couple of months back, ZANE was told of a child living in the N part of Zimbabwe – where we have no workers or experience – who had trodden on a land mine: today, he is alleged to be one-armed, one-legged and partially sighted. Of course, we wanted to help.

But by now, we have a lot of experience in what can go wrong with good intentions: before we spend hard-earned donor money on assisting this poor child, two hard-edged questions must be answered: (a) Who do we send the money to, and (b) how can we be assured that the cash will be spent on the child? For two months, despite our enthusiasm to help, we have not been able to satisfy ourselves that the money will be well spent.

ZANE has been supplying aid for nearly 20 years, and we now have learned what not to do, which comes easier sometimes than knowing what to do.

Before we spend money, we have to be as sure we can be that we are helping the poor and not making ourselves feel better.

If we want a clear example of how good intentions can go awry and how vast quantities of aid – and tragically lives – can be wasted, just take a long hard read of the stories that are flooding out of Afghanistan.

Now the walk of 143 miles is over, our 11th walk! – the weather was kind to us – In fact it was perfect.

A couple of last thoughts.

If I am denounced for expressing my views, I shall of course demand ”counselling”: apparently it’s all the fashion these days.

I was told that my nemesis could come by twitter!

What an extraordinary world we are living in where we are seemingly unable to express our views and disagreements clearly to one another.

It would seem that little has changed since the early seventeenth century.

Trial by Twitter

On 11 April 1612, despite being given the chance to repent at his trial in Lichfield, Edward Wightman was burned as a heretic.

That was said to be the last time. Just think how enlightened we are today. How could our ancestors ever have been so plain stupid and wicked to kill people because their beliefs were contrary to our own?

Doomed!

Yet 400 years on we still are condemning people as heretics. At least Wightman had a trial… well, a trial of sorts. Today on social media, trolls are destroying people’s reputations, careers and livelihoods… without trial. Why? Just because the victims disagree with some arbitrary consensus – usually to do with race or gender – and because it’s such fun to sit in cruel judgement.

Look at what George Orwell wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” It appears to have been junked…  

Today, we all have to conform – or else! I have been warned that my simple blog is a bomb waiting to explode, and if the social media trolls get wind of it, like Dad’s Army “We’re doomed!” It’s ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that we have regressed to the days of Savonarola. But the trolls believe that their “views” make them morally superior to everyone else – and that if you disagree with them, then you are not only lower than vermin, they will destroy your career and livelihood and as publicly as possible to show the world the fate of heretics, just as they did in 1612.

This is monstrous. Today, talented people are running scared of saying anything that could be distorted, because once it’s been weaponised by the trolls, employers will be fearful of employing them, commercial firms won’t sponsor them, and TV producers will be frightened of hiring them. Who can blame anyone with a living to earn for being terrified? Once careers are destroyed, they stay destroyed. 

What’s the motive? It’s a power play: a controlling minority are just as cruel and vicious and hungry for power now as they were in the days of the Spanish Inquisition. The trolls get their kicks by inflicting cruelty by Twitter: they tap away, anonymous and giggling with glee, safely hiding behind the narrow consensus of “the mob”.   

That’s what happened to actor Laurence Fox. He simply argued on Question Time that Meghan Markle may have had grounds other than racism for leaving the UK. He now worries he may never work again. Then the reputations of Germaine Greer, Toby Young, JK Rowling and the late Sir Roger Scruton – to name but a very few – have all been thrown under a bus. An article by journalist Kevin Myers in the Sunday Times was purposefully misunderstood: despite the fact he never said what was reported, he was denounced worldwide for misogyny and anti-Semitism, his career destroyed. 

At least the “heretic” Edward Wightman was given a trial. That’s more than Laurence Fox and the others were granted. 

Face Value

People take you at face value and life isn’t fair when it comes to faces. In repose, my beloved wife Jane has a face that clearly shows the world she’s a good and kind person; but in contrast, my face looks like an agitated horse and it’s not fair.

When they first meet me, people assume I’m a grumpy sort of guy, but in fact I’m just as nice as Jane. Well, I suppose not quite as nice, for that wouldn’t be possible, but at least a great deal nicer than I look. But people are bound to take you at face value; they assume that the way you look reflects character. Oh look, here comes that miserable old git. One look and its judgement day! And usually there’s no second chance to show a critical world my true colours.

But I’m sure that looking grumpy is better than being a continual smiler. The vicar of the church I used to go is an all-the-time smiler: every time you look at him, he’s grinning away as if he’s just heard some private joke. I find that irritating and it must be difficult for his parishioners. There you are, deserted and penniless with angina and fallen arches, and there’s old Fred grinning away as if he’s chorusing, “No worries!” Or you’re dying of the dreaded lesser-spotted lurgy and here he comes grinning like a Cheshire cat. Or you’re corpsed, the family’s in deep mourning, and there’s Fred again grinning like a ragtime band to spoil your misery.  

On balance, I’ll settle for looking like a horse!

Superstar Queen

Our youngest grandson, Raphael Benyon (Raph), took it upon himself to write to the queen as follows:

“Dear Your Majesty the Queen,

I am writing to you because I wanted to say “thank you” for being such a brilliant and superstar queen for such a long time.

My two brothers and our little dog Lotti have enjoyed playing and doing puzzles with my dad and riding my bike in lockdown. I wonder what you have enjoyed doing?

My family are praying for you in this very strange time. We hope you will be happy and full of hope.

Yours truly

Ralph Benyon, aged 7

Nothing else to be said really, is there?  

The last leg had us chasing around Stonesfield, through Blenheim and what a beautiful estate it is, particularly in September sunshine.

We talked about “racism”. What, we wondered, is a fair definition as the word is so often hurled about in argument as a terminal insult?

I like Martin Luther King’s hope that people should be judged by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. One walker wondered whether the Scots’ Nationalists should be accused of racism towards the English. It may sound bizarre, but what else can be the reason why so many scots are content to give some of their democratic freedoms to the EU but battle to escape the Union.

But maybe “ racism” is only white on black.

Factor X

It is alleged that Meghan Markle was chased out of the UK because of of racism.

Of course there is racism in the UK, but compared to all other countries, the UK is a benign and tolerant place in which to live. I suppose that is why the majority of desperate migrants want to come here and nowhere else.

No, the reasons Meghan left this country have nothing to do with racism.  

Femme Fatale

Will Meghan destroy her husband, Harry? Obviously I hope not but to my mind the omens are worrying.

Of course, it’s not the first time a man has given up everything for a dream that turns into a nightmare. Let’s start with Yeats’ “Poem to my daughter”:

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught…

They’re great lines. I am convinced that the way to a happy relationship is not to chase factor X or a femme fatale. Marry a beautiful person, of course, yes, every time – but don’t pursue the type of beauty that Yeats warns us about.

We read a great deal about men’s power – the so-called “patriarchy” where women are dominated by men. But what about the potent power some women exercise over men? This is a power than men don’t have – put simply, the ability to drive a person mad, to derange them. Not just to destroy them but to make them destroy themselves. The sort of power than allows a young woman to target a man, often at the height of his accomplishments, and torment him, make him behave like a fool and wreck his life utterly for just a few moments of almost nothing.

’Twas ever thus. In the book of Proverbs (7:21–3), we read: “With persuasive words she led him astray; she seduced him with her smooth talk… All at once he followed her like an ox going to the slaughter…  little knowing it will cost him his life.”

So of course, nothing is new in the dance between the sexes. In ancient times, Helen of Troy was married to Menelaus, King of Sparta. General Paris was so consumed by her beauty that he abducted her, thereby causing the 10-year Trojan War. Here’s an extract from Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr Faustus” that captures the electric effect Helen had on poor old Paris:

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:
Her lips sucks forth my soul, see where it flies!  

Paris went mad to get his hands on Helen. Yet when the war ended, she went back to Menelaus. The story could be on Netflix.

And what about Samson and Delilah? She pretended to love him and then she drove him mad with desire for kinky sex (see Judges 16). Delilah nagged Samson ceaselessly to find the secret of his strength. Finally, coldly and ruthlessly, she sold him to the Philistines, who blinded and destroyed him.

Now fast forward to the early 1930s. The power women have over men can’t all be about looks, for Wallis Simpson was no Carey Mulligan, yet she had such an electric effect on Edward VIII that he caused a major constitutional crisis by abdicating his throne.

Then in 1961, Christine Keeler sent Jack Profumo mad. I knew him a little in the early seventies when we both sat on the same committee with Lord Longford. He was a fine man but his brief liaison with Christine destroyed him and was in part responsible for undermining the Macmillan government. (Ever the name-dropper, I must admit to dancing with Christine at the 1962 Sandhurst spring ball – male ZANE donors, eat your hearts out! However, as apparently Christine was having sexual relations with both the Russian military attaché and the UK Secretatry of State for War at roughly the same period, she was somewhat above the pay grade of Officer Cadet Tom Benyon. I assure you, though, she had factors X Y and Z – and it took me some time to recover my equilibrium!)

Princess Diana had factor X in such quantity that she tried – and nearly succeeded – to create a Royal Court in opposition to that of the queen. And the majority of men, some admittedly of curious quality, fell helplessly under her spell.   

But for all that, factor X is an arbitrary quality. I know a family where a very ordinary-looking woman – to my mind with the looks of a genial horse – had, astonishingly, factor X. She could “pull” men on an industrial scale to the considerable detriment of many marriages in the surrounding district.

Trouble Ahead

And now we come to Meghan Markle. One of my old vicar friends is hard of hearing; when he heard on the radio that Harry was going to marry Meghan Markle, he told his amazed congregation that Harry was about to marry Angela Merkel: “It will do so much in terms of good will with the EC!”

I’ll bet Harry wishes he had married the German chancellor. She would never have towed him away from the job he was good at to a life of burning boats in the UK and who knows what in La La Land.

My worries about Meghan have nothing to do with race. It’s just that Meghan comes from a culture that is narcissistic and absorbed with identity politics, that of putting self-interest first at the expense of others. She knows little of self-restraint and the daily grind of duty. She understood nothing of the crucial constitutional importance of the UK monarchy and the unflagging duty of all those who are part of “The Firm”. She should have talked to Princess Anne who completes 500 events each year: she would have told Meghan that she now has to restrain her ambition, back the royal family and play a part in the often tedious grind of (for example) opening the Milton Keynes Health Authority’s new building. It’s often unglamorous, hard work and all participants must put duty first, themselves second.

Instead, Meghan appears wholly self-centred and set on serving her own interests at the expense of poor Harry and all he stands for. For it’s Harry who has lost out: Meghan has lost nothing. She has an even more glittering career that she had before as she is now a duchess and she is married to a very rich man. In short, she has won the jackpot.

Harry has lost more or less everything. When the gilt comes off the marriage and he sees that he no longer has a role, I think he will be desperate. Of course, I hope I am wrong. But I see trouble ahead and I think this is just the start of the saga.  

Back to Helen of Troy. A poet called Lord Dunsany – and no, I had never heard of him before either – wrote a short poem about the legendary beauty. It’s called “And Were You Pleased?” I fear it will become Meghan’s signature tune…

“And were you pleased,” they asked Helen in Hell.
“Pleased?” answered she, “when all Troy’s Towers fell;
And dead were Priam’s sons, and lost his throne?
And such a war was fought as none had known;
And even the gods took part, and all because
Of me alone! Pleased?
I should say I was!”

Off we start. The penultimate day and with a delightful new group of walkers including one couple who have walked with us – and map read with great accuracy – nine times.

Two dogs with us again, so Moses runs at least twice the stated distance. More glorious weather.

The lunch at a middling pub: the landlord apologises for being “rushed off his feet because it’s Sunday! ”

But for goodness sake, Sundays occur at regular intervals, so why do they take him by surprise?

Pushing Him All the Way

The other dog gets randy and starts to ravish the nearest walking leg. We have a boy with us, aged seven – who walks us off our feet.

His weary father tries to explain what the dog was doing.

It reminds me of Noel Coward’s explanation to a Godchild of two mating dogs.

“The front dog is blind: his kind friend is pushing him all the way to St Dunstan’s.”

We discussed the mawkish cover of individual death in BBC reports on COVID.

We all think it overdone and in poor taste. But then, of course, we are an old fashioned bunch. The war generation dealt with death rather differently.

Mourning Sickness

Do you recall the answer given by the Duke of Edinburgh when asked by a reporter how he felt on receiving the news of the murder of his uncle Lord Mountbatten?

You can’t? That’s not surprising because no journalist dared to ask such a drivelling question.

In 2012, the wonderful Daily Telegraph journalist Cassandra Jardine – a good friend to ZANE – died of cancer, leaving five distraught children. Her husband, actor William Chubb, played his theatre role on the evening of her death. He knew the show must go on, for that’s exactly what sensible Cassandra would have wanted. The family could mourn deeply later and of course in private with close friends and colleagues. They understood the value of a stiff upper lip. To them loss and grief were personal matters.      

Recreational Grief

Fast forward to when I was chairman of a heath authority board. A number of staff decided they were too grief stricken to do their job because of the Twin Tower assassinations in New York. Not that they had family involved mind, they were just too distressed to work. I wondered to my chief executive what would have happened if the Battle of Britain pilots had been too distressed by the death of their friends to fight? But I was told that if I had summarily dismissed the absent workers – as I proposed to do – I would lose the sympathy of the entire 2,000 staff. On reflection, he was right not to be too hard on them; in recent times, we have been conditioned to believe that it is right, even proper, to indulge our emotions. They probably felt virtuous for having done so. 

Letting it all hang out is now the thing. But I am of an older generation, and I can’t bear to watch the ghastly sentimentality and unremitting vulgarity of today’s news. And it’s not just the token politicians with faces like broken bed pans reciting the mantra, “Our prayers are with the families” that appal me, it’s worse than that.

Today’s culture demands that for public titillation the media must squeeze the maximum amount of recreational grief from any disaster. And the deaths from Covid-19 present a glorious opportunity.            

Death is no longer a family matter but paraded as a public spectacle. So foot-in-the-door reporters nightly feed on the misery of stricken families and ask loved ones to express their “feelings” at the death of granny, or whoever it is that has died. They dwell on emotion, the more harrowing the better, and they encourage its indulgence. The cameras probe relentlessly to uncover raw grief, pain, shock and as many tears as possible. The obscene intrusion is justified as “caring” and “compassionate” when in fact it’s the exact opposite. When the reporters have gone, the families are left empty and despairing.

The sadness is that the public have striven to accommodate the media’s desire to provide them with this sort of emotional pornography. Tell people they should feel something, and they’ll not only feel it, they’ll regard themselves as entitled and obliged to feel it. So the bereaved weep and lament and feel a flattering importance whilst enjoying their brief five minutes of fame. 

George McDonald Fraser – author of Quartered Safe Out Here – describes life as a private soldier under General Slim in nine section of the 14th army in Burma in the Second World War: violent death, of course, was an everyday occurrence. Fraser wishes we could be transported back in time to hear a modern television journalist ask members of his platoon for their “feelings” after one of their colleagues had just been killed. He would like to have heard their reply. 

And there’s still time to ask the Duke of Edinburgh. 

The Truth Will Out…

Jane is a gardener and rightly proud of her talents: to my untutored eye she has created a mini Sissinghurst. Woe betide any suggestions from me. I made the foolish error of proposing that one of our handsome Zimbabwe statues would look good in another part of the garden. She whirled round and rasped, “The trouble is that you’re a vulgarian!”

So true.

Happy Shambling

I shamble up to Stonesfield, as old as sin and not two pounds of me hanging straight.

Then the day looked up as the group gathered together some of my favourite people in my world, Darling Jane and beloved daughter Rev Clare Hayns; son in law, and ZANE close chum, John Hayns. I reckon Clare gives a regular MOT and state of health report about us to the rest of our children.

Then the lovely Alannah Jeune, an Oxford post-grad student who played the trumpet at the outset of our last walk in Canterbury comes too – not a good omen for on that occasion we then led the group resolutely 4 miles in the wrong direction. 

I am not allowed to mention this fact for fear of offending General Jane: even she has to admit that this episode was not her finest hour.

A glorious day: up and down paths that threaded us through sun-spangled woods from which we imagine Robin Hood and his men would confront us at any moment. To the left a glimpse of a small lake, on the right a small stream for Moses and Layla (Hayns dog) to splash in, both giving little squeals of pure delight: what more possibly could I possibly want than to be alive at this hour?     

Dames and Broads

We discussed that Sasha Swire has sold the details of private conversations with her political “friends” to the media for money. Seems pretty tawdry to me. Who can anyone trust? Who would be daft enough to risk going into politics? UK Ambassador to the US Tim Darroch (now Lord) finds his confidential report – critical of Trump – leaked, and his career destroyed. ZANE donors will recall that John Major was traduced by Edwina Currie when she sold the secrets of their brief romance to the papers.

You can only behave like this once: Do the likes of Swire or Currie – like Lady Buck (see past blog) – deserve any real friends?  

The great film actor Humphrey Bogart divided women into two camps: “Dames” and “Broads”. I reckon Swire and Currie to be “Broads” not “Dames”. 

I wonder whether her friends will ever forgive and trust Sasha again?

For forgiveness is a tough call: easy to say and hard to actually do. 

All of us have been let down badly at some time in our lives in various ways: perhaps financially; maybe by parents or family? What about being double-crossed by someone you trust? Maybe you have been the subject of abuse? Perhaps you have been the “innocent party” in adultery, or the so-called “guilty” party and find forgiving yourself really hard?  

But forgiveness can be found in even in the hardest of cases…

Amazing Grace

Those of you who have been to Robben Island in South Africa will have stood in the tiny cell where Nelson Mandela was locked up, and seen the thin mat on the cold floor on which he spent his nights. He was there for 18 long years.

Such squalid conditions usually give birth to enraged avengers, sworn to exact retribution on those who have ruined their lives and traduced their country. We can understand this embittered logic – indeed, we see the results of anger and retribution nightly on our television screens. 

The enormity of Mandela’s forgiveness towards his opponents is hard to understand for it’s all about the absurdity of Grace. We can hear the impossibility of this sort of forgiveness in the words of those being crucified as the executioners hammer in the nails. We hear about this sort of Grace in the voice of a daughter whose parents were murdered in Belsen as she forgives the man who slaughtered them – and allows him to admit, for the first time, his own heart-wrenching guilt.

Forgiveness through Grace comes without condition for the glory of God. Secular humanists – who can find no meaning in this kind of language – may conclude that on rare occasions our incomprehensible universe redeems its pain and conflict through the rare genius of extraordinary people who, for some mysterious reason and well beyond human understanding, are able to forgive the unforgiveable.

It is impossible, sadly, to codify this miraculous forgiveness in any systematic way to resolve the wrenching problems that inflict our times. We could of course pray for the arrival of a Mandela figure who might enable us to rise high above our miseries and violent hatreds. But history indicates that usually so complex are the conflicts that entangle us, and usually so unsubtle are the ways in which we respond to them, that all we sadly end up with is the mantra of an “eye for an eye”. Then we invent more weapons and recruit our armies as the problems morph and spiral helplessly into conflicts.      

Dare to Forgive

We should remember the healing power of mercy towards a beaten enemy. In a famous speech on conciliation with America in 1775, philosopher and politician Edmund Burke said “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom”. Of course magnanimity can break the cycle of revenge, but it’s rare. Yet after a great conflict, magnanimity can check the likelihood of further violence. In William Manchester’s book on Churchill, The Last Lion, he points out a clear example of failure of forgiveness.

In the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, Churchill was standing in his office waiting for Big Ben to chime to signify that the Great War had ended. Churchill listened to the cheering of the crowds but felt no jubilation. Since 1914, Britain had suffered 908,371 dead, 2,090,212 wounded and 191,652 were missing. Victory had been “bought so dear it was indistinguishable from defeat.”

Clementine Churchill suggested the couple go to Downing Street to congratulate Lloyd George, the then prime minister, on the victory.

Those already present were discussing calling a general election. Churchill interrupted by saying that the “fallen foe” was near starvation. He proposed sending a dozen ships crammed full of provisions to Hamburg: this proposal was coldly rejected.    

Manchester tells us that while Churchill’s suggestion was being rebuffed by his unforgiving colleagues, a twice-decorated German non-commissioned despatch rider, temporarily blinded by a gas attack on 13 October 1918, sat in a Pomeranian military hospital and learned the detail of Germany’s plight from a sobbing pastor.

Six years later the soldier wrote a description of his reaction to the event: “All was lost. Only fools and criminals could hope for mercy from the enemy. In these nights, hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for the deed…. and the more shame and disgrace burned my brow…in the days that followed, I resolved to go into politics.”

The soldier’s name was Adolf Hitler. 

A great day for walking and our company was blessed by some old friends and new.

We booked in to “The Chequers” in Churchill and what an excellent choice it turned out to be. Fresh, and an interesting menu of food.  

As we walked, inevitably, we talked about Brexit.   

Sound and Fury

Are you still worried that devastation – on top of the damage already inflicted by Covid-19 – will wreck the UK when we finally leave the EU on 1 January 2021?

Do you recall Y2K? This was the “Millennium Bug”, the terror we believed would befall us at the beginning of the year 2000. It was thought that flawed computer software would send civilisation into chaos at midnight on 31 January 1999. Computers would be unable to recognise the new date, and not only would Cinderella forget to leave the ball, but planes would rocket from the sky, hospital computers would wheeze to a halt, boats would do a Titanic and Armageddon would fall upon us!

And what happened? Nothing: plain zero! It was the biggest non-event of the last 25 years.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Now to Brexit. We British are good at muddling through and muddle through we will. Of course, we all know now that the EU oligarchs will do everything they can to make our lives as difficult and as uncomfortable as possible, so I anticipate 2021 will be a bumpy year.

According to philanthropist Miles Morland, we are, along with the US, one of the two great post-industrial powers to dominate the great post industrial industries – the intellectual-intensive industries as opposed to the capital-intensive ones at which the Germans excel. And our negotiating hand is a strong one. The EU has its fair share of worries: the Garlic belt of “PIGS” (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) are facing bankruptcy due to suffering the effects of an overvalued euro. Germany prospers at the PIGS’ expense because for it, the euro is undervalued. This is unsustainable.

The euro is like trying to squeeze Kate Moss and Philip Green into the same pair of knickers. Meanwhile, poor old Macron’s plans to invent a new Europe lie in tatters. He has achieved the impossible by becoming even more unpopular than his predecessor, François Hollande.

The media is obsessed with trade agreements. But why are they so important? The countries that have exported over the last 50 years – China, Japan and Taiwan – have had few trade agreements with the countries to which they send most of their goods. The pluses and minuses of trade agreements tend to be more than offset by monthly currency movements. They are a red herring used to frighten the ignorant.

Brexit is the new YK2: full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing and soon forgotten.  

Sinners and Saints

In a previous blog, I wrote about the marriage of Sir Peter Harding. I have since discovered another part to the saga, and as there is a moral to the tale that should be learned by all ZANE donors over 55, perhaps it’s worth repeating. I should add that this story is in the public domain, so I breach no confidences.

Air Marshall Sir Peter Harding had a glittering career. In 1992, he ended up as Chief of the Defence Staff. One fateful day, at an innocent lunch, he caught the eye of Lady Bienvenida Buck who placed her hand on his knee and indicated she fancied him.

A few weeks later, at around 4pm, flashlights exploded as the couple were caught staggering out of the Savoy after an afternoon of illicit passion.  

The “lady” had sold the story for £100,000 to the News of the World using the services of the ghastly, now thankfully late, Max Clifford – who was later jailed for sexual assaults on underage girls and young women.

A humiliated Harding immediately resigned and told his wife, Sheila, his career was over – it was – and that the publicity would be horrendous – he was right. Then he braced himself to be kicked out of the house, his marriage over.

Sheila took off her wedding ring, laid it on the table, and then replaced it, gently saying, “Let’s start our marriage again!”

The next day Harding’s peers – disregarding the biblical story of the woman caught out in adultery and “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…” – sought to persuade the then Secretary of State for Defence, Malcolm Rifkind, to allow them to hold “disciplinary proceedings”. They wanted to publicly strip Harding of his rank.

Rifkind was astonished that Harding’s friends and colleagues wanted to give a broken man a good kicking. But the five-star officers – all retired marshals of the RAF – were insistent. “Harding has disgraced his profession. Only five-star officers can form the tribunal, for only five-star officers can judge other five-star officers”. I should add that these men did not have the support of the chief of the air staff or the chief of defence staff.

Rifkind is a QC and his legal training kicked in. He told the men they couldn’t proceed.

“Why?” they demanded hotly.

Rifkind replied, “It’s a firm principle of law that we are innocent until proven guilty. As you have clearly already decided Harding is guilty, your so called “tribunal” cannot take place.” The men were furious but had to accept the ruling.

Moral? If you’re a man, there are two. First, find a wife like Sheila Harding – a total star – and bind her to your soul with hoops of steel. Second, if you are over 50 and a lady places her hand on your knee and tells you she fancies your body, run for the hills. She is lying!