Slightly less humid and thank goodness for that. Three delightful walkers – two young women and their Mum.

The last mile was a chore for the greedy toad of a farmer had ploughed up the path, and you know how hard that can make walking.

Our friend David Cook turned up, which was a real treat.

True friendship is a considerable gift. But of course, not all of my friends survive happily in this difficult world.

Requiem for a Friend

Whenever I see someone begging, I give them something. Why? Because it could so easily be me.

A few months ago, I attended the funeral of one of our oldest friends. He died alone – from a massive heart attack – in a cold, remote cottage in Ireland, alienated from his family and friends. 

The Short Way Down

He started out so well. Good looking and charming, he went to a top public school followed by Oxford, then he worked in a famous bank. He seemed to make excellent progress, managing to forge friendships with leading politicians and bankers who appeared to be genuinely fond of him. Then he married a well-connected and lovely woman. What could possibly go wrong? 

Lots. Drip by drip, the wheels started to rattle and then grind. The bank “let him go” and he was forced to make deals by himself. But they were always the smaller types of deals, the dodgy ones that the banks didn’t want – the deals you have to make, whether good or bad, to keep the bailiffs away. Of course, these are the deals most likely to fail. Optimism shredded as confidence drained – and then the best of the deals that had to work somehow just didn’t.

At first other people were to blame, but as the list of failures grew, his buddies began to smell failure and backed away. Then the phone stopped ringing and his calls went unanswered. Money grew tight and my friend started to drink. His realisation at the size of the gap between what he had hoped for and what had come to pass hurt, and he wanted to dull that pain.

He was caught out in some scam or other – probably someone else’s fault – and he found himself in the nick for a six-month stretch. His wife left him for another man, and his adult children grew ashamed and became alienated.

His friends kept him off the streets… just. But you can’t live people’s lives for them, and pride made him strongly resistant to advice.          

It’s a tough life. In The Magnificent Seven, the leading bandit, played by Eli Wallach, says to the character played by Yul Brynner about the vulnerable villagers he was exploiting, “If God didn’t want them fleeced, he wouldn’t have made them sheep.” Some truth in that. And “dog does eat dog” – it is only the winners who get the prizes. Laugh and the world (does) laugh with you; cry and you (do) cry alone. All these sayings can be validated in this harsh, cold world.  

That’s why my friend died sad and alone. And “there but by the grace of God go I.”

A Matter of Taste

There is a Welsh saying that the harp should be played with a smile on your face or a tear in your eye – or not at all. I like that. It’s not just the harp: what about our response to poetry, paintings and music?

I have stood before the painting The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It evokes an acute sense of awe in the face of a genius that I could never hope to emulate in a thousand years. I can feel the same way about the glories of Handel’s “Messiah”, Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius”, or after watching Shakespeare’s King Lear or reading one of his sonnets.

The late American cartoonist Al Capp sums up abstract art when he wrote that it is “a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.”  

So when I see an unmade bed littered with fag packets and condoms, a cow’s intestine pickled in brine, a baked bean tin suspended from a skeleton’s neck, or an old sofa covered in women’s underclothes – and read the tripe uttered by the art experts – I wholeheartedly agree with Al Capp.

I am sure that there are some who genuinely find modern art wonderful – and good luck to them. But I want to encourage all who may not be confident in their own choices not to be bullied by the “experts” into an affection of admiration.

We all instinctively know whether or not something holds meaning for us. And forget what is fashionable – you don’t need a three-year degree in art appreciation to know if you like a piece or not.

So why not be like the boy who announced the “emperor has no clothes,” and believe in your own good taste? It’s good because it’s yours.  

Anatomy of a tiff!

Last night I told General Jane that she couldn’t map read for toffee. She told me that I was less than supportive – in fact, what she said was rather less ladylike than that. She referred to my ancestry and she listed some of my less than savoury habits. She then slouched to bed without saying “good night darling” as she usually does: she watched Downton Abbey on her screen while I watched Newsnight, both of us in a brown study. When I went to bed I turned over so all she could see was my right shoulder.

To my silent fury, Kariba, the cat, went and sat on her chest, not mine. That irritated me more than anything. The bloody cat knew what was happening and was taking sides!

On the Tuesday morning, we decided that as neither of us is going to leave the other – for who on earth would take us in? – we had no option but to kiss and make up:

I said, “sorry Darling, it was my fault entirely ”. Jane immediately agreed and so we stopped acting like children.

AGM?

Today was apparently the AGM of the ZANE branch of the “Otmoor and Islip Ladies WI and Golfing Society” who decided to walk with us. I have no idea how many people were there but I have made a note to ask Dominic Cummings where to go to in Barnard Castle to have my eyes tested.

A hard walking day.

Revolutionary Acts

I was asked by one walker why I was a Christian. I asked whether she had read the Book of Acts.

GK Chesterton wrote that atheists have to be careful about what books they read. They should certainly avoid the Book of Acts for it relates how 12 ordinary and randomly chosen fishermen, without formal education or training of any sort, morphed into courageous martyrs who ended up transforming the world.

Jesus knew from the start that his recruits were, to put it politely, not academic. In fact, they were all over the place, without a clue as to who Jesus was or what he was about. Running away, lying ineptly, sinking in water, hacking off an ear, deserting Jesus when the going got rough – they could have been any of us.   

It wasn’t until after Jesus’ resurrection and after his message had been tattooed into their flesh that these ordinary men grew into courageous giants, prepared to die for the truth. Wholly hopeless and ignorant small-time fishermen at the outset, they ended up being changed so profoundly that their words have tumbled down the ages to teach Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and today’s thinkers in the Church. Their transformation dramatically changed the world.

Yet if these 12 hadn’t met Jesus, they would probably have lived rather boring, workaday lives. I imagine them fishing, marrying and bringing up children – and then taking care of Granny and Grandpa before finally dying anonymously in their beds.

But instead, because Jesus marinated their lives with the word of God, they chose to live as penniless vagrants who were flayed, crucified or stoned to death.

It’s a truly terrifying story and not for the faint-hearted! Perhaps we all instinctively know, deep in our souls, that if we get too close to the real thing and realise that the Gospel is not about respectability and morals, our lives will undergo a dramatic upheaval. And thinking sceptics will have some explaining to do: if the transformation in the lives of these ordinary men was not a supernatural intervention, then what exactly was it? What could have brought about such a revolution?

The Great and the Good

On most days, I tip my hat towards Churchill’s grave, sited only 200 yards from where we live. There he rests under a simple slab with Clementine, his parents, his son, his brother and all his children. It’s just a simple country churchyard. But when your reputation is indelibly stamped on the memory of your country, you don’t really need a vast memorial, do you? 

And of course he will be remembered, for he is one of the rare ones, a giant who will be celebrated as long as our ancient history is told. But it’s a select club. We have of course the great composers and writers, names too well known to have to list. And then there are the outliers like Christopher Wren whose memorial in St Paul’s states, “If you would seek my monument, look around you.”

But most of us will be forgotten pretty soon. Even the once quite famous are destined for near oblivion. Can you list the prime ministers who served before the last war? Have a go. I’ll start with Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin, Asquith (what was his first name?), Henry Campbell-Bannerman – but are they in the right order? No cheating, mind! And who remembers the names of their foreign secretaries? No, neither can I.

The point is made by Michael Heseltine, surely the greatest politician in the past 50 years never to have become PM. Although he was deputy prime minister and held many of the great offices of state, he says, wisely, that in a hundred years time, the only thing that he will be remembered for are the trees he planted on his estate.

In the words of the hymn by Isaac Watts:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away.

ZANE and the Art of Motorcycle…

Another red hot day: we were met by four delightful ZANE supporters who walked the entire route with us.

At lunch, we were greeted by Ralph Fergusson Kelly, who motor biked from Monmouth to meet us, bless him.

Hume Truths

Some of our walkers are Catholic. I reminded them of the teaching of Cardinal Basil Hume when he was a master at Ampleforth School. I have told this story to donors in an earlier blog, but it’s worth repeating.

There were roughly 100 boys present.

The leader courteously told Basil Hume that they were fed up with Bible teaching as it had no relevance to their lives.

“Sir, Henry over there is going into the City, Mike is to be a lawyer, Charles will inherit an estate, I am going into the army. We all agree we just don’t need God!”

Hume then said quietly:

Gentlemen, society estimates that at least 40% of you, when married, will suffer the pain of discovering that your partner has been unfaithful; 40% of marriages end in failure; 60% of you will find your children are in deep trouble with money or drugs; 30% of you will face acute financial difficulties; 10% of you will go bankrupt. 3% will face criminal proceedings, 1% will face prison (and I am looking at you, Henry!).

70% of you will face bereavement, 100% of you will face fatal illness, 100% will face death.

May I suggest gentlemen that at all these dreadful times you will be grateful for the Gospel of Christ.

Good afternoon.”

There was a stunned silence.

We Wondered as we Wandered

As we walked, we wondered why we listen to the so-called “left-wing” who talk down to the rest of us from a position of moral superiority? And why, if we are such an intolerably racist society, immigrants risk life and limb to come and live, not in the EU countries they pass through, but in the UK?

We wondered why on earth are so many of us ashamed of our past? Why do we listen to students who impertinently lecture us about whether our statues should remain standing or not? Why do we blame ourselves for all conflicts, past, present and future?

Best of British

Why do our teachers feed our young a thin gruel diet of misery, hatred and shame for our past so as to pox their present and future with negativity?

Why not teach children the truth? Of course, Britain has made plenty of ghastly mistakes, and our motives were seldom pure, but we are also the cause of much that is right in the world. We abolished the evil of slavery – practised throughout history by all other countries, including Africa – and are the pioneers of parliamentary democracy, constitutional monarchy and equality. The English language – our gift to the world – is used internationally in diplomacy, in commerce, in technology, education, government and invention. And our Magna Carta was the underpinning of global law, the foundation of order in the free world. Our judiciary is independent, and our property rights, labour laws and legal reasoning are the envy of the world. We are an honest place in which to do business: not many countries can boast that.

Our DNA is that of openness and fairness, and our well-founded laws and freedom mark us out as a special people. This isn’t elitism, rather self-awareness. Our patriotism is based on our love and respect for our institutions, laws, heritage and ideas. As a nation of under 70 million people, we outrank many larger nations in terms of scientific and medical innovation as well as rare achievements in sports, entertainment, the financial sector, tourism and art.

Today we lead the world in social reform and the development of hospital care; and our legacy of ethics, kindness and charity shows our country at its best.

Now is the time for us to stop saying we are sorry about being British. We still have much to teach.

Bean thinking

I don’t complain (much) in restaurants, and I’ll tell you why. There are at least 4 billion suns in the Milky Way. Many of them are thousands of times larger than our own sun, and vast millions of them have whole planetary systems, including literally billions of satellites. All this revolves at a rate of about a million miles an hour, like a huge oval pinwheel.

Our own sun and planets, which include the Earth, are on the edge of the wheel. This is only our small corner of the universe, so why don’t these billions of revolving and rotating suns and planets collide? The answer is that space is so unbelievably vast that if we reduced the suns and planets in correct mathematical proportions to the distances between them, each sun would be a speck of dust, several thousand miles from its nearest neighbour.

And, mind you, that’s only the Milky Way. How many galaxies are there? At least 100 billion in the known universe. Billions and billions of them are spaced at about one million light-years apart (one light-year is about six trillion miles). The scientists have found that the further you go out into space with the telescopes, the thicker the galaxies become. There are billions of billions that are as yet undiscovered by the scientist’s cameras and astrophysicist’s calculations.

So when you think about it, it seems silly to care that the pub has run out of ginger beer.

Benyon’s Rule

A scorcher of a day for mid-September. A great walk with four loyal supporters so we were just about legal! Our walk muscles are hardening as day by day we squeeze out some of last year’s evil living.

The validity of Benyon’s rule of pain is proving itself yet again: that is, if you ignore muscle pain and simply walk through it, the pain quickly subsides, and after a short time you forget it.

Who Wants to Live Forever?!

I read recently, during the COVID era, of an aged man seeking permission by letter from a care home manageress to visit his wife, ending the missive with a P.S.:

“I used to be a spitfire pilot!”

It was Penny Hastings – Max Hastings’ wife – who said memorably: “none of us is going to get out of this alive”. This needs remembering. We are becoming so sentimental and unrealistic, perhaps we are coming to believe that if we throw even more money at our NHS, a doctor will soon cry: “Eureka! we have cracked it: we are all going to live forever.”

Speaking entirely for myself, I have no wish to do that.

So what do I want?

I want to see old age, yes – in fact, I am probably there already, but I am good at kidding myself that it’s at least 2 years down the road from where I am today!

But not extreme old age. Of course, there are always outliers (H.M. The Queen). Still, as a generality, it sounds a pretty miserable end-game for most of us.

No one dares mention this in our marshmallow age, but it’s sad that Flu, once rightly called: “The Old Man’s Friend” has largely been cured.

I hope my children will want to see me, not feeling they have to from a sense of duty.

I want my grandchildren to remember me as a sparky and intelligent and fun-loving sort of person: not, bald, demented, babbling incoherently, sitting on a rubber mat and being fed through a straw.

It was Kingsley Amis who wrote: “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare.”

So in a few years time, I may just take up point-to-point racing, or try to climb Mount Everest…oh! and what about sky jumping to add to my bucket list.

Sparks Will Fly

As readers will know, I only discuss money, sex, politics religion and death in my commentaries, but not all are given equal coverage. A reader recently complained that it’s getting a bit unbalanced – “a tad thin”, as he put it – on the sex front. So ever willing, allow me to put this right…

You’ll remember that a couple of walks back, the pulses of intrepid ZANE supporters were set racing by my introducing them to the dating apps Tindr (for heterosexuals) and Grindr (for the LGBT community). Both offer “sex made easy”: all a customer has to do is flick through photos on the relevant app, choose his or her fancy, and then take a peek at the actual person in the flesh in a nearby pub. If sufficient mutual lust is generated, then off the couple charge to commit the capital act: boom! Just like that. No romance, no letters or flowers, no hand-holding. For goodness’ sake, not even a box of Smarties changes hands!

If you prefer your sex delivered in the same way you order a hamburger, then this is the system for you.  

HOT Off the Press

So what’s the next hot thing to boost a jaded marriage? You can rely on ZANE to do the research!

Is the wife spending too much time deadheading the roses? Is your hubbie addicted to scraping barnacles off the bottom of his boat? Yes? What can you do to recapture the sparks of the past?   

Buy some electronic underwear, that’s what. For 25 bucks, ZANE donors can buy a pair of boxer shorts or knickers – both if you’re bisexual – and pop them on when the mood takes you. Both come in garish hot pink.

Now this is the clever bit. Each pair contains a microchip that slots into a small pocket at the back.

So the scene is set. You’re up for it. Now there is your loved one, say, sloping out the loo. To attract her attention, just creep within five metres. An alert automatically appears on her smartphone inviting her to enter “love mode”. Then follows a playlist of romantic music. We are told she is bound to hurl away the Harpic brush and swoon at once into your arms.

Apparently, 1,000 pairs of these amazing pants sell in a month. And sorry about this – for the resolute, only – second-hand pairs are available on Ebay.

The inventor, Wolfgang Kamphartold – yes, he was bound to be German – claims, “Whether at dinner or in the bedroom… this is the best way to start conversations.”

Well that’s for sure: much more interesting than the Times crossword! ZANE supporters, how will your marriage survive without these pants? 

Remember! You heard about them from me first.

Already Arrived

A great gathering… old friends and new: one is Christopher Turner, 90 years old and very distinguished past Stowe headmaster.

A perfect day for walking through some of merrie old England’s finest Cotswold countryside. When such flawless beauty is right here, why does anyone want to crawl off in a muzzle in a crowded shuttle to the likes of Ibiza or Mallorca? They are furnace hot and packed with the well-padded and tattoed at this time of year: and squatting on a beach and getting sand where the blistering sun don’t shine fills me with gloom after ten minutes. So I am pleased the crowds have left our paradise walks for us to give God thanks for.

I recall the ancient Venetian Doge’s saying: “Why travel when you’ve already arrived.”

Public Grouse

Some publicans are funny – I mean in the peculiar sense, not funny haha! You would think in the midst of COVID they would be gagging for any business. But when we asked gently if lunch was being served, indignantly she snapped, “no”: when asked if we could eat sandwiches in the bar and order drinks she still refused.

Anthony and Clare Wells, walking with us – heroes both – kindly laid on a feast as generous as Ratty’s in Wind in the Willows in their house.

Coded Message?

I have just received a greeting from a buddy who said that Jane and my walking long distances once again was “very noble and courageous!”

Remembering “Yes Minister”, what he really meant was, “ you are barmy to be walking these distances at your ages!”

Interesting to note that both the US Presidential candidates are more or less the same age as I am.

Rage, Rage at the Dying of the Light 

Ageism is the last tolerated prejudice.

When you are old you lose interest in sex, your children ignore you and your friends drift away – these are some of the most obvious advantages.

When US President Reagan was fighting Democratic candidate Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election, he said, “I do not propose to make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s relative youth and inexperience.”

Well said, Mr President – who was by then a very “senior citizen” at 73.

Who Are You Calling Old?

The description “senior citizen” is often heard today but it’s one I hate. It’s patronising, and nearly as irritating as the road sign of an aged crone, curved like a hockey stick, who serves as a warning to cars that an aged person may try to stagger across the road at any given moment. Then there’s that ghastly term “over seventies”, or what about “the vulnerable”, an even more dreadful slur? I feel no more vulnerable than the Pennine Way!

“Oldies” – the very word conjures up laxatives, false teeth and incontinence pads. And what about nasal hair, invalid scooters, daytime TV, reused tea bags, bowls and bingo! Oldies are grouped officially under the HMG’s heading of “the retired”: in other words, yesterday’s folk, clapped-out and finished. All this twaddle bolsters the existing belief amongst the general public that the old should suck their toothless gums out of everyone’s way. 

I am in the over seventies group but neither Jane nor I have ever defined ourselves by age and we have no intention of starting now. Our doctors check us out as fine and we are a great deal fitter – and better looking, too – than many younger people who smoke, eat and drink to excess. We hiked from Edinburgh to London – covering 16 miles a day – when I was in my seventieth year and Jane wasn’t far behind. Since then, we have walked at least 2,500 miles round the UK for ZANE, and the only one in our party who ever gets over-tired is the dog.

Of course, we know we are lucky to possess great energy and enthusiasm for life, and a zest for new ideas and adventure. There are hundreds of thousands of others like us who feel the same way, and although we’ll all contract the galloping ab dabs and fall over one day, till then we intend to zip along like the bullets God cast us to be. Look at Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Judie Dench and HM the Queen. And look at the US presidents or presidential hopefuls – so many of them are well into their seventies but they’re still in their prime.

It is monstrous that ageism is a tolerated prejudice. But you can’t say a word against the obese! When we walk for ZANE, I am warned not to even mention that our blessed island is crowded with fatties waddling along pavements and barrelling us skinnies into the road. It has been proved that being obese – and that includes over a third of the UK population – is one of the major contributing factors to Covid-19 deaths. So, Fatso Boris, that’s why you nearly died of Covid-19 – get on a crash diet now! However, if HMG spokesmen had mentioned this ironclad fact, there would have been a chorus of denial and indignation.

We refuse to be thrown on the scrap heap of life because of ageism and neither will many of our friends.

Long live the silver hares!

Cattitude

Recently, our little tabby, Kariba, went missing for three days and I missed her dreadfully. Kariba and I have a routine: each night, when I am just in bed, she jumps lightly onto my chest, sticks her nose an inch from mine, and stares unwinking and relentlessly into my eyes. She waits until I have tickled her ears and stroked her throat, and then, when she has had enough, with a flick of her tail, boom! She’s away.

The routine is, of course, wholly on her terms. A random movement and she’s off in a huff. The real reason I treasure these sacred few minutes is because she ignores Jane completely. I like that. Jane says she only jumps on my chest because it’s bigger then hers. She claims cats don’t form attachments anyway, and she’s only ours because we feed her – but I know that’s a lie. Kariba loves me more than Jane, so there! Anyway, Jane gets all the affection and love from that darn stupid dog Moses. Of course, I pretend not to care – but deep down, I do. Quite a lot, actually. So Kariba is my favourite animal by a country mile and I love her unconditionally.

Anyway, when Kariba went missing, I was wholly distraught. We wrote a notice to be posted everywhere we could think of and were just about to smother the district when Kariba crawled through the back door. It was clear she’d been savaged by some damned dog: she was covered in cuts and her tail was bent. She must have been recovering in a ditch somewhere until she recovered her strength sufficiently to come home to me. I was overjoyed. Kariba is alive, and after a couple of hundred quid’s worth of ointment and pills – note to my grandchildren, become a vet! – she has recovered her bounce, is back squatting on my chest, and once again staring deeply into my eyes.

Kariba still loves me.

Missing the Missionary

We walked from Buckland to Faringdon and back in good time; we lunched in Faringdon, and it was a sad occasion. First, this is more or less the second anniversary of the death of Doctor and Missionary, Graham Scott Brown, who lived here. Graham not only sounded like the Prophet Ezekiel, he looked like what I imagine the prophet looked like: white hair, jutting eyebrows, both on end. A saintly and wonderful man and I miss him.

Town and Out

Frankly, if there is such a thing as a Town Doctor doctor, I would try and persuade him to give Farringdon a powder to restore her Mojo. It’s so sad to see so many shops for sale and so few people. All the banks have left, and the alleged 22 pubs have, all bar 3, gone on the wagon.

I hope this town recovers for once people lose the habit of shopping, they may never return. We walked past numerous schools, both prep and public.

I wonder how COVID is affecting that private school’s market?

Top of the Class

“People don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say”.

So said David Ogilvy, US advertising genius and founder of Ogilvy and Mather. He had a profound insight into human behaviour, and his dictum makes understanding what makes people tick a lot easier.

The Good Schools Guide

My rich cousin – let’s call him Fred – is the father of two reasonably able children. What does Ogilvy’s dictum mean to him when trying to pick a school costing £40,000 p/a  – oh yes, plus extras, please don’t forget the extras – for each of his children (that’s half a million smackeroos for the pair)? For days, he sat amongst a landfill of posh prospectuses, randomly leafing through them and agonising.

Did this or that school have talented teachers in this or that subject? How did the teacher/ children ratios compare and what were the relative merits of the facilities of each? How far were the journeys there and back? Did they do drama? Did they teach Cantonese? And how strong was the religious ethos in each? Fred worried about one school as there were rumours that some children come back “hand-waving” and he didn’t like the sound of that at all. Would his children develop leadership qualities and solid characters? Then, of course – a new one this – some offered a “happiness index”. Oh, lucky Scarlett and Piers to be alive at this hour!

I kept my mouth shut for I have long thought the whole exercise bullshit, but I didn’t want to put my hitherto excellent relationship with Fred to the test! However, I watched Ogilvy’s dictum playing out.

After literally weeks of indecision, Fred of course chose the school that most of his friends were sending their children to. So much for his objective analysis.

For however many excellent and inspirational teachers a particular school may have recruited, what makes a “good school” is often simply having a reputation for being “good”. My cousin was not so much choosing a school on its merits as much as buying an upmarket peer group for his children and, of course, for his family.

All Fred’s brow-beating was virtue signalling, the pretence of rational objectivity. In reality, people choose schools using the same yardsticks by which they choose a pub. It doesn’t matter how good the food and beer is, if you don’t like the other clientele you don’t go. This means that however hard a head may work to improve an unbranded school by buying in great teachers, people won’t send their children if they think that other people consider another school to be “better”.

The so called “top” dozen UK schools and Oxbridge/Harvard have known they are powerful “brands” – like Rolls Royce or Chanel – for centuries. It doesn’t matter how economical and relatively “safe” a particular car, or how good a school really is; what matters is do other people admire it? Apparently collective consensus is more powerful than individual taste, so fashionable brands hold a sort of monopoly power. Seen this way, why do Harrow/Eton and Oxbridge deserve to have charitable status, and not Rolls Royce and Chanel?

Fred’s children did fine, but broadly speaking bright children do well enough whatever private school they go to. But Fred’s half a million bought a “nice group” of contacts and buddies of the same social group, which of course was mainly what the exercise was all about in the first place.  

The Colour of Justice

Martin Luther King famously dreamed that “people should not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” We recognise that the realisation of that dream is as yet unfulfilled. But its not just white discrimination towards people of colour that must be condemned: black discrimination against white people also needs to be rooted out and justice restored.

From 1999 to 2010, the Mugabe government brutally expelled some 4,000 farm owners because they were white. The argument that this was justified on grounds of “land redistribution” to indigenous Zimbabweans is greatly weakened when you consider that much of the land ended up in the hands of Mugabe’s close colleagues.

We await an announcement that the government of President Mnangagwa recognises that this land theft on racial grounds greatly damages the international standing of Zimbabwe, and that he will take early steps to right this grievous wrong.  

A Great Escape

A perfect day’s walking, the sort of day to convince yourself that BREXIT and COVID are an illusion, that reality is to walk in perfect English countryside on a sunny day with friendly people. God is in His heaven: all is right with the world.

We zipped through Letcombe Regis and Wantage, down muddy and rutty tracks, through softly undulating cornfields discussing – inevitably – whether the government’s reaction to this miserable pandemic is overdone? We decided that when all other countries had “locked-down” – particularly Germany – we had no realistic choice but to follow. But the massive collateral damage to our economy and the welfare of the people is such that from now on we will have to learn just to live with the threat of disease and accept deaths. For what will we do when the next pandemic emerges as it surely will? We can’t be turning our economy on and off like a motor engine every couple of years. We can’t just keep removing the common sense and liberties of the people and handing them over to whoever is in power in Downing Street. That way points to ruin and madness.

Reflective Reflection

I caught myself glancing at my reflection in a shop window and wondering whether I should get a new outfit? I have worn the same trousers and hat for ten years, and idiotically I have grown to be rather fond of them; this is despite the fact that my trousers are shredded from a battle with a thornbush – they lost – and beyond even covering the modesty of a scarecrow. But then I thought, why bother? Provided I am reasonably clean and decent, who would I be trying to impress and why?

All is Vanity

Past blog readers may recall my story of how I admitted at a family gathering that by the age of 60, I felt I had become invisible. Women no longer saw me as a “sex object” and just looked straight through me.

“Hold on,” said daughter Clare roaring with merriment. “When did anyone, at any time, think you were a sex object? Don’t give us the date, the decade will do!”

Ha ha!

So We’ll No More Go a Roving…

There’s no fool like an old fool. I caught myself trying to be charming to a pretty waitress recently and I wondered why I was bothering? Some time later, I found myself typing “Love, Tom” and adding a couple of “xx” in an email to a woman who once worked for me. 

Today, careers are ruined in a flash, so why I was taking such a stupid risk? I didn’t mean anything by it, so what was I trying to prove?

I must reassess exactly who I signal to, and why? It’s a pulsating, red danger area. Over the past few years, and particularly after the Weinstein affair, industrial numbers of men have had their lives destroyed by women denouncing them as perverts. The line drawn between gentle flirting and being a deviant is becoming blurred: sexual assault and harassment have been turned into a “monolithic” category.

So I no longer want to do even the tiniest tango in the men/women sex dance. Perhaps I have deluded myself that I may be, in some antique sort of way, still vaguely sexy? It’s a mistake made by all too many men as they grow older. Like frogs in a pot warming slowly and stupidly towards inevitable death, they fail to notice that the gestures that were possibly once delightful or amusing have in fact grown nauseating.

The idea that any women might overlook my saggy face or my gone-with-the-wind muscle tone, and actually want to have sex with me without substantial payment in advance, is wholly absurd. It’s nothing other than the ludicrous vanity of a decaying ego. So it’s time to stop trying to be charming to waitresses or making women laugh. “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.” Simply, it demeans me. 

No more keeping my tummy tucked in and trying to look manly, and no more poncing about in tight shirts. No more fretting about whether my suit is creased or not or wondering if my bald patch is showing. No more the mysterious half smile across a crowded room that I once thought looked fascinating but probably today looks like Steptoe leering at an unguarded fiver. Stop acting like a grotesque old fool!

Weinstein has woken me up to harsh reality – and he’s probably done me a favour. 

The Wheat and the Chaff

It is said that Baroness Thatcher never knew a day’s happiness after she was ousted from Downing Street. There’s a tragic picture of her in Jonathan Aitken’s biography, Power and Personality, sitting outside the Lords, draped in ermine, three hours before the doors opened.

Perhaps when the shouting crowds departed and the phones stopped ringing, loneliness – at the horrifying realisation that true friends were thin on the ground – slowly engulfed her magnificent spirit.   

I had a friend – let’s call him Richard – who was the CEO of a large company. In his gift were millions of pounds in supply contracts. When his company was taken over, he lost his job. Richard was now unemployed but he confidently drew up a list of contacts with a view to meeting up to discuss the future and ask for their help. On the list were many people with whom he had socialised – he had been to dinner at their houses and he counted them as close friends. He was profoundly distressed when only a tiny minority responded and the rest made their excuses. Out of office, he was of no use. His unemployed status meant he was dumped on his so-called friends’ “loser” list. Richard was learning, in the most brutal way possible, the difference between social froth and real friends – those people who treasure us for who we really are.

Some people never experience a “High Noon”, that moment of truth that shows us who are real friends are. How the royal family differentiate between deferential courtiers and real buddies is a mystery to me!

When we are very young, we are desperately vulnerable about what our peer group thinks of us. We copy what they listen to, what they wear, what they drive, what they eat, where they go to for entertainment, and even the jobs they do. We are powerfully influenced by what others think of us and how we will be judged.

As we now see daily on social media, the crowd can be cruel and hopelessly stupid, so what can we learn from this? There comes a time, after we have been sufficiently bruised by life, when we can appreciate the wisdom of a couple of lines in Robert Browning’s poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra” – “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be…”

Once we have reached a certain age, there is no excuse left for any confusion. Actress Sarah Bernhardt summed it up perfectly: “We must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd… from whom there’s nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions… which leave no trace behind them.”    

Got up early after a patchy night to a “dingo’s breakfast”- a fart and a look around.

Met up with another excellent chatty group of ZANE donors. One prospective walker got himself hopelessly lost and spent the day playing hide-and-seek trying to find us.

Little Shops and Horror

Many of the Wallingford shops have closed, all victims of COVID. I doubt whether the little shops will survive the lockdown? I wonder when the elderly will get over their nervousness and start to live once more? One thing the government has succeeded in doing really well is planting fear in the hearts so many lonely people.

Wind in the Whither?

Our little group marched along the river bank where the great Graham Greene sited “The Wind in the Willows”. We expected to see Mole and Ratty’s’ boat carrying their wonderful picnic rowing past us at any time. And at least half a dozen of the houses we passed could have well have graced the great Toad. Mile after mile of flatlands but as ever we charged down a path only to have to retrace our steps when we discover that our Satnav anchorman has gone mad.

It was a shock yesterday to see a face in the street: I was dimly reminded of my first love. She didn’t look like her at all really, maybe just the faintest impression but the decades just melted away.

I Remember It Well

Maurice Chevalier in Gigi understated things when he sang, “Ah yes, I remember it well.”

For such is the intensity of youth, I recall my first relationship not just “well” but in excruciating detail: it’s still emblazoned in my mind’s eye, and even today the relationship seems to have endured as long as youth itself. Now and then the past makes a pass at me, and when I glimpse someone who reminds me of her, I am sent tumbling back through the decades.

She was the daughter of a general, I’ll call her Mary. We met at a party when I was on leave from Sandhurst. She wasn’t pretty in the traditional sense but I thought she was vastly attractive. I was instantly smitten and the next two years were churned into emotional turmoil. The Italians have a phrase (the Italians would), colpo di fulmine – which translates as “love that strikes like a bolt of lightening”.

This was over a half a century ago, mind: I was an innocent as most of us were – my contemporaries who pretended otherwise were mostly lying. That the past is a foreign country and they do things differently there is, of course, true: those distant times are summed up by the poet Larkin:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty three
(which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles first LP.

First Love

Anyway we went out, we kissed, we wrote, we kissed, I phoned. Don’t forget the huge change made by mobile phones – in those long-ago days I had to ring her parents who lived in some style near Perth to ask whether I could speak to my love? Her immediate family knew I was on the chase, but today, because of mobiles, affairs can be conducted without family knowing anything about it. I am yet to be convinced, as far as first love is concerned anyway, that this particular communication revolution is necessarily an improvement.

Very soon, I told Mary I loved her; then after some reflection she, to my overwhelming joy, told me she loved me too.

Then a problem… I was posted for a year to Kenya, then to the Sultan of Muscat’s armed forces. I wrote, Mary answered – indeed I wrote lots for there was no romance in Arabia other than camels. I was aware there were irritating pauses before she replied, but then, after a year – it seemed an eternity – I was on leave.     

Then the car crash. At first, to my distress, Mary seemed reluctant to meet me; then when she was cornered, to my stupefaction she stuttered she was pregnant, the father being some low-life show jumper. I was profoundly shocked and I remember thinking that if I chose not to believe, the whole thing might vanish like some hideous dream. But, as Mary was demonstrably pregnant, her family insisted she marry the swine. And so she did, in Edinburgh Castle chapel as I recall. I remember weeping bitterly, my happiness terminated. Then I thought I would emulate Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, and beat wildly on the windows of the chapel, screaming to disrupt the ghastly and mistaken proceedings, and elope with Mary. But a tiny trickle of common sense just about percolated through my emotional fog: the fact she was pregnant persuaded me that it had to be “Benyon: game over”.

Tormented, I wondered why cruel fate had dealt me such a foul hand? I felt sure that if there was a God in heaven, he would have prevented such misery. And then slowly – oh so slowly, and bit by bit – I realised some essential truths. While for me the relationship had been an obsessive passion, for Mary it had been a flirtation and she had grown fearful of the intensity of my feelings. We were from totally different worlds, and so after she had married someone else, there was no point in pretending that we could be “close friends” for that had never been the basis of our relationship. And I understood that love should always die spectacularly, or at least with dignity, and not of a wasting disease.

I recovered – sort of. Two years later, I met Jane Scott Plummer. Reader, I married her and lived happily ever afterwards – she is my soulmate and the light of my life.     

What happened to Mary? Her marriage wasn’t happy and when I heard this, I tried – more or less successfully – not to be too pleased. Then, very tragically, Mary contracted ovarian cancer around 1988 and died.

On cool reflection, if I had married her – as I would have done if my immediate and insistent prayers had been answered – Jane and I would never have got married. Then, of course, Clare, Milly, Thomas and Oliver would never have been born, and nor would 11 blessed grandchildren. It would have been another world.

I told this story to one of my grandchildren when a relationship had gone awry. Never let a near disaster go to waste. When God fails to answer your passionate prayers of the heart, it is nearly always a good thing.

Oh yes, and be careful what you wish for.     

Take That!

Glad for all over a certain age to see HM The Queen riding, aged 94, in Windsor Great Park… and without a hard hat.

Royal sucks to health and safety!

Very Welcome Guest

We were met by a charming group of ZANE donors who cheered up our day.. and it needed cheering up when it was discovered that “we” had left the walking “SATNAV” behind, our lifeline. It consists of a little man on a screen who leaps about indicating which way to turn: without him, we are “Babes in the Wood”, more or less lost.

I say “we” left the SATNAV to be gallant: actually it was wholly the fault of General Jane, but, when it comes to apportioning blame, a lack of generosity is simply not in my nature.

That’s when I realised how much we miss driver Markus who would have gone to pick it up, but because of COVID 19, he sits, disconsolate, in Bulawayo.

Thankfully our arrow prayer is answered. One of our guests is a retired land agent: his responsibilities covered much of the land we were walking on. He has an unerring instinct – wholly alien to me – of knowing which track to take and which to ignore. He is a living manifestation of the flawed officer selection procedures in the army: he failed, I was accepted. Need I say more?

The scenery was the best the Cotswolds can provide: gently hilly, beautifully kept woods, with fields of pampered cattle dreaming flatulently in the sun: classy horses grazing, as sleek as seals. The gardens of the manor houses are manicured to screaming point: as a rare treat, we could snatch the occasional glimpse of his-and-hers Mercs squatting aggressively behind wrought iron gates, all carefully designed to keep sweaty scruff like us out. It made me wonder what God would love to do if he had had the money.

A Mother Loved

Then my delightful Daughter in law, Lois Benyon, rang to ask how the walk was progressing? She is the French mother of our three gorgeous grand-daughters, Amelie, Annabel and Eliza.

These girls are lucky: the best gift a man can give his children is to love their mother; knowing our younger son, that’s secured and in place.

But it’s a troubled world and danger prowls around like a roaring lion.

My Thoughts Exactly…

Our three granddaughters came to stay at the time I was reading Lily Allen’s book, My Thoughts Exactly. No, I had never heard of Allen either – but Miles Morland told me about her, and she’s a darn good singer, aged 34 or so (and good looking too! But what can I do about that these days…).

I have never believed the contemporary nonsense that claims young men and women are usually the same in terms of sensitivity and vulnerability. I think that in general, boys/men are the more aggressive and predatorial sex and that girls/women are gentler and should be honoured and cherished. And sex shouldn’t be downgraded so it’s no more important than having a pizza. 

Don’t You Love Me?

Anyway, I read Lily Allen’s book and something clicked into place. Much of her book is too salty to quote directly in a family blog but the essence of her message is that although Harvey Weinstein may be on the extreme edge of sexual predators, he’s by no means the only problem. There are a vast number of men out there in their thirties/forties/fifties who are lethal to women aged between 17 and 25 or so. These girls want to be thought of as desirable and pretty, and they want to be loved. The vast majority are floating on a sea of promiscuity with no moral guidance worth a damn, and they’re hugely vulnerable. And to many in their peer group, saying “no” is a joke.

Many parents lose control of their children in their late teens – if they ever had any – and weakly believe that, as the old song claims, “Everyone’s doing it, doing it… so anything goes”, and if we try to spoil little Emily’s “fun”, we may lose her altogether. But, from what Allen writes, I don’t think little Emily is having much “fun” at all.

To quote Allen, who writes from her own experience: “Many of these young women have a very low self worth, they claim to have few sexual hang-ups, but they crave security… They cry to older men, ‘Don’t you think I’m pretty? Don’t you love me? Don’t you want to marry me now? Can’t you be the one I hitch my wagon to, as you are here, and so am I, and I need to be loved?”

Allen goes on: “Often, if a guy fancied me, that was enough for both of us. My self worth was so low, being fancied translated to being wanted – and thus loved – and this felt intoxicating enough for me to agree to sex. I used to want to shout: ‘You can be the one to look after me.’ That’s what I did with all the men I dated. I was confused at the beginning of my sexual life about my own desire for other people. I now know that a man wanting to have sex with you is not the same as him wanting you. He’ll have sex with you even if he doesn’t want you, just because he can.

“These men are in their thirties and forties: they are older and vastly experienced and they know exactly what they are doing. They will take you to bed just for a laugh, just because they can. Some genuinely want intimacy and to connect with you, but some don’t. They want sex if they fancy you and they want sex even if they don’t, just to prove they can. Some like humiliating you as a turn on. Some even like you resisting because knocking down the wall you have put up is a turn on for them.

“I gave myself away but men also ‘helped themselves to me’ and took from me (yes I’m talking about having sex with me) when they knew, or should have known, that I was too young and inexperienced, too naïve and too pliant to say ‘no’. I know a great many women know what I am talking about. It happens all the time. It’s not rape and it’s not quite assault, but it’s not right and it shouldn’t happen.”

And I pray not to my granddaughters either. 

Rhodes Must Fall

There are cries to have the Cecil Rhodes’ statue removed from Oriel College on the grounds that he was a “genocidal racist”.

The protestors may be puzzled to learn, however, that at Rhodes’ funeral in 1902, the hills were lined with thousands of Ndebele tribesmen chanting, “Our Father is dead”. And perplexity will mount further with the news that three weeks after his funeral, the Ndebele chiefs agreed to guard Rhodes’ grave – and they did so for decades afterwards.

The reason for this was that during the bloody revolt of the Ndebele against the South Africa Company in 1896, Rhodes – unarmed – entered rebel territory to parley. Sitting amongst the rebels, he came to appreciate their grievances and he promised reform, which led to the leading chief calling him “Peacemaker”. In fulfilment of his promise, Rhodes bought back from British settlers 100,000 acres of prime farming land and gave it to the Ndebele. Later that year, he resolved to make the building of trust between whites and backs a major part of his work.

In his will, Rhodes donated the totality of his fortune to fund scholarships for the young, irrespective of race or colour.

Perhaps we might persuade some of the Ndebele tribesmen to come to Oxford and guard Rhodes’ statue!

Hilly and Milly

“If you have been to San Fransico you will know what hills are like.”

That sums up today’s walk, and if I can walk up those hills, I can still walk up anything!

On the last walk from Canterbury – it seems another era – we started off by walking 4 miles in the wrong direction. I waited today for Jane’s cry of “Oh Bugga”, but thankfully today, we did not have to retrace our steps (much!).

One joy was that our younger daughter, Milly Sinclair, and her husband Clay joined us: they are always a delight and the miles melted with the laughter.

Canon David MacInnes joined us for lunch. Afterwards, Milly said what a lovely man he was, and I agreed and told her that he was a close friend. She thought for a nanosecond:

“What does he see in you to be a close friend?”

Good to have candid children.

Generally Remarkable

Wife General Jane has done a remarkable job in remodelling the food bank she co-founded with me in Oxford in 2007 (CEF: Community Emergency Foodbank). CEF feeds over 3,000 needy people each year.

Up until before the start of the Covid-19 crisis, food bank clients came to a church in Oxford to collect their food parcels, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

We were obliged to make changes to these arrangements to ensure that volunteers no longer met claimants face to face. So CEF is now a sort of ad hoc Ocado operation: while the Covid-19 emergency lasts, the food – donated by churches and kindly people – is delivered straight to the doors of the needy.

It’s been a stressful time. Most of the clients are nice people caught up in hard times, but every now and again there’s a wild card. CEF operates from a church: last week we had to stop one woman snitching the bog rolls from the loo! She was totally unrepentant and not in the least perturbed when we insisted on removing the stolen goods from her bag – she just shrugged and walked away.     

The Clapped-Out Old Galahad

Jane has a Presbyterian streak. When I buy her flowers, she claims I am in fact buying them for myself as a means of seeking attention. She pins me with a laser eye and asks, “What have you done now?” She knows me rather too well.

And she loathes being patronised. I told her that I worried about her overworking – I would act as her driver and make sure she was safe. She stared at me and her eyes went dark.

“Back off, Tom,” she snapped. “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself. I don’t need you trying to protect me like some clapped-out old Galahad.”

I was searching for a title for this blog and now I have it: The Clapped-out Old Galahad.  

Perfect.

History and Hindsight

Mankind is condemned to live life forwards and then to view it backwards. I despair at the ignorance of some of those protesting against our history today. These simpletons want to condemn national heroes – take for example US presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison – based on one aspect of their actions, namely they owned slaves. Yet these are some of the most talented and influential men in modern history. And back at home in the UK, when people lazily denounce Churchill as a “racist”, they should reflect on the racist views of the man he managed to defeat in the Second World War!

These protestors delude themselves they are morally superior to our ancestors. They do not realise the truth of Isaac Newton’s words in 1675: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” The issue of the wickedness of slavery was not seen in focus until the end of the eighteenth century. After the courageous campaigning of a growing number of Christians, the monstrous cruelty of the trade slowly became clear and then unacceptable.

When our grandchildren look back at our generation, I wonder how they will view our blindness to some of the grave injustices that exist today. What about the exploitation of near slave labour in the Third World to service our desire for cheap, affordable goods and clothes, for example? Why are people in the financial sectors paid many multiples more than nurses and teachers? And why do we tolerate loneliness in society, or the sale of alcohol? Take your pick…. 

Monumental Damage

Philosopher John Locke – said to have invented modern society – claimed that our sense of national self was an accumulation of our previous thoughts and actions: “In this alone consists personal identity”. Nations are shaped by what they have done and how they have suffered, and a nation’s story often takes physical form in memorials.

If I say “France”, an idea comes to you of probably the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame – whatever the image is, the chances are it’s a building that has been around for a while. Tourists visit temples and monuments to get a feel of the country they are in.

To Conservatives, the nation is made up of a shared inheritance that each successive generation should care for in turn. To the stone smashers, this is superstition.

Tens of thousands of Africans and Caribbeans came to fight with us in the First and Second World Wars, and the Cenotaph reminds us of that. The smashers think it’s a reminder of the hated past.

The smashing madness is out of control in the USA. A statue of Ulysses S Grant, the Union general who won the war to free slaves, was toppled, as was the statue of Hans Christian Heg, who led an anti-slave militia. The Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial was badly damaged – bear in mind that Shaw, an abolitionist, commanded the first all-black regiment and fought for his men to have equal pay to that of white troops. And then a statue of Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote and himself a former slave, was mindlessly vandalised!

A nation that forgets its past is like a person with Alzheimer’s – helpless and lost.