Disaster fell! I awoke with the impression that my left knee cap had been kicked by a horse and when I arose I was hobbling and unable to bend it and I was no use to anyone.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I was suffering an acute attack of gout. If any of my blog readers have ever suffered gout they will know how disabling and painful it can be. And it was my fault! Simply, I hadn’t drunk enough water. Gout happens when crystals form around a joint and they have to be washed away; so I drank copious pints of water and took some simple painkillers and the pain receded as fast as it had occurred. What a relief.

So up and down the hills we we tottered, clambering over tiny styles apparently built for athletic pygmies. We walked all day in a drizzle so I spent the time dreaming up a list of the best movies I have ever seen: “Blow up” (David Hemmings), “A Man for all Seasons” ( Paul Scofield), “The Third Man” ( Orson Welles), “Cinema Paradiso”, “Manon De Source and Jean De Fleurette”, “Il Postino” “Leaving Las Vegas”, ” Apocalypto”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “The Night Porter” (Dirk Bogarde), “Gladiator”, “The Graduate”, “Schindler’s List”, “Casino”, “The Scent of a Woman” (Al Pacino), “Marathon Man”, “The Pianist”, “Fargo” and “Ladies in Lavender” for starters.

Class Wars

A rather dingy pub and I have never seen the man with the sad, porpoise face lounging at the bar before. I can tell he’s straining to listen as my friend – whom I admit has a rather braying voice – and I discuss the futility of the hunting ban and how the hunts are thriving anyway.

Suddenly the porpoise leans towards us and through a whiff of tobacco and stale beer, hisses, “F*** off the pair of you, you pigs are a total disgrace.”

Just like that. Then he gives us the finger and shuffles off. We had done nothing to provoke him, and were just sitting there talking.

Toffs and Tattoos
What’s this all about? I suppose he thinks we’re Tory bastards – you know, Bullingdon boys and all that rubbish. There seems no point in trying to change his tiny mind that he’s just plumb wrong.

What’s his problem? Let me guess. Oh yes, we are middle-class, Tory-voting scum. He thinks to himself, “I just don’t want to have to look at you bastards anymore, but I know what you are. You’re filth and I hate the very idea of you!

Each time I look at you I am reminded of my limitations. Your friend looks like a rich toff and you’re clearly a fit old sod! You’re probably doing useful things – a member of that tribe of productive people who make me feel wholly inadequate. I just hate looking at your smooth, polished faces because you remind me of my failures and shortcomings.

You’re raising money for a charity walking round bloody Britain. Why don’t you sit on your sodding backside, smoking, drinking and watching daytime porn like me, eh? Why don’t you join Labour and do away with wealth creation, good management and hard-won profit?

Why don’t you devote your time to what you can screw out of the system, join a few “Stop the War” rallies, litter the streets with McDonald’s cartons, get drunk on Saturdays and snarl at everyone like a joyless left-wing, tattooed piss artist like me? I hate you! Do you get it?

Havana Blues
Years ago, I went to Cuba on a charitable mission. I arrived in Havana on a Sunday and as I am a churchy sort of person, I went to a service in a jumbo church in the middle of the city.

I am sure that many of my blog readers are churchgoers, and I’ll bet that many of you find it hard going following the order of service. Usually there are at least four pieces of paper to navigate! But the really important question is when to stand up and sit down? How can you get through any Anglican service without making a pluperfect fool of yourself?

Imagine then trying to do all this when the proceedings are conducted in Spanish! The Havana church was crammed with about 800 worshippers and I was jammed smack in the middle. I decided just to follow what the man sitting in front of me was doing: when he got up, so would I, and if he sat down, I would follow suit.

All went smoothly enough until around halfway through the service: I stood up when he did before realising that we were the only two people on our feet. What had gone wrong? The entire congregation began to laugh: they didn’t just snigger, the laughter rolled round the church and gathered momentum until the tears were literally pouring down people’s faces.

I had no idea what they all found so funny, and so I stood like a fool until thankfully my man sat down and so did I.

When at the end of the service I shuffled out, people were still grinning and pointing at me. I asked the pastor, “Please tell me why they were all laughing?”

“My poor man, he said, “I put in a baptism notice halfway through the service and I asked the father of the child to stand up – and you both did!”

Random Question
Why is it that I spy Jeremy Corbyn look-alikes everywhere, all beetling along on bikes, all sporting straggly, little white beards?

Another lovely day’s walking, on our own this time. We passed a vast fruit farm and a small army of Bulgarian fruit pickers, all scurrying along and gesturing that they don’t speak English.

Marcus, our Zimbabwean driver was surprised that whenever he stops in a village and parks by a verge, a spry pensioner often dashes out of a cottage and demands – often aggressively – that he moves at once and what did he think he’s doing parking there anyway!

Marcus is one if the most well mannered and gentle people I have ever met (that’s why he is our driver) and he always tries to disarm them with an apology and a smile and then off he drives. I wonder whether these folk spend their day just building aggression and waiting for the opportunity to have a go at someone. They say that in an uneventful life there is no such thing an an unimportant event and maybe Marcus and his parking is making their day! They are able to say to their friends – if they have any – “Disgraceful behaviour so told him, good and proper.”

Out of Sight, Out of Mind…

Some time ago a Zimbabwean friend of mine died suddenly. I knew him and his wife well and noted that they were the proud parents of two sons: one a lecturer at Durham university, and the other a professor at Exeter. Within six months, my friend’s widow mas making applications to ZANE for financial assistance.

I was astounded and rang both of the sons (readers, you can be proud of me: I was the epitome of discretion itself). It soon became clear that neither had any idea that their mother was facing acute hardship. They both expressed genteel surprise and told me that they would attend to her financial needs.

Go figure as they say. How rubbish is that? But ZANE is not in the business of assisting families who cannot communicate properly, and we often have to ring relatives to explain the harsh facts of life to them so that we do not waste donor money.

Time and again, our staff have to remind relatives who have left Zimbabwe to forge new lives – be it in Edinburgh, London, Toronto or Hobart – that the people they have left behind are having a hard time and need assistance. Experience shows me that the speed at which people forget their friends and relatives as they forge a new furrow someplace else is truly astonishing.

Longing for the Limelight
There is a poem by W.H. Auden called “Musée des Beaux Arts” that deals with this theme. Based on the famous painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, it describes how Icarus plummets from the sky while a ploughman carries on with his work and a ship sails calmly by. Wholly unconcerned by his plight, they presumably have more important things to do and worry about.

We are all guilty of being self-focused. I suppose growing up means trying to hide this iron fact as far as we are able.

There is a story about how an actress playing the nurse in Romeo and Juliet was asked what the play was all about? You will recall that the nurse is a great part for an older woman. She’s been around for a while, she says things that the audience wants to hear, and she raises a few laughs. But the fact remains that she is not Juliet, and she only is in a very few scenes. She probably appears in just one costume like a green bin bag, and she has a rather insane sort of headdress, a vast construction with horns and a veil.

Anyway the actress thinks very carefully about how best to summarise the plot of Romeo and Juliet: “Well, it’s about this nurse…”

So on we go. We are the stars of our own stories and sometimes we forget we are not at the centre of other people’s as well… and that other people can forget about us altogether.

One of my vital roles is to ensure that the forgotten people of Zimbabwe are remembered against the background of the many other worthy causes that battle to gain our attention. It isn’t easy.

—

As we go round the subject of “Brexit” arises. Interestingly, Theresa May is a popular choice as Prime Minister in both camps. Apparently she voted a reluctant “remain” and makes encouraging noises about “Brexit”. She is firm, honest, hard working, tough, competent with no small talk. Many people try to compare her with Margaret Thatcher, which I think is a touch silly as Mrs T was a Titan whose talents were suited for her time, whilst Prime Minister May is her own woman. And able women who play their cards right have an advantage in a man’s world, particularly if Chancellor Merkel’s career ends later this year in the aftermath of foolishly allowing one million refugees into her country against the heartfelt wishes of so many of her people.

But I think May has an advantage over Thatcher in that she has no children to distract her, no son Mark to be helplessly stranded in a desert somewhere. No teenage son to be found helplessly drunk in Trafalgar Square (Tony Blair’s lot). No worries as to which school to send them to. She can just get on with the job without distraction.

We can’t complain about the start of the walk.

We were welcomed in Hay on Wye by the newly elected Chris Davies, MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a leading Conservative luminary, Roger White.

The loon who devised out first day walking is clearly out on day release and the sooner he is incarcerated again the better. Just looking at the hills he made us climb made me feel sea sick. We wheezed up and down with some difficulty but I managed partly because I was stung into overdrive by Roger who to my astonishment told me that he is eight years older than I am and he shot up the highest gradient as if he was jet propelled. So I gloomily plodded on in his wake. It was a glorious day and we agreed that there is nowhere on earth so beautiful than good old England from Easter to late September.

Can anyone tell me why there are 10,000 people waiting in this nasty camp in Calais trying to get to England? Why don’t they learn French and settle down in France? What’s wrong with France? What a dilemma:  if the UK authorities were to we accept the present campers, another 10,000 would appear trying to climb into lorries and so on. If we gave way to the Greens all we would be doing is to encourage the people smugglers.

A Tale of Two Dogs

So we are out of the EU.

I know that ZANE members will be on different sides of this argument, and I am heedful that the topic is toxic. I had not realised until recently how emotive this issue has become. Just like our seventeenth-century civil war between Cavaliers and Roundheads, the issue appears to have divided marriages, families and communities. In a family I know well, a son is refusing to speak to his mother because she voted “out”. He has told her seriously that their hitherto loving relationship is over for good.

But there are two sides to every issue. Jeffrey Archer once told me that he asked the Israeli ambassador to lunch along with that of the Palestinians.

He asked them both, “Are you 100 per cent sure you are right, or only 98 per cent?”

They agreed with the lower percentage.

“Okay”, he said, “then we have 4 per cent wiggle room.”

The Brexit issue has generated so much rage. My daughter Clare – a ZANE trustee and the chaplain of Christ Church in Oxford – recently gave a talk on anger. One of her stories was as follows:

A grandfather was taking his grandson for a walk, but as they walked the old man fell silent. After some time the little boy asked him why he was not talking.

“I have two dogs fighting savagely in my mind,” replied the old man.

“Gosh,” said the boy, “please tell me about them?”

“One is named peace, love, tranquillity, gentleness, kindness and obedience.”

“That’s nice,” said the boy. “What about the other?”

“The other is called anger, rage, violence, jealousy, retribution and pride.”

“And which one will win?” asked the child.

“It all depends on which one I am feeding.”

Happy Holidays

You will have seen the adverts proclaiming how wonderful Scotland is as a holiday destination. And so it is – but if you’re going there, do take care!

Friends of mine Michael and Ann went to Edinburgh for the weekend with their eight-year-old son, Henry. On arriving, they stopped off at a cafe in Castle Street. For those of you who don’t know the area, Castle Street is smack in the city centre, connecting George Street and Princes Street.

My friends were enjoying their coffee, when Henry decided to play up – you know how ghastly eight-year-old boys can be when tired. He screamed and shouted, then spattered his ice cream on the table, just for the hell of it.

With no more ado, Michael turned him over, spanked him and then plonked him back in his seat. End of row.

After ten minutes, a police car pulled up outside the cafe. Two policemen and a policewoman appeared, briefly talked to the owner, and then promptly arrested Michael. Despite vigorous protests from Ann, little Henry was taken into care.

Michael was taken to the police station and charged with assault. Purple with rage and protesting furiously, he was banged up for the weekend, and there he stayed until Monday morning when he was released on bail.

The family then flew back to London, vowing never to visit Scotland ever again. But some time later, Michael was obliged to fly back to Edinburgh to stand trial for assaulting a minor. He was fined and bound over.

Happy holidays in Scotland, but don’t belt your kids – well, not in public anyway.

—

We are spending the night with an old friend in a delightful house in Kinnersley near Kington.

Cathy is a long-standing friend of ZANE

Dear Tom and Jane,

As you set out on your latest walk for ZANE I thought this story might be of interest to you and the people you meet along the way who may want to know what life’s like in Zimbabwe in 2016.

On a recent weekend away we went to a spot along the banks of a river in the hot, dry lowveld of Zimbabwe. We had a rare and unexpected treat and sat in the shade to be entertained by a group of traditional musicians from a nearby village.

There were ten members of the mbira band sitting along the narrow wooden bench: six men and four boys. The band leader, the oldest in the group, addressed the small audience on a sweltering afternoon under a dazzling blue sky. The sun was slowly heading towards the horizon when the band leader stood up to speak. First the older members of the band would play, followed by the youngsters he said.
The young ones were still learning, but they were already very good, he said. As the old get older and prepare to move on, so the young ones move in to take over; that is the way it should be, the band leader said, a huge smile across his face. You couldn’t help but look for double meaning in his words. And then they began: clear tones of the mbira’s, rhythmic clapping, shaking rattles and hypnotic, repetitive song, taking you instantly to another place and time. Then the young ones came on.

On his head the youngster wore a green cardboard biscuit box; once containing lemon creams now the box made perfect headgear, decorated with feathers stuck into the corrugations. For six minutes the youngster danced to the accompaniment of the mbira band; half way through another youngster joined him, rattles in his hands, he too danced and stomped. A third youngster came to the centre to dance, strings of large,round wooden beads around his neck and waist, a stout stick in his hand. On and on the mbira band played and later, as the sun touched the horizon, the hippo in the muddy brown river beyond grunted and snorted before disappearing beneath the surface, waiting for their time to emerge. Men playing mbira’s, youngsters dancing, everyone tapping, clapping and smiling: aaah this is the Zimbabwe we love and yearn for: filled with richness, diversity and happiness.

This is one face of Zimbabwe but look the other way and the image is completely different. Our leaders seem to have forgotten about these good, rich, beautiful aspects of our country and forgotten about us, the ordinary people.

We see hunger, drought, poverty and water shortages while our leaders argue about diamonds, gold and mines.

We see companies going bankrupt and people losing their jobs while our leaders post bullets to each other, make threats, shout insults and scramble for positions.

We see thousands heading for the border in search of jobs in other countries while our leaders say they want pay rises and new cars.

We see clinics without drugs, hospitals without equipment and doctors on strike while our leaders jet off to Singapore for medical treatment.

We see unemployment of over 90% and pavements filled with unemployed people selling their wares while our leaders say they will close all companies who haven’t ceded 51% of their shareholdings to indigenous Zimbabweans.

We see thousands living in hovels and plastic shacks on the outskirts of all our towns while our Vice President continues to live in a 5 star hotel where he’s been since December 2014, at tax payers’ expense.

While monkeys play in our trees, hippos grunt in our rivers and mbira bands play in the sunset, our leaders are in a dark and dangerous political frenzy that is threatening the very fabric of our country. There is a growing fear of what lies ahead for Zimbabwe and so we watch and wait: longing for the day when Zimbabwe will be great again and where we are all welcome, regardless of our differences.

I wish you and Jane warm and dry days on your walk and hope that Moses can keep up with your pace and indefatigable spirit.

With love,

Cathy

Gate Expectations

I notice that the closer we get to London the larger (and dare I say it, the more vulgar) the houses and of course the higher the “sod you” gates: you know, the ones with push button entry bells designed to keep scruffy folk like us out. I always imagine that behind these walls a series of “Mr Bigs” live with bottle blond wives with vermillion toe nails. Mr Big is always an even uglier version of Alan Sugar; he will be sitting in his vast office which will be dominated by a model of his huge yacht. He will of course be devising ways to screw the public.

Sit on my Memory

We have now done our final stretch from Kingston to Westminster – and a good job too because for heaven’s sake we have walked quite far enough – as we crawled down the Thames tow path, we passed literally hundreds of benches all carrying memorial plaques. A nice way to be remembered methinks.

Another Lovely Tom

I ring Tom, one of the traders in my financial services providers “Spreadex”. They are always and consistently efficient and pleasant.

Talking of pleasant young men…

The Last Word

One of my godsons – a staunch Christian – is to join the services and he has been accepted by RMA Sandhurst to train as an officer. Apparently his parents were not particularly keen on the idea and some of his friends mocked him for “wanting to kill people”. How daft is that?

A Noble Profession

My godson asked for my advice and this is what I told him:

I was flattered you asked me about my military experience. However, I should add a government health warning about my experiences because “the past is a foreign country and they do things differently there”…!

You are entering a noble profession. I hear that you are being mocked by a good many of your friends who do not understand what military life is really about. They think that because you are to be a soldier you are a “war lover” when in fact, of course, the reverse is the case – you are there to stop war. Any country that fails to properly defend itself loses its identity, it’s as simple as that. It’s the first obligation of government to defend the realm and the job of the services is therefore of crucial importance. I understand that we spend about 35 per cent of our GNP on social services and under seven per cent on our national defences. Only the future will demonstrate whether these prove to be the right expenditure priorities for our nation.

Churchill once wrote that “the history of man is the history of war” and that’s a sad fact that any casual student of ancient – and modern – history will know. The idea, therefore, that laying down arms somehow deters the wicked from hostilities indicates that the person who holds such a view knows no history. The Russian communist and violent psychopath Lenin who led the ghastly Russian revolution said that those who were members of the UK peace movements were “useful fools”; more recently, when the Berlin Wall came down and reporters gained access to East German archives, they discovered that the CND was partly funded by the Russians. Oh yes, we need to defend ourselves as a nation, so please join up. Our country needs fine young people such as you obviously are.

I hope you will read all Max Hastings’s books on war, plus Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser and First Light by Geoffrey Wellum. You will much enjoy them.

There are those who proclaim that followers of Christ have to embrace pacifism, wrenching the comments about peacemakers in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount completely out of context. Jesus drew a careful distinction between defending the realm and our private conduct towards our neighbour. Note that Jesus never told the centurion he should change his profession!

In an attempt to help you understand the emotions of war, here are a few thoughts, which I culled from talking to and reading about the experiences of veterans from the Second World War. But I reckon that anyone who experienced any of the many wars since 1945 would agree with them.

War is the peak of human contradiction. It contains every paradox and hardly any answers: it raises hope in hearts, excites dreams that we can solve problems, and usually leaves its victors as well as its victims disappointed, dismayed and disillusioned. But war offers its survivors in battle one supreme emotion – the feeling of having been through the turmoil of fire and having lived to mourn one’s comrades in arms. It binds friendships tempered in the forge of white-hot experience in a way unmatched in other relationships in our peaceful society. This perhaps explains its attractions and intoxicating lure to the warrior instinct in us all, buried away as it is with our feelings of insecurity and fears that are stored in our subconscious.

This is not an argument to justify war by any means but an attempt to try to place the whole process in context. I am sure that when you have left the army you will see the rest of your life through the prism of your service experiences: you will never again know such fear, friendships and contrasting emotions. It will be your university of life.

In 1974, Erich Fromm offered this observation in his book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness:

“War to some extent reverses all values. War encourages deep-seated human impulses, such as altruism and solidarity to be expressed – impulses that are stunted by the principles of egotism and competition that peacetime life engenders in modern man. Class differences disappear to a marked extent. In war, a man is man again, and he has a chance to distinguish himself, regardless of privilege that social status confers upon him as a citizen. War is an indirect rebellion against the injustice, inequality and boredom governing social life in peacetime… the fact that war has these positive features is a sad comment on our civilization.”

Please let me know your progress.

Aunt Agatha

Economist Maynard Keynes once said, “When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind.” What do you do?

One of the joys of life is to be able to discuss things with the young; then, when your learn something new, to adjust your viewpoint. Clearly Maynard Keynes understood why some people – particularly the elderly – can be so tiresome to talk to. All too many of us are firmly set in our ways and patterns of thinking, and simply refuse to budge.

Take Aunt Agatha, for example, a teacher in her day, and a good one too. However, as she grew older, she became increasingly irritating because she simply stopped thinking. This had nothing to do with dementia since other factors were clearly at work.

Closing the Door

Towards the end of her life, my aunt upset me so much that I chose to say little else to her apart from passing the time of day and being as kind as I could be without losing my temper. It’s upsetting when you seeing someone you once respected and still love behaving like a loon. So from time to time, I couldn’t help myself from trying to correct her. However, Aunt Agatha had ceased to hold opinions: instead she paraded prejudices. She simply ignored any information that might persuade her to change her mind, and instead would cling to her old views rather like a swimmer terrified of letting go of her water wings in case she sank.

US psychiatrist Scott Peck’s theory is that Agatha had allowed herself to succumb to a lethal combination of fear and laziness: fear that if she allowed herself to absorb new information, she risked having to change her mind. She realised instinctively that if she allowed that to happen, her fixed map of the world, carefully constructed over considerable time to protect her from the cave where dragons might lurk, would have to be redrawn. So she allowed her natural laziness to engulf her like a shroud so that in time she grew incapable of the necessary effort and courage needed to face reassessing her views on life.

One of Agatha’s least attractive features was her default position, which inclined her to look down on various groups of people so she could feel better about herself. So her opinions about Jews, blacks and Johnny Foreigner were culled straight from The National Front. Once, I sought to challenge her view that the Paralympic Games were a disgrace (because it’s cruel to allow cripples to make spectacles of themselves as a public entertainment.) When I showed Agatha pictures of cheering crowds and happy competitors, all she could say was: “You do go on… you can’t bully me!” Then when I told her she was being absurd, she replied: “You’re always so argumentative and silly!”

She simply closed the conversation down. She thought her dogmatism indicated strength. Discussion with her was the dialogue of the deaf.

Sad that. I saw a car sticker once that read: “Get even: grow really old and become a problem to your children.” I know exactly what the author meant.

And Finally…

Apparently, once when Billy Graham’s wife Ruth was driving along a Californian turnpike, there was a mile-long tailback caused by extensive road works. After an hour’s wait, she saw a sign that read: “End of Construction. Thank you for your patience.”

Ruth died in 2007. She asked to have her gravestone inscribed thus:

“End of Construction: Thank you for your patience.”

I rather like that.

Rug, Rats!

We stay in a beautiful house and I baptise it by casting a glass of claret on a cream rug! They were very kind about it (what else could they do?) and produced a marvellous machine which managed to obliterate most of it.

Lost for Words

When we are asked to sign visitors books ( we usually are) there is often a column to facilitate “comments”. The trouble with this is that I am always lost for superlatives. Previous writers have already combed the dictionary for adulatory adjectives. And I suppose we are being asked to outdo the compliments of previous guests. I refuse to play this game and so copy King Lear’s daughter, Cordelia, simply thank our hosts politely and merely add my name and address.
Small Stones

I saw a sign recently that proclaimed, “The person who wants to move mountains, starts off by carrying small stones.” I rather liked this as it sums up the need to delay gratification. It ties into the aim that I have adopted for ZANE, and that is that we should be trying to save the people of Zimbabwe one paper clip at a time. It takes hard work and an enormous amount of time. And it’s only after much effort that we see – just occasionally – that something substantial has been achieved.

Job Satisfaction
I read recently comments made by Nathalie Harrison, a leading dancer with The Royal Ballet. I cannot think of a more demanding job. It’s not particularly well paid, and the work is mentally and physically painful. And because the demands of the dancing profession are all consuming, she claims it’s “a complete lifestyle” – unless you are wholly dedicated, you won’t make the standard.

“Of course it’s cruel,” she says. “What goes on the stage is what the director wants at that time, and he’s not going to do something out of obligation or sympathy to me because I have an off day or feel sick. No one understands the demands of the life. It’s all about striving to achieve perfection. We’re way over the line of obsession but we’re all the same, so we think it’s okay.”

Nathalie reckons she can be proud of about one in 20 of her performances. She deplores the fact that so few young people today take their jobs sufficiently seriously. “I deplore,” she says, “the present generation who thinks that success should come easily. A lesson that my profession taught me early on is that the most rewarding moments that feel spectacular are those we have worked incredibly hard for. The harder you work, the greater the reward, and that is something I am not sure that younger people grasp. This fuels my loathing of current fashionable TV shows; young people who have done no training or hard work wanting to be famous, and crying and demanding it. There is a sense of people thinking they are owed something, but we have to earn success. Anything simply handed to someone doesn’t produce the satisfaction that hard graft delivers.”

Brand Power
I counted an average of four full pages describing the birth of William and Kate’s princess in each of the readable newspapers. Perhaps the attention given was somewhat overdone? I am delighted for the royal couple, but for goodness sake – surely there are other things in the world to focus upon for page after page besides a royal birth!

Then I heard that a group of people had camped outside the hospital for two solid weeks waiting to learn the news of the royal birth. How oddball is that?!

I have always been a staunch royalist: I am a supporter because I am a hard-headed traditionalist and pragmatist, and I realise that it is always easier to criticise institutions rather than devise a workable alternative. Imagine, if you will, a head of state called Bercow or Prescott or Heseltine, and you can understand what I mean. Prime ministers can be removed and replaced relatively easily while the ship Britannia steams inexorably on. You will recall that Prime Minister Thatcher was, for example, unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the Gulf War and the UK got on with things remarkably well. Those who remember the ghastliness of the impeachment of the late president Richard Nixon in the US will understand why the overarching institution of monarchy has advantages.

On top of constitutional advantages, the “brand” value of the monarchy to UK Ltd is overwhelming. It beats the brand name of Coca Cola and Apple into a cocked hat. I watched the French presidential ceremony of Francoise Holland: there stood a fat, little man in a brown raincoat standing disconsolately in the drizzle. This gloomy inauguration was watched by a small crowd of people including his assorted discarded mistresses, his present one(s), and a scattering of illegitimate children. The French soldiers were the cast from The Student Prince. It’s sad for the France of today that in 1789, the revolutionaries cut off the heads of the French aristocracy and monarchy, and all those with a little glamour. The “terror” thus released comprehensively destroyed “Brand France” in terms of pageantry and viewing potential. Did you watch the Hollande inauguration ceremony dear reader? I rest my case.

What do I mean by the vulgar term “brand value”? When the next UK royal ceremony takes place – perhaps the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh – it will be watched by billions stretched around the globe: viewers from Tasmania to Hawaii, and from Wellington to Nairobi. And our ceremony will be immaculate in every respect because in the UK we do this sort of thing really well, in fact better than anyone else in the world. What better publicity can our tourist industry and exporting businesses reasonably want?

So monarchy wins in respect of stability and tradition, and pays for itself many times over. But along with the NHS, monarchy is the nearest thing we have to God in the UK and I find that embarrassing and a tad distasteful. As I’ve said before, the never-ending media whirligig and the public’s devouring fascination must be a terrible burden for those centred remorselessly in the spotlight. The quasi-religious adulation is over the top – there is something creepy going on here and it worries me. And beware: adulation can morph into an obsession, thence into savage destruction in a media nanosecond. Anyone who disputes this has only to recall the life and times of Princess Diana to see what I mean. So for goodness sake, can we please show some moderation?

I recall some time ago there was a wry letter in the Telegraph’s letter column that rang true:

“Sir

I see that Princess Kate has not appeared in your front page for some two days now.

Is she ill?”

Friends and Relation

This has been an especially great day because our eldest daughter Clare walked with us all morning. Made up for the incessant rain.

We lunched with Colonel Paul Davis who used to be the Secretary General of the services charity Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League and a great friend of ZANE and ours. Also, Richard Warren who loyally drove for the last two of our walks. Despite getting to know us really well he has become a great friend.

My thoughts turned to Commonwealth, Empire and war…

The History of Man

I read in Rob Still’s Global Private Equity Fund report that the statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town was torn down because it represented “racial supremacy” and was a symbol of “colonialism”.

How ridiculous is that? Why do we continually apologise whenever the subject of the British Empire is raised? Why are we so slow to defend our past, especially when people are just parading their prejudices and talking nonsense? All too often, critics judge events that occurred 150 years ago in the context of the hugely changed world of today. They simply don’t understand that the past is a foreign country and “they do things differently there” – and not always badly either.

Facing the Facts

Will southern Africa degenerate to the level of Zimbabwe? On present showing, the answer, sadly, has to be yes. Of course, anyone who declaims the harsh truth loudly enough will inevitably be accused of “raaaaacism,” a routine knee-jerk reaction – but I think we should fearlessly state the facts.

Mankind probably emerged from Africa, likely emigrating from and then returning in multiple waves. Mankind shares the same DNA; we are of one species and created equally in the sight of God. In other words, it is racist to deem people as sub-human in the way that – for example – the Germans condemned the Jews in the middle of the last century. But it is not racist to point out essential historical facts, as stated below.

For all sorts of reasons, the various branches of man developed unevenly and great empires have risen and fallen with metronomic regularity. At some point, the Assyrians, Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Huns and Mongols all dominated world society. Attempts have been made to explain the factors that dictated the unevenness of the development of human societies. Ian Morris’s excellent book Why the West Rules… for Now attempts to measure this development over the millennia.

Survival of the Fittest

The simple fact is that, as Churchill argued, “The history of man is the history of war.” Throughout history, life was tough, brutish and short…especially for the losers. Vanquished and weaker societies were conquered, absorbed, enslaved or simply obliterated.

Ian Morris’s latest book, War! What is it Good For?, illustrates how inter-societal war over the millennia facilitated the advance of mankind by liquidating the weak and unsuccessful, and by creating the “rule of might” under whose protection mankind carried out trade and innovation to progress the species. The worst position to be in was to belong to a weaker society or tribe in any such clash or conflict. As history illustrates, such societies were always virtually annihilated.

Relatively speaking, when the southern African people clashed with the arriving European settlers, as a society of Iron Age pastoralists they were vulnerable. History shows that the indigenous southern Africans were in fact generously and – relatively speaking – fairly treated. And they have much to be grateful for to the early Dutch/Afrikaner settlers and later on to the “British Empire.”

The Fruits of Colonialism

For the last 600 years, there has been a vigorous development and expansion of the European peoples. There are all sorts of reasons: the growth of venture capital, competitive structures of society, shared information, printing, the Industrial Revolution and the harnessing of fossil energy. European society blossomed and exploded in an orgy of discovery, technical advancement and progress. The continent of Europe brought project power across the globe. The Spanish Empire in South America, and the rise of the United States, Canada, Australasia, the steppes of Russia and Siberia all bear testament to the rise of the European nations. But please note this: whenever there was a clash between the vibrant new European peoples and less advanced societies, the results have always been ugly for the latter.

Note that the native North Americans, the Aboriginal people in Australia, and the Aztecs and the Incas were all effectively obliterated. There are many reasons why the southern African indigenous people were spared this carnage. First, the early Dutch/Huguenot “settlers” became assimilated into Africa as an “African tribe”. Next, the Afrikaners failed to attract follow-up mass immigration as happened across the new world; and last, southern Africa came latterly under the relatively benign and progressive flag of the British Empire.

The fact is that the indigenous Africans who found themselves at the bottom on the development heap were in deep trouble. They needed to catch up fast – without being swamped and obliterated by clashes with more advanced societies; and the fact is they were deeply fortunate to be colonised by the Afrikaners and the British Empire.

Why were they fortunate? Well, take for example the fact that when Gandhi was openly defying the British Raj in India, Hitler advised Chamberlain thus: “Shoot him… people will soon forget!” But of course the Raj couldn’t do that, for they knew such an action would breach the law of the land. What other dominant power would have been so tolerant and decent, or wedded to the rule of law?

In the brilliant book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, economic historian Neil Fergusson illustrates the many positive contributions of British colonialism. He makes the vital point that under the British flag, more capital was transferred from the developed to the undeveloped world than at any time before or since in history, and that the risk premium for such transfers was artificially and derisorily low. Thus Anglo-American risk transfers and skills helped build southern Africa into the economic powerhouse of Africa with associated institutions, infrastructure and technology.

Southern Africa has much to thank Cecil Rhodes and the British Empire for. Of course, there were gross excesses and no one can be proud of the miseries and injustices of Apartheid. However, when you take into account the building of cities and their vast necessary infrastructure, the rule of law, and democratic and civic institutions, it’s quite an inheritance. In the round, all you have to do is look around and see – with unprejudiced eyes – what has been achieved and passed on to future generations.

Beloved Country

The good news is that, as a whole, today’s world society has become wealthier, healthier, happier, kinder, cleaner and better educated. People live more peaceful, more equal and longer lives that at any time since Adam. The bad news is that weak-strong societal conflicts are now much subtler than in the past: the battleground is about surviving in the global world economy. There is no escaping the iron rule that to survive you must innovate, but not all boats will rise in the rising tide of global progress and prosperity.

On present showing, I suspect that as indigenous southern Africans fall back in the economic race, they – as has been the case in Zimbabwe – will react increasingly aggressively towards the heritage and history of the white minority. As the aggression rises in tempo, decision boundaries by multi-national companies will be wound back to the shorter term, capital will be invested elsewhere, and emigration forms will be filled in by the most talented. The universities will start to lose gifted teachers as well as the hugely beneficial annual influx of US students, and the alumni will file their long-term endowment plans in the bin. All this will be to the great cost of the departments of engineering, science, mathematics, commerce and law: all vital disciplines if southern Africa is to compete in world markets.

The real problems that face southern Africa have nothing to do with old colonial history; rather they are that: (1) Education performance is now amongst the lowest in the world and as a result, the “born free” of the “Beloved Country” generation are being condemned to servitude and unemployment; (2) Pervasive corruption is smeared across all aspects of southern African life; and (3) There is chronic mismanagement by crucial state-owned enterprises.

The House of Tomorrow

Our children are all doing – well to us, anyway! – interesting things. Milly is a training consultant, a role she has created with her own effort, flair and energy. Thomas is starting his curacy outside Bath, Oliver starts his curacy in the centre of Cambridge, and Clare has just been appointed chaplain of Christ Church Oxford. Our children – and our 10 grandchildren – are our pride and joy, as children usually are to parents the world over and have been since time began.

It’s satisfying to watch our children’s careers and families unfold. They are pleased to be involved in jobs that are love affairs, and for our part, we are as proud as punch. But it’s dangerous for us to try and get too close. We should try and perfect the art of selfless love. Good old St Paul claimed selfless love was like a “drink offering”: a good metaphor, because liquid poured from a glass is a one-way trip. In my view, this is as good a description of selfless love as you can get. Of course, parental love can be a volatile force. It can overwhelm us like a tsunami, but we all have to be careful of living vicariously through children because a parent’s love is like a ball: it gets passed onto each generation. But the ball only goes one way, that is from parent to child and onto that child’s children in turn – and you cannot expect the ball to be passed back to you from your own children. Yes, of course, we love our parents, however old we get – we always need them, and when they die, it’s a loss to be mourned. But it’s a different kind of a love from that which you give a child. And, as parents, our job is to pass the ball forwards and not back. We are our children’s custodians: they are not our possessions.

As the poet Khalil Gibran wrote:

“You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls live in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit.”

Nor can we expect any/much thanks from our children for what we may have done for them – any more than we thanked our parents for what they did for us (which in my case, was not a lot.)

What goes round comes round in the perfect symmetry of life.

Welcome to Our Church?

While waiting for Markus I visited St Nikolas’ church in Guildford. Although it was 11.30am on a Sunday and there were people inside, the doors were locked. I wandered round to find that the somewhat elderly congregation was having coffee in a smart hall at the back.

Interesting, this. What sort of welcome would I receive? I am old (ish!) and dressed as an itinerant scruff – old trousers, a half eaten baseball hat (thanks to our dog Moses), a fluorescent yellow jacket and my big toe showing through my boot, so my fashion suggests “Salvation Home for Destitutes” rather than Hackett, if you know what I mean. What sort of welcome would I have? So, in I walked and the crowd parted like the Red Sea … everyone ignored me, including the vicar, and went on talking to their chums.

My barren visit was saved by the finance chairman called Patrick, who was welcoming, and he gave me coffee.

However, I feel that If I had been an ex-prisoner or black or under fifty I would have not felt welcome.

When I went round to the front doors again there were four young people trying to get in. I told them the bad news… that is that the church has lost the plot and is as dead as the dodo. They smiled and went on their way.

I understand that the vicar is “very spiritual”… that’s nice, then. But it would be even nicer if he had the courtesy to greet strangers because I have always understood that this is vital part of a vicar’s job.

There was a large sign saying “Welcome” on the front of this church, but I have learned that this is only symbolic!

I walked away, sadly…

Pretty Politics

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus never declared, “blessed are the nice” – though it seems all too many of our countrymen want to be thought of as just that. These people don’t want actually to have to do anything in particular to prove their niceness, virtue and political correctness, and they reckon talk will do. They have long since learned what George McDonald Fraser’s great creation Harry Flashman knew: people take you at face value… they don’t probe or think much. So if you can talk the talk, you don’t have to walk the walk. What do I mean?

Talking the Talk

I listened to another vicar the other day, a substantial lady, holding forth to a small group with her “Christian” views on politics. It seems today that clergy talk of little else: they know it’s less offensive and rather easier to discuss, for example, the alleged iniquities of the growth in the number of food banks than preach the Gospel. She talked about “her journey” and then her “vision” for a better society. Then she claimed she was “passionate” about and really “believed” in the NHS, and the plight of the poor to whom she had been “called to serve”. She said, in particular, that she advocated a higher minimum wage.

Why should this lady care that if the minimum wage rises too high, low-skilled workers, whose abilities simply cannot command a high minimum wage, become unemployed? That would of course not be her problem. She was effortlessly indicating to her audience that she was holy, generous and warm-hearted. She was showing that she cared deeply about her fellow man – or woman. All she had to do was talk and send verbal signals. I told her that it was my view that the “Christian” communities held no monopoly of such views, and stances she claimed were “Christian” were surely shared by Muslims, Hindus, Jews and secular humanists. She looked hurt, for all she wanted to be was “nice” and I was complicating things.

PC World

This faux niceness is everywhere. One of our young friends claimed at a recent supper party she had voted “Green”. Everyone said what an interesting choice that was; oh yes, what a sensible move. No one asked how the nation could afford, for example, the £45bn bill they were proposing for insulating everyone’s lofts? Or even commented that the scale of their proposed financial profligacy was breathtaking. No one asked why was it considered wise to run down our defences and drop our nuclear defences in a dangerous world? It would seem, rather, that voting Green is considered to be a “nice” and acceptable option.

At another function, one of our other friends announced he had voted UKIP. There were sharp intakes of breath from the other guests for he had unwittingly stated that he was fundamentally rather nasty, that he did not hold liberal media-approved opinions – one of which of course is to loathe UKIP and all its works. The other guests wanted to demonstrate by their disapproval of UKIP they were not racist. Now, I hasten to add that I am not a UKIP supporter, but the fact that the UKIP manifesto was a paragon of common sense when compared to the Greens’ was not even mentioned. Then one of the other guests said, presumably in order to indicate what a nice person she was and how much she cared about the poor, how much she loathed the Daily Mail. Then, in case that message had been missed, she announced how much she despised Murdoch. I asked her why? Silence fell. I presume she was convinced that her views – prejudices really – were for parading, not debating. In other words they could not be challenged in polite company. I asked if she read other papers, and of course she answered that yes she did. Then I told her that if it hadn’t been for Murdoch courageously taking on the print unions in the 1970s, then there would not today be any other newspapers to read. She stared at me silently because parading an acute dislike of Murdoch is a totemic statement indicating “political correctness”.

Signalling how “nice” you are crosses party boundaries. For example, the Conservatives always have to prove that they are not the “nasty party”. This is one of the reasons they have to hammer off-shore havens and tax avoiders. They were about to name and shame a few avoiders when it was pointed out they were in the process of destroying some of their most generous supporters.

Then why do you think that the Tories ring-fenced the expenditure of 0.7 per cent of our GDP on foreign aid? The efficacy of such expenditure on foreign aid is irrelevant: it was to prove the party is nice and caring. When Cameron claims he is a “passionate defender” of the NHS – note the “passion” – he is declaring he also believes, along with everyone else, in what passes for God in the UK. This triggers the other parties to declare they passionately believe in the NHS even more than Cameron, and that they are therefore even more “compassionate” than him. The virtue lies in the wish. The use of the word “believes” shifts the argument away from evidence about which health care system results in the greatest benefit for the greatest number of voters, to a visceral demonstration of compassion. Then the other parties angrily shriek that the terrible Tories want to “privatise” the NHS and – despite the NHS’s manifest inefficiencies, that will bankrupt us all in the end – that anyone who seeks to change it in any way has to be another Stalin. “Gosh”, we are meant to think, they must be virtuous and ever so “nice” to be so angry and to shriek so loudly.

Then I know of two people who are core capitalists through and through, and with all the trappings of wealth, who claim always to be “Old Labour” because it signals they are concerned with the plight of the poor. But the reality is somewhat different. There is a poem by the great late Bernard Levin that sums their attitude up:

“The working class can kiss my arse,

I’ve joined the bosses class at last”

Virtue is as Virtue Does

There was a time when Christians believed that to be virtuous you had to do something: help in a food bank, visit the sick, or look after your aging parents and not dump them in a care home. These things of course involve effort and sacrifice. How much easier is it just to talk about virtue and do nothing that is actually virtuous.

Christians hold that pride and parading empty virtue are core sins. This is surely why so many of us find empty verbal compassion and virtue signalling nauseating. Perhaps some people are fooled into believing that those who do little – apart from publicly asserting their moral superiority by boasting they loathe UKIP, Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail – are somehow more virtuous than those who actually take action.

Today’s widespread sham boasting indicates that there is little shame and no real reflection: it’s all words and wind. I have just received an email from George, someone I hardly know. He ends it, “Have a really wonderful weekend, Tom, Warmest possible wishes, George.” (Note the possible!)

Gosh, what a far warmer and generous person George must be than the individual – whom I like a lot – who signed off his email, “Ever Henry”.

Last night we stayed with a dear friend Nigel Pollock outside Godalming. A lovely and relaxed time, much needed after one of our perennial encounters with dis-courteous drivers.

Something Fishy Going on Here…
I recall that a policeman friend of mine arrested a woman driver whom he saw swearing viciously at an inoffensive elderly man who had stopped briefly to allow a woman with a pram to cross the road: she had then given the driver the finger.

Back at the station the policeman deposited the woman in the cells and checked out her papers and the ownership of the car. Soon he released the very angry woman who asked him what the blankety blank he thought he was doing arresting her like that?

“Well madam,” said the cop, “I saw a fish sign in the rear window of your car and a banner saying “Jesus saves” and so when these signs contrasted with your behaviour I was convinced the car had been stolen. My apologies!”

A Day as a Lion

I have occasionally been asked what persuades Jane and I to continue walking for ZANE, and concerned friends wonder whether such an activity isn’t rather risky at our age? I suppose they think that at our stage of life, watching telly in carpet slippers would be a more appropriate way of spending time than staggering up and down the UK. 1,700 miles is a long way!

However, perhaps a single day as a lion is better than a thousand years as a sheep? So, on we plod.

Marshmallow World

Many people think our relatively risk-free and peaceful society is a normal state of affairs. However, we live in extraordinary and unprecedented times. Our strife-free life is a contributing factor to the fact that over 30 per cent of the population is so used to these marshmallow times that they couldn’t even be bothered to vote in the last election. With little sense of history, they are unaware that the essential freedoms we enjoy today – to vote and speak freely, the fact we are more or less an independent people (pity about the EU), religious tolerance, freely elected parliaments and fundamental democratic rights –have all been won in blood by our forefathers. It’s all too easy to just read the sports news and forget that 55 million people died in the Second World War – we take the benefits of peace for granted, and forget the terrible cost.

And while I am thinking dark thoughts, I couldn’t help pondering after we last arrived back from Zimbabwe – a country where people have no state benefits of any kind – what a risk-averse, cosseted and spoiled country the UK has become. In Zimbabwe they have nothing but God’s protection: in the UK we rely on the NHS.

Decline and Fall

The reality is that the seeds of decline lurk everywhere. Gibbon noted five characteristics that led to the fall of the Roman Empire: an obsession with sex and perversion; a celebration of affluence instead of wealth creation; meretricious rubbish posing as art; a desire for more and more people to live off the state; and last, a wide and growing divide between the rich and the poor. Recognise these symptoms anyone?

The banality of the last election frightened me – endless talk of spending money with no attention given to wealth creation. Then the left seeks to cut the armed services with the savings shovelled into either increased welfare in Scotland or our bloated NHS. Lenin would have called Sturgeon and her chums, and their wish to scrap Trident, “useful fools”.

And another thing. What irritates me witless is the lefties’ assumption that they are somehow “nicer” than those with differing views, and automatic occupants of the moral high ground. But the left has no monopoly on compassion. We all want to take money from the “haves” and help the poor. The question is how is the balance to be struck? The idea that the left is “kind” while the right unkind is drivel. Some of the most grotesque mass murderers and dictators had their roots on the left – think Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler.

A Modern Monster

In A.N. Wilson’s excellent book on Hitler, it’s chilling to read that despite the fact he was a monster, he was also a “modernist” (and much liked by his staff). What is fascinating is that most of our lefty friends today would have wholeheartedly agreed with many of his beliefs. Of course, he took his racist views to wild extremes, but he is not alone in this; today we have growing anti-Semitism, and racism is so prevalent in our society that our leaders rightly deem it necessary to implement sterns laws to prevent racial abuse (laws, of course, do not do away with racism, they just mask its pernicious effects).

Of course, Hitler’s racism led him to the ultimate obscenity of mass murder. But he was in fact a boring, commonplace little man with a very “modern” outlook in other areas. He believed in crude Darwinism, along with nearly all the scientists and “sensible” sociologists, politicians and political commentators of our time. Hitler – rather like Blair, who abolished the office of Lord Chancellor – swept away what he regarded as outmoded political structures. He embraced science, not religion, as the answer to life’s mysteries, and he condoned euthanasia and abortion; Hitler regarded himself as forward-looking. Oh yes, and he hated hunting and was a non-smoking vegetarian. In fact, as far as I can see, Hitler’s views were the embodiment of those of the average modern lefty person.

Hitler and his gang started a world war that by its end had killed 52 million people. Without proper defences and with our naive belief that the wars of the wicked past can never return because we are now more “civilised” and “nicer” than before, how can we ensure that the new lefty versions of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam can be spotted before they end the world as we know it? Next time it will be nuclear.

A Stellar Cast

We crawled through thick traffic to the ZANE conference on the second hottest day of the year and, considering Wimbledon is on, it was surprisingly well attended. My friend Paul Boateng – past High Commissioner to South Africa made an excellent chairman. The ambassador Catriona Laing was a star- it’s clear that the Zimbabwe job is highly sensitive and they choose their stars to serve there. We were lucky to have Richard Dowden- director of the Royal Africa Society- and my old friend and clubfoot champion Chris Lavy. All in all a very worthwhile day.
Back to the kind hospitality of ZANE donors.

Turning Heads

Whilst in the car on the way to the conference with Jane, I asked our driver Markus if he looks at women in the street.

“Oh yes,” he admitted, “I always have done!”

“So do I”

“Oh yes Tom,” Jane said sweetly, “do you think they are looking at you?”

Nice having a wife.

—

Shadowlands

Over the last couple of years, we have watched a sad procession of desperate men facing jail sentences and complete ruin for abusing minors. And we read of others destroyed by drink and drugs.

Before we set off this morning, my eye was drawn to yet another sad tale in the paper of a celebrity’s fall from grace – and it set me thinking. These “criminals” have been destroyed by their shadowlands overwhelming them; and there by the grace of God go I.

Something to Die For

We are all created to make a difference. Martin Luther King wrote that, “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, then he isn’t fit to live.” A rather extreme sentiment, but he makes his position very clear. Rather more gently, Sir Walter Scott said that to be productive we need, “a maiden to woo, a battle to fight and a cause greater than ourselves to live for.”

The ominous fact is that if we are unable to make a difference then we will find a substitute because none of us can live without some sort of purpose. It follows that unless we can find our God-given role, we are likely to find an alternative one that the Almighty did not mean us to play. What do I mean?

Occasionally I have had experiences that were so profound I can recall each moment as it happened with clarity: I remember exactly what was said and who said it.

Some years ago on a business trip I was persuaded to visit a “camp” in California for a week. The course’s purpose, I soon discovered, was to put its participants in touch with their inner feelings.

I am a fully paid up member of the church reticent with deep conservative instincts embedded in my DNA: I am English, RMA Sandhurst trained, and my default position is the stiff upper lip. So when it became clear that this place was completely outside my radar, I wanted out fast. But my hosts were insistent I participated and so I rather weakly stayed; in retrospect I’m rather glad, because the experience taught me a great deal.

At the outset we were sworn to secrecy (though, don’t forget that when I’m sworn to total secrecy, it only takes me a week before I forget quite how secret the secret was; in two weeks, I can’t remember that it was a secret at all; and when three weeks have passed, I can’t even recall who told me the secret in the first place.) Anyway, as all this happened many years ago now, I can relate the experience with a more-or-less clear conscience. (Note: be careful before telling me your secret!)

To get back to the camp, numbers were used rather than names, and to create a degree of anonymity, we were all obliged to wear green tracksuits. We were softened up by having to participate in various vigorous games, racing up and down hills and passing rocks backwards and forwards (performing many sits ups if we were too slow). Meanwhile, ramrod instructors screamed the sort of crude insults that I last heard way back in my Sandhurst days. The frenzy and shouting increased as the week progressed.

In the evenings, we were made to form a circle while our leader persuaded us to open our “inner selves” and talk about our feelings; this gradually progressed to exploring our deepest hopes and fears.

Then, on the last couple of nights, psychodrama was used to persuade us to consider our relationship with our parents…. And then we were encouraged to discuss our sex lives.

Quiet Desperation

I managed – just – to retain a sort of lofty detachment and I (thankfully) rediscovered an acute speech impediment from my childhood, so I sat there rather pink and more or less mute. However, several men began to talk brokenly of hidden sexual secrets and miseries. Perhaps this is something only Americans can do with relaxed fluency, although even they found mentally undressing in public difficult.

Then the mood changed… one man admitted that in the past month he had had sex with three women whose names he didn’t even know. Now the floodgates of revelation began to break all around me. Many of the men admitted that they were addicted to using pornography, despite the fact that doing so left them feeling disgusted and emptied. Others admitted – weeping as they did so – to secret drinking; another man was hooked on cocaine, and he saw no means of escaping.

I understood then what Thoreau meant when he wrote that, “men live lives of quiet desperation”.

The course leader told us we all have a shadow mission. Carl Jung wrote that each of us has a “shadow side” whose patterns of thought and actions betray our deepest values, and lead to misery, bad consciences and destroyed families.

I find the description of the “shadow” helps, as it explains my sense of secrecy, chaos and profound feelings of loneliness that my sin creates in me.

So just as we all have a mission in life – a way of using our talents to carry out the work God intends us to fulfil – we all have a shadow mission, our default position if we cruise along with our minds stuck in neutral. We were told that our souls are stained indelibly with the colour of our leisure thoughts.

The shadowland is where we can end up if we allow our natural temptations to lust and greed to dominate. To illustrate this point, one man stared fixedly at the ground as he told us: “My shadow mission is to spend afternoons with a prostitute and let the rest of the world go to hell. My life is so structured, I need some chaos to help me through.”

A few men giggled nervously and then fell silent: the man had no aspiration to be Saddam Hussein or Stalin, such a prospect would of course have appalled him, and so we contemplated instead this sad and all too mundane story of humiliation and degradation. We realised how easy it is to slide into negative and sinful pursuits that can easily become a way of life. It was the sheer hopelessness and utter banality of his shadow mission that gave it the tang of truth.

We reflected how shadow missions can take over our lives. Celebrities are imprisoned for sexual criminality with minors as their shadow missions first overwhelm and then destroy their careers and families.

Being clear about my own shadow mission has been hugely helpful to me, for I now see it for what it is. I realise I do not want to devote any part of my life to it. Shadow missions consume time, money and emotional energy: at the same time, they are wholly negative and replace creativity. They risk family happiness.

Wrestling our Demons

Shadow missions lead to the same destination: Satan’s broken wasteland of lies, disgrace and shuddering despair. Jesus was tempted by a shadow mission: we read in Hebrews that he was tempted like us “in every way”, but he rejected it. In the desert, Satan tempted Jesus to achieve his mission without hunger and without pain. “All the kingdoms of the world I will give you.” But Jesus walked away.

We are all subjected to temptation. In Conan Doyle’s The Final Problem, Sherlock Holmes wrestles with his archenemy Moriarty on a cliff edge wreathed in mist high above the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland.

Just one tiny push, that’s all it takes, and Holmes will fall to destruction in his shadowland.