Day 20- (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 19 – All’s Fair in Love and Dinner

A Salty Tale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modern Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 17 – Sent from Coventry

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

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

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

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

A Family Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 16 – Beyond Our Ken

So Ken Clarke’s ministerial career has ended.

I knew Ken 35 years ago when I was a simple back bencher. Ken told me once that he loved Westminster so much he would have to be carried out in a coffin. I hope that does not happen soon. Ken was very kind to me on one notable occasion and I have followed his career with great affection and interest ever since.

Ken was Minister of Health, Secretary of State for Health, Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and these are just the major posts I can reel offf without recourse to Google. Ken held all these posts successfully. He must hold the record for holding more ministerial offices than anyone else in modern times. He was pipped at the post in 2002 to be the Conservative leader because of his support for the E.U. If he had been a man of less integrity he would have beaten Iain Duncan Smith to the leadership. Ken is delightful company and a jazz expert. He is the largest tree to fall in the political jungle in many years. His departure is profoundly sad and the eclipse of a generation. So Ken has gone. It’s so depressing that I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.

We stayed with loyal friends in Rugely, David and Katie Brown. They kindly drove us to the start point of our Monday and Tuesday walks while our car was being “sorted”. Dinah enjoyed herself so much she decided to mark the occasion by gnawing one of Katie’s special shoes. We walked ourselves more or less senseless round Atherston and on to Ansley and then we trekked along the motorway and round Birmingham to Cooksey Green to stay with another kind friend, Liz Landale, the widow of Sandy, who died roughly two years ago. I can see him in my mind’s eye as I write this and I can hear his measured voice. Liz is the mother of James Landale the BBC commentator. Their house is absolutely lovely.

Beggars Can be Choosers

Earler this week, I walked past a man crouching on a mat in a damp doorway. He was carrying a placard stating he was hungry and homeless. I fumbled him some money and offered a prayer that he might find the courage to change his life. He was looking down so as not to meet my eyes, as if he had been crushed by a series of hideous circumstances. Poor man.

I try to give beggars small change whenever possible. Some people claim this is the wrong way to provide aid, and that we should instead support the local caring agencies. However, that just seems too cool and clinical for me. I know that beggars are likely to spend cash on booze and drugs, and that perhaps they might be conmen – but so what? If they are rogues let that be on their consciences and not mine; and if they choose to spend any cash on booze or drugs, then at least I hope they will derive some enjoyment from that.

Letting Go
The question is, how did this beggar get to where he is? I doubt it’s that hard. Addiction perhaps? Just a few bad decisions, the result say of bankruptcy, and then the wife leaves. Perhaps this was followed by a spell in the slammer and so his “friends” desert him in righteous indignation. Then comes a shattering loss of self-confidence and the downward spiral spins out of control. Finally, the man gets used to his miserable lot. It’s all too horribly easy: there but for the grace of God go we all.

I can’t help wondering if the man actually wants to stop begging? This may sound like an odd question, but a while ago I came upon a woman who developed a pioneering method of curing stammering among young children. I used to stammer when I was young and so I had more than a casual interest in what she had to say. As part of her programme, she would ask her audience of parents to think of the most precious object they owned. Then she told them to imagine losing that treasured possession, and asked them to describe their responses. These varied from panic or shock to deep sadness and bereavement. Finally, she stunned her audience by declaring, “Now you know what it will feel like for your child to lose his or her stammer.”

For a moment there would be utter bewilderment – of course, nobody believes that a child wants to stammer. Such a speech impediment can lead to ridicule and will likely have a severe impact on a child’s social life. However, what the therapist wanted the parents to understand is that sometimes holding on to a disability can be less frightening than change. We get used to our weaknesses and build them into our relationships. They become familiar, part of our world and integral to our self-image – bizarrely, they can be very hard to let go of. Change – even change for the better – can be disorientating, threatening and traumatic.

So maybe the tramp I saw is used to his lot. Perhaps he’s convinced begging is all he’s fit for, and scrounging has become his life’s default position. Perhaps he feels trapped without any options, and that begging is now a life sentence. Yet we all have choice: we can lie on our mats and beg, or get off them and walk away.

Carpe Diem
In the Gospel of Mark, there is a fascinating story of a cripple with a dedicated group of pals who determine to find Christ and beg Him to cure their friend. Jesus is preaching in a house so crowded that the men cannot gain access, and so they scrape a hole in the roof and lower their disabled friend to rest at Christ’s feet. Jesus responds and the man walks away rejoicing.

The point of this story is that the crippled man actually found the courage to finish with his past and get off his mat. He could have decided to stay just where he was and beg for the rest of his life. However, he had the raw courage to embrace the revolution of radical change.

I have a friend who had a profoundly difficult upbringing. He tells everyone the sad details of his feckless father and an emotionally frozen mother who both spent his childhood as drunk as owls. As far as I can tell, my friend has achieved remarkably little with his life; he blames the litany of jobs lost and failed relationships on the emotional fractures he suffered early in his life. When he relates his story, a glassy look crosses his face; you can almost hear the tape clunking into a slot in his mind as his saga is related for the umpteenth time.

The trouble with this is that we all know people who have suffered a ghastly childhood and yet who have somehow managed to muster the grit to forge a new start. We also know those who apparently enjoyed a wonderful childhood, yet who spectacularly went to the dogs and ended up by staying there. There is no inevitability about it and we have choices: to silently suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to seize the day.

I think my sad friend has chosen to remain a victim. I’m sure if challenged, he would deny this bleak analysis – he expects the world to be endlessly sorry for his plight and to excuse his failure. However, he should read Mark’s Gospel and draw a line. I’m not denying this won’t take huge courage, but it’s never too late.

Day 15 – Derby, Death and Lust

We are not too keen on south Derbyshire. Sorry, but it ain’t a patch on the beautiful north. Today we faced vast expanses of scrubby grass randomly blotted with humungous clumps of elephant eye nettles. Fine fun if you are a flea but a stinging misery for us. The farmers who grow their miserable crops of beans across public paths should be driven across them stark naked. If they want a volunteer beater I’m your man!

We were then obliged to cross the A38 both ways. The cars and tankers, all apparently driven by swivel eyed zombies, zoom along as if they were racing at Silverstone. I suggest you should check the validity of your life insurance policies before crossing. Then we found we had made a false start because there was no bridge across the River Love. So, in order to resume our correct route, we were forced to retrace our steps and we had to face the A38 for the second time in an hour. This trip was the ultimate laxative as it seemed so unnecessary.

Still, we are making steady progress. General Montgomery insists that every yard of our 260 mile trek is walked and any backsliding by me is met with withering contempt and a swipe with her stick.

Walked through vaguely improving bits of south Derby and then we hit Swadlincote and it all went pear-shaped again; it’s one of the more dismal places we have walked through in the last five years. We lunched in Chicote in the graveyard of the local church. The church was locked, as usual!

I woke up out of sorts. Then I read a booklet prepared by my friend James Pringle, in which he quoted a work on spiritual depression by Martyn Lloyd Jones. Lloyd Jones mantains that we spend too much time listening to our inner thoughts, which are often negative and depressing, when instead we should be talking to ourselves and questioning the dark influences that can drag us down. I spend the morning brooding about this.

The Long Goodbye

I saw yet another news report claiming that the number of deaths amongst the elderly rises sharply when winter conditions are poor. The implications of the report are obvious: that our mean old government should do something about it by increasing heating allowances, providing better pensions, improving NHS services, and so on.

Not that this affects me of course, for I am still two years younger than the age Nelson Mandela was when he became president of South Africa. However, should we be actively looking for ways to prolong the lives of those who are already very old? Don’t get me wrong – of course I don’t want anyone to suffer unnecessarily or to die unreasonably before time. But do we really want to live to be 100 or 110? Do we seriously expect that doctors will one day announce they have cracked it, and we can all live forever? When is the right time to die? Is a lingering, lonely and aching old age better than death?

We all have to die of something at some time, and I recall there used to be a release from this mortal coil called flu. In the hard, old days it was called the “Old Man’s Friend”. In today’s marshmallow times, medical science has zapped flu as deadly enemy number one along with dozens of other ailments that used to carry people off to a relatively early death.

Joy and Woe…
On the face of it, that has to be a very good thing. But as the poet Blake told us “Joy and woe are woven fine”. That means that whenever we hear good news there is usually a sombre shadow hovering in the background to spoil our fun and make us think. This particular dark shadow guarantees that whenever we read of yet another medical breakthrough, another couple of months can be added to our life expectancy – already longer than at any time in the history of the world. So we are destined to spend ever longer in what Ronald Reagan’s wife, Nancy, called “the long goodbye”, often a time of acute misery for us and invariably a time of great worry for the families who love us. They have to watch us growing bald, batty and doubly incontinent in, say, one of Weston Super Mare’s geriatric wards.

Now, I have nothing against Weston Super Mare or any of its excellent geriatric wards. I am using them as a symbol for anywhere that – in one of my more savage nightmares – I can vividly imagine myself creeping inch by inch towards death.

The poet Philip Larkin wrote a searing poem called “The Old Fools” where he ponders why those living alongside other ancient, dying people aren’t screaming at their terrible one-way fates? He ends the poem with the chilling words, “Well, we will find out”. And so we may…

So whenever I go to a contemporary’s funeral and hear colleagues lamenting that “he died before his time” and about how unfair that is, I often think that perhaps my dear, dead friend is fortunate in quitting while he was still ahead.

The Birds of Lust
As I walk past yet another church, something springs to mind – not that I need reminding! A short while ago, I saw a young woman in church and immediately fancied her! It was not just a fleeting thought – this felt like a real connection. She was about 30, slim and edgy. I looked away at once for I didn’t want her to see me slavering away in pew three. But I couldn’t stop admiring her out of the corner of my eye and imagining. You don’t need the details… nothing particularly original about any of this.

Funny though – you would have thought that after all this time that sort of thing would have died a discreet death, or at least the old Adam would have faded to leave me in crumbly peace with nothing to prick me other than a few memories. But no, damn it, here it was again, hot and red-raw, and the years melted away like snow on a windowpane in a warm westerly wind.

Kingsley Amis wrote that the imperative of lust was as if he’d spent most of his adult life chained to a lunatic. He was spot on. And my lunatic started to gibber away and pluck relentlessly at his rather flimsy chains as if I was still a lad of 20 and as randy as a squirrel in a sack.

I told Jane and my children in a rather jokey, guess what sort of way, for I have found that secrets can turn dark and septic, and then they fester. I suppose old men are always frightened of being laughed at. I’m well aware that all the clichés are true, especially “There’s no fool like an old fool”. The family looked at me indulgently – my daughters with a touch of incredulity – and Jane was kind and sympathetic. She gave me a hug for she knows that this nonsense has nothing to do with my love for her. Betjeman wrote in his poem “Late Flowering Lust”:

I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.

Yes, of course, he knew all about it too!

Martin Luther knew how to deal with lust. After all, monks are likely to know as much about it as anyone. He wrote, “You cannot prevent the birds of lust flying about your head: but you can at least stop them from nesting in your hair.”

Not much hair to nest in these days so I’d better start flapping away.

Day 14 – Talking to the Cleaners, Taken to the Cleaners?

Please tell me why it is that, when you ask people how they are, they usually reply:

“I’m good!”

I haven’t questioned their moral status, so it’s a wierd reply when you come to think of it.

The second mystery to me is: why do we have Brazilian cleaners who can’t speak English, working very well I should add, tidying our office? It doesn’t make sense to me. I am told that there is youth unemployment, yet I cannot recall ever being solicited by any English young to do the job. Why not? And, while I am on the subject, why is Oxford so well served by enthusiastic teams of Bulgarians and Latvians offering to clean cars? When I asked the team leader why they didn’t employ U.K. nationals they looked at me in incredulity and flapped their arms as if this was a dotty question.

I’ll bet Kracow and Buenos Aries don’t have teams of the English seeking to clean cars and houses! What is wrong with our young? Are these jobs too good for them?

Greetings from Glasgow

This morning, I listened to an early news bulletin. At first, I struggled to understand a single word and briefly wondered what language the newsreader was speaking? Then I realised that he had a heavy Glaswegian accent and after a while I got used to it.

I am sure that the BBC is trying to be inclusive and politically correct, but has anyone ever told the journalist in question that if he is making a career out of transmitting information, then his accent is – as are all regional accents – something of a barrier to clarity of meaning? Sorry about that, but it’s true. Of course, I draw a distinction between strong accents and regional intonations: Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Gordon Brown and David Steel (Lord), for example, all have delightful Scottish burrs.

A Common Language?
I have difficulty in understanding more or less all American films. The actors appear to mumble without moving their lips, evidence of the old saying that we are two countries divided by a common language. Perhaps the actors think their grunting is cool. Personally, I would rather understand the plot than suffer their muttering, but who cares about that? However, the world news is in a different category altogether. I want to hear it and BBC communicators should be accent-free.

The same goes for vicars. I understand that hardly any theology colleges teach trainees how to articulate, breathe correctly or project their voices. Now if actors are taught these vital skills, why aren’t vicars? Though, now I come to think about it, perhaps it’s just as well they aren’t – for if churchgoers could actually hear what their vicars were saying, perhaps they might opt to do some gardening or play golf instead!

A Place in Society
We pass yet another nursing home. I am sure it is beautifully run – yet…

I read that in Samoa houses are made from “sennit”, a plaited coconut fibre. Apparently the Samoans think that if old people make the sennit, then it will be stronger and more long lasting. So if you are building a new house in that country, you ask your grandfather, “Please make me some yards of sennit – then my house will last much longer than anyone else’s.” So Grandad does that. He feels useful and he has a place in society.

And what do we do here in the UK? We force people to retire as soon as possible, and then we hide our elderly away in care homes.

The Beautiful Game
A while back, I tried to get tickets for a Chelsea/Everton football match. It was total chaos.

Apparently, many of the “official” tickets had already been bought by a tout. As I wanted the tickets to give as a present, I felt obliged to pay the gross sum demanded on my credit card. Lloyds bank at once blocked the payment on grounds of suspected fraud. Apparently the site and the person to whom I was directing the payment were based in Spain!

My suspicions were inflamed. I was given a number to ring – the taciturn man who answered informed me the tickets were apparently owned by a “third party” and based offshore for tax reasons. Silly me, I should have known.

I still can’t be sure if this was a bona fide site or not, or whether my card details were handed to a rat with a gold tooth based in Madrid. I suspect they were and I tremble.

All this fits my views on football exactly. A wonderful game ruined by greed and easy money, and where many of the leading lights have all the qualities of a Labrador minus the loyalty. And these people are supposed to be the role models for our young!

Day 13 – Capability and Browns

We walk from Longford to Hilton through flatter and less picturesque country.

The paths are overgrown and prove nigh on impossible to pass. At the end of the day we both look like damp wrecks.

We stayed last night with a capable and dynamic couple from Zimbabwe who are building up their lives in the U.K. from scratch. They arrived penniless. They prove that Zimbabwe’s greatest export is their most capable and creative people.

We needed to move near to the Audi agent in Stamford to get our car fixed and so, most generously, our great friends the Browns, who live close by, are giving us an ad-hoc bed for Sunday night.

Impossible Questions

 

I was once asked if there are any circumstances that might conspire to turn me into a mass murderer? What about you?

 

Let’s start at the beginning. I am sure that evil exists and that it’s possible for people to become consumed by wickedness. For all sorts of reasons – weakness, lust, hubris, misguided teaching, several episodes of mischance – who knows what? – seemingly good people can end up travelling down the wrong path. It can be very difficult to backtrack once this road has been taken.

 

Of course, I am not condoning evil, but I would expect that few people whom we today brand as wicked – unless they are clinically mad – would have chosen to end their days universally renowned for their villainy. Stalin and Hitler are extreme examples, but I doubt that even they would have chosen the path of wickedness at the outset of their lives.

 

Written in the Stars?

So we must be careful. Are we all capable of great evil or is it only “other” people who commit such vile acts? Are we right to thank God that we have been spared wicked natures?

 

How self-aware are you? We have to be very sure of our own strength of character to be able to declare from the comfort of our armchairs that if we were to be really tested, we would hold out against wicked actions even in the face of death.

 

I went to RMA Sandhurst and served six years as an officer in the British Army. It was an easy life and, as Harold Wilson – bless him – turned his face against our participation in the US-Vietnam war, a time of relative peace.

 

However, if fate had seen me born 20 years earlier in Germany, I might have been sent to the Eastern Front where the initiation test for many new arrivals was to shoot unarmed Jewish women and children. To refuse would mean being shot as a traitor and a coward. Would I have been prepared to sacrifice myself or would I have passively accepted the prevailing lie that the Jews were no better than vermin? I might have ended up as a mass murderer. What about you?

 

Murderers and Martyrs

Jesuit Francis Xavier arrived in Japan in 1549 and set about founding a number of churches. Sometime later he was expelled and the Shoguns demanded that all his thousands of converts should denounce their faith on pain of hideous torture and death – the age of Christian martyrs had begun. The persecutors produced a “fumie” plaque, a bronze portrait of Jesus in a wooden frame. Those who agreed to step on it were freed, while those who refused were killed in ways I will not describe here. Apparently the fumie imprint of Jesus was flattened by thousands of feet.

 

If you had been a believer, would you have refused to trample on the face of Jesus? If you had been born Jewish and sent to a death camp in 1942, what would you have done if you had been ordered to stoke the gas chambers?

 

Such questions haunt me, for it would be all too easy to take the road leading to hell. We can only pray that our moral fibre should never be thus tested.

 

In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote:

 

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

 

 

 

Day 12 – Talking the Walk, with a Passion

We walked through the Derbyshire Peak DIstrict, which Jane and I hunted over in days gone by. We were regaled about Zimbabwe by one ancient farmer, who told us that charity starts at home and that Mugabe was “spot on” in his views on the homosexual community. Jane and I decided to cut our losses so we walked on. I must advise the gay lobby that they have work to do in rural Derbyshire.

It was very hot and humid, and hilly with it. I decided to join Dinah splashing in the Dove river and I was just about to dip my head in the shallows when I saw a dead lamb floating towards me feet first. The water trickled from my horrified lips.

As we walked down “Bonny Prince Charlie’s Way” we were joined by Michael Hastings (Lord), his son Carl and a mutual friend James Woodward. Mike is the chair of Zane’s Council of Reference and one of my closest friends. We met many years ago and our senses of humour seemed to mesh. Mike – bless him – walks with us each time and we always have great fun.

James helped Zane Australia get its regulatory permissions. He is very bright and a trusted friend.


Talking the Walk

I think of the reason why we are walking.

There are many worthy charities and God bless them all. But Zane is the charity I founded some ten years ago. Amongst various activities – clubfoot and vulnerable women’s support to name but two – It looks after a vulnerable group of aged pensioners, forgotten people whose lives have been devastated at a time such that it is far too late for them to recover. If they have children they will have left Zimbabwe to find work. So they are often very lonely. It could be any of us. Zane is in business to help them grow with dignity and help them retain their self respect. Zane employs the services of twenty-eight people – the bulk in Zimbabwe – and as a colour-blind charity It is unique in southern Africa.

Jane strides on ahead. Apart from helping me run Zane, Jane runs CEF – the Oxford Community Emergency Foodbank – now a major charity in its own right.

We have four children and all are married. We have ten granchidren. Our lives are enriched with family and our charities.

There are three things for a man to live for: “A maiden to woo, a battle to fight and a cause bigger than yourself to live for.”

Jane Is my maiden. I have fought plenty of battles and Zane is my cause, far bigger than myself, to live for.

In the last year Jane and I have been questioned closely on more than one occasion as to why we continue to work for the poorest of the poor in Zimbabwe and in Oxford.

The reason is, put simply, that we have been called to do so, that as long as we have puff we will continue with the work until we drop. Surgeon Lord McColl told us once of an incident that ocurred after he and his wife, who was a Nurse, had worked from early morning until night operating on a mercy ship in Africa. When they were returning home they were obliged to pass through Cape Town airport. There they met a party of friends who had been partying on safari for weeks and living high on the hog. McColl told me that his friends appeared to be envious of his and his wife’s exhausted state.

Jane and I are having the time of our lives.

A Bear Garden

The Woodstock Passion play was a deeply moving experience. There were at least 800 spectators and not all were believers by any means. Indeed, why should it be necessary to believe in God to participate in church activities? All you are doing when polishing the church brasses, changing the flowers for the Sunday service – or enjoying a local Passion play – is participating in one of the customs of your tribe. And there is not exactly a surplus of communities around these days.

Our play was a valuable community exercise. Chronic loneliness is endemic in today’s society and the play brought us all together. It was an opportunity for laughter as well as plain, innocent fun, and the result was wonderful. At least 80 of Woodstock’s finest were involved and the churches united – well, most of them – to make it happen.

But it didn’t all go smoothly – of course, nothing worthwhile ever does! The manager of the smartest hotel in Woodstock complained (ring me and I’ll tell you which one). We were told afterwards that she complains about everything so we shrugged and just got on with it. But, it was beyond parody.

This voluble Italian lady snarled at our excellent and kindly producer: “We expect to hear a pin drop on Sunday morning in Woodstock, so why should we have to put up with your noise?” We tried to explain that it was important for the community and it only happened once a year, but we got nowhere.

“Why should our guests lunching in our lovely hotel have to watch you crucifying someone in the garden opposite?”

The acronym NIMBY has never seemed more apt…

Racist!
“This lady tells us that you have been using insulting language!”

My gym manager looked deeply distressed. I followed him to his office and sheepishly explained that I was playing the role of Pontius Pilate in the Woodstock Passion play and that the lady may have heard me practising my lines under my breath.

He stared blankly at me. “Passion Play? Pontius Pilate? What are you talking about?”

I spent 10 minutes explaining what the Passion play was all about and who Pontius Pilate was, but I might as well have been talking in Esperanto for all he apparently understood.

The offending lines came from my first scene: “What are these ghastly Jews doing here at this hour of the morning?”

I apologised profusely and by the end of the conversation I even managed to make the two of them laugh. But it took some doing. You can see the problem – the idea of political correctness was not an issue in Roman times!

An Eye for an Eye
I understand that a performance of an Oxford Passion play was barred by a licensing council official who assumed it must be a sex show. More’s the pity that the organisers didn’t proceed regardless. It would have been salutary to see Christ led away in handcuffs by the local police – and then he would have to face the magistrates as he did 2000 years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

On the evening of our dress rehearsal, I was standing on the pavement watching the crucifixion scene. A car drew up. The driver’s voice was hesitant: “What’s going on?”

“It’s the new parking laws,” I replied. “The council is very tough in these parts.”

Day 11 – Last of the Summer Wine

Tyred and Emotional

We walk at Olympian speed and soon we are staggering through a derelict bog set on the side of a cliff. I now know why we have’t seen another walker since the Lakes. They have more sense.

When we arrive at our lunchtime rendezvous there is no sign of Richard. We wait at least an hour with the best of the day dribbling into a rictus of impatience. I question Richard’s intelligence and then his parenthood. Where can he be? We are out of contact for there is only internet text or internet facilities in the boondocks. But then a text message trickles through and Richard has had a puncture. Apparently a huge nail had done for us. Richard is forgiven. He manages to change the tyre so we have to abort the afternoon’s walk and fit another.

We discover that the nail through the tyre had wrecked the wheel as well as the tyre. The specialist at the tyre centre told me that, in his experience, he had never seen more damage. So, what with the Mercedes that backed into us and now the nail, we have suffered more car damage in three days than in all our other four walks.

Last of the Summer Wine

At my 65th birthday party, our daughters amused guests with the following observation: “There are five topics that no decent Englishman ever talks about in polite company: money, politics, religion, sex and death. These are the only topics Dad ever talks about.”

Of course they are right – these are the only subjects worth talking about! The rest is yap. And if readers think my repertoire is a tad repressive, it has a wider range than that of the poet W.B. Yeats (who only ever talked about sex and death).

Vicars and Knickers
Death and sex are two issues that make us acutely fearful. This is the reason that these topics form the basis for so many so-called “jokes”, whereby anxieties regarding both subjects are subconsciously relieved. So the next time someone tries to tell you about the three vicars and the hand in the knickers, remember that he – and it’s always a he – is deeply anxious: be sorry for him and please pretend to laugh!

As I grow older, I find myself present at an increasing number of funerals and memorial services. Usually congregation members shift uneasily as they look at watches, mobiles and the ceiling – anything rather than look at the coffin. It’s all so grim that you have to deal with it with a good dose of black humour. My favourite death joke comes from the American comedian George Carlin:

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work 40 years till you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, get laid, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back to the womb, you spend your last nine months floating… you finish off as an orgasm.”

No Solutions
One of the saddest and cruellest side effects of our “sophisticated” modern-day society is the way in which we have perfected brilliant ways of keeping people alive, long after any pleasure or meaning has vanished from their lives. Society has not yet embraced euthanasia but this subject will not go away. “There are some problems,” said Enoch Powell, “to which there are no solutions,” and I suggest that this is one of them. I suspect as the Christian view of life becomes an increasingly minority perspective, we shall become more and more open to allowing people to take their own lives with dignity when they choose to do so. In Imperial Rome, assisting at someone’s suicide was considered a merciful act. So whether you like it or not, I predict this radical change will occur at some time during the next decade.

When I Was a Boy…
As we grow older, we must guard against complaining that everything is going to hell in a handcart or how awful, greedy and unmannerly the new generation is. The miasma of miserable complaint from oldies towards the young runs down the ages like a sniffling nose. Over 2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Horace captured the characteristics of the eternal Victor Meldrew: “Our parents’ age (worse than our grandparents’) has produced us, more worthless still, who will soon give rise to a more vicious generation”.

The best antidote to this sort of misery is for us to recall our own foolishness and errors when we were young. Kindness, tolerance and magnanimity should be the stamp of old age, not mean-mindedness and resentment that sours us and rightly bores the young.