The Black Dog

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?”

Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

Depression is on the rise. If you are one of those affected by what Churchill called the “Black Dog” and you get crushed by useless emotions such as remorse and guilt – physically, psychologically and spiritually damaging – we must do something about it. These emotions can pervade our memories and contaminate our lighter moments. I know, for I’ve been there. It takes willpower to catch these negative and self-defeating thoughts and replace them with new and more constructive ones. It can be done. I believe that we don’t have to go all the way to the “freezing north” with a donkey – a long walk in the countryside with a sandwich and a bottle of water will do the trick. You’ll be concentrating so hard on where you’re going that the past will fade and the future will start to look after itself. After just a short while, the negative stuff starts to dissolve, and life begins to look better.

So, if you’re looking up at the sky from the bottom of a well, it’s good to remember that climbing out starts with the first step. Start replacing the thoughts that are keeping you where you don’t want to be in life with ones that will help you get where you want to go.

A Taste of the Past

England in the 1950s was a simpler time – here’s what passed for culinary life before the world discovered avocado, hummus and bottled water.

Spaghetti came out of a Heinz tin.

Curry was a surname.

Pizza was a place with a leaning tower.

The only choice with crisps was whether to add salt or not.

Coffee came from a pot.

Espresso was an Italian train. 

Rice was only ever served as a milk pudding.

Brown bread was only for those who couldn’t afford white.

Oil was for lubricating cars; fat was for cooking.

Olive oil was a laxative, bought at the chemist.

Tea was brewed in a teapot using tea leaves.

Fish didn’t have fingers.

Milk came in a bottle on your doorstep.

Eating raw fish was disgusting and demonstrated how weird the Japanese were.

Yoghurt? Huh?

An exotic fruit was a banana.

Cooking outdoors was called “camping”.

Thai restaurants were in Thailand – or Siam, as we used to call it.

Kebab wasn’t even a word, let alone a type of food.

Prunes were prescribed by the doctor in case the olive oil failed to work.

Water came from the tap. Bottling it and charging more for it than petrol would have been regarded as insane.

Hardly anyone had a fridge. You kept your perishables in a meat safe outside the kitchen door.

The only kitchen appliance was a knife.

Sausages were called “bangers” because they contained so much water, they exploded when hot.

Chop suey was the only known Chinese dish.

A dishwasher was our mothers.

Best supper: toast with dripping.

Best pudding: Yorkshire pudding topped with golden syrup.

A hamburger was a visitor from Germany.

Life’s Golden Rules

I read some of the scribbles of Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond books). Among them were the rules he gave Bond to live his life by:

1. Don’t waste time on women who wear a bracelet on the left ankle.

2. Beware of motor cars with two women in the front seats.

3. Never play cards against a married couple unless they are drunk.

4. Before you drink, look at the brand name on the bottle.

5. Avoid people who call you “old boy”.

6. Never eat scrambled eggs unless you have made them yourself.

7. Talk secrets only in the open air.

8. Don’t buy anything that eats (he forgot to finish this rule so you will never know which animal to avoid).

9. Tread carefully in the company of moustaches, sideburns and beards. 

10. Live until you’re dead.

How we have lived so long without this advice is a mystery to me.

Undressed

I have just seen La Traviata, one of Verdi’s greatest operas, at the Royal Opera House.

It’s a magnificent theatre, and the whole production was stunning, with an orchestra at the top of its game, wonderful singing and acting, magnificent sets and superb costumes.

Then in waddled the audience, T-shirts, trainers and arses sticking out from tracksuits – possibly bussed in, unwashed, from Scunthorpe.

Gone are the tails and white ties, magnificent dresses and jewels – all worn to honour the composer, the singers, the designers and the building.

Sad, somehow.

The Great Purge

Scrabble is perhaps your favourite board game.

For years there have been official Scrabble dictionaries detailing which words are allowed and banned. For instance, “shvitz”, meaning sweat, is now allowed (hooray!), as are “kawaii” (the quality of being lovable), “ougiya” (Mauritanian monetary unit), “dhikr” (Sufi ceremony) and, of course, the priceless “fy” (to digest). The thing the Scrabble authorities have never done is nanny us by proscribing naughty words. But now Hasbro (owner of the Scrabble brand) has banned a whole crowd of words that have been Scrabble-legal for a long time.

These are: batshit, boff, bollocks, bullshit, butcher, crumbly, effing, girlie, greybeard, hebe, honky, Jesuit, johnson (sad for Boris), libber, Mongolian, nancy, papist, poof, poontang, shagger, stiffy and willie.

But Hasbro has also unbanned some words: butch, pom, poo, sambo, jailbait and balder.

Now you know.

The Assembly Line

In the 1950s, Second World War Spitfire hero Sir Douglas Bader gave an assembly talk to the girls of Benenden School about his part in the Battle of Britain. Not noted for his modesty, he hobbled to the blackboard on his artificial legs and chalked a series of small circles. 

“It was a hell of a dogfight!” he exclaimed, pointing vaguely at the circles. “There were fockers to the left of me, fockers to the right and then I saw another focker coming straight at me.”

The scandalised headmistress interrupted him by saying, “Girls, I think I should clarify that a ‘Fokker’ is a type of fighter plane used by the Germans.”

“Yes, that’s true,” snapped Group Captain Bader. “But these fockers were Messerschmitts!”

Speeches by the great and the good to school assemblies aren’t usually so snappy and entertaining; instead, they are safe, boring, coddling, predictable, tedious and grandmotherly: “Work hard. Respect the teachers at this wonderful and noble school, and honour and love your parents.”

What a load of patronising bollocks!   

A Few Home Truths

Here’s an excellent speech from a friend, Rodney Evans:

“The purpose of your education is to enjoy a social life… of sorts – albeit you are often surrounded by spoiled and spotty children with far too much money. Having said that, in the pecking order that pollutes the British public square, this school is said to be “smart”. Notwithstanding that there are a great number of rich thickos as pupils – I suppose their rich daddies had to send them somewhere – you have a chance to make contacts that might, just might, be useful in your future life. Second, your time here enables you to spend time in a nice, warm building; this last is the only reason your teachers bother to show up.

My advice is to be an inquisitive amateur, only study what interests you and just ignore everything else. If you come first in your exams, that will please your parents and teachers but will generate considerable dislike amongst your contemporaries. That’s a handy lesson – success brings risks.

Most of your classwork is useless. Maths, for example, is an exaggeration. There is only one number one. The rest is duplication and overstatement.

Ignore literature unless you enjoy it. It’s just escapism for intellectuals – Homer, Dante, Chekhov and so on are all in the same business as Netflix: distraction. Live your life. Don’t boggle at replicas offering fictional problems.  

If you get a degree, as soon as you enter the real world, you’ll learn the harsh reality that paper qualifications are worthless and the ability to laugh at your bosses’ jokes that aren’t funny is worth 20 years of schooling.

When choosing a career, reject the occupations that are essential to human life: farming, mining, building and sanitation. These careers are poorly paid, dangerous, cold and often wet… and socially negative. No one invites a scaffolder to a film premiere. The autobiographies of sewage engineers have never been the subject of bidding wars by publishing firms. A turnip grower is unlikely to be granted a knighthood. No trawlerman has ever been invited to appear on Newsnight.

Instead, take up an idle, glitzy and parasitical career like banking, journalism, politics or acting. If you have just a little talent, you can earn loadsamoney and you’ll be treated as a semi-divinity.

Medicine is a useful career if you have enough patience to soothe the egos of work-shy attention-seekers who often aren’t as ill as they pretend to be.

I fear your emotional life will be painful and expensive. That’s just how it is. Keep your anguish to yourself and smile widely when the cameras are clicking. Your problems will start in your twenties and thirties when you fall in love. Don’t be alarmed. You can extricate yourself from disaster by getting married.

If you have children and they reach adulthood without disowning you in public, then you will have achieved as much as any parent can hope for.

Trust no one. Your gut instincts are usually correct. Stay on the attack. 

And finally, don’t fear death. Your absence from this world will have as much effect as your presence in it – that is, very little. The reality is that you and your “legacy” will soon be forgotten. 

Good luck!

A Shameful Silence

When I was at school in the late 1950s, a Jewish friend – I remember his name to this day – suffered appalling antisemitic abuse. Of course, I rushed to his defence, single-handedly fighting the abusers.

In fact, spotty little rat that I was, I did no such thing. I pretended I agreed with the abusers and left him friendless and slowly twisting in the wind.

Later, aged 18, I shared a room with a Rhodesian cadet at RMA Sandhurst who was violently racist. I recall his name and the vile things he said about Black people but, once again, I’m ashamed to say I said nothing.

I was also exposed to “soft” prejudice. An aunt who dealt with theatre companies used to say, “Now, so-and-so (I remember his name as well, funny that after all these years) is a ‘nice’ Jew” – the implication being that all the others weren’t nice!

It’s less obvious now, but antisemitism is back again. All those marches against Israel. None against Iran, Burma or the suppression of freedom in Hong Kong. Funny that. Emotion only seems to erupt into hostile marches when Jews are involved. Antisemitic prejudice is a very light sleeper.

Racial prejudice and antisemitism dehumanise people. They are a refuge for the ignorant, seeking to degrade and destroy. They are the enemies of freedom and deserve to be met head-on and stamped out.

Meek and Mild

How many of you think church is boring? Is Jesus meek and mild?

In John 2:15–16, Jesus makes a whip out of cords and drives the sheep and oxen from the temple. Then he exclaims to the dove sellers, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my father’s house into a market?”

Sometimes God wants us to get angry. Often the status quo needs challenging. Jesus lost his temper over the misuse of his Father’s house. What does this teach us today?

The people who criticised Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being boring. On the contrary, they thought he was too dynamic and challenging to be safe. It’s been left to many churches to muffle that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah and certified him as “meek and mild”, recommending him as a suitable household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.

“Oh Dear!”

I much enjoy vigorous discussion, but I dislike it if the person arguing knows nothing about the subject.  In fact, when I discover that my opponent hasn’t a clue what they are talking bout I make my apologies and talk about the weather.

I recall in 2017 a friend of mine voted Labour; that was a vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

I asked him why?

He answered, “My son tells me such distressing news about the council housing in Lambeth I felt I had no option.”

I pointed out that the Council was Labour-controlled.

“Oh dear!”

Churchill wrote that he still just about believed in democracy after speaking to any constituent for a mere five minutes.

The Perils of Prediction

Michael Gove once said, “I’ve had enough of experts.”

The inaccuracy of predictions is fascinating. The more seriously an expert takes themselves, the more themselves, the more likely they are to be hilariously wrong. Economists often make astrology look respectable, but what about other forecasters?

Consider these examples:

Back in 1943, Tom Watson, President of IBM – which, 20 years later, would command 80 per cent of the world computer market – wrote, “There’s a world market for maybe five computers.” IBM later invented the personal computer but did nothing with it, leaving the market to college drop-out Steve Jobs – who showed that the personal PC might actually have its uses.

In 1946, the great Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, claimed, “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”

In 1953, Alex Lewyt, president of Lewyt Vacuum Cleaners, declared, “Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will be a reality within 10 years.”

Ken Olsen, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a dominant force in computing in the 1970s, said, “There’s no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.”

In 1995, Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, declared, “I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”

In 1997, Nathan Myhrvold, chief technology officer at Microsoft, announced, “Apple is already dead.”

Freeze or Fry?

Climate forecasting, however, is in a class of its own. Few subjects are as polarizing – in some circles, if you’re perceived to be a denier it can be career-cancelling and friendship-busting.

I go back a long way with this subject, which was already a red-hot topic in the 1970s. The only difference was that, back then, it was all about global cooling. A new ice age was on its way and the statistics proved it beyond doubt. Indeed, Corporal Frazer in Dad’s Army was right all along – “We’re all doomed!”

Without apology, newspapers such as The Guardian and The New York Times dramatically changed their views just after the millennium. 

So, let’s take a look at 40 years of eco-apocalyptic predictions that never came to pass:

1. In 1970, the Boston Globe ran the headline, “Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by 21st Century” (reporting the warning of PC Lodge, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research).

2. In 1971, the Washington Post reported, “Disastrous New Ice Age Coming” – quoting NASA scientist SI Rasool.

3. In 1973, a Brown University letter to President Nixon warned of global cooling.

4. In 1974, The Guardian ran the headline, “Space satellites show New Ice Age Coming Fast.”

5. In 1974, Time magazine published “Another Ice Age?”, noting that since the 1940s, the temperature had dropped by 2.7°F.

6. In 1976, climatologist Stephen Schneider of the University of Wisconsin lamented “the deaf ear” his warnings of an Ice Age had received.

7. In 2004, The Guardian reported how the Pentagon had warned President Bush that “Climate change will destroy us” – and that Britain could face a Siberian climate in less than 20 years.

The Great Switcheroo

In a remarkable change of direction, we went from “global cooling will kill us all” to “global warming will fry us all”. Consider the following:

1. In 2008, the Associated Press reported a NASA scientist’s claim that within five to ten years, the Arctic could be free of summer sea ice.

2. In 2008, Al Gore warned that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013.

3. In 2009, Prince Charles warned in The Independent, “Just 96 months to save the world… The price of capitalism is just too high.”

4. In 2009, Gordon Brown – referring to the need for a global agreement at the Copenhagen climate summit – wrote in The Independent, “We have fewer than 50 days to save our planet from catastrophe.”

5. In 2013, The Guardian ran the headline, “Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist.” The article reported a warning that an ice-free summer Arctic could trigger the release of a 50-gigatonne pulse of methane capable of destabilising the climate system.

6. In 2013, The Guardian reported, “US Navy Predicts Ice-free Arctic by 2016”. We are reassured that “the US Navy’s department of oceanography uses complex modelling to make its forecasts more accurate than others.” (Ho Ho.)

7. In 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius – referring to the time remaining before the 2015 Paris climate conference – claimed, “We have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

So, who will throw something at Greta Thunberg if she changes her mind and starts campaigning to warn us of an imminent ice age?

I wonder when the Italian saying, Io non c’ero, e se c’ero dormivo (“I wasn’t there and if I was, I was asleep”) might come in handy?

Ancient Worker Musings…

How many miles of stone walls were built by the ancients of history? How many bad backs! And walking by the canal, how many navvies spent their entire lives digging out the vast tons of earth that had to be hacked out to make the canal operational? What were they paid? How did they live? What did they do in their free time? What an astonishing achievement. I’ll bet it was a quicker job than HS2.

In Memory of Dinah

I don’t know whether there’s a mental condition called “Never-ending Grief Syndrome” (NEGS) after the death of a beloved pet – but for the record, the symptoms are deep emotional pain, intense longing and a lingering regret that goes on for months. I read somewhere that 20 per cent of people have admitted that the death of their dog (or cat) was the worst loss they’d ever experienced. I can well understand this.

I can’t forget the look in Dinah’s amber eyes when the vet gave her the injection. Her head was in my lap, and I knew she trusted me completely to keep her safe and look after her. And I bloody well killed her. Okay, I had no choice as her spine had been broken by a car. But it was my fault because I’d left the gate open. I’m sure she knew what was about to happen – and I wept as the injection took hold and an eternal stillness settled gently across her trusting face.

It may be tasteless to admit this, but the circumstances of her death are tattooed on my mind far more vividly than the deaths of many of my friends, even close relatives. 

I hope I am a proportionate person when it comes to animals. I have experienced the deaths of many dogs and cats, as well as several horses, but the death of Dinah was more traumatic than any of them. She was beautiful and courageous, with an irrepressible zest for life. By the sea, she’d launch herself into a ceaseless campaign, like King Canute, to persuade the waves to recede.

She loved both Jane and me unconditionally. Whenever we returned from some trip or other, she’d greet us with slobbering emotion, leaping up and down as if she were on a pogo stick. Everyone in the house knew when we were about to return because, long before our car could be heard, Dinah would start to howl and hurl herself joyfully at the garden gate.  

After her death, we vowed never to have another Staffie because we simply couldn’t bear to go through that degree of trauma and heartbreak again. I suppose we gradually recovered though, and the raw pain of our loss abated. As ZANE supporters will know, today we share our lives with our precious cockapoo, Moses, who scampers round Britain with us.

I am a stoic person, but even now, writing about Dinah’s death makes me well up in a way that hardly ever happens. When I think of relatives who have died, I don’t mourn them in the same way. Their deaths, after long and fruitful lives, seemed more like a release.

Dinah’s death leaves a definite emotional trace.

True Friendship

A couple of years ago, I included an item called “The Five Regrets of the Dying”. One regret was that when we become lazy or allow life to get in the way, it’s all too easy to lose touch with the tiny number of friends we truly love. As death approaches, many people feel an overwhelming need to restore those relationships before it’s too late.

The importance of real friendship was underscored after some of my former colleagues lost their seats in Parliament during the 2024 election. Many remain unemployed to this day and fear they may never find worthwhile work again. One even contacted me in the vain hope I could offer him a job.

Once the reality of his defeat had sunk in, my friend found it difficult to reinvent himself in a new career. Having drawn up a list of 30 or 40 people, he set about contacting them to see if they could help. Among them were people who had regularly invited him and his wife to dinner and parties – people he regarded as close friends. He was shocked to receive only a handful of replies, the majority making their excuses. The horrible truth was that out of Parliament, he’d become an embarrassment. He learned in the hardest possible way the difference between political affiliation and true friendship, between the “mere crowd” and the few people who valued him for himself.

There are those who never experience the kind of crisis that reveals the difference between real friends and the crowd. Imagine how hard it must be for celebrities and members of the Royal Family to know who their friends are. Especially for Lady Susan Hussey, a royal lady in waiting who was cruelly set up by charity founder Ngozi Fulani. Fulani was dressed in her national costume and, having been asked in all innocence “Where are you from?”, complained of “racial innuendo”. After 22 years’ loyal and unpaid service Hussey was fired, just like that! I suspect she found out the hard way who her friends are (and weren’t).

When we are young, we are unreasonably vulnerable to the influences of the crowd. What we wear, our taste in music and cars, our role models, and our choice of food, drink and restaurants are all shaped by what “they” will think and how our choices will be judged by “them”. It can be a painful lesson to discover that the crowd can be cruel and hopelessly wrong.

By the time we reach a certain age, we should have accumulated enough experience to distinguish the people who matter little in our lives from those who are true friends. We should be able to discern the difference between the mere crowd – from whom there’s nothing to be expected beyond fleeting emotions that leave no trace – and the very few who appreciate us for who we are, and for whom we feel the same affection and loyalty.

Once we pass a certain age, there’s no excuse for any confusion between the two.

For the Birds

I read about Lord Cruddas a week ago and was thinking about his life. He started as a milkman and made it mega rich in the city. Today he has a vast house in Mayfair, an estate in the Cotswolds, a chateau near Toulouse, a house in New York, two new Rolls-Royces, a vast yacht, and a private Jet.

When I was about twenty I would have been envious of that. Now in my sere and yellow the only think Cruddas has I would like is an occasional use of his private jet so I could miss the passenger crush at Heathrow.

The rest is for the birds.

Speechless

As donors will recall, as conversation topics, I specialise in money, sex, politics, religion and death, so I can hold my own at any supper party…

Until I am rendered speechless.

At an unknown supper party during the last walk, a delightful host suddenly fixed me with a glittering eye as he asked me:

“What’s the point of in a marriage after the lust has gone?

He stared at me, waiting for a reply. I was silenced; my mouth opened and shut like a carp.

“Well?” he shouted.

The other guests stared fixedly at their plates. Jane was speechless.

“Can we finish this conversation during pudding?” I stammered…

Somehow we never got round to finishing the conversation.

What Remains

“I can’t hate you, no matter how much people tell me that I should.
I miss you more than I thought I could,
I still love you in some way.
I might be able to forgive you one day,
But until then I will cling to your memory.
I’m trying to forgive your treachery,
Our friendship will haunt me forever
For trying to hate you is a fruitless endeavour.”

For those who are abandoned in love, feelings are likely to be a cocktail of grief, anger, despair and wounded self-esteem.

First reactions to the news that you’ve been dumped can be disastrous. Some launch an immediate barrage of hatred and blame, effectively killing off any hope of reconciliation. Others grovel in the hope of winning back their lost love – and in so doing, compromise an important part of their personality and self-esteem. Some remain diminished and steeped in bitterness, while others accept their loss and, like the poet above, try to find ways of coping that enable them to move on with their lives.

It’s a sad reality that when relationships are sundered, the good times are often forgotten, what the couple once valued in each other is rubbished, and the time they spent together is regarded as wasted.

If only the psychological contract that underpins every close relationship included the following words:

“If you should go one day where I cannot be,
I’ll cherish that of you that you leave in me.
And I hope you will be forever true
to that of me that I have left in you.” 

Like a Drunken Sailor

When I was Chairman of the Milton Keynes and Buckingham Health Authorities, I was astounded by the waste. Staff had absolutely no idea how to make savings – it simply wasn’t part of the culture.

The NHS is an incredibly generous system that the public takes for granted. It oozes waste, and no politician wants to take on the career-shattering responsibility of trying to reform it. Why? Former chancellor Nigel Lawson once claimed that the NHS was the nearest thing the English have to a god and so anyone seeking to make changes was immediately accused of blasphemy.

Of course, opportunities to make savings abound. Take the 148 million hospital outpatient appointments made across the NHS last year. Each one costs between £120 and £165 on average. 

Guess what? More than five per cent of patients don’t show. So, as the Americans say, do the math. That equates to around £1.2 billion of your money wasted each year.

Next, around a million doctor appointments are made every day, but thousands simply don’t show – marked as “DNA” (did not attend). There’s no penalty, so why should non-attendees bother? Common courtesy is no more than a dream. I’m told that trying to impose a penalty – say a tenner – is too complex. How daft is that? We’re issued with an NHS number. A simple adjunct to the NHS app to take a refundable deposit could easily be administered by the software. New Zealand operates such a system, so why not here? 

Free at the point of use also means free to abuse, so why was it set up in this cavalier way? That’s easy. The NHS was established at a time when the public had a far lower sense of entitlement, and we were more thoughtful in those faraway days. Few care today.  

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman wrote that there are four ways in which you can spend money. First, on yourself. When you do that, you really watch what you’re spending, and you really try to grind out the greatest value from your hard-earned cash. Then you can spend it on someone else, for example by buying a birthday present for a friend. Well, then you’re not so careful about the content of the present, but you’re very careful about the cost.

Then, you can spend someone else’s money on yourself. And if that’s the case, why not treat yourself to a jolly good lunch with oysters, fillet steak and a bottle of Chablis? Finally, you can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. Then you’re not too concerned how much it is, or about the value you get for the money.

Welcome to the NHS. The public has little sense of the vast scale of the money poured into the system or how it’s spent. This disconnect is one of its fundamental problems – and it will end up bankrupting us all.

Ideal British weather: a sprinkling of rain early this morning and a cloudy day thereafter. Lunch with an old colleague from Parliament I hadn’t seen for ages.

A number of other ZANE supporters cheered us on our way.

Eat, Drink and Be Wary

A few thoughts on food and eating out (thanks to Jay Rayner)…

There is nothing you can eat that will detoxify you. That’s what your kidneys and liver are for. Don’t bother with “wellness” because no one is interested in “illness”.

Fat is where the flavour is, and salt is the difference between eating in black and white and eating in technicolour – even if your cardiologist would disagree.

Most dishes can be improved with the addition of bacon.

Kitchen knives in holiday rentals are always terrible – take your own.

Avoid cookbooks that tell readers cooking good food is simple and quick. It takes time and experience.

Hyper-expensive food is all about status and never about deliciousness. Don’t bother with it.

Tipping should be abolished. It’s wrong that restaurant staff should be dependent on the mood of the customers for the size of their wages. They should be paid properly. This works in Japan, France and Australia, and it should work here too. 

All new restaurants should employ someone over 40 to check that the print on the menu is large enough for oldies to read, the lighting bright enough to read by and the seats comfortable enough for a lengthy meal. If the waiter has to explain the concept behind the menu, there is something wrong with it.

Waiters should always write down orders.

Eating alone in a restaurant with someone you love (yourself) is always a pleasure and an opportunity to watch people.   

Expensive restaurants are always wasted on the people who can afford them.

Food should always be served on plates, not on garden trowels, planks or slates. On plates.

Trust Your Gut

Follow these golden rules for choosing a restaurant:

Buffets are where good taste goes to die.

Picnics are a nightmare.

Never go into a restaurant that has shiny photographic menus displayed in four languages, particularly if one is Russian.

Never enter a restaurant if there’s a waiter outside trying to entice you in.

Never go into a restaurant if more than half the customers are waiting for food and only a few are eating. Go somewhere else, the service has to be terrible!

Bon appétit!

Ministry of Love

Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

I know why my friend Henry Brooks was born.

Henry has Down syndrome. On the face of it, he’s a victim of one of life’s cruellest hazards. But when he enters a room and sees someone, he breaks into a broad smile, yells “Hello” and rushes over to hug them.  

English people take a little time getting used to Henry’s “style”, but it’s impossible not to be charmed by his innocence, warmth and over-the-top exuberance.

Henry was born to spread love. I can’t think of a rarer and more valuable quality.

A Rubbish View

A perfect day for walking. What spoilt it were the bulging bags of garbage that punctuated the most perfect beauty spots. What do these vandals do this? Why can’t they be bothered to travel to the tip.

Charlie and Angela once again loyally supporting us. What troopers they have turned out up be.

Bath Teashop

“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another –
Let us hold hands and look.
She, such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop inglenook.”

 John Betjeman, “In a Bath Teashop”

The 10.30am train from Oxford to London sped through the countryside. A couple sat opposite one another.

He was overweight with a blob of a face, bald, spotty and covered in tattoos. If you were an artist, you would have wiped off the paint and started again. She had a Christmas-pudding figure with the merest hint of a waist. Thick glasses, mauve striped hair and crooked teeth completed the picture. My first instinct was sadness that nature had been so unkind.

But one thing changed all that – one powerful, transformative thing. They were in love. Not just “fond of” each other or “the best of friends”, but deeply in love. They sent one another signals and shared secret smiles as they held hands, oblivious to everyone else in the carriage.

For an hour they traded with one another – with their eyes more than words. It was a tenderness that excluded the rest of us and created its own special sphere. A couple deeply in love. It made them beautiful – and then I understood the poem by Betjeman. Shortchanged on physical attractiveness but “a little lower than the angels”. They were unaware that, when I raised my Styrofoam cup of coffee to my lips, I was in fact toasting them.

In a world where our concept of beauty is continually shaped by photographers, fashion editors and filmmakers, it’s easy to forget that the ingredients that create and nourish exciting, satisfying and enduring relationships defy the camera.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Lost in Translation

Why can’t we, with our vast vocabulary, have a word like forelsket?

This Norwegian word describes the euphoric feeling of falling in love – when you can’t quite believe that someone so perfect has walked into your life.

And what about the Portuguese word saudade? It captures the bittersweet, melancholic yearning for something beautiful that has been lost – perhaps a love affair, a childhood home or a once-flourishing business. There is pain in the loss, yet also a quiet pleasure that such loveliness once graced our lives. 

Then there is the Russian toska, a word describing a refined, elevated and appalling kind of boredom. Not the tedium that comes from a lack of pleasing stimulation but the kind that persists even in the presence of things that ought to delight us – creativity, wit, intelligence, history, even the universe.

The Turkish word hüzün expresses the gloomy sense that things are in decline and likely only to get worse. (Are UK newspapers suffering from hüzün? Just asking.)

Another example is the Indonesian word jayus – a lame joke that nonetheless elicits good-natured amusement rather than irritation through its sheer innocent silliness.

Lastly, the Spanish word querencia conveys the idea of a place where we feel safe – a “home” that doesn’t have to be where we live, but from which we draw our strength and inspiration.

A great start to the walk. Broken cloud and just warm enough. We didn’t expect trustees Charles and wife, Angela and Grandson Isaac Sinclair with his girlfriend Issy Harwood. A great joy and the miles melted. Beautiful rolling countryside, and we walked by Shakespeare’s River Avon. Saddened by the occasional stench. When will water boards stop shunting raw sewage into our rivers?

Maybe…

At the engagement party of our eldest grandson – to a delightful Texan – last week, I suggested to one of our granddaughters, Annabel Benyon  -aged thirteen – that Jane and I are keen on seeing any number of great-grandchildren.

She looked thoughtful.

“I may get married sometime in tbe next ten years” she said, “and I am sure you will still be around to see it.”

A pause. Then she added:

“maybe…”

Vive la Révolution!

A bit of history you may not know…

I met an American at dinner recently who told me how fortunate the US had been to have won the War of Independence in 1783 – and how awful it would have been if they had lost.

Being the friendly chap I am, I agreed. Just imagine how dreadful it would have been if the Americans had remained part of the British family of nations. They could have ended up like those benighted countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – which somehow managed to achieve independence gradually and without firing a shot. Look at the state they’re in today compared to the US – just saying!

Not a bad return of service!

But of course, the Iron Law of Unintended Consequences bit back big time. The Americans would never have won that war without the help of France’s King Louis XVI. Desperate to give the ghastly British a bloody nose, he bankrolled the American cause.

And now comes the best bit. The French monarchy was bankrupted by the vast cost. The taxes levied to pay this monstrous bill helped trigger the French Revolution 13 years later – in which Louis, the treacherous old sod, had his head chopped off.

Laughing? Moi?

Drink to That!

As the war had been won for them by the French, you might expect the signatories to the Declaration of Independence to have toasted them with champagne, but that didn’t happen. British duties on imported goods had made French wine unaffordable (which led to the “no taxation without representation” nonsense). However, because of an oversight, wine from the island of Madeira could be imported tax-free – and so it was, in vast quantity.

Two days before the signing of the United States Constitution, the attendees of the Constitutional Convention – led by one George Washington – gathered at Philadelphia’s City Tavern for a party. The bar bill for the evening still exists. It shows that 55 men ordered 54 bottles of Madeira along with a shedload of whisky, cider, beer, punch and some overpriced claret.

Two days later, befuddled by hangovers, 39 of them blearily signed the US Constitution. Washington was a particular fan of Madeira, reportedly drinking a bottle each day “to help with the toothache”.

Even though the Yankees no longer had to pay tax on imported French wine, Madeira remained America’s wine of choice. In 1803, when France’s bankruptcy obliged it to sell its vast chunk of America to the very people whose fight for freedom it had so recently financed, a toast was drunk to celebrate the signing of the Louisiana Purchase. Representatives from France, Spain and the United States were all present. For the toasts, the French drank champagne, the Spanish drank Málaga wine and the Americans drank “America’s wine” – Madeira. Its popularity showed no sign of waning – indeed, when Francis Scott Key wrote America’s anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, in 1814, he was reportedly legless on Madeira.   

No Booze Please…

Who do you prefer – the drinkers or the teetotallers?

No Booze

• Hitler
• Trump
• Joe Biden
• George W. Bush (after AA)
• Lenin
• Modi
• Mussolini

Drinkers

• Churchill
• Herbert Asquith
• Richard Nixon
• George W. Bush (before AA)
• Boris Yeltsin
• Lyndon Johnson
• George Pompidou
• François Mitterrand
• Jean-Claude Juncker
• Henry VIII