Temptation

Perhaps dear reader you might like to be a fly on the wall and listen in as I spend a little time bartering with the devil.

The man who gave us advice on how to negotiate the road to Alton was oh so kind and well meaning:

“Do watch the lorries as they sweep round bends…do be careful as drivers are known to drive really fast as they approach the town….” and on he went!

I was sorely tempted to put Him right with, “Listen sunshine, Jane and I have walked 1800 miles round Britain recently and there is nothing we haven’t already seen  on UK roads with cars tearing along so fast they make Silverstone look like a roller skating rink.  We’ve faced lorries and white vans that we’re convinced were trying to kill us…we reckon by now we know more about roads than Old Man Macadam ever did so keep your impertinent advice to yourself, and don’t tell Andy Murray how to hold his racket, do you understand?”

But he was trying to help us and was so kind and a supporter and donor so I thanked him for his great solicitude and kindness and we went on our way.

Devil 0, virtue 1

This time!

Hume Truths

Staying with Gordon and Sally Scutt I was reminded of the story about the charismatic cardinal of Westminster Basil Hume when he was headmaster of Ampleforth college. I was told this tale by a former pupil who said that after forty years he could still recall an electrifying encounter with Hume when a class of fifty boys, aged I suppose 17 or so, decided that the gospel was a tedious irrelevance to their lives:

” Look sir,” said one representative of his friends, ” Henry here is going into the city. George has a family business to look after him; Marcus will inherit an estate and I’m going into the army. What possible use is “religion” or the “gospel” to us?”

Hume answered quietly thus;

” Gentlemen there are fifty of you in this class. Statistically at least twenty five of you will have marriage difficulties that involve betrayal and endless misery. Sixteen of you will know the pain of divorce. Eighteen of you will suffer serious financial difficulties, six will go bankrupt. Twenty five of you will face serious issues with your children; two will go to prison (and you doubtless will be one of them Bloggins. Six will face the challenge of handicapped children; you will all know about sickness, pain and you will face death. At all these times I submit gentlemen you will be thankful for the gospel of Christ”.

Phew! No wonder he remembered it!

Hurry!

I am reading a biography about President Abraham Lincoln who was a great leader and achiever. He was responsible for the abolition of slavery and winning the American civil war. It is interesting that he never hurried. In fact when he was young, he read mainly Aesop’s Fables – which he more or less memorised – and the Bible.

Lincoln had to understand everything minutely and exactly, and it took him a long time. He would slowly chew over each new fact until it was memorised. And when it was lodged in his mind, he never lost his understanding of it. He often spoke of how slowly his mind worked. His law partner said that Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America. I read somewhere that today we have largely traded wisdom for information, and depth for breadth. We want microwave maturity. We should study Lincoln.

Oh Dear! I Shall be Too Late!

I oversleep and have to dress in a hurry. I can’t help wondering when the voice of God will announce to me: “From henceforth thou shalt be unable to put on thine own socks?”

But we are late. We have to catch up with our schedule so we rush to the start of the walk. Hurry, hurry and hurry!

We pass two cars with drivers furiously fingering their mobiles. Another sign flashes by advertising a credit card that will take “the waiting out of wanting.” The traffic slows to a queue and I can see road rage mounting in the driver nearest us, who by the agitated workings of his face and the honking of his horn appears to be growing somewhat impatient. We walk past a garage advertising “help to move you faster”.

What sort of a state are we in? We all have to move faster and faster. What instinct encourages me to speed in my car so often? We now have systems that churn out news 24/7. It’s not as if we can do anything much about the information we are constantly absorbing. However, people are continually staring at their phones and emails at meetings, during social occasions and even in church, in case they are missing something vital. Fast food and pizza houses tell us they don’t sell just food, they sell “fast delivery”. Even shampoos and conditioners are combined to save time.

Some time ago, a survey told us that because advanced technology is taking over mundane jobs, many people will be forced to cut their working hours. So, the weeks we work each year are bound to reduce so we can retire sooner. The question is: how are people going to spend the time they are saving? Watching video games and the telly? I hear that the two phrases most used in homes in the UK today are “move over” and “what’s on?”

This is ridiculous. Why are we all in such a hurry? As the red queen in Alice and Wonderland puts it: “… it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast…!”

Time-Poor

Hurry can destroy us and it keeps us from happiness. As Carl Jung once wrote, “Hurry is not just like the devil: hurry is the devil.”

The irony is that although our society is sated with goods, we are time-poor. Our friends in Zimbabwe are very poor indeed but rich in time. They are not driven or hurried. Hurry sickness is a continual struggle to achieve more things in less and less time, in the face of opposition real or imagined. And hurry can destroy family life. Busy people appear to have less and less time to talk to – and love – their families and their children. Charlie, a friend of mine, told me that when his bishop father died he received over 200 letters saying what a wonderful, kind, caring and gentle man his father was. Charlie told me with tears in his eyes: “He was always in a such hurry when he was with me. I did not know that man.”

It is because hurry lies behind so much of the anger and frustrations of modern living and is the great enemy of loving relationships and family life that perhaps we should take a look at how Lincoln operated – and just slow down.

Walks and Talks with Daukes

We walked from Avington to Medstead and we were joined by Clendon and Camilla Daukes. It’s always a joy to have them with us if only because we make each other laugh until we cry. Clendon is a force of nature, a man of boundless energy and goodwill who can’t see a good cause without wanting to take it up. He doesn’t just talk about things, he really gets them done.

We spend the night enjoying the kind hospitality of Patrick Mitford Slade, who I know well from his work with the services charities whom we are privileged to partner in Zimbabwe. We meet Julia from Cornwall, who is a loyal ZANE supporter and she plans to walk with us today.

The Bride Bomb

As I walk with my friend we fondly reminisce about a memorable wedding we both attended many years ago – one where everything went disastrously awry.

It takes a certain amount of courage to continue with an event after the wheels have completely fallen off, and we both agree that our friends deserved a medal. The bride’s mum was a formidable woman with the manor and bearing of a regimental sergeant major. She had arranged for two bands and three sets of singers to perform, and there were enough flowers in the church to make an annexe to the Chelsea Flower Show. There were eight bridesmaids and groups of appointed flower petal throwers, and they had all been drilled mercilessly. The grandeur was on a scale usually reserved for Trooping the Colour.

Just a Cheeseball or Two…

The wedding was unfolding according to plan until the moment of the processional. The bride had been dressed for hours (if not days). No adrenaline was left in the poor lady’s body. She had been left alone in the church’s reception hall, and while the organ went on playing bits of Mozart she walked nervously along the tables laden with delicious goodies. She absent-mindedly started to sample the delicacies on display, from a vast bowl of pressed nuts to a selection of little pink and green mints. Then she nibbled some pecans and a cheese-ball or two, before gulping down a few black olives. Now she swallowed a handful of glazed almonds, a few sausages with frilly toothpicks stuck in them, a couple of shrimps shrouded in bacon, and some cheese biscuits smothered in liver pate. She washed down the lot with the help of a glass of pink champagne given to her by her father. Just to calm her nerves, you understand.

When the bride arrived at the church door, what everyone noticed was not her dress but her face. It was white, tinged with a light-green sheen. For what was coming down the aisle was not a bride but a walking time bomb, ready to explode.

Just before she reached the church altar, the bride threw up. And when I say she threw up, I don’t mean a ladylike “urp” into her little lace hanky. There’s no nice way of putting it, for not only did the bride spray her mother but she hosed most of the chancel – hitting three bridesmaids, the groom, the best man and the vicar too.

Only two people were seen to be smiling: one was the mother of the groom and the other was the father of the bride.

The bride pulled herself together though, and afterwards there was a much quieter, less ostentatious ceremony in the reception hall. And everyone cried, as people are supposed to do at weddings, mostly because the groom held the bride tenderly and kissed her lovingly throughout the whole ceremony.

There was an action replay 10 years later to celebrate the disaster and the event was displayed on three TV monitors – everyone laughed until they cried. Even the bride’s mum had long been able to see the funny side. But how could they enjoy the event when it had all gone so disastrously wrong? Simple. Because despite the unfortunate chain of events, this was still a loving wedding full of laughter and great fun. The whole episode is now safely archived away in the family’s folklore.

Of course, that sort of wedding is well over the top, and we don’t have to spend loads of money to have fun and celebrate. But as I’ve said before, there are never enough good parties to mark the important changes in life. Today we apparently have a new way of doing things: more relaxed and less formal – but with fewer opportunities for chaos, laughter and tears. I wonder if the new ways are as much fun as those of the old days?

No More Shame

One of my friends told me that his daughter Muriel has morphed into a “relationship” with Freddie, where she seems to have been stuck for some nine years. No one decided when her single state ended and her new “couple” role started, it just seemed to happen – and, of course, there was no party.

The problem is that Muriel’s “partner”, Freddie, cannot make up his mind whether or not to commit to Muriel. Muriel is now 35 and lives in limbo land with her biological clock loudly ticking. She is desperate to have a family but no one knows what to say to Freddie to get him to face up to his responsibilities as the old lines of family authority have been eroded to dust. Is Muriel still “in” her old family, or out of it? If she is “out”, when did she leave? My friend (Muriel’s dad) has been bracing himself for some time to question Freddie about his long-term intentions, but he is told to shut up by his wife (who will do whatever she has to avoid confrontation). Muriel has come to realise that she is not as marriageable as she was nine years ago, and she is fearful that if she presses too hard she faces the risk of being traded in for a new model. The question she asks at four in the morning is whether her present insecurity is better than the risk she faces of potential loneliness?

If this is the new way of living, then who are the winners? Both sets of parents are increasingly flustered, and Muriel is frightened and miserable.

Today, we seem to have done away with shame. Once it was a very potent emotion and it governed people’s lives long after the ducking pool and the stocks were abolished. Shakespeare mentions “shame” 344 times in his plays and guilt, which is a far more personal emotion, only 33 times. A mere 100 years ago, society expected people to behave in a certain way and if they failed to conform then they were humiliated. Carl Jung calls shame a “soul-eating” emotion. It destroyed Oscar Wilde with hideous relish and finality; single mothers were ostracised and illegitimate children were stigmatised: unpleasant hypocrites and gossips had a great time. My grandmother was deserted by her feckless husband in 1905 and the family – lower middle class, southern Manchester – was traduced by the community for bringing shame on itself – an even worse social crime than ruining one’s own reputation. There was little allowance for redemption then. It’s easy to see why the British rejected shame in the second half of the twentieth century, for it was seen to be a singularly destructive and corrosive emotion.

But isn’t there a need for some shame? Perhaps we need to differentiate between good and bad shame; for example should the likes of Freddie be allowed to get off without critical comment from any quarter? All Muriel’s family want is to ensure that the interests of their vulnerable daughter are protected, for we are all more vulnerable than we pretend to be.

Poor Muriel thought it was so much fun when she started out on the relationship when there were no social rules to bother herself with. But it’s a cold, hard world out there and loneliness is peeping round the corner.

Moral Drift

Over the years, the default position of our UK authorities – both local and national – has been to create an atheist society, and they appear to be well on the way to succeeding.

Today it seems that social workers no longer work within a clear framework of right and wrong, or with reference to a higher power. Well we can see how this is working out in Oxford where underage girls were recently raped by a group of men. Although our local authorities as well as the police were informed of what was happening, they chose to do nothing to stop the abuse because they did not want to be seen as “judgemental”. So the rapes continued unabated for some time. It would seem that the police and the local authorities operate today in a state of moral drift.

It’s not as if we couldn’t see this coming. George Orwell, the author of 1984 was a noted atheist. Before he died, he pondered the loss of religious faith in Europe that he had once applauded, and he was honest enough to express dismay at the results. “For two hundred years,” he wrote, “we have sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than we had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded and down we came. But unfortunately there has been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all but a cesspool of barbed wire… It appears that amputation of the soul is not a simple surgical job like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic.”

Oxford’s raped girls are a testimony to that. And don’t forget that Orwell wrote that 50 years ago. I wonder what he would be writing if he were alive today?

The Grand Old Duke

We walked like the troops of the Grand Old Duke of York, up and down the hills from Hursley to Avington through the middle of Winchester. We met a kind lady called Ruth in the cathedral refrectory who kinldy made a donation to Zane,

The sadness for Jane and me is that Moses is not with us. The poor dog managed to get a splinter jammed in his heel and when it was extracted it went septic. We hope he can join us again on Monday as we miss him bounding along. He is so trusting and full of innocent joy. I often recall the prayer: “Oh God, please make me the person my dog thinks I am.”

Nasty Game

We were joined by Simon who walks with us. Apparently he knew Zimbabwe well. He is engaging company as we spend part of the day taking rainwear off and putting  it back on. We discuss “Big Game” shooting,  not a sport I have ever wished to take part in. I was put off for life  after I visited a baronial home in Aberdeen when I was young.  We were shown around by the aged Laird who had apparently fought in WW1.  In the hall he showed us  a selection of heads of animals mounted on the far wall – you must have seen the sort of thing. MacDuff pointed out the head of a gnu, a wildebeest, a buffalo and so on. And then he announced with particular relish:

“And there is the head of a German soldier I shot in the war!”

And there ….hanging on the wall was a skull mounted on a board. Under it was the description:

“Fritz: Vimy Ridge 1918”

This disgusting little man had gone back with a shovel after the war and dug up “his prize”and hung it on his wall as a trophy! Can you imagine anything more horrible than that?

As I trudge, my mind turns to thoughts of politics, religion and society, as it often does.

Shifting Sands

We have just endured yet another election where the level of debate was deplorable. Our leaders apparently assume that the average voter is a moron – perhaps it’s true? For some months, we were obliged to listen to a Punch and Judy show where senior politicians were seeking to bash into the electorate that their party loved the NHS more than any other party, and take that!

But reality is usually a casualty in elections. I have actively participated in four elections and during each one the electorate was told: “This is the most important election since the war!” Does anyone still believe such exaggeration?

Politics in Action

Of course politics is vitally important for there are obviously certain functions that only a government can reasonably undertake. Only government can ensure that the currency is not debased (we have an appalling record); that the country is properly defended, policed and represented overseas; and that taxation is collected and that the poor are well provided for. Only government can ensure that vital services, such as education, the NHS and local government, are efficiently run and reasonably financed.

I reckon that politicians should not only be judged by what they do, but also by the things they don’t do. Prime Minister Harold Wilson was never accorded sufficient recognition for keeping us out of the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 70s. How sad that Tony Blair didn’t read Labour’s recent history.

Of course, not all that government does is in fact wise: some is destructive folly. What possessed Labour to allow gaming houses to flourish smack in the centre of our poorest cities, thereby allowing the greedy to suck welfare benefits from the poorest families in the land with cormorant efficiency? And why did the Coalition allow this wickedness to continue? This is an issue of the deepest shame and no party emerges well.

I suggest that we can help the democratic process to flourish in two main ways: first by resisting the impulse to offer lazy, ignorant and vicious criticism of senior politicians, which has the effect of weakening our democracy. It was John Kennedy who said that no one should judge any politician until he or she had seen the advice they were given and actually faced the issues. Such criticism is usually made by those who know very little about the relevant issues, and it carries the implication that if the critic were doing the job, he or she would do it better: unlikely!

The second thing we can do is to actually vote.

Work to be Done

But there are a number of vital things that politicians cannot do – and I wonder sometimes if they are aware of their limitations?

Politicians cannot affect the passions of the masses and they cannot change people. They don’t have the power to build families, mend broken hearts or transform shattered lives. Politicians cannot limit the acute spiral in drug and alcohol abuse or the level of suicide, and nor can they moderate the ghastly level of sexual exploitation that is everywhere a commonplace. They cannot stem the rising number of abortions, and they cannot stop many of those who have no real need of care homes from being shunted into institutional care (by families who often can’t be bothered to look after them). There is little politicians can do about domestic cruelty or the chronic loneliness that disfigures our society, and they cannot repair the collateral damage caused by abusive families. They cannot reduce the misery suffered by neglected children – and this is not necessarily due to lack of resources or money. Politicians can do nothing to correct the blight of materialism or pornography, nor can they offer grace or forgiveness. And lastly, they cannot build bridges of reconciliation between those who are hurting and those who are demanding vengeance.

In summary, politicians on their own cannot make people happy.

Some might ask if I am forgetting the MP William Wilberforce and his abolition of slavery, or the Clapham Sect and the eighteenth/early nineteenth-century reformation of manners? Of course Wilberforce and many like him wrought miracles to bring about the correction of monstrous evils. But Wilberforce needed the vicar and ex-slaver John Newton to convert him to the foot of the cross, before the veil was lifted and he began to undertake his life’s great work.

So there is work for our Christian community to do, which, with respect, politicians and secular humanists can’t even begin to undertake. And it does not need committees or councils to achieve great things. Let me tell you that Jane and I have walked up and down this great land of ours, and I have never seen a monument or a statue celebrating the achievements of a committee or a council!

The Seeds of Change

Often the most amazing changes come from tiny beginnings, and from the grassroots up and not from government down. For example, in 1935, two drunks sat at a table in Ohio: one told the other that he had just been converted to Christ and he was going to stop drinking. His friend told him he was a drunk and could do nothing to help himself, let alone others. “Leave it to the doctors,” he said, “and just drink and be happy.”

Three months later, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by a drunk with an idea in a dingy cellar. Today AA (and its 12 steps) operates round the world, and it has never needed a penny of government subsidy. There was no great government initiative operating here. Just an alcoholic with an idea. Great things often start from a kitchen table, a cellar… and a dream.

So there is great work to be done by the saints in fighting the evils of our time. With respect to Archbishop Sentamu, I would submit that the greatest evil is not inequality (although that of course is a terrible injustice), but the fact that for the first time in recorded history man is trying to create an atheist society here in the UK and across Europe. It will end in catastrophe.

To sum up, I quote the great and late Malcolm Muggeridge, who claimed that his chat-show career had come to a sad end because each time an issue was raised and he was asked for an answer, he would keep on replying: “The only answer is Jesus Christ.” The invitations dried up.

The issue is a difficult one for politicians, for as Alastair Campbell told us: “We don’t do God.” However, the reality must be Jesus: anything else is shifting sand.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Yesterday was said to be the hottest day this year and today was apparently forecast to be thundery, in fact it was even hotter than yesterday so the forecasters clearly double as election pollsters!  But how kind of the health authorities to warn us about high temperatures and the effect they can have if you don’t drink enough. What a nanny state we have become!  We have just sweated to Hursley where we devoured ice creams and where I told a pretty South African lady called Caryn all about ZANE.

And while I am feeling hot under the collar:

Je Suis Confused

In a free society we should be allowed to say what we like, and the right to offend is crucial. However just because we have that right does not mean that we should exercise it lightly; with rights come responsibilities, and one of these is not to offend people gratuitously.

Let’s make no bones about it: the freedom to speak our minds is precious. Once a government starts to erode freedom of speech, history tells us, there can be no stopping it: this is why our national press campaigned strongly against the extension of government censorship, however light and innocent it purported to be. You will recall the fuss surrounding Hugh Grant’s “Hacked Off” campaign a year or so back, and his attempt to get parliament to apply press controls.

I am *Not* Charlie

If you doubt the merits of a free press, just take a look at the wickedness that the likes of Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Stalin and Saddam got up to under their draconian censorship laws – and Mugabe still does today – and you’ll see what I mean. They imposed tough censorship laws in the name of protecting the state; under its dark veil, they murdered people, and they did it with impunity.

The not inconsiderable pain that freedom of speech is bound to bring to those offended by it is, I submit, the price we pay for living in a free society. Yet we already have censorship. It’s already against the law to make inflammatory statements about minorities and it is illegal, for example, to display placards on the windows of bed and breakfast houses stating, “No Jews, blacks or Irish”. Such notices are discriminatory: they can give rise to grave offence and may lead to violence.

Yet various prominent Bitish politicians showed solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo magazine that grossly insulted Muslims. I should add that when the magazine’s journalists weren’t insulting the prophet Muhammad, they were insulting Christians –particularly the pope – in disgusting terms, or anyone else they thought cared deeply enough about something precious to allow them a cheap headline. We were all encouraged to go around proclaiming, “Je suis Charlie”. I didn’t join in.

Yet recently, Christian Harry Hammond was prosecuted under Section 5 of the Public Order Act for wandering about with a placard proclaiming, “Homosexuals will go to hell”. Whether I agree or disagree with Harry Hammond, or what the Charlie Hebdo journalists were saying about the Prophet Muhammad or those placards that insult minorities is beside the point. My argument is this: if insulting minorities is forbidden by law and Hammond was prosecuted for exercising his freedom of speech, then why is the Charlie Hebdo magazine lauded for insulting Muslims?

None of this makes any sense to me. Does it to you?

No Solutions

I have just heard a true story. Swarms of birds were pooing all over the Lincoln Memorial – not only was the fabric of the stonework being degraded, but tourists were complaining.

So the powers that be tried to stop the birds by using nets, but that failed and it looked ghastly anyway. So they asked themselves why the birds were collecting in that precise spot in the first place, and after a great deal of investigation they discovered that the birds had an overwhelming appetite for the spiders that were also gathering in vast numbers.

Then they smothered the memorial with anti-spider juice and that failed too. So for some months they continued their intense investigations and discovered that spiders were crawling all over the memorial because thousands of mosquitoes were present. So they tried a special mosquito insecticide but that didn’t resolve the problem either.

Next, they asked themselves why mosquitoes were attracted to the memorial. After weeks of research they determined that it was because of the floodlights. So they turned off the lights and the problem seemed to be solved….

Then people started complaining because the lights had been turned off and they couldn’t see the memorial properly.

As Enoch Powell once said, “There are some problems to which there are no solutions.”

Stupid Boys

I have asked countless, intelligent women how many men ask them , say at dinner, about their lives and the answer is always:

“None!  They never do anything other than talk about themselves! They bore us rigid with their stupid views and stories about their tedious careers and they even yap across us to the man on our right or left.”

Let me tell you some more about my views and stories…

Icebergs on a Sunny Day

Walked from Brockenhurst through the New Forest on what must surely be the hottest day of the year. Yet again I try to outwalk my friends Anthea and Christopher Piggins, and once again Chris’ cantilever legs make mincemeat of me. Also in the party is a new friend from Zimbabwe – an escapee from illegal farm seizures – Nicky Millbank, and delightful company. We lunch at the New Forest Inn. I see above the cloakroom door a plaque that proudly proclaims that this inn was the last stop of Captain Edward Smith before he boarded the Titanic to command its only voyage. I don’t think I want to know that somehow, particularly when I see another sign in the car park wishing passengers a cheery “Good luck on your trip.”

Makes me think, we are always only a step away from tragedy.

There but by the Grace of God…

Along with millions of parents, I have always been desperately sorry for families whose beloved children suddenly disappear. The default position of some people appears to be to condemn parents of missing kids as seriously negligent. I disagree, for I cannot see how anyone who has ever been involved in bringing up children could do anything other than admit how easy it is to lose them.

Hide and Seek

We all have our own horror stories of near misses and lucky escapes. Here are couple of ours. At more or less the same time as the tragic case of Madeleine McCann was playing out in the news headlines, our youngest daughter, Milly, was visiting friends in Kensington. At the height of the rush hour, she led her two young sons, Isaac and Silas, down the teeming escalator and towards the crowded platform. Trains were coming and going and Milly was stressed. She arrived on the platform with Isaac in one hand, Silas holding the other – and then she suddenly realised with horror that two-year old Silas had let go and she could no longer see him. She called his name, but no reply. She then shouted with increasing tempo, as he failed to appear. The crowd parted as if she was carrying the plague, and then officials materialised. They tried to calm Milly down as she rapidly approached full-flowered despair.

The tube manager searched the platform, exits were closed and trains were stopped: station officials were sent up and down the tracks in case Silas had gone for a walk. The police arrived: by this time Milly was seated in the station master’s office head in hands, silently weeping and fearing the worst. Then – at last – a phone rang. The spokesperson from Gloucester Square Tube station (one station down the track) said that a little lost boy with red hair had been just been presented to the station manager by a kindly passenger. Silas had stepped onto the train just as its doors were closing and for the next few minutes had been walking up and down the crowded tube politely asking passengers for his mummy.

Last Boxing Day, my son Oliver and his French wife, Lois, were shopping in a crowded mall in Perpignon. After they left a clothing shop, four-year-old Amelie was missing. They called and searched, and as their anxiety levels rose they called again; then they shouted. The police were alerted. No Amelie. More police arrived, the mall was closed, and footage from various CCTV cameras was fetched. More shops were visited, questions were asked, and announcements made.

Half an hour later, the entire mall was at a standstill. Then as if by magic, a smiling Amelie suddenly appeared from the clothes shop. It transpired that as Mummy and Daddy were shopping, she had decided to play her favourite game of hide and seek. She thought that a clothes box sited under a counter where returned goods were occasionally collected was as good a place to hide as any, so she opened the lid and snuggled down. She grinned to herself when she heard Mummy and Daddy calling her name, then she had a snooze.

Amelie wasn’t in the least surprised by the throng of police and people. And she informed her parents, “You never found me, so I won. Can we go on playing?”

Well of course, all’s well that ends well, and now the stories have entered Benyon folklore. But all self-aware parents who read this may also reflect, “There but by the grace of God go I.”

Euro Visions

We walk from Freshwater Bay to Yarmouth keeping the sea to our left. The path leads through several miles of dappled tunnel lined with trees crouching to attention and nodding in the breeze to greet us like a parade of elderly veterans. On the outskirts of the port we meet a group of biking holidaymakers from Holland, the Dekkers, and a delightful lady with a wholly unpronounceable name. We swopped family gossip and thankfully kept away from Grexit and the Euro! Their English was excellent so good it puts us to shame.

Catholic Tastes

A generous lunch provided by my cousin Giles. a dear man who knew Zimbabwe – and indeed married in “Salisbury”. It was then in its glory days. We discussed how curious it was that our great grandparents suddenly converted to Catholicism in the eighteen fifties when Catholicism was said to be “fashionable”! Perhaps Cardinal Newman’s influence was to do with it. Fashion is a funny reason to change your faith but there’s nowt so queer as folk.  Anyway I don’t think they were very serious about it as I was born a Catholic and no one told me anything about it at all except I should feel guilty, which I duly did, for a while at least. Anyway I have long since ceased to be sectarian, but some people take the differences very seriously indeed. In fact when one of my conservative Presbyterian pals heard I had been baptised Catholic he said that if I was to be ever baptised an Anglican by total immersion, they would have to hold me under the water for at least ten minutes to get rid of it all! I hope he was joking.

Giles and I couldn’t help but compare the Zimbabwe situation then and now…

Exodus

Since about 1980, Zimbabwe’s greatest export to the developed world has been around four million of its most talented young workers. This exodus has been as much of a tragedy for Zimbabwe as it has been a boon to the rest of the civilised world, for few will return.

A One-Way Ticket

The UK’s National Health Service relies on a steady supply of talented Zimbabwean nurses and cleaners. Thousands of businesses and restaurants round the world find Zimbabwean waiters, managers and shop assistants a valuable resource.

Of course, millions remain trapped in Zimbabwe and today live lives of repression and destitution. But who left the country and why? Well let’s start with about 4,500 farmers whose land was stolen, followed by hundreds of senior farm managers who faced destitution; then there was a queue of politicians of the wrong stripe who feared that a single misplaced word might involve them in a fatal car accident, people of the wrong tribe who faced cruel persecution, and thousands of young who discovered that they were born the wrong colour to win jobs.

All these people did what humankind has always done when life has become intolerable; it’s what the Huguenots did when faced with religious persecution, it’s what the Pilgrim Fathers did in the early seventeenth century; it’s what the Scottish and Irish farmers decided to do when faced with land seizures. Zimbaweans did what escaping Jews did when facing Nazi genocide in the 1930s. They looked abroad for freedom to live free lives as people have always done throughout the generations.

They left.

Modern Entertaining

When Jane and I were young, we used to entertain a great deal. Although we still throw parties, the times we are invited back seems to be falling. I thought perhaps it was us! But my children tell me the same story – the Benyons are a hospitable lot, we all derive great fun from entertaining, but it seems that many people find it a strain. Perhaps their mothers did not like to entertain and so the tradition has never been passed on. My children tell me that when they are asked to dinner, nine times out of 10 they are asked to bring a course with them, or the wine for the meal or something. Why is this? Are we all growing stingier and becoming more inhospitable?

One of the most majestic sea fronts in the world and it’s deserted; miles of tortuous and heathery track with occasional isolated clusters of caravans. Then we walk through the most serious competition to the good old C of E and its Sunday services:  a full scale car boot sale where the burghers of Shanklin are selling the most extraordinary junk.

The spiritual aspect of possessions fascinates me…

Clumber

In John Huston’s 1948 film, Key Largo, Rocco, the grasping crook (played by Edward G. Robinson) is asked by Major Frank McCloud (played by Humphrey Bogart) why he is so unscrupulous and greedy? The unreflective Rocco hasn’t a clue why.

McCloud guesses, “Is it because you want more?”

“Yes,” snarls Rocco, “That’s it: I want more.”

Stuff and More Stuff

The greed of man (and women!) is timeless. A friend told me he hasn’t spoken to his sister for 20 years because he alleges she stole some Tupperware – worth a few pounds at best – from their mother’s house just before she died. My wife, Jane, tells me that when she was a practising social worker she became used to people stealing money from their aged relatives’ handbags.

One of my lawyer friends always tells me that greed is at the heart of his clients’ motives: “Where there’s a will there’s a relative!” and “say ‘cash’, and a corpse rises to dance”.

When Jane and I visited New York a few months back, we saw a window sticker in a white stretch Mercedes that read: “The guy who dies with the most toys wins.” We live in a deeply materialistic, money-grubbing society. Why are we all so greedy? Do we love things more than we love the people around us? In the early Church it was said, “there were no needy persons among them”. If they had stuff they shared it.

Still, of course, that was 2,000 years ago…

And still we want more stuff. Over the past couple of days, we have walked past several charity shops selling out-of-date stuff; then we trailed a stop-go rubbish van carrying discarded stuff. After that we saw a yellow sign offering to hoard stuff in “self-storage facilities”.

William Penn (he founded Pennsylvania) called all the objects we cram into our houses “clumber”: the word’s a mix of the words “lumber” and “cloying”, and it seems to sum things up perfectly. We all have clumber: we see it, then we want it, so we buy it; then we show it to our neighbours and silently compare it with their clumber, and then we tire of it and throw it away, and look for more. In this way we often end up buying things we don’t really need with money we haven’t got in order to impress people we don’t really like. We imagine that if our clumber keeps accumulating, we’ll feel safe and secure. If our head says that’s nonsense, our hearts argue differently. Recall the Black Friday shopping day in the run up to Christmas when hundreds of shoppers belted each other as they fought for the best bargains.

US psychologist Paul Pearsall has the following to say to people who find it hard to part with possessions that they haven’t used for years. “You may require a ‘closet exorcist’, a trusted friend,” he suggests, “who can help prevent the ‘re-stuffing’ phenomenon. Re-stuffing happens when in the process of clearing out junk we are stimulated to acquire new stuff.” And beware the stuff addicts who see your cupboard cleaning exercise as an opportunity to acquire more stuff for themselves!

Chasing the Wind

We are obsessed with houses. Comedian George Carlin said that a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it – and some really quite successful people have managed to get by without ever owning one. Mother Teresa for starters, and what about Ghandi and Jesus?

I read about Hearst Castle recently. Apparently Randolph William Hearst was a “stuffaholic”. He built a vast house and filled it with antiques. He then bought chunks of the Californian coastline. And then… he died. Silly old Randolph.

When we die, we leave all out stuff behind – then our children (chanting how sad they are), pick over it like vultures and argue about what stuff they want to add to their stuff. Then they die and another vulture comes along to sift through the pile and so the process goes on. Nations go to war over stuff, and some families stop talking for generations because of it.

The book of Ecclesiastes has something to say about it all: “Meaningless! Meaningless!….Utterly meaningless… a chasing after the wind.”

For the Love of Money

Getting loads of wonga has its own problems. Recently I came across some quotes from some really rich people who found that out through bitter experience.

“The care of $200m is too great a load for any back or brain to bear. It is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.”

William Henry Vanderbilt

“I am the most miserable man on earth.”

J.J. Astor

“Millionaires seldom smile.”

Andrew Carnegie

“I have made millions but they have brought me no happiness.”

John D. Rockefeller

“I was happier doing a mechanic’s job.”

Henry Ford

Consider the tragic end of billionaire Howard Hughes. John Ortberg tells us that he was “a gothic horror. Emaciated, only 120 pounds stretched over his six-foot-four frame…a thin straggly beard that reached down his sunken chest. Hideous long nails in grotesque yellowed corkscrews….Many of this teeth were black stumps and a tumour was beginning to emerge from the side of his head. ….innumerable needle marks in his arms. He was an addict, a billionaire junkie.”

Would even more money have satisfied him? Would more money have satisfied Philip Seymour Hoffman who was found dead some time ago with a needle sticking out of his arm?

It was Henry Vanderbilt who, when asked, “How rich do you need to be for you to be satisfied”, answered “just a little bit more.”

I suppose the last laugh about money has to belong to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Moore remarked that if he were Rockefeller, he would end up richer than Rockefeller.

“How will you do that?” asked Cook.

“I’d do a little bit of window cleaning on the side”.

Having and Being

When Malcolm Muggeridge was an old man he wrote: “When I look back on my life, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed to me at the time most significant and seductive seems now to be futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises, being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women….In retrospect, all those exercise in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal calls licking the earth.”

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf claims there are two kinds of wealth in life. “Richness of being,” and “richness of having”. Richness of having is an external experience and richness of being is an inner experience. We usually focus on richness of having. We think true happiness lies there. If only I had a dream house, fame, a bigger salary, financial security, a satisfying sex life – and so on – then I would be contented. We seek richness of having, but what we really want is richness of being. We want to be happy, joyful, contented, and free from anxiety, but in chasing “having”, the bottomless pit of our desires can never be filled.

Perhaps we should all try and get our priorities into some sort of perspective and not wait until we are old. I suggest that wealth, fame and possessions are gossamer stuff compared to Beloc’s philosophy: “There’s nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.”

No Going Back

I learned a bitter lesson in not seeing and loving my mother more before she died. In fact, I can’t bring myself to read her later diaries, but I am told by family that she felt desperately hurt by me in many ways. I hope she found it in her heart to forgive me before she died.

There is a sad story about the historian Thomas Carlyle that resonates vividly with me and I am sure you will see why. He wrote beautifully and with great insight about possessions: “Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, but at the heart of them what increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, more beautiful, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call ‘happier’? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in this God’s Earth; do more things and human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so.”

But knowing the theory of love and folly is one thing; it does not mean that we live by this wisdom.

Carlyle married his secretary Jane Welsh and during their quite happy marriage she became ill with cancer. Carlyle was working hard and failed to notice his wife’s deteriorating health very much. Eventually she was confined to her bed. Although Carlyle loved her, he gave her little time. After some years, Jane died and then Carlyle was obliged to return to a house that was bleakly empty and shatteringly lonely.

Sometime later, he discovered her diary on a shelf. On one entire page she had written a single line: “Yesterday he spent an hour with me and it was like heaven. I love him so.”

He understood the shattering reality that he had been too busy really to see how much he had meant to Jane. When he was preoccupied with work, he simply failed to notice her suffering or her great love for him

Then he read the words he could never forget. “I have listened all day for his steps in the hall but it is late and I doubt he will come today.”

Later that night, friends found him weeping and crouching by Jane’s grave. “If I had only known, if only I had known,” he cried to a silent heaven.

Jane’s death terminated Carlyle’s writing career. His last years were lonely and sad, and he died a bored and partial recluse.

Poor Thomas. Of course the moments whirl by and there is no rewind button for any of us. Thankfully since my mother’s death I have cherished my family. I recall, for example, the precious occasions when I drove our two daughters to the church altar to marry good, kind and faithful men. I vividly remember saying to myself then that I wished I could freeze those treasured moments forever.

One day the end will come and we can’t control that date either. But it isn’t all bad news. Unless we are no more than walking plumbing machines, each day we live, and each act of kindness and love moves from potential good to realised good, and will stay fixed in eternity – and will never be lost.

Italian Dreams

We talked to two delightful Italian girls, Carlotta and Julia, both formidably bright. One was studying for her PHD in economics in Germany, the other working for Unilever in London. They were both adamant that Italy’s future lies in the Eurozone and they regaded the idea that Italy might revert to the Lira as risible. They hope their homeland will become more effcient and grow into the EU. In my opinion they are living in a dream world and so we will just have to see what happens after the Greek situation is finally resolved.

—

A Tail of Three Dogs

I watch our young Cockapoo Moses bound along and it sets me thinking…

I suppose Oscar Wilde might have said that to lose one dog might be regarded as misfortune but to lose two looks like sheer carelessness. And I’m afraid the old sod would be as right as ever, for we appear to have “lost” two dogs inside a mere 15 months.

Readers of my past walk commentaries will recall that for four of our walks we were accompanied by our loyal Staffie Leah. However, after she contracted incurable cancer of the womb, we were forced to have her “put to sleep”. How I hate that euphemism, for there is no getting away from the reality of her end – because, dear reader, in the manner of Stalin, we ordered her to be killed and it was a truly harrowing experience. Leah must have walked well over 1,200 miles for the great cause of ZANE and, as I wrote in my last blog, at the end we condemned her to death.

Lovely Dinah

In order to recover from that ghastly experience we quickly rescued another two-month-old “champagne” Staffie from her birthplace sited in a smelly tenement just outside Birmingham. When we arrived, her owners and their two small children – who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight – were clustered round the telly watching an “adult movie” called Horny Housewives (I kid you not). In fact the film makers should be prosecuted for misrepresentation because these movies aren’t “adult”, but juvenile.

As we drove away, I grew convinced we were saving this poor little dog from a fate worse than death. When you take a look at what many of our nation’s children are allowed to watch you don’t have to ask why the number of alcoholics, drug abusers and sexual predators is rising. The Good Book tells us that the sins of the fathers are visited on future generations, especially if they watch crap on the box. Okay I invented the last eight words of that sentence, and yes I am becoming a curmudgeon – and increasingly proud of it as well – but I am convinced that people can corrupt dogs as well as children; their noble characters are often ruined by vicious, degenerate and drunken owners. Dogs don’t just end up looking like their masters, they can reflect their natures too.

Anyway, we called our new dog Dinah – I don’t really know why, but the name seemed to reflect the hint of wildness that shone from her amber eyes. She spent the first six months of her joyous existence destroying everything she could get her sharp little snappers into: £20 notes, treasured rugs and computer wires were her speciality, but of course she ripped into everything and anything she discovered at snout level. Last July, on our recent trek, she towed us from Ambleside to Oxford and it was a privilege to totter along in her churning wake. Dinah was a joy to behold with a broad head, a finely chiselled body, and markings so delicate I’m convinced the Almighty had plucked her from his vast production line to craft her to His special glory.

Dinah was perfect in every way. She did more or less exactly what she pleased and at frenzied speed. On our last golden holiday in Chichester, she spent hours running furiously by the seashore attempting to out-manoeuvre the zigzagging seabirds as they curved and swooped against the dark, grey-flecked sky. At night, she would crawl exhausted on the sofa, lazily turn onto her back and lick my face. As a special privilege, I would be allowed to tickle her tummy.

Under My Skin

On the afternoon of 5 October last year, I was in the office and Jane was outside gardening. Then I heard a shattering scream. We found Dinah hiding under a car. Her frightened eyes told me she had been mortally injured by a passing vehicle. I pulled her out and cradled her into my car. The vet told us that her spine was fractured and once again we were obliged to have a pet put to sleep. Of course it was the right thing to do but I wept at her passing. And I was furious with myself that I had failed to mend the hole in the bloody fence that I’d been too idle/stupid to do before Dinah went on her escapade.

So third time lucky with Moses, the new Cockapoo. Black and furry, he’s a real character – and a boy. But it’s a bit like owning a Ford Focus after a Maserati! I am sure I’ll grow to love him in time. It’s just that as the great Sinatra sang – I’m sure with Dinah in mind – “I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me…”

Well of course dogs like Dinah are all gifts, aren’t they? Gifts come to us undeserved and to enjoy for a time, and then they go. The sages advise us that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Having said all this, recovering from the loss of a companion as beautiful as Dinah will take some time.

Hello Constable

We travelled from Fishbourne to Shanklin, about twelve miles. Constable country with the old world feeling about the place as if Dad’s Army might potter into sight at any time. The last three miles were traversed the sea shore. We spend the night in a couple of Victorian cottages sited in a large glade as guests of a couple of kind folk who lived much of their lives in South Africa. A friend living in the south told our hosts (who had never heard of ZANE) about our charity and they offered us hospitality on the off chance we were “fun people doing useful work.” I can only hope we lived up to expectations!

—

Yacht a Lovely View!

It was that mouldy old philosopher Goethe who claimed that all views grow tedious in 15 minutes, but I think even he would want to revise this gloomy prognosis if he had watched the Isle of Wight yacht race today. I last saw 1700 yachts with multi coloured sales in a lovely picture by Edward Seago.

One minute the horizon was dotted by this teeming armada and then suddenly the sea was empty and glassy as if an artist had dragged a rag across his canvas.

We were passed by a team of young runners sweating their way around the island. One, James, managed funds for the fund management firm Blackrock in London.

—

Filling the Void

As I wandered along I pondered that loneliness is a terrible blight. It is estimated that well over half of those over the age of 75 in the UK are living alone and do not speak to anyone other than their carers for months on end. My vicar friends tell me that at a great many funerals there is no one present other than the local vicar and the undertaker.

When she visited the UK, Mother Teresa declaimed that although we are “rich” in the West when compared to the ghastly poverty of the Calcutta slums, we have little community. “You are all so rich yet isolated,” she said. “The poor may have no material wealth but the extended family teems everywhere.” It would seem that the richer we grow materially, in terms of our friendships and love for our neighbours, the poorer we become.

Modern Connections

Family life is so important, yet it is under threat. Do Facebook and Twitter fill the void of loneliness? Well of course they serve us well by facilitating and speeding up social exchanges, but they have a darker side: social media simulates community and at the same time erodes family ties. Here’s an example of what I mean.

Until recently, if a boy wanted to take out a girl he was obliged to ring her home. Nine times out of 10, her parents would answer. The boy would then be obliged to demonstrate his manners and pass the time of day… and only then would he ask to speak to so and so. If he were favoured, the connection would be made, and if not, excuses – contrived or otherwise – would flow. Usually he would be the subject of amused family discussion – some occasionally negative, but more often than not, friendly and positive.

In this way, Jane and I got to know most of our children’s friends over the years. I suppose that for a time, in their teens, we acted as “gatekeepers” to their social lives. As a result, to this day we are still on good terms with many of these friends. Some, aged 40 plus, still charmingly call us “Mr and Mrs Benyon” as they did at parties or on the phone all those years ago. Despite the passage of time, the age gap of course has never melted away.

The advent of the mobile phone, Facebook and Twitter has changed all this, not I submit, for the better. Now when contact is made between girls and boys, the family is easily cut from the loop. No longer will parents necessarily know their children’s circle of friends – unless they are asked to teenage parties, which is highly unlikely! I do not mean that in our day we “guarded” our children in a heavy handed way, for I cannot think of a single occasion when we tried to censor whom our children wanted to meet. However, it was good to know who their friends were – and it was fun for us as a family to be involved in our children’s comings and goings, as well as the highs and the lows of them finding their wings with new friends and preparing to fly the nest.

I wonder if today the young ever have anything to do with people outside of their age group (other than schoolteachers)? Do the old know any young? If so, when do they meet?

The growth of social media means that maintaining opportunities for generations to mix outside of their age bands is vitally important. Long live churches, the hunting communities and other societies!

All You Who Pass By

I met the great Sir Michael Mayne after his retirement as Dean of Westminster when he was living in Salisbury. He once mightily irritated Margaret Thatcher by holding a service for the mining community when the pits were closed in 1991. He also set up a remembrance stone for the innocent victims of violence and persecution, which reads, “Is it nothing to you all you who pass by?”

Michael told of how his vicar father committed suicide when his son was three by throwing himself down from the roof of his church. Sixty years afterwards Michael preached in the church where his father died. After he had finished an old lady told him that she had known his father: “such a jolly man”. How little we reveal. How little we know of others’ lives.

Michael was a great man who writes beautifully about the mysteries of faith. In Pray, Love, Remember he recollects when he was strongly criticised for holding an interfaith service in Westminster Abbey on grounds of John 14:6 “No one can come to the father except by me”. In other words, his critics thought all other faiths are plain wrong, whilst Christians have a monopoly on being right!

I have always been bothered by the concept that the Christians have it all right and everyone else is wrong.

Mayne argues: “This text relates specifically to the fatherhood of God: it is not simply a question of coming ‘to God’ but of coming to the father. There is but one God, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’ and when we worship, we stand before the mystery of that deep and eternal reality to whom we give different names. From the Jews we learn of his faithfulness; from Muslims of his sovereignty and mercy; from the wonders of the natural world, a realisation of his mystery and power. Christians speak of something more intimate: of his fatherhood, for only in Jesus can we begin to experience the truth of a God as father. The presence of those from the commonwealth of other faiths, each person praying to God as that faith conceived him to be, did nothing to compromise our belief that in Jesus Christ we see the ultimate expression of God’s nature, for that belief does not deny the truth of other revelations of God, nor our hope that in Christ all may ultimately find their fulfilment.”

This sets me thinking. I suppose we will never know for sure until we confront the recording angel!

Win/ win

A successful businessman and ZANE donor told me that he made his money by stealing from the rich and selling to the blind!  You have been warned!

—

Wilde Speculation

When Oscar  Wilde was asked if he believed other planets harboured life, he said that he did,

“Why?” they asked.

“Because we are their insane asylum.”

—

Hosts with the Most

We stayed last night in the happy home of a Bill and Penny Evershed. Apparently they built their own house and very nice it is too. I have to say that I find the extraordinary talents of my hosts overwhelming. I can’t do any of the things they can do so feel rather useless.  Bill – who is a retired naval officer- walked steadily with us the whole day and he was the ideal guest. He was quiet and he only talked when he had something interesting to say.

We arrived at the Isle of Wight ferry with literally ten seconds to spare.

We are staying tonight in a glorious house in the Isle of Wight. Peter and Johanna Truman were generous hosts and they gave a dinner party for us and asked some of their buddies -all delightful and interested in Zimbabwe.

—

His Term Has Ended

I see that the great educationalist Sir Chris Woodhead has died. He spent most of his professional life battling against what Michael Gove called “the blob” that is the cloud of educationalist lefties who seek to protect useless teachers often at the expense of  pupils.

Chris pointed out that there were at least 15,000 useless teachers working in the state system.

When one of our daughters attended our local grammar school we noticed with some incredulity that her history homework was unmarked. We  complained to the head teacher to be told that the history teacher suffered domestic “problems.” I said why should  domestic problems affect the educational future  of the entire class. I was then invited to see the teacher in question with the head teacher.

I protested that this was beyond the absurd and this was not my job. The education went from bad to worse.

As our daughter’s  education was suffering so we bit the bullet and sent her to a local public school. From day one she improved.

Chris Woodhead knew great vilification in his life when he tried to take on the blob and at the hands of cowardly politicians who failed to back him. May he rest in peace.

—

Royals and Rackets

I am an ardent royalist but that doesn’t stop me from pondering on some of the less appealing aspects of the monarchy! For example, have you ever wondered at the sick-puppy expressions on the faces of those in proximity to anyone with royal blood? I am sure that most members of the royal family are pleasant and able people, but what special personal qualities do they possess to garner such adoration? They must wonder why the good Lord created humanity with faces permanently puckered in an ingratiating smile, for that’s all they ever see when they meet ordinary mortals.

The Royal Effect

Why do people turn to glue when there is a royal within a hundred yards? As the effect of the monarchy is socially crippling, do the royals have any “real” friends? Surely they must always wonder at people’s motivations? We have an admiral friend who tells us that when he was at sea people used to laugh at his jokes whether they were funny or not… but the laughter stopped dead when he retired. How much more amplified must false mirth be for those in the Queen’s tiny circle; they must have noticed that all their vaguely funny comments are greeted with shrieks of hilarity. Who dares to tell the royals when they are talking balls? Or inform them they’ve told the same tedious story twice – and that it wasn’t funny the first time round?

Can you really be close friends with an HRH? And please don’t believe the fiction that ladies in waiting or equerries form close friendships with their royal employers, for that’s highly improbable. How many of the tailored suits and frocks are sufficiently brave to chance the royal scowl and speak an occasional unvarnished truth? This is sad for the royals, sad for everyone.

Why is it like this? It’s nothing to do with the fact that the present Queen has served the country with rare distinction. I know we live in a celebrity culture – most people live relatively tedious lives and so royalty adds a touch of spice to the mix. But I’m sure there’s a darker reason… perhaps it’s because when Charles I was executed, the “divine right of kings” nonsense never fell into the basket along with his head. So today, deep down in people’s psyches – so far buried, they’re probably unaware of it – is the idea that the royals are semi-divine. I am sure if they were to be challenged, people would see this idea as risible, but if you think I’m wrong then please come up with a more convincing explanation!

A Brilliant Wheeze

And while I am on about my theories, here’s another one. Do you recall being taught about Martin Luther, the original whistle blower and the total outrage of “indulgences”?

It was dangerous blowing whistles then. To remind you, indulgences were part of a Catholic racket that guaranteed that if, for example, you paid say £10,000, you could avoid the fires of Hades despite that little spot of adultery you committed. And your bribe could ensure a shorter time in purgatory too. And what about a package of, say, £50,000 to absolve you if you wanted to go on committing the same crime! It was a sort of spiritual extortion and hugely successful. On top of this, the good old Catholic Church had the monopoly on forgiveness. The whole thing was such a brilliant wheeze that the Mafia’s Don Corleone would have given his mother and her spaghetti sauce recipes for even two per cent of the gross.

To the vast irritation of the Catholic Church, on 31 October 1513, one-time monk Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral; amongst his trenchant criticisms was a claim that indulgences were a disgraceful fraud. Only God, he proclaimed, could forgive sins through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and his blood spilled on the cross.

Are you paying attention, class? Sit up straight!

The Church had another monopoly: deciding who was to be regarded as a heretic. Luther was sentenced and they immediately began to stoke the faggots for his bonfire; so he went into hiding and who can blame him? To cut to the chase, Luther had influential pals and survived. Then came the Reformation and after a time indulgences were scrapped.

Today, no one in authority in any Christian church would be daft enough to formally reintroduce indulgences as such. But has the notion completely gone away?

What are the motives of the faithful, for example, when they help to fund church building projects? Perhaps the idea that if I donate £20k towards a loo extension, then somehow God – never mind the vicar – will be pleased, and my gift might still prove to serve as penance for that derring-do (or don’t)?

If churches are facing financial difficulties, perhaps they might bring indulgences back. It was such a good idea until dear old Luther blew his whistle.