A Great Escape

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

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

Reflective Reflection

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

All is Vanity

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

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

Ha ha!

So We’ll No More Go a Roving…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wheat and the Chaff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Shops and Horror

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

Wind in the Whither?

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

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

I Remember It Well

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

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

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

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

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

First Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh yes, and be careful what you wish for.     

Take That!

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

Royal sucks to health and safety!

Very Welcome Guest

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

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

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

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

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

A Mother Loved

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

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

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

My Thoughts Exactly…

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

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

Don’t You Love Me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I pray not to my granddaughters either. 

Rhodes Must Fall

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

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

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

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

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

Hilly and Milly

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good to have candid children.

Generally Remarkable

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

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

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

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

The Clapped-Out Old Galahad

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

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

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

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

Perfect.

History and Hindsight

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

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

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

Monumental Damage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jane and I are all set for our “circular” walk. It’s sad that driver Markus won’t be here –but since we’ll be sleeping in our own beds at home this year, we can’t justify his presence. He will be much missed.  

As ever, we are walking for Zimbabwe’s poor. This is the eleventh year I’ve said that the state of Zimbabwe couldn’t possibly get any worse – and lo and behold, once again it is! The future looks grim. Through government incompetence and gross corruption, Zimbabwe’s inflation is soaring above 600 per cent. It’s not as if we haven’t been here before. It’s often said that the first sign of madness is doing the same stupid thing time after time, hoping to get a different result. The Zimbabwe government is proving how true this bleak proposition is. 

A friend asked me a couple of dynamite questions. The first was this: why is it that Singapore, a country founded more or less at the same time as Zimbabwe, yet possessing none of its natural advantages – such as tourism or agricultural potential, or mineral riches – is today one the richest nations on Earth? It’s a country that can afford to provide superb facilities of health, education and social services to its people, yet Zimbabwe is a world-class economic ruin, the bulk of its people reduced to beggary.      

And the next question was this: why did no media outlet dare to comment when Zimbabwe turned into one of the most racist countries on Earth? From 1999, some 4,000 farmers were ripped from their farms wholly because of the colour of their skin. That was the finding some years ago of black judges in the South African court in Namibia – the findings in Mike Campbell’s case. This ruling has never been challenged. Why the media silence? 

Lockdown

Now to the present circumstances…

It’s been fine for Jane and me for we live in a nice house, we have a close family and we’ve been married forever. We are aware that all this is diamond-rare.

We are living in extraordinary times and the country is racking up vast bills. Do you recall the 2010 Conservative election slogan: “Dad’s nose. Mum’s eyes. Gordon Brown’s debt.”? Our grandchildren will have to pay our vast Covid debts. Will ZANE survive when, as we all know, “charity starts at home”?

Back to the walk: new Meindl boots, new sunglasses. We are as fit as can be, considering we should be exhibits in the Antiques Roadshow. But for many, ZANE is their only hope of survival. There’s no NHS or social services in Zimbabwe, and unemployment is 95 per cent. The majority of the most able of the young have long since left, leaving the less able and elderly behind.

So we walk: looking after the poor is what ZANE is all about.

Health Warning

Many of my blog items are penned late in the evening when I am tired and often out of sorts. I try and concentrate on the five subjects that are of most interest to me: sex, money, religion, politics and death. Occasionally, I stray off these topics. Of course, I can only guess as to the political complexion of ZANE supporters so I have to take some care. I spent most of my political life thinking I was centre left: today, perhaps the tide has shifted leaving me more or less beached on the centre right.

You may not agree with my views, and that’s fine, for the hallmark of a free country is the right to disagree and even to give offence. But please go on reading. I try not to “do” party politics but sometimes I can’t resist the odd snide comment. However, I’ve been as critical of the Conservatives in recent years as of any other party!

Please also appreciate that the views in this commentary are mine and mine alone. They don’t represent the views of anyone who works for ZANE or the body of the trustees.

Further, this commentary is not a self-important indulgence on my part but – to my surprise – generates far more revenue than the cost of printing and dispatch.

So, if you have already sponsored us, “thank you”. And if not, please do so!         

Home Stretch

The last 13 miles at some speed through the outskirts of Oxford via Wallingford.  Then to Christ Church via the Iffley Road to be met by a warm welcoming group. Dear Alannah was there to send us on our way from Canterbury at what seems to be a lifetime ago: there she is outside Christ Church to welcome us back with a spirited trumpet voluntary.

Have Faith

What I dislike are books on faith that imply that the author has it all worked out, and if the book is read then all doubts will flee (and if they don’t, well, there must be something wrong with the reader!) I also dislike the fact that too many vicars haven’t a clue and cannot preach for toffee, so people remain frustrated and unfed, their basic questions unanswered.

Let’s face it: in the twenty-first century, talk of the virgin birth, miracles and a dead man rising make for an improbable story. And dear old Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens haven’t helped matters.  

I am comforted that it was not the devout and morally successful who understood Jesus, and who were loved by him. It was the desperate and the defeated, those who felt they had let themselves down, and the profoundly disappointed. 

Grace

Paul Tillich, a German exile from NAZI Germany wrote this:

“Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean we suddenly believe that God exists or that Jesus is the Saviour, or that the Bible contains the truth… Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual… it strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.”

For me, this seems to capture the upside-down message of Jesus. So why do I believe?

Reasons to Believe

Year ago, I knew the great Chuck Colson of Nixon infamy and Watergate, and then jail and Prison Fellowship. He was a thug, no mistake – as was St Paul. And so was my friend Jonathan Aitken and so was I! But God uses us in our weakness.

In the book Born Again, Colson wrote that in the Watergate scandal in June 1972, seven men – the Watergate Seven – conspired to lie to the world that Nixon did not know about the break-in to the Democratic National Committee (Erlichman, Mitchell, Mardian, Colson, Haldeman, Parkinson and Strachan).

It took just one week for the conspiracy to fall apart; one by one, the seven could no longer bear the deception, and so they went to the special prosecutor to admit they had lied.

Colson concluded from his own experience that Jesus’s disciples simply couldn’t have conspired to lie to the Roman authorities about the resurrection, when the penalty for that lie was crucifixion. Why would they do such a thing? To die for a lie is completely contrary to human nature, so Colson concluded that the disciples had to be telling the truth. Jesus did rise from the dead: they saw him and they were prepared to die for that truth.

I have always thought that totally convincing and it’s the reason I began to believe in the miracle of the resurrection.

And then US bestselling author David Foster Wallace wrote this:

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for choosing some sort of god… to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things…  then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally bury you… Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever-more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.”

Last, Solzhenitsyn spent much of his time, after his incarceration in the Gulag, trying to understand how some 60 million Soviets had simply “vanished”. And this was in my lifetime too! Sixty million people, many just slaughtered, many starved to death – and all killed in truly ghastly circumstances.

In God’s name, why? Because, he concluded, people had tried to live without God.

So people should belt up with their worries/doubts/fears, and so on – stop moaning on about why does God allow suffering and all the rest of it. Because this is nothing new. It’s been talked about for thousands of years.

Just get on with believing – what alternative is there? – and save your witterings for the recording angel!

The POSH Test

I wonder just how “posh” ZANE supporters are? 

Just in case you didn’t know, the word “posh” comes from our Colonial past. It derives from whether liner passengers to India could afford “Port Out, Starboard Home” tickets (a posh ticket) – so they could buy shade from the sun. 

Now I have been told that posh people are defined by how they pronounce the word “shower.” If it rhymes with “flower” they are certainly not posh. If they pronounce it “shar” (to rhyme with “far”), they are totally and irredeemably posh.

Thanks

We have completed 162 miles, much through God’s own countryside, and returned safely. We were conscious that eighty years ago the sky was a battle ground: we were reminded of this by various Spitfires performing aerobatics by some enthusiasts. The weather was kind to us, perfect in fact.  We were welcomed by loyal ZANE supporters: people who comprise the backbone of the UK: kindly, hospitable and generous to a fault. We choose not to highlight their names, which might cause embarrassment, but they know who they are. Thank you each and every one of you. It’s a privilege to have you in our lives.

Markus, our driver and doughty assistant from Bulawayo is a great ZANE friend; a careful driver and a patient man, blessed by an overarching good nature. Markus never takes offence:  this last is a necessary quality when dealing with flawed individuals such as Jane and me, especially so when we are tired, thirsty, demanding and frequently fractious.

General Jane was, as ever, commanding and indomitable: an inspiration to all who know her. Her map-reading skills are astonishing, as are her leadership qualities.

The walk could not have proceeded without Sue Carter’s care and patience.

And last a thank you to you our generous supporters for your financial support and your many messages of encouragement. And thank you to the many who came to walk with us.

Tom Benyon

P.S daughter Clare tells me that her Italian friend, Luca, is most concerned about the Brexit and the wider political situation in the UK.

I ask you! When the Italians express worry about the political state we are in, we really are in a mess!

I clambered into a thicket in the deepest wood to, ahem, repair myself. When I emerged I discovered that Jane had gone, vanished, vamoosed into thin air. I shouted to no avail and then discovered that, as usual, I had no idea where I was. Not a clue. There were several tracks all pointing in different directions so what was I to do?

Those ZANE supporters who have missed earlier blogs do not know that my sense of direction is not my finest quality. I would make useless taxi driver or Field Master of a hunt!  Once, when wooing a girl, I drove from Penrith to London; twenty miles from London  I went round a roundabout and drove more or less  back to Penrith. The girl dumped me and who can blame her? And when I was in the army I was known as “Backbearing Benyon’.  My guardsmen followed me not because they thought I knew where I was going but out of curiosity to see where we would end up!

Anyway, I was lost and the thought crossed my mind, how would I survive? Are my Bear Grylls skills up to scratch? How long could I survive? I was all right for water but could I eat?  Were those mushrooms halfway up that tree edible? Were those lice under that log crammed full of vitamins?

I wandered about like King Lear in the mad scene until suddenly Moses appeared and darted off and there was Jane grinning like an owl. What a relief!

Here Blair Everywhere

I keep seeing Tony Blair leering on the telly and I have to admit I find him increasingly irritating. He is, in my view, to a marked degree responsible for the Brexit catastrophe.

When  Blair was in power his Minister of State in the home Office, Barbara Roche,  decided to leave the immigration door wide open: in six brief years she allowed into the UK nearly two million people. Such an experiment has never been implemented  before, anywhere. Roche introduced far too many people into the UK, far too fast. She did not ask anyone, she just did it. I think the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, was preoccupied with the Iraq war at the time.  Anyway, Blair’s lack of grip on his Minister placed a great burden on house prices, on the health service, on schools. ,

And, to the anger of many communities, she changed their nature irreversibly;  she did so without asking anyone and,  if anyone complained, she labelled them “racist”.

This disaster was on Blair’s watch;  the resultant fear and anger about immigration numbers generated a great many Brexit votes.

And it was Blair who allowed the MPs’ expenses regime to flourish so that, when the row became public, the voters believed – with some justification – that there was one tax system for MPs and another  for their constituents. All on Blair’s watch.

So he  has quite a lot to answer for, doesn’t he?

Strange Death

Parents who happen to be my closest friends were visiting a Church of England school to assess whether or not it was suitable for their children.

The headmistress jabbered on about the school’s virtues: “Oh, so hard working, what wonderful exam results, if I do say so myself, very good discipline, da de da de dum…”

And then my friend asked, “What about religious education or chapel perhaps?”

“Oh no, you will be pleased to learn we are a strictly secular school.”

“Oh that’s a pity,” said my friend sweetly. “You see, I’m a vicar!”

The headmistress appeared to melt to glue. “Well, perhaps I misspoke,” she spluttered, and then laughed wildly. “Of course, we do have occasional prayers and talks…” She trailed off and there was an embarrassed silence.

It’s fascinating. Here is a CoE school and the head teacher thinks that boasting about how the school is wholly secular makes a strong selling point!

Losing Our Religion

There have been many wonderful things introduced these past hundred years, from the NHS to the Internet, but we have lost the plot when it comes to our religious culture. Muslims, in the main, haven’t forgotten their faith, but we are in the process of forgetting ours (and if you want to know the seriousness of what I mean, just read The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray.)

However faithless and unbelieving my classmates and I may have been at school – and sad to say, we were a godless lot – at least we were taught the basics about our Christian/Judeo inheritance. We roared the hymns so often, we knew them by heart, and of course we knew our way around Cranmer’s prayer book and the King James Bible.

But nowadays in school, Gospel teaching has about the same status as the tooth fairy. The reason is, of course, that many teachers are plumb ignorant.  

Doubtless, this idiot headmistress was all in favour of the “fruits of the spirit” – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control – but she wouldn’t have had a clue about where these virtues come from or who inspired them! People like her are living off the capital of the Christian faith. They want the king without the cross. God willing, our friends’ children will find another school with someone sensible in charge.             

Strip Thine Own Back!

One of my friends cannot stop banging on (no pun intended) about another married mate who has been caught out – by ill-advised messages on his mobile – having an affair. My view is that we should be very sorry for all involved and stop being so bloody censorious – and indeed, “There but by the grace of God go I.” Perhaps my censorious friend had a problem and was reflecting on it by his condemnation.

I have always been amused by a saying from American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The more he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons.” In other words, let’s examine the hidden agenda of those who condemn sexual activity so vociferously?  And many of my chums who rant on about sex, clearly have never read Shakepeare’s King Lear:

“Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her.”

Gonorrhea with the Wind

Years ago, I was chairman of a Midlands health authority board, appointed by the great Ken Clarke, who was the then Health Secretary. It was in the early 1990s, when the health service was told that the local authorities had to be run like businesses.

Anyway I did my best with the Byzantine finances but no one really knew who was in charge: the local board or the National Health Authority.

Towards the end of my term, a new building was planned. No one was quite sure what it would be used for but we were all told that it would be a great asset.

Then I was asked if I would be happy to have the building named after me? I was amazed because I didn’t like the woman who asked me – and I was pretty darn sure she didn’t like me either.

But what an honour! Coo! Shucks! Well, I never did! But then I remembered Round the Horne starring Kenneth Horne, who “prefers to remain anonymous”, and something about the woman’s sly, little smile made me hang back.

Just as well because I discovered it was to be VD clinic.       

Arrived knackered at the end of a long and fractious day at Mapledurham- a long way from Wokingham!

Much of the walk was on cambered roads through the edge of Reading. Anyone who walks seriously will attest how uncomfortable a material camber can be over even short distances. Vast roaring lorries and dozens of mean little whining cars all created a light smog; our feet kicked up the spoor from thousands of students from the local poly, cigarette packets, condoms, coke cans and literally a carpet of fast-food cardboard junk.

When I sought from a store a bottle of fresh pressed orange I was told they only had bottled “juice” , all highly coloured and smothered in sugar. Two vast and highly-tattooed ladies with mauve hair purchased a stack of crisps, snacks, chocolate biscuits and lottery tickets and staggered out of the shop, pecking at the snacks as they went.

Then we passed through the waste land into newly mown fields; if we had had the energy we would have done a jig for joy.

Being Nice

My great Aunt Daisy used to tell me, “When you can’t say anything nice about someone, Tom, best say nothing at all.”

How wise. But even the kind-hearted Daisy might have been moved to say something about the way our fellow countrymen and women look today.

We’re an irredeemably scruffy lot. It’s extraordinary why men think looking unshaven is sexy. The hunky, grizzled “look” may suit film stars but when you are over 50, and wedged into ill-fitting jeans with a jutting beer belly, a spotty face and a red nose, you don’t look like Brad Pitt, you look like a three-flush floater.

By far the most stressful sight I’ve seen was while strolling along a beach on the Isle of Wight a few years back. There stood a weightlifter, naked apart from a thong, and looking like a brown condom stuffed with conkers. 

The Price of Treachery

What a soft and foolish nation we have become. I wonder for our national sanity when I read comments by the likes of Douglas Murray (you must read his excellent The Strange Death of Europe) about Jihadi Jack and Shamima Begum of ISIS fame being allowed back into the UK after they fought on the side of those who killed and tortured many of our people.

We appear to be losing our wits! We don’t have to guess what would happen if Jihadi Jack (really Jack Letts from Oxford), and others returned to the UK to face trial…

Away Game

Just see what happened when Canadian Omah Khadr arrived back in Canada after he’d spent years fighting with ISIS and allegedly murdered a US sergeant. All the Khadr family are ISIS fighters: Omah’s dad was killed, and another son wounded.

Omah’s mother made her position clear: of course there was no family remorse or apologies: all she wanted was “our rights as Canadian citizens”.

The Khadr family prove that it doesn’t matter whether you fight for the “home” or “away” team in these twenty-first-century wars: if the away team fails, you get better treatment than if you had played for the home side. Rather better in fact.

Thanks to an army of pro bono lawyers, a couple of years ago Omah was awarded $10m damages for having been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay – this despite the fact that he had fought against his own country. That’s far more cash than any American, Canadian or British widow could expect to receive for the loss of a husband.

Multi-millionaire Omah was interviewed on a Montreal TV show and greeted by a standing ovation. He was gently interviewed about his “journey”, telling viewers of how he had “suffered PTSD”. He claimed to have been in “an unfortunate place, in difficult circumstances”. A fellow guest said, “I’m filled with admiration for your fortitude” and Omah was asked, “How can you be so mentally strong?”

Now the issue of killers returning home is erupting in the UK. Thankfully passports are being refused to those who want to come back as if nothing untoward had happened. But of course, they all have a case, championed by lawyers and an army of supporters.

No one ever says “sorry”. Jihadi Jack’s ghastly father admits, “My armchair revolutionary ‘shite’ (his words, not mine) may have influenced my son”. His son is said to be a “victim”.

And during the Shamima Begum case, I remained unmoved by the arguments that somehow “we are all to blame” for her joining ISIS. This is our dilemma. We know roughly what to do when these people are in a foreign field; with luck, we can take them out with a drone. But we have no idea what to do if the Shamimas and Jacks return!

I can just imagine it. A softball interview on the Today programme would be followed by a TV special. Then after some sympathetic profile pieces, a legal case for mistreatment would be funded pro bono. Soon studio audiences would be applauding Shamima’s and Jack’s bravery. We just can’t help ourselves, can we? No matter that these traitors are undermining the integrity of our country and making a mockery of our defences, we just can’t help giving everyone – whatever atrocities they have committed, whatever side they have fought on, and no matter how many people they have killed – the benefit of every doubt. We seldom bother to learn the names of their victims, do we, or pause to wonder how the victims’ families are surviving amidst the wholesale destruction of their lives.

I say banish such traitors from the UK forever! They can float stateless across the world like the Flying Dutchman for all I care – for we will only embarrass ourselves if they are allowed to return here.

Mugabe

I was told it was bad manners to wish anyone dead, but perfectly acceptable to read obituary notices with pleasure. It is in this context I come to the news of Mugabe’s death.

He had a choice: either to rule like Nelson Mandela or turn into a tin-pot crook like so many of his colleagues. He chose the latter. When measured against Hitler and Stalin, he was a small, bad man, but bad enough to massacre 20,000 civilians and steal everything not actually nailed to the ground. A charismatic little sod who turned his beautiful country into a racist ruin and left nothing of material value in his passing.

The 1983 tragedy of the massacre of 20,000 people – said to be a material underestimate – around Bulawayo, by Mugabe’s hired thugs, was more or less hidden at the time. Apparently, the Thatcher Government was so relieved to be shot of Zimbabwe that they asked few questions and were fobbed off with non-answers. I am sure, however, that the fact that the massacre was conducted by black people killing black people was a factor. We just didn’t care enough. If, however, it has been black people killing white or, worse still, white people killing black, the world would have taken real notice, the perpetrators hunted down and tried at The Hague on grounds of crimes against humanity.

If there is any justice I presume Uncle Bob is having a difficult time with the Recording Angel.

Revisiting a Referendum

Those not totally numbed to distraction over Brexit might care to look at a 1975 YouTube Oxford University debate. The late Labour minister Peter Shore is speaking before the 1975 referendum and the points he makes brilliantly are as pertinent today as they were then. Ted Heath lolls looking bored in the audience. The great Barbara Castle and Jeremy Thorpe are also listening.

Meanwhile…

A lovely morning walking through Frimley and Sandhurst.

The Beautiful Game

The beautiful game is being ruined by hideous violence, cheating, corruption and racism.

Why not make the fans pay in hard cash for the ghastly conduct of a few? Why not make the clubs and players pay the full price of policing these matches? It’s not as it they are short of money. If the Serbian Under 21 fans behave as racist criminals, why not force such matches to be played behind closed doors without paying crowds? If banana skins and glass are hurled onto pitches, why not simply stop the game, find the perpetrators and hand them over to the police? If a match is disrupted, so what?

Make the Penalty Pay!

At the first sign of trouble, why not take the players off? Practise zero tolerance? Boom! Fans would soon learn to police their own events once they learnt that a few loonies were destroying the game and costing them a load of money. Why don’t the clubs buy their own monitors and start behaving like grown-ups? The police should treat obscene chants in the same way that such chants would be treated if heard on the streets, and prosecute the perpetrators. Tribalism trumps moral perspective and the idiotic claims that bad behaviour is always the other side’s fault are plain childish.

Segregation of crowds encourages abuse and riots. If fans were mixed as they are at rugby matches they might begin to appreciate good football being played by both sides. When did you last see a riot at a rugby match?

Why should taxpayers pay good money to clear up this mess? Of course, it’s all about money and you know what God thinks about money when you see the sort of people he gives it to. Once the players started to be paid obscene salaries, the vital link between them and ordinary supporters was sundered and any sense of duty and responsibility was broken. Players and managers are now planets apart and the honour of being a role model long since dissipated. Presently, professional footballers simply don’t have to think of anyone other than themselves and their weird tattoos and haircuts. So they don’t.

The beautiful game is now a raddled old bag: she needs a facelift.

The Dark Side

One of my chums, who knows about the darker side of life, told me a great truth. That it’s far more interesting to say scandalous things about people than nice.

If you wonder whether this is true or not, just consider this example. If I tell you I’ve just had a meeting with Jim Johnson, a dear friend who is kind, thoughtful, gentle, loved by all, and faithful to his wife his whole life long, just tell me you won’t yawn with boredom and find a quick opportunity to walk away. (I simply won’t believe you!)

On the other hand, if I tell you that I’ve just had a meeting with Jim, the one with the drunken past who is probably a crook and a legendary serial adulterer – and in great trouble – I bet you’ll curl your lip with pleasure and beg for more.

Go on – admit it!

April Fool

Years ago, I rang a friend and told him that his greatest pal had just been raided by the fraud squad.

“Great news,” he said, “That’ll teach the sanctimonious sod”!

I then pointed out that it was 1 April.

“Oh… please, please don’t tell him what I just said!”

Reader, what do you think I did?

Fast walking and great progress through unbeaten paths, smothered with nettles and brambles, a symbol of shame of the local authority. No other walkers. The afternoon’s walk was the length of the Wey river, peaceful and lovely with Moses swimming for sticks.

Then we skirted Aldershot and walked close to RMA Sandhurst where recently I attended an anniversary of my passing out parade; there were 200 wrinkled old men like me watching the Sovereign’s parade for around two hours, all hoping with some desperation that we would last out to the end without having a pee.

Heroes

Kate Hoey MP
A loyal ZANE supporter and Labour MP who has bravely voted in the national interest and nor just to please Momentum.
She has chaired ZANE meetings and is a tough, delightful lady. I wish there were more like her.

Tim Glass
Former CEO of the Ellerman Foundation. Tim gives ZANE first class advice just because he is an excellent friend of our charity.

Markus Isselbacher
He has driven Jane and me for four walks; he is an excellent driver and a very nice man.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Former Foreign Secretary who always does all he can to help ZANE.

Clendon Daukes
A good friend of ZANE who always tell me exactly what he thinks.

Jane Broadley
Wife of ZANE’s chairman. Hugely encouraging and always supportive.

Christopher Warren, Nigel Dransfied, Lance Gill Tim Burt and Marie Gordon Roe
– the RCEL team – for all their tireless work for ZANE.

Tom Benyon’s Men’s Group (they know who they are)
who keep me on the straight and narrow.

Kiss off!

I don’t like kissing virtual strangers. I know it’s the thing to do nowadays, but I have long since worked out the difference between fake intimacy and the real thing. Vicars, politicians and salesmen are adept at manufacturing the essential fake warmth and affection for people they have never really met properly as it’s a part of the business routine. I did it myself as a political hack and I wasn’t proud of my behaviour: in short, I have a distaste for professional affection.

I have to admit I quite liked Jean Claude Juncker kissing the air above Theresa May’s wrist, which I found strangely gallant. But I’m English, not continental, and I prefer a smile and a simple, “How nice to see/meet you.” The point is, if I am going to kiss people I don’t care about, what, in decency, am I to do to those I do care for? Grab, and then roundly fondle them?

Consider Yourself Kissed

So, I only kiss people who are intimates – family or close friends, not strangers. I envy the royals for the self-protection system they have long perfected. Princess Anne shoves out an imperious white-gloved hand; the queen is bowed or curtsied to, as are other members of the royal family. That’s it, unless you know them, in which case you can kiss, curtsey, bow, hug in that order – but that routine is reserved for pals only. If you aren’t a pal, try it on at your peril.

I understand all this faux social snogging started when Cilla Black began to kiss total strangers on the TV programme Blind Date; then it became mandatory for all hosts on all chat shows to kiss the entire contents of the studio sofa. After that, it ramped up even further when the Duke of Kent kissed the ladies’ Wimbledon tennis champion. The kissing game started to inflate from there and so here we are.

I’ve heard that now there is a posh new custom of saying to people, “CYK”: “Consider yourself kissed”. I rather like that. Friendly, without exposing yourself to flu germs.

Mwah Mwah anyone?

Rotten Referenda

Binary referendum results imposed on a parliamentary democracy have the same result as pouring diesel into a petrol engine: the system seizes solid. This is partly why Brexit has created such a fractious atmosphere and why referenda are a truly rotten idea. But this is where we are and it would seem that whatever happens next, the country will remain divided.

Parliament is deeply unrepresentative of the views of the people. The referendum result reflected 52 per cent Brexiteers and 48 per cent Remainers, yet our “first past the post” democracy has produced a mix of six Remainers to one Brexiteer in Parliament. Hence the log jam.

There’s a vast tranche of voters in the UK whose views remain unrepresented in Parliament and the media. The old soldiers, for example, whose views I summarised in my last blog, A Land Fit for Heroes, are often considered bigoted fascists. As are those who, even if they aren’t so old, want a nation state and to live in their own communities, and who believe we are still a Christian country. And there are voters who worry their faith is being eroded by secularism and are concerned about the illiberal aspects of Islam, and who complain that no one asked if they wanted to live in a multi-racial society. They are, of course, ignored and labelled racist.

But Parliament ignores these voters at its peril, for 70–80 per cent of voters are demanding that immigration be constrained, and a good 40 per cent want to see it stopped altogether. More than 50 per cent don’t think immigration has been beneficial to this country.

MPs ignore voters who doubt the wisdom of gay adoption (even if such voters are not in any way “homophobic”). They disregard voters who are shocked when their children are taught the normality of transgenderism at junior school, and voters who believe marriage is for the long term. They ignore voters who yearn to do the “right thing” and those who worry about the passing of free speech.

How do I know this? Social research surveys and opinion polls tell us so.

By last February (2019), of the nine parties that are represented in the House of Commons, eight signed up to the full “liberal” agenda (the exception being the 10 MPs of the DUP). So out of 10 parties in the Commons, nine are liberal, even if one of them is labelled “Conservative”. It’s the Conservatives who cannot be bothered to control immigration and it’s the Conservatives who insist that six-year-old school children are taught about same-sex relationships and transgenderism. And Conservative MPs, by a majority, are disdainful of the nation state and voted Remain. 

It seems, too, that the people in our universities, almost all government quangos, the arts quangos, the teaching profession and the media all have the same mindset. And, of course, that goes for Church of England bishops too.

And because these people all think the same way, they don’t think we suffer from political bias in the ruling elite: these views are deemed to be right!

The two main parties should have seen the warning signs. In the Euro elections, they only secured a quarter of the vote between them.

It won’t end happily.