“Perhaps we should hurry as fast as we can?

We had to go to a funeral of a friend today – for our generation is being called up. Our social lives are punctuated with memorial services and funerals. Around seven years ago there was a cull of roughly six of our friends: then the grim reaper appeared to holiday with his scythe: he vanished… but just for a while. Then, as we began once again to career idiotically along, convinced we’d fooled the bastard for good, without warning he swept back and culled Frances, Tim and Clare, Faith, Juliet and Graham, all lovely people and I miss them. Then he slid back into his smokey lair like the cruel assassin he is.

When will the tap be on our shoulder? Of course, it’s bound to happen. So is there anything we can do in response to that reality? It’s hard to resist the temptation to hurry: cram our hoped-for plans into a shortened span… for we are old and have so little time to waste… but I have learned that “hurry“ isn’t such a wise course of action.

Soul Fatigue

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” So said LP Hartley in his novel The Go-Between.

Modern life for the young seems to revolve around a desperate hurry to get the next attention-grabbing iPad or smart phone fix. When I was young, there were long periods of relative boredom when I would just skulk around the garden with nothing in particular to do. We were less hurried then. We had no computer games to divert us, and no Google or Facebook to draw us away from the real world right in front of us.

Speed Junkies

We were taught slowly. We had to learn our times tables and lots more by rote with serious punishment threatened if we simply opted out. We were taught how to write letters, and how to add up, multiply and do fractions without the aid of a calculator. We learnt how to read maps and memorised long chunks of poetry. All of this took time. We had one phone line for the entire family and we had to queue. We looked things up in an encyclopaedia, and if we missed a programme on our black-and-white TV, then it stayed missed. Collecting stamps might have been my childish obsession but it was a gentle pursuit: nothing compared with the crack cocaine of the current digital world. Today’s young are speed junkies, hammering away at green screens playing Monster Legends (whatever that is!) Our grandchildren are being hurried into an unpredictable future ruled by robot overlords.

This hurry comes at a cost. In my last blog, I told of one of the journeys of African pioneer Sir Richard Burton (not the actor). He had marched at a furious pace for three days: then on the fourth, his porters refused to budge. Despite his pleas and exhortations, they simply sat, staring vacantly into space. When asked for an explanation, the headman replied, “We have marched so fast, we are waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies.”

More Haste, Less Speed

There is a vast difference between being busy and being in a hurry! Being in a hurry often leaves us detached from our souls. Being busy is when we have a reasonable number of things to do.

Being hurried is a stressful condition. It means being so preoccupied with ourselves that we have no time for God or for other people. Business morphs into hurry when we have squeezed God (or people) from our lives.

When we hurry, we get soul fatigue. That’s when we stay up too late and get up too early. It’s when we stop eating proper food regularly, and fuel up on gin and Mars bars. We clog our brains and our arteries with junk food eaten out of a box… in a hurry.

The hurry warning signs are easy to spot. We may be in a shop or airline queue and immediately start calculating which queue is moving faster than ours. It’s when we worry that our parking space isn’t the closest to the shopping centre, or when we rudely switch traffic lanes just to satisfy the demon “hurry”.

We hurry when we are being bombarded by too much information at work or when too many screens are competing for our attention. We worry that we are missing out on something. We compile endless lists but never complete them. We are in such a hurry and are so weary that we cannot see the pile of unpaid bills and bank statements, or the unanswered emails – and we even forget the wife’s birthday!

Do yourself a favour. Remember festina lente: make haste slowly.

Broads and Dames

When Humphrey Bogart lay dying, a call came through to his wife, Lauren Bacall, asking her out to a Hollywood dinner.

“She says she doesn’t want to come,” croaked Bogart, “she wants to stay with me. It’s love that separates the dames from the broads in this town, and Lauren is a dame.”

A few years back, a very senior member of the armed forces – let’s call him Henry – was “stung” by the late and disgraceful Max Clifford. (Incidentally, when Clifford died, I imagine he faced a hard time from the Recording Angel for the destructive nature of his earthly antics but I digress.) Henry went to a grand dinner and had the misfortune to sit next to a woman with the glorious name of Lady Bienvenida Buck. She placed her cool hand on his knee and told him she fancied him. The poor, credulous clot believed her.

A month later, coming out of the Savoy at four in the afternoon, the couple were greeted by a blaze of flashlights. Lady Buck had sold him down the river to the tabloids for an undisclosed sum.

Later that evening, Henry had to confess the awful results of his philandering to Mary, his wife. He was humiliated: the publicity would be awful (it was), his career would surely be over (it was), and he faced divorce.

Mary listened to his stammering confession and apology, and wept. Then slowly she took off her wedding ring and laid it gently on the table.

Just as Henry was about to leave for good, Mary picked up the ring and replaced it on her finger.

“Let’s start our marriage again,” she said.

They are still together, a chastened man and a heroic wife. It’s love that separates the dames from the broads.

Moral to all men over 60: If a “lady” places her hand on your knee and says she finds you physically attractive, run for the hills: she’s lying!

(I repeat that this is a true story. I have disguised the man’s name to avoid distress.)

Salisbury plain proper this time, one vast hot frying pan with no escape from the sun beating down from a vast sky. Last time I was yomping across this plain was in the coldest winter on record, 1962/3, when I was a Sandhurst cadet trying to excavate trenches from the frozen flint and, as I recall, without much success.

Love is like a butterfly…

Cabbage White butterflies and Red Admirals dance ahead as we thump along.

As my kind readers will recall I try and include in my vaporings, to my mind anyway, the most important five subjects worth talking about: money, sex, politics, religion and death. So far I have only dealt with death and a few bits on politics.

Jane suddenly volunteers that Cabbage Whites copulate in the air – such frisky things – and no, I didn’t know that either! Remember you read this fascinating fact here first! But the carnal antics of butterflies neatly bring me onto…

Sex and All That

It is true that 50 years ago there was an atmosphere of sexual repression; women could be ruined by premarital sex and natural sexual feelings were often characterised as something shameful. But I reckon that today the pendulum has swung too far towards what is crass, crude and cheap: the divide between things that should be public and private has simply been lost.

Naked Attraction

Recently, a newly married couple on the Greek island of Rhodes decided to celebrate the occasion by posting a picture on Facebook of the bride committing a sex act on the groom (this is a family blog, so you’ll have to just imagine it!) The image was tastefully framed by a backdrop of a temple and a gorgeous sunset. Family and pals chorused how wonderful it was, but the Greek Orthodox Church took a very different view and have now banned future foreign weddings on the island.

There is a growing feeling that sex is no longer something joyous and precious but a biological function of no more significance than eating a pizza. It seems that girls now think that having sex with anyone at any time offers them some sort of “empowerment” so that casual sex with strangers can be linked with female “liberation”. Of course, promiscuity has always been with us, but there is today a vulgarity in our society that is beyond sad. It is particularly bad for children who are growing up in communities saturated by sexual exploitation.

There are songs for teens where the girls proclaim to have had so much sex, they are unable to walk straight; this is deemed to be an occasion for gaiety and celebration. In a vastly popular TV show called Love Island, participants celebrate their attraction to each other by having intercourse on camera. Vile and beyond tasteless, its stars are teenagers who are treated like hookers for the entertainment of the public who are addicted to the rash of casual sex that has marinated the world with sexually transmitted diseases and hastens the breakdown of family life. How any reasonable parents can allow their children to debase themselves in such a way is beyond me. Presumably the participants think that this sort of publicity enhances their dismal careers. Meanwhile, in another show called Naked Attraction, people choose a partner based entirely on the look of their genitals…

Or what about the so-called “game” I heard about called “pigging”? Men have sex with the ugliest girls they can find, then text them to say they are pigs. Okay, I agree that this is tedious, infantile and tasteless, but sadly it’s a sign of the times.

There are endless stories of couples who have only just met having intercourse on flights, or brief sexual encounters in bars – and an app called Tinder encourages just that (Grindr is the homosexual equivalent). You can sift through members’ profiles and check the whereabouts of your fancy, and then send a swift text to see whether they are “up for it”? If the answer is positive, off you zoom to complete the capital act. No gentle conversation or chat up lines, no flowers or hand-holding, not even an initial tentative kiss. Just “Bim Bam! Thank you Mam.” Efficiency, 10 out of 10; romance, rather less than zero.

Lost Childhood

Today, society is awash with pornography. When I was young, watching porn was a scandalous thing to do: something that old men in dirty macs went to seedy cinemas to experience. Book or magazine porn was wrapped in the disgrace of brown paper. Today, porn magazines are openly paraded alongside the popcorn and cornflakes in most stores. At the same time, young girls are netted by gangs on Snapchat and treated as commodities.

Recently, a teacher said that our sexting, porn-obsessed children – some as young as five – are “infected and no longer see the gravitas of the sexual act.” Older young, brought up to view porn sites as a commonplace, find they are more or less impotent because they “can’t do it as well as they do ‘it’ on the websites.”

I am not asking for a clampdown on sex and a return to Victorian standards or morality. I am just sad that our society is rapidly striding with open flies towards a coarsened and ugly future. Most importantly, the tender innocence of childhood is under attack. This will have a significant long-term effect on our society, for once you have charged through the door marked “anything goes”, it will be hard to get back to the land of yourself.

We slotted half an hour to watch the England match yesterday and the pub room was crowded. As England won, it was a happy occasion. Okay, I know I am a sour old thing but I couldn’t help noticing that everyone watching was noticeably overweight, including the children. As a follow-on to yesterday’s blog, are we as a nation now afflicted with “watcheritis”? Clearly there are exceptions to this virus but with obesity on the rise to the degree we are facing an epidemic, this is an issue for our time.

Hot Kisser

How can I repeat how hot it is without boring readers who have to know this already?

A hour into today’s walk I attempted to give Jane a kiss. She said:

“I have no wish to kiss your disgustingly sweaty face so push off,” or words to that effect. So it was that hot!

Trump, Trump, Trump

So President Trump is to visit Churchill’s grave where we live in Bladon. I understand that there will be some “virtue signalling” protests and shame on you!

I deplore Trump’s lack of manners and his gross unpresidential style and all that. But he is not the first US president to be gross. Kennedy was a serial adulterer with anyone with a pulse and he had confirmed links to organised crime. However it was his “Camelot” charm that allowed him to get away with it. We know about Lyndon Johnson, who in the early part of his career was corrupt and unspeakably vulgar, entertaining visitors on the lavatory. We will draw a discreet veil over Clinton for this is a family blog. And what about Nixon?

So the Donald grossness is not a rarity. However, I think, on the plus side, that something may, just may, come from his N. Korean initiative. I also think he was right to conclude that the Iranian nuclear deal was not working. And he is surely right to berate EU NATO members for not paying their way.
And he has one other rare quality: you may not like what he says but none of us has any problem in understanding him. This is more than you can say for most politicians (and clergymen too!).

Trump was elected as President by our greatest ally, and we need to do a trade deal with the USA sooner rather than later.  I think Sadiq Khan the Mayor of London is plain daft and rude in allowing an insulting balloon to greet Trump when he arrives in London.

Knee-jerk Reaction

I was fitted with a new knee recently in a hospital near Banbury where the Lithuanian surgeon had a fine reputation. I am an old hand at this game now – no pun intended (although with two new hips and a knee, my hands are some of the few bits I have left that remain more or less as God intended). So, operations hold no fear for me… that is, until I found myself on the operating table.

I opted for an “epidural”, numb from the waist down yet remaining fully conscious. Why? Well, I dislike the feeling of the little death that comes with an anaesthetic… will I ever wake up again? With a local, you can talk more or less sense to anyone handy as the operation proceeds.

Dr Shipman, I Presume

So there was I, a touch woozy but conscious enough, when who should hunker down next to me but the anaesthetist (who had just calculated how much drug was needed to keep me pain free). Young and tattooed, with little piggy eyes, he had, I thought, a rather thin, cruel smile. Suddenly an image of Dr Harold Shipman floated before my eyes – you know, the spectre who killed an industrial number of patients apparently just for the hell of it (he was playing some sort of power game, as I recall). I have no idea why I pictured Shipman so clearly, but I really did: his face just floated into my mind and lodged there, immovable and terrifying.

“Hello,” the anaesthetist said quietly, “my name’s David. I hear you used to be a politician?”

Suddenly I caught sight of the heart monitor: the tiny electrical impulses bumped up and down, merrily indicating that, so far anyway, I was more or less alive. At the same time, I saw David had control of the pipe that connected me to my vital air supply, and the tube that connected me to the heart machine. All in all, he was my passport to life. And there I was, lying helpless as a babe and totally at his mercy.

“A long time ago,” I squeaked.

“Oh no,” said David, “once a politician, always a politician.”

I groaned silently in desperation then tried to feign sleep.

He was insistent. “How did you vote over Brexit?”

“How did you vote?” I gasped.

“A crap decision, if I met that silly bugger Cameron, I would hit him on the nose for holding a referendum in the first place!”

“How wise… nay, far-seeing. I wish I’d thought of that myself!”

“And Corbyn?  What do you make of him?”

“Such a well-trimmed beard. Nothing quite like a good beard!”

“Sod his beard, what about his policies? What do you think of them?”

“Very radical, fundamental… what do you think?”

“Hmmm, and that Diane Abbott?”

“Very sensitive, alert and twinkling eyes. Do you agree?”

“I think they’re a couple of tossers!”

“How very wise. I was about to say exactly the same thing myself.”

So we staggered on until the Black and Decker at my knee stopped buzzing. As I was wheeled into the recovery room, thankful to be alive, David appeared.

“I’m a Thatcher man myself.”

Still scorching weather, getting used to it. Just as well for there is not a lot we can do about it! The country – long white roads – makes me wonder if I am about to meet Hardy’s Henchard on the way to sell his wife at the fair, thence to become the Mayor of Casterbridge with all the terrible repercussions that follow.

We have had some kindly walkers join the team Benyon, for which we are profoundly grateful. We choose not to mention you all by name for where would the compliments end?

Hot

Friends warned me about the heat and that was kind. But when I was a young officer I spent a year in the Sultan of Muscat’s armed
Forces and so I know something about the sun. In fact I drink so much water I resemble a bladder on legs. We walk through endless vast fields and the end of the New Forest past a place where Sir Walter Tyrell shot at a stag and killed King William by accident, I can imagine him saying “sorreee” when he saw what he had done!

We face relentless challenges of having literally to crawl through tiny holes in wire fences illicitly raised by mean farmers and allowed to block footpaths by idle local government officers. Kipling’s poem “there is no road through the wood” was spot on and this is what we are going through today! There are no other walkers. Hampshire Authority is the worse, Wiltshire much better.

A Difficult Conversation

Any debate about immigration is marinated in emotion and the fear that one participant will accuse the other of bigotry and racism. Then the virtue- signalling trolls on Facebook start chanting abuse and label the accused as sheer evil.

But the issue will not go away. Please can we all grow up? There is a vital question that needs to be asked: which people do we not want to allow into the country? For if there are people we do want here, of course there must be those we don’t. If we can agree that the world and his wife cannot all live here, then this is a conversation we must hold – and soon.

Facing the Facts

The trouble is that the conversation has been hijacked by wicked, racist people who simply hate those from different backgrounds and ethnicities. None of us wants to encourage such people. But unless we can find the courage to hold a mature, dispassionate debate on immigration, then our mistakes will go on finding us out. For example, take Angela Merkel’s disastrous error in indiscriminately allowing 1.5 million migrants into Germany, all at once. We now learn that Germany has already suffered a double-digit rise in violent sex crimes, and that 90 per cent of this rise can be attributed to young male migrants.

Then we find that in four years, 411,000 Romanians have entered the UK and a distressing number have ended up in our jails. The Liberals were mistaken years ago when they forecast that just a few brain surgeons would arrive. What about the pressure on our schools, hospitals and housing, and the downward pressure on the wages of the lowest-paid – apparently one of the main reasons people voted Brexit? I don’t blame the Romanians for coming here given that the average weekly wage in Bucharest is roughly a quarter of what it is in the UK, but I just wonder if allowing nearly half a million to enter the country in a very short period was the best idea our politicians have ever had?

Some years ago, merely to hint that this might happen would result in an accusation of racism. But is it wise to shut down debate instead of addressing the problem? Should we presume – without any evidence – that the delicate mix of our peaceful society will not change for the worse? And is it right for all this to happen without the host community even being consulted? The peaceful character of a country does not remain constant by an immutable law of nature. Societies do not remain in harmony, no matter who arrives to live in them. This is an idiotic presumption for which the public is unwillingly paying right across our northern cities as well as in continental Europe.

Tough Questions

There are two major factors here: speed and character. Speed matters, for if you bring in people too fast, there is almost no chance of their integration within a foreseeable timeframe. To test this, just ask in any of our northern cities where an individual ethnic community is living and you will get directions. Integration is not happening: segregation is.

It’s even harder to discuss the identity of migrants than the speed of immigration, because some groups are easier to integrate than others.

Another tough question that needs to be asked is this: when we accept refugees from countries locked in vicious civil wars or from lawless regimes, to what extent will they alter the character of our cities?

Politicians – particularly those of the Blair and Brown governments – have done all they can to limit the population’s ability to express discontent at the indiscriminate immigration imposed on our communities. They have ignored votes in the ballot box and spurned manifesto pledges. And when the electorate voted for Brexit, the establishment and the political class continued to berate the public for its ignorance and bigotry.

It’s easy to do this if you live away from the centres of our northern cities. Tony Blair’s six luxury homes are sited in the west end of London and rural Buckinghamshire. He only ever met migrants in carefully planned photo opportunities. Of course, for Gordon Brown one such photo opportunity went gloriously wrong when he met the hapless Gillian Duffy, who expressed mild concern at the number of EU migrants. Brown was heard to proclaim in a live mic that she was a “bigoted woman”.

So where do we go from here? Moderate voters hope that the hordes of immigrants will integrate somehow and soon. But integration takes a good deal of time. Second, if our leaders read history, they would realise that our relatively peaceful societies are an astonishing blip in the world history of our bloody, war-torn planet. We are hugely lucky to live at such a time. So we should be very careful in carrying out irreversible experiments that will compromise our future, and we must develop carefully thought-out remedies for when our experiments go awry.

Above all, we should desire to hand over our good fortune to the next generation. That, at least, is within our nation’s gift.

A steaming day with record beating temperatures. We walked, fortunately, down scrunching tracks that bisect the New Forest. Moses dived into every pool he saw. I met an aged man who, to my irritation, began the old boast: “I’ll bet you can’t tell how old I am?” Nonsense! I am always tempted to answer “104!” But I hadn’t the heart

I nearly told him he was younger than David Dimbleby and the Queen, and Dame(s) Maggie Smith, Judy Dench, Eileen Atkins and John Humphries and what was his problem? But then we
thought, what is the point?

Road Awareness

The only cars I can tolerate at the moment are car crushers!

Heroes and villains

Eighteen months ago I persuaded past foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind and past chief of the general staff General Lord Richards to lead a committee (Commonwealth Veterans Review Committee) that would campaign for an increase in aid for some 8,500 aged veterans who served The Crown when we had an empire and who today live in countries where their is no NHS or welfare.
Please see the film “The Forgotten Legion” on our site www.zane.uk.com

Some 600 live in Zimbabwe.

To cut a long story short, backed by the committee (Lord Richards, Sir John McColl, Charles Byrne, Robert Robson, Martin Rutledge, David Murray), Chris Warren of RCEL (the charity that looks after these people) and ZANE’s Camilla John did a great deal of work. We made an application to HMG’s DfID and some weeks ago we met with the Secretary of State Penny Mordaunt who agreed to create a special scheme to fund the whole exercise. My heroes are all those who worked tirelessly to get the final result.

My villains are those politicians and civil servants who have beefed up the Data Protection Act to make fund raising a costly misery for small charities. The bigger charities can afford rooms full of file pushers but the smaller ones like ZANE stagger under the burden. The trouble is that rules never succeed in stopping the cowboys. They just add costs for the good guys! I reckon that such are today’s regulations that it is more or less impossible to start a new charity today.

Take a Risk!

The spirit of risk-taking is on life support. As a small example, but representative of a trend, consider this. Two of our friends’ children were to join the army but instead decided to go straight into the city. It seems to me they have had no opportunity to walk on the wild side but have instead opted for a life of moneymaking, the delights of Internet dating and the safety of an office.

Rough Living

Of course, previous generations had greater opportunities for risky adventures than today. In my youth, wars involved boots on the ground and rough living, but most loved it and saw the rest of their lives through the prism of that experience. How many times in the late 1950s and ’60s did one hear a sober citizen throw down his pen to exclaim, “Oh, I wish the war was still on!” It’s a strange echo now, for who could want to be at war, but that citizen wasn’t longing for battle and sudden death. He was remembering the freedom of service life, the smell of faraway places, the unpredictability of the future, and the romance of distant lands and seas.

But these wars have more or less stopped and what’s left to explore? In my grandfather’s day, there were places to discover by hacking through jungles:  these are today’s tourist sites. And only a blink of time away, we had an empire that needed hundreds of thousands of the young to fight or serve in now forgotten wars. They were a hardy lot. After a diet of cold showers, the cane and endless Latin (or Greek as a treat), young men were dispensing tough justice to brigands in areas the size of Wales. That so many died can be seen in the forgotten graves strewn across the world. There was no counselling for bereaved families then; nor did TV reporters soupily ask for parent’s “feelings” at the news that Henry had been boiled in a pot. Families just had to get on with it.

Nation of Shopkeepers

Kipling and Somerset Maugham’s stories explain the extraordinary lives they led. But the spirit of adventure – at its peak in the late 1800s – began to grow thin after the Second World War, and is now reduced to a trickle. Today’s young prefer to take their adventures vicariously by way of the Internet and sensation-drenched films. Overseas travel is no longer red in tooth and claw, but has morphed into a flight to a golf course and a posh hotel with the latest girl. In short, most young men have become “domesticated” – wedded to ‘elf and safety’, nappies and family life. Their women have turned nomadic man into paunchy clerks. This comes at the cost of increasing alcohol and drug consumption to dull the pain of the loss of manhood. We are reduced, as Napoleon gloomily forecast, to “a nation of shopkeepers”.

Our elder son was until recently a teacher at St Paul’s School for boys in London. He told me that all the brightest and best opt to follow Dad into the City.

We are open to the taunt thrown by Juvenal at the Roman people nearly 2,000 years ago, that their main desire was panem et circenses (bread and circuses), today perhaps translated as “booze, dating sites and football”.

Perhaps the creeping march of “civilisation” is as inevitable as old age, but it seems that prosperity has slackened our fibres and we are definitely less tough in mind and body than our grandparents  – or even our parents. This is dangerous.

History lessons are sanitised by lefty teachers and few read the Bible, so the myth has spread that today is bound to be better than yesterday; that we are wiser, kinder, cleverer, more civilised and more peaceful than our forebears; that weapons are nasty things; and that money is best spent on welfare (since bloody conflicts are yesterday’s story). But this claptrap was believed by our Victorian grandparents until it died in the trenches of the Somme. Indeed, this lie is one of the reasons why the young feel comfortable in voting for the absurd pacifist Corbyn.

It is an iron law of life that has yet to be broken that a nation can only earn the right to live soft by being prepared to die hard in defence of its living. We are in the process of forgetting that law. So instead of the drivelling mantra, “take care”, perhaps instead we should be urging our young to take a risk!

Lefty?

One of my readers took issue with the fact that I used the words “lefty teachers” in a disparaging manner, and asked me to justify it.

It so happened that I saw an article by the Times centre-right journalist Melanie Phillips recently who writes as follows (and I paraphrase):

A report last year by the Adam Smith Institute claimed that eight out of 10 university lecturers are left wing. In 2015, the Times Higher Education poll of voting behaviour amongst university teachers found that 46 per cent voted Labour and 11 per cent Conservative. On positions such as Israel, Brexit or global warming, right-wing folk keep their views to themselves if they want to hang on to their jobs.

Phillips points out that those holding centre-right views tend not to be invited on to broadcasting media – unless there is an imperative need to display a fig leaf of political balance. For more than 15 years, she was on a blacklist and no major UK publishing house has published any of her books.

She continues: Views that challenge the left are seen as secular heresies to be silenced. Argument is replaced by smears, name-calling and character assassination designed to stifle dissent. As with all heresies, however, the fundamental motivation for silencing them is fear — fear of even hearing contrary arguments.

This is because at some level such “progressives” fear that their arguments are built on sand and they might be persuaded that the contrary view is correct. Since to such people anything contrary to leftism is not just wrong but evil, they are terrified that this would destroy their entire moral and political personality.

So that’s why I cite lefty teachers as being a curse!

Another hot and fairly humid day that didn’t start well; we found we were sited on a dangerous road with vast lorries whirling towards us winding round hair pin bends. What looks like a dainty and harmless little B road on a map can turn into a big bastard of a road in reality. And then there was the clever sod with piggy little eyes who drove his ghastly little white van straight at me, daring me to move. I didn’t and at the last minute he zig zagged out of the way and then we started to swear at each other.

Long stretches of gorse strewn plain with occasional lines of riders to cheer us on our way. We finished at the delightful Brockenhurst church which used to be surrounded by a WW1 hospital for New Zealand trench casualties. Then again with English troops in WW2.

What did they think they were fighting for?

A Land Fit for Heroes

Anyone visiting the war graves of the First and Second World Wars is surely profoundly moved by the courage of the hundreds of thousands who died, and the sheer witless waste of it all.

What did the fallen think they were fighting for? What British “values” did Stan Hollis VC – the hero of my favourite war story – think were worth preserving when on D-Day he charged German positions alone with a Sten gun and grenades, and killed or took the defenders prisoners? After the war, Stan’s company commander remarked, “Hollis was the only man I met between 1939–45 who felt that winning the war was his own personal responsibility”. What was his spur?

I have had the privilege of talking to many Second World War veterans over the last 15 years, both in the UK and in Zimbabwe, and I’ve noted their views. Many of those who emigrated in the late 1940s to the then Rhodesia left the UK because of profound disappointment with that they found at home after the war.

Of course, defeating Hitler was vital. But let’s face it: the country they returned to was not exactly a “land fit for heroes”. That was a land where pre-war values of honesty and respect for the rule of law co-existed alongside decent wages and housing. It was a reasonable and perfectly attainable hope, and perhaps for a time it came to fruit. And then it was eroded in the name of “progress”, “improvement” and “enlightenment”, which meant the destruction of much of what many had fought for and held to be valuable.

Betrayal

Veterans must have wondered if the material and spiritual degradation – the pornography, the drug culture, the violence and the greed that all grew like Topsy in post-war Britain – were worth the life of a single soldier? Many simmered with anger at the way their precious and costly victory was squandered by weak politicians. They saw the loss of familiar things that were held dear and cherished. To the vapid-minded, these things may seem absurd and trivial, but they had symbolic value: things like county names; ancient regiments with noble histories; the King James’ Bible; and yards, inches and feet (not metres). These things matter to a nation and they were soon lost.

Nor did these warriors fight for a Britain that would be dishonestly railroaded into the EU on a false prospectus – they were told it was a free-trade association, only to discover that there were ambitions to erode the nation state and create a European superpower based in central Europe. They didn’t expect the values of churches and schools to be hollowed out by fashionable reformers, where freedom of choice would be classified as “discrimination”; and they did not fight for a country where the stifling culture of political correctness would make freedom of speech a rarity, and where to hold views that had been thought honourable and worthy for a thousand years would be labelled “bigoted” and “fascist”.

What’s more, they did not fight for a Britain where the planning authorities would gut our city centres and communities in the name of modernity – just take a look at Aylesbury – and place meanly conceived, box-shaped, grey concrete structures smack in the centre of our ancient and well-loved towns and cities. I was given many examples of this sort of vandalism. How about the Bristol “town planners” who left St Mary Redcliffe, one of the jewels of English ecclesiastical architecture, simply stranded on a roundabout?

These young men did not fight for welfare provision that would become a pig’s trough for a few well able to fend for themselves and a web of confusion for others, thereby robbing the needy of self-respect. Nor did they fight for a country where a succession of weak politicians would allow millions of people from alien cultures – in terms of religion, language, lifestyle and outlook – to be dumped, with little thought for the wishes of the existing citizens – into our cities. It seems nobody thought to ask whether the NHS, schools or housing stock could cope, or whether the immigrants would integrate easily?

However, I wonder what they would now say – the very few who are still alive – after learning that amongst Muslim wives who entered Britain on marriage visas from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Somalia in 2016, 44 per cent, 36 per cent, and 27 per cent respectively are unable to speak English? And that in light of current immigration rates and the higher birth rate, Britain’s Muslim population may treble to 13 million, almost 17 per cent of the UK’s total, by 2050?

I don’t believe they fought for any of this. But being realists, they probably would have accepted what they cannot alter – and with a sigh, dusted down their medals and yellowing photographs, and stored them under the bed. Then they would have reserved their protests for the rising pollution of litter in the streets and fields.

Bidet Blues

Apparently, when the late film director Billy Wilder was in Paris making a film in the 1950s, he discovered the bidet. Soon, it became an essential accessory in all must-have bathrooms in the US. The then Mrs Wilder instructed Billy to buy one and ship it back to Los Angeles.

Sadly the demand for bidets had become so great that Wilder was unable to lay his hands on one.

He wired his wife with the sad news: “Unable to find bidet. Suggest do handstand in shower!”

Five miles along the front with chatty and fun guests, we pass miles of wooden beach huts selling so I was told for at least £0.25m each. It’s a crazy world.

We pass sad memorials to young men and crashed planes and continue into Christchurch.

The men of greying Britain have been taken by surprise by the change in the weather which today is overcast and humid. The men look as cool as they can in shorts and sandals with tee shirts stretched to cover beer bellies; and it was drizzling too.

Kindness

We are told how civilised we are as a society and we pride ourselves as being kinder and more caring and sensitive than in our grandparents’ day. Really?

Why is it then that so many of our hospitals are full of dumped elderly? If these folk were babies then there would be a riot and court hearings with irresponsible families being labelled as “cruel”.

Why don’t families regard the old with the same duty of care as the young? I’ll tell you why: selfishness and greed.

Give me an African sense of community and responsibility any day!

Death and Lies

A sonnet by Edna St Vincent Millay scorns the idea that time is a great healer:

Time does not bring relief: you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide.

I suppose we would rather not think about death: just pass the gin, have a laugh and defer worry about the end game until tomorrow. What can fool us, though, are the Grim Reaper’s sudden pauses in his culling; sometimes he seems to get tired and retires across the Styx. For us, the last great cull was in 2011 when four dear friends suddenly died – and no they didn’t just “pass away”, they are bloody well as dead as a doornail. The Reaper pauses… and then bang! More friends suddenly pass into the great perhaps.

We are told that when a great friend dies, a piece of ourselves dies with them. I agree. And like Edna, I don’t think that time is a great healer. I miss all my dead friends, and come to think about it, I miss them more than I did when I was first shocked by news of their passing.

I miss my parents more today than when they died many years ago. A picture, a scent, a building, perhaps a view… and the memories bestir all over again. It’s sad my parents can’t see our children and grandchildren today. The conversations now would be far more interesting. My relationship with them was never easy, and I wrecked bridges I would have liked to rebuild. It’s the guilt and the misery that goes with the memories that keeps the grief so raw.

Move Along, Please!

Death was a common visitor to Victorian households.  Many children, not to mention their mothers, died during childbirth or soon afterwards. And people usually died at home, surrounded by relatives and friends.

I have only seen a couple of dead bodies in my life, for today death has been relegated to hospitals and hospices, where tubes and monitors bleep away and professionals deal with the mysteries of death on our behalf.

Do we mourn enough? Bereaved Victorians wore black armbands, widows wore weeds and formal mourning took at least a year. Okay, a lot of this was simply a matter of form, not substance, but people took their time to grieve and weep. Today we are encouraged to briskly “move on”, not to dwell on the past, and to take a hard look at the nearest dating site! We are made to feel as if we have somehow failed if we can’t move on quickly enough.

At some funerals, we hear that our loved one has not died but is instead waiting in another room. Whatever our religious belief, this is drivel. For most people who have lost a dear loved one, the loss is like losing a limb: how can they ever just “get over it?” And why should they seek “closure?”

Time to Grieve

In our sentimental yet unreflective society, we are inclined to think that with the right counselling and pills we can “recover” from everything in double-quick time. But talking about the dead at a memorial service over a glass of prosecco and an egg sandwich is very different from the expression of raw grief at the graveside. The pain of naked grief is the antithesis of the belief that everything can be fixed quickly. It’s the grieving and the experience of the pain – and not the chatter or anti-depressants – that brings about healing.

We drive slowly through the ancient paths of the New Forest avoiding herds of tiny ponies towards our first host. Our gentle hosts will have to remain nameless because if we begin to praise one we have to praise them all and any gradations in gratitude or enthusiasm would be immediately noticed and although no one would say anything – we are, after all, English – deeply resented! However, without the prodigious hospitality we enjoy, our walks would be bleak indeed. We so often find ourselves arriving smack in the midst of a Wimbledon tennis joust which we usually miss as we lie cowering in a steaming bath.

The day is terrifyingly hot and a touch humid. Worrying this. We have to be wary of dehydration. I prefer grey skies myself as our English summer views are best seen through a faint haze of mist, the essential essence that paints our Eden with such delicate colours and provides such glorious views. I can’t imagine Heaven can compete, particularly in the months of June and July. Anyone who chooses to leave the UK at this time of year for anywhere else in the world has to be crazed.

We are in “Dad’s Army” country. Only 80 years ago and the sky would have been scored with the vapour trails of the Battle of Britain. Who under fifty remembers that now?

Clocked!

Our eldest daughter, Clare, told me that she would be preaching at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford (where she is the chaplain), and so of course I was careful to arrive on time.

I am always overawed by the cathedral’s majestic interior. Over the centuries, countless men and women have come to kneel with prayers listing everything from black misery to thanks for incredible joy. I sat in a vaulted space of quiet reverence gently lit by waterfalls of silver light cascading down from above. Behind, were the gilded pipes of the organ, which soared upwards towards the ceiling like prayers. There is always a great sense of drama that attends cathedral services. I sat enthralled, listening to the beauty of the choir.

But no Clare. Right place, yes; right day, yes. Then some chap began to preach. What was going on?! Had she been dropped? Poor Clare, what could I say to comfort her?

A Tale of Two Churches

I sidled out of the door and steamed over the road to St Aldates. If you are not a churchgoer, you may be blissfully unaware of the different styles of service that exist between churches such as Christ Church and St Aldates. All I can tell you is that the difference is as profound as can be. Christ Church’s services are so high you can scarcely see your feet, while St Aldates… well St Aldates is everyman’s church. Guitars, drums, noisy praise songs… The church is run by my pal Charlie Cleverely. As ever, he was brimming with joyful enthusiasm, as was the vast congregation made up of people of all ages, classes and types.

I slipped into a pew alongside the associate vicar, my old friend Simon Ponsonby (he was looking more like Ernest Hemingway than ever). Simon chatted with great affection about Oliver, our younger son, who worked at St Aldates for many years. Then Simon asked me why I was there? I told him about Clare’s mysterious absence from the Christ Church service.

Simon looked at me curiously. “The clocks went forward an hour, last night, Tom. You do know that?!”

I charged back to Christ Church, just in time to hear Clare give a peerless sermon! Then there was a second communion service. What is the theology of participating in two communions inside 20 minutes? How many sins were committed in the time I spent running between the two churches?  I sat on my hands and wondered.

And how could I have not known about the clocks?  Am I going potty?

We start by thanking all donors for their generosity. Without your support and encouragement ZANE would not exist.

Jane and I started walking a fews days early. We thought it prudent to whirl our old limbs up a few hills to see if they could, once again, stand the strain of a new long distance walk in support of the poorest of the poor in Zimbabwe.

So we have just finished trialing ourselves in South Wales, in fact on the plain where SAS recruits are driven to the point of collapse by their granite jawed trainers. I am an old soldier and like so many of my aged colleagues I fantasise that all I have to do is some tough training walks and runs, a few goes round the gym and the years would fall away like a waterfall and I could join the SAS. Dream on sunshine! I am gone with the wind and aches and pains come and go so with such regularity I know that if I am not hurting, I’m long since dead!

We walked about eight miles and to my astonishment we appear, when taking our antiquity into account, to be reasonably fit. When I checked with the the doctor I asked him: “If I was a horse would you have me shot?” When he said he would keep me a while longer at grass and gentle trotting I asked if it was at least worth my while even starting to read “War and Peace? ” He thought for a while and answered “yes” – I have to say without much conviction – so off we go, no more excuses. Since we started the walks in 2010 we have walked well over 2000 miles and consumed at least six pairs of boots and eight walking sticks. Walking addicts might be interested to know that the best walking poles by far are made by “Traveller Carbon, LEKI” with dinki little hand supporters. They are light and flexible. And avoid all cheap boots, they wear out and are uncomfortable. Remember there is no such thing as a bargain. The best boots by a country mile are (inevitably) German and called MEINDL (with Teutonic quality like that, goodness knows how they lost the war!). They are expensive but as tough as a Tiger tank, and comfortable with it.

Markus , our excellent driver, has now arrived hot foot from Bulawayo. So off we zoom to Bournemouth and here we come!

Bullingdon Blues

Recently, a friend invited me to address the prisoners at Bullingdon nick in Oxfordshire. I was shown around by an enthusiastic and caring woman from Oxford’s St Aldates Church.

When I arrived at the chapel where my address was to take place, I met the service organiser. He took one look at me and simply vetoed my talk. I shrugged and sat down to wait…

When my friend asked him what the problem was, he replied as if I wasn’t there: “Just look at him! There’s nothing the likes of him could say to the prisoners that would even begin to be relevant!”

I was stung into defending myself. “I do know the difference between the Bullingdon Club and Bullingdon Prison, you know!

The organiser looked suitably unimpressed. Then I had an idea.

“Do you happen to know Oliver Benyon? (He worked as youth pastor at St Aldates for eight years.)

“Oh yes,” said my critic, “a great man!”

“He’s my son.”

The atmosphere defrosted immediately. “Oh, in that case…”

I was quietly furious.

I spoke well enough and have been invited back. The circle has fully turned.

It goes without saying that Oliver thought this was the funniest story ever…

Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word…

It’s hard to apologise, and even harder when you aren’t particularly sorry.

But it takes even more grace to say sorry when you know that offence has been given but you haven’t the slightest idea what the dispute is all about…

Georgie Knaggs, aka The Phraser, freelance writer and ZANE Trustee joined Tom and Jane on the last afternoon of the walk and has written this lovely account on her blog: