Another miserable day marching from somewhere called Drax to Norton trying to wade through rights of way now turned into a jungle by neglectful landowners and councils. Okay, why bother to make these paths walkable? I suppose judging from their vast size that the locals never walk. They must spend their time lolling in front of their tellies eating pan fried Mars bars. Sorry about that but it’s true. The NHS will sink soon in a welter of worn out hip joints, cases of diabetes and heart attacks; everyone saw this health tsunami coming but we did more or less nothing about it.

Like the “where the sod are we bird” Jane and I go round and round in ever decreasing circles.  I expect to find myself jammed up my own backside at any moment. Seriously after trying to find the track we end up in the garden of a rich farmer’s hideously red  house and find ourselves faced by two enormous “sod off” gates with no visible means of leaving the darned place. We had to retrace our steps and we had  a further mile added to our tally.

Poor George Carey. Such a good man too. I know him from way back and I like him. It must be so galling to find yourself caught out like that after so many years. George made his judgments – pre the ghastly Savile rows –  in 1990. Author LP Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”. Quite so. George is being judged in hindsight by 2017 rules, our having learned a few things along the way. I will write to him when I get back. I learned a while ago that when a friend is in trouble always ring or write or visit. Don’t hesitate, just do it.

Happy Person Here!

I wish I had a happy face! But even when I am feeling on top of the world, in quiet repose my face just looks grumpy. People ask me, “What on earth’s wrong?” But when I say, “I’m feeling just fine thank you,” they back away looking bemused. I know lots of mouldy people whose faces look happy. It’s most unfair.

What makes us happy? It has to be more than a warm puppy. It’s not that man doesn’t try to be happy. We put prodigious effort into the search, but like the end of the rainbow, the goal appears elusive.

Futile Pursuit

French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote about man’s great experiment: simply to prove that chasing after money, sex and power would lead to happiness. For countless years, he wrote, man (and of course women too) has tried to make the experiment work – but it always results in failure.

In any other scientific field, this ridiculous experiment would have been junked years ago. But generation after generation tries to make it work all over again.

Of course, money doesn’t bring happiness – in fact quite the reverse is true. It took me years to learn that lesson, but it is now firmly embedded in my skull.

Do people really change? Rarely. Once a philanderer always a philanderer, and the same is true of a liar. Was Monica Lewinsky a one-off conquest for Bill Clinton? Well how credulous can you get?

Vital Ingredients

Freud thought that work and love are essential to happiness. Noel Coward wrote that working was more fun than fun, and I like that. I wrote in an earlier blog that every man needs a maiden to woo, a battle to fight and a cause bigger than himself to live for, and that’s a useful starting point.

Good health is important to the state of happiness, but I have met people who, although permanently bedridden, appeared to live thoroughly fulfilling lives despite all their ghastly drawbacks. Being reasonably attractive helps as people are inclined to be warm towards you. But extreme beauty can be a drawback. The poet Yeats wrote in his poem “Prayer for my Daughter” that he hoped God would give her beauty but not “…such beauty that makes a stranger’s eyes distraught.” The wrong sort of beauty destroyed Marylyn Monroe and countless others besides.

I once employed a woman with an incredibly beautiful face and body. Men immediately thought that she was “up for it” and so would leer at her at every opportunity. However, in character she was as pure as any woman I have ever met, and she hated the looks and inevitable groping she attracted.

Apparently statistics indicate that first-born children have a tendency to happiness, as do children with two parents at home, and men who are married. People can be happy fighting in war because there is the band-of-brothers element, a strong sense of common purpose and the feeling that they are involved in something useful and bigger than themselves. Often those engaged in war are testing themselves. That seems to be important too. And note that happy people are rarely gloomily sitting on a “Lazee-boy” sofa watching daytime TV. They are usually involved in some ongoing interchange with life, however inconsequential that may look at first sight.

Happy people often have work that is a love affair, a passion. Teachers can be like that, and so are vicars. And, of course, actors – you have to be in love with the stage to put up with the insecurity and the rotten money. You can’t accuse anyone engaged in these difficult professions that they are doing it to get rich. But if you actually enjoy your work then you are profoundly lucky, for a passion can see us through the dark periods in life.

Finding your inner leaf

Oh yes, and I read somewhere that we all have to be a “leaf on a tree.” We should be individuals with a sense that we really matter, yet at the same time we need to be part of something bigger than ourselves – a family, a community, a regiment, a hospital, a theatre group, a political party… A leaf that has fallen off a tree has the advantage that it can float around a bit; but then it becomes disconnected, decays and dies. Far better to be an evergreen leaf that hangs on!

It seems that the people who are best protected from anger and heart disease are those who are socially involved. They are socially attractive because they are not introverted – they are the ones asking the questions and they want to know about other people’s lives. If you are complicated or socially needy, people will choose to avoid you. It’s best to avoid introspection – so ask others about themselves, and stop talking about yourself all the time!

Next, embrace change. I’m not suggesting you should move house every second year but have enough change in your life to keep things interesting. Boat rocking can be good for our health while uniformity is a great threat to happiness – so don’t “take care”, instead “take a risk”.

Live for the moment. Focus on the things that you want to do, and then get on and do them (if you reckon they’re worthwhile). If gardening is a pleasure, then garden away. Spend less time working on the family finances, talk to friends and family, and listen to the opera (if that is the thing that floats your boat).

Then audit your happiness. Why do things that make you unhappy? And if you are happy, then tell your face and keep on smiling at others – for it transmits a signal: “Happy person here!” If you feel negative, just tell yourself that you have to be positive.

Act, play the part, listen to Julie Andrews: “Whistle a little tune” and then put on a happy face. If you are feeling miserable, tell yourself to feel happy instead: that in itself can trigger a change in how we feel. A wise old preacher, Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones, once said that one of the greatest tragedies is to say of someone: “He was born a man yet he died a doctor.”  This means don’t let your career eat you alive so you lose your humanity: you are a human being, not a human doing. I know retired headmasters, senior civil servants and generals, and some seem to be stuck like chicken in aspic, stuck where they used to be. It’s essential to be able to reinvent yourself.

Wheat Fields

After George Osborne was introduced on the Andrew Marr show as the MP for Schadenfreude North, he told viewers that Theresa May had boasted that the worst thing she had ever done was to “run through a wheat field.”

As George glanced down to look at the election results, he commented, “Well, she won’t be able to say that anymore, will she?”

A long walk from Yokefleet to Drax, which I was excitedly told houses the biggest power station in England – although what you are meant to do with that sort of information beats me. A dreary place mouldering under indifferent countryside, set off with dirty sheet skies, all accompanied by an intermittent drizzle; the mix matched my mood to a tee. Whose daft idea is this sodding route? Jane was bustling along and as usual issued me with a string of breezy exhortations: ” Come on, Tom, please cheer up for Heaven’s sake and stop being so totally dreary,” Some hope.

Kind hosts last night in Pocklington who kindly made a picnic for us. As it was belting with rain we ate it in the car. Nothing like misted windows, farmyard smells and slanting rain to raise the appetite.

In deep thought all day about the ghastly spot dear Theresa has managed to paint herself into. Poor woman. What a dreadful job she now has. She is surrounded by critics and by people who call themselves friends but who want to ruin her and probably will.

Group Therapy

 I have commented before on the intrusive way the media tries to probe our emotions to enable its readers and viewers to indulge in some recreational grief. It’s a sort of emotional pornography.

“Mrs Peabody,” they ask with a camera up close: “What exactly was your reaction when you heard that your daughter had been killed by a mad axeman?” This is a line of questioning that always makes me want to reach for the sick bag. I always want someone to answer, “Mind your own sodding business!” – but they never do. The media and the public are hungry for emotional outpouring, so why indulge this appetite?

Westminster Weeping

The escalation of our national emotional incontinence became apparent late last year when there was a debate in the Commons about women losing a child in infancy. Some MPs were apparently weeping and others joined in with their sad stories, as if the debate was some sort of group therapy. Is that what the House of Commons is for? Can you imagine the Iron Lady doing such a thing, or the late Barbara Castle, or Theresa May for that matter?

Infant death was a commonplace in previous centuries through poor medical treatment; and then, of course, young sons were slaughtered on an industrial scale in war, and the pulling down of blinds was ubiquitous. These generations had to face their heartbreaks with a considerable degree of stoicism because sadness was everywhere. The prevailing mood was just to get on with it, keep your upper lip stiff, then grin and remember the Sir Harry Lauder’s song: “Keep right on till the end of the road”. (Lauder’s son was killed in the First World War).

You can still see this today, but it is becoming uncommon. When my friend Daily Telegraph columnist Cassandra Jardine sadly died, her actor husband performed on stage that very night. He knew that was what she would have wanted. He didn’t weep on stage and ask for pity: he just did his job. And when home secretary Amber Rudd’s father died, just three days later she appeared on the election leader’s debate on television. Good for her, I’m sure that’s just what her father would have wanted.

Keep Calm and Carry On

There was a time when emotional restraint was considered to be a high form of courage. I think that this general need for public acknowledgement of distress weakens respect.

Reader, we have all had ghastly problems to live with, haven’t we?  However, as Bear Grylls recently said, “When life kicks the shit out of us all, we have to get on with it for Buddha’s ‘Life is Suffering’ is a hole in one.” So when the shit hits our particular fan, we can either give way to despair and self-pity, or we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and start all over again.

Would we rate our Police Chief, Commissioner Cressida Dick, more highly and sleep better in bed at night if we knew the detail of her heartbreaks? (I should add I know nothing of the good lady, all I am saying is we all have our miseries and failures, even she).

Would we feel more secure and respect our generals and admirals – those who are charged with the onerous task of our national security and the protection of our country – more highly if they were seen weeping over the ghastly scenes of carnage and horror in Afghanistan or Syria. Or would we feel less safe?

I would much prefer Theresa May to be tough, gimlet-eyed and unemotional as she negotiates the Brexit road ahead than weeping with stress in Number 10 and asking us to feel her pain. And emotional continence should not be mixed up with a ruthless determination to show the people she is on their side. It’s plain sad she seems unable to do this naturally. Churchill mixed with the crowds during the Blitz as did the royal family. Shyness and caution may cost Theresa her job.

Virtue Signalling

Emotional outpouring was given astonishing momentum at the time of the faux grief expressed when Princess Diana died. I never understood who the weeping donors thought would benefit from their tons of flowers (other than florists and manufacturers of cellophane), for Diana – like Old Marley from A Christmas Carol – was as dead as a doornail.

For a while, the poor Queen was under considerable pressure for not demonstrating that she “cared” enough to satisfy the public’s taste for weeping and the rending of garments. She was obliged to leave Balmoral for London, and make a broadcast to confirm that she did indeed “care”. It’s beyond conceit, of course, for the public to assume to know how someone feels, but’s that’s exactly what happened. Once upon a time, you were once considered to be a good person if you acted honourably according to generally accepted codes of conduct. But today all this has collapsed in favour of individual expression and “feelings”; the public demonstration of suffering becomes necessary as a badge of honour, as it makes a person morally untouchable.

The audience signals its virtue by displaying compassion towards suffering people  – “I feel your pain” – to show how warm and kind they are. Anyone who says this is sentimental and self-indulgent hogwash is accused of being unkind and unfeeling.

Slippery Slope

The young Royals seem to want to try and rebrand the monarchy and let emotion spill out. They seem much more like their mother and father in this respect than their grandparents. It was Charles who, like a big girl’s blouse, began to moan to the press about the way the media was making his life difficult “under the burdens of great privilege.” And can you ever forget Diana endlessly blethering on about depression, bulimia and her emotional longings?

Today William, Kate and Harry appear to have forgotten the words of Walter Bagehot who warned, “not to let daylight in upon magic.” That means preserving the mystery of the monarchy. I read that Prince Harry was pictured kissing his girlfriend Meghan Markle at a polo match: “The first public snog!” screamed the headlines. Then Kate was pictured topless in some foreign magazine, and both Harry and William decided to talk publicly about the pain of their mother’s death. On top of that, they set up “Heads Together” where they all sat on a beach and pretended to talk as normal human beings. They claimed it’s not about them, they were speaking to help others: but there is a lot of virtue signalling going on there, and it was all about them really wasn’t it?

Is all this wise? I think not. Apparently the Palace didn’t approve and the young Royals were told to stop emoting in public. Can you see the Duke of Edinburgh parading his heart on his sleeve, or the Queen?  And have they been successful custodians of the Monarchy or not these past 60 years?  The Queen knows she is hugely popular partly because she doesn’t go on about what is in her head. Nor does the Duke. Can you imagine his retort if he were asked how he felt when Mountbatten was assassinated or when his children got divorced?

The Queen and the Duke are wise old birds and they know instinctively that the public don’t want the Royals to be too familiar. The Queen and the Dukes’ reticence should be copied. If the young Royals go on sharing their pain with us and seeking sympathy, then one fine day, the capricious public will suddenly grow tired… Talk of slinging them out will slowly begin in the very newspapers that have been exploiting them by parading their pain, and pictures of wannabe President John Prescott or Diane Abbot will suddenly swim grinning into focus before our appalled eyes.

The Tale of Two Cities

Yesterday we walked through Hull past the magnificent Humber Bridge which was wrapped in early morning mist. We walked the line of the old docks and read some history. I had no idea of the key role played by Hull and Liverpool between 1836-1914 as gateway to 2.2m European emigrants fleeing religious turmoil and grinding hardship as they fled to the the New World. They arrived in Hull then to Liverpool to the ship that took them terrified but hopeful to the States. These people were the original “huddled masses yearning to be free.”

We lunched in Ferriby and saw the outlines of two 4,000 year old ships, the oldest vessels ever to sail our coasts.

Two helpful cops were wondering if we are bonkers by telling them we are walking to Liverpool. “It’s a long way you know,” said one hesitatingly checking if we were out on day release. I reassured him we know what we are  doing. I don’t think he believed me.

I asked them if they had read Senior policeman John Sutherland’s excellent book “Blue: Keeping the Peace While Falling to Pieces.” John suggested that police do such a difficult job that we should thank them. I did so. He looked even more astonished as he drove off.

The Great Divide

I am well aware that the subject of Brexit leads to argument and ill feeling, which is why I am still not going to say how I voted. I found the choice conflicting and my family divided. There were clearly arguments to be made on either side of the fence, and at the time I wished that Cameron hadn’t called a referendum at all.  However, now that we are Brexit-bound, we had just better get on with it.

The next couple of years aren’t going to be easy: staying in had problems, and leaving will hurt. I reckon that the EU needed us as much as we needed them. The younger democracies benefited from our wisdom as a nation state and we have the best civil service in the world. That may sound a bit patronising but it’s undeniably true – and now these countries have something of a wisdom deficit. From now on there are bound to be large road bumps ahead for us all; stops and starts, good days and dreadful ones. Buckle your seat belts and hope for the best.

Counting the Plusses

However, the UK has certain things going for it that make me optimistic. First, we are an immensely resilient people; we have faced vast and intractable difficulties in the past and we have always surmounted them – and so will we now. Second, whatever Jean Claude Junker says – and with his gross style, he was hardly a valuable advocate to the remain campaign – the world speaks English. It’s the language of commerce, the arts, diplomacy, international science and sport. English is spoken in the USA, Canada, Australia (after a fashion), New Zealand, in much of Africa and in South America  – and it won’t be replaced by Esperanto anytime soon.

Third, we are sited smack on the most favourable time zone for the rest of the world to do business with. Fourth, people enjoy working in the UK and some even like our weather! We are an immensely stable old democracy and it takes a lot to shiver us to our foundations. Thank goodness, despite the efforts of Heseltine, Blair and Mandelson, we never found ourselves wedged in the Euro – which is headed towards disaster. The reason is that countries are only willing to bail out or subsidise parts of their own country – for example, West Germany made vast capital transfers to East Germany, yet German voters refused point blank to bail out another country in the Eurozone bloc however desperate the need (look at the plight of Greece). Yes, such transfers have to be made. It is only a matter of time before the Euro fails, and when that happens, we will be grateful to be like Macavity… just not there.

And finally, the UK is a basically honest country. If you want to do business, the UK is a top choice, for our courts are incorrupt, and in the main our financial exchanges are well policed and honest. Put it this way, I think I would rather transact business in the UK than in Africa, China, India, South America, Russia, anywhere with “stan” in its name, and many parts of the EU that recently emerged from communism in the 1990s.

Let’s face it, we have plenty of advantages. I am sure we’ll survive somehow – and maybe even prosper.

Total Nonsense

How has such a fully-fledged ass as Alan Wilson become a bishop in the Church of England? I heard him in the box recently, talking about the row in the early 1980s caused by John Smyth QC – who was accused of causing grievous bodily harm to a number of Christian youths by flogging them unmercifully. At the same time, Smyth was apparently involved in an evangelical group responsible for teaching the gospel to mainly young men.

I have never met Smyth or attended the camps, but at least 3,000 young men attended and many progressed to serve the Anglican Church. Among their number was the great John Stott, Canon John Collins, Canon David MacInnes, Canon David Cook and many other holy men.

There is no doubt that the teaching was gospel-based and fundamental to the success of their subsequent ministry.

Bishop Wilson claims that the non-liberal teaching taught in the camp in some way spurred Smyth to behave as he did. What total nonsense. Smyth is obviously a one-off weirdo. Let’s hope he will be extradited from South Africa, where he now lives, tried, and jailed. But does Bishop Wilson honestly believe that over the years, there have been no sexual crimes committed by liberal vicars? And if he does believe this, when will he be certified?

Well it’s a roasting day for walking from Hull to Liverpool and it’s best not to think of the distance. I hum the Harry Lauder theme tune as I walk: “Keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end, though you’re tired and weary still travel on etc”. Lauder lost a son in WW1 – the war that has been long been lost to memory: everyone who fought in it has long since died. Poor Lauder never really recovered from his loss. Of course none of us would, I think it would be like losing a limb. Another forgotten war and forgotten warriors.

The Forgotten Legion

We are walking for the benefit of the forgotten people of Zimbabwe, the poorest of the poor living in a sad country whose troubles the UK wants to forget about. But ZANE is in business to ensure that they are not forgotten. These brave people must be allowed to live out their lives in some dignity, especially members of the Forgotten Legion. These are the old soldiers who fought in old wars such as Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Aden and they are living on a meal a day with no medical cover whatsoever. There are still a few like the Duke of Edinburgh who fought in WW2 but they are increasingly few left now. But today’s young are obsessed with Facebook and social media and they read no history, or anything much for that matter. So perhaps someone should remind them whether they are aware of this or not, that their comfortable lives rest on the shoulders of those who lived and served before they were born. These are the old warriors who have made our lives today a little bit more peaceful and better than they otherwise would have been. If that duty falls to me and Jane and our dog, Moses, then perhaps that’s a worthwhile cause to walk for.

The View That Dares Not Speak Its Name

I watched Tim Farron of the Lib Dems struggle with the Inquisition about whether he believed “gay sex” was sinful? Not the tendency to homosexuality –easy to answer – but homosexual sex acts, red in tooth and claw.

Tim has now resigned as leader on grounds that it is no longer possible for practising Christians to head up political parties in the UK. He is a brave and principled man. He was caught by a crew of sanctimonious journalists who hounded him from office. There was no escape; if he answered “incorrectly” in the eyes of the liberal media, it was obvious it would be Good Night Sweet Prince for his career and damaging for his party too.

The question of whether homosexual sex acts are sinful or not has snowed up the CoE for many years and as it wearily tries to shovel itself to freedom, it finds it’s digging in ever decreasing circles. Who knows when or if the Church will ever emerge from the drifts. Poor old Farron wrestled with his questioners for months. Apparently he’s a committed Christian, a serious man and we all know what the Good Book says, don’t we just. At first, he probably hoped that by keeping shtum, the questioners would go away. But then it must have dawned on him that our country is in the grip of an all-powerful metropolitan liberal elite in sole charge of the snide newspaper columns and shrieking headlines that dominate our society.

Theresa May agreed the same thing on the Andrew Marr Show. I don’t know whether anyone bothered to ask Jeremy Corbyn, but perhaps we know that the only act he considers truly sinful is to vote Tory – meaning no one bothered to pop him the question.

Damned If You Do…

Now personally I am tired of the gay subject that has consumed so much of the time and energy of the CoE over past years, and has generated so much ill feeling. I wish we could move on, but round we go. And no! I am not going to give my personal view. Perhaps you’d be surprised by what I think – but either way I’d offend at least half of ZANE’s donors, so I might as well keep my own counsel.

However, I am exercised by the thought police who demand that everyone must have the same opinion, and if you don’t agree you’re forever damned as bigot meat. This is neither liberal or democratic, so poor old Tim. But the liberal consensus questioners appear to be cowards. Why don’t they ask the same question to Muslim politicians?

A glance at the Muslim website indicates a hard line. According to “JustAskIslam” for example, homosexuality is a crime against man’s sexuality (no space is given for women’s views). Homosexual acts are therefore to be punished by either 100 whip lashes for the unmarried or death by stoning for the married. Occasionally for hardliners, Sharia law states that death should be for both partners. What does the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan think?

For all I know, at least half of public opinion may be out of tune with the liberal consensus on gay sex. I think that today many practising Catholics would be unhappy that the debate appears to have been stolen by the liberal elite. They will be joined by many members of most of the Christian churches and many in the Jewish and Muslim communities too. Perhaps there are many secular humanists who don’t support the liberal consensus either? However, no one dares speak out because who wants to be targeted as a bigot, and lose preferment at work or even their job?

It’s surely odd that the archbishops of our established Church have decided to sit on their mitres and perhaps brood about the agenda of the next Lambeth Conference instead of supporting the rights of elected politicians to hold private views without being given the ghastly Star Chamber treatment.

Perhaps our church leaders think it’s prudent not to challenge the liberal consensus. But of course we must remember that Jesus rarely spoke his mind in case he embarrassed the Pharisees… or maybe I’ve got that wrong?

One “I”

Author Joseph Connolly was at a book signing at Hatchards, and after the first hundred customers or so, was looking forward to his lunch. Growing bored, he went on autopilot, and signed away without looking up at the queue of book owners who came for a scribble.

“To whom am I inscribing it?” he asked one man who identified himself as Ian.

“Is that one “I” or two?” Connolly asked.

There was a stony silence until eventually Connolly looked up.

“The guy only had one eye,” Connolly later said.

We are driving up to Hull today. What to do on the way…?

Filling the Void

The young are bound by age restrictions when it comes to gambling, drugs or booze, though there are no such restrictions for Facebook, Twitter and video games – which are, of course, highly addictive too.

These addictions are having a disastrous effect on our young. It has been shown that the more youngsters look at Facebook, the more depressed they are likely to be. When will the young find the time to form proper non-Facebook friendships and talk properly?  How can they find the time to read the likes of Middlemarch or write poetry or pray? Since they don’t spend time developing lasting relationships with real people, what will happen when they feel lonely – will they find comfort in Facebook?  When will they find time to talk to the old? Or, as delayed gratification is today a rarity, when will they become expert in something? There are apps for every darn thing these days but none for the tackling the roots of loneliness: forming deep loving relationships or finding real job satisfaction takes effort.

Modern Plague

Today, the number of youngsters on anti-depressants and committing suicide is spiralling upwards. As machines go faster and faster and devour our attention, and as families disconnect, people are growing ever more isolated and lonely.  And some of the unlikeliest people grow miserable and isolated.

For loneliness is one of the miseries of our time and its blight stretches its tentacles throughout society. A picture taken years ago shows Baroness Thatcher hunched on a bench outside the House of Lords three hours before the doors opened. It was said that, after she was defenestrated as PM, she never knew another day of happiness. When the caravan stopped, as stop it always does, she was desperately lonely.

Seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote about loneliness in his Pensées. Cheerful old soul that he was (but a very perceptive one), he claims that humankind seeks to be busy to avoid facing the reality that life always ends in sickness and death.

Pascal tells us that busyness as an end in itself seems to be the key to much human activity from stamp collecting to buying houses to playing sport. Take “the chase” (hunting). Pascal claims that if the hunter were to be given the quarry before the chase, he would not thank you; if the gambler were to be given his winnings before the game is played, he would be angered. The business of travelling helps us forget the misery of the end game.

When American humourist Dorothy Parker was writing Hollywood film scripts, producer Cecil B. DeMille asked why her films always ended unhappily? “Because it’s true to life,” she replied. “Out of the 18 billion people born since Adam, not a single one has ever had a happy ending!”

Pascal reminds us that there is nothing so insufferable for man than to be completely at rest, he gets bored and welcomes strife. “All troubles arise,” he claims, “because of man’s inability to sit quietly with his own company in his own room.”

So Pascal would understand modern addictions: he knew why people leave their mobiles on the dinner table; they are waiting for someone – anyone – to ring with an “important” message, all to assuage loneliness.

But much activity is empty vanity. Malcolm Muggeridge called one of his autobiographies Chronicles of Wasted Time, and Prime Minister Balfour said: “Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.” Anyone with a modicum of self-awareness must agree with these old saws, yet few dare to dwell on it because we want to kid ourselves that the trivia we are working on really matters. In this often joyless universe, we need such assurances or we’d go potty. But when politicians talk of their “legacy”, I recall that long-serving deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine admitting that most of the things he has done will be forgotten; he’ll be remembered only for the trees he carefully plants on his estate.

To the Ends of the Earth

I’ll bet it was fear of loneliness that motivated explorers rather than practising their navigational skills. After all, when Christopher Columbus sailed away on Santa Maria he had no idea where he was going, when he reached America he had no idea where he was, and when he got back, he had no idea where he had been.  But still he went!

And speed doesn’t help. I read somewhere that when the great explorer Sir Richard Burton (not the actor) sought the source of the Nile, he went at such a pace that soon his porters firmly refused to budge. When he angrily commanded them to move, the headman answered: “We have walked fast for three days, Master; we are waiting for our souls to catch up.”

No Time to be Idle

Jane and I don’t have much time to be lonely. We are privileged to look after a never-ending series of grandchildren, and are in fact so busy we are tempted to add the following message to our answerphone:

“Thank you for ringing Tom and Jane. Press one for babysitting services, two for marriage advice, three for money. Your call will be answered shortly. Please do not hang up for your call is very important to us. Please note that this call may be recorded for training purposes.”

It’s interesting that for much of history, idleness was the hallmark of wealth and class. Beyond needlework and water colouring, classy people didn’t work much but spent time having tea with friends and going to concerts. When Lady Violet Bonham Carter asked her nanny in the early 1900s what life would be like when she grew up, she received this reply: “Until you are 18, you will do lessons. And after 18 you will do nothing.”

That was then, and it sounds very lonely. But I wonder what Pascal would make of our lives today?

Like hitting your head on the brick wall, it’s great when you stop. It’s a blessed and sunny day and it’s a great day not for walking.

We stay once again with kind and indulgent friends: we get up late and drive slowly home. We calculate how many thank you letters we will be delighted to write to so many kind people who have put themselves out for us.

But is saying “thank you” now a rarity?

Our two younger hosts told us that when they had eight friends of their eldest daughter to stay for a weekend – all under seventeen – and worked hard to give them a good time (preparing meals, making beds, more washing up,  the cost, you now what it all entails), not a single one of them wrote to thank their hosts, not a single call, not an email, just nothing. Other friends tell us that when they had a big wedding for their daughter, at least ten people failed to show  and not a word of apology afterwards. Others tell me that that many gifts to his and her relatives go “un thanked”.

When I was a little boy the need for “thank you” letters and saying:  “Thank you for having me”, was drilled into me. I suspect most of my generation were awarded the same treatment.

We recently had a party for Jane’s birthday; about fifty of our greatest friends came; around fifty warm and appreciative thank you letters awaited us when we got home today. It’s not that we asked our friends to supper so they would say “thank you”, of course not, but these letters are a loving response to an act of hospitality; saying “thanks” makes the cold world a little bit warmer, a touch less hostile and more friendly: expressing gratitude for dinners, overnight stays and birthday presents is a gentle and courteous thing to do and it makes the world a little less lonely too.

I’ll bet that all ZANE donors are “of an age” and we were all taught to “thanks”. I’ll bet you are also rather shocked at the casual brutality of today’s ungracious young who seem to take kindness, gifts and hospitality for granted.

Have today’s parents stopped teaching their children manners?

It’s great to be back home.

End Game

We never saw a signpost to “Ipswich” until today, our final day. I was beginning to think the place was bewitched and did not actually exist,  but at long last we found ourselves crawling through the suburbs  towards our finishing point, the  Grammar School. It is a fine place perched atop a series of hills so steep my eyes popped as  we staggered towards it. Well done Jane for leading the way. And to our dog Moses who has been a delight, and to Markus our driver who has flown from Bulawayo to be at the service of the people of Zimbabwe, to whom he is fiercely loyal.

Reaping the Rewards

A few years back, a British ambassador’s wife caused a raised eyebrow or two when she started to flog her handmade jewellery from a spare room in the Embassy. No one cared sufficiently to stop her on the grounds, I suppose, that the ambassador’s wife is not the ambassador.

Now we read of the vast sums of money being made by Blair and Mandelson through the exploitation of their contacts established while in office. Perhaps we are so used to our rulers touting their little black contact books composed at the taxpayer’s expense that we have ceased to notice it. And it is an international phenomenon; there are agencies flogging the speech-making abilities of these “celebrities” and a list of their prices to anyone with a fat chequebook.

We can read of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s vast fortunes from their tax returns: Hillary alone made some $22m from speeches to the business community during the last year. So we just shrug and get on with our lives for everybody’s apparently doing it.

How Quaint!

It was not always thus. When Harry Truman retired in 1953 after an honourable eight-year stint as US president, he went back to Missouri, threw his suitcase in the attic of the house that he and his wife shared with her mother, and started writing his memoirs to make a living. Astonishingly, there was no presidential pension of any kind in the fifties and all he had was $112.30 per month through a military pension.

The Bank of America then asked Truman if he would serve on their board as a director. He replied saying that on reflection he had to refuse. His reason was that the only commercial experience he had was as a failed haberdasher (his shop went bust during the recession in 1921) and therefore it was obvious that the only reason the bank had asked him to serve was because he had been President of the United States – “And taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation’s highest office”.

What a silly, old-fashioned man!  I wonder what Bill and Hillary and Tony and Peter would make of such nonsense?

Well, only one more day to go and then our own bed. Not that today’s experience was anything to carp about: a beautiful warm and sunny day where the cows all smile milkily at us as we pass by. We travel through some of the loveliest countryside we are blessed with in this blessed plot, this England. We spent too short a time in Long Melford church, a jewel with heavenly light cascading towards us through mellow, stained glass windows.

Francie walked with us, a lovely person and a friend from way back. She is commonsensical and kind in equal measure and runs a business where tact and diplomacy stand at a premium. She has forged an enviable reputation advising clients who seek her assistance in how to furnish their houses. Amazinly she manages to bring together her expertise and their opinions without causing ructions. Anyone who has tried to chose wallpaper with a partner will know how hard that can be!

Back to Basics

I recently stayed at the excellent Nuffield Hospital in Oxford. It was my second hip operation, and I have to say that the sheer quality of the medical experience, at no direct cost to any of us, has to be one of the major reasons why so many of the have-nots in the world are scrambling to come to the UK. The care in the Nuffield is as excellent as anyone could reasonably hope for: professional, attentive and kind.

But I had forgotten just how basic life gets when the rubber hits the road. Mothers, of course, will know the full extent of the raw indignities of childbirth, but to be frank I managed to confine myself to the exhortatory and head-end side of the business. I never had any ambitions to be an active participant.

Pleased to Meet You

So there I was, well into my prime and reasonably respected in the community, and well used to looking after myself. Shortly after coming round from my operation, I found myself in a tent with lots of people staring down at me: apparently my blood pressure had dropped and I had fainted, a not uncommon experience after recovery from anaesthetic.

A nurse told me insistently I was to empty my bladder. “How,” I pleaded, “am I to do this when I am numb from the waist down?” How, to be frank, would I know if the process was underway or not?

Another nurse appeared and in a flash ripped up my nighty and rammed a catheter up (or is it down?) my willy. And we hadn’t even been introduced. What is the world coming to?

A couple of days later, I awoke to hear a stranger hissing in my ear: “Have you peed?”

I nodded dumbly. The catheter was now but a sordid memory and I was meant to be going it alone in that department, if you know what I mean. The nurse stared fixedly at me, and her voice hardened.

“Are… you… telling… me… the… truth? It… is… very… important.”

How on earth can you convince a sceptic that such an event has occurred? I crossed my heart in a imploring sort of a way and she thankfully vanished.

August Words

Before I could leave hospital, a couple of occupational therapists demanded that I had to first demonstrate my versatility at sitting on and rising from the loo! I kid you not – and they claimed they had to watch my performance in order to tick various boxes. So there I was ascending and descending on the loo like an aged yo-yo in response to the encouragement of a couple of immensely earnest young women.

Let us hope we never cross each other’s paths again. Imagine the small talk if we did: “Oh yes, I’m sure we have met before, now where was it exactly?” And then the grim reality will dawn on us.

I recall the time that Jane and I were out hunting when we ran into her gynaecologist just a few months after he delivered our last baby.

“I’m sure we’ve met before?” he cried with a glint in his eye. Jane cantered away at speed.

There is an old Catholic saying: Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. When I first read it, I was unsure why the great Augustine favoured it so much. I won’t translate it, but I imagine that even the most rudimentary grasp of Latin will allow you to guess more or less what it means.

So when you are next in hospital, brace yourself, leave your dignity at home and remember good old Augustine.

Possessions

The other day was one of those days where the wind stripped the flesh from my bones and then came back to collect the marrow. It set me thinking, what’s it all about? I haven’t a clue!

Someone suggested that to start with we should go round our houses with labels saying “temporary” and stick them onto furniture, paintings, jewellery, stamp collections and cars.

Then we should dash back to our family and the friends we love with labels saying “permanent”.

That might set our priorities straight anyway.

A very long walk today, or at least  so it seemed to be! Never ending plodding through ploughed fields, all slightly tilted upwards, managed  to exhaust and drain us of breath and humour in equal measure; we were faced with several hooded paths and collapsing styles all smothered with brambles and vicious thorns that all left vivid stigmata on my arms and legs. We were accompanied by our kind hosts which was kind of them. We stay the night with relations that are kind and fun. Looking back, the beginning of the walk seems a lifetime ago. It’s been a long way!

I cannot over exaggerate the delight of a welcome, an iced gin and tonic and a hot bath at the end of the day.

Long Live Prudery

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.

Philip Larkin

Maybe sex is more important nowadays than it used to be, or perhaps my generation was more inhibited, restrained, pious and timid than today’s? Looking back, of course we weren’t saints but when I was in my last year at school and then Sandhurst, I guess only a tiny minority of us were sexually experienced. Hardly anyone “slept around”. Of course we all drank and smoked, we danced with great abandon, we eyed the “talent”, and often made crude comments and used foul language – for soldiers will always be soldiers – but that was about the extent of it. The pill was still in the future, clap was a badge of shame and unwanted pregnancies were a real fear. Also, we were taught to be gentle to women as they were the weaker sex.

Flashman

One of my Sandhurst chums, George Mason – our resident Flashman – used to hint that his sexual exploits were of the extent and variety to make Playboy’s Hefner envious. When we watched him charging off to Camberley like Ferdinand the Bull, we knew instinctively that the various sexual activities he was forecasting were a bad thing: frowned on by the Church, family and society at large. On one occasion, Mason tottered back grinning at his sexual prowess, unaware that when our crowd had visited the local flick-house he could be seen sitting in the front row innocently eating crisps.

Although we didn’t always live up to our standards, we did know when we were behaving badly and we knew right from wrong.

These were the sexual drag ages. In 1960, a 22-year old University College Oxford student was caught in bed with a friend from St Hilda’s. They were both suspended, and although this may sound bizarre today, their student chums thought quite right too. A friend at Christ Church told me that his one sexually active colleague was universally regarded as being rather contemptable.

Everyone’s Doing It

Recently, a private-school teacher buddy told me that today practically all seventeen-year-old students are involved in more or less constant sexual activity – heterosexual and homosexual – and anyone abstaining is regarded as abnormal. Apparently the peer pressure that faces today’s young is simply overwhelming. Most of it is one-on-one and not “promiscuous”, but it is universal.

Canute showed us all the futility of trying to turn back the tide, and so today’s parents just shrug and accept the reality that their children will be participants in this brave new world of unlimited sex, often without strings. Few politicians or churchmen or judges would dare highlight the damage caused to family values and the coarsening effects caused by today’s behaviour. They know that if they spoke out, a dollop of the contumely that was poured onto the head of the late Mary Whitehouse would drench them. And, of course, few – if any – of their colleagues would support them. Mary was trolled as an old fashioned prude, slightly deranged, bigoted and guilty of “being judgemental”.

But not everyone accepts that wide sexual experience leads to happiness. To my certain knowledge, a minority of today’s young realise that chastity and virginity have advantages – and not just religious ones. Just because you are jeered at for being a prude does not mean that your critic isn’t secretly impressed by your resolution. A lack of confidence is often crouching behind the sneers.

I know several young people who married in a state of innocence and today the marriages appear supremely happy. The idea that sexual practice and living for years together before marriage is more likely to lead to a more happy and permanent union is drivel. And not everyone thinks that flirting and adultery within marriage is acceptable behaviour either.

Here is a counter-cultural statement made by world-class singer Dame Janet Baker, quoted by Anthony Clare from the programme, In the Psychiatrist’s Chair:

“I don’t feel attractive to the opposite sex. I consider myself married. A married woman is a married woman and that’s how I think of myself and I don’t want to go anywhere this can be placed in jeopardy. I was brought up in the north of England and that’s how it was then and how I am. I’m not available in any way to a man. I don’t like men telling dirty stories. I hate it. I’m not available to a man and I don’t like men looking down the front of my frock or anything like that – it makes me feel awkward.”

Brave that.

We walk along the ‘Fleam Dyke”, astoundingly dug by hand by Saxons sometime in the fifth century. We read on the council notice boards that it was constructed in order to enable the authorities “to monitor the countryside”. Perhaps an early and forlorn attempt to control Roman immigration and seemingly so it has been ever since!

The dyke consists of vast mounds of compacted clay several hundred feet high with a tiny track perched on top that makes walking troublesome. It seems the ancients have strewn the route with slyly hidden holes designed to throw strangers like us off balance with a parting gift of a twisted ankle. Donald Trump should take a look. It might give him a few new ideas as how to control his Mexican neighbours. The trouble is that he would need thousands of slaves and about two hundred years to complete it.

Then we found ourselves in fields and were blessed with easier walking. The grey skies were huge with clouds forming around the size of trucks that as we watched slowly morphed into black lorries; then came the squalls of wind that blew slanting rain in our faces. Each time we struggled into our waterproof jackets a watery sun came out.

Tea Party

Jane and I were in Boston in February this year seeing American ZANE donors. We spent a happy couple of spare hours at the Boston Tea Party Museum.

There was a drama production commemorating the act of rebellion in 1773. This protest against the despised “Taxation without Representation” – a tax which had been imposed by George III and his “iniquitous” government – involved rebels throwing chests of tea from three cargo ships into Boston harbour.

Actors playing the rebels – disguised as Native Americans – made inflammatory speeches about the monstrous rule of the unfeeling king and his crass ministers, and about how they were being exploited by cruel repression and the presence of licentious soldiery. We, the audience – made up mainly of tourists – were handed cards with the actual names of townspeople known to have taken part, and were encouraged to make sympathetic public protest by banging the floor with our feet, and shouting “Up the rebels!” and “Down with the King!” It was the start of the new American Republic.

Going Off Script

It all became too much for me. When it was my turn to speak, I rose to my feet and all fell silent.

“I am the direct descendent of Lord North,” I declaimed to the astonished audience. “On my paternal grandmother’s side I am his great-great-great grandson. As the prime minister in George III’s government, North was responsible for taxing your tea, keeping the peace, and maintaining law and order. I have read the papers and listened to your bleating about unfair taxation and repression. But you have failed to take into account the vast costs incurred in defending you militarily from the greedy French. In fact, unless our General Wolfe had beaten General Montcalm in 1757 at the Battle of Quebec on the Heights of Abraham and stopped the growth of the French Empire, you would all be part of it and would today be speaking French!

So ladies and gentlemen, I think you are all traitors.… You should be taken from this place and banged up in jail. And after your trial for treason, you will undoubtedly be found guilty and hanged.”

A strange silence fell, as no one knew if I was being serious or not! To be frank I was a tad unsure myself… and then I began to laugh. The mood relaxed, and I confessed that on balance, as a supporter of the great Thomas Paine, I rather agreed with the rebels! The show continued, and after it was over I gave a brief interview because the history I spouted is true. I am indeed a direct descendent of Lord North, and there was a perfectly good Crown case that went more or less unheard. The majority of the Bostonians at the time were royalists and against the insurrection. It was only because of the crass way in which George III behaved, and the fact that Lord North was rather an ass, that the mood turned sour and war started.

However most of the time I do not parade my relationship with North. All things considered, he was an inadequate prime minister even by the standards of the time. He once dreamed he was in the House of Commons and gave the worst speech in parliamentary history; and then he woke up and found it was true!

However, you can’t let those pesky colonists get away with it without some sort of a corrective comment.

Gypsy Rose Lee

Pundits are still trying to forecast the future. Why on earth they bother beats me, you would have thought they might have learned the futility of ball gazing by now. The forecasts at the last election were an absolute farce… All the parties spent substantial sums on polls and stared nightly at the results of the modern equivalent of chicken entrails. On the back of those, they made all sorts of decisions…. And then, oops, oh dear, everyone got it wrong didn’t they just.

If anyone had forecast at the beginning of last year that the Tories would win an overall majority, that the Lib Dems would be reduced to a mere eight seats in the Commons, that Labour would hang on to just one seat in Scotland, or that the Scottish National Party would be dominating Scotland and that far-left Jeremy Corbyn would become Labour’s leader – well, everyone would have thought the pundit was on day release. And who forecast BREXIT?

The polls were in La La Land. It was ever thus.

Imagine if 2,000 years ago, scholars had been invited to predict what would last longer: the Greek and Roman Empires with their vast might, wealth, culture, and powerful armies; or Jesus, who was crucified on the cross, and his ill-educated, inarticulate disciples who never wrote anything down?

The answer would have been, “what’s the point of the question?”

Well the empires have been totally swept away. And Jesus’s movement, “Christianity”, is the fastest growing “revelation” (not a “religion”) ever – if you think the Word is dying in the UK, just take a look at its incredible growth in Africa, China, South America and in the Far East.

And “Christian” names such as Peter, Paul, Thomas, Mary, Joseph, Christopher, James, Ruth, Esther and Elizabeth are the names of choice across the Western world and have been for centuries.

And we call our dogs “Caesar” and “Nero”, and throw bones to them!

Want to make a forecast anyone?