A review of “A bright shining lie“, by Neil Sheehan
I cannot now recall who recommended this book to me. It might have been John Le Carre, but I think it more likely that it was Max Hastings, in his comprehensive account of the Vietnam War, which I brought after a visit to Ho Chi Minh City in 2019. The copy I bought – from the online Oxfam bookshop was as large and heavy a paperback book as ever I have had, and really could only be read when placed flat on a table or on your lap – too heavy to hold.
It is a biography of an American named John Paul Vann, and an account of the Vietnam War. It is lovely writing, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and very much in the journalistic style of Robert Kaplan, in that there is fascinating detail in the cracks and interstices of his account. One learns much, by literally, reading between the lines. At the start there is page after page just describing the pall-bearers at Vann’s funeral – but these pages contain timeless nuggets of news, gems of information about American political history.
The man who gave John Vann’s eulogy noted of him, “I’ve never known a more unsparingly critical and more uncompromisingly honest man”. Inspiring? We shall see. I personally am neither unsparingly critical nor uncompromisingly honest. Earlier, Sheehan writes of Vann that “he had no physical fear”. Being fearless is not the same as being courageous; being fearless, at least, is no virtue.
Sheehan writes – unsparingly critical perhaps – of the American military machine of those years, that after the victory of WWII, they had forgotten how to lose. And in the forgetting of that important lesson, they assured for themselves, defeat in Vietnam – to say nothing of Korea. The fool says, “I don’t do defeat” or “I don’t do failure”. But it is that very attitude that assures and guarantees failure. True success is found in that person who budgets for, bargains for, allows for and plans and prepares for failure. It’s not the failure that matters – it’s how you recover from it. “I get knocked down – but I get up again…”
In the section on “antecedents to the man” Sheehan provides as good a description of the American South as ever you will read. And in that description, he is describing a lost Britain – or more honestly, a lost Ireland and Scotland. Those who Britain rejected, after the Clearances, in the eighteenth century, went to the southern part of what is now the United States. The weak died on the way, or soon after they got there. The strong remained – and they had a wild streak, the wildness of Britain before the Victorians tamed it. Reading works like J.D Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and Hampton Sides’ “Blood and Thunder” (about the American west, but describing the life of Davy Crockett) one can see this wildness, this untamed violence, not far beneath the surface.
We read about John Vann’s sexual indiscretions and moral darkness (and the root causes of that in the behaviours of his mother) in respect of his relationship to his wife, his children and to marriage. He kept two mistresses and was a serial philanderer. Yet, he was considered moral by his superiors, and by their – and his – lights, he was a moral man. It is interesting to read about the complete separation of Vann’s moral probity (or at least, ostensible moral probity) in the professional, military, space, from the squalor and degradation of his private life. Looking after your troops properly, dealing honestly and truthfully with your superiors – yet failing to look after your own family and lying to your spouse. It is the nuance, the ambiguity, that i find so fascinating. Particularly in this age, when so often, our leading men and women need to be perfect and seen to be perfect. Nuance and ambiguity seem to be not allowed. This is a pity, for no-one is perfect. All have sinned and fall short of the high standards required of us by the great God in heaven – never mind the double standards imposed by the newspapers and social media.
A remarkable and worthwhile read, though I did skip quite a lot of detail – some of it was tedious, some of it was fascinating. From the Battle of Ap Bac in 1963, through to the catastrophe that was the Tet Offensive and onto the Nixon years, it’s fair to repeat what the blurb says – if you read one book about Vietnam, make it this one. You’ll learn much else besides – about America, France and Vietnam; about WWII and about Korea; about human frailty and sin, and the indomitability of the human spirit. I read these big improving tomes because they inspire and encourage me – and we finish with a tip from a character called Weyand, who was a patron of John Paul Vann. How does a person get on? “Move up, move out, to the cutting edge”.
A close friend of mine was speaking to me the other day, and he mentioned going from town to town in his work, and finding place after place closed and boarded up, businesses shut, opportunities lost. After a while, he said, it starts to get to grind you down.
On 2/3/20 I wrote this: “God only knows what will happen with COVID-19. One thing I know for sure though, is that the second-order effects of the disease, will be worse than the disease itself. The foundations our world are being shaken, softly, gently, by this COVID-19 plague. It is not close to an apocalyptic vision, but what this respiratory disease brings in it’s train is not the Four Horsemen, but shrunken economies, collapsed markets, lost sales, lost opportunities, missed chances, reduced travel. These second-order effects are worse than the disease.”
This week and recently we have witnessed the spectacle of the Prince Harry and Megan Markle media circus. A media feeding frenzy – over what? Why are these people even in the news? On 13/3/20 I wrote: “It’s quieter now and quieter still it will get. Yet, there is a news frenzy. Information has never been more readily available, yet the news media are like that pack of monkeys in some city in S.E Asia, scrambling and fighting over a single banana. They scramble for the tiniest scrap of news, hyping everything, hyperventilating, creating nothing but hyperbole. It is just extraordinary. And yet, opportunities for writers arguably have never been greater.”
“One who looks forward must see this: that things will not remain as they were” – Tolkien’s character Hurin, speaking the wisdom of the ages to us here and now. On 24/3/20 I wrote: “The first morning of the lockdown. There is a late frost; the sun is shining, there is no cloud in the sky. Notwithstanding the human element, the slow-down, nature continues toward Spring, with her slow, inexorable repair of the ravages of winter. Grey turns to infinite varieties of brown and a hint of green.”
On Easter Saturday last year, 11 April, I wrote: “What with all the clapping, and the endless announcements, and the police overstepping their powers, my heart remains heavy for Merrie England. People will survive, communities will go on, but Merrie England may reel and stagger from dizziness and nausea, before recovering and carrying on.”
On St George’s Day last year, 23 April, I wrote: “It IS the end of the world as we know it, and I DON’T feel fine. It is easy to have bad days in the lockdown, even in this lovely spring weather. Don’t get mad – get ready. Is it slow-motion apocalypse happening around us? It is pointless to mourn for old England for she is gone: to 2019 there is no returning. I don’t believe we shall soon see a soft return to the kind of normality we had. The kind of normality where angst-ridden middle-class environmentalists can assuage their guilt with ethical purchases whilst still taking the car to Waitrose three times a week. I’m talking about shortages of everyday necessities – we’re seeing it with flour just now. It may get worse.”
On 31/5/20 I remarked – as the first lockdown eased – that we could sit on our patio and enjoy socially distanced drinks and nibbles with two friends of ours. Real pleasant. A week later on 6/6/20, someone remarks during prayers for church that “we go in directions we have never been in before.” Arguably that were always true – or ought to be of healthy individuals – but it is doubly and certainly true of us at the moment in the time of Coronavirus. How will I manage to get my priorities right and do what is important before God, when in these times I am full of self-righteous anger and annoyance at what is happening around us? How will we cope with the institutionalisation of social distancing when it is all over? How do we restore ourselves to community in the actual rather than the virtual? Will there be a “roaring Twenties” like last time? One may hope!
On 25/7/20 I wrote: “We sense COVID-19 making a resurgence, and I believe we shall see further lockdowns once Autumn gets underway. This is the time when the government has abruptly required quarantine for travellers from Spain. This has thrown the Spanish Mediterranean holiday market into frenzied disarray , and more importantly to us, rendered impossible a visit from our oldest daughter, who lives in Madrid.”
On 12/8/20 I noted that the very hot weather was continuing. 27 degrees C in our north-facing bedroom at 7a.m. The other day I took both my daughters to two different airports; one to go on holiday, the other, to return to her home after visiting with us. Our son visited at the same time, and there was a day when we went from five adults in the house, to just us two, in a single 24-hour period. I personally don’t find this weather oppressive, though others have. I spent enough time in my last job working outdoors in really hot countries (Ghana, Gabon, Burma, Thailand etc), to not have to be seriously bothered by any hot weather that can occur in England. In fact I’m the other way round – these days I struggle with the cold til mid-April!! A few days later the weather broke – and what rain. Every weak place in our rain-water goods became apparent in less than five minutes downpour.
24/9/20 “When I woke up this morning, I heard a disturbing sound…” (James Brown, in The Blues Brothers). Actually what I heard was the sound of rain lashing down. It had stopped by the time I went for my walk. And that led me to realise that for all English people moan about rain and bad summers and all that kind of stuff, when I look back over the last six months, for there to be falling rain at 7a.m, is actually quite rare. At the moment I’m doing some research into a possible hiking trip to the Lakes. See Wild camping in the Lake District – October 2020 | Plateroom 28.
16/10/20 Today I received from a supplier, a Christmas present for my son, which we have still not managed to deliver to him, as another lockdown prevented a meeting and exchange of gifts before Christmas. It will be Lagavulin 17 or even 18 rather than Lagavulin 16, by the time he gets it!! Yesterday to a private medical sorted through my insurance company. It was instructive in that there was no doctor, just a perfectly polite and helpful medical practitioner of considerably less learning that a doctor. I confess I was unimpressed, although he did have a funky machine which enabled all kinds of measurements of my person without me taking my clothes off.
27/10/20 A visit to the Dower House Hotel at Lyme Regis. We have been lucky with travel in 2020. We visited Bergen, and then Lee Abbey in North Devon, before the first lockdown. And now we are visiting this delightful place in the all too brief window during the autumn when actual travel is permitted. A lovely interlude. It is the autumn though: this was the first time I had attacks of Reynauds Syndrome, that condition of frozen fingers. I found myself sitting indoors in a fancy restaurant in the middle of the afternoon, wearing gloves. I have worn gloves outdoors from that day until now. A few days later, there was a remarkable Sunday when we had a pub dinner!! (Now that IS remarkable in 2020) and then went onto church so I could play guitar at the last cafe service before another lockdown.
When I look back over more than forty years of hillwalking and mountaineering, starting in 1977 and continuing to the present day, there are a small handful of summits I find I have visited time and time again. Tryfan and Snowdon are two of them; Blencathra is a third. I was very surprised to find, when I started preserving my written mountaineering logbooks, that the Old Man of Coniston (803m) was actually quite high on my list.
We visit the mountain here in February 1986, in what were superb, icy-cold snowy winter conditions: quite remarkable for the English Lake District even forty years ago. I rather suspect that we shall not in our lifetime see snow like that in the Lakes. But one may hope.
Five of us left the hut in Coniston and walked up the path, towards Low Water. A tedious slog saw us into the Low Water corrie in deep snow, where we practiced ice techniques for a while on a large, gently sloping icefall. We went on up a gully to the right of Low Water Crag. Apart from a steep grassy step, it was easy but very satisfying snow climbing. It brought us out in due course onto the unconscionably cold and icy summit of Brim Fell.
Nick Hough on Brim Fell February 1986
In mist we continued south along the ridge, which looked quite alarmingly sharp in winter conditions. Snow can sometimes have the effect of making the merely British hill look alpine, and give the appearance of difficulty to what is merely straightforward. I recall being told that one of the first French mountaineers to see the Snowdon Horseshoe in winter, in the late 19th century, wildly over-estimated the height, length and complexity of the route under winter conditions. The party got to the start of Crib Goch, and saw Snowdon in the distance, covered in snow, looking very Alpine. The french mountaineer declared that the summit of Snowdon was too far away to reach from where they stood, in daylight.
Coniston Old Man was iced over, but not completely covered; the Lakeland summits are not high enough to permit a serious build-up of snow. We left north, as the mist cleared to reveal Goat Hause and Dow Crag. We stopped for lunch at Goat Hause and continued across rather rough mixed ground, which was very hard on the crampons. This would be scree in summer and there would be a perfectly obvious path to follow. We were aiming for a snow gully at the northern end of Dow Crag. The first section was just drifted snow, but soon it became some rather trickier frozen-over grass and rock steps. Nearer the top we moved over a rocky rib into the next most southern gully, which was well in condition, packed with hard snow, especially near the top. It twisted away below us down to Goat Water. [It is entirely possible that the photograph of me that opens this article, was actually taken here. At 40 years remove I cannot be sure.]
Not sure where we are here: except it must be broadly west into the sun at that time of year and time of day. Possibly taken from Swirl How. The small lake middle left may be Devoke Water. February 1986.
This was fulfilling and satisfying work, a great end to the route as we scrambled out onto the summit of Dow, to clearing weather and the sight of the Scafell massif absolutely plastered in snow. The weather was photograph-clear. From Dow, we considered our options, and moved onto Grey Friar. When we got there, it was cold, and windy, and we were becoming rather tired. We thundered around the hause and up the gentle slope to Swirl How.
This is Seathwaite Tarn – a reservoir
From Swirl How there is a very steep ridged descent called the “Prison Band”. This was excellent sport downhill to Swirl Hause, and from there, down to Levers Water through a good foot of soft powdery snow. That was hard going. In the sky, pastel hues of pink and yellow, a beautiful evening in the making. An absolutely grand day. Down past the iced-over quarry roads through the Coppermines Valley, arriving at the hut around 5pm.
Levers Water, late afternoon, February 1986
The ongoing project of preserving paper notes of mountaineering and hillwalking going back as far as 1983, can be browsed here: https://plateroom28.blog/great-outdoors/
I bought this book some years ago in a bookshop near Westminster station, after an oddly encouraging and uplifting visit to Parliament, to have a tour round and tea with an MP (who will have to remain nameless). We won the tour and tea at a raffle at a village fete in the midlands.
“All persons and authorities within the state, whether public or private, should be bound by, and entitled to the benefit of, laws publicly made, taking effect (in general) in the future and publicly administered in the courts”
This, he argues, is the core principle of the rule of law – that is, that everyone is bound by and subject to, the same law, and everyone is entitled to the benefit of that same law.
The law should be publicly known – that is, it can’t be secret or hidden. You might need to be a lawyer to know it at all well – but the basic principles and the full text of the law should be freely available to all people at all times. The state and it’s agents can’t just make up crimes, offences or law as they go along. Nor can the law be kept secret: it should be known what is, and what is not, against the law.
The law should be dispensed or administered in courts of law that are public rather than in private. Trials should be held in public and reporters and interested parties should be allowed to witness what is happening. There should be no secret trials – though this principle can be challenged in certain circumstances such as national security, or when dealing with copyright matters, or in divorce courts.
The law applies in general to the future – what this means is, you can’t be prosecuted for something that was not against the law at the time of the alleged offence. The state can’t make something in the past retroactively against the law: you can’t – or oughtn’t – criminalize the past. To me this is important, because doing just that – criminalizing or demonizing past behaviour – has become a common practice in our society today.
Tom Bingham quotes someone called Dicey:
No person is punishable or can be lawfully made to suffer in body or goods unless there is a breach of the law established in the ordinary courts.
That is, everyone should be free from arbitrary or random treatment of any kind whatsoever, unless they have broken a law which was already known about at the time of the offence. You can’t just be imprisoned, or your property confiscated, because you offended someone powerful. That of course may well happen to you even here in the UK – but because there is generally respect for the rule of law, you would be able to bring the case to court. There are plenty of big important countries where doing that would be a waste of time or worse.
A side-effect of this principle is that you can’t be treated in an arbitrary way by anyone – much less the state or it’s representatives. If someone assaults you in the street, or someone refuses to trade with you because of your ethnicity, or someone breaks your windows or harasses your family – you can take them to court, because all these things are forbidden in law that is known and respected now.
No-one is above the law – the law is above all persons and all authorities.
The same law applies to the Queen, the Prime Minister, captains of industry, the richest and most powerful in the land, as applies to those who sleep rough in the streets. This is another vital principle – that no-one is above the law. It can be quite hard to understand. King Charles I asked his Lord Chancellor to do something, and that man declined to do what the King asked, as it was against the law. The King replied that HE, as King, was above the law. The Lord Chancellor replied, “But I, Sire, am not”. But if no-one is above the law, who then can make law?
The constitution springs from precedent and case law, not vice-versa.
This is subtle; it means to me that the law springs UPWARDS from the people, not DOWNWARD from the state. (This may be a peculiarity of English Common Law not applicable in Europe.) Who then, makes the law? An agreed body of elected people, representing the wider population, have the authority to make the law – a parliament. The authority to make law ultimately springs from the people who voted them in. This body is called the legislature. The law is administered, interpreted and applied by judges and magistrates – the judiciary. They do not enforce or execute the law – this is done by the executive. In the UK though the Monarch in theory has executive power, in practice the Executive is the Prime Minister and the Cabinet – informally known in the media as “the government”.
Habeus Corpus: This Latin expression means “have a body” and a “writ of habeus corpus” means a legal requirement to demonstrate in court whether you are or not holding any given person or persons, as a prisoner. The principle effectively prevents imprisonment without trial, and renders it very difficult for the state to cause people to just “disappear” overnight with no explanation (as in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia and diverse other locations.)
Bingham argues that a writ of habeus corpus can be issued for someone arguably illegally committed to a mental hospital – “sectioned” as we say today. I argue that this is important, for having someone confined as insane or a danger to themselves and others under the Mental Health Act is an obvious way to imprison someone without trial.
Reasonableness
A side-effect of the rule of law is that where the law is concerned, there can be no black and white, nor absolute right and wrong. Two people can be take opposite views and yet both be right. There can be no sacred cows. Bingham writes:
Two reasonable persons can perfectly reasonably come to opposite conclusions on the same set of facts without forfeiting their title to be regarded as reasonable
Not every reasonable exercise of judgement is right
Not every mistaken exercise of judgement is unreasonable
An “inescapable consequence”, he goes on, “of living in a state governed by the rule of law” is that judges can and will challenge the (legality of) decisions made by the government and (sometimes) they will be successful in those challenges. He notes “there are countries where all judicial decisions find favour with the powers that be” but none of us would wish to live in such places.
Terrorism
He quotes Cicero: SALUS POPULI SUPREMA EST LEX which is translated into English as, “the security of the people is the supreme law”. He notes John Selden (1584-1654) who said “there is no thing in the world more abused than this [Cicero’s] sentence.” As Bingham himself notes, it was Benjamin Franklin who said “he who would put security before liberty deserves neither”.
I take Selden’s view and Franklin’s view: Cicero was quite wrong. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have MUCH to fear. Be afraid: be very afraid.
Bingham writes “we cannot commend our society to others by departing from the fundamental standards which make it worthy of recommendation”.
As with much of these Bingham quotes, it is well to say it out loud several times, keep it on your tongue and savour the taste and sound. He says that by relaxing or removing those hard-won civil liberties, we become no better than the terrorists themselves. We cannot and ought not “fight fire with fire”.
All of this seems particularly apposite at present when in the last nine months, in defence of the NHS, we have tossed aside civil liberties that date back centuries. I could wish that in the next 10-15 years we will see the Coronavirus Act 2020 repealed, but I don’t see it as likely. Far from it: I foresee a time when negative public criticism of the restrictions on our civil liberties – designed as they are with the best of intentions – may be treated as public order offences.
I’ve read more books in 2020 than I have read for many years. You might think that NOT commuting means I have less time for reading, but the data clearly do not bear that out. I have finished 57 books during the year. Three of them I started during 2019. As of Boxing Day I am still reading five or six books and will not finish any of them in the year.
Of the 57, 16 were re-reads. 43 books I read in physical copy, the remainder on a Kindle.
Emily St John Mandel’s account of a young actress caught up in an apocalyptic plague – “Station Eleven” – was my first of the year, followed quickly by Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Dogs of War”, which was about a world in which bio-engineered war-animals rebel against their corporate masters. The “collected intelligence” of a swarm of artificial bees was of particular interest in that story. Later in the year I read another high-concept novel about war, Adam Robert’s “New Model Army”, which is unusual and shocking in having descriptions of front-line warfare ravaging modern urban Britain – fighter aircraft strafing Guildford town centre, kind of thing. Some very thought-provoking ideas about direct on-line democracy there, too. Continuing the sci-fi line, I read Stephen Baxter’s “The Massacre of mankind”, being a sequel to H.G Well’s “War of the worlds”. My daughter recommended Margaret Attwood’s very readable apocalypse “Oryx and Crake”, which I perhaps oughtn’t have read during the fevered atmosphere of the first lockdown. I finally got around to reading Chinese author’s Cixin Liu’s “The three body problem”, which I didn’t find as exciting or as innovative as his earlier short stories. Of course I’m aware of the controversy relating to his views on who controls parts of central Asia, which we’ve become aware of since filming of this book was proposed. I was challenged – having had it on the shelf for years – by Ursula Le Guin’s “The left hand of darkness”. I read three Frank Herbert novels. “The dragon in the sea”, “Hellstroms Hive”, and “Dune”. A master story-teller, he. Apart from re-reading a few Heinleins (and Vernor Vinge’s startling “A fire upon the deep”), the final great sci-fi novel of the year was Robert Forward’s startling “Dragons Egg”, featuring a race of people living on a neutron star, and what happens when they encounter humankind. Big hitters for me this year in the non-fiction space were Austin Kleon (“Steal like an artist” and “Show your work”). Kleon has written a series of short, entertaining books that encourage creativity. I’ve read American journalist Robert Kaplan. I started with his “To the ends of the earth” and “Eastwards to Tartary” and his very instructive book about the middle east, “The Arabists”. Staying in the middle east, I finally sourced a copy of Michael Elkins’ “Forged in fury”, about the creation of the State of Israel. Not a work I’d recommend to anti-zionists. I re-read Tristam Hunt on the English Civil War, I read Beevor on the Ardennes offensive. I read the engaging Andrew Marr on the history of Britain, and finished John Keay’s long and complex account of the history of China. I got through Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 questions for the 21st century” though it took me nearly a full year, and I read an inspiring account of Captain Cook’s life by my namesake Richard Hough. Anthony Beevor tells us, in his account of the Battle of the Bulge, about a certain Sergeant Salinger, who managed to write short stories whilst in the winter trenches in the Ardennes – this was before his big break with “The Catcher in the Rye”. I re-read Tom Bingham on the Rule of Law, re-read HMS Ulysses, and read a life of Rasputin by Alex de Jonge. Remaining on the Russian side, I read P.S Nazaroff’s “Hunted through central Asia”, and Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The life of a dog”, an anti-soviet allegory whose writing – though not it’s publication – pre-dates “Animal Farm” by 20 years. The Soviets forbade it’s publication; this short and little known work did not appear until the 1960’s. I’m still reading the official TED guide to public speaking as the year ends. I’m reading Gustav Herling’s GULAG memoir “A world apart”, Sashi Tharoor’s somewhat bitter and twisted “Inglorious empire”, and Muhammed Asaf’s “The road to Mecca”. Reading should be a pleasure; it should be a distraction. It should entertain and it should inform. One might fall back on old favourites in times of stress. One might also, when feeling strong, test oneself with harder, more challenging material. I leave you with John Martin’s “A raid over Berlin”, an uplifting account of an RAF bomber command flyer’s time as a POW in WWII. Happy new year!
I am in Seat 23K, in an obscure part of the right-hand side of the upper deck of a pretty old Emirates Airbus A380. I would have chosen a different seat had I known I’d be so close to a bulkhead. Rather like this aircraft, I am tired and jaded; it’s late at night and I probably ought to try and sleep, but I’ll probably eat and drink instead.
Sometime on Monday 25th, on EK 352 DXB-SIN
Seat 18K: another business class seat in another upper deck on another Emirates Airbus A380. You start to notice tiny differences between them after a while. On the last leg, for example, we disembarked using the front stairs down to the lower deck and out the lower door. Unusual. On this flight – unusually for Emirates – the selection of films is excellent and watched some of Di Caprio in “Romeo + Juliet” (a favourite of mine), and also watched “Blade Runner” and “The Damned United”.
I’ve done some work too. I’ve boxed myself in, to a degree, workwise. I have to prepare a presentation for delivery to my CEO and the Board on next Tuesday morning. But I plan to take a long weekend with this coming Monday, a day off. I have this business trip to deal with and this important presentation to sort out. Even as I write out the dilemma in long-hand, the solution becomes clear in my mind. Get the slides for the Board sorted first, and all else follows.
Tuesday 26th November, Fullerton Hotel, Singapore
I don’t think I’ve been this engaged with the details of my work for some years. I just took a fairly good night’s sleep in this hotel, sleeping from just before midnight to 5a.m without the night confusions or interruptions that often plague me when I’m in a strange hotel and under pressure. I kept off the drink on the outbound flights, which probably helped, but getting to this hotel room late last night, almost the first thing I needed was a pint. I had to go down to the bar to fetch it, a rather excellent and satisfying IPA, but cruelly and outrageously expensive at S$21 – about £9.
I feel no urge to visit the gym in this hotel. Although it must have a pool, because it is in the inner city and a historic building it seems unlikely to me that it will be open air (in this I was quite wrong.) This room is exquisitely furnished and appointed – but quite inadequate nonetheless. There is no way of plugging your phone in on either side of the bed. The room lights are software controlled – a great cost-saving to modern hotels but a pain in the neck for guests in my opinion. The controls are on one side of the bed only. Though this is a double bed, the room is in effect a single room, designed for lone occupancy. The bathroom is outrageously over-appointed – I mean how much marble do you need in your bathroom? but the shower is cramped and ordinary.
This is the 14th different hotel room I have been in this year. My wife and I stayed at Ettington Hall in Staffordshire. Then, I visited the Mariner Hotel in Aberdeen. There were two places in Italy while on holiday. Inner city business hotels in Jakarta, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City. A hotel in Jebel Ali in the UAE. Two small places in the Scottish Highlands. The Park Plaza Amsterdam Airport and a Novotel in Paris. Busy year. I know hotels and lodging places.
I seem to have energy when by rights I should be feeling jaded from jet lag. There will be, there must be, a reckoning. Am not sure why I am feeling so strong. There are lots of reasons why. In William Gibson’s novel “Count Zero” his character Turner “could only score for the edge at the site of a major defection”. Right here, on this trip, I can score for the edge – I have it, right here, right now. Notwithstanding that, I just found out that I did not make the short list in a story competition I recently entered. I can’t even remember which story I submitted. I’m relaxing after work now: I want the section meeting tomorrow to go well. I know it will, but it is definitely not a foregone conclusion.
The section meeting went well – a tour de force. It’s always a tour de force when I’m involved. It’s what I do. Everything went well and even when it didn’t go well, it was quickly, professionally and discreetly fixed. This is what I do for a living. Work is work so I see no need to discuss or describe it overmuch. Members arrived and sipped coffee. I made small talk and made sure everything worked. I introduced the chair, and then I spoke at length on various technical matters. Speakers gave presentations. We finished and broke for beer.
Drinks were provided by a supplier member with offices a few blocks away by cab. I got some cash which I didn’t need, and had a couple of pints and some nibbles. For some of those drinks, I took care to ensure I drank what was effectively shandy: I’m still on my master’s ticket at this point. Post-event drinks like this are NOT a leisure activity. I exercised some diplomacy and allowed a few older fellows to bend my ear as the representative of IMCA out here in the east…”and another thing…” A chain-smoking Russian lady of about half my age, someone’s personal assistant, began talking to me. She was very beautiful; she had cheekbones like razors. She was painfully thin and as mad as a bag of rabbits. I found it necessary to make a swift escape, and I retreated back to the hotel for a Club Sandwich and a deep bath – two of my favourite indulgences after a busy day in a far country. A long day.
It’s ten to nine in the morning and I’m sat in the lobby overheating slightly in business dress. I’ve checked out and my task is almost done. Shortly, I and others will pay a professional courtesy visit to a local industrial facility. This hotel has as its patrons, dark-suited men in white shirts, the Grey Pound (wealthy older white folks), and a handful of local Singapore Chinese. The coffee is absolutely shocking; the service, adequate; the atmosphere, wonderful.
Friday 29th November, EK 011 DXB – LGW, seat 7J
The film “Arctic” makes me stop – literally. I have actually paused the film to take up pen and paper. “Arctic” – reviewed here – is a remarkable Icelandic film about prevailing in adversity. There were two characters, and possibly twenty words spoken in the film. It was a remarkable movie about how humans deal with adversity and challenge. Not only the physical adversity and challenge associated with being lost in the Arctic and having to survive, but also the deeper issues of emotional adversity and life challenges.
How ARE we prepared? Our hero has a coat, hat and gloves – equipment for survival in harsh conditions. This is what the safety professionals call PPE – personal protective equipment. PPE guards and protects your physical health. Is our emotional and mental health likewise well guarded?
I set off from Surrey around 3pm, starting a 300 mile drive in to the Lake District. Whilst without incident as a drive,there was very heavy rain in the Chilterns and then again around Stoke-on-Trent. The M6 Tollway I think highly of – belting along there cost me £6.90 and probably shortened my total journey time by six minutes. What price money? There are people – quite a lot of people judging by the emptiness of the toll road – who refuse to use it as a matter of principle. I confess I cannot get my head round that attitude. Arguing that you can’t afford it, for a one-off journey, cuts no ice. Commuting might be different, of course. Maybe they object to the principle of roads being private property rather than public infrastructure.
I got to my B&B in Windermere in heavy rain, a little after 8.30p.m. Mine host was a rather eccentric and somewhat peremptory older man. Eccentric, in that he’d already admitted (as a businessman and B&B owner) to not possessing a mobile phone. To not own a mobile phone in Britain today, is in my view little more than a fashion statement. Not owning one as a B&B owner indicates an indifference to customers that I don’t find encouraging. Peremptory, in his attitude. Breakfast was exactly 8a.m and appear here in the hall and I’ll show you into the dining room. (This beats by some margin the narrow window “breakfast is 8.30 til 9, any time” offered by a cheery Australian landlady in Weymouth, which became a standing joke in our house for years afterwards.) Always remember – Fawlty Towers was not a sit-com: it was hard-hitting documentary.
My room was a typical B&B room, woodchip on the walls, a sink, no en-suite, comfy bed, tea-making facilities. I went out for a rather dank pint in a local pub, and went to bed, to sleep well enough.
Part II: from Great Langdale to Styhead
Next morning I went down at exactly 8a.m and mine host was waiting for me. He showed me into an empty dining room set for over a dozen people. He served me as good a Full English as ever I’ve had, with a pot of the strongest and tastiest coffee I’ve drunk in years. An excellent start to the day. Before 8.30a.m I had left – through the misty moisty morning to the head of Great Langdale, where I parked the car in some flat land near the road, a mile or so beyond the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. Getting my gear right took some time, and it was probably near enough 10a.m before I set off.
My rucsac had weighed 16kg at home before so much as a bite to eat went in it. Now, it must have been well over 20kg. I hadn’t walked thirty yards before I wondered if I needed to take a longer warm-up. I considered walking the length of Mickleden, nice and flat, but that meant the horror of climbing Rossett Gill at the end. I decided to stick with going up The Band, so off I went towards Stool End Farm. And as I climbed, I came across the true deliverable of physical fitness. This last six months I’ve been running 20km a week. I walked up The Band in an hour and forty minutes, carrying a 20kg rucsac. I don’t say I didn’t break sweat, nor that it didn’t take it out of me, but my pulse stayed under 100 all the way. Happy with that!! At the top, a rest before continuing up Bow Fell, which despite it’s daunting aspect I found a straightforward ascent. At the top it was almost noon and there was a squall coming, so I stopped for lunch.
Scafell and Scafell Pike
From Bowfell I continued round the Scafell horseshoe. Ore Gap, Esk Pike, Esk Hause, but missing Great End. The weather was glorious, so I continued right on up to the summit of Scafell Pike itself, where I arrived at 4p.m.
Here you can see so much: an unnamed tarn on Middleboot Knotts, Great Gable, Styhead Tarn, and in the far distance, Derwentwater with Skiddaw clearly visible behind
It was cold. On a few occasions I had cause for concern that I should have brought mittens – as well as gloves. From Scafell Pike back down to the col and down the Corridor Route, starting to feel tired. But what wonderful light: Here’s the view down into Wasdale:
At one point, in the pleasant later afternoon sunshine, the path went down some very steep and rocky ground. You can do without that, when carrying a 20kg expedition bag. In Frank Herbert’s novel “The Dragon in the sea“, an old and wise submariner says to a more junior officer, “As a submariner, you only make the same mistake once“. For me as a man in my fifties carrying a huge rucsac, descending a rocky scree or boulder field, that was true. Here, I would only slip or put my foot wrong once. There would be no second chance. Taking the greatest care one does get down, though the thigh muscles ache. One has to be in the position of being able to lower, in a controlled way, your entire body weight, just on one leg. You have to keep your centre of gravity behind you – if it gets in front of you, you’ll topple over in an instant and game over man, game over…
Very tired, I reached Sty Head, and opted to camp there, on flat ground by a babbling brook.
Styhead
For supper I had fresh tortelini and some sausage, with onion, garlic and pesto. I use a very old and battered Trangia stove, the smaller “27” model. It has served me well for nearly 40 years. With this stove I feel rather like the proverbial man who has his father’s axe – I may have replaced some of the parts. On the hill I was munching through a small tiger loaf bought in Windermere, with Red Leicester cheese, butter, cherry tomatoes, and a satsuma. I was also using a trail mix of sultanas, raisins, seeds, salted peanuts and chocolate chips. This was inspired stuff – a mix of fast and slow energy. I learned this trick from a teacher when I was in school. And because I can afford the weight, a counsel of perfection for my evening meals was a bottle of Malbec, though wine and bottle weigh over a kilo. It’s an absolute fundamental to me that wild camping doesn’t mean rough or hard living. Camping doesn’t imply “roughing it”. Life offers enough difficulty as it is without adding further artificial complexity.
It was very cold overnight – an unpleasant cold breeze blew in through my air vents, til I shut them, at the expense of increased condensation. During the night the moon came out, which caused me some odd dreams and I did wake up briefly.
Part III: from Styhead to Buttermere – a round of Black Sail
My breakfast was porridge with a dash of Scotch, black coffee with a good deal of sugar, and a sausage. Breakfast of champions. Despite the cold and clear sunny morn, I had what was effectively a wet strike because of condensation. I shouldered my pack and set off towards the path. I passed a fellow out running with his dog, going in the Wasdale direction. It was about 9-ish. I reached the bottom of Aaron Slack and started up. The last time I was here, was twenty-odd years ago, coming off Great Gable with a friend of mine in absolutely dreadful weather: it was the time we met Todd, a lone American youth. Taaaarrrd, as he pronounced his own name, was rather over-equipped, we thought, at the time – probably August. I didn’t feel over-equipped now in October.
I was carrying an MSR Elixir 2 hike tent, an Alpkit three season down sleeping bag, a Thermarest mat, the smaller (size 27) Trangia and about a pint of fuel. A full set of spare clothes, a first aid kit, maps and compass, a hip flask, two litres of water, and food for two more days on the hill. Don’t forget the (hic) half a bottle of Malbec. And of course a pen-knife. And a small pair of field glasses. Waterproof trousers and jacket, fleece, scarf, gloves, wooly hat. And I carried that lot up to Windy Gap between Great Gable and Green Gable. And there, I met a chap with a dog. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” I almost said. Sure enough, it was the same guy. In the time it had taken me to grind up Aaron Slack, he’d RUN up Great Gable and down the other side. And I thought I was fit. He had a friendly and well-mannered grey dog, which whilst I was sat down, came over to see me.
Just look at the view: Pillar is on the left there. Ennerdale centre, and Red Pike just right of centre. Crummock Water is visible to the right, and the coastal plain beyond all.
From Windy Gap onto Kirk Fell: my first navigational tactical error of the day. Staying high is always good advice when hillwalking, of course, particularly in such beautiful weather. I could descend all the way down to the Black Sail hut and then back up the Black Sail Pass to Pillar, or, I could stay high on Kirk Fell, but come down off the fell to the top of the Black Sail Pass. I could see on the map that the descent went through “Kirk Fell Crags” but I didn’t pay enough attention to the detail. Coming off Kirk Fell, I not even see how steep; the land dropped away. The path descends very steeply through rocks and screes. Indeed, no-one could come up that path without actually climbing or scrambling – and I must descend with that huge heavy rucsac.
Mixing down-climbing – descent face-in (making one feel very exposed, but much safer) and going down face-out (you can see where you’re going and you feel safer, but it’s always more hazardous and you’re more liable to slip) – I got down. I recalled advice about visiting the Black Cuillin of Skye. It was simple: if you’re not comfortable climbing downwards, don’t. Don’t go to the Black Cuillin. Down-climbing is a tricky technique to learn and you have to learn to trust your hands and feet. It is the better way down steep places, especially if the rock is wet and greasy. Here, all was dry. Had it been wet I would probably have turned back. Concentration and effort took their toll and I was morally shattered by the time I reached the col. Were it not even 11 o’clock in the morning I should have been tempted to reach for the hip flask for a swift steadying double. I resisted. Climbing onward toward Pillar, I was starting to feel a little jaded. I stopped for my lunch half way up at a “Pile of Stones”. Again, lovely scenery and such clear air.
At Pillar I needed to think: whilst there was no pressing rush, it was decision time about my further route and my final destination. Would it be Haycock and Steeple and then down, or would I go down from here, and then up and over into Buttermere or onto the Haystacks? I needed to start curving round and positioning myself to be within 4-5 hours walk of Great Langdale by nightfall. Here, the second tactical navigation error of the day. Instead of dropping directly off Pillar towards Ennerdale, I dropped down to Wind Gap, the next col, and down from there. The paths looked similar even on the 1:25000 map. But the valley route was the steeper and rockier, down into a deep corrie wherein, to my ears, were nesting some raucous birds of prey of some kind. A wild and little-visited spot for Lakeland.
A boulder-strewn hillside above Ennerdale
Some way down, I found I had lost my fleece; it had fallen off my pack where it was strapped on. I dropped the bag and set off uphill in the sunshine to look for it. But how do you find a dark grey fleece on a boulder-strewn sunlit hillside? I had neither the time nor the energy. By mountaincraft and not by luck, there was nothing of any value in the pockets of the fleece – save for all my alcohol gel and a mask.
Downwards to the edge of the industrial forest of Ennerdale, crossing a stream on a fallen log, on through the dank moss-ridden woods. I do love a forest but this place made Fangorn look friendly. In the distance far below, orange. I emerged onto a forest road where three absolutely enormous tracked logging machines stood. This is a deeply industrial environment, in the heart of some beautiful countryside. Then, a long and tiresome five kilometre tramp uphill alond the forestry tracks to the Black Sail Hut.
The Black Sail Hut – probably the most remote youth hostel in England
After a brief snack of bread and cheese at Black Sail, my final climb of the day, through the Scarth Gap into Buttermere – this was familiar terrain. Down into Buttermere for supper and camp at dusk.
Part VI: Buttermere to Great Langdale by bus
I camped in a little dell by the lake. It was a warm night on the Buttermere valley floor – much warmer than up at Sty Head. The forecast rain started at 7a.m, so I had a full wet strike. My supper and my breakfast were the same as the night before – for supper, tortellini, with sausage and pesto, and for breakfast, black coffee, and porridge with chocolate chips and a dash of Malt Whiskey. Dalwhinnie, I think this was, though after being stored in a hip flask it might as well have been Grouse. The second half of the Malbec slipped down nicely and I did not begrudge carrying the extra 1.2kg. As I weigh 91kg, I feel I can afford it. Nor did I begrudge carrying 250g of butter, 200g of cheese, 400g or bread, or an onion. Camping wild and backpacking doesn’t imply living rough.
I walked out the mile or so to the Fish Hotel in light rain, and was very pleased to find a bus to Keswick leaving in half an hour! Just enough time for a quick latte in the absolutely excellent Syke Farm Tea Room. The bus was driven by an amiable scotsman who a number of times had to stop and grab a seat cushion which kept falling to the floor each time the bus went round a corner. It cost £6.40 and ambled through the rain along the shore of Crummock Water, before climbing over Whinlatter to Braithwaite and Keswick.
At Keswick what to me appeared to be luck continued: twenty minutes stood outside Booths in heavy rain and I was onto a big double decker, bus 555, for the journey over Dunmail Raise to Ambleside. Cost: £9.40. At Ambleside I got off a stop too early even that didn’t prevent me from catching bus 516 to the Old Dungeon Ghyll, cost: £6. My journey by road from Buttermere took barely three hours and cost £22. A private car couldn’t have made the journey in much less than half that time. I would have been ready – though perhaps not so happy – to have paid three or four times that amount for taxis.
Had I known that public transport in the Lake District was so comprehensive and so well co-ordinated, I would never have brought the car at all. From where I live in East Surrey, the train would be about the same journey time, maybe slightly quicker, and a good deal less tiresome than trudging up and down the M40 and the M6. The train might cost a good deal more than the cost of the fuel – but as any fule kno, the cost of fuel isn’t the true or full cost of motoring.
Back in Langdale, I swiftly changed into town clothes, under grey lowering skies and pouring rain, and retreated back to Ambleside.
A review of “The divided country” by Michael Anthony
I was given a copy of this book by a family friend. She may have bought her copy direct from the author, for we read in the endpapers that Michael Anthony lives at Melbourne in Derbyshire, only miles from where our friends live in the big-sky country of the Trent Valley. The cover of the paperback has a drawing of a little African girl drawing the title of the book on the wall.
I had no expectations other than the recommendation of my friend, which was enough. I was not disappointed. The author covers a tremendous amount of ground. The action moves from Ulster during the Troubles, to South Africa in the time of apartheid, and on through to the modern era. We move from seeing things from the viewpoint of the Catholic Irish in Ulster, to seeing the position of native black and coloured Africans in the rural Transvaal, during the time of apartheid. SPOILER ALERT: Feel free to stop here if you don’t want the plot revealing!
The author is a former special forces soldier and will have seen and done much. Experience always illuminates good writing. We start, following a rough Belfast childhood, with the IRA’s guerilla war in the cold, damp darkness of Ulster in the 1970’s. Very “Harry’s Game” – there’s even a Catholic priest working toward the spiritual and practical support of the IRA. On that note, this would make an excellent film.
The action moves from the Emerald Isle to the Transvaal – a place not unlike Ulster in that it was fast stuck in the deep-rooted hatred, bigotry and intransigence of a Protestant overlordship. The story continues, skipping lightly over years, until suddenly, something dramatic happens. Then, there is a moment when you hear the sound of “lock and load” and you think the book is going to descend into traditional “lone wolf military hero takes on the baddies and wins” territory – as have a hundred lesser books and films.
But it never happens! Interestingly, the author puts some words into the mouth of a senior IRA officer, describing our hero thus: “he does not operate within the parameters of predictability”. I paused at that point to stare into space: do I act within “the parameters of predictability”? Am I predictable? Of course I am. For me and for most of us, it is no weakness to be predictable. But for the professional guerilla soldier, being predictable is death. For such people, to be unpredictable is an essential strength. Michael Anthony’s novel has this strength. It take unpredictable turns. The author does not always “operate within the parameters of predictability”.
From a moment of wild violence, to a court room drama – our hero ends up in prison. And you think, he’ll be out soon. But again, this is not a predictable book. It does not become a prison memoir, and he is not released. In the turn of a page, nineteen years have passed and our hero is a white-haired old man whose life has been spent in hard labour. I’ve not even mentioned the little girl on the cover of the book yet! She plays a central role. I will say this and no more: I mentioned “Harry’s Game” earlier; in Gerald Seymour novels, the hero always dies before the end…
The book covers the indomitability of the human spirit and shows human courage unto death. We see the deep-rooted nastiness and hatred that can arise when things turn sour for generations without end, even for centuries – as in Ireland, as in South Africa, as in the Balkans and elsewhere. Whilst this was an excellent and captivating read, in the end, I thought the author kept redemption and reconciliation under tight control. I think redemption needs letting loose – it cannot be kept in or caged.
As the ship approached the coast, it was clear that an immense thunderstorm sat over this part of coastal Colombia, towering forty thousand feet into the sky over Santa Marta. The gloom grew as evening wore on, partly from the failing light, partly as we slid underneath this colossal storm. Lightning flickered, and the storm took all our attention as the supply ship Gulf Service lumbered along, rolling gently in the swell.
We made landfall at Santa Marta just as rain started in earnest. The lightning was almost constant by this point. We waited patiently for the shore agents to arrive, listening to the warm rain lashing down. When three vehicles swung into the dockyard, we gladly ran out into the downpour to climb in and ready ourselves for the journey to the airport. The route lay along switchback mountain roads, during which the rain increased to an absolute tropical frenzy.
At the airport, we all checked in, and retreated to the café to drink beer. Outside in the darkness the rain came down. Later, around 9.30p.m or such, the aircraft arrived, and we paid for our beer; a vanishingly small amount for the thirty or forty beers we had sunk, perhaps thirty bucks US. As we boarded the plane the rain was still falling, lightning was still lighting up the storm clouds, thunder booming away even above the noise of the engines.
At Bogota, we collected our bags, and almost immediately made the acquaintance of the security teams, the “Men in black”. These were smartly dressed, unfailingly polite, handsome and fit looking young men in dark business suits, all clearly but discreetly armed. Part of the experience of visiting a country like Colombia at our employer’s expense. James Bond eat your heart out! Swiftly then in MPVs to the hotel, where, after a swift check-in we went to the bar for more beer – as you do. It was after 11p.m when we arrived. I called it a night at 1.20a.m; some of my colleagues were still going strong at 5a.m.
After a troubled night’s sleep I didn’t go down for breakfast until 9.30a.m, and breakfast was superb. Freshly prepared omelettes with all the trimmings, fresh orange juice and black coffee. Can one ask for much more for breakfast? Together with a colleague I took a stroll around the enclave surrounding the hotel, buying a few trinkets in the process. Cash was easily available at the ATM, and it was conspicuous that the cost of living was low, in that the amounts of cash available in the machine corresponded to low dollar amounts. Also very conspicuous were the private security guards, everywhere, in various uniforms, all heavily armed, all polite and well mannered, and many with dogs.
Around 2p.m we set off for the airport. As we arrived there, the depth of security was revealed. We noticed the point car behind us as we’d motored to the airport, and as the five of us moved across the road into the terminal, it was clear to see four of the immaculately suited and suave armed security guards forming a box around us, and all very alert and attentive to his surroundings.
After another wait of half an hour or so we were all safely checked onto an Iberia flight to Madrid, and off we went. As we passed onto the airside, the security guards asked me if I’d thought their service was good. I thought it was and I said so. But as we passed through Customs and Immigration – and this is no lie – I knew it was going to be alright. The guy on the customs desk was a long haired youth in his twenties, and he was listening to Nirvana.
We’ve had thirty days of lockdown; let’s review the diary since mid-April.
23/4/20: It IS the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine. It’s easy to have good and bad days in this lovely springtime lockdown. But don’t get bitter – get ready. The worst is yet to come; the slow-mo apocalypse is happening all around us. It’s pointless to mourn for old England, for she is gone. No use crying over spilt countries, or mooning over past glories. There’s no slow return to normality, where all the angst-ridden environmentalist Guardian readers can assuage their guilt whilst still going to Waitrose three times a week. There will be shortages, there will be privation. This time now, it’s like the “phoney war” in spring of 1940. Ask someone who lived through the cold winter of ’47/48 what they thought about that.
25/4/20: Andrew Marr writes, “The most fundamental thing WWII changed was the political climate. It made democracy fashionable”. What will Coronavirus change? Civil liberties are no longer fashionable, that’s for sure.
28/4/20: It is possible that earlier reports of the demise of Merrie England, may (recalling our Mark Twain) be exaggerated. What is not in doubt is that that classic English quality of understatement, really is dead. And that, my friends, is moderately displeasing…
8/5/20 – VE 75: An action-packed day. We put up bunting, cleaned the house, made some party snacks, and had afternoon tea outside, dressed, so far as was possible, in 1940’s clothes, with red, white and blue in them. An absolutely delightful time of (socially distanced) fellowship all along the street in lovely warm weather.
16/5/20 Reading Margaret Attwood’s apocalyptic novel “Oryx and Crake” which has been a remarkable journey. Shouldn’t have done it really – not really appropriate reading for the current times, at all. Her story-telling draws me along and as an amateur writer, much I ought to learn from her.
18/5/20: The lockdown draws to an end, such as it is. This may be disastrous and cause a resurgence of the disease. Long have I maintained that the lockdown itself will cause more damage in the long run than COVID-19, so “disastrous” is a relative term. Workmen have returned to repairs on the aging railway embankment at the foot of our garden. A piledriver bangs its very necessary but distressingly loud way through the day. I’m informed that this particular embankment, between Croydon and Oxted, is one of the worst examples in the country, of cheap and nasty laissez-faire Victorian private sector railway construction. Who knew?
24/5/20 My latest read was written by my namesake Richard Hough, and is a biography of Captain James Cook. Very interesting reading. I made some oat crackers. We’re making a lot of our stuff bespoke now: bread, muesli, crackers, even pasta sometimes. Chutney when the apples are ready. With my wife to wish happy birthday to an old lovely older gent who lives locally. He has the habit of paying NO attention whatsover to anything you say, and yet he manages to do this without conveying offence.
31/5/20 This evening we had two friends of ours over for socially distanced drinks, at a table on our patio. It was the first social occasion for months other than the VE 75 celebration. Oddly enough, this couple were actually the last people we socialised with in the old times. We enjoyed a pleasant pub lunch with them in the White Hart at Brasted, on the weekend before the lockdown started.
5/6/20: This morning, on my walk, politics and moral philosophy are banging back and forth around in my head like my brain was an empty tin can with a handful of dried peas thrown in to make a rattle. Is it only me that happens to? I read in John Martin’s “Raid over Berlin” “…a long established group of five [prisoners of war] who…to some extent shared things, but not food. This was always individual as it was so precious“. An interesting observation of prisoners.
14/6/20: Last night I dreamed of writing a screenplay for John Wyndham’s classic novel about telepathy, “The Chrysalids“. I woke up and started fleshing it out from my recollection of the chapters. I ended up re-reading the whole book. Would anybody go to see such a film? Or watch it on Netflix?
21/6/20 Father’s Day. I receive some cards and a crate of beer. A good day. “…patiently with invisible structures he builds, and as patiently we must pray, surrendering the ordering of the ingredients to a wisdom that is beyond our own” – R.S Thomas, “Adjustments”, writing of a greater Father than I.
27/6/20 Today I made a cash purchase! I bought some shoelaces from the guy near the station. The first cash purchase since sometime in March. Later on my son and his girlfriend came to visit for socially distanced lunch and supper, and we had a feast of delightful food made by our middle daughter.
8/7/20 A morning of heavy rain. This is the first morning since all this began, that my early morning routine has been disrupted by the weather. So I’m sat in the bower at the end of our garden, listening to the pleasing and refreshing sound of rain on the roof. Looking out across the lawn, I can see it has prospered wildly from the rather smelly lawn-food I spread on it the other day. It is clear however that I did not spread it in an even way, for the prosperance is blotchy. A bit like all our lives!
In about half of my ways, O Lord, do I acknowledge You…coming through to spend time in Westminster Cathedral in my lunch break, I take a back street behind the head offices of John Lewis – Ashley Place, SW1. This lunchtime two things struck me.
The first is, the large piazza outside Westminster Cathedral has no cafes – not one. It is remarkable and unique for that reason. London itself, outside Covent Garden and one or two other areas, does not seem to have the cafe culture it could have or ought to have – ’tis a shame. Cathedral Piazza may be one of the biggest and most prominent squares in the whole of Western Europe that has no cafes. In any other city in Europe, a square like Cathedral Piazza would be absolutely crammed with tables and waiters from Easter til late September. Every square foot of building round the square would be tenanted by cafes and bars. Even in northern cities like Oslo or Stockholm, a square like this would be full of people eating and drinking.
The second is the homeless: I have taken this back street for years to avoid the ubiquitous Big Issue sellers on Victoria Street. There is a limit to the number of times you can buy the Big Issue. Over the last few years, it has become a place for homeless people. It is out of the way, hidden from traffic, largely free of uniformed policemen, and hidden from the bustle of Victoria Street. Today, two derelicts, lying in the street. Where did they come from? They were always there – they are not, in general, very young people. They are generally white Anglo-saxon men of military age. Other ethnicities tend to be much rarer, and few women – though there are one or two. I bought the Big Issue at intervals from a gap-toothed but cheerful street lady round here, often from the front of Pret outside Victoria station. The whole issue of mental health – particularly for men – is highlighted by the unfortunate people found in these streets. To say nothing of social justice. But even though it seems an inappropriate question, it is a question deserving of an answer: why are these homeless derelicts nearly all white men?
The car swerved towards him; his moped skidded and slipped out from under him. And then he was down on the tarmac with sudden and frightening violence. He came to a stop and somehow, got up, running and limping away. He found himself running desperately along a side-street he’d never been down before, his crash helmet abandoned somewhere. He didn’t know where he was, nor how he got there. He was limping just as fast as he could manage, breathing in desperate ragged gasps. They would be after him, his pursuers from the other gang. They would not let up until they got him. They could not; there was no escape; no way out, no rescue.
Four or five doors down the street was a café, with a big window. The window had a dark green frame. Peering in the window he could see tables and chairs inside, and napkins, tablecloths, glasses and plates. There were chequered tablecloths of white and brightest egg-yolk yellow. He became aware that he was cold and hungry. Inside, he could see a lady, perhaps a waitress or a cook, busying herself with her work. The lady turned toward the window, and with a start, he recognised her. It was his reception teacher, Mrs Burke! She saw him. She made a movement of her head that was not a suggestion but a command – that he should come along inside. All of a sudden he felt about four years old; he was in reception class. He was being chased by the school bully. He pushed the door open and went inside. A bell gave a little jangle.
His eyes darted around looking for a place to hide. In only a few seconds they would be upon him. They would burst in here and finish off what they had started. Mrs Burke looked at him, arms on hips.
“Round the back”, she said. “Quick”. He dashed past a serving counter into a sort of private area behind. Here they could not be seen from the street. She followed him, looking at him sternly, and yet somehow kindly. He remembered her well; she looked almost the same as she did years ago when he was in school. She had been the nicest and friendliest of all the teachers.
“What are you like? What on earth have you been up to?” she asked. “Look at you! You’re in a right state!”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“Someone’s after you. Don’t worry – they won’t get you. You’re safe here. But look at you” she repeated, “your clothes are torn and filthy. You’ve been fighting, haven’t you? Sit there, and we’ll see to you.”
He slumped into a chair, all of a sudden drained of strength. Mrs Burke turned away and left the room for a few moments. She returned with a shiny green box, and a glass of lemonade. The big green box had a white cross on it – it was a first aid kit. The glass of lemonade had ice and leaves in it. He looked askance at the leaves as he took the proferred glass.
“Some of the leaves are mint” she said. “You don’t have to eat it. Drink round it. It makes the drink taste fresher. You’ll like it. Drink it up. Some of the leaves are not mint; they are very special, with healing properties.”
As he gulped at the lemonade, Mrs Burke dabbed with cotton wool and ointment, at his grazes and cuts. There was an odd sensation in his head; almost as if everything was slowing down or unwinding. It was if a single moment was going on, and on, and on. It was like a clockwork toy running down.
“Now, in a minute, go into our bathroom – through there – and get yourself tidied up. There will be some clothes laid out for you. Wear the new clothes instead of your dirty clothes. Just leave the dirty clothes on the floor. Have a proper bath with bubbles. There’s plenty of time. If you come out to soon, I’ll send you back in again to do a proper job! Now git! Take your lemonade with you.”
He got up and went further back into the rear of the café, to the door indicated by Mrs Burke. Through it was a tiny space with two doors, one for boys and men, the other, for the girls. He went through into the men’s bathroom. There was a tiled floor; it was warm, heated. There was a bath with big old-fashioned taps. There was a dressing table with a mirror. Various grown-up lotions and potions stood on the dressing table. He looked at a few of them and sniffed at them. Grown up perfumes. Body lotion. Eau de cologne. Shower gel. He had never in his life seen so many toiletries, never had he smelt so many nice smells in one place at one time.
There was a big frosted glass window…there was a big frosted glass window, and there was sunshine streaming in through it. There was a big frosted glass window, and there was sunshine streaming in through it…but it had been a dull and rainy day only moments ago when he came into the cafe. He peered closely at it, trying to look through, pressing his nose against the cold glass, but he could make out nothing through it other than light. There was no way to open the window.
He put the plug in and started the bath. He poured in a great deal of a green substance with a nice smell. He hoped it was bubble bath. It started to make bubbles. It took him quite a bit of fiddling with the hot and cold taps to make the water just right. While the bath was filling, he took his clothes off. Over a towel rail were laid some jeans and a sweatshirt, socks and underwear. Bemused, he picked up the sweater and jeans and looked at them, felt the material in his hands, and then put them down again. He looked through the various jars and bottles on the dressing table. There was a jar of some brightly coloured crystals labelled “bath salts”. He’d heard they were good for baths, so poured them all into the foaming water. He’d not had many baths. They’d had no bath in the flat on the tower block where’d been with his mum, when he was a little boy.
It was all so fine and grand. All this grown-up posh stuff to use. There was a bath mat that felt like fur on his bare feet. There was a stack of towels, white like snow or perhaps like clouds against the blue sky of mid-morning. He took one out and it was so big it wrapped around him a number of times. It too felt soft and luxurious to the touch. On a little bench he discovered a pile of magazines. “Sick!” he said to himself. They were new and glossy, with pictures. Some were car magazines; another had pictures of scenery and people from different places in the world. A third was about different pop stars. Another was about engines and motors.
He climbed into the bath, wincing as the hot water touched the grazes on this legs. This was nice. He looked through some of the magazines, and just lay back in the hot soapy water. When his fingers looked shrivelled, after quite a while, he got out. He was feeling quite hungry now. He put the clothes on, and went back out into the kitchen, where Mrs Burke was busy. She turned as she heard the noise of the door opening.
“Ah. Good lad. Let’s have a look at you now”. She came across to see him, her sleeves rolled up. There was flour on her fingers. She peered at him short-sightedly, as if over the top of reading glasses she was not actually wearing.
“You’ve drunk some of my very special lemonade with bits in it. That’ll make you feel a lot better. You’ve had a bath in my bathroom and that will have done you the world of good too. And you’re looking very smart in some new clothes.”
“How did you know my size? You can’t have known I was coming…and…what about the sunshine?” He moved a little to look out of the door into the main part of the café; outside the big window, there was grey afternoon, rain. He looked sharply at Mrs Burke and went back into the bathroom. Sunshine was still streaming in through the frosted glass. He came out again, back into the presence of Mrs Burke, in the café, a shelter in the world from the rain, a place to hide from the other gang, who sought to end him. Their knives were out for him, but he was OK here with Mrs Burke.
“They won’t get you; you’re quite safe here, and when you do leave, you will be safer still. They cannot harm you now. Now: sit down here and have some supper. It’s OK; people outside cannot see you.”
He sat down, no longer capable of worrying, just wanting to eat something.
Mrs Burke appeared with a little notepad and a pen, poised to write.
“Are you ready to order, sir?” she asked.
He read slowly through the menu and noticed that nearly everything on it was his favourite food. He ordered pizza with pepperoni and hot chilli sauce, and a coke, and then some ice-cream. It seemed strange to him that the café had no other guests. Perhaps it opened in the evening only, just for grown-ups. It did not seem strange to him that Mrs Burke was in charge. He was in a strange kind of place where strange things could happen, and he was not at all bothered by it.
When he’d almost finished eating his ice-cream, Mrs Burke came to sit down opposite him.
“Nice?” she asked. “You’ve seen our special bathroom; by now you’ll be very much aware that this is an unusual cafe. It’s not anywhere. Not everyone can come here. You can’t even see it on the street. You could walk by it and not notice it. But the people that do notice us, well, they always come in, and they always feel very much better for it. I’m really pleased to see you. You’re going to be OK now. You’ll be able to do great things by yourself. You’ll be going back to the place they can get you: but they won’t get you. But you need to change yourself. You’ve to turn to the future, turn away from the past. You’ve to stop all those dodgy deals I know you’ve done, and get on the straight and narrow. You’ve got greatness ahead of you, believe me, young man. Even if you had not been here, you would have been able to do great things. But people who have been washed in our bathroom here, find it difficult to get into trouble later. You will – you must – go on. You must get back to college. But the very first step is the hardest. You’ll walk out that door, and then take that step.”
“Have a look in the mirror in the bathroom” she said. He went into the bathroom and looked at himself. He seemed unchanged, though perhaps a little pink and clean from the bath he’d had, and from the effect of the new clothes. As he left the bathroom and went through the anteroom, he noticed that the tiled floor had a spiral of yellow tiles starting in the middle, getting bigger, spiralling out to the door into the café. He went through the door one last time to see Mrs Burke waiting for him.
“On your way then, young man”, said Mrs Burke.
“Will I be OK?” he asked.
“Believe me when I say, you will be fine.”
And with that, he opened the door – which tinkled again – and walked out into the afternoon. Hours must have passed: the rain had stopped and late afternoon sunshine was breaking through. As he walked away from the café, three men suddenly burst round the corner on the opposite side of the street. One of them glanced across the street at him, for an instant, before ignoring him and running on. The other two men did not even notice him. They ran on down the street away from him, past the café, and disappeared. He came to the end of the street and saw the street name: Lorien Street.
In the next street, there was a crowd at the scene of an accident. A youth on a moped had been hit by a car. Police were there, and paramedics in green were tending to the badly injured youth. As if from an immense distance, he saw the youth being lifted on a stretcher into an ambulance. He had an odd head-spinning moment of disorientation, as he became aware that the youth on the stretcher was him.
A review of “21 lessons for the 21st century”, by Yuval Noah Harari
“If you can’t afford to waste time, you will never find the truth”. When you think about that, it’s either nonsense, or it’s the deepest profundity. Yuval Noah Harari’s book contains a handful of similar memorable quotes – another is “the problem with evil is that in real life, it is not necessarily ugly. It can look very beautiful”.
Overall I found this work rather negative, much harder to read than his excellent “Sapiens”, reviewed here. Today we rightly go to some length not to notice or to judge the characteristics, background or ethnicity of people. It really ought not matter, and of course it doesn’t. Now, with some writers you have little idea who they are, or what their politics are. The author is invisible; the story, the writing, is all. John le Carre is one such. But Yuval Noah Harari is not. The reality is that when reading him, it is impossible to ignore the fact that he is gay, very secular, and a Jewish left-leaning university professor. He seems to have a very low view of the human race, which may be partly understandable, but it is not a view I share. I have no time for that depressing but popular school of thought that sees humankind as a Bad Thing.
An important point he does make is that this is not a timeless age, these are very changeable times. He notes that a man in 1020 A.D would have been able to predict, with a reasonable degree of confidence, that things in 1060 A.D would be pretty much the same. That would be true through much of human history perhaps, until the 20th century. Then the pace of change really does start to pick up. Exactly why that was, would be the subject of more debate still.
Harari argues that today, in 2020, NO-ONE really knows what 2060 will look like – and this was written before COVID-19. How much less now? I can’t even see what the state of civil society will be in six months from now, much less forty years. In 1920 you might have dared to predict 1960 with some degree of success. But he suggests that to dare to predict 2060 would be pointless. (Actually, there are a number of writers and philosophers who do make just such predictions, though Yuval Noah Harari, as someone working in this area of thought, seems oddly unfamiliar with their work.)
He argues that the central skill that our young people need today, is not (only) the traditional “three R’s” or even STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), but the ability to deal with change. And that our schools – us in effect, we elders – have failed to deliver this. Resilience – the ability to adapt, to be open to change. To recreate oneself, to re-engineer who and what we are. As someone once said to me, “the jobs of the future are the jobs of the imagination”. How do we recreate ourselves, not once, but again and again and again over the course of a career? How do we earn a crust in a world we can’t even imagine now?
But for all Harari noting that the pace of change may be accelerating, it is worth recalling that developing technology rendered it ever thus. There are not many fletchers, thatchers, archers, or ostlers around today. When trains were invented in the mid-19th century, coachmen, coach drivers, owners of coaching inns and so forth fought long and hard to restrict or prevent the spread of railways. They knew – they knew! Their jobs were going to disappear. But new jobs emerged. New trades became necessary. Harari argues that new jobs will cease to emerge as technology develops and as machine learning and AI improves, but again, I don’t share that view.
Dealing with constant change is just one of a number of important themes and ideas emerging in Yuval Noah Harari’s book covering some of the great philosophical questions of our time. Overall, his analysis of dramatic and unknowable change for the next 40 years, is somewhat despondent and a little overstated. Rather like George Orwell does in “1984“, he underestimates the power of cynicism, inertia and idleness, to say nothing of snobbishness, pride and vested interest. It’s a bit like when classic mid-20th century science-fiction predicted that we’d be on Mars by the end of the century. It never happened – not because we couldn’t, but because we didn’t. We couldn’t be bothered, or because other matters (the Vietnam War for example) were more important.
But one premise does keep me thinking: what if you were ruined tomorrow? What if – as Harari wonders – everything changes and your livelihood completely disappears? What are the steps to reinventing yourself? How do we deal with ultimate change? We’re all going to die eventually, so ultimate change really ought not, at least for Christians, be too hard to deal with. But the post-Christian mind, or the un-Christian mind, has less training to deal with that, perhaps. How do you deal with constant change in life? Not once but again and again and again?
Starting work at midnight, everyone piles into the instrument room at the absolute last possible minute. I’ve been on crews where you start work at 11.35 and your oppo leaves exactly at midday or midnight. On this crew, it was the other way round – you start work exactly at just before 12, and your oppos leave about 12.25 or so, earlier if possible. It doesn’t matter which you do – so long as everyone does the same thing.
We’re in a long line change. The first thing we learn is that all the starboard guns are on deck for repairs and the gun mechanics need a hand. Us two assistant observers head for the gun deck on the instant, followed later by the Observer, once the handover is complete. There are several problems. A supporting U bolt needs replacing and welding into place. One gun has a water leak in the umbilical line. Another gun needs it’s actuator replacing. This last we can do; it’s just heavy work with spanners. All three observers and all three gun mechanics work hard for a while, and eventually all the tasks are completed. The guns are launched at the last minute – only just in time as the survey line starts.
We shoot the survey line; it is mostly uneventful. An observer watches the tell-tales on various computers, of the seismic cable and the guns, and the navigator (or surveyor) steers the ship. It is 3a.m and blowing Force 5-6. There is some swell noise on our seismic recordings – that is, the sea is rough enough to start distorting the reflected noise from the guns when it appears on the seismic streamer, which is towed around 8m under the sea surface.
After the end of line, I perform a set of daily diagnostic tests on the recording instruments. This is a contractural requirement. It’s routine work but we do it for a reason, to spot problems as they crop up. After the test, it is 7.50a.m. My colleague replaces me watching the streamer, and I go for breakfast: sausages, bacon, tomatoes, chips, toast and marmalade, and tea.
We come round onto the next line, and prepare to start shooting, but the wind has risen to Force 7-8, and the swell noise in the direction of the line is unacceptable to us or the client’s representative. We have some options on this prospect – we can swing round to try a line in a different direction. The new information is programmed into the navigation computer by the trainee navigator, his boss keeping a watchful eye. Time passes: the swell noise is no better.
Then there’s a call on the intercom from the bridge, about the rising wind and worsening sea conditions. We agree; it is too rough to continue shooting. I’m despatched to the mess to tell the gun mechanics to stand by to recover all the guns. By now it is Force 8 outside and Seismariner is starting to move. The guns are recovered in stormy weather. Driving rain is hammering down, hissing on the surface of the sea. Because of the weather it takes a while, about an hour, to get all the guns aboard safely. Next, I accompany the chief mechanic and a gun mechanic up onto the quarter deck to help bring in the booms. These extend 21m either side of the vessel and are controlled hydraulically. It is pouring with rain and a sharp gale is ripping at our clothes. We’re all glad to get back inside afterwards and clean up.
I sit down shortly afterwards in the instrument room with a cup of tea. Everyone is sat around, talking. The wind is still Force 8. It’s not a BAD storm, but storm warnings are being broadcast on the teleprinter. The words “cyclonic depression” are seen. It is 10.30a.m. Suddenly, Phil, the deputy party chief, makes his decision – “get the cable in!” We stare: it’s a three-hour job in the wet and cold, and hard work. We finish work at noon…
But Phil has a hunch about the weather; that’s what they pay him for and he is right. There’s a delay about then as a trawler crosses our stern about a mile back – on top of the cable. Crash dive the cable. Fire flares into the rain and wind. By the time we start recovering the cable, it is 11.15a.m. One or two out of every five waves or so is slopping into the back deck and getting us wet; it is quite rough. Progress is slow, pushing and shoving with no hydraulic support. It seems to be getting calmer outside. It IS getting calmer; the sun appears. We wonder at our bosses decision. He appears on the back deck, telling us that Seismariner is in the eye of the storm – the “cyclonic depression” he saw on the teleprinter earlier. The sea goes down to barely 8 or 9 foot waves.
All of a sudden though, just about noon, the wind comes up again, from a different direction. Foam and spray are everywhere all of a sudden; the sea is white. Phil’s boss, the Party Chief, makes a rare visit to the back deck and endorses Phil’s decision: “Get it in QUICK” he says. The wind is now Force 10 and gusting to Force 11.
Getting up for work at 11.30p.m, I’m happy, because I know this is the last shift of the trip. At midnight I join my colleagues on the gun deck and help the mechanics with recovery of the starboard side seismic guns. For me this is mainly a business of pulling in towing strops, and fixing the hook of a “concertina winch” in certain places on the gun array to bunch the array up or “concertina” it. The gun deck of this old vessel is too short to fit the seven gun array when spread out to its full length.
By 12.30a.m the booms are raised, the big Norwegian buoys are stowed out of the way, and the towing strops have been tightened to pull the slack loops out of the sea to avoid them being caught in our propellor. Shortly, we will recover the seismic cable, and for that, the vessel must be driven backwards.
In a flat calm the single short cable is recovered swiftly. Mostly just a matter of pushing and shoving to keep it neat on the winch drum, which is driven hydraulically. Newer seismic vessels have fairleads and winches which can be used as ways to mechanise this pushing and shoving, but not the Seismariner. What can take hours of potentially hazardous and unpleasant grafting in cold and wind of the North Sea, is forty minutes of tedious work in a flat calm in the overbearing heat of equatorial Africa.
Cable recovered, the ship starts to steam towards Mayumba in the Congo, where we will off sub-contract navigation radio receivers by ship’s boat. (This was a couple of years before differential GPS navigation equipment became commercially available). We all adjourn to the crew mess for a well-earned pot of tea. An hour later, work restarts, and I join the mechanic Eric down in his domain in the guts of the ship. Starting at 3.a.m, I help him strip down and replace the big end bearings in four huge water pumps – 12 bearings in all. It takes three and a half hours and two pots of tea to finish the job.
By now it’s 6.30a.m and it is pouring with rain. This is quite usual at this time of year in this part of the world. Our FRB (Fast Rescue Boat) is made ready to transfer the navigation equipment. The sub-contractors gear – receivers, cables, antennas etc – is made ready on the foredeck. The rain stops, but oppressive clouds remain. The jungle close by is steaming and looks threatening. A short break for what we call “breakfast” (though working nights, it is the main meal of the day), and then the crew is ready. It is an assistant observer (myself), the mechanic (the late Eric Gray), and the Assistant Party Chief (Mick).
We lower the boat, and Eric takes her round to the boarding ladder. I climb in along with our client’s representative, the Texan Dave, and we’re off. The ship grows smaller in the distance as we move inshore. We can discern – with eyes, ears and nose – more detail of the jungle and the beach ahead. As the seabed slopes up to the shore, a huge swell develops, white rollers crashing onto a sandbar. We search without success for a way into the lagoon beyond, passing as we do so, the wreck of a coaster bigger than Seismariner. Her rusted bridge is all that remains above the sand and water. We know that getting into the lagoon will be easy – but getting the boat out again through the immense surf will be impossible.
It’s exciting stuff for a young man: the small boat, the sea, the strangeness of the African jungle close by. We can see people waiting for us ashore, but defeated for the present, we head back to the mother ship. On the way the outboard engine stops, and Eric toils to fix it in heavy, pregnant silence, except for the slopping of wavelets against the gunwhale. The four of us in the boat breath a sigh of relief when the engine whizzes into life; we make it safely back home, and are lifted out of the water.
A while later, a second attempt is made at a slightly different location, and all the equipment and the client rep. are safely dropped ashore. It takes three separate trips to move everything, but all is complete by 10.30a.m. The FRB is recovered once again, and we leave the bay at once, steaming for Pont Noire in the Congo, some ten hours journey away at 12 knots.
After another brief tea break, I spend the final 45 minutes of my shift conducting electrical tests on cabling removed from the gun arrays. My results recorded on a scrap of paper, it’s time once again for “Swarfega” at the close of my 63rd consecutive twelve hour shift – and the last one.
My journey home was instructive. I had no ticket for the last part of the journey (from Paris to my home) and more cash to cover this was offered. I was counselled by my colleagues to refuse this offer as the actual ticket would cost more than the cash being offered by the company administrator. Several of us were taken to the airport and flew in an antique 737 with Lina Congo, to Brazzaville. They did not even pressurize the 737 and it flew at 6000′ the whole way. As it was only the 4th or 5th time in my life I had been in an aircraft at all, this passed me by. Those who knew better were petrified. At Brazzaville we changed onto a 747-combi (half passenger, half freight) of UTA. This was in fact the first long-haul flight I ever took. The flight was to Paris via Doula in Cameroon, and Marseille. All was well until we landed at Marseille at 6a.m the next day, and that’s where we stayed. Owing to fog in Paris, we remained on the tarmac at Marseille for four hours, with neither refreshments nor breakfast served. We eventually arrived at De Gaulle early afternoon. It was February in Paris – foggy.
I spent the rest of the day trying without success to get a flight to England – anywhere – Heathrow, Birmingham, East Midlands. Late in the evening I gave up and took train into central Paris, and secured myself a train ticket to London via the Bologne-Dover ferry. This was 1989 – LONG before the Channel Tunnel. I remember several things about that journey. One of them, is buying a Croque Monsieur from a vendor near Gare St Lazaire, and the second, is sitting in a compartment on the train (that dates this story – compartments??) with a number of men – clearly pilots and aircrew – who claimed to be from Mauritius but who were clearly Scythe Ifrican. This was in the days of apartheid when everything and anyone remotely white South African was considered rather bad form in liberal society. These gentlemen, it must be said, were perfectly upright and pleasant fellows.
We took train from Gare St Lazaire (the first and only time I’ve ever been to that particular station in Paris), crossed the channel, and then on a cold winter’s morning, more trains, from Dover to Victoria and on home. I arrived home on 3rd February 1989, having left on 27th November the previous year. A good trip.
Plateroom 28 