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| Interlude - a Christmas Jigsaw |
Friday January 7th
Christmas has come and gone, and the book club has read ‘A
Christmas Carol: a ghost story of Christmas’, written in about six weeks by
Charles Dickens in 1843. It achieved
high marks, though one member complained that Dickens sometimes uses 10 words
where one would do (I thought that was the whole point of Dickens). In 1843, there were no distractions such as
the Internet, TV, telephones, radio, recorded music, and the general public
hung on Mr Dickens’ every word. In
return, he gave them an abundance. An
episode on BBC radio of ‘In Our Time’ with Melvyn Bragg, discussed the
work. Bragg drew attention to the use of
adjectives – there are seven preceding the word ‘sinner’ in the opening
description of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Wonderful writing; a book that has come to characterize Christmas, and
gave our language the word ‘Scrooge’.
Such was the influence and power of the story that the forename,
Ebenezer, disappeared immediately from the most widely used names for children
for over 150 years. It is said that
Dickens misread the name Scrooge on a tombstone in an Edinburgh churchyard: it
was ‘Scroggie’, and below the inscription read, ‘A Mean Man’, though correctly
it was ‘A Meal Man’. My grandfather in
Glasgow was a ‘Meal Man’, i.e. he provisioned horses, that is, until the era of
horses was well and truly over, sadly for him, and then I am not sure what his
occupation was. I have dim recollections
of him with a walrus-like moustache in his flat in the suburbs of Glasgow
eating raw whipped egg and milk for breakfast.
It occasioned me much horror, not only to see the egg adorning the
bristles of his moustache, but also his adjuration that it was ‘the stuff tae
put hairs on yer chest’. I must have
been about six at the time.
But it is with a lethargic pen that I write in the early
days of 2022. A scarcely appropriate
phrase these days; literally as I am of course typing this. An article today predicts that the skill of
writing will be gone in a few years.
Another article illustrates two panels side by side – one full of
present day emojis; another full of Egyptian hieroglyphs – the evolution of
writing. We appear to have come full
circle. The pandemic of Covid-19 now
enters its third year. Ambrose Bierce –
a misanthrope if ever there was one – describes plague as: ‘The Plague as we of
today have the happiness to know it is merely Nature’s fortuitous manifestation
of Her purposeless objectionableness.’
(The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911).
Some of his more acerbic observations are worth reading, e.g. ‘Diplomacy
– the patriotic art of lying for one’s country.’ Much of the dictionary is disappointing,
though there is an enjoyable preface to my Folio edition, written by Miles
Kington, a highly witty journalist whose pieces in Punch I used to enjoy. Kington was also an adequate jazz musician
(with Instant Sunshine), and the man who invented the term Franglais.
We have recently secretly re-marked our book club choices
over the three years of our existence and the overall scores have dropped
slightly, but ‘An Officer and a Spy’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ remain high
scorers. ‘A Christmas Carol’ now tops
the list.
Encouraged by our swimming group organizer, we had a brief
dip in the sea on Christmas Day, and egged on by the promise of a tot of rum
from the Commodore at the Royal Motor Yacht Club, another swim on New Year’s
Day. As regards other physical activity,
Strava has sent me my 2021 statistics, and I’m pleased to see activity on
almost every other day of the year, but a reduction in distance and frequency
compared with 2020 – the year of the major lockdown, when our allocation of
prisoners’ activity hour at least meant that we took exercise every day.
The Christmas Day Swim
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| New Year's Day in Poole Harbour - with Maggie from Bake Off |
We should be glad that no major lockdown was announced at
Christmas, though that was not the case everywhere. Scots were forbidden to party at Christmas
and Hogmanay, an edict that saw them journey to Carlisle and Newcastle, to the
detriment of Glasgow and Edinburgh publicans.
The only amusement to come out of Australia this winter (our
test team lost an Ashes series in a period of only 12 days) has been the
detention of the surly Serb, Novak Djokovic, in a quarantine hotel in Australia
prior to the Australian Open tennis tournament because he (apparently) has not
been vaccinated. He thought that he had
a ‘doctor’s note’ to excuse him, but it seems that Australian Border Force were
not happy with his credentials. Amusing
posts show Roger Federer in Australian Customs’ uniform greeting the Djok at
the airport; and he has now been dubbed ‘NoVaxx Djokovic’.
It is hard to lift the spirits at this time of year, the
inevitable ‘SAD’ begins to take its toll, so pardon the excursion into the
following, which was prompted by a conversation with a former junior doctor of
mine, for many years now a consultant anaesthetist.
Oliver St John Gogarty, the Irish writer, poet, athlete, and
ENT surgeon, was also a friend of James Joyce and W.B. Yeats. He is thought to be portrayed as Buck
Mulligan in Ulysses. He visited a surgical colleague, who was
known to be a connoisseur of fine furniture.
An exquisite sideboard decorated the salon. Not having seen this before, Gogarty
observed, ‘Ah, Fitzgerald, another successful cholecystectomy, I see?’ He was correct. I first read this story in the biography of
Gogarty by Ulick O’Connor. I was
reminded of this by my colleague, who told me of a consultant, known to me, but
practising elsewhere, whose interest in private practice was considerable, who
became known to his juniors as ‘Rhino’.
The connection did not immediately come to me. ‘Charges on sight!’ was the explanation.
Such are the trivia with which we enrich our lives these
days. Omicron cases are surging, but
hospitalisations are nothing like as high when considered as a ratio compared
with the pre-vaccination waves.
Sunday January 16th
There is as much or as little to write about as ever. Djokovic successfully challenged his
deportation order, but the direct intervention of the minister responsible for
the granting of visas has seen him drummed out of Australia. Whether by mistake or by deceit, his
application was incorrect in that he did not quarantine beforehand (pictures
emerged of him at a media event the day after testing positive for Covid), and
travelled elsewhere when he should have been isolating in Serbia. The polarisation of public views has been
dramatic, but a substantial majority of Australians wanted him out. The England test team dramatically lost the 5th
Test Match this morning.
At home, pictures have emerged of parties going on in
Downing Street last year. Sadly, one of
these was the night before the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, and the press
have contrasted this levity and disregard of the rules with the poignant
picture of the Queen, sitting masked and alone in the chapel at Windsor on the
next day. If the Tories had another
leader in the wings there would be little doubt that Boris would be on his way
– but they do not. A critical article in
the Telegraph by a former politician, David Mellor (you may not remember him,
but he is chiefly famous for an affair with the frisky wife of a diplomat,
while indulging a fetish of being dressed in Chelsea football kit), does at
least delve back into political history.
He says that Boris, with his undoubted lies (or are they just economical
versions of the truth?), risks being classed with Harold Wilson, the Labour
Prime Minister of the 1960s and 1970s, of whom the joke was told: ‘How can you
tell when Harold Wilson is lying?’ The
answer: ‘His lips move’.
Of more potential long lasting concern is the recent ‘Not
Guilty’ verdict for the four young people accused of criminal damage in the
downing of the statue of Edward Colston (merchant and slave trader, late 17th
Century) in Bristol. Colston’s
benefactions to the City of Bristol are estimated to lie in the region of 5.5
million pounds at today’s prices.
Whatever the merits of the removal of the statue, it seems incongruous
that the four were discharged after a jury trial. The judge’s summing up was clear – there was
evidence of wilful criminal damage. The
jurors were invited by counsel for the defence to ‘Be on the Right Side of
History’, and this they chose to do, whatever ‘The Right Side of History’
means. This verdict has been echoed by
discharges of Extinction Rebellion protestors who glued themselves to tube
trains in London – stopping the working public from travelling. I find it troubling that the law can be bent
in this way. Many years ago, the
polymath, John Julius Norwich, quoted two contrasting opinions on riots:
‘Riots are the language of the unheard’ (Martin Luther
King).
And Dr Thomas Arnold (famous headmaster of Rugby School):
‘As for rioting, the old Roman way of dealing with that is always the right one; flog the rank and file, and fling the
ring-leaders from the Tarpeian rock!’
And the famous quotation from Robert Bolt’s ‘A Man for all
Seasons’; Sir Thomas More in response to Roper who proposes cutting down all
the laws to get after the Devil comes to mind:
‘And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round
on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from
coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re
just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds
that would blow then? Yes, I’d like to
give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake’.
David Olusoga, the black historian, interviewed on the Today
programme, did not seem to agree. For a
historian, albeit not a lawyer, it seemed perverse; or perhaps he did not
recall the words of Sir Thomas More.
Sunny Cold Walk - my Birthday, January 21st 2022
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| Out fishing, January 23rd, a restored classic 12 metre yacht sailing out of Poole Harbour |
Tuesday January 25th
It is Burns’ Night.
To a friend’s (recent participant in the Great British Bake Off) this
evening, and wondering what we will be eating.
The days have been dry, and largely overcast and bleak, with
temperatures a few degrees above freezing.
But on the 13th, I failed to report that we had
several days of sunshine and truly frosty weather with beautiful rime on the
long stems of dead grass in the Wareham Forest.
During one of these I scouted out the route for our walking group which
will take place this coming Friday. A
secret lake in the heart of the forest showed multiple wildfowl and a great
crested grebe. We then enjoyed a lunch
at friends near the quay, where the fading light on Corfe Castle gave a
remarkable view:
Corfe Castle from Avenel Way, near Poole Quay, late afternoon, January 13th
Wareham Forest, January 13th, 2022 
Wareham Forest
It’s hard to know what to make of the Covid data these
days. Infections are rife, but
admissions to hospital only modest.
Deaths appear to be falling, reflecting the high proportion of the
population which has been vaccinated. At
last, the BBC took us into an Intensive Care Unit at the Royal London Hospital,
where the consultant pointed out his patients on ventilators. ‘Unvaccinated; unvaccinated; unvaccinated;
unvaccinated; unvaccinated. Only one
patient had been vaccinated. It is hard
to know how to interpret the figures, because omicron infection is so
prevalent, it is almost meaningless to harness together deaths with positive
tests – in so many cases the deaths have nothing to do with the virus. And yet, the number of virulent (pardon the
pun) anti-vaxxers remains high, and 50,000 people from all parts of the EU
paraded through Brussels at the weekend protesting – mostly against lockdown,
but also against what they see as an infringement of personal freedom. The Government appears to be pulling back on
the deadline for mandatory vaccination for NHS staff. What a mess we are all in.
Meantime, the partygate scandal marches on. The press have unearthed the fact that a
small get-together also took place on Boris Johnson’s birthday, which included,
heaven forbid – a cake! Prominently
displayed beside this in the press is a letter Boris wrote to a young girl,
who, obedient to the rules, cancelled her 7th birthday party. The lunchtime news yesterday did at least
lead with the potential for WW3 unfolding with a Russian invasion of Ukraine
seemingly a strong possibility. Hundreds
of thousands of Russian troops are stationed along the borders of the country. A letter in the paper today points out that
February 2nd is a very important date in the Russian calendar, it
being the date when the tide was turned at Stalingrad and the German invasion
was repulsed. We can only hope that
commonsense and diplomacy may win the day.
Another letter suggests that the German refusal to supply arms to
Ukraine indicates a short sighted view of history – do they not think that
there might be trouble with a megalomaniac dictator poised to invade another
country in Europe?!
Thursday January 27th, 2022
‘This precious stone, set in the silver sea’. John of Gaunt, dying, nonetheless finds
himself capable of delivering a very long speech, which is, rightly, much
quoted, not least by Jingoists. But it
came to mind early this morning as the sun rose, without breaking the cloud
cover, and Poole Bay literally glimmered, the distant sea all silver. Precious moments.
And to turn to the events of the moment: more partygate
stuff, and Boris Johnson’s demise is widely predicted. A radio broadcast on the series ‘From our own
Correspondent’, introduced by Kate Adie, featured a report from our Russian
correspondent. Sweating with some
Russians in a sauna, it seems that the conversation turned to Ukraine, and
given that the only news in Russia is delivered by the state controlled media,
even intelligent Russians have readily accepted the idea that Putin’s response
on the Ukrainian borders is purely a justified reaction to the Americans’
rearmament of Ukraine. Poor Ukraine,
historically either ruled by European powers or by the Soviet Union; it remains
a potential battleground for Russian imperialism. Later today, news of strong objections from
Russia against Ukraine joining NATO.
(Ukraine is currently a ‘partner’ state of NATO and not a ‘member’
state).
The Sun newspaper has a different front page story and
headline. Have I said before how much I
wish I could be a deviser of Sun headlines?
Above a photo of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, the banner reads. ‘ANDREW: I’LL GO TO TRIAL … NO SWEAT’. There is space beside it for a large picture
of a scantily dressed Lily James who is about to portray Pamela Anderson in a
TV series.
Once again, a certain sense of ennui prevails, and I wonder
whether I should continue writing. Who
will read it? Very few. Might it be of future interest? Well, possibly.
Simon Hoggart, whose writing I enjoy, states in his preface
to his book ‘A Long Lunch’, that ‘It’s one of those popular myths that
everyone’s life is, in its own way, fascinating. Some people live lives of quiet dullness,
even in many cases lacking Thoreau’s quiet desperation.’ As he also goes on to say, ‘Sometimes, people
who have led lives crowded with incident manage to make it all sound like an
extended version of a trip to work on the 7.29 from Weybridge.’ A relative, who was shot down near Berlin in
1944 and incarcerated in Stalag Luft III, where he was on the reserve list
(second tranche) for the Great Escape, had this particular skill. It’s hard to imagine nodding off while
listening to a personal account of one of the most famous (I refuse to use the
word ‘iconic’) episodes of the Second World War, but believe me, it is
possible. There were two aspects of his
long drawn out story which I found fascinating, and which, were I writing it, I
would commence in medias res, viz:
‘The hue and cry was up; somehow the guards were aware that
an escape was in progress. The
searchlights came on, and the firing started.
I was running towards the escape hut, desperate to get to the hut and
the entrance to the tunnel. Stupidly, I
imagined that once in there I would make my way along the tunnel to
freedom. As I ran, in the pitch black,
lights waving crazily and randomly around, I tripped over a tree root and fell
so heavily that for a moment I was winded, almost unconscious, and unaware
where I was. Bullets screamed
overhead. The guards were firing into
the dark at waist and head height. I
dimly realised that the tunnel must have been discovered. “Get back to your own hut!’ Someone hissed in the darkness. I was prostrate, at ground level, fortuitously
out of the line of fire, and crawled as rapidly as I could towards my hut,
diving through the open window and searching for my own bed. Within seconds the lights came on and the
inspection began… A tree root in the
wrong place saved my life. My friend who
hissed at me was caught in the open. We
did not see him for two weeks. He was
sentenced to solitary confinement.’
‘I never knew how my plane had been shot down. We kept a good look out, and in the gun
turret, I could not see any aircraft in my vicinity. Now I know that this was due to a recent
German innovation – fighters with upwards firing cannon. This was such an unexpected event that the
system which allowed fighters to use this was known as schrägemusik –‘weird’ or unconventional music in English. It was not until after the war that the
British fully worked out how this system of attack worked. That was how I became a member of ‘The
Caterpillar Club.’’
So, whether to continue or not?
It’s a source of some grief to me that I have so little of
the writings of my parents to read. A
dry report on the Polaris project by my father, who was early into the
discussions on siting of the Polaris missile base, is much less interesting
than his letter home to his mother from Trinidad during World War II, where he
was about to join the Pacific fleet.
Naturally, there is nothing about his war duties (secret), but an
account of a long walk he took in a sparsely inhabited part of the island is
fascinating. But it’s the only one I
have…
Reports from the hospital Governors’ meeting today suggest
that Covid is on the run (fewer admissions), but many staff are still off,
either symptomatic or isolating. MFDH’s
preoccupy the team (Medically Fit for Discharge Home). The hospitals have invested in a hotel to
accommodate some of these patients. Many
care homes are closed because of outbreaks of Covid.
Sunday January 30th
Epic events in the Australian Open tennis. Ashleigh Barty won the women’s singles title
– the first Australian to win for 44 years.
Today Rafael Nadal won the men’s singles, beating Daniil Medvedev in
five sets, and reaching a new record of 21 Grand Slam singles titles. A slightly bitchy report in the Telegraph
states that he demonstrated that he was merely the best vaccinated player. The absence of Djokovic is surely an elephant
in the room, but in 50 years’ time, who will care, when examining the names
engraved on the trophy. This final was
still an epic, comparable with the greatest.
To London, on a bright sunny day to visit my daughter and
her partner in their first house together in Southfields, near Wimbledon. Lunch was protracted by the remarkably long
(5 ½ hours) tennis match.
Evening: anxious anticipation for the deciding T20 cricket
match in Barbados – England and West Indies tied on two wins each. The result – a win for West Indies – we are
not as good as we think we are. Does
that sum up most of our lives?
Monday January 31st
Cold and windy. The
sun makes an appearance for a couple of hours in the morning, allowing us to
see the blemishes in our window cleaning efforts (yes, I know, an unexciting
detail).
If not exactly exciting, here is a short but brilliant
extract from an e mail that we received from a friend who has recently
discovered breast cancer with nodal spread.
Open up Twitter, or listen to any news story these days and you will see
musings by someone who has cancer – and of course, one cannot criticize these
authors – to do so would be cruel. I do
tire of those with superstar status who feel it is justified to thrust every
minor nuance of their lives down our throats.
The solution of course, is not to read Twitter.
But this lady, highly intelligent, was head girl at Talbot
Heath school, and after a ‘giving’ career in social work, is able to find the
way to write remarkably about her recent status, forty or fifty years on. She had undergone surgery for a parotid tumour
(successful though with facial nerve trauma), and writes that she ‘should have
been more diligent in examining my breasts, but that’s a plug hole of
self-reproach there’s no point in going down’.
Well said. Later she says that
she has ‘been thrust into the unknown – like joining a club you never wanted to
belong to’. Many friends who have cancer
would be able to echo that statement.
Finally, a complete non sequitur. Herbert Morrison, Labour politician of the
mid 20th Century, masterminded the policy of nationalisation (though
curiously he did not support Aneurin Bevan’s National Health Service). A recent article in the Telegraph business
section entitled ‘How the price cap helped ruin Thatcherite reforms’ discussed
the failure of numerous energy companies, particularly against a backdrop of
governmental interference with free competition (by both Labour and
Conservative administrations). Former
energy secretary, John Wakeham (now Lord Wakeham) told the Commons in 1990, the
promises of state ownership too often failed to materialise. “Without competition, the state sector
monopolies quickly became inefficient and overmanned, with low productivity,
dissatisfied customers and frequent financial losses”
I could not help feeling that those words might be applied
to the NHS…
Monday, February 7th
My fourth Covid vaccination last Saturday. Quite a vigorous reaction starting 16 hours
post with rigors and a fever. Still
feeling a little washed out. A chance
photograph on the Verdala School (Malta) website has put me in touch with friends I
haven’t seen for over 40 years. He is a
pathologist. In writing about chance
meetings with our classmates, he mentions another mutual friend, whom he
encountered having performed an autopsy on his wife. A macabre experience.
In Dorset, we live in the middle of history, both literately
and literally. The walking group tramped
through Wareham Forest the other week.
Wareham, known as ‘Anglebury’ in Thomas Hardy’s novels, features in at
least two. The forest is in fact
sparsely forested these days (see photographs above), and is mostly open, low-lying heathland, with one
substantial knoll, the site of the Bronze Age univallate fort, Woolsbarrow,
which rises to 200 feet above the marshy land around, forming a natural
watershed between the Piddle and the Sherford rivers, both ultimately draining
into Poole Harbour (Havenpool to Hardy).
At the end of our walk, I chose ‘The Silent Woman’ Inn as our last stop
for beer and lunch. Known as ‘The Angel’
until Hardy christened it ‘The Quiet Lady’ in ‘The Return of the Native’, it
knew an advertising opportunity when it saw one and changed its name sometime
in the 1920s.
Finally for this post, whatever your concerns about politics, the Winter Olympics is on, this time in Beijing. It’s cold, but there is no snow. So snow has been artificially made and trucked in. No protests from XR out there as far as I know. Putin has certainly stolen a march on Joe Biden, and on other Western leaders, by popping in for the opening ceremony, and managing to persuade the Chinese leader Xi Jinping to endorse his sabre rattling in Ukraine. We are having to reacquaint ourselves with curling terms again, after a four year drought. ‘The Button’, the ‘Guard’, having the ‘Hammer’, etc. A host of successively more improbable events with extraordinarily dangerous acrobatics. And of course, in the background, the Tory self-destruct goings on preoccupy BBC journalists and newsreaders. David Cameron (remember him?) who has of course known Boris since Eton and Oxford, has rather tellingly characterised him as being like ‘a greased piglet’ in his ability to escape from one predicament after another. Has the grease worn off, though?
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| The way we live now: at the Winter Olympics, a Chinese waiter in full PPE, serves cocktails |
The above picture is credited to The Daily Telegraph
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| Are you sitting comfortably? Sika deer on the lawn |
