"All is changed, changed utterly..."

 

Evening Hill Diaries 15

 

Friday 28^th February (diarised 2^nd March, 2025)

 

Like most of the UK population, I was aghast at the confrontation in the White House this afternoon.  I briefly listened to ‘Any Questions’ in the car.  Inevitably this was the first topic for discussion.  The first panellist prefaced his remarks by saying something like, ‘Before I answer, may I just say that I believe Volodymyr Zelensky to be the most courageous European leader since Winston Churchill in World War II.’  There was, as you may guess, loud applause.

AI can do most anything these days

 

The unforgiveable rudeness of J D Vance and Donald Trump was startling.

 

Trump, looking purely at the situation from a business point of view, has seemingly forgotten that the U.S.A. stands for Democracy, and one wonders what the content of his conversation with Vladimir Putin was, prior to the recent meetings with Macron, Starmer and Zelensky.  I sense that there are many in the US with great sympathy for Ukraine.  Surely Trump has forgotten that Putin, emboldened by the lack of support for Ukraine, may now embark on his grand plan to reclaim the Soviet Union.  Could Latvia and Moldova be next?  Another friend sent a piece which claims that double agent security personnel from a former USSR country have claimed that Trump was compromised (honeytrapped) in some way by Russia in 1987, but I have not quoted this.  It is extremely hard to know what is fake and what is genuine news these days.

 Another friend sent me this image which tells a story too.

Many of us found the Starmer meeting with Trump rather cringe making, particularly the moment when he pulled an envelope from his pocket with an invitation from King Charles to Trump for an unprecedented second state visit to the UK.

 

Starmer, Macron; these are the politicians with no court cards left in their hands to play, to descend to Trump’s poker allusions.  We all seem to have to kowtow to the Orange Buffoon.

 

I have now read three dystopian novels about America.  The latest, written by Sam Bourne (Jonathan Freedland), is entitled ‘To Kill The President’, written in about 2016.  It seems eerily prescient.  The second, ‘The Plot Against America’, written by Philip Roth, published in 2004, imagines a descent into Fascism and anti-Semitism, when Charles Lindbergh (an admirer of Hitler) defeats FDR at the election of 1940.  The third is a very unusual book, probably little read nowadays, which I only came across in a second hand bookshop.  It was written by one of America’s most famous authors and playwrights, Sinclair Lewis, entitled ‘It Can’t Happen Here’, and published in 1935.  It was written against the rising tide of Fascism in Europe.  I quote from Wikipedia: ‘The novel describes the rise of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a demagogue, who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms, while promoting a return to patriotism and “traditional” values.’  Does this sound eerily familiar?  I found this novel very disturbing, indeed horrifying, to read.  The Wiki article about it carries quotes from U.S. journalists in response to Trump’s candidacy the first time around, which are also prescient and relevant to the current presidency.

 

Our cousin in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, wrote on Saturday morning; ‘Utterly dismayed.  And very concerned.  I get up every morning wondering how much worse things can get, and am never disappointed.  At least our Governor put out a good statement yesterday.’

I quote Governor Josh Shapiro in full.  Surely this is what the majority of right thinking Americans must feel?  I hope so.

 

Harrisburg, PA – Today, Governor Josh Shapiro released the following statement in reaction to the White House meeting between President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (sic): 

“Pennsylvania is the proud home to over 150,000 Ukrainian and Ukrainian American people. Some have planted roots here for generations – and tens of thousands are here to find safety after fleeing Vladimir Putin’s aggression. I know they, along with countless other Pennsylvanians, watched in shock as the President and Vice President berated President Zelenskyy and advanced Russia’s propaganda directly from the White House. 

“The Oval Office should be a place where we advance American values – not where we retreat from them. When the President and Vice President attacked President Zelenskyy today, they served to undermine the safety and security of America and our national security interests. I support a diplomatic end to this war. Achieving this requires an honest reckoning of who started the war and who the aggressor is, and to that question, there is only one answer: Russia.

“In a matter of just a few weeks, the Trump-Vance Administration has alienated many of our allies and is seemingly trying to take us from being the leader of the free world to a hemispheric power, signaling to our friends in Europe that they are on their own. Friends and adversaries elsewhere are taking notice. That is weakness that does not serve the interests of freedom and liberty, and it will create a more dangerous world. 

“Strong leaders stand with their allies and they stand on their principles – and I believe we must continue to advocate for the values of freedom and liberty, not cower to dangerous dictators like Vladimir Putin."

 

 

It would be hard to follow that with anything in my blog that would seem nothing but trivial, so it’s time to shut up shop for the time being.

 

March 10^th

Unable to cycle, play golf, or swim, my exercise is typically Shanks’s Pony.  I walked down to the harbour this afternoon.  A watery sun was pointing up an almost eerily calm harbour between Salterns and Brownsea Castle.  A light breeze blew from the northeast and made little effect due to the shelter of Whitley Bay from Evening Hill.  A gentle outgoing tide usually reveals some waders at the edge, perhaps some turnstones, plenty of oystercatchers, and the occasional curlew.  Today the water’s edge was occupied by some crows, who were taking care not to get out of their depth, but were harvesting a fine crop of small cockles and clams.  These adaptable birds have gained a taste for seafood.  The tarmac nearby allows them to drop and smash the shells.  A good leg-stretcher of four miles for me.  On my return there were a few Brent geese paddling around near the outfall of the Luscombe valley.

 

 

A brief return to Trump and Vance.  Prior to the televised exchange with Zelensky, Brian Glenn, a correspondent for the right wing cable channel Real America’s Voice, who was given privileged access, berated Zelensky for not wearing a suit.  History does not matter to people like Glenn, but it had obviously escaped his ken that Churchill wore his wartime boiler suit to meet President Roosevelt in May 1944.

Here is a link to another article, entitled ‘The Rise of the Brutal American’, subtitle – This Is How The Bad Guys Act - by Anne Applebaum, staff writer at Atlantic Monthly.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/trump-and-vance-shattered-europes-illusions-about-america/681925/

Sadly, spread throughout the media, and no doubt encouraged by the Trump press corps, there are plenty of unpleasant rants against Zelensky and Ukraine.

Thinking people everywhere are also aghast at the power wielded by the unelected Elon Musk at the behest of Trump.  Federal employees everywhere are being summarily fired, often with disastrous consequences.  For example, air traffic controllers who were sacked had to be reinstated.  Public health employees who were organising efforts to combat a measles epidemic due to an undervaccinated population were also laid off.  The cancellation of PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) has sparked an analysis of the true cost of this action.  The result seems to be that the increase in AIDS cases will inevitably come home to roost in an upturn in medical care costs in the United States itself.  A counterproductive initiative.

Another Trump disciple (I use the word advisedly; Sigmund Freud became dictatorial about his views of the human psyche, and his followers necessarily became his disciples) is Robert F Kennedy,Jr, who despite being an antivaxxer and conspiracy theorist, as well as having a conviction for heroin possession, is the new Secretary for Health and Human Services.  The measles outbreak, affecting many states, has seen the first deaths from the disease for many years.  Kennedy’s advice?  Use cod liver oil (reported by the New York Times).

Dr Paul Offit is an American paediatrician with an interest in infectious disease.  His bona fide is vouched for by a respected US colleague of mine  Offit has written about RFK Jr, and introduces his piece by discussing Galileo, whose treatise of 1632 supporting Copernicus’ theory that the earth moves around the sun led to his being forced to recant by the Inquisition.  Legend has it that he murmured ‘Eppur si muovo’ (Yet it still moves).

Some of Kennedy’s beliefs are truly mind boggling: ‘Vaccines cause autism’; ‘The polio vaccine killed many, many, many more people than it saved’; ‘The Covid-19 vaccine was the deadliest vaccine ever made’; ‘SARS CoV-2 was ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese’; Blacks have a better immune system than Whites and should have different vaccine schedules; HIV does not cause AIDS; and best of all, the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 was caused by the Influenza vaccine (which was not invented until many years later).

Offit concludes by pointing out that in 1992, after 350 years, Pope John Paul II finally accepted the conclusions of a Vatican commission that Galileo had been correct in his view.  He says; ‘One can only hope that it won’t take that long to undo the harms that an anti-vaccine, science denying, conspiracy theorist who is now setting policy for the largest public health agency in the United States.’

 

Offit has also written a piece about ‘The Medical Freedom Movement’, which trumpets individualism against the benefits of Public Health strategies.  I urge you to read it.  Offit’s writings can be found at Substack.com but the link is here:

https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/the-medical-freedom-movement

 

I prefer to write a blog with my own observations and thoughts, but cannot resist quoting in full from Ralph Nader, still alive at the age of 91.  Nader rose to prominence in the 1960s as a consumer champion – the little guy against the big corporation encapsulates what he was about and has continued to be.  Here is what he wrote this week.  A friend published it on Facebook.

 

Stay Silent and Stay Powerless Against Trump’s Tyranny

by Ralph Nader

March 14, 2025

There are reasons why influential or knowledgeable Americans are staying silent as the worsening fascist dictatorship of the Trumpsters and Musketeers gets more entrenched by the day. Most of these reasons are simple cover for cowardice.

Start with the once-powerful Bush family dynasty. They despise Trump as he does them. Rich and comfortable George W. Bush is very proud of his Administration’s funding of AIDS medicines saving lives in Africa and elsewhere. Trump, driven by vengeance and megalomania, moved immediately to dismantle this program. Immediate harm commenced to millions of victims in Africa and elsewhere who are reliant on this U.S. assistance (including programs to lessen the health toll on people afflicted by tuberculosis and malaria).

Not a peep from George W. Bush, preoccupied with his landscape painting and perhaps occasional pangs of guilt from his butchery in Iraq. His signal program is going down in flames and he keeps his mouth shut, as he has largely done since the upstart loudmouth Trump ended the Bush family’s power over the Republican Party.

Then there are the Clintons and Obama. They are very rich, and have no political aspirations. Yet, though horrified by what they see Trump doing to the government and its domestic social safety net services they once ruled, mum’s the word.

What are these politicians afraid of as they watch the overthrow of our government and the oncoming police state? Trump, after all, was not elected to become a dictator—declaring war on the American people with his firings and smashing of critical “people’s programs” that benefit liberals and conservatives, red state and blue state residents alike.

Do they fear being discomforted by Trump/Musk unleashing hate and threats against them, and getting tarred by Trump’s tirades and violent incitations? No excuses. Regard for our country must take precedence to help galvanize their own constituencies to resist tyranny and fight for Democracy.

What about Kamala Harris — the hapless loser to Trump in November’s presidential election? She must think she has something to say on behalf of the 75 million people who voted for her or against Trump. Silence! She is perfect bait for Trump’s intimidation tactics. She is afraid to tangle with Trump despite his declining polls, rising inflation, the falling stock market and anti-people budget slashing which is harming her supporters and Trump voters’ economic wellbeing, health and safety.

This phenomenon of going dark is widespread. Regulators and prosecutors who were either fired or quit in advance have not risen to defend their own agencies and departments, if only to elevate the morale of those civil servants remaining behind and under siege.

Why aren’t we hearing from Gary Gensler, former head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), now being dismantled, especially since the SEC is dropping his cases against alleged cryptocurrency crooks?

Why aren’t we hearing much more (she wrote one op-ed) from Samantha Power, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under Biden, whose life-saving agency is literally being illegally closed down, but for pending court challenges?

Why aren’t we hearing from Michael Regan, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Biden about saboteur Lee Zeldin, Trump’s head of EPA, who is now giving green lights to lethal polluters and other environmental destructions?

These and many other former government officials all have their own circles – in some cases, millions of people – who need to hear from them.

They can take some courage of the seven former I.R.S. Commissioners — from Republican and Democratic Administrations — who condemned slicing the I.R.S staff in half and aiding and abetting big time tax evasion by the undertaxed super-rich and giant corporations. I am told that they would be eager to testify, should the Democrats in Congress have the energy to hold unofficial hearings as ranking members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees.

Banding together is one way of reducing the fear factor. After Trump purged the career military at the Pentagon to put his own “yes men” at the top, five former Secretaries of Defense, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, sent a letter to Congress denouncing Trump’s firing of senior military officers and requesting “immediate” House and Senate hearings to “assess the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s dismissals.” Not a chance by the GOP majority there. But they could ask the Democrats to hold UNOFFICIAL HEARINGS as ranking members of the Armed Services Committees!

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker can be one of the prime witnesses at these hearings – he has no fear of speaking his mind against the Trumpsters.

On March 6, 2025, the Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller, put her rare byline on an urgent report titled, “‘People Are Going Silent’: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves.”

She writes: “The silence grows louder every day. Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents [one exception is Wesleyan University President Michael Roth] fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute.”

To be sure, government employees and other unions are speaking out and suing in federal court. So are national citizen groups like Public Citizen and the Center for Constitutional Rights, though hampered in alerting large audiences by newspapers like the Times rarely reporting their initiatives.

Yes, Ms. Bumiller, pay attention to that aspect of your responsibility. Moreover, the Times’ editorial page (op-ed and editorials) are not adequately reflecting the urgency of her reporting. Nor are her reporters covering the informed outspokenness and actions of civic organizations.

Don’t self-censoring people know that they are helping the Trumpian dread, threat and fear machine get worse? Study Germany and Italy in the nineteen thirties.

The Trump/Musk lawless, cruel, arrogant, dictatorial regime is in our White House. Their police state infrastructure is in place. Silence is complicity!

https://nader.org/.../stay-silent-and-stay-powerless.../

 

 

Ordinarily I would not publish another blog for some months but the recent events have shattered the paradigm.  So here it is.  One final thought: Trump has said that NATO would be of no help if the USA were to be invaded, quite ignoring the fact that NATO contributed enormously following 9/11.

 

Finalised 21^st March 2025.

 

Winter and Early Spring 2025

Winter 'Kolf' in Holland.  See below.

Preface to 2025. 

I finished the last diary entry with a funeral on October 25^th (St Crispin’s Day).  The weather remained funereal for some while thereafter and there was little to cheer us up.  The clear-cut victory of Donald Trump in the US Presidential election depressed approximately half of the US population, and substantially more than half of my US friends and acquaintances.  His subsequent bizarre choices of confederates (if I may use that word in reference to US politics) has done nothing to reassure us.  A unifying theme according to many observers is that most of them are climate change sceptics.  One of the most unusual is Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of the former president John F Kennedy.  He will head Health and Human Services.  With no medical qualification and a vaccine sceptic too, it remains possible that he will not get through the screening process.  For example, his bizarre escapade in dumping a bear carcase in New York’s Central Park, may count against him.

New Year 2025

January 1st.

'Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun...'  (From 'Digging' by Seamus Heaney)

I think that Heaney wrote this while he was waiting for inspiration, struggling to write.  The pen sat in his hand awaiting instructions from his brain.  In the modern day I sit (or do not sit if feeling lethargic) at a keyboard, but the state of mind between the will to act and the act itself is the same.  Seamus Heaney sat there in the study and while he looked out of the window, either in the flesh, or in his imagination, he saw his father digging.

His father was digging his potato drills, and Heaney then remembered his grandfather who could '...cut more turf (peat) in a day/ Than any other man on Toner's bog.'  His poem was under way, and it is the first verse in his early collection entitled 'Death of a Naturalist' (1966).Although lauded worldwide, and awarded a Nobel prize in 1995, a friend who met him in the pub in Kirkwall, Orkney, during the St Magnus festival, described him as a delightful character.  He was charming, and not in the way that many media figures are - professionally charming because they have to be - but genuinely so.

I mention this because ever since I last posted, the lassitude and ordinariness of everyday life has induced a writer's block, occasioned more by sympathy for my readers than anything else.  Who wants to read about forgetting to put the bin out, golf course rounds in the high 80s, acquiring hearing aids (another badge of age), or attending funerals?  Or indeed the pettiness of our new Labour government, the disaster of the U.S. Presidential election, or the steadily deteriorating UK weather as it darkens into December?  The activities of the four horseman of the apocalypse continue unabated and are perpetual, so there is little point in mentioning them either.

But now it is January, and in Dorset the daffodils are beginning to show their heads above ground.  I saw a camellia in full bloom the other day.

What else has happened?  A friend posted about his 50th birthday on Facebook, asking whether it was a millstone or a milestone.  Would that I could remember that far back.  (I can.  We went skiing.  We had a notable lunch party).

On the 4th of November I visited friends on the other side of the harbour, and was delayed in my return.  The Barfleur (cross-channel ferry) made its final return voyage to Cherbourg after its Poole crossing and the ferry waited while it surged through the channel at the Haven.  Somehow the Barfleur, at least to me, marks the beginning and the end of summer.  On the following day the U.S. held an election and we all know what happened then.

On the 7th November (it has taken a long time to organise this), a group of us who lived at International Students' House during the early 1970s returned for a reunion.  Though much changed physically we were unchanged in our friendship and camaraderie.  For many years a fine bust of John F Kennedy stood outside the house, but following vandalism it was rescued and restored and I was pleased to see that it now sits in the lobby of the building at the top of Great Portland Street (anyone can walk in to view it if they wish).  We will meet again in 2025.

Reviewing my little diary of items that have struck my imagination (they are very few), I was intrigued to see a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine detailing the success of fish skin grafts in healing of diabetic foot ulcers.  Yes, I am a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

The unchanging round of the everyday improved with visits to London; to the Christmas lights and to the theatre (David Tennant as Macbeth, Mark Strong and Lesley Manville in a rewriting of Oedipus, and a quirky but excellent production of Twelfth Night at the Richmond Orange Tree Theatre).

A particular happiness came on 22nd November with the birth of daughter Katie's first child, a boy; to be christened Finley George.

 

Resting over Christmas, my brainwashed into Christianity self enjoyed the quality of the singing and the splendour of King's College Chapel in the annual festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.  Seeing the chapel again always brings back memories of being freely allowed entry as an undergraduate (now a tourist pay-to-visit venue) and my Uncle, who was a Don at the less well-off college next door, St Catharine's.

Uncle Robert fulminated against the college, 'Showing off their bloody Rubens again', he used to harrumph when the annual carol service was shown.  'Of course', he used to say, 'Keynes made them a fortune by gambling on the stock market in the 1930s.'  He rarely had a good word to say about the college and I will spare you some of his comments about their fellows, whom he regarded as very left wing and beyond the pale.  The worst epithet he could summon up about a fellow scientist who was more in the public eye than merited; whose research he regarded as meretricious was, 'He's a Spiv - he'll never get his FRS with that work.'  The decision by King's College to alter the 15th century architecture of the chapel to render the Rubens painting more visible for television viewers sparked substantial criticism from many, not just Uncle Robert.

It is true that John Maynard Keynes, the economist, became bursar at the college, and began to speculate with the college assets.  At that time (between the wars) it was the prevailing view that investments should be in real estate or fixed income, and Keynes invested in equities.  Some idea of his skill and success can be gained from the results: during a period in which the Wall Street Crash and the Second World War was fought, Keynes returned a steady 15% on the assets, and of course became very wealthy himself.  One wonders, in this cynical age, whether he had inside information on occasions, but he also pursued new investment strategies such as 'futures'.

C.P. Snow, author, was another fellow whom Robert could not stand.  Robert mixed with several of the serious scientists at Christ's College who rarely had a good word to say about him.  It is a known fact that Snow published a paper in Nature on a new method of synthesis of Vitamin A which was subsequently shown to be incorrect.  After 'The Masters' was published in 1951, there was widespread anger at Snow's revelations about college politics.  The plot revolves around the Master of an unnamed college who is dying and the various factions supporting one or other of two candidates.  At High Table in 1952, Robert secretly enjoyed the fulminations of the various fellows who came up to him in secret and whispered their detestation of Snow.  Some of them had of course been caricatured in 'The Masters'.  Many years later, during my last year at Cambridge in 1970, I invited my reluctant aunt to come to the special combined Oxford and Cambridge footlights with me.  She sat stony faced through most of the show, until one of the undergraduates joked about 'C.P. Snow; known to writers as a scientist, to scientists as a writer, and the world at large as Pamela Hansford Johnson.'  She laughed unrestrainedly.  The Snow antipathy had lingered.  This show was one of the best ever of that era in Cambridge, featuring Clive James and Pete Atkin, Julie Covington, Diana Quick, Rob Buckman, and Jonathan James-Moore.  The show had been professionally buffed by its producer, David Frost, and it went on tour to New York, though whether they understood the sketches is not recorded.  Julie Covington's performance of 'The Magic Wasn't There', a song written by James and Atkin, was described as the gem of the Edinburgh Festival by the well-known theatre critic, Harold Hobson.

 

 

 So what awaits in 2025?  The diary/blog so far is a start, but what will appear next?

 

Early January.

I hope that I can raise a smile.  I am included in a group dedicated to the radio panel game, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.  It seems to me that there are some very clever people out there, though the predominant form of wit on the site is pun-related; scorned by some.  Recently one of the moderators asked for suggestions for films to be shown at the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Welsh film club.  Here are some of the best.  I find the effect is cumulative:

Welsh Film Club:

Look Bach in Bangor

Where Eagles Aberdare

Dial M for Merthyr

How Haverfordwest Was Won

The Eagle has Llandudno

Who Framed Roger Rarebit?

Myfanwy and Other Animals

No Country for Mold Men

Bridgend Jones' Diary

Dai Another Day

Evans Can Wait

Eisteddfod in Alex

How Green Was My Valet

Last Tango in Powys

Glamorgan: a Suitable Case for Treatment

Sheepless in Seattle

The Lloyd of the Rings

Nine and a Half Leeks

Bonnie and Clwyd

The Magnificent Severn

Debbie Does Dowlais

 

The above was written in early January, and flippancy aside, I feel it is difficult to write about such matters today (January 27th) because there are several events this afternoon to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  A strange anniversary date because it is also the anniversary of the birth of Mozart.  I cannot write much at the moment anyway because on 14th January I fell off a snowy path (not skiing) onto a concrete patio landing on my right shoulder, putting my lateral clavicle into at least three pieces.  As a doctor, I know it is better to be an interesting rather than a mundane patient, and the jigsaw puzzle of my collar bone has exercised quite a few orthopaedic surgeons, who participate in a local society called 'The Shoulder Group'.  My pain is their enjoyment.  'Doctors can bear a very large amount of pain - in other people', a favourite Somerset Maugham quotation of mine from a character suffering from cancer in his play, 'For Services Rendered'.  So it hurts to type and that must be all for the moment.

Disruption of lateral third of clavicle

Probably my last ski photo ever.  Top of the mountain in the early morning.

My first ever ski photo.  January 1974.  Top of the Valluga, St Anton.  Taken by a very kindly German gentleman who sent me the print all the way from Cologne.  Note the old fashioned equipment.

February 2nd.  Typing is a little easier and there is some sunshine today - perhaps the winter is receding?

A brief trip to London last week.  Unable to get into a preferred choice of theatre, I booked to see a new play at the Royal Court, 'A Good House', which had received a 5 star review in the Telegraph.  The plot concerns an upwardly mobile black couple who move into 'Stillwater', a dominantly white housing development.  Sihle, the husband is obviously earning more than the other white residents, and his wife has social pretensions, such as a wine aerator and a cheese knife on the platter when entertaining their neighbours.  The obvious prejudices surface throughout the play: Chris and Lynette have never been to Sihle and Bonolo's house before until a shack pops up nearby, potentially devaluing all their properties; Sihle has never been included in the neighbourhood WhatsApp group, etc.  Critics have seen this (with one or two exceptions) as a sizzling personification of the tensions and underlying prejudices of the modern South Africa.  I quote: '(Amy) Jephta's lacerating, emotionally charged interrogation of the quotidian (sic) realities and ambiguities of post-apartheid Cape Town marks her out as one of South Africa's leading contemporary playwrights, and suggests that South Africa's drama scene is in rude health.'  It seemed to me rather too predictable and I was in the three star camp.  The Royal Court not only sells you a programme, but mandatorily includes the play script, and I note the author's directions that there are quite a few places where the characters are meant to speak lines together (so one does not catch either).  Her direction that the speeches should be fast, 'Like Really Fast', is not only unrealistic, but again risks the spectator not fully appreciating the lines.  The antithesis of the Pinter pause!  In addition I found myself worrying that the actress playing the character of Jess, an ultra slim, ultra-flexible embodiment of a yoga teacher might have mitral valve prolapse.

Prior to the play, I visited the National Gallery.  I became a member late last year in the hope that I might get to the Van Gogh exhibition, celebrating the gallery’s bicentenary, but without success.  But members have a separate entrance now, which reduces queueing time.  Entry is rather similar to an airport security check, certainly since Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint and dye on ‘Sunflowers’ (which is behind glass).  I had forgotten just how many amazing paintings are in our national collection, including four out of Vermeer’s known thirty-five paintings.  But there are so many other wonders.  A large group of schoolchildren was gathered in front of Velasquez’ Rokeby Venus, and a curator tour was in progress before the group of Titians featuring Diana and Actaeon.  But my lasting thought- why on earth do we not charge overseas visitors to visit our galleries?  Half of China and Japan were here, snappily burdening their iPhones with the images.  Something I had not heard of before was a ‘Tronie’, the Dutch word for face, which typifies many of their portraits, often with exaggerated facial expressions.

Some of my favourite works therefore are those of the Dutch 17^th Century, including the wonderful sea pictures of the Van Der Veldes, father and son.  The only ‘snap’ I took in the gallery this time was one for my golfing friends.  Sometimes the winters here on the golf course feel like this.  Of course the image comes during the ‘Little Ice Age’.

'Kolf' being played on the ice.  Dutch, 17th Century

Among the free (and therefore popular) exhibits was a new look at the history of Constable’s Hay Wain.  I was intrigued to learn that when he exhibited it for the first time in London in 1821 it was not thought to be much good.  It was the French, some while later, I think at the 1824 Salon, who took to it, and indeed Constable was awarded a gold medal by the French in recognition of its quality.  It has remained as an example of ‘Englishness’ ever since and has been much used by cartoonists dating from early in the 20^th Century.  One re-drawing of it features a barge carrying white goods across the river while nearby, the footballer Wayne Rooney hovers on a jet-ski.  The link?  Another terrible pun – ‘Hey, Wayne’.

 

Richmond, London.  On the Ted Lasso trail.  This picturesque pub is the one in which Ted and Coach 'Beard' ruminate before and after games at 'A.F.C. Richmond'.

February 3^rd.

66^th anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death in a plane crash in an Iowa blizzard (yes, I know, pedants – and the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens).  Those with a morbid interest can read further – it may have been caused by the pilot misreading the ‘artificial horizon’ meter on board the Beechcraft Bonanza.

The wife of a friend, Sally Smith, K.C., whom I am pleased to say I am beginning to know a little better after a few meetings and a dinner together with friends, is an author.  Her first novel, ‘Of Mice And Murder’ was published last year and was well received.  ‘Conan Doyle with a touch of Rumpole’ was one comment.  A more measured but very enthusiastic piece in the Literary Review was then followed by a choice as a ‘Radio 2 Book Club’ book.  Another book featuring her legal hero, Sir Gabriel Ward,K.C. follows later this year.  I very much enjoyed reading it.

In occasional passages she neatly but gently skewers the legal profession.  For example, she mentions the elevation of the judge’s desk above the well of the court: ‘This literal and spiritual elevation, while beneficial to the abstract concept of justice, was not so good for the humility of the judges.’  Understandably (the novel is set in 1901) she draws attention to the antipathy towards any possible female entrance to the bar, despite evidence of greater intelligence than many male counterparts.  Sir Gabriel says;  ‘…They have never seemed obvious to me.  In all my reading I have never seen anything that convinced me of a correlation between gender and intellect; though certainly it is the case that, by convention, education and expectation, we do our best to make such a correlation.’

One character in the novel, Lord Dunning, inevitably makes one think of Lord ‘Tom’ Denning.  Perhaps a Freudian slip?  The two characters could not be more different.  If you do not believe me, read the novel.  (Lord Denning’s life story is worth more than a glance too.)

And finally, with some amusement as a Dorset-dweller, the reclusive Sir Gabriel considers travelling out of his beloved Temple to investigate the mystery: ‘Not the most assiduous attention to the little rituals he adopted to make travel tolerable to him would enable him to travel to Greenwich, let alone Bournemouth.’

I think it was on this day (February 3^rd) that I came down to breakfast to hear my wife say, ‘Have you heard Trump’s latest?’  (No).  ‘He’s going to take over Ghana.’  ‘Wow’, I say.  Then I wonder, is it the gold, the cocoa, or the diamonds that is the attraction?  But the tagline on the TV corrects me.  It is ‘Gaza’.  Perhaps I should demand money back on my relatively new hearing aids.  Either plan, Ghana or Gaza, seems a little fraught with problems though.

Private Eye has published a farewell poem to Jean-Marie Le Pen, right wing French leader, holocaust denier, etc, etc.  Private Eye tributes are always penned by E.J. Thribb, aged 17½.  In this case he has signed himself E.J Le Thribb, and concludes with the thought that ‘Le Pen was not mightier than Le Scythe.’

 

Chris Rapley, CBE, was a year ahead of me at school.  He and his colleague, Phil Whitemore, were considered the only two of their year and our year worth coaching for the S level physics exam.  An Oxford degree, an MSc at Jodrell Bank, and a PhD at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (in X-ray astronomy) seemed more or less inevitable.  He is now Professor of Climate Science at UCL.  Along the way he has been director of the Science Museum, and director of the British Antarctic Survey, among other accomplishments.  Writing in the school magazine, however, often a vehicle for self-congratulation, he offers a lesson in humility.  His theme is attempting to make science interconnected.  Often the great scientists have remarkable knowledge – but in a pigeonhole of information.  At the end of his article, he wonders why it is that humans do not act on the evidence placed before them by scientists, and states that natural scientists have much to learn from social and behavioural research.

As a medical practitioner, and, I like to think, a medical scientist, I found the following paragraph very telling:

‘Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, and expert on human behaviour, described our mind as “a machine for jumping to conclusions” and noted that “thinking to humans is as swimming to cats – we can do it, but prefer not to”.  In practice we filter information according to our predilections, and behave in ways that are all too often against our best interests.  As social beings we are strongly influenced by our peers’.

On reading this, I could not help thinking of the times as a doctor when I jumped to conclusions, hopefully more frequently in my earlier rather than my later career, and I have written at length of examples, which I hope may help medical students who follow me at a later date.

The ‘against our best interests’ is nicely detailed in the book, ‘The March of Folly’, by the American historian Barbara Tuchman.  She begins with the Wooden Horse of Troy and ends with the Vietnam War.

 In medical practice, the best example I can think of is a consultant who shall be nameless, whom I worked for many years ago.  Anticoagulants (exclusively warfarin in those days) may be given to patients who either evince evidence of thrombosis, or are at high risk for thrombosis.  Given to these patients, a significant number of patients can be saved from the fatal occurrence of blood clots passing into the lungs (pulmonary embolism).  The down side of treatment is that a few patients, a very small, but definite number will be harmed by these drugs.  A few will develop gastrointestinal bleeding and some of these will die.  The sad fact is that one cannot know how many lives will be saved – because they will live on, oblivious to their treatment.  Only a trial of patients at risk, some of whom are given a placebo, and some the active treatment will prove the value of the treatment.  The physician in question had been asked to advise about his brother in law, who had an unpleasant deep vein thrombosis.  He advised warfarin treatment.  Unfortunately his brother in law died from a gastrointestinal bleed.  Thereafter, irrespective of the many trials, which showed benefit, it became impossible to ask him to ratify a prescription for warfarin, even if the patient in the bed in front of him was virtually clogged solid with thrombus.

A paper in the British Medical Journal, some years ago, specifically addressed the bias introduced into medical thinking by past experience, despite contrary evidence from large scale double blind clinical trials.  Professor John Hampton, when lecturing on ‘Evidence Based Medicine’, used to say, ‘When someone says “In my experience”, I reach for my shotgun.’

‘Primum non nocere’, First Do No Harm, is a byword of medicine, but the moral philosopher will of course see that in medicine, one often has to choose the lesser of two evils.  ‘Drugs are useful poisons’, Nobel laureate Sir James Black used to say, and he was right.

Another bizarre experience, related to risk and benefit, was described by W St C Symmers, the pathologist, in one of his books about the rarer reaches of pathology.  Visiting a hospital somewhere in Africa, he was horrified to see children on the ward, dying of typhoid fever.  ‘But you have chloramphenicol here’, he said.  ‘Oh yes’, was the reply, ‘But we can’t give it because of the risk of agranulocytosis (death from bone marrow suppression)’.

Chloramphenicol is almost universally successful in curing typhoid.  Fatal agranulocytosis only occurs in a tiny fraction of patients receiving it.

 

Monday 10^th February

Oh dear.  A cold day with a temperature of 3 degrees but the easterly wind makes it feel like minus 1.  I have just read ‘Orbital’, last year’s Booker Prize winner.  Best to read the reviews on Goodreads rather than mine.  Of course, they range from the adulatory to the unimpressed.  The one star reviewer seems to have a point when she talks of the romanticisation of Russia without any mention of Ukraine.  (The book concerns six astronauts circling the earth on the International Space Station (Russian, Japanese, English, American).

The Japanese astronaut is presumably there to allow the author to introduce and meditate on, the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki (the astronaut’s mother survived the bombing of Nagasaki).

Here is my review – please do not read if you are in the 5 star category – and don’t look if you are intending to read the book.

Firstly, fortunately it is only 136 pages long.  It is described as a novel, though it has no plot and is either an extended and extremely dry geography lesson, or an exercise in philosophy (or navel gazing, if you prefer), or a tract written by a Green MP (not that I disagree with the critique of man’s despoliation of the earth), or in places an attempt to out-Virginia Virginia Woolf in a stream of consciousness-like meander.

The relentless search for the telling metaphor or the super-flurry of adjectives and adverbs left me wanting to go back to the simplicity of something by Ernest Hemingway (‘Never knowingly used a word which might send a reader to the dictionary’).  Naturally, Samantha Harvey has qualifications in creative writing and philosophy.  It strikes me as the perfect example of a Booker Prize Winner. 

Hmm, got that off my chest, didn’t I?  Maybe it has to do with the constant ache from my fractured clavicle.  I have read that NSAIDs can impair healing and bone union, so I am trying to wean myself off them.

On second thoughts…

There is one section in the book which does offer real insights into the minds of the astronaut or cosmonaut.  But are they original?  Remember, ‘Good writers borrow, great writers steal’.  Perhaps I should not have been surprised to read that there are so many autobiographies by former astronauts.  I have not read any.  Looking over the list however, it sounds as though Chris Hadfield’s autobiography ‘An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth’ is one of the more revealing.  Did Samantha Harvey mine these books?  I am sure she did.  The section of the (paperback) book I have in mind is between pages 72 and 75.  It shows the inhabitants of the ISS gradually becoming aware of the lack of real boundaries on earth – other than land and sea, and a perplexity about how we cannot live in peace with one another.  And how our own species has dominated, shaped, and in many cases, ruined the land we live in 250 miles below.

 

But, ‘Life is Real, Life is Earnest’ – I think it was Longfellow who wrote that.  And the news is almost universally unbearable.  Gaunt malnourished Israeli hostages released in Gaza, surrounded by hooded gunmen bearing Kalashnikovs.  That was really successful, Mr Netanyahu, wasn’t it?  A child in a flat in Southampton with creeping black mould, like something out of a John Wyndham science fiction novel.  The awfulness of the Super Bowl half-time show.  I am with Paul Simon.  I am the only living boy in New York.

‘I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.’

‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’.

I do know that was T.S. Eliot.  And as if to prove it, my trivial mind reminds me that there was a cracking game of rugby this last weekend with England scoring and converting a try to beat France by one point.  For American readers – this is our version of the Super Bowl.  It always amuses me when the winners of Super Bowl are announced portentously (Samatha Harvey – all those adverbs and adjectives are catching) – as ‘WORLD CHAMPIONS’!

Due to a touch of insomnia, I caught quite a bit of the Super Bowl, which could be characterised by ‘How are the mighty fallen’?  It was widely touted that the Kansas City Chiefs would win for a third year in a row (known to U.S. sports fans as a ‘Threepeat’).  However, the Philadelphia Eagles triumphed by a wide margin.  For those in the know, the Chiefs quarterback, Patrick Mahomes was ‘sacked’ six times and threw two interceptions.  The Eagles MVP was the appropriately named Jalen Hurts.  For a height of 6’1” Hurts weighs 222 lbs or 101Kg which appears to be all muscle.

 

But mention of Virginia Woolf reminds me that I have read one very interesting and readable book recently – my wife’s book club choice which I purloined for a short while.  Like me, she has got to the age where it is now wise to read the book only days before the meeting in which one is due to discuss it, so it was available.  ‘Deceived With Kindness’ by Angelica Garnett.  Now… I have never really got to grips with the Bloomsbury Group.  Their painting, writing, economising etcetera.  ‘Who did what, which way up, and to whom’, or if you prefer a less coarse quotation, ‘Lived in squares, moved in circles, and loved in triangles’ (Dorothy Parker).  Angelica was the daughter of Clive and Vanessa Bell, though sired as she afterwards found out by Duncan Grant.  Grant was presumably going through a heterosexual phase at the time.  He and Vanessa spent most of the rest of their lives painting.  Angelica movingly describes how the lack of a true father figure in her life left her feeling isolated and naïve – the others of her parents’ generation were all just selfishly doing their own thing.  The counterpart of the 60s and 70s hippy culture perhaps?  Poor Angelica was thrown together socially with her future husband, David ‘Bunny’ Garnett, who was 26 years older than her, without knowing that Bunny had at least made a pass at her mother, and was also the lover of Duncan Grant, her biological father.  This was a moving and poignant autobiography.

 

Thursday February 13^th

A lovely BSO concert last night – Beethoven’s 1^st Symphony, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, ‘Death and Transfiguration’ (Richard Strauss).  The cellist was Laura van der Heijden and the conductor was Alexander Soddy.

Every time I hear the Elgar concerto it sounds more melancholy than before.  The sadness is unsurprising – composed in Brinkwells Cottage, near Fittleworth in rural Sussex, as 1918 ebbed away and a gloomy armistice supervened.  Of this time, when he was often ill, worried by financial problems and the death of friends, he wrote, ‘Everything good and nice and clean and fresh and sweet is far away –never to return’ (Note from programme by Andrew Burn).

My former colleague, Dr Peter Clein, a gifted musician himself and father of Natalie Clein (cellist) and Louisa Clein (actress), once told me that the abrupt jumps and drops of the scale in the first theme of the Elgar is said to represent the identical shifts in altitude of the spine of the Malvern Hills, where Elgar was happiest.  The story may well be apocryphal, but nonetheless it is a pleasant one.

The other day, because I can only walk at the moment, I was getting my exercise on the beach when I met a lady blowing bubbles.  These were spectacular bubbles, some three feet across, floated from her own home-made bubble ring constructed of strips of cotton sheeting, suspended between two bamboo poles, which she dipped into her mixture of detergent, baking soda, glycerin, and water.  She told me that she found the experience very therapeutic.  One needed moisture in the air and a light breeze.  Here they are:

February 17th, 2025 

It is now cold and blustery.  May the weather (and my shoulder) be better by the time of my next diary.