The Evening Hill Diaries.
11th April 2026.
At the RAF club, London. I always
walk along the corridor to the north end of the building to look at the Battle
of Britain stained-glass window.
A new and beautiful window commemorates the women of the air services – the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), the ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary), and the WRAF (Women’s Royal Air Force). Several members of these services won the George Cross or the George Medal, which is also displayed here.
My father-in-law's squadron was 225. All of the squadron badges are displayed on the walls of the first floor. This is possibly the most well known. Can you identify it?
The clue is in the motto.
It was a bright cold day in April… and we were
in London with the excuse that our minnows (AFC Bournemouth) were playing
against the big fish – Arsenal F.C., at the Emirates stadium. And on this occasion the minnows won. The clocks struck thirteen…
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| Alex Scott scored the winning goal just in front of us |
Buoyed by this unexpected result, I went to Covent Garden (The Royal Opera House) to see the ballet of Mayerling (music by Liszt, choreography by Kenneth MacMillan [Sir Kenneth MacMillan, see: https://www.kennethmacmillan.com/best-friends ] ). MacMillan has created some of the most dramatic and lasting of modern ballets – Elite Syncopations, The Rite of Spring, Romeo and Juliet, The Prince of the Pagodas (for the 20-year-old Darcy Bussell), The Song of the Earth, and Mayerling. Born and raised in hardship, his story reads like that of Billy Elliot. MacMillan was deservedly knighted for his services to the arts. I have long wanted to see this ballet, knowing very little of the story, other than that the heir to the Habsburg empire, the Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, shot himself and his 17-year-old mistress, the Baroness Mary Vetsera, in the hunting lodge of Mayerling, outside Vienna, in 1889. The true story, and the elaborate cover up which ensued, is remarkable, and the choreography spectacular. To paraphrase a theatrical blurb, the dancing and athleticism of Rudolf and his various inamoratas (sic) made Dirty Dancing look like a pensioners’ line dance session. Now, I am no expert in the various ballet moves; I have difficulty knowing a plié or assemblé from a retiré, but the joy of ballet is in the physical expression of the story and the emotion, and modern choreographers such as Ashton and MacMillan achieve this without the need for the audience to know anything very technical.
In an extraordinary echo of the final funereal scenes of the
ballet, MacMillan himself collapsed and died backstage during curtain calls after
a revival of Mayerling at the ROH in 1992.
At Covent Garden, the ambience is different. The high price of the programme, for instance, at £10. But for this one gets what is almost a textbook, with every possible nuance about the ballet or opera being performed. Rehearsal photographs; profiles and portraits of all 60 of the principal dancers, and photographs of the 44 named dancers of the corps de ballet. One appreciates there is a difference, even from the back cover of the programme. The advertisement is for ‘Van Cleef & Arpels. Haute Joaillerie, place Vendôme since 1906’. After victory at The Emirates, I needed no encouragement to visit the very busy champagne bar.
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| Curtain Call |
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| Ryoichi Hirano and Melissa Hamilton as Crown Prince Rudolf and Mary Vetsera. The Royal Ballet now employs an 'intimacy consultant'. You may be able to see why. |
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| Natalia Osipova as Mary in the production I saw |
But in a reverse of the old farmers’ almanacs, March came in
like a lamb and went out like a lion. Or
at least, it was rather contrary, which sums up our weather these days.
I re-established contact with an old colleague, a former
charge nurse at Poole Hospital, subsequently ‘modern matron’ who worked with me
to establish the first coronary care unit in Poole. He trained in West Cumbria, in a hospital
environment which was in some ways near Victorian, and in others, full of
eccentrics. Sitting in a nursing office
on the ward, the Senior Sister announced she needed to visit the toilet, and
reaching into the filing cabinet, took out a roll of white toilet paper. Geoffrey pointed out that there was already
toilet paper in the toilet. ‘I know’,
she said, ‘but it’s pink – it gives you cystitis.’
On another occasion, a very starchy paediatrician rang the
district nurse who was on the ward. One
could almost hear his hiss of disapproval down the phone as he was greeted with
‘Eh, ‘ello Luv’.
‘Nurse’, he sniffed, ‘Mrs Walburn’s child is malnourished. Cannot you improve this?’
‘Doctor – I’ve told her and told her, time and again, how to
mix feed and prepare food.’
‘Hmm, that’s not very efficient nurse. Perhaps you’d better write it down.’
‘Right doctor. But
then I’d have to bloody teach her to read first.’
The doctor rang off.
Geoffrey was recently finishing his career as a senior nurse
advisor at another hospital. He was
horrified one day to discover that the senior ward sister was planning to work
from home the next day. ‘Lots of
paperwork to do’, was the excuse.
‘I’m sorry’ (said in gentle but firm West Cumbrian accent). ‘That’s not good enough. Your staff need you here, whether you are
doing paperwork or not.’
There were protestations, and the ruckus was escalated to
the Chief Nursing Officer, who agreed that Geoff’s suggestion was correct.
And this is the state that our nursing profession has
reached. It’s symptomatic of the malaise
which afflicts the health service at every level. Junior doctors and students walking off the
wards at 5pm when there are still patients to see (they are not allowed to
stay, thanks to the appalling European Working Time Directive – and now they
regard it as sacrosanct); endlessly rotating consultants in charge – so there
is no personal responsibility for care. There
is no apprenticeship system any more, so there is no individual responsibility
for training. A friend and former
colleague of mine was recently in ITU with a critical illness. ‘Look above the bed’, he said. ‘There is no named consultant who is looking
after me.’ I could go on…
April, 2026. Storms
of hail; walking in North Dorset; fields of yellow rape; clear chalk streams;
spring blossom.
During a few days of Lindsay’s absence in Canada in early
May, visiting relatives, I cycled around some West Sussex lanes. Such a beautiful county. A nightmare for drivers on twisty single-track
roads. I started at Uppark House (built
1690), a National Trust property set on the South Downs. The next day the longer route took me through
West Chiltington, where St Mary’s Church is a remarkable 12th
century Grade 1 listed building. Its
interior is decorated with well-preserved 13th century wall
paintings, primarily displaying the Passion of Christ. The villages around about, and the south
facing slopes of the hills are a centre for the renascent wine industry,
particularly the vineyard of Nyetimber.
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| Uppark House, West Sussex (National Trust) |
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| St Mary's church, West Chiltington. A typical Sussex village architectural style. |
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| An interesting homily on the Old Rectory wall, Kirdford, West Sussex. |
I recently spent an enjoyable few hours in Winchester
Cathedral. The tour was delivered by a
very knowledgeable elderly volunteer who knew a lot of the history. I was
told that the tours began on the hour and the half hour. Arriving at 2 minutes to the hour, I was
directed to the nave where the tour had already started. ‘I’m sorry’, I told the senior organiser, ‘I
was told that they were on the hour and the half hour.’ He smiled benignly. ‘After nearly ten centuries, I’m afraid we
don’t have quite that precise sense of time’, he said gently. I then put away my ‘Type A’ inclinations for
the rest of the afternoon.
Two Americans were with us.
During any items of history prior to about 1776 they looked vague and
smiled. The guide tried to explain that the
West window looked like a kaleidoscope because Cromwell’s soldiers, in about
1642, had looted the castle’s liquor, and smashed as much as they could find in
the cathedral, attempting to find treasure.
The people of the city gathered the broken glass and some 20 years later
the window was restored in its present form.
The Americans looked very puzzled when the subject of the Reformation
came up, and the destruction of idolatrous images or statues. After the tour, I attempted to help them make
sense of the general lack of catholic imagery and hagiography in English
churches. ‘Have you been to Edinburgh?’
I asked. ‘Oh yes’, was the reply. ‘We’re going there.’
‘Well, Scotland was rigidly Presbyterian, and against any
images at all. If you go into St Giles’
church in Edinburgh, you can see that it took them several hundred years before
they replaced plain glass with any images at all. So, in the late 19th Century the
beautiful stained glass was designed and constructed by the Pre-Raphaelites.’
‘Who were the Pre-Raphaelites?’
At that point I decided that I wasn’t cut out to be a tour
guide, particularly for Americans. It
reminded me of Lindsay’s Viennese tour, where, stopping in front of the Hofburg
Palace, the guide explained to the largely American tourists, that it had been the
Imperial Palace of the House of Habsburg for some 600 years. ‘Did the Habsburgs change their name to
Hofburg, then?’ was the enquiry.
It also reminded me of the time when I was asked by an
attractive American girl, who also lived at International Students House, if I
knew anyone who could take her to a cricket match. I would have loved to but was busy with
medical school attachments. My best
friend from school was approached, and he agreed to take her to Lord’s to watch
an MCC match against New Zealand.
‘How did it go, Mike?’, I enquired when next we met (there
were no mobile phones in those days).
‘Mac’, he said, ‘Never do that to me again, will you?’
Now, continuing my Winchester theme, who is this,
commemorated there in a stone tablet on the floor of the north aisle?
‘In memory of…
The benevolence of her heart, the ∫weetne∫s of her temper,
and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who
knew her and the warme∫t love of her intimate connections.
Their grief is in proportion to their affection they know
their lo∫s to be irreparable, but in their deepe∫t affliction they are con∫oled
by a firm though humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith and purity, have
rendered her ∫oul acceptable in the ∫ight of her
REDEEMER.’
Here is the marble stone:
Jane Austen died at the early age of 41. For my medical readers, the subject of her
final illness has been a lasting and much speculated condition. Both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were
published posthumously. She came to
Winchester for help in her illness, but to no avail. It seems likely that her burial in the
cathedral was facilitated by the fact that her father was the Reverend George
Austen, formerly rector of Steventon in Hampshire. Otherwise, it would have been unusual for a
commoner to be buried there, particularly as she was not yet celebrated for her
authorship. Her writings were not
mentioned until a much later brass plaque was placed on the north wall of the
cathedral nearby.
Sir Zachary Cope, a famous surgeon, first suggested that
Jane may have had Addison’s Disease (adrenal gland failure), because about the
only medical description we have of her condition is in a letter from her elder
sister Cassandra to her niece, Fanny Knight.
Pigmentation of her skin is mentioned (a feature of Addison’s Disease). Other features of her illness do not
necessarily confirm a diagnosis, and some have suggested that Hodgkin’s
lymphoma, with its remitting fever, may have been responsible. Cope believed that her Addison’s Disease
could have been due to tuberculosis – then a common cause of widespread
destructive inflammation. When I was a
student, we were taught to remember TB in cases of lymphoma. The famous phrase, ‘TB follows Hodgkin’s
Disease “Like a Shadow”’. The two
illnesses are not mutually exclusive, therefore. Others have suggested lupus and the short
answer is that we cannot know, partly because much of her correspondence was
destroyed after her death.
The visit to Winchester was occasioned by my wife having
some eye surgery at a hospital near Southampton. While awaiting ‘check in’ it was mildly
amusing to watch the discomfort of a gentleman, whom we shall call ‘Mr Davis’,
also registering for some surgery when the receptionist said, ‘Oh and we have
as your next of kin Mrs Samantha Davis.’
His new and much younger model was sitting nearby, and he had to explain
sotto voce that his ‘next of kin’ had changed.
I came across a rather sad and poignant item. Searching for another player’s golf ball, I
picked up, deep in the heather and gorse, a near perfect ball which bore the
printed inscription ‘Happy Birthday Dad.
Here’s to an Ace.’ An Ace, for
those not of a golfing persuasion, is a hole-in-one on a par three hole. The poignancy reminded me of the famous shortest
ever story (six words), even more heart-rending: ‘For Sale. Baby shoes.
Never worn.’ It is misattributed
to Hemingway but appeared early in the 20th century when Hemingway
would have been a child. Similar hopes
and dreams…
I journeyed to Scotland for our two yearly Ryder Cup for
Cardiologists. Five days of golf, mostly
on East Lothian courses, but with one trip over to Royal Troon. The weather was challenging and cold for the
most part. We beat the Americans…
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| 12th green, Kilspindie Golf Club, May 12th. Heavy squalls, including hail |
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| Troon beach from the golf course. Looking across the Firth of Clyde towards Arran |
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| 8th Hole, Royal Troon G.C. The infamous 'Postage Stamp', surrounded by bunkers |
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| Sunset over Arran, taken from Highgrove House restaurant. |
This was followed a few days later with a two day trip to
Rye Golf Club. For those who have not
been there, Rye is a magnificent town to visit.
Having been a vital port in the 13th and 14th centuries,
steady ingress of pebbles and sand washed into the bay has resulted in the
hilltop town now being two miles from the sea.
The golf club and course has had gradual increments of land such that
there is sufficient acreage behind the dunes to create an additional golf
course. Here is a picture taken in 1913. It shows ‘Mrs Brodrick and Lady Maude
Warrender standing on the 12th tee’.
The vast expanse of sea visible is now land, and there is another half
to three-quarters of a mile before one reaches the dunes behind the beach.
Rye Golf Club, 1913
Sunday May 17th
A letter from Chris Cox appeared in the Telegraph today,
which I quote in full:
‘From a Labour era of political heavyweights to a party
dominated by shallow careerists’
‘Sir – Fifty years ago, the Labour Party could choose
between James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Michael Foot, Denis Healey, Tony Benn and
Anthony Crosland: a front bench of heavyweights who had read deeply, fought
hard and, on occasion, won arguments.
Several were products of the grammar schools their own party destroyed.
Today we are invited to marvel over Wes Streeting, Angela
Rayner, Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham, as though a talent for broadcast clips
and stakeholder jargon is evidence of statesmanship. They have all risen without trace:
politicians who leave no intellectual footprint, no memorable phrase, no sense
that history would notice if they vanished tomorrow.
The ancients warned that those whom the gods wish to destroy
they first make mad. Ours is a country
apparently determined to prove the point, entrusting itself to a political
class of weightless careerists who would once have struggled to rise beyond
junior ministerial obscurity.’
I realise that many of my overseas friends will not
particularly know these personalities, but they too have their own problems
with those in government who could not be classed as statesmen. The precepts apply in their case too.
When I was a student, I had to give a speech of thanks to
Roy Jenkins, who was the speaker at a dinner at International Students
House. His speech was urbane, witty, and
highly enjoyable, delivered entirely without notes. I was in awe.
I gave my pre-rehearsed speech and was afterwards introduced. I told him that I was impressed at such a
fluent and amusing speech delivered without notes. ‘Well, you see’, he said politely, ‘I’ve had
a lot of practice.’
I remember he told a story about a
member of the House of Lords who was put on some sort of London transport
committee. It was known that Lord …
always used his chauffeur to travel. The
problems of London congestion did not seem to bother him particularly. One exasperated member of the committee
suggested that the next time he left his club he should try coming to the House
by bus. At the next meeting he arrived
very late, looking hot and flustered.
‘Did you try the bus?’ somebody enquired. ‘Yes, I did’, he said, ‘and it was a
disaster. I got on the bus and told the conductor
to take me to the House of Lords and he downright refused.’
Continuing the theme of those who
do not seem to inhabit the real world, a friend who is a JP told me of a judge
he knew who was presiding over a divorce case where it seems that mediation had
led to an agreement whereby the separating parties agreed to meet at McDonald’s
once a week for handover of children to the other parent. The judge concerned remarked that this seemed
quite an imposition for Mr and Mrs McDonald, and did they not mind the responsibility
for hosting meetings for the family every week?
June 1st, 2026
Coming to the end of a remarkable
May heatwave, we journeyed to London to see what was alleged to be Lulu’s last
ever concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
The concert was in aid of a mental health charity, so whatever
misgivings one had at being once again subjected to ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’ (Eurovision
song contest winner) were put aside. Lulu
hit the top ten of the pop charts in 1964 at the age of 15 with a cover version
of the Isley Brothers’ record, ‘Shout’.
Her voice was a literal expression of the song title. But she could also hold a tune. Just as Cilla Black proved her vocal worth in
her rendition of the extremely complex tune of ‘Alfie’ by Burt Bacharach, so
Lulu in her singing of the theme tune from the film ‘To Sir With Love’ proved
that she was not just a shouter. And the
original hook to the announcement that she would be accompanied by ‘Friends’
suggested it might be an interesting evening.
Dinner at the Hard Rock Café (steak
too tough, surroundings too loud, some of the memorabilia not up to scratch,
e.g. a Fender Stratocaster allegedly signed by the members of Queen has almost
all the writing expunged; difficult if not impossible to find a main course
dish containing fewer than 1000 calories) and off to a very warm RAH. Audience at the Hall mostly of a certain age
(some sticks and wheelchairs) and a significant proportion of Scottish accents,
but the atmosphere was genial.
The word ‘Accueil’ appeared on the
big screen in front of us, but it turned out to be a flourish of indecipherable
script announcing ‘Gcielle’, a ‘new’ singer-songwriter, whose words were
entirely impenetrable, even though she proudly announced her latest song was
about her favourite city, Rome. It might
as well have been in Latin. The bass
guitar player front of stage made impressive suggestive pelvic movements
(copied from Blondie circa 1978), though the finest musician appeared to be the
saxophonist. As was said of the Cliff
Richard musical ‘Heathcliff’, ‘After an hour and a half had gone by, I
looked at my watch to discover that only twenty minutes had elapsed.’ Thus, Gcielle. The set lasted just over half an hour, and
the next 35 minutes was spent in dismantling her band’s gear and setting up and
tuning Lulu’s team’s guitars.
But from just after 8pm until 10
it was full on Lulu. Never mind if her
rendition of ‘To Sir With Love’ did not quite display the vocal ability of nearly
60 years ago. But it was when her guests
started to appear that the party really warmed up. Firstly, Delta Goodrem, a lady who is big in
Australia, and mysteriously sang the Australian entry in the recent Eurovision
Song Contest (sic). Then Boy George,
flamboyant as usual, but struggling with locomotion (his, not the Little Eva
song). Inevitably it was Karma Chameleon. Then Gary Barlow, and finally Robbie
Williams, to the delight of much of the female audience including my wife. Robbie shambled on in an impressive suit of
large pyjamas (well, it looked like that), but after the first song (Angels, of
course), removed the jacket to reveal his ripped torso and tattoos in a small
black vest. Again, cue ecstasies of
middle-aged female delight.
It wasn’t so much the quality of
the concert (even Lindsay admitted it was not the finest she had attended – and
she saw the Beatles at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens), but the venue, the good
cause, and the uniqueness of seeing Lulu, Gary, and Robbie singing together
made it a special evening. Here is the
evidence:
Packing activities in, I visited the Imperial War Museum. I had not been there for about 50 years. Its exhibitions are superb and I was pleased to see a number of school trips being shown around. The holocaust section is not recommended for younger visitors, and indeed you need a strong stomach to fully take in the horrors.
There are some magnificent
paintings on display, and at least at the moment, there is an exhibition of
wartime art in London, 1939-45. Well
worth seeing.
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, SE1
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| The Mule Track by Paul Nash, Belgium, 1918 |
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| A curious coincidence. A poster from 1925. A very different event to that which we attended. |
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| Shipbuilding on the Clyde. Stanley Spencer, 1940. Shows the frenetic need to build ships for the navy. |
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| Battle of Britain, Paul Nash. Painted 1941. While not an exact image of the dogfights in 1940, Nash attempted to display the confusion of the war in the skies. |
There should be much more to talk
about, or at least meander on about. I
should feel guilty choosing the topics I do when there is so much of real
import in the world (Wars, earthquakes, crime, deranged Presidents). I console myself in noting that during the
height of the London blitz, George Orwell was more concerned about his geese at
his little smallholding to the north of London.
I hesitate to bring this forward
for readers’ attention, but I was deeply troubled by the turning over of the
entire area of Trafalgar Square in London to a Muslim prayer event. The sight of all those upturned buttocks was
not only risible, but depressing. But
then (pace my friends who are deeply religious) I find religion
depressing. Again, I think it was
Bertrand Russell who said, or rather, wrote: ‘It is possible that mankind is on
the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary to slay the dragon
that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.’
Belatedly (there are echoes not
only of World War 2, but also possibly, The Great War) in our lack of
preparedness in defence; announcements have been made about increasing the
defence budget. Our navy is mostly in dry
dock; our new tanks do not work. ‘New’
war is technologically different.
Perhaps all those adolescents who just play computer war games in their
bedrooms, will be our saviour in the ‘New’ Army. (I almost said New Model Army).
Matt, in the Daily Telegraph, as
usual, has the apposite cartoon.
We have muddled through some
challenging heatwaves recently, and another one approaches (early July).
I will end with two stories. During the very hot weather, I was playing
golf with a Scottish friend, an anaesthetist, who suggested that we cut across from
the 12th to the 17th hole, and return to the clubhouse as
soon as possible. While walking, our
minds not particularly on golf but on survival and the choice of cold drink
awaiting. He asked me about my research on beta-blocking drugs during exercise. He also quizzed me about intra-operative and
peri-operative effects and potential benefits.
He asked me if I had heard of a famous Professor of Anaesthetics who had
done much research in the field. The
name was not particularly familiar. This
Professor had been asked to deliver a keynote lecture in Oslo on the
topic. Of substantial self-importance,
he complied willingly and was therefore seated as a guest of honour on the high
table at a suitably magnificent post-conference feast. His neighbour asked politely for the Prof’s
views on various topics, not least his own research, which he was never shy of
talking about. Eventually, after listening
in apparent awe to Prof X’s extensive knowledge of just about everything;
anaesthetic, political, geographical, historical; the Prof – as an afterthought
– indulged the man by enquiring what he did for a living. ‘Well, I’m the King of Norway’, said his
neighbour.
Finally, for almost every entry in
the diary, I could quote from Private Eye’s ‘Pseuds Corner’, a column which has
been going almost as long as the magazine.
Skewering the pompous, the wordy, and the sometimes near impenetrable
outpourings of creative journalists, here is my favourite recent entry from a
long list of possibles:
The Luce is more than the thinking
man’s (or woman’s) Ferrari, the sort of motor car that Hamlet would have
enjoyed taking for a spin around Elsinore on a Sunday afternoon between existential
crises. NICHOLAS FOULKES on Ferrari’s
new electric car, Financial Times.
Until the next time…
July 3rd, 2026.
