Corona Diary Chapter 19 - January 20th to February 24th, 2021

 

Wednesday January 27^th

 

We have passed through two major events in the last week.  The Presidential Inauguration, and my birthday.  I say that without any acceptance that this is bathos.  Trump boycotted the ceremony, and by leaving early, was able to commandeer an official helicopter to make his way down south to his pad in Florida.  Dramatic change of emphasis with Biden.  His avowed goal was first and foremost to deal with the pandemic, the death toll in the U.S. being not far shy of half a million people.  So for the first time in a while it was good to see Dr Anthony Fauci, from the NIH, on a podium again.  Another good sight on Inauguration Day – Obama, Clinton, and George W Bush all standing and conversing together.  There is something of a collaborative approach between the GOP and the Democrats at the moment; almost a coalition, but don’t expect it to last.  The Republican Party will have its work cut out to move on after Trump, who still has millions of supporters.

Stormy seas and kite surfing against a backdrop of 'Old Harry'
A propos of nothing but evocative of recent weather

 

On my birthday, some friends appeared for a distanced conversation (outdoors), but otherwise it was just a day for the two of us, with some fine wines and simple steak and chips.  Thank you to the friend who gave me the Ch. Gruaud Larose 1998, simply superb; and a small glass of Niagara-on-the-Lake Peller icewine to finish our meal.  There were no major surprises in the present list, but it is the first time that I have been given special protective masks as a birthday present.  Chocolate is of course, never unwelcome.

 

The last few days have been grim indeed, with huge numbers of people admitted to hospital and record numbers of deaths.  On 20^th January, 1820 deaths were recorded in the UK, and the 7 day average figure was around 30% higher than in the April first wave.  Only in the last few days has there been a clear cut fall in deaths.  In the last 24 hours the UK has broken through the 100,000 deaths statistic, and the government is eating humble pie, and by humble pie, it is Boris Johnson who has at least had the grace to ‘take full responsibility’.  Today, the sanctimonious BBC News has largely focussed on the human lives stories of those who have died, and while it is sad to hear these renditions of human suffering, there is a very real sense that the Beeb is wallowing in it.  Indeed, an excellent article in yesterday’s paper by Janet Daley draws attention to the intrusive nature of the in-hospital coverage, some of which feature interviews with patients who subsequently died after being filmed.  Under the byline ‘Manipulative broadcasters are feeding despair’ she writes that ‘this intrusive, emotionally manipulative programming is not serving the national interest.  ‘I am sorry to have to tell you’, she writes, ‘that the delinquents who organise illegal raves and the indifferent who host big parties ARE NOT WATCHING.  They detached themselves long ago from this phenomenon, which, for various reasons, they feel has nothing to do with them.’  She goes on to describe the terror and despair felt by the lonely and isolated, and states that they find it ‘too demoralising and voyeuristic.’  I agree.  I’ve felt uncomfortable with this coverage for some time.  Always accompanied by a sotto voce Fergal Keane-type commentary, which pretends to be sympathetic.  To film an ITU nurse in tears may be a TV scoop, but it doesn’t serve any purpose, as Janet Daley has emphasized.  There are positives.  In the last four weeks over 4 million people have been vaccinated in the UK.

 

Which leads me on to cogitate on the UK’s success and pro-activeness in ordering vaccines from both Pfizer and AstraZeneca.  And this is where I nail my colours to the mast and say that I voted for Brexit (more in a moment), and various friends have been so aggressive in their criticisms that I, like many others of the silent majority, have been cowed into silence.  The EU vacillated over vaccine purchase.  Its cumbersome multi-state involvement mechanism meant that it was too late to the party (if you don’t believe me, this is also the view of the editor of Germany’s Bild newspaper).  Many discussions during the summer of 2020 were not leading anywhere, and eventually, Jonathan Van Tam, the minister charged with dealing with the business, cut loose and pre-ordered the Pfizer and AstraZeneca (Oxford) vaccines in substantial amounts for the UK.  At date of writing, the EU has still not approved the Oxford vaccine and we are far in advance of EU members in our immunisation programme.  Germany have now seemingly tried to order their own supplies, and in an outrageous announcement from Brussels, an attempt is being made to block transport of vaccine (some of which is produced in Belgium) to Britain.

 

Not many people younger than I participated in the first referendum in 1975.  At that time the vote was on whether to remain part of the EEC (European Economic Community).  I certainly did not vote to be ruled by the EU.  Forty plus years of connivance, a terrible CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), poor harmonisation of production norms, the antithesis of free trade, bizarre rules over fishing (nearly 90% of fish caught off Cornwall goes to the EU and is caught by foreign boats), and many, many other bureaucratic anomalies and inefficiencies have made me completely disenchanted with the EU as an organization.  It also seems to be designed for poorer nations to dip into the coffers of the richer ones – often with useless projects where many millions of Euros are wasted.  I think of a fishing harbour on the north coast of Tenerife for example, that would be suitable competition for Malta’s Grand Harbour in size.  When I walked past, what was the number of fishing boats?  About six or seven.  Similarly, when cycling Scotland’s roads, it is easy to tell the ones built with EU money – they are the only good ones!  Euro lovers will say that it brings closer ties among nations, by which they probably mean it’s easier to go there on holiday.  But most of the important ties, whether in trade, or in scientific exchange of ideas have been brought about by modern transport, modern communications, and the Internet.  I’ve been encouraged in my ‘Coming Out’ by an article by Julie Burchill in last weekend’s papers: ‘EU pettiness reminds us every day why Brexit was worth it.’  Julie is never a faint-hearted dissembler.  The article is too long to quote in full and you can probably find it online.  She starts well though: ‘As a youngster on the pop press, I coined the term “non-specific epic-ness” to sum up a certain sort of music that was all bombast and no bite, U2 being the best example.  So it was a match made in heaven when their frontman, Bono, exhibited extreme BDS (Brexit derangement syndrome) on tour a few years ago.  Previously, pop stars had shown us fun things onstage (i.e. Jim Morrison’s genitalia) but the only thing Bono managed to reveal was his barmy levels of virtue-signalling.  There was: “Its values and aspirations make Europe so much more than just a geography.  They go to the core of who we are as human beings, and who we want to be.”‘  And there is much more in that vein, much of it funny.  She ends by saying, ‘Behind all the brotherhood-of-man braggadocio, the EU were only ever a gang of playground bullies, their impotent rage revealed in their spite as we extricate ourselves from their moribund grasp, the end of the Big Sulk (La Grande Boude) nowhere in sight.

 

Wednesday February 10^th

 

Two weeks have passed, and I haven’t seen anything to change my mind about the EU.  Vaccination seems to be the main thing that the government have got right, and everybody is chipping in to help.  I have tried to volunteer (What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?), but when I get to the question about my reduced immunity, the webpage recycles to a sort of ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’ section.  Two friends, one a retired GP, the other a retired dentist, have volunteered.  The GMC have re-registered her without charge, but the General Dental Council want £1000 to re-register her husband.  So it’s car park duty for him and vaccinations for her.  Some interesting stories though, including the invasion of the car park by an anti-Vaxxer who is shouting ‘Don’t go in, they’re killing people!’  Scary how many bonkers people the pandemic seems to have brought out of the closet.

 

Just over a week ago it was my younger daughter’s 30^th birthday.  She is a well-liked, nay loved, social animal and it would be wonderful if she could have spent time with her many friends.  Fortunately, her partner is a good guy and they both took the day off and went to Richmond Park, followed by Zoom sessions with friends.  An illustration of her network and continuing friendships is an Instagram post wishing her a happy birthday from the ‘Seasonnaires’, the other friends who worked with her in Val d’Isère a few years ago.  For some reason, I think 30 is a major milestone, much more so than 18 or 21, and I write her a letter, detailing some, but not all, details of my 30^th birthday celebrations.  There was the end of a dreadful affair with a girlfriend who told lies, an on-off relationship with a neurotic woman who took industrial doses of Valium and amitriptyline, and so a relatively gentle evening at a dinner party in Clapham with some friends came as some relief.  Following which I spent a night on the floor, sensibly, for once, not driving home afterwards.  21 was a time when the celebrations were rather juvenile, even though we thought we were adults.  I wonder how it was for the previous generation?  My father-in-law had already finished his war by the time he was 21.  His 20^th saw him on operations in the RAF.  How they must have partied, with the ever-present fear of not being there for the next birthday.  Occasional sentences slipped out at reunions illustrating their rumbustious and fancy-free sessions.  I wonder how many Spitfire pilots were in the cockpit with alcohol levels which would see them taken off the road for a year or so these days?

 

The last few days have seen the death (seemingly with Covid) of Captain Tom, the 100-year old who raised millions for NHS charities.  Suitable tributes all round.  After an enormous spike in deaths, the peak being reached on 18^th January with around 1300 deaths, there is at last a substantial fall.  There is much anxiety about the efficacy of the vaccines against the new variants of the virus, now known as the UK variant and the South African variant.  Genetic analysis reveals multiple changes in the protein structure (usually the substitution of one aminoacid for another in the spike or other proteins), and there is in fact, a substantial number of virus variations.  As of today there are over 12 million vaccinated persons in the UK; only Israel achieving a higher proportion of population.  The EU lags far behind.  It is truly an unwieldy bureaucracy.

 

Our book club had an easy choice this last time around.  ‘The murder of Roger Ackroyd’, by Agatha Christie.  Although her second murder mystery, it is the first to feature Hercule Poirot.  Opinions are mixed.  I am a sucker for a plot, and despite the cardboard characters, all sounding like something from Cluedo, I enjoy it.  In the meantime, a friend who shall be nameless has lent me one of the Flashman books, which I feel I ought to return to him in a brown paper cover.  It could not be published nowadays.  It is called ‘Flash for Freedom’, the third in the series, and it deals with slavery.  The n word is used perhaps a thousand times…  I feel reluctant to admit to reading it.

 

So I’ve turned to a book recommended by a Scottish friend.  ‘I am Charlotte Simmons’, by Tom Wolfe.  My first introduction to Tom Wolfe was when I lived in North Carolina, and somebody loaned me ‘From Bauhaus to Our House’.  This is a witty, well-researched, critique of modern architecture, particularly in the United States, though of course it starts with Walter Gropius and the Modernists.  I enjoyed it so much that when Wolfe published his first novel, ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’, I bought it immediately.  I found it overlong and tedious.  I tried twice but never finished it.

 

My Scottish friend said to me; ‘You were at Duke, weren’t you?’  Have you read ‘I am Charlotte Simmons?  It’s about Duke…’.

 

The University in the book is an amalgam, of several Ivy League-type universities.  University of Michigan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stanford, are among those mentioned by name in the acknowledgements (even though these are not in the original Ivy League).  The fictional university in the novel is called Dupont, and the emphasis on basketball as a religion probably means that Duke is at least a strong candidate for the true location.  Wolfe sites his university in rural Pennsylvania and his main character comes from a backwater in the Appalachians in North Carolina.

 

But it’s tedious.  659 pages tedious.  The immersive nature of Wolfe’s research into college speak of the 00’s is endlessly reproduced in the so-called ‘Fuck Patois’, and occasionally ‘Shit Patois.’  One of the few enjoyable scenes in the novel is the confrontation between the President of the University, Frederick Cutler III; a disaffected highbrow lecturer, Jerome Quat, and the redneck basketball coach, Buster Roth.  There are some telling Wolfe phrases.  Of Cutler and Quat: ‘Both regarded Israel as the most important nation on earth, although neither was tempted to live there’.  There is an amusing anecdote about the coach, who has criticised, then belatedly praised his star player for wanting to take a course in Greek philosophy – ‘As Socrates would say, “mens sana in corpore sano”’; said the coach.  An interesting aside is that Wolfe (originally a journalist), has noticed that many older academic Jews use the phrase ‘Jesus Christ’ as an exclamation.  But perhaps Wolfe should have followed the example of another North Carolinian, coincidentally named Thomas Wolfe, whose turgid bildungsroman, ‘Look homeward, angel’ was reduced to a mere 800 or 900 pages by an editor, Maxwell Perkins, who cut at least 60,000 words.  One is left with the feeling that Tom Wolfe was a great journalist and critic but a poor novelist.  I was recommended to read ‘Look homeward, Angel’ by a friend when living in North Carolina.  Somehow I finished it.  My friend’s grandparents had rented a house in Chapel Hill to Wolfe when he was studying at UNC.

 

January weather was unpleasant, with the occasional sunny day thrown in.  Rain left puddles where the diggers and dumper trucks moved endlessly around trying to build a patio and then re-landscape.  Early February began the same, but with a twist.  The ‘Beast from the East’ returned with a vengeance.  The jetstream has curled south of us and cold air is being sucked in from Russia.  It is now dry but chilly, with temperatures failing to rise much above freezing most of the day.

 

What might be a lawn one day, but is currently just mud

Pre-dawn, looking towards the Isle of Wight

A nice jigsaw of Varenna, Lake Como, 'lockdown life'

Whitley Bay, Poole Harbour, very early morning walk

Various sports have continued.  A slight sense of envy – why should Premier League footballers be sacrosanct?  Cuddling and backslapping for goal celebrations.  The same applies to virtually every sport.  Periodically a few positive tests means that fixtures are cancelled.  The England cricket team had to move on from South Africa for this reason.  Our very early mornings have now been enlivened by broadcasts of their series win in Sri Lanka, and in the last few days a superb victory over India in the first Test in Chennai.  Joe Root has been head and shoulders above the rest, now with two double hundreds during this tour.  A stirring victory for Scotland in the Calcutta Cup over England last weekend.  A variety of humorous texts and posts has of course followed.

 

Over 13 million first vaccine doses have been administered in the U.K. as of today.  I had mine (AstraZeneca) two weeks ago.  Unfortunately, I seem to have been one of the three in a thousand who have had a major reaction.  10 hours post dose I had rigors, muscle aches, and a fever of 39.7 deg C.  It took two days for the fever to come down and four days before I really felt back to normal.  Subsequent testing for Covid and for Covid antibodies has been negative.  Apart from filling in the MHRA yellow card, I have kept relatively quiet about this, not wishing to give the anti-vaxxers any ammunition.  Subsequent analysis of safety data by MHRA and the research trials themselves indicate a significant reaction to this degree in about 3 per 1000 people.

 

Monday February 15^th

 

The cold snap (much worse in Scotland – temperatures of -22 C in Altnaharra) has gone and mild weather has returned.  The easterly gale has subsided.  It rained a lot yesterday, but today is a balmy 13 C and merely misty.  Having lost the toss in the second test match, England are now very likely to lose the match.  A second exciting weekend in the rugby six nations tournament sees England win easily against Italy, Scotland narrowly losing to Wales, and another tight game in which France beat Ireland.  On Saturday I had a chilly walk along the beach with the gale blowing, large rollers crashing in, and fitful sun shining through the colours of a kite as its rider skimmed across the waves.  Turnstones, oystercatchers, and an occasional curlew sifted the mud as the tide went out in the harbour.  One unlucky turnstone picked out some delectable worm and was immediately ambushed by several black-headed gulls.  I think it managed to swallow its prey before the highwaymen gulls purloined it but I’m not sure.

 

More ‘woke’ nonsense is going on.  At Brighton NHS trust, some PC person has dictated that midwives refer to ‘chest feeding’ and not ‘breastfeeding’.  Indignant and often funny letters have followed.  One man said that he would ‘need to make a clean chest of it’ but he liked wearing ‘double chested suits’.  Meanwhile, the future of Rhodes’ statue in Oxford looks ever more uncertain as Oriel College, who own it, have made it known that black and minority ethnic applications to their college have dropped dramatically.  Someone informs me that a black actress has been chosen to play Anne Boleyn.  A case of ‘black swyves matter’ I suppose.  This seems to run counterintuitive to the current approved luvvie tenet that roles should be played by those appropriate to them, e.g. gay men playing gay parts.  So, to be completely accurate, the actress chosen should be someone whose sister has been having an affair with the King or the heir to the throne.  This sounds familiar and the House of Windsor may well be able to oblige here.

Some images from Studland; first naturist (not shown) spotted February 21st!

Studland Walks

 

A little while ago, much was made of a first ascent including a British ex-Gurka, of Mount K2 in winter.  Many years ago, while working in Nottingham, a gifted and charismatic neurologist there, Richard Godwin Austen, informed us that the correct name for this peak was Mount Godwin-Austen.  This was because the first person to survey it and to accurately assess it as the second highest mountain in the world, was his 19^th Century ancestor.  Local names for it, Chogori and Dapsang seem less likely to intrude into the public consciousness.  K2 seems the most likely to stick, sadly.  Perhaps Richard’s forebear should have had a snappier surname, like Everest?

 

Tuesday February 16^th

 

Mild and rainy first thing, clearing for the time being.  3.3 mile walk, limited to the beach, around Canford Cliffs, wittily described by a friend as ‘Can’t Afford Cliffs’, and back.  Our lockdown continues, with jigsaws, books, newspapers, sport on TV (disastrous loss in 2^nd Test in India), quiz shows, and occasional news.  Cases of Covid and hospitalisations are falling sharply but we are told that easing of restrictions is some weeks away.  Turned on ITV news for a while this morning and was astonished by the vehemence of the anti-Government stance, or more particularly the anti-Boris stance.  The editor of the Daily Mirror uses words such as ‘incompetent’ and ‘liar’.  He trots out the statistic of over 100,000 deaths, with what in medicine we used to call the ‘retrospectoscope’.  Vacillation has cost lives (my words), but I suspect his ire is largely anti-Tory, anti-Etonian, and anti-establishment.  It would have been interesting to speculate on what would have happened with Jeremy Corbyn in power…

 

Trivial I know, but controversy continues to court VAR, the Video Assistant Referee, now used in football.  A witty letter from Malcolm Tibble in Norfolk suggests alternative interpretations for the acronym:

 

Verdicts Aren’t Rational

Visibly Aggrieved Ralph (possible a reference to the Southampton manager)

Variably Applied Rulings

Vigorous Arguments Rage

Victims Are Relegated

 

 And more trivia – the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle), has just won a court action over privacy against a daily newspaper.  Somewhat contradictory, she and Harry are to appear in a ‘tell-all’ date with American talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey.  And she is expecting another baby.  Well; you didn’t hear it here first.  A newspaper letter points out that this woman who is requesting privacy has just announced to 7 billion people that she is expecting another baby.

 

Read ‘The Thursday Murder Club’, the new book which is selling like hot cakes from Richard Osman, quiz show host.  Very good, in an Agatha Christie-like way.  Slightly cardboard characters, and the plot stretches credulity.  And indeed, it would be incorrect to say of one character who was lethally injected with fentanyl, ‘He was dead before he hit the ground’.  Death with fentanyl is due to extreme sedation and respiratory depression and would not be instantaneous.

 

Everybody is becoming very tired of the current situation.  But when one thinks of how it must have been for those enduring two world wars in the last century, our experience seems minor by comparison.  Given the degree of low-level anarchy present on the streets, one wonders what our life would now be like if this virus killed, say, 30% of us rather than 1%.  The dystopian scenarios of a number of books and films would probably come true, with vigilantes, no law and order, corpses in the streets, and a complete collapse of the economy.  We need to keep those bats at bay!

 

A final thought on those enduring four years and six years of war in WWI and WWII – although searingly hard, poor food or no food, loss of loved ones, restrictions on entertainment and movements; at least people could touch one another, hug one another, and maintain human contact.  This is denied to us at the moment.

 

Friday February 19^th

 

There are times when even the most determined and conscientious diarist loses, if not the will to live, at least the will to write.  I have felt this in the last few weeks.  So many things move on their unchanging and tedious way.  Unable to see and hear loved ones; dark mornings and evenings; wintry weather.  A certain torpor hangs heavy.  For the blogger ‘their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.’  But this morning for some reason, I have awoken from this slumber.  Waking early I decided to go out for a walk, aware that heavy rain would come later in the morning.  As I came down Evening Hill, shortly before 7a.m. the harbour was a dull grey in the half light, with a strong westerly blowing.  It was still dark enough to see the winking red and green lights of the channel buoys, but light enough to make out their position.  A few cars raced towards Sandbanks, no doubt intending to get the first chain ferry of the day which starts at 7.  Turning along the promenade from shore road past the beach huts, the wind built to near gale force and I was bowled easily along (‘Wafted by a favouring gale, as one sometimes is in trances…’).  The lights on the mothballed cruise ships still glimmered, and a few hardy souls, the year round swimmers, were breasting the waves, tugging their fluorescent tracer buoys along behind them.  I thought that the one disappointment of such an urban and beachside walk was the absence of flowers – some snowdrops would have been nice – but on shore road as I mooched along I was suddenly struck by a hellebore which was almost in bloom in a niche in the pavement.  Looking up I discovered there was a hilly slope of a garden above, with many of these plants, obviously a favourite of the owner.  ‘I lifted up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence came my hellebore.’  On the beach, it being first light, there was much activity from gulls and oystercatchers, all ravenous for breakfast after a long windy night, and taking advantage of a receding tide from about 5.30 a.m.

 

‘Wokeness’ continues to perplex, and to amuse.  Michael Deacon yesterday drew attention to an announcement by an Australian University which, in addition to endorsing the notion of ‘chest feeding’ and ‘human milk’ for ‘breast milk’, recommends that ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ be reclassified as ‘gestational parent’ and ‘non-birthing parent’.  You couldn’t make it up, to use a cliché.

 

Some friends have recommended a TV series entitled ‘Call my Agent’.  This is a French made series about ASK, a company of film and TV agents, and in the original it is called ‘Dix Pour Cent’.  This may be something of an oxymoron, but it is Good-French-TV.  It’s witty and hilarious.  Note to self: all French women are slim.  There is an article this week hailing the new breed of French TV (previously French TV soaps have been universally poor).  The language is very fast, extremely colloquial, and the subtitles, while accurate, are not always the literal translation from the French.  My scatological French is therefore coming along very well, and in addition to the usual ‘D’accord’ and ‘Desolée Monsieur’, I am now able to tell another Frenchman to do something anatomically impossible, and to lament to my lesbian lover that the batteries on my sex toy have run down and I will have to ‘do it the old-fashioned way’.

 

Finally, and at last I can say this, because Wilfried Zaha, the black Ivorian striker who plays for Crystal Palace F.C. has endorsed it; we need no longer pay lip service to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement by ‘Taking the Knee’.  As Zaha himself has said, it has lost its impetus and meaning.  Wearing a ‘Black Lives Matter’ badge makes him a target.  He finds taking the knee ‘degrading’.  Well said.  Some of the racist hate abuse is probably from people who are fed up with having the message pushed down their craw, though most of us have been too polite to say so.

 

A reflection of medicine as it is currently practised.  It is impossible to ring up and ask for even a GP telephone consultation.  An online form is needed (eConsult), which includes every time a question about your family history.  They have my records, and do not need to do this, but yes, my father still died of a stroke following Alzheimer’s and my Grandparents are still dead and suffered from TB, vascular disease, and diabetes.  Following some symptoms which I suspect are not serious, I went through this whole rigmarole once again yesterday (being careful not to answer yes to any question which might allow them to say ‘This could be Covid’ and throw you out of the system with an adjuration to phone 111), and this morning have been greeted by a ‘Do not reply’ e mail which says that my eConsult will be passed to the ‘Care Navigation Team’ for further evaluation.  What has medicine come to?  ‘O Tempora, O Mores’?  As Flanders and Swann posed it, ‘Oh Times, Oh Daily Mirror’!

 

Mild weather prevails, and sunshine.  It is nice to see that in sunny weather our house draws nothing from the external electricity supply.  Deaths and cases of Covid continue to fall and we have had a timetable for exit from lockdown issued by the P.M.  From a selfish point of view, the excitement is that golf will resume from late March.  Final exit day is Midsummer Day – June 21^st.  The last 24 hours show 548 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test – down nearly 30% in the last week.  Nearly 18 million people have had at least one vaccine dose.  Both Pfizer and AZ vaccines have now been shown to work in the elderly and to reduce transmission.  So ‘Fromage à pâte dure’  to Emmanuel Macron who has been loth to order the AstraZeneca jab, claiming it did not work in the elderly.  Lockdown exit arrangements as ever are slightly different in Wales and Scotland.  In Scotland the pandemic is currently overshadowed by the internecine struggle between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon.  I speak at length this morning to an old medical school friend in Edinburgh, whose artistic and needlework talents are burgeoning during the pandemic.

 

Recent walks have disclosed swathes of crocuses and snowdrops.  The year marches on.

Links Road, Parkstone, Poole

Corona Diary Part 9. Sunday June 7th to Thursday June 25th

Sunday June 7^th 

A generally sunny day in Southern England, including Bournemouth.  Bournemouth: ‘the medicated atmosphere of a town full of doomed bodies and restive minds’.  At least in the 1880s.  Thus Andrew O’Hagan in the London Review of Books, writing of the three years that Robert Louis Stevenson spent living at Skerryvore, the house whose plot I visited recently.  O’Hagan has certainly mined the literature of the age to portray the small town which Stevenson came to in 1884.  We are fortunate he came to Bournemouth and not to Davos, another haven for tubercular patients.  Or perhaps not.  Had Stevenson gone to Davos, he might have spared us the toil of reading ‘The Magic Mountain’; it might not have been written.  But in Bournemouth at least he produced two of his greatest works, ‘Kidnapped’ and ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.  From Bournemouth, in ever fainter quest of health, in 1887 to America, and thence to Samoa, where he died at Vailima, Upolu Island, in 1894.

 

O’Hagan is most interested in RLS’s companions and friends in his stay in Bournemouth, and particularly in Henry James, who became a friend and visited regularly.  But he has unearthed many vivid pictures of the town of invalids.  The London fogs were at their worst in the late 1800s.  Dickens, and later Conan Doyle conjured them memorably.  The ‘health resorts and watering places, with their “curative” sea air and salt baths, became meccas of specialised medical care and splendid accommodation.  People built sanitariums and spa hotels, they planted palm trees and erected iron piers, as if one could promenade from restoration to decline, from cheerfulness to death, without it seeming so dark or sordid a journey.’  O’Hagan writes well.  I am envious.  Google tells me he is Visiting Professor of Writing at King’s College, London.  In 19^th Century Bournemouth, newspapers referred to ‘a metropolis of bath chairs’.  Nowadays, we know that pine trees cause as much disability through allergy as they can ever cure through their gentle shade.  But the local council remains fixated on the majesty of these trees, and woe betide anyone who damages them.

 

Stevenson's house, Skerryvore, pictured in 1898

O’Hagan has discovered ‘Guests and Memories: Annals of a Seaside Villa’, written by Una Taylor, daughter of a man who knew the Lakeland poets.  “The people we have here are divided into visitors and residents”, she wrote.  “The visitors are mostly invalids.  Death is the resident”.

 

Stevenson joins that long list of composers, artists, and other notables who could easily have been spared for many more years of creativity by modern medicine.

 

I nearly wrote, ‘From Gustav Mahler to Billy Fury’.  But the bathos might have been an unhappy one.  Both suffered from rheumatic heart disease and died before their time.

 

Dwelling on sickness and invalidism is of course something we do in the Covid era.  Daily numbers of deaths continue to decline however.  It remains to be seen whether the protest marches and rioting which have spread from the USA to the UK will rekindle a rise in Covid-19 cases.  This weekend, the debate about Edward Colston (1636-1721) was brought into fresh focus as a group of rioters pulled down his statue in Bristol and dumped it into the sea.  Colston made money from the slave trade, but used his fortune in philanthropic acts, founding almshouses, hospitals, and schools.  I went to concerts at ‘The Colston Hall’, and played rugby against ‘Colston’s School’.  There is a diametric opposite of opinion concerning the way in which this happened.  It does not profit a diary to dwell at length on this.  There are some very stupid people involved in the protests, however.  Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square has been daubed ‘Churchill was a Racist.’  Whoever wrote that has clearly not considered the fact that, were it not for Churchill, that person would very likely be under the rule of the worst racist of the 20^th Century, namely Adolf Hitler – and very possibly one of a new generation of slaves.

 

We walked again in North Dorset, starting from Bulbarrow Hill, site of the Iron Age fort, Rawlsbury Camp.  We ate our picnic lunch in the peaceful churchyard of Bingham’s Melcombe.  This manorial estate and gardens have remained virtually unchanged since the reign of Edward VI (mid 16^th Century), though it dates originally to the 14^th Century.  While sitting on the only bench, I contemplated a headstone, which commemorates someone born shortly after me, who has now been lying there for the best part of a decade.  A potent reminder that life is fleeting.

 

Monday June 8^th

 

A pleasant sunny day again.  It is easy to miss important notices of what may happen.  An article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, buried in the business news, relates that the USA has banned Taiwan and South Korea from exporting some key components of high end chip technology to China.  Whereas we know that so many electronic items are made in China, it would appear that the really high end supercomputing material is from Silicon Valley.  Evans-Pritchard states that it is not too fanciful to fix the start of the real Sino-American trade war (Cold War?) from this date.  On researching this further I find that in 2009, The Economist referred to him as a modern day Cassandra – whose prophecies are accurate but not believed.

 

Tuesday June 9^th

 

Not to bore readers, but both of these last days have been taken up with decisions on site in the new house.  This evening we watch the last two acts of Nicholas Nickleby.  If you read about this play (or two plays in fact), you will find it referred to as the ‘Landmark RSC Production.’  I think Lindsay enjoyed it, but good though the filming is, it cannot conjure the atmosphere that I felt when seeing it live in the theatre for the first time.  When it was first announced, I was in the habit of visiting the Aldwych for virtually every RSC production of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  But I held back, being unenthusiastic about the length of each play – over four hours.  A friend who went, lost for words, persuaded me that I was missing something.  With difficulty I gained tickets.  On entering the auditorium, all of the cast members – 40 in number (they were the great days of the RSC) were in costume, chatting, offering Victorian favours, muffins, and the experience was immersive from the start.  At the key scene in the first play, with Smike, Squeers, and Nicholas, the tension was unbearable.  At the resolution, everyone in the audience was either crying or laughing, and often both.  There were spontaneous cheers and applause.  But the production never descended to the level of pantomime – for example, the villainous Ralph Nickleby and Sir Mulberry Hawk were never hissed or booed.  And who, being male, could fail to fall in love with Emily Richard as Kate Nickleby?  At the end of four and a half hours, I could not wait for the following week when I had my ticket for the concluding play.  Then I went to see it again.  One thing one notices again in the RSC recording, is the perfect diction of every single cast member – not ‘received pronunciation’, but beautiful prose and dialogue, perfectly spoken.  In the scene setting before many of the vignettes of Nicholas’ life, David Edgar uses Dickens’ own prose – it can’t be bettered.  This was so unlike the rubbish of NT’s ‘Treasure Island’.

 

Wednesday June 10^th

 

Breezy, somewhat overcast.  Wetter weather forecast.  Scientific theories and reworkings of the epidemiology of Covid-19 rebound around the newspapers like the silver balls in a pinball machine.  All scientists seem to be pinball wizards.  Are their flipper fingers purposive, or just plucking chance from the air?  The incidence rate of Covid-19 is falling, as is the death rate.  The rate of decline however has slowed.  A preprint paper from a London group (see Catherine Houlihan first author) has assessed Covid-19 positivity in hospital staff in serial studies.  There is a high rate of positive swabs in completely asymptomatic subjects.  A fifth of subjects gave at least one positive swab, but only a fifth of these had typical symptoms.  Serological study from the same group shows a rate of Covid-19 seroconversion rate of 45%.  They argue (see my previous arguments in favour of this) for regular testing of at risk health care workers.

 

Prof Neil Ferguson (see above) has stated that if lockdown had been imposed a week earlier we would have saved thousands of lives.  Thanks, Neil.

 

 This evening we make a start in on The West Wing.  Friends have advised us that we will be confused and they were right.  Will we grow to love it?  Don’t know.

 

Thursday June 11^th

 

So much to report.  First, the mundane.  Drove to The Berkshire Golf Club and was a guest of a member, playing on the Blue course.  The fairways are like an elegant carpet and the greens superb.  What a treat.

 

But, the ramifications of George Floyd go on.  Attention has now turned to statues of virtually anyone that minorities don’t like.  Letters in the paper question why demonstrators held back from daubing Gandhi’s statue in Parliament Square.  Apparently his views on black Africans were violently racist.  Gladstone has come in for some defacement.  Cecil Rhodes’ statue in Oxford has long been under debate – the nasty colonialist is a definite target.  Here in Poole, Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement has a statue on Poole Quay which some demand is removed.  It is said he admired Hitler.  Though of course on delving into the truth of the matter, one finds complexity.  He admired Mein Kampf, though he noted that Hitler did not practise the ideals referred to in the book.  His Boy Scout movement was however banned in Germany because it clashed with the doctrines of the Hitler Youth; and he was on the black list of people to be detained after the successful invasion of Britain.  In view of the fact that he died in 1941 he can perhaps be excused for not being able to revise his view of Hitler and of Germany, 1939-1945.  More letters say – (my précis) – ‘If it’s statues now, will it be books next?’  Echoes of Fahrenheit 451, The Fire Raisers by Max Frisch, and even 1984.  Let me challenge you with a quotation which was put out after the recent antics by Konstantin Kissin, the interesting and alternative Russian born comedian:

 

‘A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.  And yet the rage one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.’

 

Do you recognise it?  You have probably read it.  George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  It seems that we have almost reached it.

 

Friday June 12^th

 

Interesting discussions on site concerning MVHR (mechanical ventilation and heat recovery).  The installer was using a rectangular configuration tubing in the roof void.  He also has cylindrical tubing for the first floor.  He explained that if the void is large enough he prefers to use the cylindrical tubing.  We both agreed on the merits of laminar flow; he in domestic ventilation systems; I in coronary arteries.

 

Rectangular versus Tubular MVHR pipes

Mixed weather, not too cold, but with some heavy showers. 

Delivered newspaper to neighbour and was rhapsodizing about the vast and beautiful area of the Berkshire Golf Club.  Was somewhat taken aback when he asked if I knew that 2% of the area of England was made up of golf courses.  Have had to do serious research on this.  A Financial Times ‘FT Fact Check’ was a useful source.  It seems that this claim was first made by Colin Wiles in 2013, who contrasted it with a much smaller area used by housing.  This was enthusiastically latched onto by the housing charity Shelter.  It would seem that this is only true if one ignores all of the land that goes with houses, such as gardens, drives, paths, and accepts some (probably) non-applicable figures from the United States on average golf course size.  It would also be true to point out (my own thoughts), that golf courses occupy area, but little volume – and the area of a golf course is also, by definition, carbon negative.  The Berkshire is so magisterial in every respect that one wonders why it lost its Royal Berkshire status.  Truth, the first victim in war, is hard to tease out (as in golf course areas for example), but the following is a possible reason:

 

At Swinley Forest Golf Club, rice pudding is a permanent favourite on the lunch menu.  Early in the 1900s, the Prince of Wales had been playing golf with the famous Scottish professional James Braid (1870 – 1950) at the Royal Berkshire Golf Club.  On being refused entry to the clubhouse because of Braid’s ‘professional’ status, the incensed Prince of Wales removed their royal status and drove to Swinley Forest where Braid happily tucked into the rice pudding.

 

Saturday June 13^th

 

My chief memory of this day is of playing golf badly, and getting rather wet due to a heavy rain shower.

 

Sunday June 14^th

 

A day which has varied between overcast and hot humid sunshine.

 

In preparation for a possible Father’s Day get together within reach of the family next Sunday, we do a walk across Twyford Down (Winchester).  Excellent walk of around eight and a half miles.  Starting at St Mary’s, Twyford (and admiring the 1000 year old yew tree), the walk goes up over Twyford Down, skirts the Hockley golf course, and descends to a footbridge over the M3 motorway.  Many will remember the huge furore over the final phase of the Winchester bypass which was driven through the down.  Many years on it is hard to see what the fuss was about.  Crossing over onto the nature reserve of St Catherine’s Hill and descending to the Itchen Navigation waterway, the M3 is blissfully obscured, as indeed it is on the down itself.  Walking up into Winchester, and seeing the famous King Alfred statue and the cathedral, cloister, and close is a delight.  Returning on the other side of the Itchen across water meadows one passes the remarkable St Cross Hospital, if anything, from the outside, more impressive than Winchester Cathedral.  This building, correctly termed ‘The Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty’, was begun in 1135, with much of the building 14^th century, though there are some earlier and later additions.  Much of the almshouse dates to the 14^th century.  It sits in a tranquil and remote spot, in complete contrast to the Cathedral itself which forms the centre of Winchester.  Passing back under the M3 we walk through more meadows, past sluices and abandoned locks back to the church in Twyford, where the sounds of someone practising Bach on a piano come faintly through the windows.  A lovely walk.  I noted that, fortunately, nobody has as yet made any attempt to deface the King Alfred statue.  This is probably because the vigorous opinions of young black and white people, so extensively aired by the wonderful BBC, do not rely on historical research, otherwise they would be aware of the extent of the system of slavery in the Anglo-Saxon world, and of course, before.

The Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty

Undefaced King Alfred statue

 

Yesterday was notable in Central London for clashes between a far right ‘Protect the Statues’ group and ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters.  I have marginal sympathy with those who downed the Edward Colston statue, but none at all with those who have defaced other monuments.  A suitable cartoon in the papers has a character with a wrecking ball approaching the Egyptian pyramids, with the caption, ‘They were built by slaves; down with them!’  Enough said.

 

 

Monday June 15^th

 

A beautiful day; surprisingly some showers are forecast.  Back to the building site for discussion with the ‘blind man’.  No jokes please.

 

It seems to me that the pent-up fury of lockdowners has really been a feature of the protests.  On every side.  Irrespective of the wish to ‘get something done’ about black poverty and discrimination, there is process to go through to do it.  I am reminded of Sir Thomas More in ‘A Man for all Seasons’, when challenged by William Roper over his respect for the laws of Man against the laws of God, he says:  ‘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?’  Surely we should be above mob rule?

 

A final comment on statues and their value.  I sincerely hope that some Scottish nitwit does not go and destroy the famous statue of the Duke of Sutherland which stands atop an enormous pillar on Ben Bhraggie, 100 ft above the skyline, in East Sutherland (there have been attempts in the past).  The Duke and his policies (the Highland Clearances) were probably responsible for cramming my ancestors into poverty in the little fishing port of Helmsdale, a short distance north of the monument.  He stands, ‘His back towards the lands from which he drove his people and his face towards the sea to which he condemned them.’  If we removed the statue we would not remember this.  Cycling past Golspie, slowly, some four years ago, gave us plenty of time to reflect.  But, as ever, there is complexity.  The relatively barren lands of East Sutherland did not provide good sustenance for the inhabitants.  John Prebble, the Canadian communist writer who wrote a much admired trilogy in the 1960s (Glencoe, Culloden, The Highland Clearances) approached the topic from a very biased viewpoint (see The World Socialist Web Site – not very often I quote from that:  https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/03/preb-m21.html).

 

Tuesday June 16^th

 

A lovely sunny day, with mostly mundane activity concerning the house.  But the scientific news has dominated, both recently and today.  One scientist in the recent news is Professor Angus Dalgleish, who together with others has analysed the SARS CoV-2 viral makeup and claimed that it was incompatible with a naturally mutating coronavirus.  In other words, it is laboratory generated.  I remember ‘Gus’ as a hippyish intelligent student a year or so below me at UCH.  He then made his name when he determined the method which HIV virus uses to damage the human immune system.  Whether he will prove correct over this one we really don’t know.

 

The big news today from the UK RECOVERY trial is that, perhaps surprisingly, dexamethasone has proved lifesaving in Covid-19 pneumonitis.  The institution of this trial in the early days of the UK epidemic has meant that because there were so many deaths in the studied patients (what statisticians lovingly refer to as ‘endpoints’), the statistical power of the trial has been high and the drug reduces the risk of death in ventilated patients by around 30% - a huge difference in trial terms.

 

I watched the RSC recording of the ‘Scottish Play’ this evening, and was disappointed.  Yet the critics were impressed.  Christopher Eccleston was the Thane, and Niamh Cusack his wife.  Lines such as ‘This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air nimbly and softly commends itself unto our gentle senses’ (the ironic lines of Duncan arriving chez Macbeth) seemed to be just thrown away.  The device of having three small girls as the witches meant that most of their lines were inaudible.  Guess I’m just a grumpy old theatregoer.

 

Wednesday June 17^th

 

Despite the warnings that showers were imminent anywhere we had a lovely sea breeze and warm sunshine.  Played golf with some improvement and minor financial gain.  In the early evening we were guests of a friend who lives in the remarkable 1938 Oliver Hill house, ‘Landfall’ for drinks on the terrace (see picture).  Later we watched the concluding episode of ‘The Salisbury Poisonings’, a sort of okay drama about the events of 2018 when Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.  I say sort of okay because it seemed very overacted, which I suppose was to lend ‘human interest’ to the drama.

'Landfall' (Oliver Hill, 1938)

 

Thursday June 18^th

 

In further research for a possible family venue for Father’s Day, we got up early and by 1100 had completed a six mile walk in the New Forest, from Fritham.  Sadly of course, the Royal Oak pub is closed.  Light drizzle for much of the way, and very few other people.  Sightings of deer, New Forest ponies, and sounds of cuckoo and skylark, together with other birds which I can’t identify.  Good picnic spot located, but we may be trumped by the weather.  Talking of Trump, his former national security adviser (sacked) has written a book which the Trump administration are trying to ban.  In it he claims that Trump tried to persuade the Chinese government to purchase agricultural products from US states that might be crucial in Trump’s re-election campaign.  In an interview this morning with the former head of MI6, Trump is described as ‘deeply unsuitable and totally unqualified to be President of the United States’.  The news today is very varied.  Premier league football recommenced last night; obituary for Willie Thorne, snooker player (only 66); and Vera Lynn (singer) has died at the age of 103.  ‘We’ll meet again’ is perhaps only appropriate if one espouses the ramifications of the Christian faith…

New Forest foal

 

Friday June 19^th

 

A rainy day.  Little to do apart from a site visit and jigsaw.  Listen to ‘The Last Word’, which is a radio review of the week’s obituaries.  Chief among them Vera Lynn.  Sort of related, today records the visit by Emanuel Macron, no doubt to garner prestige and publicity, to commemorate the 80^th Anniversary of the speech on BBC radio by General De Gaulle in exile, in which he exhorted the French to resist the German occupation.  Fine fly past with red, white and blue smokes from the RAF Red Arrows and the French Patrouille de France.

 

But another obituary caught my ear, and indeed my eye in the newspaper earlier in the week, when it was bizarrely juxtaposed to a 1960s pop singer.  That was of Geoffrey Burnstock, remarkable physiological and pharmacological researcher, and Ricky Valance, known for the ‘one hit wonder’ in 1960 of ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’.  The death song genre, known in the trade as ‘the splatter platters’, reached its apogee with the Shangri La’s recording of ‘Leader of the Pack’, though for British ears, Twinkle and ‘Terry’ probably ran it a close second.  Burnstock had a huge research output and virtually single handedly created the research field of purinergic nerves.  I remember reading his paper in Physiological Reviews in 1972 on purinergic nerve transmission.  I was a medical student in clinical medicine at the time.  I am sure Professor Alan Cuthbert, at Cambridge in 1970 alerted us to the research which was going on in that area.  Burnstock was not believed, and it took many years before his theories were accepted.  Like, no doubt, many others, it is hard to understand how he did not get the Nobel Prize for his work.  The refusal by the establishment to accept his hypothesis probably delayed research which led to the adenosine receptor hypothesis, and the ability to block adenosine stimulated aggregation of platelets by such drugs as clopidogrel.  Without this drug we would probably still be doing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) instead of less invasive angioplasty and stenting.  Sir Peter Medawar’s maxim of ‘…the intensity of the conviction that a (scientific) hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not’ comes to mind.

 

Saturday June 20^th

 

Obituary of Sir Ian Holm, latterly remembered for his parts in the Lord of the Rings films, but who I first remember seeing in the 1960s serialisation of the RSC’s War of the Roses sequence, produced by the BBC as ‘The Hollow Crown’.  Friends said his timing was impeccable to the end, by refusing to upstage Vera Lynn.

 

More golf, improving slightly.

 

Sunday June 21^st

 

Officially the longest day.  We have been keeping a close eye on the weather, with rain in the night, but our Father’s day get together is on – so we head back to the New Forest armed with picnic tables, champagne, and a veritable feast which Lindsay has prepared.  Anna and Graham drive from Reading, Katie and James from Kennington, and we all do our walk and then have a picnic.  Great.  It is hard not to be able to hug my daughters however.  We can only be happy that they are happy, that they have lovely partners, that they remain employed, and we all hope for better things.

 

Fathers' Day, Eyeworth Pond, New Forest

Premiership football is back, and our local team Bournemouth get well beaten by Crystal Palace, and Liverpool and Everton fight a goalless draw.

 

Monday June 22^nd

 

A beautiful day and we are promised a lovely week of sunshine and warm temperatures.  Visit site this morning.  Horrified by the amount of cabling (see picture).  Main item of news this morning is the terror attack by a Libyan illegal immigrant who was given leave to stay some years later…  Several people knifed in a park in Reading with three deaths.  Awful.  The presence of these individuals in our society is a reward for the long-lived tolerance of our nation, unlike many other nations.  ‘Reward’ here is used in an ironic sense, it is truly ‘… the last guerdon of death.’

Cable, ducting, heating pipes

 

Thinking of obituary juxtapositions the other day made me think of the unfortunate endings of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley, which were perhaps less appropriately celebrated than they should have been.  The reason?  They died on 22^nd November 1963, the day JFK was assassinated.

 

Time for less morbid musings.

 

Tuesday June 23^rd

 

We are back to ABD (another beautiful day) and are promised this for most of this week.  Coffee in a friend’s garden to discuss a socially distanced walk tomorrow.  Visit a garden to review the highly spoken of landscaping.  Create a sourdough loaf, though my ‘starter’ lacks oomph, and eventually I admit defeat and re-knead the bread with some commercial yeast, after which it is at least an edible loaf.  Much breast beating this morning after an aeroplane was seen over the Burnley-Manchester City game yesterday towing a banner saying ‘White Lives Matter’.  The witch hunt for white oppressors and slave owners – even at a distance of centuries continues, and nobody has the courage to say that the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has gone too far.  An Oxford don has spoken out to say that the majority of academics are too frightened of the backlash to express any views or ideas which might be contrary to perceived appropriateness.  The Football Association who threatened to fine clubs and players for wearing poppies to mark the end of WWI accepted that all players would wear ‘Black Lives Matter’ without demur.  My own view?  ‘All Lives Matter’.

 

Pimms in the garden with friends this evening, shortly after Boris Johnson announces substantial lockdown easing measures.  The inevitable Laura Kuenssberg pops up to ask the first press question, part of which is ‘Will you accept responsibility?’ i.e. for the end result of lockdown easing.  Boris has not dealt with questions well throughout this period.  Instead of turning the question around and saying, ‘Well, who do you think the Buck stops with if it is not the Prime Minister’ he waffles a bit and then hands the science part of her question to Chris Witty and Patrick Valance.

 

Obituary in the Telegraph today of Charles Webb, writer of the book ‘The Graduate’, more famous as a film launching the career of Dustin Hoffman.  One of the most extraordinary obituaries I have ever read.  I can’t do it justice tonight!

 

So, an extreme non sequitur.  I was searching for a website for baking which I had lost, one in which the loaf is completely failsafe, because it uses a substantial amount of honey, which of course really gets the yeast going.  There are some good blogs around with baking themes.  Their websites have titles such as ‘Bake My Day’; ‘Knead to Relax’; ‘Gimme Some Oven’.  Whether the breads are as good as the catchy soubriquets I know not.

 

Wednesday June 24^th

 

Yesterday the second Zoom lecture in the series from our erstwhile Sicilian travel guide, Damian Croft, owner and founder of the travel company Esplora.  We had a remarkable holiday with him and his team visiting and climbing all of the Sicilian Aeolian islands last year.  Today’s talk was on the Greek temples of Sicily.  Last week was the Greek colonisation of Sicily, and specifically Siracusa.  Fantastic.  Can’t wait to go back there.

 

It’s an ABD day.  Very hot.  Thirty degrees C plus.  A just wonderful day, for several reasons.  A little like Hillaire Belloc’s ‘The Four Men’ (though there were only three of us), we drove a short distance and then embarked on the circular Stour Valley Way loop of 7.4 miles.  Unlike Belloc we were engrossed in conversation but no song, and sadly we could not stay in, or even visit, any pubs.  But we trollied along, with conversations ranging from economics via politics to medicine, including the aforementioned Charles Webb.  Part way round, we were entertained alfresco by a friend who should be non-identifiable, because she regaled us with tales of her father who became a GP at the commencement of the National Health Service.  In one extraordinary story, he was called to see a rich single lady staying in a Bournemouth hotel, who had a painful swollen knee.  On the advice of his Great Aunt, also a doctor, he injected the knee with Dettol, and the patient returned to the Midlands.  Some weeks later he received a letter from her doctor informing him of the ‘miracle cure’ and asking for details of the therapy.  After some thought and taking further advice he threw the letter in the bin.  Maybe President Trump is onto something…

 

After our walk, we were entertained in our friend’s garden with a salad Niçoise, ciabatta, Camembert, and fresh strawberries, accompanied by some ice cold Chateau de Berne Provence rosé, Chateau Duthil 2008 Bordeaux, and a Chateau Doisy Daene (Barsac).  What a treat.  Most of the day after this was an anti-climax.

 

Although perhaps not materialistic, the above could be seen as a paean to the finer things of life, something which Charles Webb would have eschewed.  Evelyn Waugh, in his introduction to Brideshead Revisited says something similar when he reflected that the portrayal of wild excess of Oxford eating, drinking and rowdyism, and the focus on the Epicurean in Brideshead was a subconscious reaction to the austerity of wartime.

 

Let me return to poor Charles Webb, who has died at the age of 81.  The Graduate was his first novel.  It sold well, but the film became stratospheric.  Dustin Hoffman and ‘his lament that “For 21 years I have been shuffling back and forth between libraries and classroom.  Now you tell me what the hell it’s got me” chimed perfectly with young Americans horrified that their affluent society was sending its children to die in Vietnam.’  The stunning soundtrack by Simon & Garfunkel helped too.  Webb sold the novel rights to the film for $20,000, gave the book royalties to the Anti-Defamation league, and disposed of his house, possessions, and paintings by Warhol, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg.  He married a similarly anti-materialistic woman called Eva, who changed her name to ‘Fred’ in sympathy with a Californian society for men who had the misfortune to be called Fred.  Their wealthy parents’ capital and possessions were all similarly disposed of, and they worked in the poorest and lowest paid jobs, ultimately giving away everything including their clothes to become caretakers in a nudist colony.  After a life in motels and trailer parks they finally moved to Newhaven in East Sussex and lived in a flat above a pet shop.  Other novels were written, one of which, ‘New Cardiff’ was highly praised by Nick Hornby, and was made into a film with Colin Firth.  Webb refused to promote it.  Virtually their final brush with the media was when ‘The Graduate’ hit the London stage.  A reporter visited the pet shop and informed Charles and Fred that Jerry Hall as Mrs Robinson was making more money in a week than Webb had made from the novel in his entire life.  Webb said ‘I couldn’t care less.’    The published photograph in the obituary could be titled ‘The Sorrow of Abject Poverty’, but it seems that Charles Webb had no regrets.

 

And with that, on a boiling evening when it is too hot to sit upstairs typing in our little room which serves as an office, I make an end of Wednesday 24^th June.

 

Thursday June 25^th

 

A viciously hot day.  If this is the future then we must be glad that the enormous overhangs on our new house will reduce the ‘solar gain’ within.  A friend who lives in a lovely architect designed house on the harbourside has an enormous wall of glass facing south west, which always causes him problems.  It must be horrendous today.

 

A record high temperature of nearly 33 degrees was recorded at Heathrow yesterday.  Photographs of Bournemouth beach in the paper look like the worst ever Bank Holiday.  Sleeping was difficult last night, reminiscent of nights in North Carolina when I lived there in the 80s.

 

Maybe it is ironic that we are due to meet the heating firm later today to discuss the solar panels.

 

We did not return to ‘The West Wing’ last night.  Premier League football is back, and despite some desultory games and the second failure of Bournemouth, this time against Wolves, I began to watch the game of Liverpool versus Crystal Palace.  Breathtaking football from Liverpool, with great interpassing and despite an initially well organised Crystal Palace defence, they received a 4-0 drubbing.  Occasionally football is the ‘beautiful game’.