The Evening Hill Diaries - 1st May 2022 to September 2022

My first grandson has been born within a few minutes or at the most hours of the death of Queen Elizabeth the Second (on September 8^th).  He is now a Carolingian rather than an Elizabethan.  It seems very strange to be singing God Save the King, but we will get used to it.

The late Spring and early Summer both passed with wonderful weather, and a new record high temperature in the UK of over 40 degrees C, somewhere in Lincolnshire.  A drought was officially declared in many places, particularly the South of England.  The grave and the trivial have existed side by side.  How else can one write in one catch-up diary entry of the death of a monarch who has steadfastly been the rock at the centre of our Nation’s life, and a petulant lawsuit between two footballer’s wives?  If this diary were unfolding sequentially, such matters might perhaps be excusable (HMQ died in the afternoon of September 8^th), but most gossip becomes somehow irrelevant now.

What I will say is that there is an enormous contrast between many of the utterances of Prince Charles (as he was) and King Charles III (as he now is).  The sincerity, the gravitas, the perfect phrasing, the lack of those characteristics so ably imitated by Rory Bremner and other mimics, seem to mark out a new era in Charles’s communications with our nation.

‘Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turned away my former self; So will I those that kept me company.’ (Henry IV part 2)

I will try to catch up with some of the highlights between these dates above.

May 2, 2022

Woken at first light by helicopters overhead.  They are searching for a missing person.  A post-sailing regatta party resulted in some lads taking a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) for a spin in the middle of the night, and rumour has it they hit a cardinal mark in the harbour at high speed.  Some days later a body is found.

Fine and increasingly hot weather brings a drought to the southern part of the UK.

We first become aware of the rising temperatures on our first overseas holiday for two and a half years.  Alighting from the Poole – Cherbourg ferry on May 15^th, temperature much as in the UK – a comfortable 20 degrees, but suddenly, stopping just outside Le Mans, it is 29 degrees.  The Brittany Ferries brochure is full of advertisements for alcohol but in the interstices are some articles to encourage visits to this part of France.  Le Mans, for instance, is praised for its ‘competitive spirit’ but is worth visiting as the birthplace of the most famous of the Plantagenet Kings, Henry II.  The guide also attempts to tantalise with recipes such as ‘Far Breton’ – with ingredients such as brandy, sugar, prunes, raisins, milk, eggs, flour, and butter, there surely isn’t much that could go wrong with this?

Our first stop is the Loire and the riverside town of Langeais, a little west of Tours.  The cycling here is largely level, apart from the challenging cliffs above the town of Chinon, high above the Vienne, a tributary of the Loire.  High temperatures and cycling mean rehydration with cold (Belgian) beer.  Chinon is famous for its literary son, François Rabelais, the French renaissance writer, as well as associations with Joan of Arc, and the birthplace of Richard the Lionheart.

The fortress of Chinon

Fine food in Langeais

Au Coin des Halles

The Chateau, Langeais

A meeting with Rabelais

Rehydration in Avoine

Moving further south, we have a night of luxury in a restored farmhouse in Perigord, before visiting family in Monségur, near the Dordogne.  By this time the temperatures are in the high 30s and cycling is only possible in the shade of trees by the river path.  A visit to Bergerac brings one face to face, or perhaps nose to nose with the eponymous Cyrano.

A secret corner of Perigord

Nose to nose with Cyrano

38 degrees in Bergerac

A three-year absence of trips to France reminds us powerfully how much we love so many aspects of the country.  It also reminds us of the French waiter’s stock response to a customer awaiting tardy service:  ‘J’arrive.’  Translated as – ‘Sometime in the next hour.’

Dawdling in France

Kouign-Amman, a Breton cake, much like a croissant, but with lots of sugar mixed in.  Very welcome to cyclists

Returning home, we are determined to fit more holidays in, and within a few weeks we take a walking holiday in Umbria, visiting some of the less well known corners of the Apennine foothills, though also visiting Assisi.  My last visit to Assisi was in 1958 with my parents.  My mother bought a decorative tile with a picture of St Francis blessing the animals, and an inscription in French:

‘Que le bon Dieu/ Te regarde, te benisse/Et tourne son visage vers toi.’

It hung in our kitchen for many years.  But the religious memorabilia available now seems trite and trashy, and is probably made in China, much like Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps.

And a further trip to Italy to play a 4-year delayed social golfing event against European and U.S. cardiologists is fitted in before returning to ‘face the music’, so to speak, for a Robotic Assisted Radical Prostatectomy on 29^th June.

These holidays serve to take the prospect of forthcoming cancer surgery out of one’s thoughts.  The few days after returning home remind me of Brutus in ‘Julius Caesar’, and the abhorrence of delay between thought and action:  ‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing /And the first motion, all the interim is /Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. /The genius and the mortal instruments /Are then in council, and the state of man, /Like to a little kingdom, suffers then /The nature of an insurrection.’

Recovery is delayed and complicated, but somewhat alleviated by some wonderful sport on TV.  Wimbledon, Test Match cricket, and especially the Tour de France.  One of the best and most exciting Tours of recent memory, commencing with hugely enthusiastic Danish crowds lauding one of their own, Magnus Cort, as he gained the ‘King of the Mountains’ title during the first three days parcours.  (There are no mountains in Denmark, I hear you say).  Over the succeeding three weeks, a magnificent duel between the two clear strongest competitors evolves.  Eventually Le Tour is won by Jonas Vingegaard (Denmark), from Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia).

A remarkable sporting gesture happened near the end of the race.  Pogačar, desperate to gain time on Vingegaard, took a descending corner too wide, slid on gravel and ended up in the ditch.  At first Vingegaard stormed ahead, but realising that his arch-competitor had experienced some bad luck, slowed until Pogačar righted himself and caught up.  A touch of hands in a high-speed handshake acknowledged the debt owed by Pogačar, and the sporting rivalry continued.

One of the greatest ever sporting gestures, akin to Jack Nicklaus giving Tony Jacklin that putt in the 1969 Ryder Cup (acknowledgements to whoever posterised the still from the race

Sadly, other events continued as before.  The war in Ukraine continued.  As I write, late in September, there has been a remarkable turnaround, with Putin’s forces in retreat; many of his most formidable weapons trumped by modern technology – portable anti-tank launchers, for example.  In May, there was yet another mass shooting in the USA – in a Texas school – 19 deaths.  A friend died from an unpleasant form of facial cancer.  A great outdoorsman, his funeral was a wonderful celebration of his love of sailing, walking, climbing, and cycling.  The final touch?  ‘The Manchester Rambler’ by Ewan MacColl.

On 12^th August, another U.S. based incident.  Salman Rushdie, for many years under a Fatwa from Iran due to his authorship of ‘The Satanic Verses’, which it seems that the Ayatollah failed to read before condemning it, is attacked in Chautauqua, New York, while giving a lecture.  Despite multiple stab wounds, Rushdie is fortunate to survive.  The Fatwa situation is a Catch-22 one: the only person who can rescind the issuance of this is the person who originally invoked it.  Unfortunately, Ayatollah Khomeini cannot do this – he is dead.

But all other news, gossip, or opinion fades before the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.  The national response of mourning, tributes, and ceremony is remarkable.  Huge queues of citizens, first in Edinburgh’s St Giles cathedral, and now in Westminster Hall, to walk past the coffin, indicate the depth of love and respect that we have for the monarch, who dedicated over 70 years of her life to the duties of a Queen.

The period of mourning that we are now in is enlivened by some examples of Her Majesty’s humour: an interview with the artist who painted the last official portrait for example.  The Queen asked him who his favourite portrait artists were.  ‘Oh, Gainsborough and Reynolds,’ came the reply.  ‘I think,’ replied Her Majesty, ‘We have a few of those downstairs.’

The BBC has done a remarkable job during the period leading up to the funeral.  Interviews with virtually anybody who ever met the Queen can pall, however.  I was intrigued by an interview with John Kerry, the Presidential envoy for Climate.  He spoke of his remembrance of the Queen being ‘coronated’.  I was tempted to assume that he couldn’t speak the Queen’s English, and should have used the more usual ‘crowned’, or spoken of the ‘coronation.’  Of course it was an American who said that ‘There is no noun that cannot be verbed.’  But then I remembered that some Americans – chiefly in the remote outposts of the Appalachians, still use some of the English of 400 years ago.  Indeed, ‘coronated’ has been extant since 1623.  Mountain folk use antiquated words like ‘britches, (breeches, trousers); ‘poke’ (bag); and ‘settle’ for ‘sofa’, and will ask you to ‘set that down’ rather than ‘put that down.’

Letters to the papers are poignant, and interesting.  One elderly man who was present as a child as the Queen’s Coronation Coach drove along the Mall in 1953, remarked what a sad sign of the times it was that then the policemen were all facing the coach – now they are all facing the crowd. 

The Queen’s funeral was a magnificent affair.  A solemn and reverential ceremony in Westminster Abbey, followed by a march to the Wellington Arch near Buckingham Palace, transferring by hearse to Windsor Castle for a more intimate ceremony in St George’s Chapel.  At the point where the military parade reached the palace the commentator observed that the procession (the coffin borne on a gun carriage) was now one and a quarter miles long.  History was made at every step.  The last Royal funeral held in Westminster Abbey was that of George II in 1760.  Some of the music has been sung at such events for several hundred years.  But it seems that it is impossible to please everyone.  Sir James MacMillan (a Scot), who composed a choral piece entitled ‘Who Shall Separate Us’, has received hate mail and complaints from Scottish Nationalists who saw in the work a subliminal message in favour of the Union between our countries.  As Sir James explains, the title refers to a passage from the Bible which was a favourite of the late Queen, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

And immediately following the obsequies, the railway workers have announced a recurrence of their strike action (for more pay), threatening the London Marathon, and creating travel misery for thousands.  Another letter in the papers reads thus:

‘Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress claims that the right to strike is a fundamental British liberty.

Not so: it is an innovation arising out of legislation in 1871.  Then, working conditions were utterly different: employers held a whip hand over their workers.  In current conditions, it seems wrong that one group should aim, without penalty, to better itself by imposing hardship on others.’

Agreed.

I am sure that so many of us were taken aback by the suddenness of the Queen’s last illness.  Only two days before she had welcomed Boris Johnson who attended at Balmoral to resign as Prime Minister, and a short time later, Liz Truss, who attended to be asked to become Prime Minister.  Photographs of her show her smiling, looking frail, but still in full control.  You may wonder why I did not mention the Prime Ministerial race before?  Do not fret.  ‘It is a tale.  Told by an idiot.  Full of sound and fury.  Signifying nothing.’

More Shakespeare.  He has been much in vogue in the last weeks.  King Charles quoted from the final scene of Hamlet about his mother; ‘Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’  I seem to recall that it was originally ‘hymn thee to thy rest’, but I can’t find it anywhere.  Perhaps it was in the First Quarto?

An article by Dominic Cavendish in the Telegraph (September 17) is entitled ‘Why We Find Solace in Shakespeare’, and mentions another bon mot from Charles, who quotes Shakespeare’s Henry VIII; the blessing of Elizabeth I.  Cranmer saying, ‘She shall be… a pattern to all princes.’  I commend the article.

Some counterpoise to recent events is given by the TV series, ‘The Crown’, and we are not caught up with the most recent episodes.  We have moved through the late 70s, and are now in the 80s, with the excruciating goings-on in the Charles/Diana/Camilla triangle (or pentagon if you choose to include Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles).  It is a salutary reminder that none of us is perfect, but may explain why some of my era have a certain ambivalence about the transfer of the monarchy, which does not extend to full-blooded Republicanism, but may we remain aloof, awhile? 

Let us hope.  Back, almost, where I began:

‘Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turned away my former self; So will I those that kept me company.’ (Henry IV part 2)

So long Falstaff…

 

The ER insignia at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.  Blacked out at the performance of Don Giovanni on September 13th

CORONA DIARY PART 13 - WEDNESDAY AUGUST 26th TO SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 20th

Candy floss clouds above Christchurch Harbour - taken by a friend from Royal Bournemouth Hospital

Thursday September 3^rd

 ‘Cripping Up’.  I do try to get attention straight away, but sadly it is often with something which might appear to be trivial.  I had never heard this term before the other day.  It is a theatrical extension of the term ‘blacking up’, and implies an able-bodied actor playing the part of somebody with a disability or affliction.  Actors and actresses are not necessarily known for their overwhelming intelligence, though their high profile ensures that their often left wing views are widely heard.  But they can certainly come a cropper, as during the recent episode where Maxine Peake was forced to withdraw remarks that she made in the wake of the death of George Floyd, and similar faux pas by those who should know better about 5G, vaccination, and coronavirus being a white conspiracy.  In the current news, the actress Sally Phillips has criticised two actors in particular, one for portraying John Merrick, in a new production of ‘The Elephant Man’, and Eddie Redmayne for having the temerity to portray Stephen Hawking and his motor neurone disease in the film ‘The Theory of Everything’.  It is part of a movement which insists that only a person so afflicted can portray the subject in the play or film.  If one only thinks for a moment, this is so stupid that it cannot be a realistic possibility.  How to find someone with the gross variety of multiple cutaneous neurofibromas that poor Merrick had in the first place, let alone persuading them to act?  And one of the characteristics of motor neurone disease is profound weakness.  Again, a physical impossibility.  See my previous remarks on ‘blacking up’.  Besides, the term itself, ‘Cripping Up’ with its reference to cripples is offensive enough in the first place.

 

A dreary day.  Mild but cloudy with occasional drizzle.  Now some days since last diary entry.  As you can see, from the above opening line of my diary, I did not think it worth starting the blog with a weather report, hence the ‘Cripping Up’ story.

 

Lindsay has been unwell with a ‘bug’ she obviously caught from the grandchildren, but we did get a postal Covid test, which came back negative today.  Otherwise, with the reduction in test facilities now actioned, she would have had to drive to Dorchester.  Mildy amusing to hear that the App telling people where to go for a test works on a ‘as the crow flies’ basis; hence some unfortunates in North Devon being advised to attend in Barry, South Wales – just a few miles across the Bristol Channel!

 

Golf yesterday, ‘Celtic Nations’ versus ‘England’ at Parkstone Golf Club.  A bit of fun really, but not sure how several members of other nationalities qualified to play, e.g. an Italian.  Chuffed to come from behind with the last four holes in one under par to beat the opposition.  Met a friend and medical colleague in the car park.  Explained about Lindsay.  ‘You should get into the Oxford study’, he said.  ‘We get tested twice a month.  We get paid twenty-five quid a time’, he added helpfully.

 

 

Friday September 4^th

 

A consultant at UCH when I was a student, who shall remain nameless, was a very testy and impatient Welshman.  His teaching style was aggressive and impatient.  One could say he did not suffer fools gladly.  He was however, needless to say, highly respected in his own field.  He was also extremely old fashioned in his approach to medicine.  Knowing this, I bided my time, and having been upbraided on at least one occasion for not knowing something, I stood by as he berated one of my ‘firm’ for not knowing the dose of pethidine to give a patient suffering from renal colic.  ‘Well’, he turned to me, peering at my name badge; ‘McLeod.  What dose would you give?’  ‘A quarter of a grain, sir’, I replied.  He recoiled as if he had been shot.  ‘A quarter of a grain’, he repeated.  ‘How did you know that?’  ‘I thought everybody knew that was the correct dose, sir.’  ‘Very good, very good.’  He was almost smiling.  ‘If only we still worked in proper doses.  Yes, a quarter of a grain.  What is that in modern medicine?’  ‘Fifteen milligrams, sir.’  He turned to the small group.  ‘One of the most painful conditions in medical practice.  Make sure you give enough analgesia.’  End of session.  I forbore to tell him that the only second-hand edition of Bailey and Love’s Practice of Surgery that I had been able to afford still had the old doses of drugs to use alongside the metric equivalents.

 

A lovely episode that occurred later on with the same consultant, was when one of my friends, a mischievous individual who was an outstanding folk guitar player, and who should never have been doing medicine, was his House Surgeon.  In those days, during surgery, the diathermy device for cauterising blood vessels and cutting through tissue was connected to a floor pedal consisting of squishy white rubber.  When you stood on it, a high pitched squeak came from the device and the connection was made, shortly to be accompanied by the smell of barbecuing human tissue.  The operation was a Millin prostatectomy.  On the first application of the diathermy, the surgeon inadvertently trod on the squishy surgical wellington boot of my friend, who instantly responded by mimicking the high pitched squeak.  The surgeon tried again.  Again a squeak, but no cautery.  ‘Damn thing’, muttered the surgeon under his breath and tried again.  Same response.  His Welsh accent much to the fore now, he was heard to say something like ‘Bloody useless thing’.  Eventually, after multiple attempts, ‘Sister, get me a new diathermy.’  The sister, who had realised what was going on, calmly pushed my friend’s boot out of the way and moved over the pedal.  ‘Try that one, sir’, she said sweetly.  Snap, crackle, pop – diathermy!  Surreptitious chuckles.  Some years ago, I searched in the medical register for my friend’s name, but he was not listed.  He was one of those individuals from a medical family in whom it was expected that he study medicine, but for which he was not ideally suited.  Before coming up to Cambridge he had been a roadie for Barclay James Harvest, so perhaps he eventually went back to his roots.

 

I was reminded of the quarter of a grain story when watching a short feature on TV the other night concerning the release of medical papers in the case of the death of George the Fifth.  Fifty years after his death in 1936, the personal papers of Lord Dawson, the King’s physician, revealed that Dawson had eased the King’s suffering (official cause of death: bronchitis) by injecting morphia ¾gr and cocaine 1gr into the King’s ‘distended jugular vein’.  As you may now calculate, having read the preamble, 45mg of morphine i.v. is probably enough to kill a horse, let alone a king… The issue resurfaced because a programme entitled ‘Royal Murder Mysteries’ promises to investigate the death of the King’s sister, Queen Maud of Norway, in 1938.  This occurred relatively soon, unexpectedly, and suddenly after abdominal surgery during a visit to the UK.  Her physician?  Lord Dawson.

 

It is an interesting fact that up until our present queen, every member of the Royal family to take the throne in the 20^th century has been killed by smoking.

 

Life meanders on.  Riots in the USA as yet another black male is shot by police (seven times in the back as he was getting into his car); more polarisation as the re-election campaign gets under way.  Various quarantines from a number of countries, all rather confusing.  My daughter was due to compete in a mountain bike event in northern Norway but has had to cancel because UK citizens are required to quarantine in Norway for 14 days if they travel to the country.  On the plus side, it meant that she and her partner came and stayed with us last weekend and enjoyed perfect weather and some very rugged off-road riding in Purbeck.  An opportunity to drool over their bikes – Canyon carbon gravel bikes with a twelve cog cassette and SRAM electric gear shifters…

 

 

Monday September 7^th

 

An advantage of living in Poole is that friends and family like to visit.  Not necessarily because of our scintillating company, but also because it’s just a great place to be.  Seaside, coastal walks, cycling, pubs, etc.  My other daughter and her partner appeared last weekend and we enjoyed their company.  Leaving them to their own friends and devices on Sunday, we walked with other friends up in North Dorset, enjoying some autumnal sunshine, views over the Blackmore Vale, and the appearance in the hedgerows of rose hips and sloes.  An unusual location for a sign concerning social distancing was noted in the churchyard of St Mary’s in the tiny hamlet of Turnworth – in juxtaposition of two his and hers graves.  Presumably however, they were in the same social bubble?

Social Distancing Required?  Very strict rules in Turnworth

But beautiful wild cyclamen beneath a yew tree

Sloes and rose hips

 

Wednesday 9^th September

 

The last few days have accentuated that dying autumnal feel, with drowsing warm sunshine, and a temperature climbing to 22 deg C.  In the mornings it has felt cool and fresh.  Definite upsurge in coronavirus cases with a suggestion this morning that the government is to introduce a ban on gatherings of more than six people.  Minor setback for vaccination studies because a participant has become ill.  No details as yet (subsequently revealed to be transverse myelitis; definitely concerning in view of some of the Guillain-Barré cases seen with some vaccines in the past).  We all seem to be in a bubble which waits for – what?  A catastrophic burst?  There really is no feel of normality coming back at all.  After the euphoria of the dramatic drop in cases with the initial lockdown strategy, we seem to be in the ‘phony war’ phase of waiting and wondering what will be next.  A virologist on the news this morning points out that we commonly become reinfected by the ‘common’ cold, much of which is due to coronaviruses, and there are now documented cases of Covid-19 reinfection, albeit with subtly changed virus molecular structure.  But perhaps natural selection will happen, or at least random selection, and a less serious derivative of the original virus will begin to circulate.  Or, could it be the other way round?

 

I feel reasonably resilient and fatalistic about things today.  It would be easy to believe, as in Thoreau’s words, that ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’ and to succumb to a sort of ‘status morbidus’.  I did have some of these feelings when, with time on my hands, I read an obituary of someone who had never previously crossed my horizon, namely David Graeber.  Alongside an obituary of commando Moss Berryman, a sailor whose exploits in a disguised Japanese fishing vessel in attaching limpet mines to Japanese shipping in Singapore (Operation Jaywick), I would ordinarily only have glanced at Mr Graeber’s entry.  Only 59, and described as a ‘prominent anarchist’, my attention would normally have wandered immediately.  But Graeber was an original thinker, who came to widespread attention when he published “On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: A work rant” in a radical feminist magazine called Strike!  He wrote, ‘In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week.  There’s every reason to believe he was right.  In technological terms we are quite capable of this.  And yet it didn’t happen.  Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more.  In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively pointless.  Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed.’  These would truly be men (and women) who lead lives of ‘quiet desperation.’  Graeber expanded his views into a book.  His speciality was “Value Theory” – how societies decide what it important.  With a few exceptions, he argued, modern economies value jobs in almost inverse proportion to their social worth: compare the salaries of advertising execs and PR men with those of bin men, builders, nurses, teacher, and carers, and then ask how society would fare if one group or the other were to disappear.  The forced pretence that many “bullshit jobs” are useful takes a huge emotional toll on those who do them.  The epidemiologist, Michael Marmot and his team have shown that work stress, and particularly a lack of personal control over one’s job, are factors which directly or indirectly, lead to an increased incidence of coronary artery disease.

 

Much of the above re David Graeber is taken directly from the Daily Telegraph obituary, and I acknowledge it completely.  Food for thought however.

 

Scattered bits of news around, mostly bad, including the shooting of a year 11 pupil by another, a 15-year-old, begging the question of how he had access to a gun.

 

No such puzzlement in the wonderful United States of America where terrifying pictures emerge of right wing activists in a standoff with Black Lives Matter activists, both groups armed to the teeth, outside the racecourse at Churchill Downs, Kentucky during the belated running of the Kentucky Derby.  Surprising to hear that no shooting took place.  That Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution has probably taken more lives than those lost in war by that same country – and if I’m wrong on that, it must be a ‘damned close run thing.’

 

Tuesday 15^th September

 

“Nostalgia’s great but it’s not what it was”.  Don’t know why this came to mind, but age and Covid make one nostalgic.  To give this witticism its attribution, I remember this appearing in the Sunday Times sometime in the 1960s or 1970s.  The author was ‘AFGL’.  This and other witticisms and puns were the work of Alan Frederick Grantley Lewis (thank you, Google), whose works appeared collected in a book called ‘Pundemonium’.  Another example:

 

‘I feel so strongly

About loo graffiti

That I’ve signed

A partition.’

 

I suppose his modern equivalent is Brian Bilston (q.v.), who is known as ‘The Poet Laureate of the Internet.’

 

From time to time I enjoy pop nostalgia, particularly Tony Blackburn’s ‘Sounds of the Sixties’, which often helps me to get off to sleep.  My hypothesis is that the songs heard during one’s formative years are those that one thinks are the best.  There are undoubtedly a few around today of the Snowflake generation who will feel that Beyonce or Adele have been the finest interpreters of the popular song, or even some of the rappers, whose names sound to me like drug pushers, at least those of them who haven’t been shot or overdosed.  But the development of the modern pop song, where lyrics as well as a musical hook were all important, started surely in the 50s and 60s?  When Gerry Goffin (q.v.) died, his former musical writing partner (and one-time spouse), Carol King, said that his genius lay in his unerring ability to express in a few words what teenagers were trying to articulate about love and relationships and were themselves unable to say.  (That is a loose parenthesis of what she did say, because I can’t remember it exactly).  When his skills were allied with King’s classical pianistic training, the result was innumerable hit songs.  ‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’ is a good example of their first attempts at song-writing, with an interesting chord progression into minor keys, but the others are legion.

 

I was reminded of Sounds of the Sixties, because recently, Tony played a song by P.J.Proby, his version of ‘Somewhere’, the magnificent song by Leonard Bernstein from West Side Story.  I have always enjoyed PJP’s version of this, though those who read this and are tempted to check it out on YouTube or Spotify will almost certainly be aghast.  But it is partly the extraordinarily tortured diction of his version that I like, and the reality that somewhere, inside that, there is a magnificent voice trying to get out.  Poor P.J. Proby’s career came to an abrupt end when, during his stage act, dressed in a cowboy version of a tight velvet suit, his trousers split.  Exactly the same thing happened on a second occasion, suggesting that it was a deliberate ploy to excite the young female fans.  Cue a massive reaction of revulsion in the press and exit Proby stage left.  I believe that although he originally came from Texas, he is currently still alive and living in modest council accommodation somewhere to the north of London.

 

We have been enjoying wonderful calm, settled, and warm sunny weather in Poole, though my Edinburgh friends have had less luck.  Golf, both here, and at Denham, has been wonderful.  At Denham, with the Scottish Medical Golfing Society, there is it seems, much pessimism among my colleagues about the prolonged Covid experience which most agree will be with us for a very long time.

 

I have been intending for some time to revisit the location (with the exception of my first postnatal six months in Hong Kong) of my first three or four years of life.  This was in a remote valley between Salisbury and Romsey, in a place called Dean Hill.  In the 1930s, as Britain re-armed, it was decided that there was too much risk in placing munition storage close to dockyards.  Between West Dean and East Dean, adjacent to the main line railway, and to the north of a steep chalk escarpment, the Department of Armament Supply (DAS), for whom my father worked, imported miners and engineers and dug huge tunnels into the hillside to store mines, torpedoes, and shells.  It had its own 2’6” railway, and the ordnance was then transported to the Navy in Gosport and Portsmouth.  We eventually found the remote village of West Dean – it still feels rural in 2020; what it must have felt like in 1948 who knows – and enjoyed a ride in a big loop of still unspoilt countryside, eventually topping out on a ridge to the north overlooking Salisbury plain and Porton Down.  Berries, sloes and hips in profusion.  Dean Hill still exists, a small industrial park, the typical MoD fence and the two story redbrick flat-roofed admiralty buildings an unmistakable signature of a bygone age.

 

The last week or so has seen some nostalgic activity on television concerning the 80^th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.  The son of my father in law’s old squadron leader is an actor who has fairly strong left leaning views (he spends a lot of time ‘resting’), but his writings on Facebook are often enjoyable, even if they are sometimes unprintable.  He unearths some remarkable stuff, e.g., and here I was going to give an example, but Facebook have deleted his post!  It was a pretentious arty piece of writing, that in the old days would have been a good entry to Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner feature, with Peter’s trenchant comments appended.

 

As a postscript to this entry, I report that we have been enjoying some fantastic sport recently, particularly the cricket (England v Australia), but especially the Tour de France, which this year is a remarkably open affair, with the yellow, green, polka dot, and white jerseys changing hands frequently, though at the time of writing, the Slovenian Primos Roglic looks the best bet for yellow in Paris.  Less enjoyably, but still addictively, the dear old Premier League of football has restarted.  I report this because of a gobsmacking moment the other evening when watching Newcastle play.  In their first game of the season versus West Ham, Callum Wilson (purchased from Bournemouth) put the ball in the net.  From my left on the sofa came these words from my normally well-spoken and mild mannered wife: ’So why couldn’t you do that for Bournemouth, you twat?’  The difference between Le Tour and football, as someone put it, is that when injured, footballers roll over and over and pretend they can’t carry on; and cyclists roll over and over and pretend that they can carry on.  Give me Le Tour any day.  From the helicopter shots one can always plan one’s next holiday in France too.

 

Just taken a call from our GP surgery.  My wife has back pain, and would like a referral to the rheumatologist she has seen before.  The surgery has indicated that a GP consultation will be required, and they were ringing to book one, by telephone only, in a week’s time.  Pathetic.

 

Friday 18^th September

 

Sad news earlier this week when the friend I spoke of earlier died from the spread of her colonic cancer.  It was proof that Facebook can be a source for good in that her husband posted a sober but laudatory note, and subsequently a montage of some of her finest moments.  Truly a person who loved life, and the comments from all of her friends and colleagues on the site were a testament to her.

 

The Indian Summer has continued.  Global warming is good (so far) for us, though not so good if you happen to live in Oregon or California which are alight with wildfires.  When playing golf the other evening in balmy temperatures, as the sun went down we were besieged by mosquitoes, and I wondered when it would be that malaria re-emerges in the UK.  In the distant past (well, certainly up to the end of the 19^th century), the ‘ague’ was not uncommon in marshy or low lying areas, chiefly the fens, East Anglia, and Kent, and curiously was due exclusively to Plasmodium Vivax, the less deadly form of the disease.  Worldwide, Plasmodium Falciparum is the main cause of mortality.  Many theories exist as to the cause of the decline in English malaria, none entirely conclusive, and my experience the other evening suggests that it might return.  Parkstone Golf Club has plenty of wetland habitat for breeding of midges and mosquitoes.

 

Evening at Parkstone Golf Club

Poole Harbour & 7th Hole, Parkstone G.C., evening

Another friend has commenced chemo for metastatic cancer.

 

My time as a Governor at Poole Hospital is drawing to a close.  The two local trusts will merge and become University Hospitals Dorset on 1^st October.  There is boundless optimism among the executives responsible for the secondary phase of healthcare.  I may possibly continue to try to contribute, though the Zoom meeting style of governance doesn’t really encourage a querying, questioning, challenging attitude to the steamroller of optimism.  What we mustn’t lose sight of is that our health service is not the envy of the world.  It has strengths, but it also has drawbacks, and it seems to me that a radical revision of health care delivery is needed, particularly in primary care.  There seems to be a generation of doctors, maybe accelerated by the ‘hands off’ approach during Covid, who won’t be able or indeed be inclined, to properly examine a patient any more.  I would love to go back to bedside teaching, but will that ever be a feature of training again?

 

Evening blackberrying at Corfe Castle

I must get back to my book club book – ‘An Officer and a Spy’, by Robert Harris; an account of the Dreyfuss affair, which I have never properly understood, so I am looking forward to learning more about it.

 

Sunday September 20^th

 

Yesterday was our morning gym class, warm ups, stretching, and circuits, and very tough it was too.  It now takes longer to recover from vigorous exercise, so I feel very justified in relaxing, reading, solving the cryptic crossword, and watching the final time trial of the Tour de France.  The result is electrifying.  Tadej Pogačar takes the stage by nearly two minutes, and in the process wins the entire race from Primož Roglič, who has worn the maillot jaune for most of the race.  The newspapers today liken it to a Devon Loch moment (q.v.), or a cycling version of Jean van de Velde’s collapse at Carnoustie in the 1999 Open Golf Championship.

 

In the evening we watch the second instalment of ‘Des’, the dramatization of the case of Dennis Nilsen, the serial killer.  Nilsen is played with remarkable and jaw-dropping insouciance by David Tennant, who looks identical to the real character.  It is impossible to get insight into this man though, at least insofar as episode two, and I suspect, episode three are concerned.  Perhaps more interesting is to speculate on what drew Brian Masters, the author, to the story and to his other books on serial killers.  Was it money?  Was it just morbid curiosity?  Was it his homosexuality?  I rather suspect Masters is a man with an eye for the main chance.

 

Enough of Nilsen.  I feel slightly depressed as we walk in a large circuit around Bournemouth and the beaches.  The people seem to be fat, grubby, smoking, earnestly playing crazy golf, or drinking (it is only 11 am), and sit in the beach bars and restaurants in an unconcerned sort of way.  Some of the waiters and waitresses are wearing masks, but not all.  When we walk up Alum Chine, the notice on the pedestrian bridge, covered in verdigris proudly announces that Bournemouth Town Council opened this in 1924, but there is litter and overgrowth of creepers, ivy, and bracken.  Everything looks so shoddy.  Unremoved dead leaves litter the pavements and gutters.  Perhaps this follows a sequence: we learn from the Andrew Marr show this morning that Britons are the worst in Europe for following rules.  Trying to salvage some likeable national character from the detritus, I suppose it is because we are stubborn, suspicious, inherently anti-authoritarian.  Querulous and questioning; but are these good traits or merely a sign of a civilization in decline – even if it ever reached an acme?

 

The depressed feeling is accentuated by my book.  Poor Colonel Picquart, will he come to a good end or a bad end?  The injustice of the frame-up of poor Dreyfus eats into you after a while.  But I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading ‘An Officer and a Spy’; it’s an excellent book.  Typically, the author of the historical novel can’t resist putting in a few topical though barely credible details.  The protagonist attends a cello recital by the young Pablo Casals; he is at the first performance of Debussy’s ‘Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune’; he used to go to a church where César Franck was the organist; and finally he is a regular visitor to the Wagner festivals in Bayreuth.

 

With regard to civilisation, I think I will end my diary for this entry as follows:

 

The United States of America is the only nation to have gone from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilisation.

 

I have not put this in quotation marks because it exists in many different forms, and credit for it has been laid at the door of many, many people.  For example, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Georges Clemenceau.  But it probably comes from James Agate in the 1920s, and he was originally talking about Russia.  But so as not to antagonise my American friends too much, I would report that an American wit has riposted, ‘If what goes on in Europe passes for civilisation, then perhaps it is just as well we skipped this step.’

 

Au revoir.

Yorkshire – Le Grand Départ 2014, or, Walking With Giant-Shimano

Burnsall bridge and Wharfedale

Best bike award - Grassington

Having walked the Dales Way from Ilkley to Lake Windermere in 2009, it seemed only appropriate to visit once again to take in the territory planned for the opening of the 2014 Tour de France.  The Dales Way is 83 miles long and it took us about six days.  On day one of Le Tour the boys in Lycra were going to cover 131 miles in a clockwise circular route from Leeds to Harrogate.  The atmosphere, when we reached Burnsall in Wharfedale, was terrific.  Everywhere, Yorkshire’s oldest bicycles had been dragged from shed and storeroom, painted yellow, and put on display.  Sadly we missed seeing the sheep that some farmers had painted in the colours of the tour jerseys – yellow, green, and white with red polka dots.  Yorkshire tourist authority had recreated their logo of a ram’s head on a hillside – entirely made out of shorn fleeces.  Settle and Copper Dragon breweries had produced their own special beers for the occasion, Golden Fleece Tour de Yorkshire and Hill Hammer respectively.  Both excellent – I can vouch for it.

Settling in to the Devonshire Fell in Burnsall, we quickly set off to walk the Monks’ Road known as Mastiles Lane.  This green road leading over the moors from Wharfedale to Malhamdale is part of an ancient system of routes that the wealthy monks from Ripon would take to walk over into their vast estates in the Southern parts of the Dales.  It later found use as a drove road, and detouring off it to the south brings you to one of the most inaccessible hamlets in Yorkshire – Bordley – consisting of two farmhouses.  Throughout our walk we had only some raptors and lapwings for company.  Fortunately, the daylight in Yorkshire is noticeably longer than in Poole in late June and we were able to do a six mile circuit before returning to an excellent meal and a bottle of New Zealand chardonnay (Muddy Water 2011 for future reference).  Total walk distance about six miles due to a detour to avoid some cows.

On Tuesday 1^st July, we set out early for Malham, which looked beautiful in brilliant morning sunlight, the lovely steeply humped stone bridge crossing the Malham beck which whirls and bobbles its way on down to become the beginning of the river Aire.

Malham Beck in the morning sunshine

Our circular route took us south across the fields, spotting a heron drying its wings in the sunshine by the beck, before turning east and north again to Janet’s Foss, a pretty natural waterfall.  A dipper hopped from rock to rock in the foss, clinging to near vertical moss covered surfaces on the falls.  On emerging from Janet’s Foss, the path directs north to Gordale Scar, an impressive natural gorge dramatized by the Lakeland poets.  A lower and a higher falls are accessible to rock climbers, but we decided against going directly up the gorge.  At moments like these I always think of Boswell and Johnson and their trip to Scotland.  On Skye, despite proximity to a fine hill immediately behind their dwelling, Boswell noted ‘The hill behind the house we did not climb...’  and I take heart from this in places like Gordale Scar.  We detoured up a steep enough ascent, which gave fine views into the scar, and then set out across the bleak upland plateau which takes one to Malham Tarn, England’s highest freshwater lake, beloved of Charles Kingsley.

Gordale Scar seen from the detour

En route today we occasionally came across schoolchildren, clutching their clipboards, on the end of term school trip.  What a nightmare for the teachers!  Across the moorland we became aware of numerous bright little birds – wheatears – which were identified for us by the RSPB group at Malham Cove.  Walking south from Malham Tarn, the moor descends into the famous dry valleys, finally emerging on a high plateau, Malham Cove, and the remarkable limestone pavements, with a spectacular view down into Malhamdale.  This enormous ledge is a part of the same fault – the Craven fault – which created Gordale Scar.  Peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs.  The curving limestone cliff, which falls abruptly 260 feet sheer into Malhamdale, was used in the Harry Potter movies.  The Lister Arms provided an excellent final destination with the aforementioned Golden Fleece pale ale.  Distance about ten miles.

Limestone pavement, Malham Cove

Malham dale, seen from the Cove

Malham Cove

Wednesday 2^nd July.  A long drive to Horton in Ribblesdale.  Ideally we would have done the Pen y Ghent climb and circular walk from Litton, which is closer by road.  But this is a good 14 miles and Lindsay didn’t feel her feet or her shin splints were up to it.  So we did the shorter route.  At least it allowed us to come back by the famous Ribblehead viaduct and Hawes, with a venture over into Wensleydale and a return over the pass (Le Cote de Cray as the guide calls it) into Wharfedale which Le Tour would be ascending on the 5^th of July.  The weather was beautiful at the start – sunny, blue sky, etc.  Having forgotten our maps and guidebooks we had to buy yet another in the tourist information shop at Horton.  We also chatted to a very professional looking walker, kitted out in a black outfit which reminded one of the Paris riot police.  He had two Springer spaniels with him, all of them looking rather fit.  He came from Scunthorpe and spoke broad Yorkshire.  Starting out on the route which leads to the northeast up part of the Pennine Way, we detoured to Hull Pot, an enormous hidden hole on the hillside; the water far below could be heard murmuring into the ground.  Then the ascent of Pen y Ghent from the West, turning south to reach the trig point.  At the top we found our friend with his dogs, having ascended the direttissima.  He advised us about the direct descent over the cliffs to the south and enquired whether we were doing all three peaks.  Answer: ‘no’.  ‘Yer can doo it in twelve hour’, he observed.  ‘I would have dun it meself ‘cept I got ‘ere a bit lait.’  We were to meet him finally back in the car park where he averred that he ‘were pleased that yer enjoyed thissen.’  We climbed carefully over the cliffs, descended on the Pennine Way, then turned right to come back past some more ‘shake holes’ and Dub Cote farm.  Meeting other walkers in Yorkshire on the way down, accompanied by the inevitable ‘Ow do’ and a ‘Hi’ from us.  It allowed us to be back in time to change for dinner in the excellent Burlington Restaurant of the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey.  Distance about 7½ miles.

Horton-in-Ribblesdale station with Pen y Ghent

Selfie with Pen y Ghent

King and Queen of the Mountains

Thursday 3^rd July.  Drive to Appletreewick (pronounced Aptrick).  We would have walked it but anticipated that we needed an early start to get to Leeds for the opening ceremony of Le Tour at the First Direct Arena.  We had a marvellous walk up a hidden gem – Trollers Gill, above Skyreholme.  A hidden valley, to the west of the estate of Percevall Hall, and then a tricky ascent up the stones of the Gill, past the old lead and fluorite mines, and back over the plateau to the Craven Arms in Appletreewick, ‘Gateway to the Ales’.  A quick Theakstons and then it was time to head for Leeds.  Walking distance about six miles.

We were fortunate to reach the Merrion Centre car park just after 2pm.  Thereafter it rapidly filled up.  The atmosphere in Leeds was abuzz with pre Tour activity.  Trick cycling demonstrations, bands, steel bands, and sales stalls.  We walked around the centre and passed some time by visiting the Leeds City Art Gallery.  An exquisite ceiling in the cafe.  Although small, the gallery has a good collection of many 19^th and 20^th century works, from pre-Raphaelites via Atkinson Grimshaw to Corot, Impressionists and Fauves.  There are a couple of beautiful Sisleys and a very characteristic Derain.  The 20^th century collection is perhaps ‘to be discussed’ or ‘shall we re-evaluate in 100 years’ time?’  A Damien Hirst catches the eye, mainly because it is one of those works that one feels one could have painted oneself, and a few other works that look representative of one’s children’s efforts (Castle Court School, circa 1994).  In the ground floor galleries, there is an exhibition of what looked like Mondrian, but turned out to be by an associate, Marion (‘call me Marlow because I don’t really want to be female’) Moss.  Her main contribution to geometric art turned out to be the double line, which Piet Mondrian himself had not thought of.  There were some strange photographs by a strange woman who lived in Jersey in the first half of the 20^th Century (Claude Cahun).

Back to the First Direct arena.  The opening ceremony was supposed to have been modelled on the 2012 Olympics, but was not quite as lavish (understatement).  The opening with Opera North and local children was effective, but we should have had more of it.  A trio of Yorkshire presenters did their best to do the warm up, but with an hour to kill it was a bit difficult for them.  There were some unmemorable bike films.  The two main presenters, Jill Douglas (ITV sports commentator) and Sebastien Piquet (the voice of Radio Tour) did the team presentations.  Between each team a short clip showed some Yorkshire stalwart doing Yorkshire things (Sheffield steelman, Scarborough street cleaner, etc) and ended with them saying ‘Bienvenue à Yorkshire...  Welcome to Yorkshire’.  Since there are 22 teams they had a few breaks for music, Kimberley Walsh (very pregnant) and some chap from Yorkshire sang ‘The Road’, the theme for this year’s tour, which sounds a bit like John Denver’s Country Roads...  The chief exec of the Yorkshire effort gave a speech.  Christian Prudhomme, the race director gave a short but fine speech, in English, and used the phrase ‘God’s County’ to describe Yorkshire, which predictably went down well.  The organizers missed a trick because there were some well known people in the audience who weren’t introduced, e.g. Lizzie Armitstead and former multiple Tour winner Bernard Hinault.  The formal event ended with the introduction of Yorkshire’s own pop Megastars, Embrace.  They sang some of their top hits – I knew none of them except the first one which I gather is called something like ‘Nature’s Life’ and has a memorable chorus which goes ‘Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh’.  Unfortunately as soon as they came on people started leaving in droves (perhaps they’d heard them before) and although the final set was only half an hour before it all ended, the hall was half full by the time we left.  No news is good news however, and it meant that we had easy exit from the car park and a trouble free journey back to Burnsall, through the darkening Dales, where we relaxed with a drink before bedtime.

Leeds Town Centre

Chris Froome and the Sky team

Appletreewick - pronounced 'Aptrick'

Burnsall

Swinden Quarry

Malham

Bienvenue a Bainbridge, Wensleydale

Near Hawes

So that’s about it from God’s county.  Glad we went.  Would have loved to have been at the race as well, but we’ll be back in Yorkshire, no doubt.  Gutted for Cavendish on day one, but both days in Yorkshire were held in good weather with fantastic scenery...