A War Diary - February 11th 2022 to April 30th

 

WAR DIARY 

 

March 18th - a beautiful arrangement of hellebores at a friend's dinner party - something we haven't been to for two years

Starting this new phase of the diary.  Previously called the ‘Corona Diary’.  February 11^th 2022 is the exact two year anniversary of the designation of Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) as a pandemic by WHO.  Admissions to hospital are increasing in the UK because of the complete relaxation of restrictions, and because of the enhanced transmissibility of the Omicron variant.  Lindsay tells me that there is a ‘Deltacron’ variant, but I await further data.  An interesting post by a nurse on Facebook calls attention to the bizarre paradox that anti-vaxxers, on admission to hospital and ITU, are more than ready to be filled full of cocktails of modern drugs to treat their Covid, but, strangely, were not previously prepared to be vaccinated!  How Lewis Carroll is that?

 

‘Contrariwise’, continued Tweedledee, ‘If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t.  That’s logic’.

 

So, I will leave Corona for the time being.  The war in Ukraine is on all our minds now.  The outrageous disinformation from Russia is truly mind-boggling.  I have noticed, and I feel the same too, that many friends cannot bear to switch on the news.  I confine myself to gathering in the bare daily facts.  It is hard to watch suffering.

 

Sunday March 13^th

 

It is the middle of the night.  I play my guitar.  Vivaldi, Hoagy Carmichael, Pachelbel.  Strange bedfellows, though bedfellows is perhaps not the right word.  Easy arrangements you understand.  I’m no John Williams.  A friend visited on Friday.  She said that deranged sleep patterns are a feature of Covid.  Truth to tell I’ve sometimes had these episodes before.  Maybe it’s worse.  I woke up from a strange dream, with a headache.  Now waiting for the Solpadeine to work.  In the dream, two trees had come down.  I didn’t recognise the house; the neighbour was the same though.  Going through my mind was the following:

 

‘Time it was, and what a time it was

It was…

A time of innocence

A time of confidences…

 

Long ago, it must be,

I have a photograph.

Preserve your memories,

They’re all that’s left you…’

 

Strange, isn’t it?  Sitting on the music stool I cast my eyes left and downwards.  Standing by the record turntable, the Richard Avedon photograph of Simon and Garfunkel.  Bookends.  Strange…  As I have observed before, Paul Simon is a poet.  Equally deserving of the Nobel as Bob Dylan.  Nobel – dynamite.  It’s hard not to think about the War, or ‘Special Operation’, as Putin calls it for domestic consumption.

 

‘Vlad i mir

What are you doing here?’

 

First two lines of a song or poem by the author.  I can’t complete it just now…

 

In 1974, Mr Cool, I bought a pigskin jacket.  It cost £54.  A website tells me that this is worth about £800 nowadays!  I was in my second housejob (internship).  I worked so many hours I couldn’t spend my salary.  Then I left the jacket on the back of my chair in a pub in Old Basing.  I rushed back at lunchtime the next day.  Of course somebody had taken it.  Wonder whether somebody still wears it?  I was distraught.  The purpose of this story – this Tristram Shandyish story – is that once I summoned up the courage and mental effort to go out and buy an identical one, I felt better.  But the related purpose of this story is to tell of my collected poems of T S Eliot (the S for Stearns is put in there so that nobody can spell his name ‘Toilets’ backwards).  I loaned it to someone years ago.  It never returned.  The other day, a line from the ‘Four Quartets’ coming into my head, I determined to buy another copy.  Only just over three pounds, with free postage!  I felt better.  Shades of the pigskin jacket.  When it arrived it was in perfect condition, and proudly bears the stamp ‘Cork City Library’.  Why don’t they need their copy any more?  It must have been there for years – obviously not borrowed frequently.

 

Now, what was it that was running through my brain?  It is the suffering in Ukraine.

 

‘…human kind cannot bear very much reality’. (Burnt Norton)

 

This is why we switch off the news.

 

I don’t pretend to understand all of Eliot.  Ralph Fiennes, who has been giving stage readings recently of the Four Quartets said something very similar when I saw him interviewed about it.  But mostly I can see what Eliot’s getting at.  When he wrote this (1935) there was great interest in the concept of time.

 

  ‘Time present and time past are both perhaps contained in time future…’  

 

Alternative realities influenced J.B. Priestley (Time and the Conways; Dangerous Corner; I have been here before), and they were still influencing authors such as John Fowles, years later (The French Lieutenant’s Woman).  In the 1930s, Einstein must have seemed like the scientific celebrity equivalent to Stephen Hawking in our time… and after Einstein, nobody understood time.

 

But this is a long way from a War Diary.  Prevarication.

 

Monday March 14^th

 

It is ‘pi’ day.  Only the Americans think of it this way because they write it 3.14 (π to 2 decimal places).

 

I cannot report anything new about the war.  A photograph taken the other day showed an injured heavily pregnant woman removed from a maternity hospital which had been bombed.  Reportedly, today, both she and the baby are dead.  I’ve been saddened too, to watch the little children, with their garish rucksacks, presumably containing clothing and everything that is precious to them, boarding buses to take them away to neutral countries.  Thinking about our little children, or grandchildren, with their rucksacks, is somehow even more upsetting than seeing the faces of these children.

 

Biden has publicly stated that any intervention by America would mean ‘World War Three’.  This plays into the hands of Putin, who has threatened, in a roundabout way, nuclear retaliation.  This seems unlikely – Putin would know that a nuclear attack, no matter where he was hiding, would be the end of him and his regime.  There is a strong mood of bitterness and frustration at our inaction in letters to the newspapers today:

 

‘We are standing on the sidelines watching Russia target civilians in Ukraine as its method for overrunning the country’.

 

‘Western leaders have fallen over themselves retreating from red lines (invading a sovereign state, attacking nuclear power plants, targeting civilians)…  All our leaders are doing now is postponing the inevitable – and while they dither Ukrainians die’.

 

Biden’s statement: ‘those words invite Mr Putin to invade other neighbours with no fear of reprisals, except for sanctions that don’t deter him.  It isn’t Mr Putin who is crackers.  It is us’.

 

‘Can’t someone smear something nasty on Mr Putin’s front-door knob’?

 

I mentioned Alexandra Hall Hall recently.  Although a very clear thinker, and hugely experienced as a diplomat, she is very clearly a European anti-Brexit person.  But she ignores the fact that, even if we were still in the EU, we would be dithering about Russia in just the same, or perhaps an even more disorganised way.  European federalism has completely failed to tackle the risk on our borders.  A huge and successful country like Ukraine, which is mostly Westward looking, should have been invited into the EU soon after the fall of the Soviet Republic.  Failure to do this has invited Russia to attempt to take it back.  And European Federalism is mostly about bureaucracy, red tape, and economic partnering – it has no firm military organisation.  What is more, for nations like Germany particularly, as well as richer nations such as ourselves, it has been about giving money to the poorer members, often for the most ridiculous projects.  Trump certainly had a point in his carping about NATO member states not paying their legitimate share of the defence budget.  I do wonder sometimes whether, if Reagan and Thatcher were still in their respective posts, Putin would have attempted his ‘Special Operation’.

 

 

Tuesday March 15^th

 

Eventually got around to reading an interview with David Hare in the weekend review.  I presume it was done before the war (the New war).  For a left-leaning dramatist, I couldn’t resist a smile when I heard that he laments that Margaret Thatcher was not in charge during the pandemic.  As both a scientist and a politician she would have organised things better.  As he reflects, ‘She had competence; something noticeably lacking in the present incumbent.’

We have had our ‘Tiananmen Square’ moment.  A presenter on Russian TV suddenly appeared behind the newsreader with a ‘Stop the War’ message.  This brave girl is called Marina Ovsyannikova.  Like the man standing in front of the tanks in 1989, she is now missing.  (Note added 16^th March; she is visible, and has been fined, but may ‘face further charges’).

 

Say what you like about President Kennedy (and many have), his speeches are remarkable in their quality, compared, let us say, to be even handed, to Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  Here is the text of his speech before the Canadian Parliament on May 17^th, 1961, tragically and ironically, his first trip outside the U.S. as President.

 

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/may-17-1961-address-canadian-parliament

 

I came across this because I was searching for the origin of the famous sentence:

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’, erroneously it seems attributed to Edmund Burke.  Kennedy used it in this speech.

 

 

Wednesday, March 16^th

 

A southerly wind bringing yellow or brown Saharan dust has covered the ski slopes of the Alps, and there are pictures of what they call ‘Saharstaub’ from Lenzerheide.  It seems to have reached here today, giving a very gloomy cast to the sky before heavy rain adds to the murk and puts an end to plans for golf today.

 

No change in Ukraine.  Bizarrely, Ukraine and Russia have been holding talks.  Zelensky (Ukrainian President) has put a promise not to join NATO on the table.  I can’t see any satisfactory resolution to this, and I suspect Putin is just doing this as a sham negotiation.

 

There is much discussion about making the West less dependent on Russian oil.  Perhaps this will kickstart alternative approaches to energy generation?  A recent edition of CAM (Cambridge Alumni Magazine) focussed on climate change and green issues.  There were two topics I found interesting.  One was a word I had never heard before – dunkelflaute – a German word meaning ‘dark doldrums’, i.e. how to produce energy when it’s dark (no solar); or when there is no wind for wind turbines.  The second is that current solar panels are more efficient and cheaper to make than previously, but still only capture about a third of the wavelength energies contained in the sun’s light emissions.  Work proceeds on how to make them more efficient.  But, forgive the pun, the push to carbon zero may have to go on the back burner until war is over in Ukraine.  Some years ago, much was made about the harnessing of tidal energy with tidal turbines, but that doesn’t seem to have come to fruition.  As a letter in the paper stated the other day, the tide will come in and go out again for as long as the moon continues to go round the earth.  Why are we not making use of it?

 

Thursday March 17^th, St Patrick’s Day

 

Another strong Irish presence at the Cheltenham Festival (horse racing).  Shamrocks in the top pocket for Sir A P McCoy.  Lovely weather today in contrast to yesterday.

 

Boris Johnson seems to have returned from Saudi with his tail between his legs, having failed to persuade the Gulf States to turn on the tap to provide more oil.  The Americans were apparently in secret negotiations with them recently but no word on their progress.  The 6 year custodial hostage, Nazanin Naghari-Radcliffe, held by Iran on trumped up spying charges, has returned to the UK, seemingly as a result of the UK repaying a £400 million debt owed to them since the Islamic takeover.

 

Yesterday evening was a very emotional one.  Kirill Karabits, the Ukrainian chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, returned for the first time since the war began.  Many of us wore blue and yellow, or waved sunflowers.  Kirill received a standing ovation and then addressed us.  ‘Since I last saw you’, he began, ‘the world has changed; and not for the better’.  He went on to say how moved he had been by the many messages of support.  Suggestions had been made that the orchestra play some Ukrainian music.  But as an audience, he reminded us, we have probably heard more Ukrainian music over the last 13 years (his period of tenure) than anybody else outside Ukraine!  Besides, he stated that Sibelius’ 2^nd Symphony, the main work, was written at a time of threat and trouble for Finland in their relationship with Russia, and he believed that its profound nature typified the need for struggle for one’s country.

A reflective Kirill Karabits on the podium at Poole Lighthouse

 

The other main work on the programme was Bax’s Tintagel – a work which was given its premiere by the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra (as it was then) under Sir Dan Godfrey in 1921. Another piece echoing with the threat or actuality of war (written 1917-19).  Looking at the yellowing pages on the music stands of the first violins it was easy to believe that these were still the original manuscripts.

 

The Poole audience (for bizarrely, the BSO is a Poole based orchestra) is not known for demonstrativeness.  A second standing ovation, which the Sibelius received, is unknown.

 

Tuesday March 29^th, 2022

 

It is easy to get depressed.

 

‘Our lot crawls between dry ribs, to keep our metaphysics warm.’

 

 

The war rumbles on, though success against Putin by the Ukrainians has forced a retrenchment and a focus on the southeast of the country, particularly the Black Sea coast.  There are many Russian speakers in the area – shades of the Sudetenland again – and Putin’s chosen tactic is to destroy the cities such as Mariupol, and even to deport many local inhabitants to camps in Russia.  Lyse Doucet reminded us yesterday evening that Putin has stated in the past ‘Ukraine should not exist’, a chilling statement of how he views the true extent of the Russian Empire.  In the meantime, Biden has come under fire again for a rather stupid remark calling for ‘regime change’ in Russia.  Superficially this doesn’t seem unreasonable, but as his critics point out, that is a matter for the Russian people.  There is significant dissent about the war in Russia, but it is hard to gauge how widespread this is.  An open letter signed by many academics has surfaced.  The current ban on demonstrations has led to an underground symbol – a knot of green ribbon – which has started appearing in public places, surreptitiously placed on important Soviet era statues and the like.  An unusual incident in Ukraine brings back memories of ‘fragging’, the deliberate killing of senior officers by disaffected men under their command.  Upset by losses incurred in their engagements with the Ukrainians, a group of Russian conscripts deliberately ran over their commander, a Colonel Medvedev, with a tank.  He later died of the wounds inflicted.  (Although this type of military action existed before, the term fragging came from the use of fragmentation grenades by Vietnam war soldiers in this context).

 

I went to a college reunion in Cambridge this last weekend.  It was a lot better than I anticipated, and the college must have decided that at our age we might be thinking about a legacy, so the boat was well pushed out with an excellent meal and good wines.  I met fellow undergraduates whom I have not seen for over 50 years.  A beautiful day in Cambridge, the streets seemingly filled everywhere with Chinese people, students, visitors, and tourists.  I even saw a young man walking through Downing College with a sweatshirt which proclaimed his name and title (Tom Chen) ‘Chinese Student Welfare Support Team’, or some such.  Some of the David Hockney exhibition was in the Fitzwilliam, and some in a Chinese funded gallery in Downing, the ‘Heong’ gallery.  The room I was allocated in College is usually inhabited in term time by somebody called Qi Qi.  It’s almost certainly a racist remark to say that it sounds like a giant panda, but this is what came to mind…

 

Early the next morning, Cambridge was enshrouded in mist, and I walked around freely, the streets almost empty.

Misty early morning looking downriver at Queens'

Hockney at the Fitzwilliam

 

On my way home, stopping in a motorway service station, I walked back outside to meet a family dragging themselves towards the fast food.  Dragging being the operative word.  The dad, had scarce been able to exit the car before lighting up.  The scrawny son – perhaps 16 to 18, rapidly rolling himself a cigarette.  Mother followed with her daughter.  How sad.  Just hours before I had been walking past the Cavendish laboratory; the Downing site; inhabited by the greatest scientists and Nobel Prize winners.  Why all the scientific advance if this is the result?  To give cigarette-addicted dad a mobile phone to make it easier to waste even more money with instant betting on Paddy Power?

 

Today was the memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh, and it was brief and moving.  The Queen attended.  The senior lady royals wore a dark green; was this Lovat?  In deference to the Scottish connection?  I don’t know.  Interesting to see the Queen escorted in through a short route rather than the west door – by Prince Andrew.

 

Meanwhile, the free world (for which read the USA) is reeling following a violent episode at the Oscars.  Comedian and (black) actor Will Smith took exception to a tasteless joke about his wife’s alopecia by a black comedian I have never heard of called Chris Rock, and slapped him.  Cue many hours of news anchor time discussing this.  Given the level of violence in many American made films this seems a somewhat hypocritical reaction.  And given what is going on in Ukraine, it seems risible that so much time, and so many column inches are wasted on this little spat in La-La Land.  Unfortunate too in that it probably gives the reactionary white zealots ammunition against black people – you can imagine the story line.  There is some irony in labelling America the Land of the Free.  A radio feature ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ came from Texas, where the Governor recently signed into law a statute that prohibits abortion from about six weeks of gestation – after a beating heart is detected.  In practice this means no abortions, since many women are not aware of pregnancy until later than this.  No exceptions, even in cases of rape.  The USA, in its own fundamentalist way, is also one of the most illiberal countries in the world.

 

Tuesday 5^th April

 

Following a beautifully sunny weekend, though with biting northeasterly winds, we have a milder period.  I played golf at Rye, one of the great places of the world for golf.  A very traditional club.  Jacket and tie required.  The town of Rye stands on a promontory, which 700 years ago was on the sea’s edge.  Now the accumulation of shingle has made it a two mile journey to the sea.  The tidal River Rother winds its way muddily past the town.  On the dunes – skylarks.

A typical scene at Rye

 

The war is as unspeakable as ever.  Murder, rape, and torture of civilians is commonplace.  Again, the West is reluctant to get involved, though it continues to provide military equipment and weapons – a ‘nice’ point.  The consequences for us are minor in comparison – increased prices of energy, fuel, commodities, and absence of foodstuffs which come from Ukraine – sunflower oil (the sunflower is the Ukrainian national flower), and grain prices are higher.  You would not think that these are minor to read the papers or hear the dialogue on TV news programmes.

 

Surreally, life continues.  Much anxiety for example, about the ‘draw’ in the World Cup (football) which will take place in Qatar (yes, Qatar) later this year.  England emerge with a favourable draw in a group with Iran, USA, and a playoff team.  Sun headline – ‘It’s Iranian Men’.  Please ask if you don’t understand this.  Plenty of hypocrisy here too – Qatari human rights are appalling; many migrant workers died because of unsafe construction practices during the building of stadia; and homosexuality is illegal.

 

There is much debate about reliance on Russian oil imports (only about 4% in the UK but much higher in many countries), and debate about self-sufficiency as regards energy supplies…

 

Publicity about the construction at Hinkley Point C – a new nuclear power station.  Belatedly we realise that our previous energy policies may be flawed.  A nice cartoon by Blower in the Telegraph illustrates how our countryside may change (with apologies to John Constable):

 

Blower - copyright The Telegraph

 

 

Sunday April 10^th

 

Another atrocity – a missile targeting a railway station in the east of Ukraine, where civilians were trying to board trains to evacuate.  There is really nothing good to report about this war.  Surprise visit of PM Boris Johnson to Kyiv, and he is filmed walking around with President Zelensky.  Detractors say publicity stunt, of course.  UK to provide more hardware including anti-ship missiles, aimed at preventing the invasion and occupation of Odessa from the Black Sea.

 

I should mention the awful gathering of Russians in a stadium in central Moscow some weeks ago.  Compulsory attendance and lots of flag waving (we are told that employees of local businesses were given the day off provided they attended).  Putin stalking onto the stage clad in a £3,500 Loro Piana coat.  Loro Piana is apparently the luxury wear of choice for oligarchs and dictators.  The event reminded one forcibly of Hitler, the Nuremberg rallies and the Leni Riefenstahl film ‘Triumph of the Will’.

 

One feels guilty talking of other things.  The skylarks over Rye golf course bring to mind the escape that WWI soldiers felt in observing ordinary natural things during that war.  Isaac Rosenberg wrote in his poem ‘Returning, we hear the larks’:

 

But hark!  Joy-joy-strange joy, Lo!  Heights of night ringing with unseen larks.  Music showering on our upturned list’ning faces’.

 

John McCrae (In Flanders Fields): ‘The larks, still bravely singing, fly, scarce heard amid the guns below’.

 

Is it any wonder that the skylarks on the dunes evoke these thoughts?  And in Rye and on the Romney Marsh, of all places, where, with the wind in a southerly direction, ordinary villagers were able to hear the guns on the Somme in 1916.

 

And a lovely walk in West Dorset yesterday, with some wild garlic gathering, turned into soup today.  Vaccinating the elderly (over 75s) today.  It’s a terrible generalisation I know, but older people seem much nicer than younger people.  They don’t take this vaccination service for granted.  Watching yesterday’s Grand National from Aintree, and now the Masters golf from Augusta, with the rhododendrons, dogwoods, and azaleas in perfect bloom.  Some normality.

Springtime wood anemones in Dorset woodland

Winterborne Houghton church - solidarity with Ukraine

Cottage - Winterborne Stickland

 

Scottie Scheffler won the Masters golf tournament.  Another headline I wish I had had the wit to make up ‘Master-Scheff’.

 

Saturday 30^th April

 

Entries to this diary now infrequent.  What is there to say about a war that is new or original?  The West is at war with Russia in all but name, supplying much hardware though not personnel.

 

The different facets of war are unusually expressed in a remarkable book called Children’s War Diaries, collated by Laurel Holliday which I picked up at the second hand book display underneath Waterloo Bridge, just next to the National Theatre some years ago.  In one diary, for example, written by a 13 year old Jewish child in Budapest, Eva Heyman, there is fear and dread and ultimately – silence.  For she was murdered at Auschwitz in October 1944.  The diary only survives because it was saved by her devout Christian maid.  In another, Joan Wyndham, a teenager from a partly aristocratic, partly Bohemian family in London wrote: ‘The bombs are lovely, I think it’s all thrilling.  Nevertheless, as the opposite of death is life, I think I shall get seduced by Rupert tomorrow’.  Like many, it was only when friends were killed that she realised what war really meant, and enlisted in the Women’s Armed Services.

 

So it is with us.  ‘We that have free souls, it touches us not’.  Our life goes on.

 

We have recently had our first holiday in over two years – three days in Wales.  There are some cynics who would guffaw at this suggestion, that any visit to Wales can be a holiday.  A partisan Scottish colleague (despite the fact he lives near Southampton) had hoped to get to the end of his life without ever visiting Wales, a principle he adhered to until a friend invited him to play golf at Royal Porthcawl.

 

To return to the Dylan Thomas theme, we journeyed to Laugharne, where Dylan lived from 1949 until his death in 1953.  Stopping in Llansteffan on the adjacent estuary – the Towy – we found again the ruins of one of those frontier castles which the Normans built as they tried to extend (or defend) their empire into Wales.  At school in Fishguard, the history of Wales was dinned into us at every opportunity, including the fact that the Normans found the unruly Welsh in the north of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire so ‘difficult’ that they had to fortify in a more or less straight line along from West to East.  The line which demarcates English from Welsh speaking inhabitants is sharper than the line of castles and is called the Landsker Line, an Anglo-Saxon term meaning a separation of land.  The Landsker Line runs in a more northwest to southeast direction.  But what we were taught is also an oversimplification.  There are more than 50 castles in Southwest Wales, built by both invaders and defenders – ranging across Cardiganshire, Pembrokeshire, and Carmarthenshire.

Llansteffan Castle looking northeast

After a walk over the castle ruins we drove to the centre of Dylan Thomas culture in Laugharne.  There are several walks here, including the Dylan Thomas trail which takes in The Boathouse where he lived, his writing shed, and his grave in the village churchyard.  Caitlin Thomas is also buried here.  Four years after Dylan’s death she published a book, ‘Leftover Life to Kill’, though perhaps this was a little premature.  She lived on until 1994, over 40 years from Dylan’s death.

 

Laugharne Castle

The Boathouse - looking south towards Sir John's Hill

Peering into Dylan's Writing Shed

Dylan Thomas's Grave

Spring flowering near the Boathouse

Dylan’s Birthday Walk includes Sir John’s Hill, the title of one of his late poems, and the hill and woodland which is thought to relate to Poem in October, celebrating his 30^th birthday.  Poem in October however was written in 1944 in Llangain, a small village near the Towy estuary, where his mother’s family owned a cottage.  No matter; he may have intended Sir John’s Hill to be the ‘high hill’ of the poem.  Laugharne town council certainly make the most of the Dylan story.

 

Continuing the Welsh coast walking, I started from Amroth, where we ended the Pembrokeshire coast path trail, and headed east over spectacular and unspoilt headlands, down tiny paths through stunted trees and alleyways of bluebells, up to gorse clad hills where a kestrel, or perhaps a peregrine, whizzed over the edge of the cliff.  A jackdaw flapped up in front, a vole in its beak.  Skylarks sang above; stonechats and warblers hopped from bush to bush or dived into the sedge in the low-lying marshy areas.  A buzzard soared.  The sun shone, and a cold east wind blew.  Always the Gower peninsula visible to the south, and Tenby and Caldey Island to the west.  I stopped for lunch in Pendine at the start of the famous sands, scene of multiple land speed records in the 1920s.  Sadly the MoD requisitioned the beach during WW2 and access is restricted.

Tunnel like paths - ringed with bluebells

Looking west back to Amroth

A tedious low-lying stretch of the coast path is redeemed as one enters the area at the mouth of the Taf estuary, the salt marshes, and finally the woodland of Sir John’s Hill.  Benches placed to enjoy the views carry quotes from Poem in October.  A new one (‘Summery on the Hill’s Shoulder’) also carries a plaque – ‘Bench by Bob; View by God’.

Bench

View

For Dylan Thomas, in ‘Over Sir John’s Hill’, the heron acquired a near mythical, and possibly quasi-religious meaning.  ‘…and slowly the fishing holy stalking heron/ In the river Towy below bows his tilted headstone.’

‘Where the elegiac fisherbird stabs and paddles/ In the pebbly dab-filled / Shallow and sedge…’

 

Walking down through the woods, the strange burbling and growling sounds led me, not to a heronry, as Dylan would have seen, but a colony of little egrets.  Thus time and nature passes…

 

We ate at Brown’s Hotel, a popular drinking spot for Dylan (but one could rhetorically say, of course, where wasn’t?), and enjoyed wonderful steaks from local long aged beef.  Of necessity, we ate there again on the following night, all other places being closed on a Monday.

 

Finally, to round off the holiday, I walked from Kidwelly to Burry Port, much of which goes through Pembrey Country Park, fringed by eight miles of Cefn Sidan beach, which though lesser known, is finer than Pendine.  The beach is littered with the hulks of ships driven ashore by Southwesterly storms.  Another modern interloper, a red kite, cruises above me.  All day, something about Kidwelly, which I had not visited before, nagged at me.  Eventually it came:  the S.S. Kidwelly was the ship commanded by Captain Cat in Under Milk Wood.  As he dreams: ‘…never such seas as any that swamped the decks of the S.S. Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish slippery sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and the long drowned nuzzle up to him.’

 

One of the 'long-drowned' hulks on Cefn Sidan beach

Kidwelly has one of the finest of the frontier castles, mostly complete in its twelfth and thirteenth century conception and building.

Kidwelly Castle

Cattle graze on the salt marshes to the southwest of Kidwelly

 

Eventually it was time to leave, and to make our way to Swansea to watch the Swans play AFC Bournemouth (The Cherries).  Facing a long drive home, I persuade Lindsay to leave after 75 minutes when Bournemouth are running around like headless chickens and have conceded three goals.  I am not forgiven when Bournemouth score three goals in the final quarter of an hour to tie the match.

 

Back in Poole, the sunny cold dry weather with a forceful easterly continues.

 

There is much I could write about, but it is so petty, it is scarcely worth your while to read it.  Allegations in the Daily Mail that a female labour MP (Angela Rayner) crosses and uncrosses her legs while wearing a miniskirt to put Boris Johnson off his speeches – a Basic Instinct moment as it is dubbed.  Another article reveals that a Tory MP has watched porn on his phone in the House (he has resigned).  A headline, ‘Boris Jailed’ excites interest until one realises that sadly, it is Boris Becker who concealed £2.5M from bankruptcy investigators a couple of years ago, who is off to spend time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

 

The war?  Yes, of course it continues.  Putin is now concentrating his efforts in the southeast of Ukraine.  Suggestions that Moldova is likely to be the next target.

 

I think it is time to end this section…

 

CORONA/WAR DIARY CHAPTER 27/CHAPTER 1 - FEBRUARY 8th 2022 to MARCH 10th 2022.

 

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 8th, 2022

 

Time to record the first swim since New Year’s Day.  Freezing – well, it was 8 degrees C.  Just for the record, you understand.  Nothing else to add.

 

MONDAY FEBRUARY 14th, ST VALENTINE’S DAY

Valentine cupcakes, courtesy 'Maggie the Seaside Baker', q.v.

Advice and a 'handshake' from Maggie the Seaside Baker

 And I have Covid.  After nearly two years, at last, it has come to this, or at least come to me.  The Omicron variant (which I suppose I have – I have not lost my sense of taste or smell) is rife, and it may become harder to miss it than escape it.  Almost certainly acquired at our recent book club meeting (a member recalled that this person, whom medically we call the ‘Index Case’ (!) had such vigorous views on the ‘Fall’ biography of Robert Maxwell, that phlegm and spittle might have landed on the cheese board, which is an unpleasant thought, but it was not I that thought it).  The index case was asymptomatic, but symptomatic the next day.  Two days later I noted a dry cough, and tested negative.  Three days later the cough was incessant, with headache, malaise, and some fever, and the lateral flow test strip lit up like a beacon, as they say, within minutes of the pregnant droplets falling upon the well.  Two rather rough days and nights followed, but I am on the mend.

Bingo!

Google knows where you are and what you are doing.  Evidence that I did isolate for the period when I was Covid positive.

 

There were two images that came to mind.  The first being the Edgar Allan Poe short story, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, where Prince Prospero, his Kingdom devastated by the pandemic of the Red Death (evidently a sort of haemorrhagic fever, such as we know as Lassa or Ebola), takes 1000 of his healthy high born courtiers and subjects into his Royal Apartments and bids his armourers seal and weld all doors.  Of course (spoiler alert), the Red Death gets in.  Perhaps, for Prince Prospero, one should substitute the name Jacinta Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand?

 

The second, more subtle illustration, is from Dylan Thomas.  ‘In Country Sleep’ is one of his later poems.  In the poem, written in Italy, and generally thought to be addressed to his daughter Aeronwy, ‘the Thief in the night’ threatens to get in, no matter what precaution one takes.  In the first stanza, the Thief is described in nursery rhyme terms as the ‘wolf in a sheepwhite hood’, but later, more specifically, ‘Be you sure the Thief will seek a way, sly and sure’.  And, ‘Ever and ever, he finds a way, as the snow falls, As the rain falls, hail on the fleece…’  These lines sound a little prosaic, taken out of context, and without that wonderful voice reciting them.  Do listen to Dylan reading it.

 

Who is the Thief?  Multiple critics have attempted to answer this, with surprisingly different results.  Who am I to better their attempts!?  Thomas himself gave several interpretations, sometimes depending on whether he was feeling paranoid about Caitlin’s possible dalliances, or whether he was drunk.  Paul Ferris, in his biography of Thomas (p212) rehearses some of these.  But generally, the Thief is assumed to be Time or Death.  We know that Thomas took his compositions very seriously, at least at this stage of his life.  The working sheets for a poem written at a similar time, ‘Over Sir John’s Hill’, are complete, are preserved in Harvard College Library, and run to 47 sheets of paper, and this poem is less than two-thirds the length of ‘In Country Sleep’.

 

So, at last, the Thief of Covid-19 has found a way, and it doesn’t profit to imagine whether my illness would be different if I hadn’t had a total of four vaccinations.  It was unpleasant enough…

 

So much for the self-indulgence of talking about oneself.  As for Dylan Thomas, and attempts to analyse him, best to leave the last word to Cyril Connolly: ‘At his best he is unique, for he distils an exquisite mysterious moving quality which defies analysis as supreme lyrical poetry always has and – let us hope – always will.’

 

The reader will realise that I have had, for many years, a huge affection for the poetry of Dylan Thomas.  It’s interesting that his contemporaries were also attracted to him, despite his many faults.  He borrowed and never paid back; he stole; he was frequently drunk and incapable; he was faithless; he told lies.  His first poem, at least the first poem for which he was paid, he sold to The Western Mail, and is entitled ‘His Requiem’.  Many years later, in 1971, someone found the poem, written by a Miss Lilian Gard, in a ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ of 1923.  Perhaps it is because I first heard of him, when at the age of ten, I was condemned to, or granted the benison depending on your point of view, of living in Fishguard, in rural West Wales from 1958 to 1961.  Richard Burton promoted Fishguard as the inspiration for ‘Under Milk Wood’, and directed his film version of the play there.  The film crew took over the last little cottage on Lower Town quay and converted it into Blind Captain Cat’s cottage (where Peter O’Toole sat).  The townsfolk complained of the disruption, but at least the Ship Inn did well out of the heavy drinking actors.  A note signed by Burton and others states that on a certain date (1970 or 1971?) the cast and crew drank the pub dry.  Burton was also kind enough to write in the visitor’s book at Fishguard Bay Yacht Club that it compared favourably with the Royal Thames Yacht Club.  As regards the location of Llareggub, it seems more likely that New Quay, north of Cardigan was the inspiration, though the many churches and chapels of Fishguard, and his origins in Swansea are also possible amalgams of the town.  But in 1958, few in Fishguard, five years after Thomas’s death, had a good word to say for him.  Now regarded as one of Wales’s finest poets; at that time he was regarded as something of an embarrassment.  Naively (aged 11) I asked a dinghy sailor at Fishguard Bay Yacht Club, why his super-fast fibreglass dinghy, with which he won all the races, was called ‘Polly Garter’.  ‘Because she’s no better than she ought to be’, he replied.  My mother refused to explain this.  It stimulated an obvious attraction for the creator of Polly Garter.

 

I return to an issue that remains the elephant in the Covid room – ever since the location of its origin emerged, or even since Donald Trump referred to ‘The Chinese Virus’, a possible clue as to the correctness of the laboratory-created virus theory has always been that the nearest animal relation of the virus carries a genome similarity of only around 95%, whereas other viruses passaged through and identified in animal species tend to have a much closer homogeneity to the virus responsible for epidemics or pandemics.  So to create the SARS-CoV-2 virus implies a substantial, and possibly engineered difference in the nucleotides coding particularly for the spike protein.

 

The most recent piece of the jigsaw comes from an unlikely source, as reported by the Daily Telegraph (Sarah Knapton).

 

The University in Budapest had soil samples taken in Antarctica in 2018 and 2019.  In December 2019, these were sent to Shanghai (Shangon Biotech) for genetic analysis.  The samples were subsequently found to be contaminated with a previously unknown variant of SARS-CoV-2.  This variant has a genome which shares features with both the nearest previously known bat coronavirus and the earliest Wuhan strain.  Other findings in the samples contain hamster and monkey DNA traces, perhaps pointing to growth of the virus in animal cell lines, such as would be undertaken in a laboratory.  Sangon Biotech is often used by Chinese researchers for sequencing.  If the work was undertaken before the end of December 2019, this finding would be evidence for a laboratory leak.  If afterwards, it might just be contamination, as scientists in Wuhan struggled to identify the virus.

 

Monday February 21^st, 2022

 

This is the first day that I have felt substantially better, and the lateral flow test is pristinely negative.  A little stroll round Whitley Bay and back.  Still very windy.  We have had three named storms in the last four days – Dudley, Eunice, and Franklin.  Most of these major depressions move further northwards than Poole, but Eunice was unusual in having its highest wind strengths on the south coast.  122mph gusts were recorded at the Needles, Isle of Wight.  Some major branches down from trees and a lot of debris, but otherwise the new house stood up to it.

Fun in high winds in Poole Harbour

 

My illness, from which I am still fatigued, has at least allowed me to read the new biography of George III, by Andrew Roberts, a recent birthday present.  Weighing in at over 750 pages including the notes and bibliography, it is a welcome re-evaluation of George III and his role in 18^th and early 19^th century politics.  During almost all of his reign, Britain was at war with somebody, whether France, Spain, the American Colonies, or other sundry nations such as Denmark.  Mindful of what had happened to Charles I, George was careful not to overstep his Royal prerogative, though this also allowed him to put blame on his ministers and parliament, who with the exception of the Pitts, were generally hopeless.  The corruption, and the violence and rioting which characterised the time, were appalling.  (The Police Force was not established until 1829).  George was one of the few Hanoverians who was guided by moral principles.  He was lucky to escape hurt during various riots, and also survived several assassination attempts.

 

Perhaps most interesting to me was the reassessment of George’s illnesses.  Soon after I became a medical student, the papers and book by Dr Ida Macalpine and her son, Dr Richard Hunter, provided what seemed to be conclusive proof that George suffered from acute episodes of  (variegate) porphyria.  I believed this theory, even to the present day.  Alan Bennett’s play, and Nicholas Hytner’s film promoted this too.  But meticulous re-examination in 2010 by Dr Tim Peters and Dr D Wilkinson strongly suggests that George suffered from acute hypomania – what we would now call bipolar disorder.  I can’t do better than quote from the abstract of their vigorous rebuttal of the Macalpine/Hunter theory:

 

‘The diagnosis that George III suffered from acute porphyria has gained widespread acceptance, but re-examination of the evidence suggests it is unlikely that he had porphyria.  The porphyria diagnosis was advanced by Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, whose clinical symptomatology and historical methodology were flawed.  They highlighted selected symptoms, while ignoring, dismissing or suppressing counter-evidence.  Their claims about peripheral neuropathy, cataracts, vocal hoarseness and abdominal pains are re-evaluated; and it is also demonstrated that evidence of discoloured urine is exceedingly weak.  Macalpine and Hunter believed that mental illnesses were primarily caused by physical diseases, and their diagnosis of George III formed part of a wider agenda to promote controversial views about past, contemporary and future methods in psychiatry.’ (History of Psychiatry, 2010)

 

The appendix to the present work demolishes the porphyria theory completely.

 

Of some interest, in view of my previous comments about rapacious doctors, is the account of the various famous physicians who controlled and maltreated the King in 1765, 1788-9, 1801, 1804, 1810-20.

 

During the King’s last illness, the most famous physician of his time, and even to this day the longest serving president of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Henry Halford (PRCP 1815-1844), together with Sir William Heberden, Henry Dundas, and Henry Reynolds, were chiefly in charge of the King’s care.  Four major works on the treatment of insanity were published between 1806 and 1809, yet when questioned by parliamentary committees, it emerged that these distinguished physicians had read none of them.  Halford in particular was doctor to four monarchs, including Queen Victoria.  A medical historian (Sir Roy Porter) wrote: ‘So suave was his bedside manner, that some aristocratic women were said to prefer dying with Sir Henry than living with lesser physicians.’

 

Robert Willis, having some experience of treating the insane, is treated relatively kindly by Alan Bennett in his play.  Yet a ditty of the day went:

 

The King receives three doctors daily –

Willis, Heberden and Baillie:

Three distinguished clever men,

Baillie, Willis, Heberden;

Doubtful which more sure to kill is,

Baillie, Heberden or Willis.

 

(Quoted by Roberts from a British Medical Journal of 1914)

 

Finally, it should be noted that the doctors continued to charge huge fees.  By the time the King died (January 1820), the amount spent on them since January 1812 totalled £271,691 and 18 shillings (almost £34 million in today’s money).

 

The last time I was ill for so long a period was a genuine episode of influenza, which prostrated me some thirty years ago.  It allowed me to read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in an uninterrupted sequence.  I had been looking forward to it, having read The Hobbit many years prior.  In the event, although the story started well enough, I found it tedious, and nothing like as enjoyable as The Hobbit (could it be that reading the one in one’s teens and the other in one’s 40s had something to do with it?).  It was during my time in Cambridge, in the late 1960s, that TLOTR became a cult.  There was a club which called itself ‘The Hobbits’ and to get into it one had to be interviewed and answer correctly searching questions at random from the books.  Life seemed too short, especially when studying Medicine, and Groucho Marx’s remarks about clubs come to mind.  I do remember a very successful discotheque during my time there called ‘The Desolation of Smaug’.  Well, anybody who can read TLOTR which contains a geographical feature, key to the story, called ‘The Crack of Doom’ without breaking into ribald laughter ranks in the same category as Charles Dickens’ readers, of whom Oscar Wilde wrote, ‘One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.’  I have sympathy with the Oxford don (Professor of English, Hugo Dyson) who, in the Merton SCR, listening to Tolkien declaiming his latest passage from TLOTL, said, ‘Oh no; not another fucking elf, Ronald?’

 

Thursday February 24^th

 

The above seems rather trivial, compared to the news today.  I have not felt so uneasy since Nine-Eleven.  Vladimir Putin, or rather Russian forces at his command, has invaded Ukraine with simultaneous attacks using helicopters, aircraft, and missiles, aiming to neutralise any Ukrainian armed response.  Images show Russian military vehicles crossing borders without any attempt to stop them.  After 22 years in power, as one correspondent stated this evening, with effectively no opposition, Putin considers himself invincible and it appears he has a Messianic mission to avenge Russia’s humiliation of the 1989 fall of the Soviet bloc.  As mentioned before, Ukraine is a NATO partner, and not a NATO member, so there is no armed response from the West.  But it seems likely that Putin may target Poland or the Baltic states next, and they are among the 30 members of NATO.  The response from the UN is predictable – a rather pathetic ‘Please Stop’.  Sanctions are being announced, with the USA response expected later tonight.  These will not have any short term effect however.

 

So, relegated to the second division are discussions about Partygate, and even Covid has taken a back seat.  Prince Andrew can relax for the first time for months.

 

The charming Laura Kuenssberg has tweeted that now Tories are worried about mass immigration from Ukraine… later in the day however she seems to be covering the story in a more considered manner, though she has jumped on the news that many MPs including Tories do not think the sanctions against Russia go far enough.  In my own cynical way I wonder whether Putin has delayed striking against Ukraine until now to allow his Russian athletes, masquerading as ‘Russian Olympic Committee’ to win all their medals at the Winter Olympics.  (Note added 3.3.2022: there is a credible intelligence source suggesting that President Xi had been in touch with Putin over exactly that scenario).

 

Feel a bit rough again post Covid, with a sore throat.  Time for bed.

 

Thursday March 3^rd, 2022

 

It has been a week of unremitting horror in Ukraine.  At times in the past I have counted my blessings, relieved to have lived such a long life untainted or unthreatened by war.  I have idly wondered how my parents felt – my father at just 21, my mother at 19, when the Second World War was declared; their lives altered irrevocably by one madman.  And now here we go again.  This is the iPhone war, the TV war, and awful images are now commonplace.  During my life we have had single, powerful, and frozen in time images to tell us that war was taking place – the little girl running naked down the road in Vietnam after a napalm strike; Syria, Afghanistan, the Falklands, and many others.  These seem to recede into the distance compared to what is now going on in Ukraine.  Already, one week in, one million people have fled the country.  Males aged 18 to 60 are not allowed to leave – their families joining the 40 kilometre queue at the Polish border.  Putin speaks bizarrely of ridding the country of Nazis.  Many feel that his personality has changed; some question his appearance as evidence of some inner pathology.  A Matt cartoon last week in the Daily Telegraph shows a sign outside the city of Salisbury – ‘We warned you about him’.

 

At the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert last night, the CEO read a message from our Ukrainian chief conductor, Kirill Karabits, thanking us for our concern for his country.  The lights changed to blue and yellow.  Kirill is in France at the moment, but is due to conduct here in Poole in two weeks’ time.

My wonderful original 1960s purchase of the DG 12" LP of Sibelius violin concerto.  Worryingly, Finland is not a member of NATO

 

As I write this evening, it seems that Putin’s tactics have changed to an altogether more barbaric strategy.  His forces bogged down on the ground, he has resorted to pulling back and just raining destruction on Ukrainian cities – indiscriminately targeting residential areas.  Russian involvement in Ukraine before, and in Syria has focussed on completely levelling the cities.  Safe, many miles away, his commanders can merely press the button and send cruise missiles or other ordnance in to destroy.  It seems possible that President Zelensky will call for surrender rather than allow so many more defenceless Ukrainians to suffer.

 

Meanwhile, in the United States, many, many miles away, President Biden gave his State of the Union address.  He was applauded for promising to help Ukraine, but to many critics he appeared fuzzy, and did not help himself by saying ‘Putin… will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people.’  Conservative commentator, Ann Coulter, observed ‘That’s a relief!’  More than half of Americans polled by ABC News/Washington Post do not believe that Biden has the ‘mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as President.’

 

It seems to me that Ukraine’s invasion is entirely analogous to Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland, part of sovereign Czechoslovakia, on the pretext that many native Germans lived there, and that it should be Germanized again.  At that time, our line in the sand was Poland, and only when Hitler invaded Poland did we declare war.  This time it is the Baltic States and other members of NATO (or OTAN) in Europe.

 

I had so many other things to write about – the detection of the antianginal drug trimetazidine in a urine sample of a 15 year old Russian ice skater; a remarkable observation about cricket; more about Dylan Thomas – but these will have to wait.

 

Parenthetically, it seems reasonable however to mention Covid.  A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, today, March 3^rd, is a review of the efficacy of vaccinations against the Omicron variant – and it is nowhere near the effectiveness displayed earlier to the first coronaviruses.  There is some protection, but with various combinations of primary and booster doses, it’s difficult to tease out which is best.  Protection is at best around 60%, and has been shown to wane with time.  It seems to bear out my experience.  I still have paroxysms of coughing, and sleep late most mornings.  (Added note: further NEJM papers bear this out in other countries – omicron is less well protected against, but nonetheless there does appear to be protection against serious illness and death).

 

Yet again, the Wuhan story has been re-examined and some scientists have suggested that the origin was indeed the Wuhan wet market.  The paper has not been peer-reviewed and will obviously bear further assessment.

 

Sunday March 6^th

 

More articles questioning how on earth we were so gullible as to allow London to become ‘Londongrad’ for so many corrupt Russian businessmen.  Party donations, visas for sale, a process it seems dating back to John Major, but just in case any left wing readers feel reassured, substantially endorsed by Tony Blair and his successors.

 

Cold, bleak winter sunshine.  Strong north-easterly winds.

 

This next paragraph may jarringly intrude, but for many, the death of Shane Warne, cricketer, greatest leg spinner of all time, from a suspected heart attack at the age of 52 has come as a massive shock.  Rodney Marsh, greatest Australian gloveman, has also died from a heart attack.  Warne lived life to the full, but his diet of junk food and cigarettes obviously caught up with him.  As another evidence of the naivety of successive generations about history, a friend recently told me that his grandson asked him, ‘Dad, what franchise did Donald Bradman play for?’  I am not going to go into the details of that for American or Canadian readers, only because it would take too long.  They may guess from his dates of birth and death – 1908 to 2001.  Note to American readers – cricket is our baseball, though there may be a social class difference.

 

I feel very sorry for all the Paralympic athletes.  Apart from the occasional minor news item that tells us somebody from GB has gained a medal, the interest in the Winter Paralympics must be almost zero.  The BBC does not cover it – it appears on Channel 4 in the middle of the night.

 

Covid is no longer the main topic of conversation.  Whitty and Valance, so important in the early pages of this diary, are nowhere to be seen.  Instead, current and recent figures from the Armed Forces deliver our briefings these days.

 

This diary will now become the ‘War Diary’, not the Corona Diary.  Will it ever see the light of day?

 

Thursday March 10^th

 

The war has continued for two weeks.  The obscenities of it are almost unspeakable.  An image of a small girl in a pink padded jacket lying dead in the gutter.  Yesterday the airstrike or missile strike of a hospital for mothers and children.  How long can the West tolerate this?  The fear of escalation and the fact that we have no commitment (officially) to Ukraine stops a European/NATO/US response.  I still think this is the Sudetenland moment and there will be more to come.  It is remarkable how many BBC reporters seem to be in Ukraine (chiefly in Kyiv, though also elsewhere).  The unmistakable New Brunswick tones of Lyse Doucet who seems to be in every war zone.  We also have the familiar sound of Fergal Keane.  A dedicated reporter, and highly respected, Keane nonetheless possesses the ability to lower one’s spirits just in the tone of his voice.  I am sure if he read P.G. Wodehouse to us it would sound equally depressing.

 

A moment of history yesterday – Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian President, became the first head of state to address parliament in person, by satellite link.

 

It is very hard to focus on other matters.  I had to look on my phone for some pictures to remind us that life goes on, so here they are.  Some daffodils, the early morning sunlight shining through; boats on the hard at the Royal Motor Yacht Club, waiting for Easter and launching.  Our Ukrainian flag flying from our flagpole.  Is this just bourgeois breast beating or a meaningful symbol of solidarity?

Spring approaching

'Weapons of Happiness', yachts awaiting Spring launching, R.M.Y.C.

Carp, Luscombe Valley lakes, Parkstone G.C., Poole

Our Ukrainian flag - solidarity at least

Some years ago, inspired by all the boats of various shapes and sizes that one can see in various drives and in front of houses, I felt that I should create a montage of the more colourful craft, and enter it into the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition under the title ‘Weapons of Happiness’.  The title is taken from an awful play by Howard Brenton which I went to see at the National Theatre many years ago.  Apart from its left wing sermonizing tedium, and the fact that a motorcycle appeared on stage, I remember nothing of it apart from the clever title.  I believe it comes from the Bible: ‘All the bright weapons of happiness wait only for a sign’.  Apposite to the war perhaps, but in my context it contains the pregnant happiness that awaits the launching of boats in the springtime.

 

Research fails to find the biblical quotation; I only remember the context from Brenton’s introduction in the programme.  If it is not from the Bible, perhaps it could be Karl Marx?  Brenton is or was a Marxist.  Research also indicates that the cast was stellar – Frank Finlay, Julie Covington, Michael Medwin, Bernard Gallagher.  It was the first new play commissioned by the National and premiered in July 1976.  David Hare was the director; Peter Hall the artistic director.  My view of the play is shared.  Most reviews were unenthusiastic.  It has only been revived once, in 2008, in a peripheral theatre, and was not well-reviewed.

A propos of 'Google knows where you are', I received this heatmap of my wanderings over the last several years - golf in Ireland, cycling the North Coast 500, cycling the Hebrides, walking the North York Moors, walking in Cornwall.  Parenthetically I wonder - does Vladimir Putin have a similar heatmap?  And might it be useful?

 

At this point, unless some other important issue comes forward, I think it appropriate to cease my Corona diary.  I will continue to write a diary/blog.  In a more skeletal form it may reappear.

 

I close by giving you two meaningful entries from newspapers, in 1853, and 1969 respectively.  Do not read the name of the first correspondent until you have read the article:

 

‘…These vital interests should render Great Britain the earnest and unyielding opponent of the Russian projects of annexation and aggrandisement…Having come thus far on the way to universal empire is it probable that this gigantic, swollen power will pause in its career?  With the Albanian coast … she is in the very centre of the Adriatic … It would appear that the natural frontier of Russia runs from Danzig or perhaps Stettin to Trieste.  As sure as conquest follows conquest and annexation follows annexation, so surely would the conquest of Turkey by Russia be only the prelude to the annexation of Hungary, Prussia, Galicia and the ultimate realization of the Slavonic Empire.  The arrest of the Russian scheme of annexation is a matter of the highest moment.  In this instance the interests of democracy and of England go hand in hand.’

 

From the New York Tribune, 12 April 1853, by its European correspondent, Karl Marx.

 

This was written shortly before the start of Crimean War, an anti-Russian alliance of Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Piedmont-Sardinia which achieved eventual victory, at some cost.  The Treaty of Paris (1856) effectively barred Russian warships from the Black Sea.  Putin seems to have a long memory.

 

And with regard to military or national leaders, perhaps Putin should also take note from two entries to The Times, on 3^rd September 1969, in the In Memoriam section.  Depending on the results of his current incursion into Ukraine, will he be regarded in the former or the latter category?

 

 

Oliver Cromwell, 25^th April 1599 – 3^rd September 1658.

Lord Protector, 1653-1658.  Statesman, General and Ruler.

            ‘Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered’.

                                                                                                -Psalm 68, verse 1.

In honoured remembrance.

 

 

Cromwell. – To the eternal condemnation of Oliver, Seditionist, Traitor, Regicide, Racialist, proto-Fascist and blasphemous Bigot.  God save England from his like. – Hugo Ball.

 

 

I freely confess that I found these entries in my copy of the Commonplace Book of John Julius Norwich, 1971.

 

Those who are interested in following someone with a huge amount of experience, an ex-Diplomat, non-partisan commentator (though you might not think it from her contempt for the current government), should take a look at the writings and Tweets of a distant ‘friend of the family’, Alexandra Hall Hall.  Her hashtag is:

@alexhallhall.  What she says is usually worth reading…  She has far more international experience and far more intelligence than virtually any inhabitant of the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.  Even that title is a misnomer, if you visit Iceland and go to Thingvellir, the true Mother of Parliaments.

 

Good bye.

 

Andrew McLeod