Epiblog for the Feast of St Donan

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. When I wrote last week that winter could yet have another go at us before it finally left these shores, little did I know how prescient I was being. The weather has turned – and so has the wind, to a bare-fanged nor-easter. When I open the door to put the bird food out on the decking, it’s been like standing in front of a fridge, some mornings.  In between times, when it has been sunny, it’s very pleasant, provided you keep out of the wind, but my poor old herbs are getting a bit of a baptism of fire – well, actually, a baptism of ice.

Friday was a crapulous, wet, dismal day which I spent mostly arguing with people who singularly failed to grasp the point, but the weather-Gods saved up the best for Saturday.  At teatime I was plodding away working on Crowle Street Kids, when all of a sudden I noticed it was starting to get dark.  It shouldn’t be dark at 4pm in April – what the hell was going on. The next minute there was a flash of lightning (but strangely, no thunder) and it started absolutely drumming it down with hail. It hailed solidly for 20 minutes, and at the end of it, the garden and the decking looked like a Christmas card. I trundled over to look out of the front window, and the old Victorian cemetery was white over as well.

My concern was that, somewhere out there, in all of this, probably at that moment up on Black Hill, were Misty and Debbie, and if it was banging it down with hail here, a mere 250ft above sea level, what the hell would it be doing up there. I found out when they returned.  First it had got dark, but they trudged on. Then the wind got up, and they trudged on. Then it started snowing horizontally, followed by thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening, finishing off with a hailstorm of Biblical proportions which covered the road with freezing slush to a depth higher than the tops of Debbie’s shoes.  Fortunately, she was wearing gaiters.  Interesting weather we’ve been having.  Her shoes dried overnight beside the stove, Misty steamed gently on her beddies, and, bizarrely, the deep and crisp and even stuff has now all gone, melted by this morning’s bright sun.

Matilda’s reaction was quite amusing. Three times in the course of yesterday evening she went to the door to be let out. The first time, Debbie opened the door and Matilda hovered on the step, taking in the strange white landscape and sniffing how cold it was. Then she visibly shuddered, turned tail and fled back to the warmth of her armchair.  The second time, twenty minutes later, she again went to the door, possibly having forgotten that she had already checked it out. A similar scene ensued.  Finally, I assume because her desperate need to pee had overcome her innate dislike of snow and ice, she did venture out at the third time of asking. 20 seconds later, she was back at the door asking to come in, and then she jumped onto the settee and stayed there all night.

We haven’t seen hide nor hair of the badger lately, although a couple of mornings the bird food dish has been completely cleaned out as if something has hoovered up the entire contents. The squirrels obviously knew what was going to happen yesterday – they say that animals can often sense changes in the weather before we do – and I saw one of them desperately stuffing food into its mouth even as the skies were darkening. It scarpered up the tree just before the hailstones started falling.  When the storm had passed, I put them some extra rations in the form of a second dish out on top of the thin crust of ice.

The squirrels weren’t the only ones skating on thin ice this week, of course – Mr Cameron’s woes continued to multiply, and now politicians are desperately publishing their tax returns  left right and centre, like it’s going out of fashion! Meanwhile, Sir Alan Duncan made a speech in parliament which set out to defend the uber-rich by claiming that the problem with the rest of us was that we were just under-achievers who were envious of great wealth!

For a start, what do you reckon is an “achievement” anyway? Inventing an imaginary fiscal product and buying money the other side of the world by touching a computer screen?  Standing on a street corner in the rain rattling a collection tin for an animal sanctuary? Doing a soup run for the homeless? Getting your moat cleaned and flipping your second home allowance? There are many kinds of achievement in this world, Mr Duncan, more than are dreamed of in your philosophy, and not all of them rely on a six-figure bank balance and a penthouse flat. As the Eagles, that supremely unfashionable 1970s American rock band put it “A gold plated door, on the thirty-third floor, won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.”

They really just don’t get it. I don’t care how much money Cameron has, or Samantha Cameron, or Cameron’s dad. It’s nice that his mother gave him £200K, so what. It’s the fact that he uses his featherbedded, cushioned, protected, privileged position in life to lecture the rest of us on the need to cut back on life’s little luxuries such as eating and keeping a roof over our head.  He, like the rest of them, is totally blind to his own hypocrisy. Whether wilfully blind, or just completely unable to comprehend how real people live, I don’t know. Either way, the effect on us is the same.

Anyway, it is obvious now that he is toast. Toast on toast, with a side of toast. The men in suits are probably already selecting a nice shade of grey tweed, and setting up their ironing boards. There have been yet more demonstrations in London, unreported by the BBC, calling on Cameron to resign, which is – as I said last week – counterproductive, since the alternative is Boris. Always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse, as Belloc once said, in between the typing errors. So, I am in the peculiar position of hoping someone I can’t stand wins an election I never really wanted in the first place, because all the alternatives are even worse. A feeling which will no doubt be replicated in the USA this November when millions of people vote for Hillary Clinton with their fingers firmly crossed behind their backs.

One person who won’t be taking over from Cameron is John Whittingdale, who – it was finally revealed, although apparently the media knew about this for some time – had had an affair with a “sex worker” which he had omitted to brief Number 10 about beforehand.  I have to say that I viewed this with almost complete indifference, except to note that at least the scandals are reverting to type. The Tories always used to have sex scandals involving whips, oranges, basques and suspenders, the Liberals’ favourite choice of scandal usually involved homosexuality, and Labour’s were always about money and dodgy macs.  In recent years, though, since the parties all started to merge their policies, the types of scandals merged as well, so Mr Whittingdale should, at least, be congratulated for making a bold statement of traditional Tory values.

The other thing that it shows up is the partiality and hypocrisy of the media.  They are quite happy to hack the voicemails of dead murder victims, but when the subject of the scandal is someone who, potentially, as head of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, could make life difficult for them, the boot is on the other foot.  The values of the tabloids never ease to amaze me. In fact, the phrase is probably an oxymoron. They are all over this “celebrity threesome” story at the moment, trying to find ways to tell us who the person involved is without breaking the super-injunction and being held in contempt of court.  Again, I am afraid I may be alone in not giving a stuff who romped (a very tabloid word) with whom in a paddling pool filled with olive oil. I must be getting old, but my first thought was that a) you would need quite a lot of olive oil but b) nevertheless a paddling pool isn’t very big when compared to three adults all trying to writhe around in it at the same time and that c) therefore it must have gone everywhere and made one hell of a mess. Still, the rich have people to clean up after them, and I don’t just mean lawyers.

The hand of the lawyer was also evident in a government response I received to a petition I signed, this week. Not my petition, which is languishing at just under 1200 signatures and is clearly never going to achieve a toughening up of the animal cruelty laws, but a petition started by some enterprising soul who thinks that old MOD bases, especially the ones with accommodation, that have been closed down and are no longer used by the armed forces, should be turned into homes for the homeless, specifically homeless ex armed forces personnel.   I signed this without compunction, as it is the self-same idea as the one behind Rooftree, which I thought of in 2009.  Rooftree, as a concept, has also languished, given the government is all in favour of private housing development and the idea of public housing is anathema to them. Not that this has stopped both the Tories, and in those years when they were being the mini-Tories, the Lib Dems, from borrowing the concept and using it in unfulfilled campaign promises.

Anyway, this particular petition must have received 10,000 signatures, obliging the MOD to respond, which they have done. This is that response, which I will now unpack for you.

While the vast majority of members of the Armed Forces successfully transition to civilian life, the welfare of all former Service personnel is of great importance to the MOD. We are fully aware of the problems encountered by some in securing accommodation. when their time in the Services comes to an end. Whilst there remains more to be done, the Government is making good progress in addressing this issue.

No it  isn’t. Where is the evidence?

Both during and following their resettlement period, married personnel have the opportunity to attend briefs and speak to the Joint Service Housing Advice Office (JSHAO) for advice and guidance in acquiring accommodation. Single Servicemen and women may also contact the Single Persons Accommodation Centre for the Ex-Services (SPACES) for help and support either during or following their resettlement period.

They may do this. They may indeed. They may sprout wings and fly to the moon, but the high preponderance of ex-servicemen – and women – in the homeless stats suggests they don’t.

Whilst the Department wholeheartedly supports the aim of charities helping to house homeless ex-service personnel, it has to ensure open and fair competition in any sale, ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. Any land or property which is surplus to MOD requirements is disposed of on the open market, at the earliest opportunity. Sites may not always be appropriately located and it is unlikely that they will be suited to rehabilitation or habitation uses in their current configuration and condition.

This is the nub of the matter. Open and fair competition, ensuring value for money for the tax payer. That phrase itself requires further unpacking. Firstly, though, that sentence that sites are disposed of “at the earliest opportunity” is a lie. The country is littered with old, mothballed sites, some of which we, the taxpayer, are paying to have securely guarded for some reason.  Not just old military bases either, there are dozens of NHS sites and other properties which were once in the public domain waiting to be flogged off to developers who will then bulldoze the site and build unaffordable and unwanted yuppy-hutches on them, at a price totally out of the reach of anyone trying to start off on the property ladder.  Some of them have been derelict for years, while ex-squaddies doss down under the railway arches.

Secondly – value for money? Well, that depends on what you do and don’t factor into the equation. Does “value for money” include a sum for the continued security and guarding of these derelict sites? No, it does not. Does value for money include any calculation of the cost to the NHS, the social services and maybe the police for picking up the pieces of a homeless ex-squaddie’s life? No, it does not. Does it include any assessment of the amount of wages, and therefore tax, and disposable income going back into the economy by giving the building trade some “quantative easing” and telling them to get on with converting these derelict bases into affordable social housing? No, it does not.

We’re back to judging our achievements by whether or not our lives made a profit or a loss again, aren’t we. Except this is even worse, because it deliberately omits some of the elements of even that narrow type of judgement, in order to brush off these tiresome people, who actually, MOD, have a very good point. Not that the MOD gives a stuff.

Anyway, somehow, through all the alarums and excursions, especially on Friday which was a day largely spent arguing with people, as I said, we’ve made it to another Sunday. The feast of St Donan, no less, whose name is perpetuated in the many “Kildonan” place names all over Scotland, the one I am most familiar with being the one on the Isle of Arran, of course.

Generally speaking, the Vikings and Danes seem to have been quite tolerant of the Celtic missionaries travelling around the fringes of the western Isles, setting up hermitages and chapels and occasionally doing the odd conversion. For some reason, they seem to have decided to make an exception with St Donan, who was slain alongside 52 of his fellow-monks in a raid on the monastery on Eigg.

Not much is known about his origins – he is generally assumed to have been Irish and roughly contemporary with St Columba. Attempts have been made to plot his travellings throughout Scotland by connecting the chain of St-Donan-related place names that begins in Galloway and ends up in the outer Hebrides, but this is largely speculation.  Despite the lack of sources, the story of his martyrdom persisted into the middle ages in Scotland.

Eventually, Donan settled on Eigg and they began constructing a series of monastic buildings overlooking the coast facing Arisaig. It is not known precisely why the Vikings chose to attack this settlement – probably because it was there, and the other ones, the ones which were not attacked, were just luckier.  One tradition states that the raiders burst in while Donan was celebrating mass, and he asked to be allowed to complete the ceremony, then led the monks out of the chapel into the refectory, where they were beheaded.  The idea being not to pollute the sacred space of the chapel with an act of violence. Other accounts speak of the Danes setting fire to the refectory with the 52 monks shut inside, rather than of a mass beheading. It is generally agreed, however, that the date of the attack was 618AD.

As I said, the only Kildonan I know personally is the one on the southern tip of Arran, the one where the seals haul themselves out onto the rocks to be admired and to “wave” with their flippers at the passing tourists. The one with the stunning views out over the Firth of Clyde to Pladda Rock with its lighthouse, and Ailsa Craig beyond, rising improbably out of the sea like a giant, granite, cupcake.  Kildonan is the place where, memorably, Debbie was once “buzzed” by a Basking Shark while kayaking across the bay.

I must admit, there have been times this week when I wished myself back there. The last time we were there wasn’t a particularly auspicious occasion – two fuses blew on the camper and we had to limp back to Dougarie with no radio and no means of charging the phones!  Still, any holiday which involves Debbie invariably contains these little episodes of drama. She is a disaster magnet the like of which I have never hitherto known.  I can’t afford to retire to Arran, even if I wanted to, and I still haven’t finished my latest Arran book, but it would be good to see that view again. Plus, the dogs love that beach at Kildonan, and it was Tiggy’s favourite as well.

So yes, and it will soon be time for us to start thinking about how and when we are going to try and get to Arran this year. The days and weeks are zipping by at an alarming rate, especially for someone conscious of the last grains of sand tricking through the neck of an hour-glass. I’m still trudging on with my self-imposed regime of trying to learn more about quantum physics as well, but, to be honest, I haven’t really done much this week to advance mine or anyone else’s understanding of the origins or workings of the universe. A study of Matilda would seem to suggest that when an object is at rest, it tends to remain at rest, but then we knew that anyway.

One bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre week, though, has been that I have become an uncle over again, with Matt and Claire having been safely delivered of a male child, as yet un-named, on Friday. By the time he was born, I was done for the day, but I have spent a lot of time since wondering what sort of world he will grow up in. Ten years ago, I thought pretty much the same things about little Adam, and indeed I worry about all of them. Globally, we’re going to leave them some horrendous problems to sort out. I only hope they are up to it, and I’d like to apologise to them now, in advance, for how we screwed up on poverty, hunger, world peace, and the climate, to name but four.

Anyway, welcome, boy-child, into a world of beauty and horror, a world of alarming inequality and contradictions. May you love and be loved, and may you be happy and healthy. May you be successful at the things that matter, the things that you want to do, rather than those you have to do, as you grow and pass through life. Good luck. You’ll probably need it, but you’ve got two good parents and a sister, which is what I started out with, so I know that’s a fine place from which to start.

As for me, nobody’s going to wash and bathe me and put me down to sleep, not even a passing district nurse, so I am going to chuck the ashes out, get the coal in, and put the badger’s tea out on the decking. Thanks to the generosity and kindness of my cousin, a late birthday present of Earl Grey Tea with Cornflower petals arrived yesterday, and before the draggled dogs return, once more, I am going to put the kettle on.