Epiblog for the Feast of St Egbert

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Fortunately, it seems that the hailstorms and the thunder and the rain have finally left us for this winter (although I always say that, and find that I am speaking too soon) and we’ve had a few days now of quiet, cool-ish weather, interspersed every now and again with some quite pleasant sunshine, provided you stayed out of the wind.  We haven’t entirely escaped “Aprille, with his shoures soote” that pierce “the droght of Mersh” to “the roote”.  It’s been cold at night, though, and I have been keeping a wary eye out for frost, which could damage the tender young herbs, even though they are in tubs.

This has pleased Matilda somewhat, and she seems to have gained a bit of a new lease of life, with her numerous comings and goings out on to the decking and back in again.  It is actually quite tedious letting her in and out all the time, but the alternatives (either a cat flap in the double-glazed conservatory door at a cost of approx £250, or opening up the existing cat flap again and feeling the joy of the wind from the Urals whistling around your ankles) are even worse.

Misty, too, has been enjoying the longer evenings, because now at least her meanderings over the featureless peat bogs and moorlands with Debbie usually end in daylight, unless something goes massively wrong.  Zak has been an occasional willing companion, but Ellie now seems to recognise that, in the canine panoply, her role is to keep the chair warm for the others when they get back.

We’ve seen the badger again, as well, and once more it was at approximately 10.30pm, so we are obviously a fixture on Brenda’s nightly route. It has been suggested that we should put out some peanut butter sandwiches for her, because apparently badgers love peanut butter.  I hasten to say we have not actually done this, as I fear that the logical extension of such a move would be the badger ambling into the conservatory one day, and asking for a table for one, and to see today’s specials. Either that, or waking up with it snoring next to me on the pillow. Much as I love badgers, there are limits.

The squirrels and the birds are also very active, as you might expect – they’ve started doing that Alfred Hitchcock thing again where they all line up on the branch outside my bedroom window and peer in, encouraging me to get up and put the birdseed out on the decking.

Getting up has, however, been a bit of a problem of late. Partly because once again I seem to be constantly in the grip of some sort of low-grade lurgy, which seems always on the edge of flaring up into something more serious, and keeps me awake at night and sends me to sleep during the day, and partly because my wheelchair itself is not very well, and I suspect one of the wheels may be on the way out, which makes sliding on and off it via the banana board somewhat problematic, as it’s always more difficult to hit a moving target. A service call is booked for the morrow.  

Still, I haven’t fallen off my perch yet, and neither, it would seem, has Her Majesty. There is obviously something in the “Gin and Dubonnet” diet that promotes longevity, which is why her mother lasted to be 102 (degrees proof). 

Predictably the media (the same media that hacked the royals’ phones and drove Diana, literally, almost, to an early grave) went into full-blown “Gawd Bless You, Ma’am” mode. I do, actually, have a lot of respect for the Queen, more so than I do for some other members of her extended family.  As I said elsewhere this week, I feel about the monarchy a lot like I feel about Trident and about the EU.  Given a free hand and a blank sheet of paper, personally, I would never in a million years have set off down a route that led to here. The current state we’re in is the result of generations of meddlesome idiot politicians, many of whom, have, sadly, gone to their graves unpunished. But we are where we are, and we have comprehensively painted ourselves into a corner whereby all the other options are even worse, so we might as well persevere with what we’ve got and try and make a fist of it.  Just don’t expect me to be happy about it, that’s all.

As part of the Queen’s birthday celebrations, Obama has been in town, taking this opportunity to put in his two penn’orth about the perils of Brexit. He might as well have saved his breath to cool his kedgeree, since the people voting to leave are mostly doing so because they don’t want brown people coming to “their” country (which happens to be mine, too, but we’ll let that go by outside the off stump for the moment) and depressing property prices. So they are unlikely to listen to someone, er, brown, as demonstrated by Boris Johnson, who chose to make Obama’s colour a feature of his rebuttal of the President’s remarks.

Since this week has also contained St. George’s Day, the massive sentiment-topped midweek blancmange that was the Queen’s birthday tended to overflow into St George’s Day at the weekend as well, and the internet was clogged up with people wanting to swear allegiance to Her Majesty (von Hanover Saxe Coburg Gotha Battenburg) and St George (that well known Turkish/Syrian/Palestinian itinerant dragon-slayer).  It seemed pretty clear to me from what Obama said that there wouldn’t be any free lunches across the pond for the UK if we vote to leave, and this week the Treasury also published a report on the potentially damaging economic consequences of Brexit. Ironically, however, because it was promoted by George Osborne, the Chancer of the Exchequer, it was widely rubbished, on the grounds that you can’t believe a word he says and he has missed every target since 2010, when in fact this may have been the one pronouncement he’s made that didn’t require flame-retardent undercrackers.

Cameron must have been quite glad of the distraction of the Queen turning 90, as it momentarily diverted the focus of the news media away from the vicious Tory in-fighting over Europe, and the continuing deterioration of his government and all it stands for. Jeremy Hunt seems determined to press on into the valley of death, the only difference being that, unlike the government of 150 years ago, this time around, Florence Nightingale will be on strike.  Nicky Morgan, allegedly the education secretary, apparently can’t spell “sincerely”. And Channel 4’s continuing investigation into the 2015 election expenses scandal is daily uncovering more and more evidence that, in fact, the government consists of the finest politicians that money can buy. 

For our foreign readers, a quick word of explanation might be necessary here. There are strict limits on the amount of money that can be spend by each side within a single constituency during an election. Each candidate gets a free leaflet, free mailshots etc, and all other expenses are subject to a maximum cap. What the Tories did was to fill a “battlebus” with activists and drive them round from constituency to constituency. While they were in the constituency, they worked to get the local candidate re-elected, but the cost of the battlebus and the activists came out of a national budget for national campaigning only.  Opponents claim that the Tories breached the local spending limits by subterfuge, and in the nine most marginal seats, where the battlebus troops made a difference on the ground, in effect they “bought” those constituencies.  And I have to say, opponents have a point.

Meanwhile, in Liverpool, following on from my piece last week about the government response to the official petition asking that homeless ex-service personnel be housed in refurbished abandoned MOD bases, a Labour (yes, Labour) councillor, Frank Hont, has rubbished the idea that the city’s homeless could be housed in abandoned and empty buildings, after a 6,000 signature petition called for this. Writing in the Liverpool Echo, he called the idea ill-informed, saying “If rough sleeping could be resolved simply by housing people, we would do it tomorrow.” Well, go on, then. It seems to me that one of the prime causes of homelessness is, er, not having a home. Or am I missing something here?  The model suggested by the petitioners has worked successfully in the US, Canada, Australia, France and Finland, by the way.

Things are not much better this side of the Pennines. In Leeds, the local council is trying to stop Dion Smith, a local jeweller with a shop in the city centre, who has been handing out cups of tea, biscuits, soup and snacks to homeless people in the city, often accompanied by his bulldog, Lulu. He has received the unwelcome attentions of Business Improvement District (presumably some sort of local government quango) that employs people in bowler hats and overcoats to wander round the city centre assisting visitors. I kid you not. They are called, rather sinisterly, The Welcome People, although The Men In Black seems more appropriate. Anyway, Mr Smith has had a visit from this crowd of jokers:

Last week we were approached by three people wearing bowler hats who said we should stop providing food to the homeless as it was attracting intimidating and undesirable people to the area.

Translation: we don’t want the yuppified centre of Leeds and the yuppified people who shop there exposed to the harsh realities of life under a council that would rather spend money on the Tour de bloody France than sorting out the problem of town centre homelessness.  I’ve said this before and I will say it again. The problem of homelessness would be solved in a month if MPs and Councillors were forced to sleep outside in a sleeping bag every night until something was done about it. But because our politicians (of all parties) are, by and large, with a few shining exceptions, lying, venal and corrupt two-faced shits, the problem goes on.

If Labour had any sense (which clearly they don’t, see under Frank Hont, above) they would make the food banks and the class war on the poor and the disabled into a mantra for years to come. Every time some chinless wonder starts going on about the free market, austerity and competitiveness, they could blow them out of the water by just pointing out that it’s the way to the food bank, in the same way as we’re constantly reminded by them that apparently nationalisation or any form of state interventionism to save an ailing steel industry, for instance, will immediately transport us back to 1979 and dead bodies lying unburied in the street. Yeah, right.

Anyway, today has been a rather sombre day, weather-wise at least. While I have been typing this, the weather has turned dull and grey, and the wind cold, once again.  Today is the feast of St Egbert, who is not to be confused with the later Egbert, Archbishop of York, apparently. If only one of the two Egberts had been a swineherd, like St Dunstan, we could then refer to the other one as “Egbert No Bacon”! (Badum-tish! Here till Friday, try the veal).

Our Egbert, today’s Egbert, was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, probably from the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, who was born some time in the 650s AD.  In 664AD he went to Ireland to study, by which time he must have been in his mid-teens.  His destination was either County Louth or Connaught. It wasn’t entirely a trouble-free journey, as his companion Ethelhun died of plague. Egbert also caught it, but, surprisingly for those times, survived.

Egbert had vowed, while ill, that, if he was spared, he would become a perpetual pilgrim and would lead a life of continuous prayer and fasting.  On his recovery, he began to organise the monks in Ireland to go to Frisia. He became known to, or friends with, all of the names which are associated with the great era of Northumbrian saints – St Adalbert, St Swithbert, St Chad, St Willibrord, St Wigbert, and others.  Despite having influential contacts with the royal house of Northumberland and of the Picts, he failed to stop King Ecgfrith of Northumbria from sending an expedition to Ireland in 684AD.

He did, however, manage to persuade the Iona community to adopt the Roman method of calculating Easter from 716AD onwards. Ironically, the first day that his own monastery celebrated Easter according to this new method was also the day Egbert died, on 24^th April 729.

Apart from almost being a saint by association more than in his own right, Egbert doesn’t seem to have been particularly saintly in any of the normal aspects of sainthood, eg miracles and stuff like that.  But, nevertheless, I guess he meant well.  He tried.

He holds, however, absolutely no lessons for me or for my religious life. Not that anything much does, these days. Still, it’s been a long week.  And next week isn’t going to be much better. Still, at least if Debbie’s back at work, it will bring a temporary halt to her mission to make our house look like the IKEA catalogue. And, in the meantime, apparently it’s been announced that my new nephew is called Luke, which means I can at least revise my will.

I am, though, increasingly questioning myself these days, especially in the matters of my spiritual life.  Believing that God is somehow connected to time, and that people who die live on in another space we can’t access until we follow them, is all very well, but where does Jesus fit into all this? Did Jesus really die for me, Steve Rudd, 61 year old unwanted marketing director and largely unsuccessful publisher, who is going to wizen away into a walnut over the next decade or so? And if so, why? What the hell was he thinking?

Meanwhile, as I get less and less religious (or should that be fewer?) I did spend what might be referred to as a reasonably enjoyable hour this afternoon listening to choral evensong on BBC Radio 3. I may be turning into one of those people who says they only go to church because they enjoy a good sing.

I almost don’t want next week.  I’m so very tired.  And I have to deal with people who, to be honest, don’t care if I spend £123.08 on their vanity projects with little prospect of any return.  But, on the plus side, my petition, which once had 198 signatures, now has 6,740, and a real chance of getting to 10,000 before August, and provoking a response from the government. It’s obviously going to be a response that “the existing legislation is adequate” but even in itself that can be challenged, it puts down a marker.

Perhaps my last act on this earth is going to be giving the government a jab in the arse over animal welfare. Anyway, I could wish for worse. The badger has been tonight, and eaten some more peanuts. If Jesus is all he claims to be, there would be more, and better, badgers in the world.  Meanwhile, the jury is still out.

Here’s a little ditty for St George’s Day to keep you going.

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.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Fulbert of Chartres

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. And it did snow, but not at ground level. More of that later. Actually, ground level has been pretty balmy, but not, as Radio Leeds’s recent weather forecast had it “barmy” – well, no more so than usual.

It’s good to see the sun again, and the light evenings have also done a lot to alleviate the black moods of recent weeks. Maybe we are finally through winter, after all. There have been lots of ye olde traditional April showers, though, some of them made of hailstones.  Yesterday when I was out on my ramp planting things, Matilda came wandering around from the back garden and started winding round me an rubbing her chin on the corners of the planters, sniffing the flowers.  “Do you want to come in?” I asked her, and she totally ignored me, then toddled off back into the front garden. Half an hour later, when I was just about finishing up, the sky was looking awfully black over Will’s Mother’s, and I felt the first sharp stinging pelts of rain – I was half way up my ramp when a ginger, black and white streak overtook me, dived under the wheelchair, and inside.  By the time I got in, she was lying in front of the stove, grooming herself.

The squirrels and the birds have been busy as usual, and it looks like we have a couple of wood pigeons nesting in the big laurel tree in the front garden again. I was watching them go back and forth during my “rest breaks” when I was planting things.  Enforced rest breaks, as I had comprehensively managed to knacker myself! The biggest surprise, however, was when we were watching Match of the Day last night and Brenda (or very near offer) appeared on the decking and proceeded to hoover up all the bird seed that the squirrels had left. Of course, we have no way of knowing if it really is the same badger, and I felt slightly trepidacious that she might make her way round to the front and finish off her din dins by digging up and masticating all the plants I had previously spent two hours planting, but I checked this morning and they are all OK.  So, that was a bit of a “turnip for the books”.

Zak is, now, technically, back at home, since Granny’s return, but he still gets included on long distance cross-country yomps if he wants to go. Ellie is more or less permanently excluded from route march duties these days, because she really can’t manage the distances without having to be carried for the last five miles, but Zak is up for it, and game.  So this week Debbie has been making the most of the last week of the Easter holidays and cramming in as much time as possible on the hills.  By and large these excursions have been enjoyable.  Misty managed to lose her dog tag on Monday, up on Wessenden – God alone knows how she does it, that was the second one – so a replacement had to be procured, toot de sweet and PDQ. Thank the Lord for the internet. By Friday she was once more fully labelled.  Debbie has even been running the odd mile or two during these walks, which the dogs seem to enjoy, once they got the hang of it.  Several people have apparently stopped and made a fuss of Misty, saying how “cute” it is to have one blue eye. Right.

Anyway, yesterday it all came unstuck. They set off from here at about 2.30pm in bright but cold sunshine.  About half way round the walk, it started to get dark and threatening up aloft, and pretty soon it was hailstoning. Deb, fortunately had taken her wet weather gear, and decided to press on. As they got higher, the hailstones turned to snow.  This was the same weather that, back at base camp, Matilda was scuttling up the ramp to get away from, but given the altitude difference, ours was liquid whereas theirs was solid! By the time she got back to the van, she had to use both hands to get the key in the door as she was completely numb, then sit there with the heater going for a while before she could even drive home. The dogs were bedraggled as ever, but a few minutes with a dog towel and they were fit to wolf down a tin of “Butcher’s Dog” and some Muttnuts apiece.  So, a good time was had by all, eventually, when they had thawed out.  If you want any snow, it’s on the top of Wessenden. Send me a postcard.

As for us, you will have gathered that we failed to get away in the camper van to the Lakes, as threatened. Actually, using the word “failed” implies that we tried, which to be honest, we really didn’t.  There were several reasons for this – as explained last week, to load up the camper you need a nice day, but nice days are also the best days for taking the dogs out on the moors. Then there is the fact that both of us are probably more tired and run-down than we think, and it does take a considerable mental effort to get everything ready even for a short trip. Finally, there was the uncertainty over the weather. We tend to use the MWIS (Mountain Weather Info Service) which is usually very accurate, but the downside is they refuse to forecast more than three days ahead. The forecasts from MWIS were almost universally gloomy for the Lakes, and, indeed, the general BBC forecast promised at least showers and possibly more prolonged rain.  We did the equation – is it worth the effort of spending a day getting everything ready, driving for almost three hours, then watching the rain come down like stair rods, then getting up the next day at an ungodly hour to climb a mountain in the rain, only to find that when you have got there, the summit is in cloud and there’s nothing to see except for a cairn ten feet away.  We decided that no, it isn’t.  If this sort of thing happens in the context of a longer holiday, well, that’s maybe different, but it’s not worth making a special journey just to be disappointed.

This week also marked my 61^st birthday, which was a bit of a sombre occasion, to be honest.  A long while ago now, I had a premonition that I would die at the age of 62. I don’t know why, or where it came from, but it has lodged with me, like a pebble in my shoe, ever since, and of course, if it comes true, then that is next year. Eeek. But I haven’t done loads of things that I intended to, including finishing off several books currently in the pipeline.  On the other hand, it could all turn out to be bollocks, and I will end up 92 and senile, like Auntie Maud.  The odds are against it, though. I noticed when I was doing my gardening, how much harder it was this year than last year, and how I got tired much more quickly. The gardening itself was a result of my birthday treat, a trip to the garden centre, which ended up with us coming home with two trays of plants, even though we only went for the “Five Alpines For A Tenner” special offer.  Mindful that I am approaching borrowed time, it didn’t seem such an excess. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and all that, or in this case, Alpines.

You never know when life is going to bowl you an unpredictable googly, or even a chinaman.  That must be pretty much what David Cameron is feeling this week, at the end of possibly the worst week yet of his premiership.  I have no sympathy for the man. His hubris in thinking he could decide and announce in advance the time of his going, and in calling a referendum when he didn’t need to, means that he is largely the author of his own misfortunes.  And then on top of that comes the revelations about the tangled nest of offshore investments in Panama and his own involvement in the imbroglio.

I wasn’t shocked at all by the extent of the financial shenanigans that seems to have been going on. Warty old cynic that I am, I tend to assume that they are all in it up to their Savile Row armpits anyway. They are all at it, like a fiddler’s elbow.  We don’t have statesmen any more, we have self-serving technocrats who entered politics to make a difference to their own bank account.  In that respect, Cameron is no more or less guilty than any of the others who took the piss by claiming for moat cleaning on expenses, flipped their second homes, or employed their wives as non-executive secretaries while also drawing three other lucrative salaries by keeping on their previous jobs while being an MP (Yes, Boris Johnson.)

The difference for me is in the level of hypocrisy. Again, I don’t suppose I should be surprised by this, either, but I do, currently, find it breathtaking.  Here is a man who has never had to struggle, whose father’s questionable dealings featherbedded him through Eton and Oxford, the latter affording him the opportunity to undertake the initiation rites of various student clubs which allegedly involved burning £50 notes in front of homeless people. Here is a man who, from 2010 onwards, together with that little weasel Osborne, the Chancer of the Exchequer, has been lecturing us all about the need for “austerity”, how we are “all in it together”, how we must “live within our means”. Here is a man who has presided over an evil regime that has driven people to suicide over the bedroom tax, allowed people to starve because their benefits have been cut, a man whose minions have taken away the independence of thousands of disabled people under the pretext of switching them from DLA to PIP, including one of our “paralympic” wheelchair contenders, yet who has always and invariably come down on the side of the big companies like Google and Starbucks and Boots and Amazon, for whom paying your taxes seems to be optional.

Now we know why. Because, while he was fond of telling us to do one thing, he was party to – and at least knew all about, even if by then he had ceased to benefit personally – this seamy world of offshore tax evasion slush funds that seems to have underpinned and given scope to his very existence. That is what sticks in my craw. At least be honest about your actions and your motions. Don’t lecture a single mother in a high rise flat who is going without her own food to make sure her kid gets fed, on the need to tighten her belt, while simultaneously trousering another month’s dividends. Don’t stand up at the Lord Mayor’s banquet and lecture us on the need to be “competitive” when you’ve never had to graft for an honest penny in your life.  As it is, the revelations which he has finally, reluctantly, divulged have been hedged about with ifs and buts and ands, and couched in linguistic sophistry of the “I may have slept with that woman but I did not inhale” variety. Just be straight. Just be honest. If it’s even in your DNA.

Anyway, as I say, I have no sympathy for the man.  Apart from anything else, at the end of a week where most people would have been quite happy to don their tin hat and get down the foxhole, he has sailed straight into yet another massive row, this time about using public money to make a partisan case for Britain to remain in Europe.  I should say, at this point, that when it comes to Brexit, I am of the “reluctantly, we should stay in, but things have got to change” camp. I view it a bit like Trident – left to me, we wouldn’t even be starting from here, but because we’ve painted ourselves into a corner by our own stupidity over two decades of stirring up trouble for ourselves, it now looks like we have no damn option. Don’t expect me to be happy about it, though.

But there is a separate principle involved here. This government in particular has a track record of being laissez-faire over what are allowable limits of expenditure (look at the election expenses of certain key constituencies in the 2015 election, for another example of a visitation from the Panama Accounting Fairy) and they have done this over and over again – churning out what is essentially Tory propaganda from the COI, in the guise of public information leaflets. There is also the issue with this particular leaflet in that it purports to be the government’s official view on something where there can be no official government view, because half the bloody government disagree with every word of it.

One thing is for certain though. If any further independent confirmation was needed, which it probably isn’t, in all honesty, the speed with which the government petition against this leaflet topped the 100,000 signature mark is yet another symptom of how heavily the government is going to lose the EU referendum. To a certain extent, leaving aside the issue of why hold the referendum in the first place, the government can’t be blamed for the “perfect storm” of issues which are all conspiring to cloud the importance of the referendum decision – immigration, the refugee crisis, so-called “Islamic” extremism (to some people, these are all one and the same) international trade and protectionism (especially in view of China trying to kill off our steel industry) et al. Whatever the reasons, though, and most of them are entirely spurious, and are only nourished by a heady, noxious brew of racism, xenophobia and hatred served up by the Daily Mail, Britain will vote to leave and there will be some very dark times ahead.  Unfortunately, as with general elections, the people who took the time to look into things in more depth and realised the perils and the pitfalls, will be sabotaged by the people who voted to leave because they don’t like brown people. Thank God, at least, that Gordon Brown, although he may have been an insensitive, boorish, copper-bottomed booby, had the sense to keep us out of the Euro.

All of this has led for calls for Cameron to resign, which I find rather puzzling. If Cameron resigns, which he won’t anyway, not before the referendum, whatever further revelations or happenings ensue, but if he did, all that would happen is that there would be a leadership election amongst the Tories, and Cameron would be replaced by Boris Johnson. Since this is going to happen in the autumn anyway, why bring it forward. Why suffer before you have to?

Mr Cameron is not the only person having his DNA scrutinised this week, when it emerged that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s father is not actually his father, if you see what I mean. Without trying to sound too “Darth Vader” about it, his father was actually Churchill’s last private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne, and not Gavin Welby, whom Archbishop Justin had always believed to be his biological father. Certain tabloids (in spirit if not in actual format) have sought to make great play of this, but I can’t help but wonder which is the greater of the sins of the father – being brought up thinking you are someone else’s kid, or being brought up by someone whose dad made bazillions of pounds in offshore deals that you not only initially refuse to acknowledge, but which never seemed to have prevented you from lecturing the rest of us on thrift and frugality.

I had very few expectations of Justin Welby, and by and large I haven’t been disappointed. But then Rowan Williams was always going to be a hard act to follow, and to give Archbishop Justin credit, he has in the past publicly criticised the effects of “austerity” and the need for food banks, and the government’s pitiful response to the refugee crisis. At the same time, he has presided over dithering about the treatment of gay clergy and same-sex marriage, so there’s still room for improvement.  Whatever else he can and could control, these days, though, he couldn’t control who his mother chose to give her affections to before he was born, and therefore attempting to use this to chip away at him in the press is about as pointless, misleading, and futile as much of the other stuff printed by the same papers.

Mention of Archbishops reminds me that I am supposed to be writing about spiritual matters.  So I hasten to remind you that today is the feast of St Fulbert of Chartres.  Fulbert was a poet and scholar who was born in Italy between 952 and 960AD (the precise date being uncertain) He studied at Rheims, in Northern  France, under the guidance of Gerbert of Aurillac, who later became Pope Sylvester II.  In 1003, he returned to France, rising to become Bishop of Chartres in 1007. He wrote at least a couple of dozen poems which have survived, and many letters, including one to the Duke of Aquitaine, ticking him off about the duties of a feudal lord. He also wrote hymns and contributed to theological debate.  Perhaps his greatest challenge came in 1020AD, however, when the old cathedral burned down and he devoted his remaining years (he died in 1028) in building a new one, which was eventually completed in 1037.  Fulbert, sadly for him, was never recognised as a proper saint, but his feast is celebrated locally under a special dispensation. Unfortunately, the cathedral he built only lasted until 1194, when it was also consumed by flames. Having learned their lesson, the clergy then built the beginnings of what became the present gothic cathedral, using stone this time.

The present cathedral does contain some of Fulbert’s influences, however. For a start, he is buried there, and one of the many impressive stained glass windows is a depiction of the Tree of Jesse, showing the ancestry of the Virgin Mary, in a reflection of Fulbert’s devotion to her, and the importance generally of Chartres as a Marian shrine and centre of pilgrimage.  Since 876AD it had been the repository of the supposed Sancta Camisa, the cloak worn by the Virgin Mary at the time of the nativity, although this has only been a significant factor in pilgrimages to Chartres since the 1200s.

I have a soft spot for Chartres because, as I wrote last week about Chartres and Holy Cross Abbey, it is one of those places where I have had something like a religious experience.  The combination of the cool gloom after the heat outside, the stained glass with its myriad colours being projected onto the labyrinth on the floor of the nave (they had cleared away the chairs to allow pilgrims to trace the pattern) and the general air of holiness which pervaded everything all conspired together to make time stop for a moment – or possibly longer. I was not a pilgrim – well, not specifically – I was a day tripper, a curious follower of guidebooks, but I came out transformed but a glow that lasted for several days before fading. Similar, in fact, to Yeats:

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless

Thinking back about that last visit to Chartres, especially now, around my birthday, I am still puzzled by its significance. Apropos of nothing much, I have also been busy reading a self-administered birthday present, How To Teach Quantum Physics To Your Dog. Despite its slightly wacky title (the author is actually a professor of hard sums or similar at some US university) and the premise that it’s actually a dialogue between the owner and his dog about the things that preoccupy dogs (chasing squirrels and rabbits, scoffing treats) it is a good basic grounding in the general principles of Quantum Physics for dummies like me who dropped physics like a red hot brick in the third year.

I have to admit, though, to having to read several bits of it twice, notwithstanding the folksy quips about dogs and their behaviour. Some of it brought me up short as well, resonating with me in all sorts of unexpected ways, which is how I come to be dragging it up now, when I am talking about Chartres Cathedral.  I was reading the chapter in particular about multiple universes and the “many worlds” theory, and in particular, decoherence, which is a concept I hadn’t previously come across.

Me trying to explain decoherence is going to be a bit like the blind leading the blind, and I am open to correction, but basically, as I understand it, it goes like this (much abridged and minus any equations) – Schrodinger’s famous cat, in its box, is both alive and dead until someone opens the box and measures it.  Chad Orzel, in the dog book, uses the example of two boxes, one of which contains a dog treat and the other which doesn’t.  Once you open a box, you immediately know where the dog treat is – it’s either in the box you opened, or it’s in the other one, depending what you found.

At this point, according to Schrodinger, the “wave function” of the other particle collapses at that moment.  Once it's been measured, that's it. However, earlier, Einstein had observed that there was something he dubbed rather un-classical-y as “Spooky Action At A Distance” by which one particle affects another even though their locations are different. To get around this, they came up with the concept of “decoherence”, which basically severs the connection almost instantaneously once one particle, or cat, or dog treat or whatever is observed.

Nobody knows what decoherence is, and it is generally accepted, apparently, that it’s a very poor explanation. Yet, nevertheless, like much of quantum physics, even though it appears totally illogical and defies all reason, it does seem to be what happens. Except that, in the many worlds theory, the explanation is that decoherence still happens, but that the other particle (cat, dog treat) carries on, but in another, parallel universe.

I realise this is a very tedious and not very good, long-winded explanation.  And you could be forgiven for thinking well, what has this got to do with Chartres Cathedral? I’ll try and explain.  When I visited Chartres, in 1987, my mother had only been dead a year, and I had already had one experience which, when recounted, sounds totally prosaic, to do with seeing sunlight flickering on a rain-puddle in Loughborough (see, I told you it was prosaic) which convinced me, in a way I could not begin to explain, that my mother lived on, somewhere, somehow.  That day in Chartres Cathedral was another of the same, as it used to say in auction catalogues.  I had never heard of the many-worlds theory then, but it sort of fits what I felt.  

The many-worlds theory has been parodied in a cartoon cited by Orzel where the professor is standing in front of a board full of equations, in the middle of which is says, on a separate line, “and then a miracle happens”.  But what if this is true? Maybe not a miracle as such, but something that can only be explained in “religious” language, rather than the language of physics.  Maybe, just maybe, decoherence is the grit in the oyster, the apple in the fall, the thing that binds us to the human condition and stops us being able to see the whole picture. If you are still with me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you had given up and put the kettle on several paragraphs ago, maybe decoherence is consistent with the neo-platonist view of the 17^th century. And maybe what happens, in that moment when time seems to stop, for me and for other people who have had similar experiences, is that for some unknown reason, decoherence doesn’t kick in, and we get a glimpse of everything – or at least of what’s on the other side of the curtain. Or at least we know it’s there.  And of course, if decoherence was placed into the mechanism of our universe, then who placed it there?

Thinking about this sort of thing makes my head hurt, and I am writing it and know what’s coming next, so God alone knows what it’s doing to you having to read it.  Next week is (as usual) going to be a busy week. Deb will be back teaching, and I will be trying to solve the same 17 intractable problems that I take with me wherever I go.  It’s been a good break, these last two weeks, though the main benefit for me has been a few hours’ extra sleep. My petition is relentlessly stuck on 1167 signatures, and I have some letters to answer from charities who think it’s acceptable to allow people who have actively voted to cut ESA to their members by £30 pw to continue to be their patrons. I intend to ask them if there is anyone who they wouldn’t take money and patronage off? Josef Mengele? Jack the Ripper?

But, regrettably the main focus will be on work and money, the two bugbears of my existence. I need to up my game, as the modern expression has it, if I’m going to get these books out to their deadlines, particularly Crowle Street Kids, which is, unbelievably, almost ready.  It’s also coming up to my favourite time of the year, when the primrose blooms, and cowslips too, as the song has it.  Soon we will be the other side of Easter, and into what the Church likes to call “Common Time”. This time next year, if I’m spared, it will be not so much Common Time as “borrowed time”, so I need to get my skates on. But first, a cup of tea.

Epiblog for The Feast of St Richard of Chichester

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. I am beginning to think that winter might, after all, finally have had it.  Even if it snows now, it won’t stick for more than a day or two. We have had a couple of nights of frost, which necessitated putting little plastic cloches over some of the young herbs.  Other than that, the weather has been relatively quiet and uneventful, and the green haze between the bare branches of the woodland grows more intense in colour daily.  The snowdrops have gone now, and the daffs are going, and I think there’s at least one tulip out in Colin’s back garden, so the signs are all good, so far.

The squirrels and birds are pretty much taken as read, these days. Something, also, has been rooting around in the compost heap. If it is the badger, it has so far escaped detection, but it could be anything, really. It could be Bob Flowerdew checking up on us for Gardeners’ Question Time, except I have a feeling he may be currently deceased.

As I have written in previous weeks, I have had concerns that Matilda might be “slowing down” a bit, and perhaps that she may have been older than we were told, when we adopted her back in September 2012.  Particularly, this winter, when she seems to have spent so much of it fast asleep. Not that I blame her, I would have done the same, had workload allowed.  However, I am pleased to relate that, with the coming of the better weather, she does seem to have resumed some of her earlier activities, at the previous level, patrolling around the decking and the garden, for instance. She is still no nearer catching a squirrel than I am, though!

Zak has gone back home, to be reunited with Ellie, following the return of Granny from her solemn progress through those parts of the realm south of the Thames.  However, he made a brief reappearance at lunchtime today because Debbie has taken him and Misty out, up onto the tops for a bit of well-deserved fresh air and sunshine.  While he was here, last week, they did, in total, about 85 miles, spread over five days, so they are certainly not lacking in exercise at the moment.

It’s been pleasant, as well, not to have the relentless early starts, for a change, to enable us both to put something back in a tank which has been running on empty since Christmas.  The disadvantage of shifting a gear, down to a more leisurely pace of life, is, of course, that we still haven’t managed to get the camper ready to go off for a few days next week.  With the better weather, it’s dried out a lot, but there is still a considerable amount of sheer organising that needs doing, and organising takes time and energy. Plus, if it’s a nice day here, Deb would rather load up the dogs and go off for a ramble with them over Dove Stones, not that I blame her, she deserves it - and if it’s nasty weather, then who wants all the doors open and the traipsing in and out when it’s cold and rainy?

So, it remains to be seen where, if anywhere, we will get to in the next few days, or whether we will spend it doing what I have already been doing this week, in what laughably gets referred to as my “spare time” – planning and organising yet further work on the house and the garden, now that we’re taken the decision to bite the bullet and sort out the immediate environment as much as we can this year.  This, too, takes time and energy.  Tradespeople are often quick to witter on about “timewasters”, but are often equally as guilty of wasting my time, by not turning up when they are supposed to, not getting back to us with estimates until they’ve been chased fourteen times, and so on, and so on.

I do sometimes wonder why I bother. The way the country is going, I would probably be better employed stockpiling canned food and candles, and digging a bomb shelter.  Hard on the heels of last week’s budget shambles came the news that making steel in this country is now likely to become an endangered occupation.  We absolutely, positively have to disabuse ourselves of this peculiar notion, which started with Thatcher and has been allowed to grow and fester unchallenged, that running the economy of a major world power is the same as balancing the books of a corner shop in Grantham or a family budget in Droitwich. It isn’t. There are other factors to take into consideration. Strategic factors. Geopolitical factors.

Part of the reason why Tata, who now own the rump of Britain’s once-proud, once nationalised steel industry, are making such a thumping loss, is that the world market is flooded with cheap steel from China.  And this, in turn, is because the Chinese government has been intervening and propping up its own indigenous steel industry. The Chinese are not fools.  They have realised the strategic importance of being able to make your own steel. If , heaven forfend, there is ever another global conflict, or if China, emboldened by the fact that nobody seems to give a dickey-boo about their 65 year illegal occupation of Tibet, or its appalling human rights record,  decides it needs some more battleships, submarines, tanks, or planes, because it feels like invading India, for instance, it will have the capacity to produce these without asking anyone’s by-your-leave.  Plus, it will have mitigated the possibility of hardship and political unrest amongst its working classes at home in the meantime by keeping them happy making steel instead of joining the Falun Gong or plotting to overthrow the government.

This might sound like an impassioned plea for our government to step in and save the British arms industry. It is far from that.  I am not an advocate of arms trading generally. I have written before that I would like to see all of the armies of the world transmuted, over time, into international peace-keeping, disaster relief, and search and rescue organisations. But it is criminally stupid of the government, in an uncertain world, and given that Britain is an island, dependent upon imports of all sorts of things, which in turn relies on shipping lanes being kept open for unmolested trade, to be unilaterally giving away yet more of our capacity to defend ourselves independently. We’ve come to believe that the only enemy we face is now the lone suicide bomber, because of the long, undeclared war against middle-Eastern terrorism (largely a war of our own creation, but that is by the bye for the purposes of this discussion). What if some chancer does decide to (for instance) blockade the channel or the North Sea oilfields? Are we going to re-commission HMS Victory and send it bobbing down the Solent?  Are we going to trundle the Sopwith Camel out of Duxford Air Museum? Are we going to send in the SAS in coracles? Extreme examples, perhaps, but the world is an uncertain place, I repeat. The most optimistic interpretation on the loss of our own independent steel making capability is that we have handed potential enemies a stick with which to beat us, a thumbscrew to tighten.  Once the only source of steel in the world is China just watch the price go up then!

There is also the human cost, of course.  Labour is cheap in China, but even the Chinese state capitalist government can see the virtue in not deliberately creating unemployment and failing to rectify the situation, a lesson which is lost on the Tories here, who tend to believe (a bit like Donald Trump’s views on abortion) that losing your job is your own fault, and is potentially a crime for which the punishment is unemployment.  There are things the government could do. They could, in effect, step in and buy the remaining steelworks from Tata. If they are going to be paying the people who get thrown out of work Jobseekers’ Allowance, and pumping millions into the economically depressed areas anyway in an attempt to create non-existent jobs so that highly skilled steelworkers can become self-employed window cleaners and dog-walkers, why not just keep the factories going.  They can run on, making steel which we can stockpile against the time the country might need it. The government could specify that all public works in this country that require steel should use steel from our own steelworks, and sod compulsory competitive tendering.  If the rest of the world doesn’t like it, they can invade, but only when we’ve built a few more ships.

In reality, though, this set of clowns in charge will not do anything so bold and radical.  Asset after valuable asset has already slipped through their buttered fingers, and been lost to us for ever. Royal Mail. Our shares in the rescued banks.  The Land Registry, put up for sale at 5.30 on the eve of Good Friday, in the hope no-one would notice.  The irony of this is that it actually contradicts the teachings of the blessed St Margaret whom they hold in so much reverence. Whatever else you say about her, Thatcher knew that you can’t sell the same asset twice.  They won’t step in because, as the renowned economist Paul Mason wrote in his recent article this week about the steel crisis, in a rather brutal analysis, “they don’t give a shit”.

It goes deeper than mere uncaring contempt, though they won’t step in because they are still clinging to the fallacy that everything has to make a profit, that the cheapest price is always the best value, that the nation has to “live within its means” and “balance its books” and that to have a nationalised steel industry would be not only anathema to a party that reveres the architect of class war, but also a major loss of face to the present government who would have to admit that market forces, and by inference “austerity” are a busted flush.  That’s what they can’t stand and that’s why they will do absolutely zip, in real terms, to alleviate the situation, while putting up as much fuss and bluster as they can, to confuse the situation.

Increasingly, this is a government of unresolved contradictions, that has given up even the pretence of squaring the circle and giving an outward appearance of knowing what it’s doing. In education, policy is in chaos, the teachers are leaving in droves (and will do so in even greater numbers if the forced Academy status policy is enacted) and yet Theresa May’s Home Office is starting to send home foreign nationals who do not earn more than £35,000 a year – a policy designed purely to appease the likes of the Daily Mail – and some – quite a lot, in fact – of these people we seem hell-bent on deporting have turned out to be teachers, or doctors, thus exacerbating shortages.   The NHS is in crisis anyway, because of Jeremy Hunt’s confrontational stupidity.  In defence, we are cutting and cutting again, including being left without an aircraft carrier for a few years, because of cock-ups in procurement, while becoming embroiled, seemingly, in every overseas conflict going.  By those conflicts, we waste huge amounts of money that could be more profitably used elsewhere, create massive international crises of refugees, then arrogantly refuse to bear our fair share of picking up the pieces.

Still, if it all goes wrong, they can always blame the disabled, those shirkers who should be picking litter for free, or foreigners with their damn desire to come here, get jobs, work hard, pay their taxes, and better their prospects, or the wrong sort of leaves on the line, or the markets, or cheap steel, or Smurfs, or sun-spots.  Or something. It’s never their fault, you see, for undertaking government by abdication of responsibility without the necessary skills and abilities. They know what’s best, that’s why you never hear them say sorry.

So, as I sit here typing this today, on Sunday, a fine and otherwise blameless day, I am contemplating a different landscape.  It’s no wonder that I find myself increasingly harking back to days when I was younger, happier, and healthier, and life looked as if it might actually get better and not worse.  The time I spent in Chichester was one such era, and coincidentally, today is the feast of St Richard of Chichester, or Richard of Wyche as he is also known in medieval times, from his origin in, of all places, Droitwich, where he was born in 1197.

Despite being orphaned at an early age, he managed to regain his inheritance and used it to provide himself with an education at the universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.  At Oxford, he studied under the rather wackily named Robert Grossteste (sometime bishop of Lincoln) and became friends with St Edmund of Abingdon, who tutored him.  Armed with a law doctorate from the University of Bologna, he eventually became Chancellor of Oxford in 1235, and then Chancellor to Edmund, who was, by now, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Edmund retired to a monastic life in France, accompanied by Richard, and after Edmund’s death, Richard remained there until after 1243, when he returned to England to become Chancellor to Edmund’s successor at Canterbury, St Boniface of Savoy. Henry III appointed Robert Passelewe to be bishop of Chichester in 1244, but Boniface nullified the appointment, declared it invalid, and appointed Richard instead. This had all the makings of a major cat/pigeons interface, and the dispute went all the way up the chain of command to the then Pope, Innocent IV, who ruled in favour of Richard.  Henry, however, dug his heels in and it was only after he was threatened with excommunication that he gave way and allowed Richard to take the post. For two years, Henry forbade anyone to house or feed Richard. This decree, however, does not seem to have been carried through, because Richard lived in the house of his friend Simon, the parish priest of Tarring, West Sussex, where he divided his time between growing figs and tramping the parish on foot to visit the parishioners

Once installed as Bishop, Richard became known for strict discipline amongst the clergy, aid to the poor, and constant criticism of the corruption of the high clergy and the Royal court. In person, he was an ascetic, wearing a hair-shirt and refusing to dine off silver. He also excluded meat from his diet, having been a vegetarian since his Oxford days.  He was especially harsh on people who attacked the clergy and disrespected church property. When some of the townsmen of Lewes dragged a suspected thief out of sanctuary in the church there, and promptly hanged him, Richard made them dig up the body and pay for it to be re-buried in the chancel, with all due ceremony.  He is often depicted in iconography with a chalice, after the story that he accidentally dropped a chalice during a service, but miraculously, iot landed without anything spilling from it.  

He actually died away from Chichester, at midnight on 3^rd April 1253, during a sojourn in Dover where he was delivering, of all things, a plea for a new Crusade, because the Pope had told him to.  His internal organs were removed and buried in the Dover church, and the rest of his body returned to Chichester cathedral and buried in a shrine on the north side of the nave, in an area dedicated to St Edmud. He was canonised in 1262, reburied in a new tomb in 1276, and his shrine became a site for many reputed miracles, until its destruction at the time of the Reformation.

By 1538, when it came to the attention of Thomas Cromwell for the “superstition” and “idolatry” which surrounded it, St Richard’s shrine was almost as popular as Becket’s at Canterbury as a place of pilgrimage. The edict for its destruction was carried out in 1538, but a stubborn legend persisted that one of the men involved in the act, William Ernley, managed to somehow squirrel away the saint’s bones and relics and have them re-interred in the church at West Wittering, down on the coast, where he had connections.  The altar frontal at West Wittering illustrates this link and the legend.

The modern-day shrine of St Richard in Chichester cathedral dates from 1930.  In 1987, the cathedral was offered a relic from the Abbey of La Lucerne in France of an arm-bone that was said to that of St Richard.  The then bishop, Bishop Kemp, accepted it on behalf of the cathedral and it was interred in the shrine in 1991. The modern shrine of Richard features an altar that was designed by Robert Potter, a tapestry designed by Ursula Benker-Schirmer (partly woven at West Dean College at Singleton, just up the road) and an icon of St Richard by Sergei Fyodorov.  

My fondness (if that is what it is) for St Richard probably lies rooted actually in my fondness for Chichester, with its Roman wall, its market cross, its four medieval streets, North, South, West and East, its hidden gems such as Pallant House, and, of course, its cathedral.  Not only does it have a separate bell tower, and is made, improbably of Caen stone which must have taken one hell of a journey to get there in the Middle Ages, but it also has delightfully dotty Anglican trappings such as a Garden of Wiccamical Prebends. I have absolutely no idea what a Wiccamical Prebend is, except that if you made me guess, I would go and look for it in the “plumbing” aisle.

But yes, they were happy days, by and large. Of course, one of the things about being happy is you never truly realise when you are being happy, you only see it afterwards. Compared to now, sitting here in my wheelchair, hammering this out on my laptop, with my petition to toughen the laws against animal abuse stalled at 1100 signatures, and my campaign to write to charities being used as clothes horses for PR photo opportunity purposes by ruthless Tory MPs who cut ribbons to open facilities, then ESA with their other hand, behind their back, I think I must have been happy then. Maybe I am happy now, in my own way. If I count my blessings, I certainly ought to be, compared to some people.  I do have some things in common with St Richard – notably the vegetarianism, and I do, occasionally, read the prayer most associated with him, a prayer I first learned at school, without knowing anything about it, or that I would one day live in the same city as its author.

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ

For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly.

Which you may recognise as what became eventually the song “Day by Day” in Godspell, of all things.

Of course, for me, Chichester cathedral is forever and indelibly linked with Larkin’s poem, An Arundel Tomb.  The title has led many people to locate the tomb, mistakenly, at Arundel, but the title arises from the fact that the tomb, in Chichester cathedral, is of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and his wife Eleanor.  Many people have argued over the meaning of the closing lines of Larkin’s poem, which ends on an enigmatic note, asking if the tomb, with its effigies holding hands through all eternity, goes to prove

Our almost-instinct, almost true

What will survive of us, is love.

Personally, I think Larkin set out trying to hedge his bets and almost by mistake ends up asserting, convincingly, in the enhanced language of poetry something he probably didn’t actually believe in, when he thought about it rationally in the plain light of day.  But I am glad he didn’t tear it up. I find it strangely comforting.

Anyway, if anyone can tell me whether I am currently happy, please address your answers on a postcard to the grumpy old sod in the corner.  For my part, it’s yet another Sunday teatime, time to bomb up the fire, put the kettle on, and prepare for the return of the wandering dogs, and the wandering wife, come to that.  If we stay here, it’s going to be another long and busy week, and if we go away, I’ll probably be taking it with me anyway!