Epiblog for Midsummer

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The premature end of summer, which has morphed seamlessly into autumn before we’ve even reached Midsummer’s Day this year, has put an end to gardening and outdoor tasks for now, and the sundial remains unbuilt. Some of the herbs seem to love the rain, however, and the Comfrey in particular has gone from unremarkable seedling to giant Triffid in just a few days. The rose garden is also on the back burner, as Jersey Plants Direct decided that they would beg my pardon, they never promised me a rose garden. Well, they did, actually, but I got a refund instead, which is not nearly as romantic. No barge pole is long enough for some people.

Matilda has taken badly to the deterioration in the weather, pacing about, yowling, and lashing her tail in frustration when it’s absolutely peeing it down, or sitting by the conservatory door and glowering at the squirrels, who seem undeterred by the rain in general, robbing peanuts and bird food out of the dish.

Misty has also been undeterred by the rain in general, although Debbie’s thoughts on having to go “walkies” during what is rapidly becoming the Monsoon season are generally less blasé.  Several days occurred when they both came back drenched, both dried off, both demolished their food, and both fell asleep by the stove. It really is redolent of October, especially in the colder evenings, with the coal banked up.

In the wider world, it has been a week bookended by tragedies, but in between, the filling in the sandwich if you like, it was bizarre beyond the limits of weirdness.  The referendum is now an Alice-in-Wonderland world, completely devoid of reality. George Osborne announced that, in the event of a “Brexit” he would have to levy an emergency budget featuring everything bar a guest appearance by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Why do the remain campaign do this? All it does is make it easy for more sober, more considered, more correct, but equally alarming economic forecasts to be similarly dismissed.  Especially when, if there is a Brexit vote, Osborne will no longer be the chancellor anyway, and in any case, he has missed every target he ever set, so why should anyone believe him now. 

Economically, a Brexit would be a car crash. Worse, it would be a motorway pile up, but Osborne, by crying wolf, has once more made the work of his opponents easier for them.  Because they knew it would never happen, several senior Tories on the Brexit wing of the party immediately issued statements condemning Osborne’s further cuts and proposed additional austerity. Truly, irony has eaten itself.

Sadly, the levity of the week, if you can call it that, was also leavened with some nastiness. The pantomime which is the Euro 2016 football tournament has continued to rumble on.  Off the field, small groups of “fans” from England and Russia have continued their running feud, despite the dire warnings fro the organisers that disqualification is hanging over both teas like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.  Video has also emerged on social media of England “fans” mocking refugee children who were begging in the street, making them catch coins thrown down on the cobbles, and in one case, drink a bottle of beer. On the field, Roy Hodgson finally abandoned his policy of determinedly playing only the second XI, brought on Vardy and Rashford, and, as a result, England accidentally won against Wales.  

In response to the condemnation of the initial rioting, some England fan forums have been quick to point out that it is not all England fans who are acting in this disgraceful way, only a lunatic fringe, who are in no way representative of the England fan base as a whole. To which the obvious riposte is, this is also true of Muslims. Now you understand the difference between a terrorist and a Muslim.

The distinction is lost on people like Nigel Farage, however, who continued to campaign for Brexit in a way which was totally free of all logic and reason. But then, logic and reason have no place these days in the Brexit debate.  On Wednesday, he decided to major on the way the EU affects the British fishing industry, by the simple expedient of renting a river cruiser and leading a flotilla of fishing craft up the Thames in the general direction of parliament.

Despite his apparent espousal of the cause of British fishermen, however, Nigel Farage has only attended something like two of the 42 meetings of the EU Fisheries Committee held since he became an MEP. We know this because it was shouted by no less a personage than Sir Bob Geldof, who appeared in the midst of the Brexit Fleet in a similar, separate, rented river cruiser, complete with loud hailers and stereo speakers blasting “I’m In With The In Crowd”.

It was through the medium of the said megaphone that we learned of Farage’s poor attendance record, possibly the only part of the whole proceedings that fleetingly touched fingertips with what we would normally recognise as reality. Farage, instead of commandeering a megaphone of his own and starting a slanging match (something I would have put money on him doing, actually) retreated under the canopy of his boat, where there were Union Jack deckchairs all set out ready for use, and lit a cigarette.  When questioned about this by a journalist, he said he thought the doctors had got it wrong about smoking. It is not entirely clear if he was joking, or whether he believes, along with Gove, that we have all had enough of experts. For a few bizarre minutes, the entire EU referendum campaign was dominated by two millionaires in rented boats circling each other tentatively on the muddy Thames, one haranguing the other through a megaphone.

Because neither of the leaders of the respective flotillas had inherited the glorious maritime tradition of Nelson, the encounter ended inconclusively, more like Jutland than Trafalgar. While the river boats were circling ponderously in the brackish, turgid water of the Thames, the fishing boats were being “buzzed” by a small number of RIBs (Rigid Inflatable Boats, powered by outboard motors). They responded by spraying the boats and their occupants with water from the bilges. Amongst those in one RIB, who got soaked in the process (along with her family) was Jo Cox MP, the Labour member for Batley and Spen.

The next day, she must have travelled up to her constituency, to do one of the regular MPs’ surgeries which are held all over the country and give MPs a chance to interact with the people who voted them in.  While she was engaged in this, in Birstall Library, my wife was busy teaching her outreach class in a location less than a mile away, and based on the very estate where the alleged suspect is said to own a home.  Had it not been the exam season, Deb might well have hung around giving feedback, as is her usual custom, and had she done so, could have probably been transiting the area just as Jo Cox was being shot and stabbed in the street. I shudder to think of it. As it was, Jo Cox’s murder was taking place just as Debbie rolled safely back into the driveway at home, but it was still too close for comfort.  I couldn’t begin to think what it must feel like to answer a phone call and be told that your wife has just been shot and stabbed in the street. But that is what happened to Brendan Cox on Thursday afternoon, and he then had to break it to their children.

But who is responsible for Jo Cox’s death? It all depends what you mean by “responsible”.  There has been a definite attempt, in the two or three days since the event, by those who have come to realise that their hate and fear mongering may have contributed to the state of the assailant’s mind, to downplay any “political” aspects to the killing. Normally, when I hear that sort of apologia being uttered, I immediately think that what they are really saying is “Oops, I have been busted, and now the shit is about to hit the fan.”

Thus, we find that the people who are saying this sort of thing the loudest, like a repetitive mantra whose chief aim seems to be to drown out any discussion, are those who don’t like being called out on their actions in the referendum campaign, actions which may well have pushed someone vulnerable enough to be susceptible to the febrile atmosphere of hatred and xenophobia, to try and do something about it.  The same things have been said (about “keeping politics out of it”) on a couple of other online forums I read – one about the proposed closure of the A & E Department at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and one about the flooding in Calderdale.

In both cases, the people who are saying “let’s keep politics out of this” are people who probably voted Tory in the election and are now embarrassed that it is coming back to bite them on the bum. Them, and the rest of us.  So any mention of Tory meddling with the NHS and the destabilising effects of PFI cannot be discussed. Any mention of Tory cuts to the Environment Agency putting flood defences in peril cannot be discussed. So it is with Jo Cox, as those with most to lose by being identified as part of the process that led up to her killing fall over themselves in their haste not to be implicated, and any mention of the political dimensions to the death of Jo Cox, cannot be discussed.

The assailant was a mentally disturbed loner, end of.  But I’m sorry, that is not the end. The same people who are saying this are probably the ones who would be the first to be baying for blood if it had been, say, Boris Johnson who had been shot and stabbed in the street by an assailant shouting “Allah-uh Akhbar”, instead of “Britain First”.  But it seems that the rule of thumb is Muslim assailant = ISIS terrorist, whereas white, right wing assailant = mentally disturbed loner.  In the week’s other tragedy, which happened as I was writing my blog last Sunday, the mass shootings in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, there is a similar double standard, the irony there being that the individual in question may well have been first and foremost a disturbed individual with a thing about gay people, but in this case he was appropriated by both ISIS and Donald Trump (for different reasons, but still quite an achievement) for political ends, as an example of “Muslim Terrorism”.

The people who killed Lee Rigby were also mentally ill, but that didn’t stop the likes of Britain First using the case to tar all Muslims with the same brush, and misappropriating the posthumous “approval” of Lee Rigby from beyond the grave, against the wishes of his family.  Mr Boot, meet Mr Other Foot.  Britain First, the political group, were frantically backtracking all day Friday, claiming that even if the assailant had shouted “Britain First”, it could have been part of a longer, rhetorical, question along the lines of “shouldn’t we put Britain first?” Well, if you believe that, tell me again how you feel about the tooth fairy.  In court on Saturday, charged with the crime, the alleged assailant apparently said “Death to Traitors! Britain First”, which I would say puts him firmly in the “Brexit” camp.  When I wrote, in last week’s blog, about the exchange witnessed by one of my friends in the supermarket, where a remain voter was jocularly referred to as a “traitor”, little did I suspect just how far that particular canker had spread.

The prime burden of responsibility for the death of Jo Cox  falls upon the person who killed her.  A man has been arrested and charged, but not yet tried or convicted of her murder.  There has been much speculation about whether the suspect in custody has links to far right groups or not, and whether he shouted “Britain First” as he stabbed and shot his alleged victim.  I am trying to be careful with my nomenclature and terminology here as I have no wish to prejudice future legal proceedings and make it easy for a smart defence counsel to point to the overwhelming speculation on social media as a means of his client being denied a fair trial.

Any tragedy, any catastrophe, usually has multiple causes. It is rare for one single cause to be the root of it. The Space Shuttle that blew up in mid air over Florida was the result of cheap rubber “O” rings and freezing temperatures.  Hillsborough was a combination of a late surge in fans being ineptly handled followed by a failure to appreciate the gravity of the situation and a consequent delay in deploying the emergency services. The Titanic suffered from the bad luck of scraping an iceberg rather than hitting it square on, and then the loss of life was exacerbated by inadequate use of the lifeboats, such as there were on board, and other shipping mis-interpreting her distress rockets as fireworks. In Jo Cox’s case, it featured at least all of the following, plus perhaps other factors of which we are, as yet, unaware.

Unprecedented levels of hatred and xenophobia, especially against refugees and immigrants, being whipped up in the referendum campaign by the lunatic fringe of the Brexit campaign. However uncomfortable that may make them feel, and personally I hope it does, the whirly-eyed zealots of the far right can't escape *some* responsibility.

A local MP with a high profile commitment to helping refugee causes, who made a point of being "present" in the community that elected her.

Seemingly, someone with a number of issues (as yet unknown and specified) which may well have been inflamed by the two above

The fact that (unlike cabinet ministers or politicians in other countries) our MPs by and large are accessible through the means of surgeries and the like and are not, generally, chauffeured around in armoured limos and surrounded by bodyguards.

The killing of Jo Cox is bound up with multiple strands of irony. By several accounts, the man who has been charged with the offence was a “loner”, and fighting the effects of loneliness was one of the causes which she cared passionately about. If he is indeed found guilty, he may misguidedly have killed someone who was trying (albeit indirectly) to help him, and people like him.

                                                                                   

Then there is the issue of the way in which the public view their elected politicians.  You couldn’t throw half a brick on the internet on Friday without hitting someone who was singing the praises of our hard working, diligent MPs. Previously, these MPs were the people who were described (often by me) as lying, venal and corrupt.  I, too, have been guilty of making flip jokes about there not being enough rope, or enough lamp posts in Westminster, especially at the height of the expenses scandal, but again, as with Muslims, as with members of far-right groups, there is a whole spectrum of behaviour and belief, ranging from respectable to completely-off-the-scale four stops beyond Barking and well off the bus route.  They are not all the same.There, I have said it. I've recanted.

The irony here being that, by all accounts, Jo Cox was a diligent and a hardworking MP, proud to serve the community that bore and raised her, and happy to be able to make a difference for her constituents.  She wasn’t some purple-faced old buffer with a glassy stare who only turns up at Westminster once in a blue moon and is rarely seen in his constituency except when he is installing his ornamental duck house, claimed for on expenses, on his moat. One bad apple does not imply a rotten barrel, with MPs, nor with England fans, and, sadly, probably not even with Britain First, though the irony of people deriding their rather hurt social media postings to the effect that the whole group should not be judged by the actions of one individual was totally lost on them.   

But in the case of UKIP, they cannot evade the fact that, on the very morning Jo Cox was killed, Nigel Farage was busily unveiling his latest referendum poster, which showed a winding river of brown people stretching back into the distance and over the horizon.  Superimposed on the image were the words “Breaking Point”.  I caught a brief clip of him being interviewed at the unveiling. He was speechifying, as usual, and he was actually saying “all these people will end up at Calais and they will all be getting passports and coming here…” or words to that effect.  As it happens, the image was a stock photo of refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict.  Who knows what really happened to these people in the picture.  Most of them are probably in refugee camps in Lebanon, Macedonia or Turkey. Some of them will have drowned.

But to  Farage, it’s all grist to his racist mill. And the scary thing is, people are believing him.  A chilling article by Polly Toynbee in The Guardian this week (not my normal fare, but all sorts of things have been popping up in my news feed after the Jo Cox murder) reported on an MPs’ surgery by Margaret Hodge in East London, where the subject of Brexit came up. Every UKIP lie was produced in the course of the discussion, and each one was debunked by Hodge, and demolished. But at the close of the meeting, people were still saying they were going to vote leave, in the face of all facts and reason.  Facts no longer matter. Because it’s a vote with the heart, not the head, and UKIP have captured the emotional argument with their unsupported assertions and now, with the latest poster, sadly, with their naked racism. 

By and large, I am pretty hard on UKIP members, but I guess, like England football supporters, Muslims, MPs and the members of far-right groups, there is a broad spectrum of membership there also, ranging from people who simply feel disillusioned about the state of the country and (wrongly) believe UKIP can fix it, to obsessive racist loners with a bee in their bonnet about refugees who might have just seen Farage’s latest poster on Thursday morning, and decided, spurred on by its message, to play their own part, by taking direct action.  And to my mind, if that is proven to be the case, ever, then UKIP, although they cannot be held directly responsible, are at least culpable, and guilty of recklessness.

Farage was offered the chance on morning TV to express sympathy for the death of Jo Cox and instead used the interview to defend his racist poster and paint himself as a victim of political hatred. That really does tell you all you need to know about him.  So well done, Mr Farage, with your odious quasi-nationalism. It starts with the waving of flags, and ends with a woman lying dead in the street.

What do we do about this, though? I know it’s a cliché, often spouted at such times, but what would she want? Feeling very angry, on Thursday night, I signed an online petition calling for the referendum to be postponed. On mature reflection (as it says in all the best wills) I wish I hadn’t. Because if democracy means anything it means allowing the processes which underlie it to happen, and let the chips fall where they may. Only holding elections when you are sure of getting the result you want is the sort of thing they do in Russia and China, and I think we’re better, in our political traditions, than that. Not much better, of late, but I still think the referendum should go ahead, and let the chips fall where they may.

One area which does bear some scrutiny, though, is the status of the group Britain First. As I said, I am not, generally, an advocate of banning things, but maybe it is time to make an exception with this organisation.   Britain First is an organisation that consistently pumps out vile, anti-Muslim propaganda, and seeks to paint all adherents of that faith with the same brush. In the past, it has carried out “direct actions” including Mosque invasions.

I am well aware that Britain First is merely a decorative border on the edge of the  lunatic fringe of the right-wing movement in general in the UK, in the same way that a group like, for instance, Al-Mujaharoun was the lunatic fringe of Islamic opinion. However, we were quick enough to disband and proscribe that organisation, and similar ones, and I think that, in terms of equality of response if nothing else, the time has now come to do the same to Britain First.

I realise that there is a counter argument which says that banning solves nothing, and it is better to keep these people in plain view, where their actions may be more easily scrutinised for unlawful activity, but the precedent has now already been set, and for me, it is now a case of “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”.

Britain First, even if not directly responsible for the death of Jo Cox (and I accept that no organisation can control the action of its supporters 100%, even if the suspect did turn out to have been a member, which is still an open question) are nevertheless, with others, generally responsible for stirring up the poisonous mixture of hate and xenophobia which is currently killing off all of the British values of tolerance, compassion, and sympathy for the underdog which we used to hold so dear, and which made this country the special place it once was.

It is the feast day of various saints today, including the splendidly named St Deodatus, but somehow it doesn’t seem right, this week, to be writing about ancient church history when events have taken place which have challenged the very ideals of Christianity and the very roots, indeed, of faith. Well, my faith, anyway. Where was God when Jo Cox was being killed? Why is evil constantly triumphant? What possible part of a planned universe managed and run by a benevolent caring God who allegedly loves mankind so much that he was willing to sacrifice a part of himself in the form of his only son, to save mankind, could allow this to happen?

The standard answer (theologically, although I paraphrase) is that we live in a fallen universe and we have free will. So although God must have known, being omniscient and omnipresent, that Jo Cox would have been killed, and indeed knows the minute and the hour for all of us, he did not do anything to stop it happening, for reasons best known only unto the mind of God.

This has never made much sense to me, and has been a major stumbling block all my religious life. Especially since God, faced with a blank canvas, could re-shape and re-frame the world any way he wanted.  I accept that I will never know the  mind of God, at least not in this lifetime, and I accept that I have occasionally had experiences, which some may call “religious” where I have – inexplicably, and in a way it is impossible to explain – felt that “all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” but even so, God’s mind must be bloody strange if something like the death of Jo Cox is acceptable to it.

The other often-advanced argument is that some good will come of the death of Jo Cox. Well, that may well be so. I know there is a tendency when someone young and bright dies before their time, especially a young woman, to re-write their past in a more “saintly” light. It’s the Princess Diana syndrome. Jo Cox didn’t feature particularly prominently on my radar before her death, but from what I have gleaned since, she seems generally to have already been a force for good, so why God felt it necessary to allow her death to create “good” out of it is a mystery to me. You got me there, Big G.

It is tempting, after thoughts like those, to fall into the pit of thinking that nothing has any meaning, and the world is truly random and chaotic, part of a Godless universe. I suppose the only mitigating factors, the consolations, are things such as the bravery shown by her sister in reading out her very moving public tribute, the way in which Jo Cox’s assistant tried to comfort and help her as she lay dying and the attempts by the 77 year old ex-miner, the have a go hero who got stabbed for his trouble, to prevent the murder taking place. Always look for the helpers, as the saying goes.  As Jo Cox herself said, in her maiden speech:

Batley and Spen is a gathering of typically independent, no-nonsense and proud Yorkshire towns and villages. Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

In a sense, she was merely echoing John Donne, four hundred years earlier, in his Meditation VII from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions:

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe

is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as

well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine

owne were; any mans death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Odd as it may seem – maybe because it was so “close to home” in some ways – I do feel “diminished” by the death of Jo Cox, a person I never knew. Oddly and personally diminished, an additional dimension to the sheer anger at the fact it happened and the despair about the way in which the country is going.  Maybe we just have to cling on to the fact that people tried to help, and that, despite the heart growing brutal in some cases, there is still more that unites us than divides us.

Next week, for good or ill, is the referendum. At times like those we have endured in the past few days, I tend to find myself rummaging mentally though the ragbag of poetry I keep in my head, looking for a talisman, a touchstone, that will help me to make sense of it all  Poetry makes nothing happen, as W H Auden once memorably said about the Spanish Civil War, but it does help sometimes in the struggle to make sense of those times when bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason.

For the last few weeks, thinking especially about the climate of hate engendered by the Brexit camp, I have had The Stare’s Nest By My Window by W. B. Yeats going round and round inside my head. The poem was written in the bloody aftermath of the civil war which led eventually to partition in Ireland in the 1920s.  The bees outside Yeats’s window at Thoor Ballylee are building a hive in the remains of an empty nest left by starlings, but on another level, Yeats is using the poem as a heart-felt cry for reconciliation, and for people to co-operate, to build something new in Ireland out of the wreckage of war, in the same way that the old nest is being re-used by the bees.

We have fed the heart on fantasies
The heart’s grown brutal on the fare

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love. O honey bees,

Come build in the empty house of the stare!

Whatever the outcome of the referendum, there is going to be a massive need for people to all pull together and make things better. If we vote to leave, economically, that task is going to be well-nigh impossible. Even if we stay in, it should be a massive wake-up call for Cameron and Co and the EU generally. The status quo is not an option.  I fear, however, that we may be in for dark times ahead. If we vote to leave, and – as they almost certainly will – things get worse, not better, for the people who voted to go, in the misguided hope that there would be more hospitals, more schools, and fewer brown people, and these people wake up on June 24^th and don’t find themselves basking in a warm glow of sovereignty, whatever that means, and its just as difficult to see your GP, the roads are just as busy, the schools just as crowded, and the economy is tanking, so there is even less money to fix these things, eventually, that anger will surface, and find a way to manifest itself, to the detriment of us all.

And of course, next week there is the Midsummer Solstice, and everything starts to tip back down towards autumn, towards decay, shorter days and colder nights. “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date” as the Bard has it.  Somehow, today, this Sunday teatime in England, with clouds overhead and a light rain falling, seems to be the eye in the hurricane, the calm before the storm. In what is laughably described as my spare time, last week, I took to painting yet again, and also to baking. So I am going to close now, and make what seems to me to be the only sane response to the mad world I seem to be trapped in. I’m going to paint an eikon, and then make a strawberry flan. Or vice versa.

Epiblog for the Feast of St John of Sahagun

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, even though summer does seem to have come to an end, somewhat prematurely, is it’s still nine days to the solstice.  Sadly, though, the warm and humid weather of last week has well and truly broken, at least for the moment.  Before it did, we had a very pleasant barbecue last Sunday evening, outside on the decking. The first time I had been out there, using the ramps which Owen so kindly constructed for us, this year. That, together with starting writing it too late in the day, was one of the reasons why last week’s blog was so late.

Anyway, a pleasant time was had by all, and the mobile little barbecue thingy that Debbie bought from IKEA to take on holiday with us when we go off in the camper performed very well, browning vegan sausages, pretend prawns, and rashers of faux-bacon, all of which were accompanied by a big bowl of salad, chopped and mixed by yours truly.  Half way through, Granny arrived with Zak and Ellie, having walked them over in the warm of the evening. There was plenty to go around, so she ended up staying as well.  Eventually, however, she felt the pull of home, and tottered off into the night, faithful poochies at her heels, as always.

This is why you should never leave a party before the end, or else you might miss the floorshow.  It had been a terrific evening up to that point, but then the Titanic was having an absolutely spiffing voyage, until it hit the iceberg.  Attempting to negotiate my way back up the ramp, over the threshold and into the conservatory, somehow, I got stuck half way up. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have turned round on the decking, and gone up backwards, then I could have used my legs as well for additional propulsion.

Anyway, I didn’t, and though – as it says in all the best police statements – drink had been taken, the main problem was my wheels started slipping, and my arms weren’t strong enough on their own to hold me. Debbie rushed from inside to the doorway, leant out and grabbed the lapels of my fleece, all she could reach in that instant, but it started to come off over my head and the inevitable ensued. Gravity triumphed over levity, I rolled backwards, then, on “landing” on the decking, the wheelchair itself tipped over backwards, with me in it. I managed to take out a small stone ceramic owl that lights up in the dark (we only have the classiest garden ornaments, us) and one third of a garden lily. The owl was stuck back together on Monday morning, and the plant re-potted, and both are doing fine, in case you were worried.

I, however, was not so good. Stuck in the chair, on my back with my legs in the air, I couldn’t reach my mobile to summon help. There was no way that Deb could get me back in the chair on her own.  She shouted that she’d get me the house phone, and reappeared in the doorway with it. For some reason not entirely clear, but probably to do with speed and panic, instead of just coming out and handing it to me, or dialling 999 herself, she threw me the handset.  Because I was currently lying on my back like a stranded beetle, waving my legs in the air, my catching wasn’t at its best, and because it was dark, her aim was a bit wappy too. The phone struck me a glancing blow on the forehead just above the left eyebrow, and skidded off into the darkness, amongst a load of shrubs in tubs. We recovered it the following morning, surprisingly no worse for wear. Unlike my head.

Meanwhile, I had managed, by dint of wiggling my hips like Chubby Checker, to send the wheelchair one way while I rolled the other. This meant that at least I could reach my mobile. I dialled 999 wearily, and explained what had happened. I asked for an ambulance, because the last time I fell off my banana board while transferring into the chair, about two years ago, that’s what they sent. This time around, the 999 operator started asking me if I was actually injured bleeding or unconscious, and seemed unsure whether I needed an ambulance or not. All I could do was reiterate the situation, and in the end I just said send who you like, send the lifeboat if you must, but please send somebody.

A few minutes later, with commendable speed and despatch, three burly firemen knocked at the door, and were admitted through the kitchen by Debbie. Having assessed the situation, they did a “fireman’s lift”, plonked me back in the chair, and wheeled me up the ramp and into the house. I thanked them, and they left.  Upsetting though the experience was (spiritually, and literally) it did have a hidden up-side. Previously, there had been some speculation as to whether the elevated decking, now getting on for 20 years old, was going to rot through, but the fact that it took the combined weight of the aforesaid trio of burly “pompieres” plus me, indicates that it is probably a lot stronger than it looks.

The next day, I felt like crap. I had a bump on my head from the phone, bruised ribs, and I had strained the muscles in my right shoulder. Gradually, during the week, things improved, and at least it took my mind off my thumb, which has, conversely, quietened itself down a bit. I have since suggested to Debbie that maybe next time we have a barbecue, though, we should just invite the fire brigade to send along a delegation from the outset, as this would save a lot of time at the end of the evening.

Matilda has had, for her, a busy week, also, including, unusually for her, having to defend her territory. I was sitting working on Wednesday and Matilda was sprawled out like a discarded set of bagpipes on the cool floorboards in the front room. A movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and I looked up to see Poppy, the little black cat from next door, sitting in the middle of the conservatory rug, having no doubt come in through the open door (open because of the stifling heat).  Matilda saw her at exactly the same time, and thundered across the room. Poppy turned tail and fled, with Matilda lumbering after her. At the turn, the order was 1. Poppy, 2. Matilda, and in third place, the fat old guy in the wheelchair. A short head separated 1 and 2, and several lengths 2 and 3. I sat at the door, calling Matilda back, aided by Misty, who had come in to see what all the fuss was about.  Eventually, Matilda returned, eyes like saucers, and tail the size of a bog-brush.  As predicted, she had failed to catch the interloper, as I saw Poppy later on in our front garden.

The next day, on Thursday afternoon, Deb and I were sitting in the kitchen when Deb drew my attention to the conservatory door, which was again open. A squirrel was half way up the door jamb, clinging on like a gecko, and craning its neck to see whether there might be any additional sources of food inside.  Matilda did not need to be involved in this instance, as the squirrel in question met Debbie’s stern gaze, got the full-on gamma-ray treatment, quailed, jumped down, and fled up the tree.

As I said to Debbie, they are getting too tame for their own good, really, though they did have a rude awakening when Ellie and Zak were here on Friday. For some reason, Zak (65 in human years) suddenly decided he was affronted by a squirrel with its nose in the dish on the decking, just outside the open door. In one bound he was off and after it. The squirrel escaped, of course, but Ellie had also exited through the door, after touching the floor just once in between the armchair where she’d been sleeping and the outside world, in a manner reminiscent of the late, great Freddie, who was legendary for hurling himself at the glass whenever there was a squirrel in the garden.

Ellie is not allowed outside unsupervised, because she has a habit of turning every excursion into an adventure, and, true to form, this time, when Zak returned from his pursuit, he was alone. The previous time she escaped from out the back, she was found in the front garden of a house seven or eight doors up the road, heading resolutely towards Netherton with no obvious route plan. The time before that, she tried to get back into the house, but unfortunately it wasn’t our house, it belonged to one of the neighbours. You begin to get the idea. With some weariness, we prepared for a full scale search, possibly involving external agencies. However, Ellie saved us the trouble. When Debbie went out of the front door to start traipsing up and down the road, searching, Ellie was rooting around unconcerned in our front garden, and was unceremoniously scooped up, scolded, and replaced in the armchair, with the door from the conservatory firmly shut, after the dogs had bolted.

Sadly, that has been more or less what has passed for fun in our household this week. Last night, Granny, Adam, and the dogs came round and I made them egg and chips for tea while we all watched England draw inexplicably with Russia in Euro 2016 because of the masterly tactical move by the manager of stubbornly refusing to put our two best goal-scorers on the pitch. Mathematically, we can still qualify, as the old saying has it, but it may not come to that, and Hodgson’s cunning plan that this is such a crucial tournament that we can get away with fielding the Second XI and going out at the group stage may not be necessary, as we’re highly likely to be disqualified anyway, because of the behaviour of the England fans, sorry, thugs, in Marseilles. Calling these people fans is like calling ISIS muslims.

The fact that we seem to have somehow managed to create such an atmosphere of xenophobic bile that it has culminated in us having, in effect, exported our version of the Blackshirts to Europe, is probably another unintended consequence of the Brexit debate. Back home, here, the level of the “debate” though it hardly qualifies to be called such, has reached a new, nasty pitch this week, with only 11 days to go to the poll itself.  Actually, the Brexiteers do have a point. There is a large group of young men in Europe, who will soon be making their way to Calais, intent on entering Britain, and these people are violent, lawless, ignorant, intolerant, and intent on fostering hatred in our towns and cities. The trouble is that they are England football fans, they all have British passports, and we can’t really stop them coming back, however much we might want to.

It has got to the stage now where it seems that, on the Brexit side at least, the debate is being conducted entirely on emotional terms, with a driving force of unfocused xenophobic nationalism that is completely – and unashamedly – unconnected with facts or reality.  In this respect, it has gained a boost this week by the yet further, continuing, celebrations of the Queen’s 90^th birthday, which seems to have been going on now for about the last three years.  The whole country is decked out with Union Jacks and street parties and, while I am an admitted monarchist (because the alternatives are all much, much worse) the atmosphere it has fostered, combined with the Brexit campaign, is at least febrile, and at best, very, very weird. A friend tells me of an informal discussion she witnessed between two supermarket workers and a customer. The customer had a “Brexit” badge on her coat and one of the supermarket workers was congratulating her on it, then turned to point at her colleague and said “Oh, take no notice of her, she wants to stay in, she’s a traitor!”

Now, this is one colloquial exchange and in no way statistically significant, but that use of the word traitor strikes me as highly significant, redolent of the mindset of the Brexit supporters, and the reason why it really looks as though Britain, in 11 days time, will perform an act of insane self-harm, in economic terms, which will take two generations to repair, if indeed it can be repaired at all. Because somehow, Brexit, through a campaign which is an admitted tissue of lies, has nevertheless come to engineer it that the patriotic thing to do is to vote to leave, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor.

I don’t normally link to other articles in this blog. I know that’s sort of the whole point of the internet, but I prefer if possible to use quotations and give a reference to their source, because I think it spoils the flow of reading something if you have to click off it and then read something else, and then click back again, but I will make an exception this week.  I have – in the last few days – read two articles that have more or less summed up, for me, the case for remaining. Both are very long, and challenging reads, and one at least is larded with invective, but they both repay reading. In fact, speaking as someone who was, at the start of 2016, vaguely considering voting to leave until I saw who else was in that camp, and, as a consequence, started to look into the economic implications of a “Brexit", I’d strongly recommend – especially if you are thinking of voting to leave, or still undecided – reading both of them, even though it means investing half an hour or more of your life.

https://www.facebook.com/nicholasjohncarter/posts/10153467946496736?pnref=story

and http://tinyurl.com/zt3mlkz

are the articles in question. I apologise for the F-bomb in the second one's link, but as you will find in the article, if you read it, he is even more exasperated than I am with the imminent act of collective self-harm we seem about to inflict.

If you don’t read the articles (and by the way, despite being on Facebook, the first one is actually a well-marshalled summary of some actual facts, especially on the immigration issue) William Gadsby Peet, in the second one, made two or three particularly telling points about the ability or otherwise of a “Brexited” UK to strike new, independent trade deals  quickly enough to prevent economic chaos.  He points out that, in the event of a vote to leave, the process takes two years. That is two years of economic uncertainty, stagnation and lack of confidence, lack of investment, and pressure on the pound.  Plus an end to any existing support we get from the European Social Fund, the Europpean Economic Development Fund, and any specific disaster funds such as the flooding fund. Germany and France, in particular, will be in absolutely no hurry to strike any sort of deal with the UK, post-Brexit. It is in their interests not to, after all. If the UK is allowed to waltz away, and then everything carries on much as before, with no apparent dire consequences, this will send what they consider to be the wrong message, and feed the incipient groundswell of the right wing in both those countries towards their own “Frexit" and "Gerexit” movements.  And that is the last thing the EU wants. It wants to be able to point to Britain as an economic basket case and say “look, this suffering is what happens when you turn your back on the EU!”

As for trade deals with the rest of the world, he points out that they, too, will be in no hurry to sign anything. By leaving the EU, Britain will have telegraphed to the rest of the world that it is now in a situation of desperately needing to sign up trade deals elsewhere, and the longer it is left by the countries with whom we want to trade, the more they can delay, the better the terms they will get from us, as desperation sets in further.  I’ve written many times that I am no fan of the EU, especially as it currently operates, and in the unlikely event of the UK voting to remain, I certainly don’t see it as an endorsement of the status quo (other ageing rock bands are available). It has to change and improve, but we can only influence that process in our favour if we are at the table when the deals are made.

In any decision involving the UK’s future, the economy has to be paramount. Anyone who has bothered to look into it already knows that immigration, in economic terms, has a positive effect on the economy. In terms of the Brexit argument it is a distraction, being used to whip up xenophobia in the face of economic sense. Immigrants come, they get jobs, they pay taxes.  Those jobs in turn create more jobs, and the economy grows, and with it the tax take, which is the way out of the wasteland left by the careless bankers and their world economic crash in 2008.  If you want the next generation of kids to grow up with the best prospect of getting a job, buying a house, getting on in life, and generally living in a stable and prosperous society, the only sane choice is to put away your bunting, stop blindly waving that Union Jack, tell the Daily Mail where to stuff its straight bananas, and vote to stay in and try and make the best of it.  Like me, you may not do so with a spring in your step and a song in your heart, but if we don’t, then the lights are going out all over Europe, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime, in the words of Sir Edward Grey.  Liz Hurley has apparently said that she is all for voting Brexit if it means we can go back to having old fashioned high powered light bulbs, screw cap or bayonet. I’m sure that her light bulbs will be a great comfort to her, when she gets back home after queuing in the street to catch a loaf of bread thrown off the back of an army lorry. Always assuming there is any electricity to run them.

It’s not just the weather that has turned nasty with the end of the week, either. As I was typing this, listening to the jazzy, syncopated plopping of heavy drops of rain landing on the conservatory roof, news was coming in that 50 people have been shot  dead in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, an incident seemingly unconnected with the fact that Christina Grimmie, a singer, was gunned down on Friday night in the same town as she signed autographs after a concert.  At the time of writing, though ISIS has endorsed the action, there is also a theory that it was simply the “lone gunman with a grudge against gays” theory.  Donald Trump, who is undoubtedly the Antichrist, has tweeted on the atrocity “When will we be tough, smart, and vigilant”- basically jumping the gun (no pun intended, I assure you) and blaming it on terrorists.

I know rhetorical questions are usually posed without any expectation of an answer, but in this case, Donald, in answer to your question, your idea of “tough”, will only make domestic terrorism worse, you will never be “smart”, and as for “vigilant”, unless you keep all of your citizens under 24/7 surveillance, with the total loss of civil liberties that implies, “vigilance” will not solve matters. Maybe that is the sort of society you, and your supporters, want.  Goodbye, America, it was nice to know you.

There was one little gleam, though, this week, one gleam in the gloom. Les Binns was on the news. Les Binns last crossed paths with me when, back in the day, as they usually say, he used to run a copyprint machine at the office, back in the times when I used to have a real job.  He progressed to a slightly more hazardous existence in the Army, doing one or two tours in Afghanistan, dodging bullets and IEDs.  After that, our ways had parted, though I do occasionally see things his mum posts on Facebook.  Imagine my surprise, then, to click on the news and find him being interviewed. He, now aged 42 and working in private security, had been on a lifetime trip to climb Mount Everest, and was within striking distance of the summit when he stumbled upon a female Indian climber who was having trouble with her oxygen. Further on, another climber, male, from the same expedition was also in trouble.  I have read (given that Debbie is quite keen on mountaineering) books about climbers who have gone summit blind and ignored the distress of others. You can see why.  It costs about £40,000 to climb Everest, these days.  And it must be so tempting to just pass by on the other side, and carry on plodding upwards.

Les did not. Les told his Sherpa that he wasn’t going to summit, and instead, commenced trying to help the two stranded climbers back down the mountain to safety. The woman’s life was saved. Sadly, the male climber was too far gone, and didn’t make it. Everest is a dangerous place, though not as dangerous as K2, where apparently 25% of climbers on average die on the descent.  By stopping to help these people, and changing his own planned schedule, we should not forget that Les put his own life in considerable danger. Once things start to go wrong at 29,000 feet, they don’t often magically right themselves.  So, well done, Les, you probably wouldn’t remember me if I fell off a shelf onto your head, but I am proud to once have worked in the same office as you. And in what Shakespeare called a naughty world, your good deed stands out.

Today, for all its drizzly dreariness, is the feast of St John of Sahagun.  He was born John Gonzales de Castrillo in the town of Sahagun, Leon, in Spain, and was educated by the monks of the Benedictine monastery of Fagondez. He was ordained in 1445, and at that point he resigned all of his benefices except that of St Agatha in Burgos, as a protest against religious pluralism.  He spent four years studying at the University of Salamanca, and then began to preach.

In the next decade he achieved considerable fame as a preacher, a worker of miracles, and for his ability to, as it was put “read men’s souls”.  After a serious operation, though, in 1463, he retired and became an Augustinian friar. He denounced evil in high places, and several attempts were made on his life, ending when he was poisoned on 11 June 1479, allegedy by one of two women who had taken offence at being denounced in a sermon about them living “in concubinage” with a powerful nobleman.  Not long after his death, in 1525, the process of his beatification began, culminating in October 1690 when he was canonised by Pope Alexander VIII.

Apart from the preaching and the miracles, I can sympathise with some bits of the life of St John of Sahagun, especially the bits about retiring after a serious operation (been there, done that) and denouncing evil in the rich and famous (ditto).  Other than that, though, I can only conclude, as I have been forced to do with several other saints I have researched, that the conditions for sainthood were a lot more relaxed in those days.

As for me, next week is pretty much more of the same. One of the four books I have been working on simultaneously since as long ago as I can remember, has finally gone to press. Technically, this means I should be feeling 25% less oppressed, but it doesn’t seem to work like that. Two of the four are my own projects, and it’s looking increasingly likely that I’ll have to ditch them (even though I have pre-orders for both) in favour of working on books by others. It’s the only way it’s going to happen, as other stuff is fast coming up on the rails.  Sad, but true.

Still, the end of term is approaching, which will at least be an easement for Debbie, although there is still the baptism of fire of the exams to go through, first.  It’s getting to that stage where I need to make a big list of everything that needs doing before we go away (if we even get there). But with the end of term comes the end of summer. I know the Solstice is theoretically midsummer, but inevitably I can sense a change, a downward decay in things, from then on.  The flowers of July are living on borrowed time, and the blossom of May is gone, long dispersed and dead for another year.

So, this autumn and winter is, for me, a pretty depressing prospect. At best it will be full of hard work, cold dreary weather, and struggling against the same 17 intractable problems, while having to acknowledge that I am, probably, getting weaker in my upper body. Six years on from my formal diagnosis, I’m not surprised, I suppose, but it’s another thing to worry about, even though worrying about it is futile, since it will happen whether I worry or not.

My petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120545

has now got almost 12,000 signatures, so that looks like it’s headed for being another small victory,  since there is no way it will get the remaining 88,000 needed to trigger a debate in parliament before 16 August, even assuming parliament, post-Brexit, even wanted to debate it. 12,000 is still, though, a significant wodge of people who want to see the animal welfare laws strengthened.

So, in an attempt to stay sane, in addition to this crazy life I chose of trying to sell books to people who have little or no disposable income, I’ll carry on sketching, and doing the occasional thing for myself instead of others. I’ll stake up my herbs, some of which have been knocked down by the rain, I’ll polish my clock, and I’ll continue trying to implement the power of gradual change and small victories.  And I guess I’ll carry on praying for the welfare of me, mine, and those less fortunate than ourselves.  Despite the fact that my relationship with Big G seems to have become troubled over the years, we are more or less still on speaking terms.

That, at the end of the day, is all that someone in my position can do. So now I’m going to make some gooseberry tarts.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Boniface

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Summer continues, much to the delight of all concerned in our small household of two humans and a variable number of animals. It being half term, and very much the “eye” in the hurricane that is the exam season, we were hoping to get away in the camper van for a few days, even if only to Walney, to see the seaside, the seals and the sea, but – unfortunately, from a timing point of view – something sharp in the road which Debbie encountered on Monday took out two of the tyres, and also bent the rear wheel arch plate.  The scary thing is Deb has no recollection of hitting anything, but that is what happened, according to the garage.  Two new tyres and a bit of metal-bashing later, we got the van back from the garage on Thursday. But by then it was a bit too late in the week to be loading up. I'm not quite sure why it took so long to repair. Lewis Hamilton's car gets its tyres changed in about 15 seconds.

Still, Misty and Zak have been enjoying their walks, although not the runs, which Debbie has taken to doing on alternate days. Yesterday they did five and a half miles. Misty kept stopping in protest, and Zak, at 65 in human years, was loping along, doing the best he could to keep up.  When they got back, they demolished the water bowl plus several refills between them.

Matilda has not been running anywhere. In the manner of cats the world over, her reaction to sunshine is to find the warmest and sunniest spot on the decking, curl up there, and go back to sleep.  Then, later in the afternoon, when the sun has moved around, she moves too, to the next sunniest spot, and so on.  Eventually, when hunger overcomes the desire for a warm sleeping-place, she plods in through the open door and takes up station by her bowl, ready for another instalment in the never-ending buffet of her life.

The birds and squirrels are still busy, but it looks like Brenda has left us for another year, as we haven’t seen any sign of badger activity for a few nights now.  Still, like many pleasant things, it was good while it lasted, and it’s comforting (to me at any rate) to think of her nurturing a new generation of badger cubs in a cool sett somewhere underground in the woods down the valley-slope.

I’ve not done nearly as much work as I should have done this week. Unfortunately, this weather and work just don’t mix. I really must buckle down to it next week and get some of these damn books off to press.  Having four projects on the go at once, all of which are almost finished, is currently doing my head in.

As is the continuing hoohah over the Brexit debate. It is absolutely everywhere you turn, and, of course, it is The Grand Confusion writ large, with lies and questionable statistics being bandied about on both sides.  One reason why, sadly, the Brexit campaign is going to win this (by bamboozling people who already have racist xenophobic tendencies and a warped view of the EU as an army of faceless bureaucrats fond of straight bananas) is that Brexit even have the better lies.

The “Remain” campaign seems to be relying on an ever-increasing number of statements by people of varying statuses, from captains of industry, merchant bankers and the like, right down to questionable celebrities no-one has heard of, to the effect that economically, we’d all be worse off out of Europe.  This is, actually, probably true. More sober, realistic studies by people such as the Bank of England and the IMF have said as much. But the serious, considered nature of their analysis is lost in the noise of the hysterical scaremongering employed by the Remain campaign, though they have toned it down a little of late, as they have belatedly come to realise it was alienating people.

What they omit to mention, as well, is that the ecomony isn’t going to sing and dance any time soon, even if we stay in. Six years of misguided “austerity” have seen to that.  With the clown Osborne, the Chancer of the Exchequer, in charge, things can go down as well as up. And probably will. With potentially four years to the next election, Osborne still has a lot of missed targets to fail to try and meet by yet more irresponsible plundering of the poorest and most disadvantaged, so expect more of the same, if Remain wins, with a few sops being thrown as election bribes in early 2020.

Brexit, however, have, as I said, outclassed the rather dismal untruths of the Remain campaign by a country mile.  Their “offer” as it might be described in marketing terms, is based on three key issues.  Better use of “our” money than simply “giving” it to the EU,  “regaining control” of immigration, and returning “sovereignty” to the UK.

When you start to examine those in detail, however, they fall apart. On the monetary front, the £350million a week has been shown to be, in effect, more like £161million, which is still a tidy enough sum, but nowhere in the Brexit “Ladybird Book of EU Economics” is there a chapter on EU regional development funding, EU emergency funds (such as the flood fund) and other inward investment.  The most fallacious claim is that the money we “give” to the EU could be better spent on the NHS and schools.

How likely is it, given the Tories’ appalling record on investment in the public services, that this would actually happen? We are talking, after all, of the people who disposed of Royal Mail at a below market value, fire sale price, and now want to do the same to The Land Registry.  To give you a clue, I posted a question on Boorish Johnson’s Facebook Page, asking if, in the event of a Brexit win, David Cameron resigning, and Johnson becoming prime minister, if he would commit here and now to putting an extra £350million a week into the NHS. After all, it’s plastered all over the Brexit literature.  I’m still waiting for an answer!

There won’t be a cash surplus anyway. Norway, which trades with the EU although it is not a member, still has to pay in to the EU, and also has to accept free movement of labour.  So in that case, nothing changes apart from we lose what limited influence we have to shape policy from within the EU, and veto anything we don’t like the look of.  And if you think we can instantly magic bilateral trade agreements with the rest of the world outside of the EU, I also have some magic beans I can sell you if you’re interested. 

But the glaringly-obvious point, the pike-staff-brandishing-elephant-in-the-room, is that, since we are not in the Euro, we control our own money supply anyway, and if we wanted to spend £350million a week extra on the NHS, we could, right now, from tomorrow. That weasel Osborne (sorry, weasels everywhere) only has to pick up the phone to Mark Carney at the Bank of England, and tell him to start the presses running, and jiffy bags full of £50 notes could be in the post to every hospital in the UK.

The issue on the free movement of people brings me on to immigration. This is the area where Brexit are possibly being more untruthful than any other.  They are tapping into the generally perceived idea which has been fostered by the Tories and UKIP since 2010, that there are “too many” brown people in the UK, and that these people are getting a disproportionate chare of state handouts and benefits which are somehow denied to “white natives”, and that this is somehow “swamping” our “native culture” because we are being forced to sing “baa baa ethnic sheep” and not to wave the St George flag might offend Muslims. All bunkum, of course, or at best, bunkum leavened with a tiny, homeopathic-sized grain of truth.

I’ve paraphrased that slightly, but speak to any white van man or racist granny and that’s what you’ll hear. Usually from people who are incapable of differentiating between a refugee, an asylum seeker, an economic migrant, or a British citizen with a non-white ethnicity.  I am hard on these people, but on the other hand, you can see how they got that way. Labour, their traditional homeland and the natural refuge of the white working class, has ignored them for about twenty years now, because people like Blair and Miliband thought the route to Westminster lay in wooing floating voters in the leafy shires of Middle England.  Add to this a generous leavening of misguided “political correctness” and “positive discrimination”, each instance of which is eagerly proclaimed by a rabidly xenophobic press as evidence that the country is going to the dogs, and there you are. Mix them together, and what do you get, bippity boppity boo, as the song says.  You can see the same thing happening in America, where white working class voters whose needs and concerns have been ignored by the college elite technocrats who have run for president in recent years, are now emerging en masse from the woodwork to do Nazi salutes at Trump rallies.

Brexit have been playing on these fears with the touch of a master pianist stroking the ivories of the best Steinway. They rarely, if ever, point out the difference between EU and non-EU immigration, and they never pause to consider the knock-on effect it would have on the thousands of Britons working and living in Europe, if we were in effect to fill in the tunnel and pull up the drawbridge. This attempt to tap into anti-Muslim sentiment is what is behind the Brexit campaign harping on about Turkey joining the EU, even though Turkey has only currently met one or two of the conditions for joining. They are singing a siren song to people who don’t want brown neighbours, and trying to wind the clock back to the 1950s in terms of racial and religious tolerance.  In that respect alone, a Brexit victory would have very bad implications for racial cohesion and harmony in UK society. Meanwhile, the refugees drowning in the Mediterranean continue to go un-named and un-mourned.

On the employment front, Brexit really don’t care if a British software engineer in Dusseldorf has to up sticks and move back to the UK to pick sprouts on a Lincolnshire farm for minimum wage, because all the Poles and Romanians have been sent home, post-Brexit. In fact, I doubt they have even thought it through. Too rigorous an analysis would, after all, destroy the argument itself, once you start weighing losses and gains.  Let’s be charitable and assume they are just being stupid, though someone more cynical than myself could possibly conclude that they are wilfully not bothering to tell the full story, in order to tap into incipient racism in some sections of the electorate.

When it comes to sovereignty, I already wrote last week about the way in which Johnson is deliberately confusing the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, and quoted at length from Professor Adam Tonkin about the way in which sovereignty actually works, by mutual consent. This analysis of the situation is totally drowned out by the blaring and trumpeting coming from the Brexit camp about “taking back control” – of something we already had anyway – and once again, unless something is done to scotch this falsehood that, post-Brexit, the UK would be somehow more in control of its own laws and destiny, when in reality the situation would be pretty much the same as now, or maybe worse, in terms of some of the positive things the EU has brought to us no longer applying, such as employment law and health and safety, then Brexit will win, and win comfortably, something which we will all come to regret. Mark my words.

Boorish Johnson was singled out especially for attention by no less a personage than Sir John Major this week – our oldest living ex prime minister, who knows a bit about European arguments. Major called Johnson a “court jester” and said that leaving the NHS in his care, and the care of the other Brexiteers, was like leaving a python to look after your pet hamster.  This was quite severe for John Major, whose previous most extreme remark was to call people who disagreed with him over Europe “bastards”, but despite his bluster, Johnson must be concerned that both Major and Heseltine, who still represent a considerable faction within the Tories, have now both given him the savaged-by-a-dead-sheep treatment, and will no doubt be queuing up to wield the lead-filled sock in the event of a contest to decide, post-Cameron, who will lead the Tories in the four years to the next election. 

When I said, “there are four years to the next election”, that is, of course, unless the continuing rumblings about the 2015 Election expenditure on the Tory campaign do actually manifest themselves in prosecutions. It is a story which is not going to go away. It can only get bigger, and if the result is that the 2015 Tory wins in the affected constituencies have to be set aside and the government falls, then so be it.  In the last big financial scandal to hit the political establishment, the one over MPs’ expenses, Labour MPs who had transgressed generally received harsher punishments, including jail in some cases, whereas Tories generally got off scot-free, or with a rap over the knuckles. This latest, episode, for me, goes some way to redressing that imbalance of justice.  If it turns out that the 2015 Election was actually null and void, because of unlawful expenses costs, though, quite where that leaves the authenticity of the EU referendum, which would have been called by a government acting unconstitutionally, is anyone’s guess!

St Boniface, whose feast day it is today, was originally known as Wynfrith, Winifrith, or Winfrith, and was born in the (then) Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex in about 675AD.  He was a leading figure in the Christian evangelisation of what is now Germany, and was then “Germania” in the 8^th Century.  Considering the era in which he lived, his life is actually one of the better-documented ones of saints of the period, though of course not all sources agree. For instance, the place of his birth, supposedly Crediton in Devon, is only given in one source.  He is supposed to have studied at an abbey in Exeter, under Abbot Wulfhard.

Although he apparently lobbied hard to be allowed to be a missionary, it was not until about 714AD that he was able to depart on his first trip, to Frisia, to aid St Willibrord, who had already been over there for some time attempting to turn people to Christianity.  Winifrith had moved on from Exeter to a monastic institution at Nursling, near to Winchester. When the old abbot of Nursling died, it was sort of expected that Winifrith might take on the post. Instead he set off on his first mission.  It’s all in the timing, though. Winifrith arrived at Utrecht just as the Frisian king, the splendidly-named Radbod, had declared a war on the Christians, destroying monasteries, scattering communities, and forcing them into hiding.  Willibrord was heading the other way, back home or into exile, and within a few months, Winifrith had no option but to join him.

Back again at Nursling, Winifrith took some time to regroup and re-think, and decided that he would go to Rome first, before doing any more abortive missions, and get the blessing of the Pope.  His idea was that then, he could claim that any future missions he instigated had the backing of the papacy.  On meeting Pope Gregory II, Winifrith was immediately renamed “Boniface” by the pontiff, after the legendary 4^th-century martyr Boniface of Tarsus.  It wasn’t really the done thing to object, so from that day forth, Boniface he became.  Apart from unexpectedly acquiring a new name, the rest of his plan went well. The Pope appointed him the first bishop of Thuringia, conveniently overlooking that there was actually no organised Christian church in that region, and Boniface set off on May 15, 719AD.

It was in Thuringia that one of the most well-known incidents in the life of St Boniface took place, the chopping down of the Donar Oak. This was obviously some kind of sacred tree, possibly dedicated to Thor (“Donner” is the German word for thunder) and associated with non-Christian worship in the area. A confrontation developed when Boniface attempted to intervene in a sacrifice taking place. The story goes that he used his bishop’s crook to block the downward blow of the sword, and instead of cleaving straight through, the sword shattered on impact. Then Boniface began to attempt to chop down the tree and a great wind sprang up and felled it for him, without any further blows.  The tree fell in four pieces, in the shape of a cross. These tales were obviously puffed up by Boniface’s many hagiographers, and if such a confrontation did happen, it may well have been stage-managed to ensure a victory for Boniface.

While he continued under the protection of the Frankish kings, who took the side of the Christians in their conflict with the Saxons, he was able to get on with establishing monastic foundations, and returned to Rome twice, once in 732 and once in 737.  In 742, he was instrumental in the founding of the abbey at Fulda, with which he remained closely associated for the remainder of his life.  At the age of 73, when most people would probably be thinking of downsizing and taking it easy,  St Boniface set off on his final mission, to have another crack at converting the Frisians. Unfortunately for Boniface, a meeting he had summoned, on 5^th June 754AD, for the purposes of converting people to Christianity, turned into a bloodbath when a band of armed robbers appeared and slew Boniface and his entire entourage.  Some accounts claim that Boniface ordered his retinue to surrender, shouting "Cease fighting. Lay down your arms, for we are told in Scripture not to render evil for good but to overcome evil by good."

After travelling around a bit, post-mortem, via Mainz and Utrecht, Boniface’s remains eventually found their way back to Fulda, where they were interred. Also returned to Fulda, and kept there as a relic, was the Ragyndrudis Codex, one of three books found on the field of battle after the saint’s death, which supposedly belonged to him, and which is marked by the cuts of sword or axe blades which may actually have been inflicted on it during the saint's martyrdom.

A cult quickly sprung up around the abbey, no doubt encouraged by the monks: saints were good for business!  Miracles were also reported. A particular visitor’s horse became stuck in some mud at the site of Boniface’s martyrdom, and when its hoof was pulled out, a fountain immediately sprang up there. A church was later built on the site, at Dokkum. There are several dedications to St Boniface in UK churches, notably a catholic church of that name in Crediton, near Exeter, his supposed birthplace.

He also left a legacy in the form of approximately 150 letters, though not all of them are attributable to him, as he was a prolific correspondent with other notable figures of his time and with the papacy,  some sermons which are generally accepted to have been written much later and simply attributed to him, and a latin grammar of which there is an 8^th-century handwritten copy in the state archives of Marburg.

Ironically, because he was, after all, an Englishman, St Boniface has occasionally been appropriated as a symbol of German unity and nationalism. In 1954, the 1200^th anniversary of his martyrdom, the then German Chancellor, Conrad Adenauer, addressed a crowd of 60,000 celebrants with the phrase “What we have in common in Europe comes from the same source.”  Quite appropriate, given the current context. 

I’m not sure what the lessons are from the life of St Boniface. I’m not a great fan of people who proselytise their religion, and I also quite like trees, so he sort of starts behind the line as far as I am concerned.  Converting – or trying to convert – other people to your “one, true religion” has been the cause of a massive amount of suffering and war, and still is.  I much prefer my saints to be contemplatives, hermits, who found their own way to God, and if they did convert anyone, it would be by example. Also, don’t allow yourself to be appropriated by nationalist movements after your death, I suppose.  Although Adenauer was nowhere near as damaging as some of his predecessors in his desire to reunite Germany, a certain A. Hitler to name but one.

The issue of a wider European unity is something that has been sizzling on the hot plate for almost a century and a half, ever since France and Germany started the ding-dong that became the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. In fact, you could say that even in the dim and distant days of St Boniface, the wars between the Franks and the Saxons were almost a precursor of later conflicts.  Hitler wanted to unite Europe for a thousand years, but of course the extra bit in his plan was that he wanted it to be called “Germany”. We should not forget that 72 years ago on D-Day, the morning of 6^th June 1944, thousands of young lives were lost in the first decisive step towards dismantling Hitler’s idea of Europe and replacing it with something better.  The issue which we now have to decide, 72 years later, is whether that “something better”, originally intended mainly as a free trade agreement, has grown too big for its boots, and, if so, what we should do about it. Specifically, whether it is better to try and shape and influence its direction from within, or to opt out and trust to luck in an uncertain world.

Next week involves a succession of “D-Days” for me. Not I hope, ones involving actual shot and shell, but some of them involving early starts and journeys which will have to be planned like a military operation, possibly – if things go wrong - with a similar outcome, involving blood and casualties.  The government has finally responded to my petition, which is now just shy of 12,000 signatures, predictably with the line that “the existing legislation  is sufficient”, which is exactly what I expected them to say. It isn’t, of course, that’s the entire premise of the petition and why I started it in the first place, and I am sorry, government, but no amount of saying it is will make it so. I am probably going to do a one-off separate blog post, giving my response to the response, when I get chance.  Somewhere along the line (well, Tuesday afternoon, actually) I also have to fit in a health appointment which I had to cancel previously because my wheelchair wheel started collapsing. At least my thumb has quietened down a bit, though it’s still not right and gives me twinges of pain occasionally.

So, it’s already the start of June, and May has gone for another year. The garden is lush, the plants on the decking look excellent in all their finery, and soon it will be the end of term and we will be thinking of heading off in the direction of Arran.  Soon, in fact, it will be Midsummer, and the days will start to decline, imperceptibly at first, but then progressively shorter and darker as we journey on, this time into an uncertain winter.  I’m amazed how quickly this year has gone. They say that one of the symptoms of getting older is that your last few years seem to fly by. That, and the policemen getting younger. Sadly, I have been back-sliding as far as praying goes; I haven’t done much lately. But I have a feeling that I am going to need an unseen ally at my side in the many challenges of the crucial few days ahead, and therefore I might just, once I finish typing this, see if I can get in touch, and leave a feeble message on God’s voicemail.  And after that, we might, when Deb returns with the dogs, have our tea outside on the decking, for the first time in two or three summers. Who knows, next week, Jersey Plants “Direct” might finally deliver my roses.