The Oldest Trainee

Out of Cornwall, Eden and the World

2010-10-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

“ if you want to do the impossible, ask the young because they don’t know it cannot be done “

Cornwall boasts many delights to its residents, tourists and visitors: countryside, beaches, cliffs and coves, wild flora and fauna. But it also has something which goes far beyond these attractions and which celebrates them all. It may not be widely appreciated by many people outside Cornwall but near the small village of St Austell, on the site of a reclaimed clay pit, stands the Seventh Wonder of the World. The Eden Project. The largest botanic conservatory in the world housing the largest collection of plants outside their natural habitat the world has ever seen.

The ambition is stratospheric – to become the leading educational and research centre for the study of, and contribution to, man’s future on planet earth. Sited under specially created conservatories or biomes, which re-create a tropical rainforest, a Mediterranean habitat the project seeks to harness the power of story-telling and theatre to the narrative of the natural world building up the connections between people and the natural world through the plants that enable humankind to exist on the planet. One of the many mottos, aphorisms and inspirational sayings that adorn the exhibitions and displays such “the future depends on the stories we tell ourselves”.

These stories are told beautifully through poetry and sculpture, music and painting as well as narrative prose. For example, in the Mediterranean Biome the visitor learns of the ‘Tribunal of the Waters’ – a dispute-resolution council which has been meeting every Tuesday in Valencia, Spain to adjudicate farmer’s disputes since the times when the Moors ruled.

In the Rainforest Biome, for example, we learn of the connections between deforestation and the palm oil industry of Indonesia. It is about regeneration and education according to Chief Executive and co-founder of the Eden Project Tim Smit. (www.edenproject.com). It won a Reader’s Choice award at the Rough Guide to Accessible Britain Awards earlier in the year.

http://www.edenproject.com/come-and-visit/plan-your-visit/access-guide/index.php
http://www.edenproject.com/media/eden-top-uk-accessible-attraction-pr.php

From the appreciation of flora and fauna of the natural world to another sort of Cornish paradise. The beaches, inlets and coves are a surfer’s paradise and there are many surfing schools catering for those hungry to learn the art of taking the wave. One school, in Bude, has taken customer service that one step further and teaches in British Sign Language (BSL), which the instructor Becky Price has added to her other languages of French and Italian. There are internationally recognised hand signals in surfing and she regards BSL as a logical progression from that.

The Big Blue Surf School
www.bigbluesurfschool.co.uk
UK Deaf Sport
www.ukdeafsport.org.uk

Old School by Tobias Wolff ( Bloomsbury, 2005)

2010-10-08T01:01:00.000-07:00

Tobias Wolff, a celebrated novelist and short story writer, has crafted a wonderful short novel which is both part-memoir and part literary criticism. It is set in an East Coast American boys boarding school, known as a prep school, in the early 1960s and is something of a coming-of-age, rites of passage story. But it is also much more than that – Wolff deals with big themes such as class, trust, loyalty, honour and the nature of friendship as well as the writer’s art, and artifice.

The plot is concerned with a story-writing competition amongst sixth form boys at the unnamed prestigious school, which could be one of a dozen such establishments, from Groton to Andover, that has educated the mainly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) offspring of networked established families of the East Coast elite from the mid-19th century until the present day.

The focus on literature is an important part of the school’s educational agenda. It provides the driving narrative of the story, which is in the first person. The visiting writer chooses the winner of the competition among the senior boys, the prize being a private audience with the visitor and publication in the school magazine.

The rivalry amongst the book-obsessed aspiring writers that make up the sixth form student body is intense. One of the themes taken up by Wolff is that of identity: the narrator has a fear that his Jewish origins will be discovered, which he has kept a secret.

The climax of the novel brilliantly brings these overt and hidden themes together. The narrator wins the competition but is expelled for copying another’s work and passing it off as his own. He discovers a story written some years before by a pupil from a nearby girls’ school and so closely identifies the events of the story with his own life that he believes it to be something he could and should have written himself. It deals with Jewish identity kept secret; privilege and class and self-concealment. It itself encompasses the strands of the wider novel. A story within a story expertly accomplished. The deed is discovered and punished by banishment for breaking the honour code.

This event is what forms the author as a writer, but the story does not end with disgrace and humiliation. Many years later his former master tells him a postscript to the saga which provides an insightful twist: the senior teacher known as the Dean resigned from his post the day of the expulsion. So who is the writer whose work is to prove both the undoing and salvation of more than one character in the novel? It is Ernest Hemingway.

An evening in May at Glyndebourne

2010-08-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

Every year since 1934 the Sussex country house of the Christie family has played host to an opera festival known the world over simply as Glyndebourne.

On any evening (from May to August) amongst the gentle Sussex hills near the old town of Lewes, people bearing rugs, collapsible chairs, picnic hampers and dressed in evening wear can be spotted. They are opera goers and are taking part in a uniquely British summer season ritual. The picnic is an integral part of the Glyndebourne experience, the consumption of which can be enjoyed during the ‘long interval’ – a performance break of up to 80 minutes.

The intimate setting of house and grounds, complete with grazing sheep, provides the backdrop to productions by composers including Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Stravinksy and Britten. The original theatre was replaced by a new opera house built in1994 with a capacity of over one thousand, and now luxuriates in the sounds produced by the celebrated Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, beloved of singers and musicians alike.

Cosi Fan Tutte is one of Mozart’s greatest works, but also one of his most perplexing. The music is sublime but it tells a story of jealousy, infidelity and cynical manipulation of emotion. The plot is simple enough: two men (Ferrando and Guglielmo) are persuaded by a friend (Don Alfonso) to test the love of their fiancees (Dorabella and Fiordiligi) by playing a trick on them. The men pretend they have been called to the war but disguise themselves in order to tempt each other’s girlfriend as an experiment in fidelity. Aided and abetted by the scheming housemaid Despina, the plan plays out with the two girls ‘falling for’ the two strangers and ends up with the four protagonists realising that they have played a game that has backfired and left them confused. The test has undermined their love, not strengthened it, and they will have to live with the consequences. The title of the opera has been debated ever since Mozart wrote the piece but it gives the general meaning as “they all do it”. It is a brilliant dissection of what men and women do to each other in the comedy and tragedy of life and love.

Hearing access at Glyndebourne is provided by a Sennhauser sound enhancement system which is available on request. It is an innovative, infra-red audio system which technician David Yapp describes as “ a two-channel or a stereo system. It can be run with an audio soundtrack of the show on one of the channels, and then the other channel can have an audio description of what’s happening on stage for blind or partially sighted audience members……... the receivers go under the neck. They’re very discreet, and there are no cables. There are no switches. You turn it on and it’s working “. Exactly as those at Glyndebourne would wish it.

Michael Foot- A Life by Kenneth O Morgan

2010-07-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

M Foot (1913-2009)–

The death of Michael Foot at the age of 96 has marked the passing into history of an era in British political life whose like, as the poet says, we shall never see again. With perhaps the exception of Foot’s friend and rival Denis Healey, now advancing into his nineties, there are few standard bearers left of that generation of political figures born in the closing years of the First World War who experienced the harshness of the “low, dishonest” decade that was the 1930s, survived the titanic struggle of the Second World War and emerged from that epoch-defining period to build the peace and a new world ‘fit for heroes to live in’. It is said that all political careers end in failure but, in Foot’s case, if failure, it was of a glorious and romantic kind. The political cause of democratic socialism never had a more eloquent exponent or more committed advocate. Whether writing leader columns for papers as diverse as Tribune or the London Evening Standard or books on HG Wells or his hero Aneuran Bevan, and in philosophical tracts and polemical pieces, his prose was scintillating and his wit razor-sharp; on public platform in full oratorical flight he could be mesmerising and in person charming and erudite.

All these traits have been brought to magisterial life by Foot’s biographer, the academic, historian and peer Kenneth O Morgan. With great insight and scholarship, one great intellectual and philosopher-historian has celebrated another. Although not from the same tradition of the Labour movement as Foot, Morgan has captured the life, the work and the man both sympathetically and objectively as well as generosity laced with scepticism when necessary.

Born to a prominent Liberal family near Plymouth, Michael Foot inherited the love of literature, music and public debate from his father, as well as a passion for soccer which he manifested in a life-long devotion to Plymouth Argyle. As a journalist in his late twenties, he published the book that made his name exposing the delusions of those who appeased Hitler – Guilty Men. The man who was later to become a founder-member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and self-styled ‘inveterate peace-monger’ was also the protégé of press baron Lord Beaverbrook and a supporter of humanitarian intervention by force in Bosnia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Old age may have slowed him but it never wearied him, although the death of his beloved wife Jill Craigie, a celebrated film-maker, affected him deeply.

The blessing of binaural hearing aids meant he was able to debate, comment and perform in private and public as vigorously as ever. Although an atheist by inclination he was ever the Nonconformist and his was a true Pligrim’s Progress, charted brilliantly by Professor Morgan - son of Wales and possessor of the gift of words himself.

Review of The Ghost by Robert Harris

2010-07-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

Robert Harris has written a critique of the Labour government in novel form.
The premise is brilliant – former Prime Minister Adam Lang is indicted on war crimes charges through endorsing the kidnapping and torture of suspects by the CIA. The agent of said ex-PM’s destruction is his former colleague and ex-Foreign Secretary. The ghost writer protagonist tells the tale in a Philip Marlowesque first person, having uncovered the plot during the course of his duties ‘ghosting’ the ex-Prime Ministerial memoirs. He is Lang’s alter ego personally and professionally – literally his shadow and his ghost. Packed with references and allusions to those he has modelled the characters on – direct comparisons do not have to be drawn because the audience knows for whom the plot tolls. The narrative voice of Robert Harris reveals a man writing with the hot indignation of one who knows of what he speaks and uses the novel’s creative devices to tell a wider truth: the satire borne of intimate knowledge.

In a television documentary on the Tony Blair years, Harris revealed his disappointment about his generation not living up to the promise of their own and others expectation when in power. This book is his response – a polemic disguised brilliantly as a satirical page-turning thriller of exceptional quality.

The novel is an encapsulation of the hopes and subsequent disappointments
of the generation that came to power, influence and prominence in the late 1990s. After a dozen years, the bright new dawn has given way to the dark night of the Iraq war, extraordinary rendition and the War on Terror; ‘governing for the many not the few’ ends up lining corporation pockets; ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the United States in its hour of sorrow ends up with acquiescence in extraordinary rendition and the condoning of torture. Written as much in sorrow as in anger by an insider who knows the way governments work as well as the personalities involved, it is a very powerful critique.

Food for thought - nourishment of the soul - books

2010-05-21T02:16:00.001-07:00

Not Quite the Diplomat
By Chris Patten
(published by Picador Penguin, £8.99)

Chris Patten has spent his entire professional life engaged in political affairs: as policy researcher, Conservative MP, Cabinet Minister, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong and European Commissioner. He is known for his engaging, witty style combined with a wide-ranging interest in matters beyond the political podium. He has a talent, rare amongst front-rank politicians, to set his thoughts and actions in a wide sweep of historical and cultural context. If any public figure has what the Labour politician Denis Healey called a “hinterland”, Patten has. This book, part-memoir, part commentary and part personal manifesto is something of a ‘state of the union’, or state of the planet, report on where we all are now. Using anecdote, reportage and historical devices, the author takes his reader on a tour of the world culturally, politically and geostrategically. However, he wears both his knowledge and experience lightly and manages to flatter the reader with a presumption of intelligence that can deal with a complex or contradictory argument whilst deploying a a wit that combines dryness with generosity. His pen-portraits of international leaders from Clinton to Chirac, Blair to Cheney are entertaining, shrewd and believable. He manages to mix criticism with compassion and disagreement with tolerance, yet his views are no less strongly held for his humanity. He also has a wonderful frame of reference, from ancient Chinese writings to American song-writers of the mid-20th century, from Rudyard Kipling to AA Milne and Confucius or Sartre. In the middle of a discourse about the nature of modern American power, he will make mention of Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. His chapter headings begin with a quotation from book, play or ancient text which sets the scene. This is a man who likes to read, listen, travel and talk in the service of the profession he has adorned for many years, underpinned by the historian’s sense of proportion and context.

James Naughtie sums it up by calling the book “masterly, elegant, sprightly, wry..” whilst The Independent calls it “warm, witty, stylish and readable”. It is also a wonderful introduction to international affairs for any aspiring student of the subject as well as for those well versed in its contradictions and fallibilities. A rich resource, garnished lightly by erudition gently applied.

The Hubris Syndrome
By David Owen
(published by Politico’s , £8.99)

David Owen is something of a Renaissance man in public life. A trained doctor before entering Parliament, he went on to become a Cabinet Minister, under Prime Minister James Callaghan, and Foreign Secretary aged 37 before going on to co-found the Social Democratic Party as one of the original Gang of Four. Having spent a lifetime ‘up close and personal’ with major political figures, and having a medical interest in the powerful and how ill-health effects leaders, Owen is well-placed to write about the nexus of power, personality and the mental state.

Written as part-case study, part-polemic Dr Owen puts the case for the idea that the nature of power today can send some leaders to the point of a kind of mental illness which manifests itself as a condition that is similar to what the Greek dramatists called hubris. Whilst the popular terminology would be that ‘power has gone to their head’ or he or she is unhinged or has ‘lost touch with reality’, Owen traces the roots of the concept of hubris and applies it to messrs Blair and Bush, taking as the template the handling of the Iraq war and its aftermath. The idea of hubris has its roots in ancient Greek drama, and in the study of power and the impact it has on those who seek to wield it. It is the study of how powerful people – heroes in the drama - can become puffed up with pride and thus become contemptuous and dismissive of others which leads to excessive self-confidence causing misunderstanding of the situation around them and eventual destruction at the hands of their nemesis. In the Greek experience, the hero is brought low by trying to act as though he were more like a god and thus is humbled and brought to earth. Thus the moral is that we should not allow power and success to go to their heads. It is, perhaps, also captured by the aphorism that ‘those who the gods wish to destroy they first make great’.

From drama, literature and history Owen develops his theme that hubris could be seen as an ‘occupational hazard’ for many leaders in political, military or business roles, and this should be considered as a medical syndrome when it arises and can be described as such. Owen sees it as illness of position as much as personality, and some leaders fall prey to it whilst others do not. Given the context of power, position and hierarchical deference in a governmental system, hubris can develop as a sense of omnipotence can develop in the individual. Owen cites a list of behavourial symptoms which could identify the condition such as: an identification with the state and themselves to the extent that they regard the outlook and interest of the two as identical; a messianic manner of talking about what they are doing and excessive confidence combined with unshakeable self-belief of being vindicated in a ‘higher court’ or by ‘history’ rather than colleagues or public opinion. All this combined with recklessness and restlessness leads to a loss of contact with reality, and major mistakes in decision-making with huge consequences for themselves and others.

The thesis continues with examples of leaders – from Attlee to Thatcher and Truman to Bush Senior - who became hubristic and those who did not, in the author’s opinion. Ways of avoiding hubris include having a sense of humour, developing perspective through a sceptical approach, support of family and friends and avoiding being cut off from the idea that power, ultimately, enables influence for a short while but not the dominance of events. Simply put, the leader who succumbs to the trappings of power over a long of period of time is more likely to become hubristic. The main case studies examined are that of Mrs Thatcher and how her premiership came to an end and the whole run-up to the recent war in Iraq involving Blair and Bush.

The reader may feel daunted by the subject matter but David Owen writes in a clear, lucid and straightforward manner which seeks to enlighten, based on his considerable experience of medicine, politics and international affairs. The author writes with wit and grace and is refreshingly candid about his own shortcomings as perceived by others – once accused himself of megalomania he admits to arrogance and an impatience of others combined with a tendency to ‘over-examine the spilt milk’. Owen has been seen in the past as a controversial figure, borne from a reputation as being a ‘serial resigner’ and a divider rather than uniter. However iconoclastic his view, it is an independent one which is the product of a questioning temperament. His criticisms, although profound and stinging, are nonetheless measured. His tone is one of the doctor giving advice, which if ignored will not be advantageous to the body politic. A penetrating study from a political figure who has often trod his own path in the face of harsh criticism. A survivor of the syndrome which he describes so brilliantly? The reader can judge.

Our Game
By John Le Carre
(published Hodder & Stoughton)

The premier British chronicler of Cold War intrigue and spy politics turns his attention to post-Soviet Union geo-politics in this typical tour de force. It is the mid-1990s and retired secret servant Timothy Cranmer is nursing his grapes on a country estate in Somerset – the English equivalent of the Italians’ ‘growing the olives’ in retirement. He is also dealing with the consequences of two simultaneously difficult relationships: that with his young girlfiriend and with his long-time agent, also retired but still troublesome.

Familiar themes abound in this as any other Le Carre novel which the author has come to make his own: identity in a clandestine world; the self-deceit of honour amongst spies; the English class system as manifested in schooling and occupation; the past lurking in the every day. These novelistic trademarks are set against the background of a post-Cold War Europe dealing with the break-up of the Soviet Union, the claims of Chechnya and regional conflict in the Cauacasus involving the former Russian republic of Ingushetia. Through the characters of Tim Cranmer and his agent Larry Pettifer the big geo-political questions of the 1990s are explored: the break-up of states and the resulting religious-ethnic identity conflict.

The characters are bound together by history, occupation and school – Cranmer is the spymaster to Pettifer’s agent just as he was the prefect to the junior boy at public school decades before. However, just as at school, it is Pettifer who is the wayward prodigy and beyond control and authority of a traditional sort. These underlying tensions are reinforced brilliantly by episodic flashbacks exploring these motivations further. The duo becomes an emotional ménage a trios when Cranmer’s girlfriend Emma becomes involved with Pettifer and is drawn into the central action dynamic plot of the novel – a bid to start a small war in the former Soviet republic of Ingushetia.

With the publication of the novel that made his name, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, it seems that Le Carre embarked on an ongoing voyage of autobiographical discovery which continues to this day. It is said that his first books were borne of anger at the outbreak of the Cold War and the way in which it was prosecuted by all concerned: he has knowledge of this as he was involved with the British foreign service in the 1960s and witnessed the building of the Berlin wall – the setting of the Spy. Subsequent books have developed, expanded and brought to life a parallel world which acts as a metaphor for everyday existence, as well as given birth to a host of vivid characters, notably George Smiley. Perhaps the anger has been tempered by experience but it is still evident and burnished by compassion and moral vigour. There is, as always, a whole universe of meaning in the title: the ‘game’ of the title is the traditional name given to the occupation of the spy as well as the game played out by the central characters – it is also the name traditionally given to football played at Winchester College. Our Game, as ever, in more ways than one.

The Time of My Life
By Denis Healey
There are many political biographies which can seem rather self-justificatory if not self-serving comprising a book-length catalogue of incidents in the life of the person concerned. This is not one of those. Written over twenty years ago by a man who had scaled the heights of the British political establishment by way of the British Army and the international department of the Labour Party to election as a Yorkshire MP and thence Defence Secretary and Chancelllor of the Exchequer, it stands as one of the best of the genre. Having a reputation as something of an intellectual bruiser, Healey’s style is both elegiac and honest – his well-known love of the Arts generally and poetry in particular is a central theme of the book. He is open about the trials and tribulations of political life and indulges a talent for character description with force and wit, even if his judgments are sometimes a little harsh. If he is unsparing with criticism he is also generous with praise, and his analysis of the post-war post-war world is all the more trenchantly convincing for the fact that he is of the generation that fought the Second World War and then set out to ‘win the peace’ by building the new Jerusalem based on social justice and equality of opportunity.

No dewy-eyed sentimentalist, his realism and gritty understanding of the challenges of changing society does not detract from his idealism, although his wartime experiences temper his expectations with pragmatism. It was Healey who declared that a politician must have a ‘hinterland’, by which he means interests, enthusiasms and passions beyond the fields of political play which are themselves sustaining, and he has them in abundance. A complex man of immense ability, he comes across on occasion as arrogant which is ultimately forgivable because it is balanced with tremendous good humour and self-knowledge. Now in his nineties having recently celebrated 60 years of marriage to his wife Edna, herself a successful writer, his much-tendered hinterland must be a solace and a comfort in the evening years of a life well-lived.

Look Me In the Eye - A Life in Television by Jeremy Isaacs (published by Little Brown, 2006)

Jeremy Isaacs, son of Glasgow, has lived many lives at the glittering forefront of the arts and media in Britain. The list of his appointments and achievements is long and distinguished in a career that took him from beginnings as a producer at Granada TV, when commercial television began in the mid-1950s, to current affairs at the BBC and on to the highest pinnacle of the arts establishment as General Director of the Royal Opera House in the 1990s – a period of his life chronicled with typical verve and style in his memoir Never Mind the Moon.

These were the days when television was controlled by the great panjandrums who were the abiters of taste and lords of the airwaves, enlightened autocrats who oversaw the more limited schedules then on offer, compared to our multi-channelled opportunities, according to their view of the world. The old two-state system of the BBC and ITV held sway until Isaacs was appointed first Chief Executive of Channel Four, courting much controversy along the way. The roster of his pioneering firsts in television production include the epic history of the Second World War, the World at War, which further developed the use of eye-witness account allied to documentary film footage and voice-over (provided by Laurence Olivier) and the development of the independent production industry when founding director of Channel Four.

The book deals with big issues, as befits a big character, with Isaac’s usual ebullience and brio – he robustly defends the medium of television and celebrates its power to inform, educate and entertain. His is a life marked by personal tragedy borne stoically: his brother was killed by a bomb in Israel and his wife Tamara died of cancer but also a life of great abundance with the arts his joy, consolation and constant comforter. Isaacs has that rare ability to see large things largely and he paints the picture of his life and times in primary colours for all to see.

October in the West - San Franciscan ventures

2010-03-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

It is often said that the people of the United Kingdom and the people of the United States of America are divided by a common language. The framer of this much-quoted aphorism, which has something of the cliché about it, was articulating the myriad of ways in which so-called American English and so-called British English differs. Just as a ‘sidewalk’ is a pavement, the ‘trunk’ of a car is the boot, a supermarket has ‘carts’ and not trolleys and road users are told to ‘yield’ rather than give way so it is in the world of hearing devices.

I have, therefore, a set of instructions for obtaining hearing aid filters when on vacation in the United States. When preparing to travel internationally it is advisable for the hearing aid user to pack enough (wax) filters to cover the period away. To those not familiar with such matters the filter is a small perspex finger-tip sized piece of plastic which is affixed to the hearing aid to prevent wax from the inner ear entering the device. In the United Kingdom they are known as ‘filters’ and in the United States as ‘wax traps’.

Step One: find a representative of the company that supplies your hearing aids (or listening devices as the current parlance has it) by way of internet search and the discovery of an exhibition (Hear the World – www.hear-the-world.com ) at a downtown department store in the city. Macy’s Department store, Union Square, San Francisco was the scene of the latest stage of the globe-trotting exhibition of celebrity photographs by the celebrated musician Bryan Adams aimed at publicising hearing loss issues specifically and the promotion of hearing health issues more widely. The exhibition consisted of a series of photographs of artists striking a hand-behind-ear pose as if they were straining to hear something being said – a typical every-day gesture brilliantly conceived to make the wider point. The singer Annie Lennox graced the front cover of the publicity leaflet which relayed a number of startling facts: one in every six people worldwide is affected by hearing loss which is equivalent to the number of people who own a car and on average people with hearing loss wait 10 years before doing anything about it.

Step Two: Contact the Hearing & Speech Center of Northern California and discover that the nearest audiologist dispensing hearing aid accessories has an office in the next bloc to the bookshop you are visiting.

Step Three: Locate the audiologist in his office and after some initial confusion about the elusive Dr Schindler (who has moved to the other side of the city) subsequently you are presented with two complimentary packs of wax traps. All courtesy of the company network via Macy’s department store, the Hear the World exhibition and the information resources of the Hearing and Speech Center of Northern California – a wonderful example of the combination of American know-how, can-do philosophy and pure serendipity.

Sitting on a balcony in Tiburon, California overlooking the yacht club in late October with the sun pushing its way through the cloud amid the famous fog rolling across the San Francisco Bay, one would be forgiven for thinking that there cannot be many better ways to spend a late autumnal day. The former railroad terminus town of Tiburon, named after the Spanish word for shark, faces San Francisco across the Bay which is itself flanked by one of the greatest engineering wonders of the world and symbol of the city the world over – the Golden Gate Bridge The town once known as rowdy and raffish – think navvies, trains, saloons and hard-living – is now a sought-after commuter town of smart shops, smarter houses and even smarter cars. - with the many BMWs, V-Ws and Mercedes to be seen, the European car market is being supported mightily in Northern California.. The nearest to a disturbance of the peace to be found of an evening these days is an argument over protocol in the Corinthian Yacht Club, scene of the annual Commodore’s Ball which is the social event of the autumn season. To be seen twisting the night away in the main room of the clubhouse is proof that you are on good terms with the cognoscenti and the ‘movers’n’shakers’ of this Californian enclave which could be a town out of Hollywood central casting with its wooden houses, main street, coffee shop and every kind of boutique outlet imaginable. It is reminiscent of the setting for the movie Roxanne, a remake of the French play Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, based in small-town America.

The people of Tiburon have what is perhaps one of the easiest and most scenic commutes in the world. For those with houses overlooking the quay where the ferry docks it is a matter of watching the approaching vessel from kitchen or bedroom window and moseying or sauntering down to the waterfront, perhaps via the coffee house to pick up the obligatory ‘take out’, before boarding. Then it is sit back and admire the view of the Bay as your water-borne version of bus or tube conveys you towards the city either resplendent in its fog-bound glory or newly emergent from it as the ferry sails stately onwards.

At the ferry terminal building in San Francisco there is the wonderfully-named bookstore ‘Book Passages’ which contrasts in atmosphere and approach to the big down-town Borders bookshop on Union Square in middle of the city where the statue to Commodore Dewey hero of the Spanish-American war in late 19th Century (later made an Admiral) stands proud in front of Macy’s department store.

Fisherman’s Wharf with shops, such as Seasons dedicated to Christmas gifts and the National Football League (NFL) official outlet for American football merchandise, boasts restaurants and views of the harbour overlooking the infamous Alcatraz, now a museum.

As Tony Bennett describes in his signature song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, the cable cars do rise half-way to the stars and the morning fog may chill the air -
through the evocative names of the streets as the cable car makes its journey up, over and through those famous avenues ( “the little cable cars rise half-way to the stars”).

The hills of San Francisco are well-known for the large houses perched on top of the impossibly vertical streets named after robber barons from the romantic buccaneering days of the Gold Rush and the frontier: Nob Hill is named after Leland Stanford of the Union Pacific railway and founder of California’s Stanford University – who had a house on Nob Hill. The name Russian Hill conjures up White Russians escaping both the Bolshevik Revolution and the frozen steppe with Dr Zhivago not far behind; and downtown can be found the streets where the iconic car chase scene in Steve McQueen’s Bullitt was filmed.
Twenty years after the first visit of the Tutankamun exhibition to San Francisco, the young pharaoh and his entourage into the afterlife was back at the city’s de Young Musuem. Dedicated to fine art, this now-venerable institution was set up by the patronal family that founded the daily newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle. Our early morning tour, before the museum opened for the day, was facilitated by a member of the fundraising committee and we were accompanied by the ladies of that committee . The guided preview , often undertaken by volunteer guides or ‘docents’ at the Museum. The story of how the archaeologist Howard Carter and the aristocrat Lord Carnarvon unearthed the tomb of the boy Pharoah is still a stirring one of adventure and romance. The exhibition was enhanced by all the knowledge and understanding developed over the succeeding decades and also featured the photographs taken at the original opening of the tomb in the 1920s now stored in New York (on loan to de Young). The physical access for disabled museum-goers is very good – hearing access is facilitated by trained museum guides and there is a deaf docent service provided by an organisation called Deaf Media. (www.deafmedia.org / www.tutsanfrancisco.org / www.deyoungmuseum.org).

The de Young specialises in art and a striking piece of sculpture was the anti-war installation model of a Cathedral, by Al Farrow, made out of old and decommissioned weapons and consisting of further materials such as guns, bullets, steel, glass, bone. It serves as a graphic illustration of the link between war and religion – http://www.alfarrowcathedral.com. My art education has been enhanced considerably and given a boost courtesy of Amy Whitaker’s book on museums (Museums Legs – Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art)

The Muir Woods National Park Monument is a living museum of nature. Set up in 1908 by naturalist, frontiersman and ranger Gifford Pinchot, who was appointed first head of the US Forest Service (forerunner of National Park Service) by President Theodore Roosevelt, it boasts some of the tallest and oldest trees in the United States – the redwoods. These majestic trees can live up to 2200 years and many stand taller than the Statue of Liberty. They are guardians of the plant and animal life which grows in profusion across the national park and they are playing a vital role of environmental protection through carbon capture and water preservation. Pinchot was influenced by the pioneering environmentalist and woodsman John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club. The founding/organising conference of the United Nations in 1945 was held at Muir Woods. (http://www.nps.gov)

A Sunday afternoon trip to the Marin Headlands National Park which sits atop San Francisco Bay affords spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Bay and City. The land was originally farmed by the “vaqueros” cowboys of Spanish origin – followed by the Portugese community who made a living from dairy farming. The lighthouse commanding the entrance to the Bay, a difficult passage for vessels past and present, stands on its own promontory with the original mid-19 Century glass still intact which continues to bring light and relief to those who may find themselves in peril on the sea. A reminder of recent Cold War history and the real possibility of nuclear confrontation in those decades is the NIKE missile military encampment which stood on the Marin headlands, before the advent of the inter-continental ballistic missile rendered the base obsolete. The base is now a museum.

The Fort Bay yacht club stands in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge – it has a raffish, down-at-heel slightly faded but charming old-world feel with an air of past glory but uncertain future. The rather theatrical old salt of a barman was dumbfounded when confronted with the idea of a shandy – mixing beer and lemonade – which he regarded as both mystifying and almost sacrilegious. A white wine sprizer (white wine and soda) was incomprehensible so we settled on a glass of white wine straight – almost acceptable!

A late afternoon trip to Mill Valley reveals a slice of American and Californian social history. It is one of the original hippy communities of Northern California (“if you are going to San Francisco be sure to go with flowers in your hair”) complete with Mill Valley Market selling everything organic from West Coast to Eastern Oriental and back via Northern approaches – including Yorkshire tea. Mill Valley also boasts some fine restaurants – Italian a speciality.

A Saturday afternoon spent sailing on San Francisco Bay aboard the fifty-foot yacht Georgia J with the Vice-Commodore of the Corinthian Yacht Club and her husband-Captain is quiet an experience. Under Captain Kim we sailed around the former prison and military camp of Alcatraz (being reliably informed that Burt Lancaster as the bird man had flown long ago) and into the famous fog – which descends and lifts in an instant – after nearly losing both the winch and the Captain’s hand. The ever-present sealions in and around the bay – sometimes to be seen sitting on the yacht club dock – provided an amused audience. It all brought to mind the old sea shanty, The Mermaid, that tells the story of how ships were lured on to rocks by pretty creatures holding a comb and a glass: “ when we set sail, and our ship not far from the land, we there did espy a fair pretty maid, with a comb and a glass in her hand….”. The night was danced away at the annual yacht club ball when tales of the sea were swapped to the sounds of the 1970s.

The wine-country of Northern California, based in and around the Napa Valley and its towns, was traditionally a patchwork of family-owned vineyards and wineries which are now increasingly being taken over by larger commercial entities. The region also has a growing reputation internationally for olive oil. As a sign of affluence, confidence and ‘chutzpah’ many of the vineyards boast art installations and architectural structures not out of place in big city plazas. They are incongruously sited in the middle of the Napa Valley ranges, commanding views across the Valley.
Just as the European immigrants who found themselves in Southern California used the natural resources (of light and space) to invent and develop the quintessential American art form of the 20th Century – the motion picture – so their compatriots who came to Northern California brought with them the skills of their forefathers in wine production, making use of the abundant natural resources of the Western fertile plains.

The history of the state of California is also bound up with the Spanish missions which were built by missionaries along the length of the coastline from San Rafael in the North to San Diego in the South – all the names we know that are synonymous with Californian living have their origin here. Indeed, the American rock band The Eagles – whose sales of records necessitated a new category (platinum) to be invented by the record industry – pay tribute to the “mission bells” which line the route of the highway across the state in the hit song Hotel California.

A visit to Angel Island, across the Bay from Tiburon, was a sobering one. It was the historic immigration station – the ‘guarded gateway to the West’ - and former Civil War Army base, although San Franciso never heard a shot fired in anger during the American Civil War of the 1860s. All the immigrants from Asia – particularly Chinese and Japanese – were held on Ellis Island (sometimes called California’s equivalent to the New York entry point Ellis Island) whilst paperwork was processed. A poignant moment was provided by a Chinese man, on a works outing from a city-based company who told the assembled company that his own mother had been held at the barracks we were visiting, as one of the last cohort of immigrants to pass through before closure in the 1940s. This is a powerful reminder that the American Dream is a story based on injustice as well as heroism, brutality as well as courage. The manifest destiny of the United States was forged in adversity and history lives on in people’s lives. The Island affords views of the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and the city from various vantage points.

In the canon of American popular music there are many songs celebrating the joys of particular places at particular times of the year: Frank Sinatra sings of the delights of Autumn in New York or Moonlight in Vermont, Joan Baez begs the object of her love (‘a rambling boy’) to Please Come to Boston for the Springtime. The Great American Songbook lyricists and composers turned their attentions to European cities as well – Yip Harburg on April in Paris or the Gershwins on A Foggy Day in London Town.. There should surely be a hymn to San Francisco in October, for it is very heaven. Perhaps it was October when Tony Bennett left his heart in the City by the Bay. I certainly did.

Julie&Julia: love&food across time in US and Europe

2010-02-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

Food, marriage and intertwined lives combine in this latest feel-good factor film from Hollywood screenwriter-producer Nora Ephron, who brought the world When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Heartburn. It tells the story of Julia Child, food writer and doyenne of TV chefs, whose cookery show was the first to have subtitles of the deaf and hard of hearing, in the America of the 1950/60s/70s through the eyes of a twenty-something newly married girl in New York, Julie. Julia Child wrote the seminal book on French cuisine (Mastering the Art of French Cooking), that revolutionised American attitudes to cooking. A daughter of Californian privilege and wife of an American diplomatic official, Julia Child became the unlikely star of the television age and food writer of enormous distinction. It was said that every College girl moving to New York across the decades of the mid-twentieth century had to have three items in her possession: a couch, a copy of Joseph Heller’s book Catch 22 and a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.

Based on Child’s autobiography and a book by Julie Powell, the film’s central dynamic takes a twenty-first century newly married girl Julie, played by Amy Adams, living with her journalist husband above a pizza shop in downtown New York. Commuting to an uninspiring government agency job Julie dreams of accomplishments beyond her humdrum existence. She finds it in her twin passions of cooking and writing by resolving to spend a year cooking her way through recipes in Julia Child’s magnus opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking and to blog about the experience.

By using the classic cinematic device of running two stories simultaneously, Julie’s story unfolds in the New York of the 2000s whilst Julia’s autobiography develops in the postwar Paris as she evolves from government service wife to legendary food writer by way of happenstance and accident. Meryl Streep gives one of her best screen performances to date, displaying once again a gift for light comedy as luminous as her dramatic talent. Streep captures the awkward, ungainly, forthright yet well-meaning manner of a very tall woman brilliantly and her well known facility with accent and tone evokes the educated, well-bred voice of her subject precisely. Stanley Tucci plays her affectionate husband Paul with humour and a touch of gentle comic irony which complements his co-star’s large screen persona. The film is as much an analysis of a loving marriage as it is affectionate tribute to a much-loved figure. The theme of relationships between the central characters are contrasted by the pressures of modern living faced by Julie and husband Eric in twenty-first century New York with the diplomatic life of Julia and her husband in postwar Europe.

A recurring theme beloved of Nora Ephron is that of friendship between women – they meet for lunch and dinner to compare notes, parade successes and give bittersweet advice to each other. There is the inevitable tension between Julie and her partner as the cooking obsession takes hold and starts to affect their relationship with crisis ultimately resolved when the project ends with media interest and beginnings of a writing career. This is in counter-point to Julia’s life – she forged a career almost by accident and in spite of herself from a desire to be occupied when women of her age and class were expected to marry well and be decorative, whereas the young protagonist Julie has a conscious drive to succeed with an expectation of that possibility in an age of opportunity for women that would have been almost unknown to Julia’s contemporaries. These parallels, however, should not be overplayed. If the film is an examination of modern sensibilities: relationships, work, career, self-fulfillment, ambition and the role of the internet in life and living; it is also a reminder of the universal theme of the quest for the good relationship and what the songwriter called the ‘fight for love and glory’. Could it be that it really is the same old story after all?

The Eternal City on screen and in print

2010-02-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

For the discerning actual or armchair traveller, there are many city guides giving details of where to visit and how to spend time. This is a different approach – introducing some wider ‘popular culture’ reference points – some history, some reading, a film or two.

Attempting to condense the history of Rome into a few hundred words is a little like setting out to paint the Forth Road Bridge with one tin of paint – a wee bit optimistic. However, what the Reduced Shakespeare Company has managed to do for the Bard, appreciated by many over a long period of time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I will attempt for the Eternal City.

From its beginnings in the early settlement of antiquated legend through to its heyday as seat of Republic, Empire and on to its role as capital city of the Catholic Church, Rome has enjoyed a history about which big words are used: resplendent, majestic, awe-inspiring. The settlement on the banks of the Tiber, beleaguered by warring tribes, was fated to grow into a city-state that dominated the world in antiquity and the history books from the moment Romulus, Remus and a she-wolf entered the scene at stage left – or forest right depending on your view. Being men – nearly always men but Roman matrons are not to be trifled with – of rugged independence with a tendency to violence when het up or riled the Romans re-invented the idea of the Republic as a way of governing affairs. This idea was inherited from the Greeks whose power by this time had waned but still had an influence: heard of that chap Socrates or his friends Plato or their pal the playwright Aristophanes?

Due to a series of accidents; murders; armies needing pacifying and powerful men seeking more power, the Republic gave way to the Empire which, as old-fashioned historians (often in glasses and tweed jacket with initials such as AJP or WF or BHS) used to tell their students and anyone who would listen, sowed the seeds of its decline from its very inception. Thus began an era which made internecine warfare between families such as the Mafia quite tame. Aristocrats, plebians, the mob, heroes and villains, soothsayers, political intrigue, big battles, huge triumphs with lunatic Emperors and their loopier progeny and relations – the story has it all.

These themes were to be repeated in later medieval and Renaissance periods – the Romans gave their fellow Italians a taste for city governance combined with family madness, public intrigue and dangerous power-plays involving Uncle Umberto or Auntie Bella. Eventually, as it is with these vainglorious human endeavours (as they say in all the best Victorian hymns), earth’s proud empires pass away and another rises from the ashes. Instead of the Circus Maximus with spectacles involving Christians being thrown to the lions, the Christians took charge and non-Christians or heretics (believers of a different sort) were often thrown into the fire. The martyr St Peter, the rock on which the Church was built, established the Apostolic Succession and his successors created the Papacy, built the Vatican and established the Holy See which became another city state with all the accompanying intrigue and machinations. This time the story involved men in cassocks of many colours (black for the humble priests and red for the not-so-humble cardinals), with the leader both temporal and spiritual, meaning in this world and the next, of the universal church known as Pope dressed in white. The Pope may not have many divisions (as 20th century dictator and son of the seminary Joseph Stalin once put it) but he did have millions of followers, an impressive civil service known as the Curia and ‘wheels’ to boot. Any aspiring Cardinal (in red) who was ‘papabile’ (deemed as suitable for both a change of wardrobe and status) could look forward to the motoring possibility of the ‘Popemobile’ – a transport of delight Vatican-style made famous by Pope John Paul II. In short, the man who is ‘papabile’ has a chance of transportation in the Popemobile. If the smoke from the chimney puffed white the world knew that a new occupant of the Throne of St Peter had been elected. A curious thing – God’s ultimate Holy Father is chosen by a ballot of his peers – the anointed one is elected.

The city on film – Spartacus, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday, La Dolce Vita, The Shoes of the Fisherman

The late actor, writer, raconteur and all-round Renaissance-style polymath Peter Ustinov used to remark that the Americans were very good at making Hollywood movies about the Romans – they understood the Ancient Roman mentality. Thus it is fitting that Ustinov stars in two of the recommended films. Spartacus (1960) tells the story of the slave revolt led by Kirk Douglas as the eponymous hero and pitted against the might of Rome’s legions led by Crassus, played magisterially by Laurence Olivier. Ustinov plays the weaselly slave auctioneer (a memorable line is “why me? I am more civilian than most civilians”) who ends up helping to save Spartacus’ love interest, played by the classical actress Jean Simmons, by smuggling her out of the city

In Quo Vadis (1951), the story of the rise and spread of Christianity from the birthplace of Christ in Judea to the very gates of Rome is told set against the background of the persecution of the Christians by Emperor Nero. Peter Ustinov plays the murderous emperor with maniacal glee and much declaiming and rolling of eyes.

On a lighter, and much less epic note, Roman Holiday (1953) has two leading Hollywood stars of their day – Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn – having the time of their lives in 1950s Rome and duly falling in love. Scooters and ice cream abound which predates some of the famous scenes in La Dolce Vita (1960) when Swedish actress Anita Ekberg took a fully-clothed but very suggestive dip in the Trevi Fountain.

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) is a film adaptation of a Morris West novel that imagines the election of an eastern European pope a full decade before it happened, played by the late film actor Anthony Quinn, famous for his role as Zorba the Greek. Quinn’s character tries to mediate between Russia and the United States during the Cold War and has a penchant for going among the people of Rome disguised as a parish priest. He has difficulty coming to terms with modern life after years in a Siberian gulag in the Soviet Union.

The city between book covers – Imperium by Robert Harris; I Claudius by Robert Graves; the Falco mysteries by Lyndsey Davis.

If the reader is looking for an insight into the political, social and familial workings of Ancient Rome the two Roberts – Harris and Graves – provide that in abundance. In Imperium Robert Harris, political journalist turned novelist, tells the story of the young lawyer Marcus Cicero who rose to greatness in the dying years of the Roman Republic as one of the finest orators the world had ever seen (note all those superlatives – the Roman story as a whole invites them). Harris writes a thriller at once captivating and colourful and evokes the very smell of the city as he paints the portrait of political lives in dangerous times.

Robert Graves (1895-1985) develops similar themes in his much earlier work – Graves is of Harris’ grandfather’s generation. Classical scholar, poet and writer of great renown in the mid 20th century, Robert Graves sets his novel during the high-point of the Roman Imperial adventure and the extraordinary story of the unlikeliest of Emperors – Claudius. A scholar, librarian and writer he is part of the Imperial Julian family and is a chronicler of the family goings-on. Murder, intrigue and lust for power form the driving narrative with Claudius grandmother Livia emerging as the most ruthless operator of them all, manipulating the central players through a combination of guile, charm and deadly poison. The book was turned into a celebrated TV serial by the BBC, starring many of the best and brightest of British stage and screen; Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips as Livia and Brian Blessed as the Emperor Caesar Augustus leading the cast.

Lyndsey Davis’ Falco is a private detective in late-Empire Rome with a line in world-weary scepticism and a complicated emotional life. Davis paints a vivid picture with her hero constantly fighting Roman bureaucracy and his prospective in-laws. His adventures takes the reader into the heart of the uncivilised aspect of the Rome of the Emperor Vespasian where slaves are downtrodden, life is cheap and business of any sort corrupt. Falco does his best to remain above the stench whilst wooing his love - the aristocratic Helena Justina.

- All films mentioned are available on DVD and books from all bookshops and online. Imperium and the Falco mysteries are published by Arrow Books and I Claudius is published by Penguin

Valkrye – Cert 12 A

2010-02-08T02:37:00.000-08:00

Tom Cruise and host of British stars in this retelling of the July 1944 plot - - a war-time story of heroism and daring ending in tragedy

The latest vehicle for Tom Cruise is a well-made and exciting thriller set in the last months of the Second World War. It tells the story of the July 1944 plot against Hitler’s life by a group of German Army officers led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg was an establishment aristocratic scion of the German officer class, a decorated war hero, who became convinced that the only way to secure Germany’s future and save the fatherland from the continuing evil and madness of the Nazi regime was to kill Hitler and stage a coup allowing the Germans to sue for peace. This project was astoundingly difficult for practical and psychological reasons – Hitler was the German Army’s Commanding Officer and on taking power as Chancellor in 1933 had made the German armed forces swear a personal oath of allegiance to him as their Fuhrer. The film opens with that oath displayed up on screen. This meant that any disobedience or questioning of orders was considered as treason and the very notion of defying the chief went against the Army code. Thus the cause has to be honourable – that of stopping the horror and bringing peace – or the will to carry out the plot would have been lacking. These are men, by no means democrats, who would rather die in the attempt to show that some were prepared to resist Hitler than have the ignominy and shame cast on them as perpetuators of Germany’s dark night of tyranny.

Stauffenberg is invalided out of the fighting in the Western Desert and is posted back to Berlin as a staff officer where he falls in with the various groups of civilians, soldiers and diplomats who formed the disparate German ‘resistance’ at this stage in the war and at this moment in the life of the Nazi regime. The plot is hatched to plant a bomb in Hitler’s Army HQ and run Operation Valkryie designed to topple the Nazi government. Although Tom Cruise is hardly the epitome of what may be imagined as the Prussian officer of the old school he carries off the part with dash and style. Sporting an eye patch and a prosthetic arm, Cruise portrays Stauffenberg as arrogant yet a caring family man, driven yet compassionate. He has a fine supporting cast of leading British actors as his co-conspirators: the dependable Bill Nighy; Tom Wilkinson as the duplicitous General Frohm who switches sides; a character part for comedian Eddie Izzard as the staff officer inside Hitler’s command HQ; the hard-working and multi-talented Kenneth Branagh as the original leader of the plotters who makes a failed attempt on the Fuhrer’s life at the beginning of the film and ends up being posted to the Eastern Front; a strong performance by 1960s heart-throb Terence Stamp as the old general lending moral support to the operation and a study in fear from politician Kevin Mcnally.

The audacious plan to plant a bomb under the table in Hitler’s map room of his command bunker has been the most celebrated of the numerous plots on his life that took place in those last, increasingly desperate days of the Third Reich. The film is an exciting thriller which maintains pace and plot whilst giving due attention to character and motivation. Stauffenberg is worried about the safety of his wife and family and there is a scene in which she signals that she is only too well aware of the consequences of failure for them all. There is a rather moving scene, handled well, between Stauffenberg and his wife when he sends them out of the city knowing they might not see each other again. At the end of the film the credits inform the audience that not only did Nina von Stauffenberg survive the war, she lived a long life into her nineties, only recently passing away. Although the audience knows the story ends in tragedy and the plotters will not succeed, the telling of the tale as to what went wrong with mishaps, mistakes and near-misses is compelling and the courage of those involved inspiring.

The threads of honour and decency and conflicts of conscience are well handled amidst the frenetic pace that builds through the movie. At one point one of the generals declares that even if they fail it will show that not all Germans went along with the Nazis to the bitter end and some had the courage to resist. That, of course, is a central thrust of the whole affair – some were prepared to risk all and resist the tyranny. Many of the best films, plays and books dealing with the wartime period confront the viewer with the uncomfortable but necessary question, contemplated from the safety of our modern lives in peace and security, of what we might have done or not done in circumstances depicted on screen, stage or page. As we salute the bravery of Stauffenberg and his comrades, and all those prepared to confront evil in whatever era, it is a thought to be pondered still.

A weekend in the City of Light

2010-02-08T02:32:00.000-08:00

“Look at Paris in the Spring/Where each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before” (Gigi, Learner & Lowe)

Our weekend trip to Paris, to celebrate our anniversary began at the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet in Kent. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, our hotel was some distance from the city, so we prepared for the walk uphill along the Rue de Dunkirk, a street we got to know well after missing several turnings.

Once settled into the hotel, small but with good views of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, a monument to the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and unfinished till the next great conflagration in 1914. We ventured out for the classic French dish, steak-frites, at a local bistro and soaked up some local colour.

Montmartre, built on a hill at the heart of the city, is easily accessible. We headed for the bars and cafés forming the centre of the artists’ colony, previously frequented by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Then we visited the studio off the Rue Lepic which, by repute, saw the birth of modern art.

Lunching at the Café Sancerre, with tables spilling onto the pavement in haphazard fashion we then walked back along the Boulevard by way of the Moulin Rouge. Walking through student populated Paris, the Latin Quartier and Sorbonne, the Rue St Germain and Rue St-Michel, the tour was a reminder of the lyrics from Peter Sarsted’s hit song ‘Where do You Go To My Lovely?’

The traditional farmhouse-style restaurant behind the former HQ of the Ècole Polytechnique, where a meal with wine must be purchased with cash scratched together from purse or wallet, is a reminder there are still establishments left in the world that do not accept the ‘carte bleu’, as credit cards are known in France. So the diner resorts to counting the cash and enjoying steak and frites, a glass of wine à la rustic serves admirably. Neither ‘a la carte’ or ‘prix fixe’ but somewhere between the two.

The Metro looked more inviting from the surface, with its welcoming ‘belle époque’ signs above, giving way to a down-at-heel feel below. A tour of Paris by commuter bus can be taken with stops at such evocative place names and iconic buildings as Palais Royale and Comédie-Française.

The Louvre Museum was disappointing with crowds let loose with no control. It is also best to remember many Parisian museums and galleries are closed on Monday. This fact can be more than compensated for with a lunch near the Tuilleries Gardens in a typical city centre bar-bistro complete with waist coated waiters. We took a post-prandial stroll along the Seine’s Rive Gauche through the rain, passing green boxes where the artists keep their materials. The imposing riverside buildings of cultural and political Gallic life such as the Institute de France look down upon the artists at their easels, displaying the hauteur of their French Second Empire architectural heritage.

We took the last bus to the Gare du Nord through the famous Parisian rush hour and homewards on the Eurostar with billboards displaying the glories of the refurbished St Pancras station, running fashionably late as befits the essence and joy of Paree

L’elisir d’amore by Gaetano Donizetti

2010-02-08T02:19:00.000-08:00

- a signed performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

The theme of a magic love potion is as old as the Arts themselves. Over the millennia countless songs, stories, paintings, books, plays and films have expressed humanity’s fascination with the idea of a potion, brew or mixture which once taken makes the opposite sex swoon with desire and become irresistible to the imbiber’s charms. From Tristan & Isolde of ancient Greek fable as to Shakespeare’s Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream and on through literature to become a staple of the Hollywood film (think of James Stewart in Bell, Book & Candle or Mia Farrow in Alice) our capacity for self-delusion in the mysteries of attraction and sexual chemistry is manifold. This obsession has given rise to many forms of artistic expression

The Italian ‘bel canto’ composer Gaetano Donizetti deals with this age-old theme in his opera and signals this intention in his title – the elixir of love. The plot is as involved and comedic as might be expected with the a piece involving love-sick men, capricious girls and a quack doctor selling French wine as liquid Viagra.

The story opens with the beautiful Adina expressing her amusement on reading the legend of Tristan and Isolde which involves a love potion, watched by her admirer Nemorino who loves her from afar and upon whom she tends to pour scorn. Our ardant hero’s heart is put under more emotional strain when a soldier arrives and sets about courting Adina. The matter is further complicated, in grand Italian style, by the arrival in town of the quack doctor Dulcamara selling love in a bottle to unsuspecting customers, of whom he has a ready supply amongst the villagers. Nemorino buys a bottle in the hope of effecting a change of heart in Adina, having been told by Dulcamara that the magic will take 24 hours to work. The plot thickens when the fickle Adina becomes infuriated by Nemorino’s apparent indifference to her attachment to the soldier Belcore, so convinced is he that the potion will work, that she is stung into announcing she will marry her man in uniform within six days. The wedding is then brought forward to that evening because Belcore receives his marching orders.
An unhappy Nemorino seeks solace in another bottle of Dulcamara’s brew, paid for by signing up as a soldier. Meanwhile, news comes to the village girls that Nemorino has inherited a fortune from a rich uncle and they begin to fight for his affections. At last, Adina recognises the error of her ways in love and realises the lengths to which Nemorino will go to win her heart – even join the army. It all ends happily with the two lovers at last united, the soldier Belcore off pursuing other affairs and Dulcamara selling his liquid to punters convinced by events that it so magical it makes a person rich as well as attractive.

The production by Laurent Pelly and Chantal Thomas is a revival of a collaboration between the Royal Opera House and the Opera National de Paris. It is a truly international affair with the Italian tenor Giuseppe Filanoti singing Nemorino and the German soprano Diana Damrau in the role of Adina. The role of Dulcamara, the part that the great Welsh tenor Sir Geraint Evans made his own in the second half of the twentieth century, was played by Sicilian bass-baritone Simone Alaimo as a seedy industrial chemist complete with lorry and a grubby white coat. The production designers have evoked the setting of rural Italy of the 1930s with clever use of bales of hay as the set itself and ingenious lighting.

The performance was signed magnificently by Wendy Ebsworth, a leading practitioner in the field. Her expressions and body language conveyed the artistry on stage in all its musicality, emotion and drama.

In recent years there has been some controversy in the arts world generally, and amongst some critics and journalists specifically, about the merits of signing in opera. The question generates a great deal of passion on both sides of the debate, although why a section of the opera-going public, albeit an opinionated and vocal one, would seek to deny the deaf and hearing-impaired community access to the joy and splendour of opera on spurious grounds of ‘taste’, is something of a mystery. An edition of the SPIT News from October 2004 gives a flavour of the issues in an interview with the then Head of Schools and Youth at the Royal Opera House, Paul Reeve:

“ One of the most animated discussions I’ve had about opera was with a group of deaf people, in the bar of the Wolverhampton Grand after a performance by English Touring Opera. Conversation (and drink) flowed: what they’d liked and disliked, what had moved them and, yes, their reactions to the music. Some had heard quite a bit,
some only certain frequencies, others heard nothing but had felt the vibrations of the orchestra (‘the power of the music’, as one person put it). The sign language interpretation of the performance was also the subject of discussion. The overwhelming consensus was that the interpreter had ‘made’ the evening by giving people real access to the theatrical event and enabling them to enjoy something –
opera – that they’d never have done otherwise. It had been a
great night out “(No. 37 Summer 2004 www.spit.org.uk Reg Charity No. 1038247)
Signed Performances in Theatre (SPIT) is the leading national body for promoting BSL interpreted performances of mainstream theatre. SPIT aims to provide a link between arts organisations and the Deaf community, and to ensure that the high standard of British theatre is accessible to Deaf and hard of hearing people.

An Hour in a Bookshop

2010-02-08T02:13:00.000-08:00

Oh what a delight
To pass an hour
In the confines of a bookshop
A universe to be discovered
As varied as the four walls
Containing it

Sometimes to be found in
Shopping arcade, sometimes in favourite
Hideaway places, up alleyways, off high-street
At others in transient arenas
Such as airports, train stations
or hospital concourses
Sporting titles for their literary emporiums
As revealingly innocuous as ‘books etc’

An hour spent in the company of books
Wherever the purveyor may be
Whether before a flight or train
Or awaiting others on a family shop
Perhaps as a form of retail therapy
Is never wasted

Tis a joy and a balm for the soul
An uplift which never fails
To restore good humour whatever the travails
Of time and circumstance
Try it sometime – pop into your local
Arena of words
And marvel

WBR Jeremy

Ear Pieces

2010-02-08T01:44:00.000-08:00

I sit in the room engaged in conversation
With a charming, warm man talking of
Disability – hearing impairment – in terms
Of ranges of sound and levels of loss
Of hearing retention and damage done
Of future worsening and capturing sound
Told “grasping the nettle just as well now
Or face worse problem to come”
Told it is about enhancement and sustainment
If not replacement of sound

We talk of many things my
Hearing confessor and I
Of family and society
Children and parents
Speech and cadence
Rhythm and tone
Accent and articulation
The state of the health service
Situations and circumstances
We go on twice the time of
Regular consultations

Then comes the fitting
First the choosing
Involving discussions of placement
Where is comfortable, less or more conspicuous
Inside or out, noise control or not, larger or smaller
“No point if they are not to be worn but sit in a draw
Like so many do nowadays”
Next the moulding with wax imprinted
By firing from a special gun
Sitting with wedge in mouth whilst
Waxy substance melts

It goes off without hitch
The time is late we break off
To stroll to the gents still talking companionably
In generalities
And then more forms
Arrangements made to collect
A good-natured farewell

The deed is done
The nettle grasped
What has been spoken of, debated, alluded to, put off
Has been achieved
In short, two words describe my official state of disability
WBR Jeremy, May 2007

Biographica Audiologica

2010-02-08T01:41:00.000-08:00

The creative process is often accompanied by some sort of compulsion. This is what is sometimes known as the creative urge. And so it was with my poem Ear Pieces The compulsion was to explain what had happened – a diagnosis of hearing loss – and the urge took the form of a poem. It is said that the material chooses the writer.

The story is not conventional, in keeping with much of my life. Many narratives of hearing loss run thus: sound or possibly perfect hearing since childhood and into adulthood followed by loss – gradual or steep – into middle or later age. A traditional, linear, almost accepted, progression from perceived ‘perfection’ to imperfection, from ‘full faculty’ to ‘impairment’.

I discovered my hearing loss in my late 30s. I had difficulties with ears when young but this may have been hidden due to attention given to a stammer/speech impediment Growing up in a large voluble family with an average noise level much higher than the conversational norm, I was used to the projection of voices with an emphasis on diction and thus any problem would not necessarily have been picked up on because most of the time I heard everyone around me only too clearly!

On marrying and moving to a much quieter environment my wife Karen realised I must have a hearing problem – she noticed I would not respond if I stood at one end of the kitchen with my back turned. I also had difficulty hearing low tones and certain pitches of sounds, both vocal and electronic.

Further investigation led to a diagnosis of audiosclerosis. This means the inner ear bone is stuck fast and does not vibrate. Through the process of diagnosis and acquisition of hearing aids I have learnt about the world of audiology, both its science and art. The hearing sense requires more in terms of ‘brainpower’ than sight. When man was living in the cave, the predators would come at night and sharp hearing was paramount in detecting them. Each person has a set number of ear hairs that facilitate hearing and once damaged the brain compensates in all sorts of ways. It is possible that I have been unconsciously lip-reading for many years. So much for survival of the fittest! The specialists could not accurately tell when the problem started, possibly in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood. Any operation to substitute an inner ear piece of bone would not be effective due to nerve damage. Hearing aids followed and the rest is an ongoing revelation, if not quite history.

The adjustment to the onrush of sounds and sensations with the hearing aids – birdsong, footfall on stairs, wind-in-trees, traffic – was unexpectedly emotional. I ‘knew’ all those sounds but re-discovered them anew in sharper definition for the first time in a long time. I had always been able to listen to the radio or TV and read at the same time. With my new ‘ears’ in the sounds are much higher volume, so the concentration on one medium at a time is important.

The hearing adventure has provided something of an explanation of things past: from school, through to University and into the working world. With a childhood stammer giving an existing, perhaps self-imagined perception of ‘slowness’, speed (of thought, reaction, approach) and its lack has always been an issue. In retrospect, how much might have been missed in arenas requiring aural faculty - the classroom, lecture-hall, at interviews and in the court-room?

Despite these difficulties early on I have achieved academically – at degree and post-graduate levels and professionally in public and legal affairs, research and the media.
My passion is the radio and all things audio and I am developing a freelance practice in research, writing and broadcasting. My hearing loss is by no means a curtailment of ambitions in the aural arena and may add an extra dimension to my life through the enhanced understanding of people with disability generally and hearing loss in particular.

Michael Frayn's theatrical wonders

2009-09-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Many of the best playwrights, as many artists dealing with written and spoken word, are teachers at heart. Their urge to explain, clarify and show shines through their work and Michael Frayn is no exception. A brilliant wordsmith he has excelled in all areas of the writing trade: as a journalist he wrote a book that is widely regarded as the best insider’s view of how the old Fleet Street trade worked (Towards the End of the Morning); his column in the Guardian brought him a wide audience; his novels are celebrated for their verbal inventiveness and he has ventured into screenwriting being responsible for one of John Cleese’s best comic perfomances as the time-obsessed headmaster in Clockwise. Add philosopher; art historian and documentary film-maker to the accomplishments and you have the classic ‘Renaissance man’ – in France he would grace the dining tables of Presidents and the ‘belle monde’ – in Britain he is regarded as a ‘clever chap’ in a world of arts and media known for its abundance of cleverness.

Frayn’s play Noises Off is nothing if not ambitious. It has no less than two theatrical conventions at its core: the farce and the ‘play within a play’. Both dramatic themes are intertwined resulting in a torrent of words, hectic action and a lightning delivery as the play proceeds. The play centres on the rehearsal and performances of a theatre company touring the provinces with a farce. The first Act opens on the technical run-through with all the attendant stress of pre-opening nerves and actoral temperaments jangling. The playwright, lyricist and composer Noel Coward once remarked that the secret of successful stage acting was remembering the lines and not bumping into the furniture. This play is based on nobody remembering lines and everybody bumping into the furniture and each other. The first Act has the actors rehearsing their play whilst being directed from the auditorium by a director with a growing sense of despair at the prospect of a first night looming ever closer and barely-suppressed rage mounting. The characterisations are wonderfully drawn by Frayn and captured precisely by a skillful cast. There are the stock-in actoral universal types to be found in both amateur theatrical groups and repertory companies alike: the world-weary sarcastic director, played by Shaun Hennessy; the neurotic Garry, played by Rowan Talbot, who displays an athleticism and physical comedy worthy of a Rowan Atkinson at his most Mr Bean-like; the precious method actor feeling meaning and motivation in every stage direction whilst not being able to cope with life generally; the ‘ever-so-nice’ but intense blondie with her ‘luvvie’ way of calling all and sundry ‘sweetie’, 'darling' and ‘my love’ and trying to stick to her part when all is falling apart; the veteran actor with a drink and hearing problem – played with vigour and enthusiasm by Stuart Organ. One of the best performances is by Kim Ismay who plays the housekeeper in the play within the play as a cross between Maureen Lipman and Su Pollard with her flamingo-like turns and wonderful timing.

The play demands a great deal from its ensemble cast. All the characters have two roles: the part they are playing in the play ‘within’ and the part in the play ‘without’. Act I is the rehearsal process of the play within and Act 2 is set backstage during one of the performances as it tours the provinces. As usual there are sub-plots with members of the cast having affairs with one another. The second Act descends into classic farce – fights between the actors; intermix of ‘onstage’ and ‘off’ and the major ingredient of any farce – trouser-dropping. There is a very clever piece of pure artistry – a whole section of the play conducted in silence with actors conducting complicated stage business whilst trying to get on and off stage. The audience is treated to a reverse view of the action from a backstage perspective.

The Third Act is back on front set during a performance when the whole effort reaches a climax of wrong entrances, mixed-up lines and confused action. The audience has been ‘taught’ the play within as it unfolds and so by the Third Act the hilarity is in the understanding and appreciation of the ‘fluffed’ lines or the missed entrance. There is a very well done ‘sub theme’ running through the play involving sardines which is the device Frayn uses to hang a lot of the physical action. The action between the players and their parts onstage and their lives offstage merge and mingle in a colourful tumult of misunderstanding and mayhem.

Television biography of the late Paul Scofield

2009-01-07T23:56:00.000-08:00

Due to the wonders of modern technology it is possible to record programmes and watch them at a later date - not such fantastic news one might think given the advent of the video recorder over two decades ago. It is just that the latest version -courtesy of the company owned by well-known Antipodean media tycoon turned US citizen - makes the recording business so startlingly, and in some ways worryingly easy - just the push red button. And so, in the household of the Oldest Trainee we push the red button and store up programmes that we may or may not watch later.

One such programme successfully retrieved from the system was a BBC documentary paying tribute to the late Shakespearian actor Paul Scofield. A gem of a TV biographical film for its example of the 'less is more' school of artistic philosophy. What was brought out by the programme was that this giant of the British post-war theatre: West End star, film actor of enormous renown, brilliant Shakespearian interpreter with a mesmeric stage presence and voice to match, was a shy man who was happiest at home with his family and who would return by train from the theatre to his Sussex village. A very un-show business actor. Therefore there were was not the usual roster of big names attesting to a an actor's life of premieres, parties and late-night goings-on in post-performance restaurants or of big personality clashes with fellow performers or of on-set tensions associated with film making. The contributors were themselves leading artists of stage and screen and they attested to Scofield's brilliance combined with modesty. Among their number, Sir Peter Hall; Sir Richard Eyre; Felicity Kendall; Peter Brook; Donald Sinden, John Harrison, Christopher Hampton most of whom declared they were inspired by this man.

The director of the last film Scofield made, Nicholas Hytner, reported that he agreed to play the part of Danforth the witchfinder in Arthur Miller's great play The Crucible, set in 17th Century Massachusetts, because he saw Danforth as the other side of the character that he played to great acclaim on stage and film - Thomas More in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons. What separated Danforth and More was time, circumstance and geography - from Tudor England to pre-Revolutionary America - but men of unyielding principle whose conscience is uncompromising but no less troubling with very different outcomes. More will not bend to the people's will and Danforth is unbending in his will to root out what he sees as heresy amongst the people of Salem. To have seen those connections across decades of experience shows a man of rare insight and sensitivity and the performances flank an extraordinary career. All in all a portait of a shy man who let his acting do the talking - man for all seasons.

DYLAN JONES-EVANS: Bute Park

2008-12-11T01:46:00.000-08:00

DYLAN JONES-EVANS: Bute Park

I would very much like to be updated on the campaign's development - although am now I am an ex-patriot South Walian based in Kent, I worked for some time at the Temple of Peace at the WCIA and know and love Cathays Park - the centre-piece of the capital.

Reflections on the art of the eulogy

2008-10-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the last month this correspondent has had sad family news. Not only did we lose my dearly beloved maternal grandmother but also my wife's sister-in-law. One aged 97 after a long, eventful and rather wonderful life and the other too young, in her fifties, to cancer. I was privileged to be able to give the eulogy address at my grandmother's funeral. Herewith in memoriam to Grandma, Joan Elsie Blair, nee Haines:

Joan Elsie Blair – Little Haines / Big Joan
‘A Talent to Amuse’

" Joan Elsie Blair (nee Haines) – wife of Hugh Dickie Blair, mother to Sally, Juliet and Meg; mother-in-law to Anthony and Eliot, grandmother to Claire, William, Madeleine, Richard, Charles, Tom, Jess and Sam; great-grandmother to Daniel, Charlotte and Tom, and adopted Grandma to her ‘beautiful’ Karolina and steadfast Magdalena – long-time companions at 165 Lake Road West or ‘international house’ as it became known in recent years. She had many roles, played many parts. She touched many people’s lives in her 97 years upon this earth, whether you knew her as Grandma, Joan, Mummy or Mrs Blair. She encouraged, advised, occasionally cajoled, and often-times persuaded. She could also be provocative and at times a little acerbic - I sometimes teased her about going into ‘Little Haines’ mode – the nickname she was given by a jolly hockeysticks gym mistress at her boarding school in Southport. Her patience, kindness, forbearance, courage, humour and great sense of fun was inspiring. She was a guiding star twinkling and shining - leading by example. Grandma once told me that the central priorities in her life with Grandpa were other people, the children and only then themselves. In this way her focus on other people’s welfare was an animating feature in the way she lived her life. Indeed as the song (It’s a Lovely Holiday) from one of her favourite films – Mary Poppins – has it “forbearance was the hallmark of her creed” and this is neatly summed up in one of her favourite phrases – “ oh well, don’t worry, it can’t be helped “. And through this interest in others she was that rarest of breeds – a life-enhancer. She had a natural spontaneous gift for building up confidence in whomsoever she met. She found the positive aspect of a personality or a character trait or a person’s point of view and highlighted it. She quite simply made people feel good about themselves – she truly enhanced their lives. As Susan Caree-Roberts, daughter of Grandma’s great friend Margaret Roberts, has put it in a card: “ who could forget that little figure, thatch of white hair, advancing resolutely along the pavement towards the chosen goal – to the shops, to visit a neighbour, to Church: what will they do now for a guardian angel in Lake Road West? “

And I have been the recipient of this loving bounty all my life: as a boy who often felt awkward, with a tendency to fall over his shoelaces and burdened with a speech difficulty, it was Grandma who sent me to elocution lessons to build up speaking confidence, nurturing a love of literature, theatre and performance in the process. [And when in recent times a hearing problem was diagnosed it was Grandma who enabled its treatment]. She used to say by way of encouragement “but darling, for someone who walked late and talked even later you are doing well”. And these comments were not confined to her immediate relations. On meeting my wife’s grown-up son and daughter Grandma declared “Karen my dear, I am very pleased with your children”. We felt we had received the Grandma Blair benediction. We all have similar stories.

Grandma was always ready for a trip. I had occasion to go with her to the London opera starring one of our favourite singers, Lesley Garrett, in The Barber of Seville. At this point she was a mere spring chicken in her late 80s. We went up on the train to Paddington (in past times it would have been the theatre train). She joked with the taxi-driver about her forebears hung at Tyburn as we passed Marble Arch and casually mentioned her family relation to Sir Christopher Wren. We arrived at the ENO as the curtain went up after negotiating a long flight of stairs to the upper circle. We of course had seats in the middle of the row. The usual ‘excuse mes’ led to po-faced audience tut-tutting. Grandma’s indignant response delivered in a commanding voice that she thought was a whisper reverberated around the auditorium “well we don’t get this sort of reception in Wales you know! “. I had learnt at Grandma’s knee to be nonchalant in the face of embarrassment. The girl of the 1930s London theatre, who met her future husband through friendship with his cousin Tana , was always full of praise for her adopted homeland – Joan Elsie Blair was a Cardiffian for 50 years. Grandma passed on her love of music and theatre to all of us. I was lucky enough to go with her to many shows – she was a generous audience and a sympathetic appreciater of other’s artistic efforts.

Grandma’s professional singing career coincided with that of the Noel Coward era and she appreciated his sense of humour and sometimes bittersweet lyrics. One of his songs, to my mind, will forever remind us of her. It for me expresses her optimistic hope that all shall be well at the last (and we shall all meet again)

I’ll See You Again / Whenever Spring breaks through Again /
Time May lie heavy between / But what has been is past forgetting
Your Sweet Memory / Throughout my life will come to me
Though the World may go awry / In my heart will ever lie
Just the echo of a sigh / Goodbye…..

Grandma, Joan Elsie Blair nee Haines, God-speed. We shall miss you "

We said goodbye to another remarkable woman called Joan this year - Joan Smith. She served as the right hand to my father in the family law firm over four decades, and had known my father for nearly 50 years and my siblings and I all of our lives. She worked right up till her death, in her eighties, still serving her clients whilst battling with cancer. My father spoke movingly about his old friend at her funeral, reproduced below, capturing her for those who knew, worked with and admired a devoted servant of humanity:

Joan Smith – an appreciation

Taken from the eulogy given by Anthony W Jeremy at the funeral service, Thornhill Crematorium, 2pm Monday 14 July 2008

" As we sorrow for our loss, it seemed to Marie and the Minister right that I should say something of Joan’s professional life, although she was of course not merely my colleague but effectively a member of my family – one of my oldest friends. So let us reflect on the qualities which inspired such respect from the profession and affection from literally hundreds of clients whom she served in the course of a long and successful career.

Many practitioners in the law are appreciated for their efficiency, skills and dedication to their work, but few are so highly valued and esteemed by clients and indeed professional colleagues as was Joan. Why was that?

Well firstly, she had an unswerving professional commitment which I encountered early on as a raw recruit, fresh from the leisurely pace of University life. In the firm which I joined as a raw recruit, Joan was briefed to monitor the often wayward activities of the law students grappling with the urgencies of legal practice. Her no-nonsense, disciplined and sharply focused approach to us made a memorable impact, not unlike experiencing the close attentions of a sergeant major on entering military service. I hasten to add Joan was much gentler, but equally firm. We learned fast and never forgot.

Some years later, when we formed our own firm, my then partner and I counted ourselves extremely fortunate when she joined us. Joan was to prove a pillar of my practice for over 40 years. Her importance to the firm cannot be exaggerated. My work as a civil court practitioner took me away for long periods. Aggregated over the whole of our association these absences amounted to literally years, and in all that time Joan was the proverbial rock in all crises. A steady, calm voice in a sea of troubles she always responded to the challenges with impeccable judgement. She had a rare ability to analyze complex facts with an insight into the essential relevant considerations – a gift which was most evident in her cases of family disputes and matrimonial litigation. To those caught up in the highly charged emotional maelstrom of marriage breakdown, Joan brought wise counsel, clarity of thought and powerful support. Her uncompromising professionalism was respected throughout the legal fraternity by a garland of friends and acquaintances – legal executives, solicitors, barristers and judges – and was recognised in her appointment as one of the fist Fellows of the Institute of Legal Executives. In the affairs of the Institute she played a prominent part in its growth throughout South Wales. Joan was especially concerned to encourage and inspire new entrants, particularly young students.

But what set her apart was that she gave herself to her clients without restraint and without reserve, placing her counsel, experience and skills at their service, often at the cost of personal sacrifice. This she did right to the end of her working life. Only a few weeks ago, at the height of what we now know to be her last illness, Joan was applying herself to clients’ matters and the protection of their interests in spite of considerable discomfort and pain. It has been said that ‘ when you give of yourself you truly give ’ and Joan proved the truth of that proverb to the full.

That dedication was motivated by her compassion for others, a compassion inspired by the ideals and teachings of her Faith. In the chances and changes of life, in times of misfortune, trauma, distress and uncertainty, clients found in Joan not merely someone with whom they could share their pain and problems, but a source of strength, comfort and true understanding – a light in their darkness to set them on their way. That is why so many clients came to regard her not as a legal adviser but as a loyal friend, and many of those friendships have lasted to this day.

And now in this hour of separation, everything which we loved and admired in Joan will become clearer – to us irreplaceable. We shall miss her humour, her wisdom, her commitment and concern for clients. And yet what we miss is in reality her legacy to us. What Joan has left behind is more than a record of professional success but an incomparable example of selfless devotion to others. Those of us who were fortunate enough to know her as clients or colleagues will never forget her. Your presence today is the most eloquent testimony to the admiration and love in which she was held.

I am reminded of Shakespeare’s Sonnets:

‘ When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughts I summon up remembrance of things past
Then can I drown an eye unused to flow for precious friends hid in death’s dateless night
But the while I think on thee dear friend all losses are restored and sorrows end’

And so, although we say farewell to Joan with tears, we shall always think on her with happiness and gratitude for her life of true humanity and service to others.

May she rest in peace "

In penning my thoughts about my grandmother I was much inspired by a number of eulogies written by various members of the family and friends. The art is to capture the person both for those who knew the person well and for those who knew them little or not all - to 'capture' the life lived for all there, and sometimes for those not present to read in print. Herewith two more.

My uncle Eliot wrote and presented the eulogy for his father Winston. As can be appreciated by the reading, they don't make them like him anymore - if they ever did in the first place:

" Winston, we shall miss you.

You were an unusual man. We all respected your wisdom and advice, even if sometimes we found it hard to follow. You were usually right.

You were a man full of surprises. None of us knew until recently the degree to which you had worked with British Intelligence for many years both before and after the last war. We knew you had something to do with camouflage but little more than that. That your department was “concealment, deception and counter measures” sounds quite dramatic, but not half so dramatic as going to Spain as a spy during the Spanish Civil War to study the effects of bombing and meeting Franco, then a Colonel, in passing.

You came from a simple and very poor background, your father was a butcher and your mother a nurse who rose to become a matron.

You and your brothers were bright. Raymond in particular was a brilliant draughtsman. This was recognised and a wealthy patron by the name of Alex Keighly supported you and Raymond financially through higher education firstly to Leeds School of Architecture and then by scholarship to the Architectural Association in London. At the AA you met a fellow student, Kitty Holman, of Scottish and Norwegian extraction. You married her and had a son, David. Tragically, she died in childbirth.

By 1936, you were in Spain and there you met an extraordinary English colonel by the name of Wintle, who eventually became Secretary for Air. It was through him that gradually your career moved from architecture to military matters. Your architectural interest in the design of aerodromes was recognised by the Air Ministry and you were sent to Germany to study the aerodromes being secretly built there. You bought back news of the autobahns being designed as runways and the secret hangers being built in woods nearby, and of the extensive ‘gliding clubs’ which were a thinly disguised basis for a developing airforce.

Back in England, you were put in charge of the ‘L’ expansion scheme, which was semi-secret as it fell outside the Geneva Convention, to develop our own airfields in case of war. The success of this scheme was the key to winning the Battle of Britain as without airfields we would not have been able to defend ourselves when war came.

You started to specialise in camouflage and flew thousands of hours studying different treatments and disguises from the air. At some point in time you had worked in the film industry as an art director making three very bad ‘B’ movies. But you used your experience of film set design to create false buildings, shadows and ‘street lighting’, even mock towns and cities during the War. The success of one of these outside Cardiff can be seen today. Bomb craters are still visible where German bombers dropped their loads on what they thought were the docks, but were in fact only lights and tin foil.

During the war you had married an actress, Everley Gregg, but the marriage was not a success. Immediately, after the war you met Maryel, also an architect who had studied at the AA, and you had a son, Eliot, followed by a daughter, Louise.

For a period you were head of the Hammersmith School of Architecture and then moved to teach at the AA. There, your anti Communist views were not popular but with your background understandable so you went to work in the offices of T P Bennet, a well-known commercial architect.

Once again you received a call, this time from the Admiralty where you secretly worked on a study of the outlying reaches of the Empire to see if they were defendable or should be given up. To your amusement, when you called up the files they were the same ones you had worked on during the War, and had been untouched since. Your conclusion that defense was impractical was as ever logical and pragmatic.

On the death of Maryel’s mother you moved to Cleavers and lived there for almost forty years. After a spell with Howard Hicks in Stratford on Avon you returned to teaching architecture and had many happy years with the students at the Leicester School of Architecture.

You helped start the Stratford Society and were the scourge of planners everywhere. You found time to take a degree in Urban Conservation and used your experience gained as a Planning Inspector to pursue the Stratford Council in ever more ludicrous and complex planning applications. This I suspect you did for your own amusement as much as anything else. You always had a hatred of blind bureaucracy and were a great defender of the individual’s rights against monolithic government and the nanny state.

I have not mentioned your friendship with the De Havilland family or your friendship with Basil Winham, at that time Charlwood Alliance, but subsequently to become a main board director of P & O. You seem to have crammed so many things into your life that it is hard to keep track of them all.

Perhaps it is the ease with which you made great friendships and sometime great enemies that was both your strength and weakness. Your blunt speaking was not always welcome but you were afraid of nothing and always had a sense of justice and a love of freedom.

I hope you are now free to pursue all the things you loved in life because we shall miss you now you are gone.

You were an unusual man and we loved you very much "

Some years ago I went with my cousin and his family to the funeral of a lifelong friend of his and fellow pilot. Jeremy's friend had died too early from cancer and his funeral took place in a small, ancient Oxfordshire Church. The friend remembered, Chris Cowper, and my cousin had been comrades since joining British Airways together after service in the RAF. This address also captures the life and the friendship between them shines through:

"Chris Cowper 1936 - 2005

Chris died just over a week ago, early in the morning on Thursday 15th Sept. perhaps appropriately, in view of his aviation career, it was Battle of Britain commemoration day. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in November 2003 and had, initially, a long period of containment. He could even play golf during this time. However in the past few months there were increasing difficulties, culminating in a sudden inability to walk or use his legs at all. Tests and treatment followed for 2 weeks at the Churchill hospital in Oxford but it was realised that this condition could not be reversed. Chris wanted to come home and not stay in hospital or go to a hospice. Judy, calmly, methodically, and efficiently took on the role of organising all that this entailed, a hospital style bed downstairs in the dining room, a wheelchair, a commode, and crucially a range of support services, nurses and carers. Chris was fortunate to die at home, where he wanted to be, surrounded by his family in familiar, friendly environment, listening to and watching the recent memorable cricket Test matches. His death was comfortable and peaceful at the last. The support Chris received, not only from Judy, Marcus, Jamie and Claire, but also absolutely crucially, from the health services, was wonderful. Chris had great trust in the medical services, the GP, the Health Centre, District nurses, the specialist cancer consultants and services, the hospitals at Stoke Mandeville and Churchill in Oxford, the carers, the Macmillan Nurses and finally the Marie Curie support from the Florence Nightingdale. They were all caring, amazing and first rate. This is a tribute to them all. Thank you.

Chris has died too soon, much, much too soon but we can celebrate his life because he regarded himself as a fortunate man. He had a good innings. He was not a man given to introspection but, a few months ago, said to me that if he had to go he had enjoyed a good life and could not complain. That good life included a close knit family, Judy his wife of 44 years and his three children. I know that he was thrilled to have a grandchild, Daisy, He had her picture as the wallpaper on his computer. In his chosen career, he was also highly successful as a pilot, firstly in the RAF as a fast jet pilot for 9 years and then as a commercial pilot mainly with British Airways for 27 years and subsequently with smaller charter companies. Chris loved flying, it was his career, vocation and hobby. He wondered that he was being paid for doing something he loved so much. His aviation interest and knowledge were encyclopaedic. His aircraft recognition was phenomenal; he could identify an aircraft from the smallest dot in the sky.

So where and when did this enthusiasm arise. Born in 1936, an only child, his Dad was a tea broker and after school at Canterbury- an experience which I think he enjoyed but in which he claims to have been rather undistinguished- he was destined to follow his Father into tea. But Chris’s interests were already in aviation. He was a modelmaker and apparently an avid reader of aviation magazines. He applied and was successful in obtaining a short service commission to become a pilot in the RAF. On 8th October 1954 Officer training started at Kirton in Lindsey, in where he met his oldest and firmest friend John Cray and his future best man at his wedding, Tony Netherton, both here today. Flying training at Ternhill, on the Provost and Oakington on the Vampire culminated in the award of the coveted wings in 1956 and a posting to the Hawker Hunter, the premier fighter aircraft of its day. These were the days of the cold war and Chris, John and Tony all went to the Second Tactical Air Force in Germany. Chris was with 26 Squadron, followed by 14 Squadron. Apart from the flying this appears to have been a giant never ending party experience in a Germany going through its miraculous economic recovery from the war.

After 3 years in Germany he was fortunate to get a second flying tour as they were called- this time on the twin engined, two crew, delta wing fighter, the Javelin. The fortune, one might say, was short lived as, on one of his early flights at the OCU, he suffered an engine fire, closely followed by a second engine fire, the inevitable conclusion of which is to leave the aircraft, so both he and his navigator ejected, as it is called and descended by parachute. This made him a member of the distinguished club ‘the caterpillar club’, reserved for those who had been compelled to parachute from an aircraft. Chris, typically never made a meal of this very rare experience. Apparently he did say the burning aircraft wreck had ‘set Lord Bolton’s grouse moor on fire and it would burn till Christmas’ but he was, as always, very self effacing about what must have been a terrifying and unique experience. Tony Netherton played golf with Chris shortly after this incident. Chris casually mentioned, between shots, that he had bailed out. There was no aggrandisement; typical Chris; most people would have dined out on this for ever. He did, however, injure his spine in the ejection and spent some time at the famous rehabilitation centre at Headley Court. This spinal injury occasionally caused some pain in subsequent years and latterly he thought this was the cause of his back pain which eventually, tragically, transpired to be the developing prostate cancer.

Chris spent a further 3 years flying the Javelin on 25 Squadron. Somehow he found the time, before the Javelin course, to woo Judy, a neighbour from home, (how he got such a fantastic girl is beyond me) and they married, with Tony Netherton as best man on, 9th. September 1961. They moved to RAF Leuchars, St Andrews. For the first 6 months of his time there Chris was on detachment in Cyprus. I doubt whether this was part of the bargain for Judy!

And so after 9 years in the RAF Chris left to join British European Airways on the Vickers Viscount. It is here that I met him We were on the same course starting 2 days before president Kennedy was assassinated (so we know where we were—probably being taught Viscount electrics at the BEA Heston Training centre). From the every first I knew Chris as very special. What is the touchstone of friendship? I don’t know but we, quite different in temperament, hit it off. This character had the ability or knack of defusing a tricky or difficult situation by making it funny. He didn’t tell jokes but, as we all know, was the ultimate master of the pun. Chris could make a pun out of any statement. Yes we all groaned but we laughed as we groaned and then we prepared to groan and laugh again as pun followed pun. It was great fun, sometimes culminating in side splitting, uncontrolled fits of laughter. Tony Netherton reminded me that Chris would make the pun, stare at you waiting for recognition and then tell another one. We will all miss that.

Chris was an excellent civil pilot. We know that because he came out ahead of all of us on the course and consequently above us all on the infamous seniority list which governs life in the realms of civil aviation. He was also a wonderful crew member; a pilot everyone liked to fly with - and not all outstanding pilots make good members of a crew.

He flew the Viscount and Trident as co-pilot and the Viscount, Vanguard, Trident and Boeing 757, on its introduction to British Airways, as Captain. I remember he was interviewed for a position as a Route Check captain. I asked him how it had gone. He replied he didn’t know but he had made the panel laugh – typical Chris. He was offered the job but the aircraft was withdrawn from service before he could take it up.

So at age 55 in BA, all good things come to an end and one is compelled to leave. Chris flew the 757 with a number of charter airlines, realising what we had all suspected, that BA had been an excellent outfit to work for. Finally he became less than satisfied about some of the safety issues in one operator and he retired, aged 61, in January 1997. His last pilots log book entry simply says ‘Finis’.

So that is the career. He came home to the Old Parsonage, Nether Winchendon , the family home of 21 years after many happy years in the delights of Bryn Cottage, Speen which became too small for the brood, at one time 3 children under 2. Chris had spent a lot of time away from home both in the RAF and in civil flying. Nonetheless he had a strong family and a vast range of interests. These were mostly centred around things which move, mainly with wheels. Aeroplanes, cars, motor bikes, trains, cycles, and, without wheels, canal boats. Chris knew all there was to know on these subjects. And he and Judy also had, at one time, a mini sail. Interest diverged to birds, feathered which also move a bit. Rather like his aircraft recognition skills, Chris took pride in his bird recognition.

He had a combined interest in choral music and churches and cathedrals. Living near Oxford, he and Judy went to the beautiful college chapels to hear glorious choral music.
They also visited the great cathedrals of England and France There was also an interest in Jazz. We all did a course together on art appreciation in Oxford. Chris was very proud of and supported Judy as her sculpturing talents developed.

So what manner of man is emerging? Well, like most of us, a patch work quilt. A family man of absolute integrity, he had a wide circle of acquaintances but was content with a few friends and very happy in his own company, sometimes solitary, even reclusive, doing his own thing, perhaps establishing his amazing model railway system. He did not like large crowds and avoided London, except for a specific occasions; a traditionalist and conservative; rather old fashioned in clothing. I would tease him about his ‘demob suit’ and his panama hat – perhaps it was a Noel Coward influence. I think he thought Armani was some far away Eastern European Republic. He was offended by the word ‘toilet’ it was ‘lavatory’ and certainly some humour was distinctly lavatorial. I have been reminded by Tony Smith of what is, loosely, a golfing story. For many years I didn’t know that Chris played golf. During his working years he, apparently, played occasionally in Scotland, having learnt, to some extent, the game in his youth. On retirement, golf became more important and a source of pleasure, especially to those playing with him. Chris would turn up, immaculately dressed in knickerbockers, polished shoes and shirt and tie (I think he must have worn a tie with his pyjamas). Chris’s golf was pretty erratic, sometimes lousy, but not as bad as mine. On one occasion he hit a diabolical shot; ‘S…T’ was loudly broadcast down the fairway closely followed by the response ‘said the king and 10,000 courtiers struggled and heaved to his command’. We were in stitches only to be brought up short by the admonition of other, more serious, golfers for our excessive noise and hilarity. This was decidedly a reversion to childhood but we revelled in it. There was something of PG Wodehouse in this upright Englishman, (he liked ‘spotted dick’ for pudding), a fantastic sense of humour and a natural clown. Yet Chris could be quite radical in opinion and had firm, diverse and controversial (to me) views on national and world events which he would argue with conviction. He had great interest in books, especially military history as well as anything on transport, aviation, railways, cars, Etc. He would like to find the reference for anything of interest. He was very keen on maps, but I became less enthusiastic about his map reading skills after a jaunt in the Lake District when with supreme confidence, he got us lost. John reminded me that, at Marcus and Jo’s wedding, Chris decided to drive the ‘pretty route’ from hotel to church. We all dutifully followed to be led up an increasingly narrow lane going nowhere. Lots of manoeuvring was required. We just made the church on time!

Chris was very good with words. He wrote a fantastic account of a joint holiday we enjoyed in Kenya in the early 1970’s. Very recently, only a few months ago, he wrote a letter to the Log, the journal of BALPA, on the Hawker Siddely Trident aircraft. This was a fascinating, detailed, historical, account of the aircraft and its characteristics. This article, I am delighted to say, was published as a two page spread in the Log which arrived last month. Chris was thrilled. It is a lasting, worthy, tribute to his aviation knowledge and skilled writing.

He was most amusing, good company, usually easy going but sometimes he would grab hold of some idea and worry it to death. He was far too modest. He certainly undersold himself and his abilities. He was unnecessarily self- effacing, sometimes deliberately playing the fool, as a mask. He was as straight as a die. He was much more sensitive and caring than is perhaps recognised. He was not into possessions. He liked the ‘wireless’ as he called it, especially radio 4. He was always true to himself and his beliefs. He was very fortunate in his chosen professional and private life. He had many hobbies and was happy in his leisure time.

I would like to conclude with a quote from John Cray: ‘Chris had a love of the countryside, particularly the remote areas and of course the wild life, particularly birds. He loved old buildings and, probably influenced by his schooldays in Canterbury, the churches and, cathedrals and though he did not sing well or play an instrument, he was very keen on jazz and very much taken with early English church music, Tallis, Byrd etc. and would listen to choral evensong on the radio or attend evensong if the opportunity occurred. He was a very balanced man. He loved and was very proud of his family and the achievements and skills of all of them. The focus of his life had been flying backed up by his keen interest in all things mechanical and powered. But his interest in, and knowledge of, the arts and also of the countryside and its natural history was also part of the character of an intelligent, thoughtful, loyal man. A friend of more than 50 years’

So Chris has gone, leaving his close family Judy, Jamie, Marcus, and Claire, his wider family and his friends to mourn but above all to remember with pleasure and gratitude what Chris has given to us.

“The rest is silence” "

Rest in peace all.

September songs and island dreams

2008-09-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

As September breaks and the dreaded back-to-school type feeling descends, something which afflicts the British and possibly the Anglo-Saxon world in a particular way, thoughts turn to times not-so-long past when early September found this particular correspondent-blogger in the Mediterranean, on an island off the coast of Italy to be more precise and on Ventotene to be even more accurate.....

If the discerning traveller was to take a train from Rome southwards they would eventually arrive at the coastal town of Formia. If the same traveller was so inclined, he or she could take a boat ferry or hydrofoil (a sort of cross between a hovercraft and a jet-propelled passenger boat) to the island of Venotene. Not as well known or as glamorous by reputation as Capri, although the island made famous to postwar Britons by Gracie Fields is not far away across the water, it is where a certain Altiero Spinelli was exiled by Mussolinni's fascist regime during the Second World War. Altiero Spinelli is honoured by the Italian federalist movement as its founding father and also as a pioneering thinker-politician behind the development of the European Communities. Spinelli's work influenced the architects and guiding spirits of those who built the institutions that were to grow into the European Union. Whilst imprisoned on the island he wrote the Venotote Manifesto which promoted the idea of a federal Europe and developed the federalist political philosophy. There is an institute - the Spinelli Institute - which exists to further his work and every year holds a conference on federalism to discuss, debate and celebrate his achievements.

The international young Europeans known as Jef, send members to participate in these conferences and the week-long seminars which form a part of the ongoing work of this international organisation. It is a conference like no other: a mixture of lectures and workshops, beach afternoons and the sublime food and drink that Italy offers in her unique way. Evenings are spent carousing under the stars and weighty matters debated and such as the committe membership of the European Parliament and the extension of qualified marjority voting in EU decision-making. There is also a lot of music to go with the wine...

45 years after Luther King the dream is still alive.....

2008-08-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

For once it is not hyperbole to use the word 'historic'. Forty-five years after Martin Luther King delivered his impassioned speech - that resonated around the world and became known by the short-hand I Have a Dream - in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, a young African-American has stepped on a stage at a football stadium in Denver Colorado and accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for the Presidency of the United States. Barack Obama, of Kansas and Kenyan parentage, has lived the American ideal and embodies the dream itself - that anything is possible in America with hard work, belief and opportunity. A young, articulate, idealistic, mellifluous, brilliant black man has a chance of becoming the next President of the United States of America. He has risen from community organiser in the South Side of Chicago to the first African-American chair of the prestigious and influential Harvard Law Review and via a stint at the Illinois State legislature to be elected junior Senator for the State of Illinois in the US Congress. This man, who grew up in difficult circumstances with an absent father and a mother faced with major economic and social challenges with the family moving from Indonesia to Hawaii and grandparents having a major input into his upbringing, emobodies what is possible in America.

Politically he represents change from the Bush era and the old, exhausted, bankrupt non-solutions to the problems of the US and the world. Biographically, his is the story that the American elecrorate may wish to have reflected back at them to show them and the world at their best. One of the themes of Obama's book Dreams From My Father, which chronicles his early life and struggles, is that the problems encountered along the way - racial and other prejudice - are not about him and him alone: 'it is not just about you' resounds through the book. And on that platform in Denver Obama echoed that message as he told his audience - both in and outside the stadium - that in the end his candidacy is about them and not him. If they have a vision of themselves reflected in him, he could occupy the White House in 2009. In framing who they are, Americans often re-visit the words of the founding fathers of the Republic as laid down in the Constitution - we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are made by their Creator equal......and certain inalienable rights among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... What a manifesto for change. In the words of the Obama team - yes he can.

From Scarborough to Salcombe - a Summer tour

2008-08-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

In the last fortnight or so a Summer's journey has taken in Yorkshire, Kent and Devon and counties in between. The first weekend in August saw my wife and I heading for Yorkshire to visit her parents in Withernsea, outside Hull. Withernsea is a seaside resort out on the East Ridings and journeying to it feels a little like voyaging across a land-sea of endless flat fields comprising some of the the most arable farming land in the county, England and the UK. The landmark that heralds our destination is a tall white structure visible from some miles off. Known as the Kay Kendall lighthouse it is named after the town's most famous daughter - the actress Kay Kendall, star of films such as Genevieve (with Kenneth More, Michael Redgrave and and once married to Rex Harrison, star of stage and screen with appearances of varying quality from the incomparable My Fair Lady through to the less illustriuos Dr Doolittle to wonderful, almost half-forgotten, gems such as The Yellow Rolls Royce (also starring Omar Sharif). It was said that Kay Kendall was the love of the much-married Rex Harrison's life and when she died young of leukemia he was inconsolable. In a way it is fitting that this vivacious woman who managed to shine a light into the heart of a gifted but in many ways impossible man, should be remembered in her home town by a lighthouse however landlocked. Needless to say it is only open on high days and holidays in the season when the moon turns into a balloon (as observed by her friend and fellow actor David Niven).

Another Yorkshire seaside town with artistic connections is Scarborough. A cross-country drive into North Yorkshire via Bridlington and Filey brings a motoring party to this Victorian pleasure site. Like many such towns of its era it boasts an esplanade, a pier and a grand hotel as well as two beaches complete with promenades. It also has two theatres and a link with the playwright Alan Ayckbourn, whose plays were first performed in the theatre which is named after him - The Theatre in the Round. It was thus the citizens and holidaymakers of Scarborough that were first treated to such modern classics as Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests, Absent Friends and Bedroom Farce . If the works passed the 'Scarborough test' they were ready for the rest of the world - in this way the people of Yorkshire were the literary and artistic arbiters of modern theatrical tastes and trends for where Ayckbourn has trod others have followed.

After such heady artistic pursuits, the traditional beach-side ice-cream experience was deferred for the farmgate produce of Mr Moos, where the challenge is the consumption of what seems to be the largest plateful of chocolate chip-vanilla ice-cream with cookie biscuit base this side of the Yorskhire Dales.

Another county with plenty of agricultural produce is, of course, Devon which is where we ventured post Yorkshire. After a brief administrative stop-over in Kent (Garden of England where the strawberries are boasted of as the best in the UK if not Europe) involving government agencies and paperwork, the caravan rolled southwestwards via the old road connecting South East to South West known to all familiar to it as the A303. Almost a parallel route to that of the Western M4, the traveller passes through counties such as Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset before crossing into that deceptively large expanse of south-west countryside known as Somerset. Villages with evocative names abound on this route, including that of Norton-sub-Hampden - for those with political interests it is the place from which Paddy Ashdown the politician (former Leader of the Liberal Democrats) and international civil servant (UN High Representative to Bosnia) takes his title - Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hampden. By sheer chance, when we were sojourning in Devon, the eponymous Paddy A appeared on an edition of the Radio 4 Any Questions programme, which was broadcast from that same village. Once famed for being the only MP to be able to kill with his bare hands - a product of his training as a marine commando - the admirable Paddy still cuts a dash on the stage of public life, where he is noticeably reticent about giving any advice to his successors in the Liberal Democrats. He seems to have taken the advice first attributed to ex-President Harry Truman when counselling others after leaving high office in relation to their successors not to 'talk to the Captain or spit on the floor'. His closing speech to the Party Conference when he retired from the leadership was a masterclass of its kind, ending with the valedictory "and may God continue to hold you in the hollow of his hand". His is a class act in many ways which has developed in adversity as well as truimph since the day he inherited a party, over 20 years ago, that was close to bankrupt. Not that it gets any easier to be a Liberal Democrat when adherents often have to hold simultaneously to two completely contradictory beliefs - and are often hampered by this during election time....or at least are obliged to tell one story at one end of the country and another at the other.

A little like this post, the road eventually leads to Exeter - Devonian market town with a well-regarded University which this correspondent attended in what seems like the increasingly receding years of the late 1980s to early 90s. Follow it south from Exeter and onto what is known as the Devon Expressway which sweeps down the peninsula towards Plymouth, eventually arriving at Ivybridge and Lee Mill, home to my wife's daughter and her Devonian-born boyfriend. Which is how we ended up at Salcombe, for he lived in that fair seaside town which attracts the glamorous and the well-upholstered together with the surfers and boaters of all kinds, urban and sea-prone, townies and locals alike. All this as well as the delights of a visit to the newly revamped harbour area of Plymouth called the Barbican, where we sat and watched as the drama inherent in any activity involving a TV film crew unfolded before us - notwithstanding that what was being filmed rejoiced under the title Come Dine With Me - a day-time cooking show of the variety ubiquitous to the small screen, or idiot's lantern as they call it in some parts. Not far from where we sat, the spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh relives his famous game of bowls upon the Plymouth Hoe - scene of one of the most celebrated pieces of sang-froid of all history: the Spanish Armada was hoving into view carrying the invasion forces of England's rival power and the good sailor and hero of the hour (as the history has it) insisted on finishing his game of bowls before joining with, and ultimately defeating, the Spanish foe. The same chap who cast his coat down in front of his sovereign, Elizabeth I so as to save her dress from a puddle. A hero for history in a long line of naval heroes. Plymouth is an appropriate setting for all this drama - the port of Devonport providing the raw material of the naval power that enabled Brittannia to literally 'rule the waves' from Tudor times to the end of the Second World War. A panolpy of naval heroes echo down through the ages from Raleigh onwards including Nelson as well as all those yachtsmen. Few, perhaps, quite as quixotic as Walter. Could be the effect of the salty air combined with the clotted cream......

An Anniversary Outing

2008-08-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

The end of July saw this correspondent and his wife celebrating a wedding anniversary on London's South Bank. Having investigated West End theatrical offerings we opted for the wider spaces and promenading opportunities provided in and around the National Theatre. One can sit and sample the delights of the passing parade - the comings and goings of late afternoon and early-evening Londoners together with the musical performances in the precints of the National Theatre make wonderful entertainment for theatre goers and promenaders alike. For all the past talk of architectural 'carbuncles', by heirs with airs, the South Bank is a space in the heart of London to be cherished - it is a space on a human scale and facilitates a democratic meeting point for strollers, culture vultures, city workers and artists alike. In a way, the play we saw echoed the theme of people, life and art.

The brilliant polymath playwright Michael Frayn's virtuoso portrait of the life of German theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt, Afterlife, was a joy. Set in Austria in the years leading up to the rise of the Nazis, it follows the career of one of the century's most flamboyant and contradictory theatrical luminaries. The play is a kind of literary dissertation on the themes of life, art, mortality and legacy as seen through the Miracle Plays which Rheinhardt staged at the Salzburg Festival. The premise of these plays had at its centre the figure of Everyman - the universal character beloved of artists from time immemorial to denote humanity in its entirety and in its particularity. Everyman has his time, as Shakespeare has it, 'to strut and fret his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more' and then has to account for his deeds on earth to the Almighty. Rheinhardt was much preoccupied with breaking down the barriers between what went on in everyday life and what went on on stage, and talked of the 'frontier' between art and life. Frayn brings these themes to life through devices such as blank and rhyming verse - the characters on stage suddenly burst into passages of poetry. The story of Rheinhardt's complicated artistic, personal and political life is told with wit, panache and verve but is also profound and serious in intent. In amongst the stage antics, clever theatrical jokes and visual allusions, the deeply philosophical message of the play is never far from the surface - time waits for no man and death comes whispering 'Everyman' to every man.

First world war battlefield trip, Northern France

2008-07-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

In the spring of 1985 school boys trying to take in the awe and majesty of the Menin gate and the uinimaginable horror of the Western Front. Visits to the trenches and the war graves in the vast cemetries: Ypres; Passchendaele; the Somme; miles and miles of trench snaking way through the countryside- scenes of mud, shell, barbed wire and bodies now overlain with grassy banks and flowers. The flat country of Northern France and Belgium as the scene of the slaughter.

Subsequent years have brought an apprecication of the art that tried to describe such horror - poetry, songs, the brilliant O What a Lovely War, the books of Sebastian Faulks, the moving TV series on the monuments to the dead all over Britain, presented by Ian Hislop.

Summer thoughts of past adventures

2008-07-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

In a memorable edition of the Radio 4 personal essay series 'A Point of View', the writer and critic Clive James recounted his battles to give up smoking and how he eventually learned to 'smoke the memory'. Whenever he feels like a cigarette or small cigar he recalls the sensations, the feelings and associated pleasures of the actual act of lighting up, inhaling and exhaling. This helps him both to remember the pleasure and not to recreate it in actuality.

It feels a little like that as we do not contemplate venturing abroad this Summer. Instead of preparing to head off to foreign clime I shall try and recall past trips - to 'travel the memory'. What does the poet say about "summoning up things past, what do I recall?". The first venture starts in the mid-1980s and a school trip to the First World War battlefields of Northern France and Belgium, the latest a wedding anniversary trip to Paris. The travelogue will follow a haphazard, but one hopes interesting path. These are the wanderings of the Oldest Trainee...

Summoned by Pips

2008-05-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

The poet John Betjeman wrote a celebrated book of memoirs in verse, Summoned by Bells, taking as his theme his various experiences of being called to school-room or lecture hall by the ringing of bells - not to mention to church services. Over the last three weeks your correspondent has been at various secondary schools across London, in an exam invigilating capacity, and the sound marking the school day can only be described as 'pips': short bursts of noise as if from klaxon or loud hailer but put out across a tannoy system that reaches everyone on what is referred to as 'campus'. The word campus is used to describe schools as well as undergraduate colleges and the word 'student' seems to have replaced 'pupil'. With an environment, in some places, more akin to further education establishment than high school, the overall effect is one of democratisation of the school experience, albeit an illusory one.

Another innovation, and sign of the times, is that there are now members of staff dedicated to running the exams system. Such is the variety and number of exams these days that the Exams Officer is often occupied with the job full-time. Some schools recruit specialist administrators and some are drawn from the retired teachers ranks, often depending on the size of the school and its catchment area, which may determine the number of pupils with English as a second language. Administering exams in one language is challenging enough but with Asian, African and European languages as mother tongues of students increasingly the norm, particularly in London, the pressures on time and staff attention is that much greater.

From entering high school aged 11, the average pupil faces a seemingly ever-growing list of examinations. There are SATs; GCSEs; AS-Levels and A-levels with the usual provision for mocks and those taking exams early. The exam boards range in difficulty and what is called 'stretch' and schools choose different boards for different subjects - Edexcel for Maths and the WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Council) for RE as an example. A modern variation on the theme of eliminating disruption in the examination hall is the problem posed by that ubiquitous communication instrument of modern times - the mobile phone. The rules laid down by most of the public exam boards is as clear as it is uncompromising - if a mobile rings during the course of an exam the owner can be disqualified from the paper forthwith. Most schools have a system of mobile hand-in beforehand and hand-out afterwards. They are sometimes 'tagged and bagged' in envelopes. One pupil's mobile phone went off during a GCSE art exam causing upset and consternation - the phone had switched itself on so as to activate the alarm whilst it lay in its brown envelope. A case of functionality not having its uses!

The endless debate of the state of education generally and examination standards particularly rumbles on and is as regular as Summer downpours. From personal observation in the last few weeks of this year's season, the papers seem to be as they always were in subjects as English, History and Maths and a little more modular in languages. What does not change is the anxiety, worry and general tense atmosphere in exam halls up and down the land and the accompanying reactions of pupils undertaking them ranging from pyschosmatic illness, through to tears and high-jinks horseplay. Midsummer madness in all its manifestations accompanies examinations, for pupils, parents, teachers and invigilators alike.

Reflections on a London journey

2008-05-02T02:59:00.000-07:00

The standing joke about travelling in my home country of Wales is that few people realise that we have a Welsh sub-continent, which takes up most of the middle of the country and consists mainly of two counties - Powys and Montgomeryshire - where rolling countryside gives way to small towns and country miles wind their way through hedgerow and field. All this bisected by the Welsh version of the M25, the A470 which runs north-south and is the major arterial route. Thousands of words have been expended on the inadequacies of this road in the form of reports, discsussions, debates, political manifestos. Plans come and go, elections are fought and lost, the talk goes on and still very little happens in the way of change to this enormous piece of tarmac which is literally at the centre of motor travelling life in Wales, apart from the highways in and out and surrounding Wales - the M4 and M5.

Travelling in and around London is a very different experience. Since I have been living in Kent I have cause to undertake journeys into the capital more and more. Yesterday was a case of car, tube and bus out to the East of London via the delights of a the Jubilee line and the DLR (docklands light railway) to Stratford (not the Warwickshire town and birthplace of Shakespeare although it would have been an interesting diversion) and thence to Leyton on the Central Line (did not feel that central at the time as the underground became the overground). The destination was as yet some way off and required a bus from tube station to somewhere near the road I had to walk down to arrive at the street which harboured the school I was visiting at its end. The school building was a revelation, all new architecural design and opened at the turn of this century by the then-Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris. Set in a borough of London that has been the recipient of government largesse and increased state funding for services such as education, the Lammas School at least has a modern building to serve the needs of a catchment area which reflects our modern wider community life: a high number of pupils with English as a second language; a sizeable provision of free school meals; special needs coverage (of all kinds).

The infrastructure of education is linked with public policy in a very direct way. In towns, cities and villages all over the UK there are school buildings which are still standing and in use from the 19th century, when the era of state involvement in the provision of public education began with the various Education Acts of the 1870s. Indeed, I had encountered a typical example of swhen I stopped for directions at a primary school bearing all the hallmarks of a 19th century school build: red bricks; iron railings and the separate exits and entrances for boys and girls. A very twenty-first century group of school children, filled with the faces and languages of a dozen countries, played in the yard built by the burghers of Leyton and Walthamstow who had been mindful of their public duty to encourage 'useful lives' among the citizenry when Victoria was Queen Empress of India and Britain had an Empire (run from Whitehall and managed by a few hundred servants of the Crown). If those same men of affairs took a walk past the school they financed they would find that the Empire had come home to the mother country in all its variety, colour and diversity. I crossed the road and travelled over a hundred years in a few hundred yards, to a shining new building proclaiming the same endeavour in pursuit of the virtues of public education of a century ago. A long way to travel in so short a time. The challenges may be different but the ideals of education for all are the same.

The Lost Baggage Saga or skiing out of Terminal 5 in borrowed salopettes

2008-04-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

This correspondent has been away from his blogging duties due to a combination of illness, Terminal 5 Heathrow, lost baggage and ski trip adventures.

The timing was spectacular. Having been excited about the prospect of flying out of the newly opened (by HM Queen no less) and recently operational, many billions-costing, Richard Rogers-designed Terminal 5, Heathrow's newest glory, our party found ourselves in the midst of one of the biggest public project false starts since the Millennium Dome met the Millennium wobbly bridge over the Thames. We being the intrepid school ski party. What should have been Day 3 of the new super-charged Terminal 5 (or T5 as the cognoscenti started calling it - the name got shorter as the baggage trail got bigger) showing the world its wonders turned into the third day of a Very British Airport Breakdown. The much-heralded superfast bag-handling system, capable of processing up to 12,000 bags per hour, had started malfunctioning and sending luggage various to variously different destinations, apart from where the passengers were headed. Flights were cancelled, passengers waiting hours on the concourse for flights delayed - the Chief Executive of BA apologising but not resigning - turning disaster into technical difficulties and a mea culpa into a marketing strategy.

Advised to keep checking the electronic board for news of our flight we had the green light it would be operating via the neon glow of the website, and the Party Leader (also doubling up as travel agent and this correspondent's wife) duly gave the order to implement Phase One of the Ski Party Reach Destination Plan - the airport run. This consisted of 2 school minibuses, about half the party and some of the luggage, driven by Party Leader No 1 Daughter and ex-HM of said school. Upon arrival checked in to an emptier-than-average departure hall (stunningly rendered by the Rogers outfit) due to cancellations, to be greeted by tales of woe from the long-suffering check-in desk staff: management not supporting front-line staff who took the brunt of passenger angst and aggravation. Disgruntlement was taken to an art form that day.

Along the concourse flagged by shops, designer outlets and eateries of one sort or another lay a noticeable lack of seating for those not inclined to shop or eat. After the misdirecting of the departure gate we eventually found ourselves sitting on a plane that was yet to depart for some time. Apparently, there was missing paperwork that had found its way off the flightdeck and had to be re-located. A very embarrassed pilot explained the delay and we eventually took off into the blue yonder. The usual talk on board the plane of family, history, education, careers. The mother sitting in the next seat was a photographer-turned fruit farmer. The party had a late arrival in Munich, and the luggage carousel told the story - 14 bags missing from the 42-member group roster, including all of the party leader's luaggage and her partner's (the author all present and correct). After more delays to fill out forms, collection of BA-issue emergency toiletry bags, food purchasing and general consternation at the lateness of the hour exacerbated by fatigue, the bus left Munich Airport bound for Austria, Salzburg and St Johann im Pongau. Our doughty travel rep, retired teacher who had recently been involved in a horrific car accident and wore a neck-brace, met us with the bus and the journey continued. We eventually arrived at the Hotel Sonnhof, Alpendorf, St Johann im Pongau to be welcomed with the typically Austrian soup dish, gulashsup.

That night the party leader and her assistant (the present author) were left pondering. The thing about losing luggage on a ski trip is that one has packed to ski and the whole raison d'etre, clothing-wise, seems a bit lost if the whole kit and caboodle (gloves, hats, ski suit etc) is having a holiday of its own. This was as nothing, though, to the worry of the missing parents the following day......

On David Lean - a film giant

2008-03-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of David Lean. This giant of the film world was responsible for some of the twentieth century's iconic movies. From working on Noel Coward's In Which We Serve and launching the screen acting career of Alec Guinness in the film version of the Dickens classic Great Expectations, Lean was at the forefront of a dazzling mileu of British talent that adorned the cinema in the post Second World War years. Not an easy man to work with he nontheless helped develop the careers of several distinguished actors, Peter O'Toole and Omar Shariff among them.

He was responsible for some true masterpieces, such as Lawrence of Arabia with the opening desert scene, Dr Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai, with a mesemerising peformance by Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson. As for the cream of the acting talent, Lean worked with them all, from Richard Attenborough to Jack Hawkins and Julie Christie to John Mills and many, many more. A perfectionist who drove himself and others to the point of distraction, at times a tyrant, he was not an actor's director or a particularly caring man. He was, though, a great artist and a list of even some of his films is a roll-call of cimematic delights. Read and marvel: Great Expectations; Oliver Twist; Brief Encounter; The Bridge on the River Kwai; Hobson's Choice; Lawrence of Arabia; Dr Zhivago; Ryan's Daughter; Passage to India . Shall we see his like again?

The triumph of Sunday night television

2008-03-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

The BBC would have pulled off a televisual coup if it develops the brilliant series shown on Easter Sunday night, The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Based on the book series by Alexander Mcall Smith and adapted by Richard Curtis (of Blackadder and Four Weddings& a Funeral and Vicar of Dibley fame) and the late and hugely missed Anthony Minghella, it is set in Botswana and tells the story of the abundant Precious Ramotswe of the eponymous title. Wonderfully photographed and brilliantly written, it is a 'feel good factor' series if ever there was one, with combining warm African wit with profound messages, all shot on location with fabulous colours. Last night's episode was dedicated to Anthony Minghella (the English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain to name just a few) who died suddenly last week at the achingly young age of 54. The world has lost two of its brightest in the firmament in the space of a week - Anthony Minghella and Paul Scofield. RIP artistic souls both.

A theatrical light goes out and another burns brighter still

2008-03-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

The British theatre has lost one of its great figures - Paul Scofield. Famous for his role on the stage, and later screen, as Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolts's play A Man for All Seasons he was a Shakespearian classical actor of great power and presence. Choosing to remain in the theatre when Hollywood stardom beckoned, he was a modest and sel-effacing man - as his co-star in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, Simon Callow, said of him Schofield was not an 'actorly' actor. Having lived through the great days of the theatre in the mid-20th century, Scofield ranks alongside Olivier, Gielgud, and Guinness as masters of the art.

Another contemporary master of the art can be seen at the National Theatre in London playing Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, Simon Russell Beale. In a truly magnificent performance, playing opposite Zoe Wanamaker as Beatrice, this most celebratory of Shakespeare's comedies is brought to vivid life. Both actors are at the top of their profession and a the top of their game. The cast is wonderful with the likes of Oliver Ford Davies lending his great experience on stage and screen in the role of Beatrice's father, Leonato. Directed with bravura by the brilliantissimo Stephen Hyntner the action is aided and guided by a revolving stage and there is a fabulously conceived, wonderfully funny and perfectly executed piece of stage business involving a sunken bath and the antics of the two warring principals.

It is every bit as exuberant and bouncy a production as Kenneth Branagh's film version set in the Italian countryside and boasting an all-star cast. As they say in the theatrical reviewing world: beg, borrow or steal a ticket.

A broken window in Adelaide

2008-03-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

As well as the excitement of the finale of the Six Nations rugby football tournament, made all the more sweet by the victory of Wales as champions and winners of the Grand Slam, the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne is playing out its drama as I write. Melbourne is Australia's 'second city' but it has not always played host to the Grand Prx. For many years the South Australian city of Adelaide gave itself over to the thrills, excitement and glamour of motor sport. Another memory springs to mind.....

In the year of grace 1991, as the long premiership of Mrs Thatcher was coming to an end, marking the close of the decade that would become to be known by the short-hand of ‘the 80s’, and what was to become the shorter but turbulent early 1990s under one John Major was just beginning, the Oldest Trainee journeyed to the other side of the world. At that time it was popular for gap-year students – between school and university or further/higher education – to take time to work and travel and in the Oldest Trainee's case it was mid-degree course and it was travelling to the Southern hemisphere. Due to a combination of academic exhaustion, an understanding university tutor and a suggestable nature, it was South Australia that became the focus of travelling attention . . Suffice it to say, he found a way through the good offices of a sympathetic tutor at the University to persuade the academic authorities to grant him leave of absence for a year – a suspension of studies – in order to take time out from the ‘treadmill’ of study followed for many a year since the age of 4. A friend of the family who had attended Cambridge University in the 1950s with the pater familias of the Legoe family and had subsequently gone out to Australia to live and work for a while, suggested both a visit Down Under and a sojourn with his old friend’s family.

It is not a highly recommended technique to endear oneself to your hosts, but launching oneself through the glass door of the host family on the first night of arrival is exactly what this writer did on his arrival in the city of Adelaide. Having been kind enough to respond to a telephonic entreaty from the airport to pick up the friend of a friend and having furthered that generosity by putting that stranger up for the night, these blameless citizens of the South Australian capital found themselves dealing with a long-haul traveller who leapt through glass doors. He had chosen the family, or rather the family had been unlucky enough to be landed with him by virtue of their names being on a contacts list provided by a family friend (of the Oldest Trainee) who seeded the idea of the Great Australian adventure in the first place.

Thus it came to pass that on a balmy weekend evening in the first flowering of a Southern Hemisphere summer, having left the Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, the Oldest Trainee found himself in the garden Jacuzzi under an Australian sky in the city of Adelaide. Having been reassured by the host father that he, the father, had not claimed on the house insurance for a while and warned by the host mother not to presume or expect help from anyone just because of the fact of friendship long ago between one family and another, he started his Australian sojourn.

After that window-shattering experience in the capital city of the free-settled state of South Australia – a distinction the burghers of its capital city and across the state never cease to point out, giving South Australia an Anglicised flavour of a certain kind, it was into the hands of the Legoe family of Adelaide and Robe and South east South Australia that he was passed before he could do much more damage.

In the year of his visit, the Australian Grand Prix was still being held in Adelaide. En route to meet George Legoe, eldest son of gentlemen farmers and as near-landed gentry of the South Australian state as it gets, the father of that most forebearing of host families showed him the sights of the city in preparation for the Grand Prix by driving the route that the drivers would race: at that time Adelaide shared with Monaco the distinction of being host to a motor race actually raced within the city itself – Melbourne was to steal the Formula 1 crown from Adelaide, but at that time the South Australian capital was Queen of the Australian motor racing world. It turned out that the Oldest Trainee was to be present at the race which was run in a sustained downpour of rain and viewed from an office block near the track.

The handover of the troublesome visitor to George Legoe having taken place outside the city limits, the journey continued southwards towards Robe in the south-east of the state. George was taciturn but friendly and he indulged the Oldest Trainee's stream of questions.

The Legoe family have major connections with Adelaide, as do half the farmers and land-owners of the state. George’s mother Marianne was from a family connected to the founder of the city and the state itself. Adelaide was named after Queen Adelaide. As was the case with many farming families, the Legoes had a house in the city and his younger brother Will attended one of the Universities in Adelaide (Flinders). The traffic from Robe to Adelaide was frequent and an unremarked feature of their lives: the family networks had friends whose children studied in the city at university or had attended as pupils one of the various boarding schools modelled on the English system. The Legoes themselves had a school link with Geelong in Victoria. All in all Adelaide was the nearest major city and in Australian terms, up the road in journey time: three hours. A country town and a small city, three hours apart, not a problem for citizens of this island continent.

On rugby, Ireland, Oscar Wilde and wheelchairs

2008-03-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend marks the closing of this year's playing of the rugby tournament known across the northern hemisphere as the Six Nations championship. In times gone by the championship was known as the 'Five Nations' and consisted of the home nations of the United Kingdom - England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales - plus France (the auld enemy from England's viewpoint or the auld ally from Scotland's). With the arrival of Italy on the rugby-playing scene the tournament opened its doors to its sixth member. Those of us from Wales had a special reason to welcome the Italians, for it is said that the Welsh are 'Italians in the rain'. As if to prove the point, not long ago the Welsh squad boasted a Sidoli, a scion of an ex-patriot Italian family business dedicated to the fine art of making ice cream - Sidoli's are the toast of South Wales to this day.

Last weekend's rugby clash between Wales and Ireland brought back memories of a trp to Dublin in support of Wales against Ireland. If I close my eyes and think hard I will conjure up the scene:

It is not immediately apparent that road travel and the European Union are linked until you travel across Ireland by road. The emerald isle is known for its enthusiastic embrace of all things European and not least because of the opportunity to fund all sorts of projects that membership provides, road-building among them. But with an Irish twist, of course. The story has it that each county in the Republic, large or small, had to have the same allocation of money to put into the highway. This in turn meant that once the fund per county ran dry, so did the tarmacadam. Subsequently there are stretches of road in and between counties that rival the art of the French auto-routes at their best which suddenly come to an end, giving way to the worthy but altogether less magisterial efforts of the local authority. The super-highway trail is once more taken up a few miles further along in the next county.

This observation seemed all the more pertinent at the time of crossing these motor trails for it was on the occasion of the announcement of the death of the much-loved former Irish Prime Minister or Tasoieach, Jack Lynch. As well-regarded for his sporting prowess on hurling and Gaelic football field as in the public arena, it was Jack Lynch who negotiated Ireland’s entry into the European Union, then known as the European Economic Community (EEC). At the time of making the journey, from Galway to Dublin and back, the name Jack Lynch was not a familiar one, although I counted myself as a student of history and politics and of European affairs. Through newspaper coverage and the familiar tones of the BBC correspondent John Simpson on Irish radio I learned of how this sporting political hero was almost airbrushed out, removed from of the annals of Irish political history , through the machinations of subsequent political manoeuvrings.

A view of Jack Lynch as honourable man sketched out in the obituaries was echoed in the confines of the poor Claire convent in Galway by those well-informed nuns whose knowledge of the outside world seems to deepen as a result of their silent contemplative life. “ A good man, was Jack Lynch” they concurred, sitting behind a grille in the reception room, during the audience granted to me as a result of my involvement in conveying a wheelchair-bound friend, formerly of the convent ,to visit them.

The European theme continued in Dublin, with the crane-filled skyline paying witness to the building boom that came in the wake of Irish membership of the European single currency. Obligatory visits to some of the ‘must-see’ Dublin sites: the public sculpture of Molly Malone (otherwise known as ‘the tart with the cart’) as well as the water-monument, popularly referred to as the ‘floozy in the jacuzzi’; the rather moving memorial monument to Oscar Wilde inscribed with one of his greatest aphorisms: “ all of us are lying in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”.

This tribute to human exuberance links to another Dublin trip and accompanying another wheelchair-user – this time for the ‘rugby and the crack’ – Ireland and Wales. During that festival known as the Six Nations rugby tournament, when Ireland play Wales at home, Dublin becomes a party city. From the rugby stadium known by its shorthand label of ‘Lansdowne Road’ through to late night scenes of comic alcohol-fuelled festival mayhem in Grafton Street and the Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephens Green. The experience of acting as navigator and guardian to a man determined to demonstrate he is making the most of his weekend by launching himself out of his chair at the smallest opportunity, is something of an eye-opener. It seemed to me the on-pitch action was safer. This rocket-propulsion enabled the jumping of taxi queues, much to the apparent consternation of fellow revellers – I will never know whether the arm-waving was in celebration of our leaving the scene or anger at our stealing of the ride home. However, the joviality and inevitable hangover was soon dispelled by an early morning phone call bringing news of the death of my companion’s stepfather, felled by a heart attack.

The journey back to Cardiff was thoughtfully sombre, the atmosphere leavened by (rugby) talk of the weekend with Welsh rugby officials we sat with in the plane – those men in jacket and ties known as the ‘blazerati’. As for the rugby, there’s always the next game, the next trip, another opportunity to stare at the stars whilst lying in the gutter. Jack Lynch would have appreciated the scene as would my friend’s stepfather, Colin. Together, of course, with Oscar Wilde and those well-informed sisters of the poor Claire convent.

Kenya days

2008-03-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

My collected diaries tell me that almost exactly ten years ago I was in Kenya visiting my uncle, who was in the last few months of his life. Uncle Ted was married to my late Scottish maternal grandfather's sister. A life-long vegetarian he was the eldest of a large Quaker family who moved out to East Africa in the early decades of the 20th century. Ted's mother was a remarkable woman who kept the family going, and as the eldest he supported his siblings by working on a farm in Tanzania (then Tanganika). He eventually farmed coffee near Nairobi and was a pillar of the Museum and a keen tennis player. A pacifist by conviction, he served as an ambulance driver on the East African front during the Second World War and during the Mau Mau emergency slept with a gun under his pillow to protect his estate workers from the guerillas who were waging a terror campaign against farm workers. A very gentle man, his wife, my great aunt Marjorie was quite a tour de force. A teacher at the Agha Khan school in Nairobi, she never seemed to like children and perhaps was as frigtened of them as they were of her. Throughout their long marriage and well into Marjorie's declining years - she was older than Ted and died before him - theirs was a relationship based on trust, tolerance and good humour. So often, when a controversial topic came up and Marjorie was holding forth, whether on children, family or their long-serving cook NuHu, Ted would become increasingly exasperated and suddenly exclaim " O Marjorie! ". In that phrase lay a universe of meaning and comment.

Having no children of their own, Ted and Marjorie followed the fortunes of their assorted nephews and nieces, and succeeding generations. There was something of a tradition in my mother's family to go out to Africa to stay with Uncle Ted and Auntie Marjorie during the Summer of leaving school, before going to University. My mother and her two sisters both made the journey as did I many years later. The African summer was a defining moment in one's life up until then and to have that connection was magnificent indeed. Experiencing the extraordinariness of Africa as a callow youth of 18 for the first time is to enter a different world. Ten years later the magic was just as strong.

Over many years Ted and Marjorie's farm in Nairobi became a place to which friends and family retuned time and again, and was also the scene of an Out Of Africa-style love story between cousins: one a young RAF officer and the other a 17 year old fresh from school.

So it was with great concern that I have followed the events in Kenya these last months and hope and pray that the settlement mediated by Kofi Annan will hold and real political change will happen. Kenya has not in the past been a crucible of trible violence, but once those forces are unleashed they can be very difficult to control. Ten years ago the talk was of the then incumbent President, Daniel arap Moi, being up to his neck in the usual corruption and Richard Leakey, who was credited with saving the Kenyan wildlife industry, was active on the political stage developing a credible opposition to the ruling party. They were balmy days indeed compared with the appalling scenes these last months. The legacy of post-Colonial Africa has too often been one of the 'big man' presiding over a corrupt regime. Let us hope that Kenya moves out of the shadow of the big man into a properly functioning multi-party state as soon as possible and Kenyans once more return to the ideal that they are Kenyans every bit as much as tribal affiliations of Kikuyu or Kalendrin

The blog begins

2008-03-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

These are the jottings, writings, thoughts and comments of the Oldest Trainee. They will encompass history, politics, public affairs, education and the arts, all of which are dear to my heart, as well as matters philosophical. The Oldest Trainees has been educated for life if not a career. As one of the greatest playwrights of the English language, Oscar Wilde, once commented - " education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught ". How true that is. Would that our illustrious Chancellor and his esteemed cohorts bear that in mind on this the Budget day in the UK - for those watching outside the UK the Chancellor is the government's chief finance minister.

More on these themes anon