Dear Friends, many years ago when I lived in London, I was invited to a party in the Borough of Peckham. It transpired it took place in a block of council flats. As is often the case I was greeted and shown to a bedroom where coats were being dropped. On the way in ‘mine host’ asked me if my coat was made of real leather. I said that it was. He shook his head and dissuaded me from leaving it there. The inference was that if I did then it would be stolen. I will never forgot leaving that block of flats late at night and walking across the concrete plaza that I suppose was the equivalent of a courtyard.  A council sign stated bluntly:- No Ball Games. It was a sign I had seen before on more depressing council estates and not only in London. I was a fresh faced young teacher back then and had discovered that the welfare of children was my business. Dear Reader, I was and continue to be disgusted and appalled by this sign. It seemed to me then that that was the wrong priority. It suggested that a gang fight, a stabbing, the taking of drugs, rape and murder were acceptable but that a pick up football game, a bit of shooting at a basketball hoop was not. How ridiculous, how stupid, how criminal.  Since then I have become a smidge more cynical about how bureaucracy takes things seriously which are anything but and then jokes about things which should be taken seriously.  There is a bridge over the River Yeo in Somerset where the sign states ‘No Jumping or diving off the bridge”. The water beneath is deep and barely moving as it lies on land that is almost flat, the bridge is only about 10 feet above it. There is, therefore, no deadly current, no delirious height.  Driving over it on a hot summer day, there are teenagers who are showing off by jumping, diving off the bridge, breaking its rule. Fair play to them.  Personally I would rather they were doing that than sat in a darkened room playing a mindless video game. That would be far more dangerous.

                      Recently we have seen the remarkable news pictures of our political leaders walking hand in hand to speak to the grieving population of Tumbler Ridge. Everybody comments on the fact that Poilievre, the leader of the opposition, has shared a podium with Prime Minister Carney. Like many of you, Dear Readers, I am uplifted by the way the shooting was handled by our politicians.  But is it jejune of me to take this type of gesture for granted? It is fine to differ politically and expound on an opponent’s policies but we should not be falling out over such tragic incidents, should we? I was impressed with Sunak who, as British Prime Minister having just been voted out of office, expressed the view that his successor, Keir Starmer, was a good man. The current President of the United States, however, is a toilet blockage. You know what it is like, friends. We all dread that dire moment when the effluent is bubbling up to the top, the plunger is not working and your friendly neighbourhood plumber is on a “Round-the-World’ cruise. Dear Reader, if Trump had had the freedom to play street basketball or jump off a bridge as a child, don’t you think he may have a better understanding of the real world of give and take? I failed to be impressed by the story of a friend of mine when on a business trip to Edmonton was shown around a large storage facility which contained supplies for the Ukrainian war effort. Amongst the contributions were a variety of motor vehicles. The young woman turned her nose up at one of the vehicles expressing the view that she would not be caught dead driving one of those.  “But these are to help in the war effort in Ukraine”, expressed my aghast friend.  History doesn’t relate whether or not Generation Zed caught the message and suffered some embarrassment at her faux pas. It sounds like she still didn’t get it.  I suppose, Dear Friends, that this whole blog is simply about not getting it. Taking the serious seriously is important, taking the frivolous seriously is not.

                  I am a pedant, Dear Reader. Some language usage irritates like fingernails scraping down a blackboard. But there is a time and a place for pedantry. When one is dealing with a tragedy (and there are plenty of them about,) it is petty and puerile to worry about comma usage and the placement of colons and such. The sign ‘No Ball Games’  is a tragedy to me. Why?  Because it smacks of nihilism, tells of pessimism, reflects badly on human nature. Local government should be employing youthful interns to be playing hoops or football with youngsters particularly those children who have been disadvantaged from the start of their lives. The sign should read something like:- “For Gawd’s sake, please, please play ball games every spare moment you have.” And if somebody tells you not to, then feel free to throw them off that bloody bridge over which you are forbidden to jump.

             Don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader, I want, like all of you, to keep our children safe. Hmmm, I have just had a flashback to an occasion at school when I was taking my class of 9 year olds for a walk in the woods. On this particular occasion I was accompanied by parent helpers. One child’s mother let out a yell and rushed forward because her son had just leapt onto a moss covered rock. It was damp and there was a danger of slipping. He didn’t slip. She then insisted on holding his hand for the rest of the hike. For some reason I was privy to the knowledge that this woman was pregnant by her British boyfriend, was planning to leave the family home and go back to England to live with her new partner.  The causes of the breakdown in the relationship with her husband were none of my business but all I saw was somebody who was going to leave her son, indeed desert him across an ocean. In my book, Dear Reader, that is a smidge more traumatic for him than falling off a wet rock. Strewth! Give me strength! Or the boy at camp who was a gung ho kind of fellow but somehow wasn’t interested in any of the activities which would normally enthuse him. Tearful one night he told me that just before he left for camp his parents told him they were separating.  Sometimes, of course, that is the best course of action but not if it is told to the child like it is no big deal the night before he heads off to Camp Summit, a place where normally a gung ho lad like this one has the chance to go gung holier than ever. In the words of Salman Rushdie,

“At such times my picture of the world hangs crooked on the wall.”

          I love seeing little children out with their parents in the rain I share the joy when they are allowed to jump in muddy puddles. Even better if mum and dad are jumping in puddles with them. Please, please allow your wee tads to jump in puddles. What am I saying? I know that if you are reading this blog you already allow your child or grandchild to dig in the mud and pull up worms. I once read or was taught or heard at a professional development seminar that no child ever really plays. Free play in particular encompasses a whole slew of valuable learning, involving creativity, imagination, invention, back and forth negotiation with peers, athleticism, assessment of consequences and so on.

“There is something to be said for leaving youth a good deal alone so that it may discover itself.” John Buchan

  Those children who go through their childhood where they are over structured, are rushed from  activity to activity hither and thither probably need more time to sit and stare, to wonder and dream.  I speak as one who probably had his own children in too many activities back in the day. It is healthy for children to be busy but sometimes I feel the balance is too much see, not enough saw if you will forgive the playground analogy. Sometimes, Dear Reader, I feel, in the words of Josephine Tey:-

“The shadow of unreason has reached out and taken the sunlight from them.”

Sometimes I want simply to see our children allowed to be children and that, Dear Reader, means kicking a ball and splashing in puddles.

Thanks for reading.

In early October I had to go to Park Royal Mall to buy travel insurance. I arrived early. Most of the shops in the Mall do not open until 10.00 a.m. but one can still access the building. On walking past a gaming store I was surprised to find a group of about 25 people seated outside  in an orderly line waiting for it to open. I assumed, Dear Friends, that this was because there was a new computer game coming out and they could not wait to buy it. I thought no more about it but on the way back from my appointment I took another look at this orderly queue. This time, as I walked past, I noted something strange. Not one of the people seated there was female! I don’t know what experts would make of this queue.  I could read between the lines but I don’t have at hand any lines between which to read. All I know is that I felt unease about what I saw.

That very night Irene and I stumbled on a current reality TV show where the police in Birmingham, UK, were dealing with the fatal stabbing of a young man.  So the tragedy eked out its conclusion to an ending where the gang members who had perpetrated the incident were arrested.  During this documentary the cameras kept flashing back to the grieving mother. Near the end they interviewed his brother. Finally they showed him and his mother poring over photographs of family events in their history.  I asked Irene what she noted about this hour long programme. Dear Friends, there was never a mention of a father, nor an uncle, nor a Big Brother.  It seemed that not only was there no adult male figure in the family’s lives but it seemed like there never had been. I suppose that I can understand this omission if that is what the grieving family wished but as an outsider looking in I wanted to know if there had been a participatory male in these boys’ upbringing. Rightly or wrongly I thought that such a thing may have been important.  

We all know, Dear Reader, that there are many successful single parents. But I was left wondering what might have been  the outcome in both of these sad stories (and yes I find a load of males lined up to obtain a sedentary, computer game ‘Sad’) if there had been a male role model for these young men. It reminded me of something Irene and I witnessed on Spanish Banks Beach a few years ago in Vancouver.

There is a reason Spanish Banks has the term ‘banks’ and it lies in the fact that wading out into the waters it takes a long time to become deep.  About 7 or 8 teenage boys had been lumbered with the task of looking after two 8 or 9 year old boys. We watched as the teenagers rushed into the water and immediately starting throwing their Frisbee and football. The two wee laddies were tentatively dipping their toes into the shallows.  We both thought that this could not last. Sure enough within minutes the teenagers were back on the beach, grabbing the wee takkers and rushing back into the deeper water and throwing them into the waves amidst shrieks of laughter.  It wasn’t long before the whole group were having an absolute ball.  And we knew as parents ourselves that the two youngsters were having the best time.  Dear Reader, it was lovely to watch, people playing outside on a hot sunny day, teenagers with a bit of responsibility and primary school boys looking up to their bigger mates.

Dear Friends, I know that I don’t have to draw your attention to the contrast here.  There is sedentary youth, impoverished youth and enriched youth.  I do not need to do the old fogey statement, “In my day” and all that nonsense about how much better we were back then , how much we loved to be outside and physical in those days because there is ample evidence of this in the beach story.  We could have been those teenagers or youngsters on that beach. There were no video games to play. I will admit that if I got into a book which I could not put down, I would try to hide away until I had finished it.. My brothers and I would play football for hours on the lawn.  But there were also the woods, the castle on the hill by the golf course. The summers seemed longer, the days were never ending. Portishead outdoor swimming pool was a 5 mile bike ride away.  I remember vividly riding along the low road there and being amazed at the fact that a field was a colour I had never seen before. I  can’t remember the colour now but one moment it was one colour, the next moment it wasn’t as millions of butterflies took flight. But I have wondered from my point here. There is something to be said for leaving youth a good deal alone so that it may discover itself. But leaving it alone in front of a screen for many hours is ‘alone’ too far in my book. John Buchan would have had us ‘try by indirections to find direction out’. Many of us wouldn’t disagree with that but most of us don’t step outside our comfort zone comfortably. So maybe we need to encourage youth to get out there and try new things when the next new thing to them is a computer game which, of course, is the same as the last old thing.

Some years ago I caught sight of a very meaningful Doonesbury cartoon in a newspaper. A man in his forties ran into a woman with whom he had graduated all those years before. Inevitably they started to talk about where life had taken them. She revealed that she had become a neurosurgeon. There was silence until he said the never to be forgotten line,

“Hmm, I think I would like to do that.”

At that point that ceased to become funny because we all know people for whom life has not really progressed since they left school. Sadly more and more of them seem to be male. And having made that statement I am now wondering if it matters at all, Females deserve their turn at the top and if they innovate, work hard and do a job that benefits society then what does it matter what gender they are.  Of course it doesn’t. If I am putting my life in the hands of a doctor, pilot, lawyer, plumber, electrician, welder then if they are the best at their job then I couldn’t care less about their gender. 

But, Dear Friends, it won’t stop 30 minutes of gender bias and gender despair when I see 25 males and no females lining up to grab a sedentary game on its first day. I find it worrisome. HoweverI try to stay not too long on a thought lest it take me prisoner. Eventually I dig for the Davidson optimism, an incongruous smile appears like a spring thaw I do  try to avoid long winters of gloomy frigidity. In other words I have seen many human beings throughout my life and have continued to be impressed with how they act when the chips are down and there is nothing left in Pandora’s Box but hope. There is plenty grit and resilience out there when we need it.  Hopefully some of those gamers can step up to the plate if things go awry.

“I appreciate the courage that you state in being willing to die for your country but would you be willing to do your Maths homework for your country.”

Ronnie Chieng to his MAGA friends.

Thanks for reading.

All the land that stretched for miles outside his ancient pile was his. He looked out on green fields, flourishing forests, a walled garden, some land that was farmed, some that was wild. He controlled it all. His was an ancient title, some said his family went back with the land for 1000 years or more. Legend was that his long dead relative had saved his King’s life in some long forgotten skirmish. The result of a moment of skill and bravery was an entitled chiliad of wealth and privilege and unbroken lineage. He was a man who looked upon the world as his fiefdom. With the confidence of that history came an unearned atavistic wisdom, or so he believed. He was unused to nay sayers. He always knew best. He knew what was best for the tenants who farmed his land. He knew best for the servants who managed his castle. He knew best for his wife and children. And, strangely, he knew best how the country and the world should be run. Because he was who he was, people listened to him with respect and often that respect turned to awe and most of the time that awe resulted in a decision and a consequence that was less than ideal. And every wise nod, every bowed acceptance, every enthusiastic agreement was a gift for his confidence. He was an omnibus of mastery. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, there was wherewithal in his every all. His advisers, therefore, did not advise, his architects did not design, his experts stood aside in the presence of his greater, he would say ‘greatest’, expertise. His mastery was unassailable, his intellect was invincible, his downfall was inevitable. The only solution to a man pontificating from the isolation of an ivory tower is to tear it down. But such was the establishment of the ages that its destruction was likely to be a slow demise. It was feared that it would be a long time before the emperor had no clothes.

                     But there were some, a paltry few, who recognised that the situation was bad. They made important decisions to make things better. They took severe measures. They crossed their fingers!! Some even attended religious services despite their inherent atheism. Successful men in business suits took to walking on the street avoiding the cracks in the pavement because stepping on them was bad luck. Many protested in the streets. Singers wrote protest songs. Celebrities and pundits used humour and sarcasm and irony and logic to influence and cajole. There were one or two, a silent minority, who realised that the situation would get worse before it got worse.  They went to bed but did not sleep. They ate their food but did not taste. They listened but did not hear. They lost weight but did not notice. Their hopeful talk was speckled with ‘almosts’ and ‘nearlys’. They almost stood up and were nearly counted.

              There was a small group who did nothing. They took no side, ventured no opinion, refused to mention him by name. Instead they ignored all that he approved and instigated and burdened upon them. Quietly they sought solutions elsewhere.  They found nooks and crannies that were not a part of the man’s whole. They found markets and allies which were apart from ‘His Lordships’ fiefdom. Eventually the ‘lord and master’ heard of this group, partly because it was becoming so large that it was hard not to. Mostly because he realised that he was not a part of it. His bruised ego bridled at not being the centre of attention. For so long the hub and nub, all spokes of the wheel had him at the centre.

         Lord Beauchamp of Beauchamp, for such was his name, told his wife that he was feeling out of sorts and headed off to bed early.  He slipped between the sheets and was almost immediately asleep.  At 6.00 a.m. the next morning he awoke. He was surprised to feel much, much better. Normally he would have washed and shaved and rung the bell for an early morning cup of tea. His wife lay still asleep. So as not to wake her, he nudged open the curtain and noted what promised to be a beautiful day. He dressed and walked down the stairs to the front door. His manservant knew his habits and was there to greet him with the morning newspapers and his Earl Grey. He waved them aside. 

“Not today, Fenton, I’m going for a walk.”

“A walk, Sir?”   Fenton raised a quizzical eyebrow. He had never known his master to go for a walk. He had always either been on horseback or in his landrover.

Lord Beauchamp stepped back to allow Fenton to open the front doors. He paused a little on the front step, looked about him and moved forward onto the green sward that led straight and wide into the distance. About a mile through the lawn and nearing the folly that a Victorian ancestor had built to enhance the view from the house, he turned left into a wooded copse. The beeches and birches were widely spaced, the forest floor was resplendent with daffodils and snowdrops, the rising sun was springing the birds to life. He strolled, he looked up, he looked around. His face told a story of new experience. It was as if he was seeing each sight and hearing each sound for the first time. He reached a grassy bank, dew lay on its surface. He placed the palm of a hand on the grass, noted the moisture, shrugged and sat down. His arms rested on his knees. His eyes and ears saw and listened.  Eventually he put his hands behind his neck and lay on his back and closed his eyes. He did not know how long he had been asleep but he was awakened by footsteps coming from deeper in the woods. Eventually a man appeared, clad in hard hat and working clothes and carrying a chainsaw. He recognised him but could not put a name to him. He was in his late forties with two or three days bearded growth. He had long dark hair with flecks of white appearing at its edges. His face was craggy and weather-beaten. He walked with an easy lope. There was the athletic strength of manual labour in his movements. Face and torso were chiseled and etched and handsome and fit.

“Behaviour that’s admired is the path to power everywhere.”   Beowulf

“Out early, my lord.”  He waved at him as he strolled past.

“Yes, my man”.  He peered quizzically as the man continued on his way, now with his back to his seated master.

“I say, my man,” He shouted after him, “Have you a moment?”

The man stopped. “I don’t know about that, my lord, gotta busy day ahead.”

“I won’t take too much of your time.”

The man turned and walked up towards the bank, reached Lord Beauchamp, took off his chainsaw and safety helmet and, without a word, sat down next to him.

For probably the first time in his life, Lord Beauchamp was at a loss for words. The man said nothing but reached into his pocket, pulled out his tobacco and papers and began to roll a cigarette. He placed it between his lips, lit it and offered it to his master who surprised himself by accepting it. The forester rolled another one for himself, lit it and dragged on it with satisfaction. Still no word had passed between them but an eased relaxation swept over his lordship. Eventually Lord Beauchamp spoke,

“I’m sorry I don’t know your name.”

“John Kneebone”.

“Do you know who I am?”

He grinned sardonically.

“Course I do. Lived here all me life. How could I not know thee?”

“Do you work for me?”

Kneebone smiled.

“Aye, I’ll show thee. Come wi’me.”

Like a schoolboy following his teacher, Lord Beauchamp stood up and followed as John Kneebone led him into the deeper woods. He stopped in a clearing where there had been obvious woodcutting on days before. On one side were neatly cut logs in a pile on the other was newly cut lumber destined for a mill.

“First job is to trim the branches off these firs.”

He put his ear protectors on, adjusted his helmet, cranked up the chainsaw and went to work. His lordship stood back and watched. After about 20 minutes he signalled to Kneebone to pause.

“May I have a try?” Kneebone looked dubious, turned to one side, screwed up his face.

“OK but I need to teach you the basics first.”  So he set about giving this peer of the realm techniques to be safe with a chainsaw, how to place his feet, how to start it. Beauchamp picked it up tentatively, He had listened well. He approached the trees with the buzz saw rattling. He was soon handling it with growing confidence. A smile started to play across his face but he wasn’t used to the physical side of the work. After 20 minutes or so he was sweating. He stopped the chainsaw when Kneebone proffered him a water bottle.

“You’d better take over Kneebone, I’m bushed”.

“Aye, I’’ll carry on but when you’ve had your rest you can pile those logs onto the trailer over there if you’ve a mind to.”

The chainsaw buzzed and rattled again and the woodcutter went about his work, noting out of the corner of his eye his master beginning to load up the trailer. They worked until the sun was high in the sky, At a point in the late morning, Kneebone shut down his saw and called over.

“Lunchtime.” He went and sat on a log and reached for his backpack. Beauchamp joined him.  He looked tired and was starting to feel the exertion in his middle aged muscles and bones. Kneebone offered him a water bottle from which he greedily drank. He pulled out his sandwiches wrapped in cellophane.

“Cheese and ham.”  He offered one to his partner.

“I couldn’t possibly>”

“You’ve worked hard,” He nudged the cellophane towards him again. Beauchamp took one.

The afternoon went quickly. Time came and Kneebone called a halt. They loaded up and walked back through the woods.

“May I call you John?”

“Depends”

“On what?

“What do I call thee?”

“You can call me Hubert.” Kneebone nodded and thrust forward his hand to shake.

“Hubert it is.”

They walked on in silence. They came to the bank where they had met early in the day.

“Want to meet the Mrs , Hubert?”

“I should like that John.”

20 minutes further, they reached a small cottage with a well groomed flower garden at the front and vegetables behind a fence at the back.  Smoke rose straight up from the chimney.

“Martha, I’ve brought my work mate, Hubert, home for a cuppa tea. Leave yer boots at the door and come away in.”

A fresh-faced, smiling woman, clad in apron and a dusting of flour, came to the door and dusted her hands before extending her right one.

“Scones are just out of the oven, Your Lordship, this is unexpected but welcome. “

It was the gloaming before Lord Beauchamp decided to leave. He looked at the sun slowly slipping away. He was reminded of the legend of the famed lighthouse at Alexandria that it was put there ‘not so much to lighten the darkness but to dazzle the day’. The conversation had ranged back and forth for a good hour or so, it had indeed dazzled him. As he started his walk back to his pile, Lord Beauchamp was in no doubt that he had gotten more out of the day than had John Kneebone and his wife.  He had learned so much. He thought to himself, grinning inwardly, that he was Ebenezer Scrooge without the ghosts. A tear dropped from his right eye. He cursed himself at his weakness and plodded on. By now he was out of the woods and could see his house in the distance. He slowed his walk. He sighed. He came to a gate with a stile. There was nobody about so he sat on the wooden step. He looked about him. The sun was still fighting its losing battle against the darkness. A breeze was rustling through the grass, the heat of the day was rising up from the ground. The bees buzzed, the crickets clacked. The world was peaceful and calm. Suddenly Lord Beauchamp spoke out loud.

“This has been one of the happiest days of my life.”

He couldn’t explain why. He was surprised that he had said such a thing. He decided there and then that he wouldn’t enter his house until he had milked every last drop from this most wondrous of days. The moon was up when he finally made it across the threshold of home. There was a reception committee of his family and servants all looking concerned. His wife spoke,

“Where have you been? We’ve been worried.”

“I’m sorry, Dear, I’ve been with John Kneebone and his wife, Martha.”

“John who?”

It was after Fenton had brought him a bowl of soup and a whisky that he sat in his drawing room and mulled over what had happened to him on what he recognised as a wonderful day.

                                                                                                    ____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Friends, this  elongated nuisance of a tale  has a point but not one that I have gotten across very well. I wouldn’t say that I was ever deliberately out of doors in my boyhood, it just always seemed that way. So, of course, there are so many good memories. The stillness of snow falling, the crunch of it underfoot, the sound of it when a branch unloads it to the ground below, the movement across it on skis or sled. There are the gales coming off the sea; the promenade awash as waves rise up and over;  the smell of the tangle on a sea battered littoral; the leaning in to the wind on an exposed edge; the stinging of hail on my face. There is the sound of burns, creeks, streams, rivers each a different watery personality spilling their melodies through ravines, over rocks, down rapids, characters making their way as best  the land allows. There is the scuff of boots on heather; the welcome cadence of an undulating path. There is the Scots Pine, the Silver Birch, the oaks and lime trees,   summer…. full bodied, winter ….. a skeletal bleak. There was the rowan tree, the old friend of my youth, the mountain ash, berry-clad in the back garden. There is the lonely cry of a loon on a lake; a skein of geese overhead, honking their presence, hinting at a migration. There are the early morning songbirds, the joyous dawn chorus.  There is the bed of daffodils, the March and April of crocus and snowdrop, bluebell and lavender. There is the azure world of blue sky and fair weather cumuli billowing pillows, the ominous cirrus, the dark storm looming, a gloomy foreboding. There is the driving rain, the squelch of mud underfoot. There are the smells of seaweed in rock pools, juniper hedges with a morning dew, salty broom in the sand dunes. There is a purity in all those places which lends goodness to our being.

And, all in all, if we are lucky, Dear Reader, there are meetings with friendly strangers who share part of our walk, who join part of our talk, who listen to part of our character and  share part of our story. There are life stories in the woods, on a mountain, on a beach, beside a river. There are tales told to strangers, never uttered before, never mentioned again. There is the realisation that weakness and vulnerability and humbleness are strengths.  In the words of Keats, all of these moments ‘walk about my imagination like a ghost.’

I don’t know that I hold out much hope for Lord Beauchamp in his epiphany if that indeed is the result of his day with John Kneebone. Maybe he will be a better listener, become an accepter of advice, a realiser that there are people who know better, people who can speak truth to power. Probably he will lapse all too easily back into his routine of dominance and arrogance, the master of all trades. But wouldn’t you like to think, Dear Reader, that his day in the woods with the woodcutter had brought about a sea change? Could it not have been a Scroogean epiphany, a dawning Ebenezer? Could he not have rediscovered his own humanity? Could he not have realised a pride in his own humility? He should at last and at least be able to allow experts to use their expertise. He should note that rattling saws and dusty aprons, logs and scones, wood chips and flour have their own worth in the nature of things; that if you view people without the jaundiced eye of mistrust but with the faith of belief then they shall be honest and tell how it is with eyes wide open and wisdom honestly expressed.

The point, Dear Reader, yes, the point at last is that if the tyrants of the world were willing to have Lord Beauchamp’s day or, indeed, meet with Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghosts then maybe their cruelty might be replaced with kindness, their disdain with respect. The point is that they have to come to terms with the fact that they have let loose the bull and, therefore, should not complain when eventually it gores them. Maybe they would come to see their place in the world as being just one of millions of people, none being exceptional yet all being exceptional, yet each one of us having our ordinary extraordiness. Maybe they will come to realise that a culture of machismo that suffers from an inferiority complex is highly dangerous to us all.

What do you think, Friends, am I wading through a muddy morass expecting clean boots at the other side?

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” Ernest Hemingway.

Thanks for reading.

                                                                                    Now resting proudly on one of the walls of our TV room at home is a picture that used to belong to my mother. It was given her by her Uncle Jim, my great uncle. In 1970 I really got to know Jim Tolmie. I lived with my Grandma in the town of Nairn on the Moray Firth. I was a van boy for an organisation called ‘The Nairnshire Laundry’. After my grandfather died in 1965, my grannie fulfilled her promise to him to look after Jim. He became her lodger. Time, Dear Friends, tinkers with memories and ‘truths’. But the way I was told the story was that Jim had been a stone mason all of his life apart from the 4 year old interlude of the Great War, soon to be called World War I. The Tolmie family grew up in Loch Flemington, a small hamlet near to Inverness. As the main wage earner it fell to Jim to help fund his brother, Peter, in his quest to become a medical doctor. Peter Tolmie headed off to Edinburgh to master the skill which would see him operating on the wounded behind the front lines in that terrible onslaught.  He came back to the UK, found himself in practice in Yorkshire where my mother was born, before retiring back to his roots in the north of Scotland.  He never forgot what his brother had done for him, hence the arrangement which saw 90 year old Jim moved from the small community of Ardersier to Hazelbrae, Viewfield St, Nairn.

                                                                Jim was a kind man, a gentle man, a quiet man but with a twinkle-eyed sense of humour. He and I got along very well. He loved to watch boxing on the TV and somehow managed to draw out the removal of his boots in front of the TV after my grannie had forcefully ushered him off to bed at a ridiculously early hour. Often when he and I were alone he would ask me, ‘Peter, where’s the landlady?’ and when I told him he would endeavour to make himself scarce.  Dorothy, my grannie, wanted him to transfer his pension from Ardersier to Nairn. He refused . Every week he would walk into the town, meet his friend who drove the butcher’s van and go off with him on his rounds which included a stop in Ardersier, some 7 miles away, whereupom he would line up at the post office to pick up his pension. He would then take the slow road back to Nairn as his friend the butcher completed his deliveries. It was a wonderful day out for him.  Being 18 or 19 years old I would occasionally disappear to go to the pub on a Friday night.  Jim would look up from filling his pipe.  “You be careful out there at night, Peter, the gorrygocks will get you. Look out for the horny golochl”. He would shake out his match, puff vigorously on his pipe to make sure it was fully lit and through the clouds of smoke I would see the twinkle which was ever present.  Time came when I was to leave and head back home to Somerset. Jim walked with me the half a mile or so to the bus station carrying one of my bags.  He shook my hand. His eyes spoke. He offered no words of advice but he tilted his head, looked me in the eye and said, “Aye, well, Peter.” I found a window seat, the doors closed and we were off. He was filling his pipe as we moved away but he looked up and nodded his head at me and smiled in that mysterious way of his. I never saw him again. He was in his early 90s then and died at the age of 96 a few years later.

“When a man has experienced the inexpressible, he is under no obligation to try and express it.” Samuel Johnson

  When I arrived home my mother asked me about my journey. I let slip that Jim had helped me carry my luggage to the bus station. She was not happy about that and berated me for allowing it to happen.

“Jim was at Gallipolli, Peter, he was gassed in the war! How could you let him do that?”

I shrugged with youth’s insouciance and thought no more of it.

                                                                   My mother died in 2023. In her house she had a painting of a highland croft, a cottar’s dwelling place. I told my brothers and sister that that was all that I wanted as a keepsake from my inheritance. George, my brother, as is the wont of somebody of his kind thoroughness, went ahead and had the contents of her house evaluated. The painting is worth the paltry sum of 15 pounds sterling but, Dear Reader, of course that is not the point.  Of course we could have paid money to have it shipped from there to here in Western Canada but, I thought, that I would just pick it up on my next trip over. Two months ago, I was staying with my brother, Bill, and his wife, Murdina, in Somerset. How was I to get this painting home without damaging it? Murdina and I spent half a day flitting from store to store trying to find a case big enough but to no avail. Rona, their daughter, it was who came up with the winning formula. She, who was in the north at the time, ordered a bag through Amazon, one of those which one might use for storing extra bedding. Meanwhile I popped into Hobden and Sons Removals locally where the son of my old friend, Nigel Hobden, bubble wrapped my picture.  The bag arrived the day before I was to return to London. I packed the picture, ensuring that there was the padding of much of my clothing around it. I was still worried that the canvas would be damaged in transit.  It went on the plane oversize and it is safe on our wall now.  My Great Uncle Jim gifted this painting to my mum many, many years ago. You can see it as the banner to this blog.

                                                          As I type this I am surrounded by family pictures, achievements of our children, one of my father-in-law’s wartime regiment.  There is also a Burns quote which my young colleague, Grant Harder, carved for me in wood.  There is some indigenous woodwork. There is a Bruce Springsteen poster of when his ‘Born to Run’ album came out.  There is a brown paper grocery  bag which Irene found in an old cist that she was restoring. It had been in the chest for over 65 years and was the property of “John Grant and Sons, General Merchant” in Methlick where I spent the first 8 years of my life.  It is framed and sits above my computer. There is a picture of a leafless tree in winter which has the quote by Carlyle on the bottom:- “A life of ease is not for any man”. I gave it to my father on the day he retired. I claimed it back after his death.

                                                  Dear Friends, my point here is a statement of that which is quite probably bleeding obvious to all of you. Other people shall come to own my memorabilia or throw it out unaware of what it has meant. Some of it will find itself at a Saturday garage sale, a roup, where the seller will be holding out for 25 cents when the buyer only wants to pay a dime. But, of course, as with all of us, the memories attached to such a serendipitous cornucopia, such a miscellany, are absolutely and unequivocally priceless and exclusively ours. Each item can never be matched. My mum’s old picture will always provoke, always nudge, always flash back.

He saw a rock by the loch.

“A perfect rock!”, He said.

“Nice,” She said.

He threw it.

Eons later, that was still the rock’s favourite day!

There were a great many favourite moments with my Great Uncle Jim but, like the rock, they cannot be comprehensively shared. They rest deep in a place that is mine alone.

Thanks for reading.

Temple Meads Station in Bristol is a building that was built at the dawn of the railway age. Like everything else it has had to adapt. As the technology has advanced so has the station. Yet that which could remain has done so with the result that the old and the new are become the now. Getting aboard the train to Penzance on an April day in 2008 was, Dear Friends, a beginning. It was the start of some months away from the routine of work and regularity. It was the start of a walk along the coastal trail towards Land’s End then round the corner and up the coast back towards Bristol and beyond.  Land’s End is land that juts, an iconic peninsula on the edge of the English Channel, the last piece of the English mainland that points west into the Atlantic and looks back east into the stretch of water that the French call ‘La Manche’, the sleeve.  Many have set off from Land’s End have started on trips to walk, cycle, drive from this point to that furthest other in the north of Scotland, John O’Groats.  Our daughter ran it virtually during Covid. Looking at her certificate on the wall behind my computer desk I see it measures 874 miles.  Apparently one eccentric once swam it using the gimmick of a large towable water tank which one of his mates was pulling behind a lorry.  Many charities have teamed up to do the journey and raise money for a laudable cause.

                   I reached Penzance and decided that I would begin my walking tour with a Cornish pasty and chips. It says much for multicultural Britain that one can now munch on a curried pasty. Indeed when I worked in London it was true to say that on a Friday night I could eat a better curry in Southall than I ever ate in India. I ate seated on a park bench on the sea front, keeping my lunch close because I had read so much about predatory, fearless seagulls.  Finding the entrance to the path, I rummaged my way behind back gardens until I found myself on a lonely promontory looking out to sea. I pitched my tent and watched in the evening as the Scillonian ferry arrived in port from its journey back from the Scilly Isles, western habited islands which are more into the Atlantic than anything on Mainland England.

             The days were windy but warm as I trundled along the trail westwards, stumbling into coves where villages nestled where sometimes there was little more than a boat ramp. One place had and has an outdoor theatre on a sea viewed promontory.  It is wrong to say that I was looking forward to seeing Land’s End because I knew what to expect. It is true to say that I was looking forward to turning the corner there and heading north. It was misty and dreich as I approached the final 30 minutes or so.  I stood by the signpost which indicated distances to various parts of the globe and looked down on the turbulent seas angrily attacking the rocky escarpment beneath. I looked at the sorry looking tea shop and wandered up the road past the garish, trashy tourist ‘attractions’. What ‘Doctor Who’ has to do with a place of nature I will never know.  Humankind has come along to something iconic and made it ironic. I could not escape rapidly enough from a place of wonderful natural forces which some greedy tourist board has done its best to destroy. Such were my thoughts as I walked through the gloomy car park as a drizzle started up. As I neared the end of the tarmac and was about to enter the trail again, I was hailed by a middle aged man who was seated outside his car brewing up a pot of tea on his stove.

       “Wanna  cuppa tea, mate.”

I hesitated.

     “Sure. Why not? Thank you.”

    The small talk that accompanied our introductions subsided into a silence which was relaxed and easy.

“Can I offer you a ride somewhere?”

I looked at the weather that was getting worse, saw that there would be little in the way of a view that day and said,

“Yes please.”

He was happy to take me where I wanted to go so I suggested St. Ives and off we went. Narrow roads and hedgerows are the roads of the Cornish countryside. We wound our way slowly towards the village. On the way he told me that he was taking this holiday as a sort of pilgrimage. His wife had recently died and he was reliving places and sights that they had visited on their honeymoon some years previously. He talked and reminisced, sometimes laughed as he shared a memory, other times welled up when a moment or an old scene snuck up on him.  He had loved his wife and loved her still.  I am naïve and frequently don’t understand how to behave. But on this day, during this time I did ‘get it’. I was to listen and speak only when the conversation stalled. I was to laugh when I should, ask questions when I should. I was to be the shoulder for a stranger, the barman leaning on the bar hearing tales of woe and joy, problems and solutions and then moving away to serve the next customer.  We knew that we would never see each other again. He was obviously not the type to seek help from a therapist or a psychiatrist or any such professional, he was too proud for that. But a complete stranger fit the bill. He dropped me in the town. I could have offered him gas money, taken the opportunity to offer to pay him back with a pint and a bite, but I sensed that he would not accept. More than that I think that he would have felt insulted. Favours had been given and taken between us that day, my ear for his ride. I sensed that I had more than payed him back for the cuppa tea. Indeed I think I had accompanied him on a journey that was more his than mine.  Sometimes we have to step back from our garrulous tendencies, our habits of trying to upstage a story with a matching one of our own. Sometimes we need to set aside our egos, our solipsism of self, and just be there and just say nothing. I don’t do that easily but am proud to say that on that day, on that journey I did. Something good did come out of the depressing manmade mess of Land’s End.

“If you don’t grieve for the dead, how can you love the living?” John Le Carre

                             Thanks for reading.

                 I don’t know, Dear Friends, whether this New Year started with a bang or a whimper. I am talking from both a geopolitical point of view and a personal one. I have long been of the view that politics and governance should be boring. I like to create my own excitement, I don’t need somebody else doing it for me. Belgium and Spain, at periods in their recent history, had spells where they managed without a government. In Belgium’s case this lasted for about 18 months. And yet, and yet, both these countries still exist.  I think I like my government to be tedious and nondescript. How much do I like it getting involved in foreign affairs? Well, I like it giving aid to poorer countries, I like it voicing and supporting a reasonable point of view that fits with humane norms. I do take an interest in history and geography. I have fallen off my goal of reading a biography of an American president every year. I will try to get back into it in 2026. There is an excellent argument for reading history through biography, I believe. I think it is fair to say that I am a fan of democracy as a way of life. I like the ability to have ideas and to express them with impunity. I think, Dear Reader, that most of us do. So, with my smattering of knowledge of the American Constitution, the ethical outline of rules for a democracy, I think of it as being one of the finest documents  created on how to rule. The Declaration of Arbroath and the Magna Carta are other paragons for a fairer world.

          So, Friends, 2026 started with the most powerful nation in the world barrelling off to Venezuela and carting their president and his Mrs away from home and hearth and into an American holding cell. So, by all accounts, Maduro was a brutal dictator and a drug dealer. If I am honest  I would be hooting and hollering with joy if the Americans had done this to Putin. But they didn’t because they couldn’t and they did because they could.  Sometimes American interference is welcome. Ask any European and they will tell you that the two world wars could not have been won without them. Also ask them about the importance of the Marshall Plan in saving Europe, particularly France, from communism. Ask my recently deceased relative about the sigh of relief he and his mates breathed when the atomic bomb ended the war in Japan. This hideous event stopped them having to be deployed to the Far East.  (The ethics of dropping the thing are unconscionable, I know, but I did like my 99 year old uncle, Jim Davidson, whose funeral is tomorrow. RIP Jim Davidson). But then look at the imposition of a Shah on Iran, the Vietnam War, the removal of Allende in Chile, the justification for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the return of the Taleban to Afghanistan and the implications of that on women’s equality. In their own country the witch-hunts of McCarthy, the failure to follow up effectively after the Civil War so that emancipation was slow to come and Jim Crow was there for years afterwards. To me, looking from afar (I have not been down to the US for over 25 years), the USA is a country with wonderful laws, an excellent balance between state and federal jurisdiction,  a tertiary education system which is responsible for innovation and innovators. It is brimful of kind, generous, welcoming people.  It is not perfect but it has checks and balances which many  countries do not have and, I suggest, envy. It is still a country where many people in the wider world would like to live.

         But as an immigrant to Canada, I do not understand why “Liberal” and “Communist” are pejorative terms in the country beneath us.  Communism, it is true, has not a good track record around the world but when it morphs into Scandinavian socialism it really is pretty impressive. Many experts now believe that Vietnam was more about a country wanting independence from imperialist masters than the domino theory of communism setting the casus belli of American intervention.  I do, I suppose, understand the antipathy towards taxes but, personally, I like living in a country that has them. What I object to often is how they are being spent.  By and large, I believe that taxes are a power for good. I also believe that a politician is elected to serve ALL of her country’s citizens not just those who voted for her.  Of course, criminals have to be brought to justice but the rest of us need to be given a chance to pursue and voice an idea even if that idea is likely to be rejected. Picking on people because of ethnicity, gender bias or sexual persuasion is truly asinine. It really means that one is not allowing certain groups of people to reach their full potential when their full potential is something which a country and the world needs.  I hope that the cure for cancer is discovered by a gay, African American woman who is partially indigenous and if they can add being transgendered to the mix so much the better.  I hope that that person is honoured to the highest level. I hope that she is modest, generous of her time and gives of her innovation without avarice.  I hope that they (singular) give as much attention to the homeless person in the street as she gives to her boss in the office. I hope they raise her children to be kind, aware and to place ‘pro bono publico’ as the most important of human qualities.

      Dear Friends, I have to be careful because I am rambling. Like you I could diatribe for hours about current leadership in our world.  It seems to be at the moment that leadership cares little for the grass roots, the plebeian masses, the great unwashed. It is inconsequential. It needs to understand that if it is going to create rough seas it also needs to understand how to calm them.  It doesn’t. It understands how to destroy but not how to create. It is good at riding roughshod over people but truly awful at raising them up. It has a master’s degree in cronyism, nepotism, cowardice, egotism, bullying and dumbness. There is a small part of me, a molecule, which feels sorry for a short inadequate Russian who thinks it is good to bring his dog to a meeting with the German Chancellor when he knows that she suffers from a canine phobia. Very childish. There is a scintilla of Davidson, a mere morsel, which feels sorry for a man who received only conditional love as a child and, as a result is vengeful and so inadequate that he always has to toot his own horn.  There is a nano second of sadness for a man who sees his state as only an homeland for Jews to the detriment of the Palestine people who have as much right to be there.  There is a passing thought for a man who thinks his country has the right to conscript the island of Taiwan into being part of his mainland, when actually cooperation on a peaceful level would benefit them both.

    So, Dear Reader, my hope for 2026 is that a pandemic of reasonableness, cooperation, kindness and thoughtful common sense breaks out. It is difficult to be a fence sitter at this time, trying to be impartial between the firefighter and the fire, really isn’t an option? I think, Friends, that more than ever people have to be engaged. We have to flood the world with kindness and acts of generosity . My hope is that, in the process, we speak truth to power and give power back to truth.

Burns Night approaches with the annual celebration of the poet’s birthday on the 25^th January. He said it best:-

                                                                             “Then let us pray that come it may

                                                                            As come it will for a’that,

                                                                             That sense and worth o’er a’ the earth

                                                                            Shall bear the gree an’ a’that*

                                                                               For a’that and a’that,

                                                                                 It’s comin’ yet for a’that

                                                                         That man tae man the warld o’er

                                                                          Shall brithers be for a’that.”

                       Thanks for reading.

*’Will win the prize’

                          Dear Friends, it was a good plan. I brooded on it for a few minutes. I decided it fitted into my lazy modus operandi. And, what is more, my poor work ethic for once would have purpose. Admittedly it was late in the day. Maybe I should have begun to initiate it a month before when I was strolling pointlessly around the UK. But here I was and there on my email was the request. Would I be Santa Claus again this year at Norgate School? I would be honoured and delighted. So, rather than don the white beard, I would set aside shaving and grow my own. I already had the white hair, I had the Claus paunch, the aging ‘Ho, Ho, Ho” and now I would become even more of a real deal. The Santa voice and the questions of the wee takkers would come on the day. But if any little devil decided to pull on Santa’s beard because he suspected it was false then he would be in for a rude awakening. And then, ho hum,  Dear Reader, sadly, the Davidson thinking went a bridge too far.

               Vanity and self-absorption raised their ugly heads. I could become professorial in demeanour. I could leave the beard to a certain length so that I could double as an Oxford don, ‘Professor Davidson’ had a lovely pretentious ring to it.  I would trim it if it became logger like. That would not do. I do not own a plaid shirt and braces. I would not attempt to become Seumas Davidson, the Norwegian arborist. The sound of a chain saw has me searching for a green party membership form.  Yes, Dear Reader, I would become the academic with corduroy jacket and elbow patches. Why, I would even smoke a pipe. I would pontificate with world weary wisdom with every wrinkle in my well worn face rueful in its grinning know-it-all condescension. In short a new growth of white beard would raise me to the status of an insufferable bore. I would drive people away from me. Friends would  be seen at a distance, swerving suddenly in a different direction.  And I would not care because I would be confident in my arrogance, arrogant in my confidence. I would become content in my hermit like existence. I would live in a pie in the sky.

      The beard grew but not quickly enough. By Santa Claus Day it was a thin, pale, pathetic paucity of what was needed. But after I had been photographed with many children and their parents and had discarded Santa for another year I could have shaved the thing off. But my dream of professorial pretence continued morphing into the possibility of becoming an artist of Bohemian lifestyle inhabiting a garret in a three storey Amsterdam house. It would be a place of pallets and easels, dirty dishes and empty whisky bottles. The floorboards would creak with memories of decadent debauchery. I would be in there for days delivering wide brush strokes on blank canvases; moulding stunning busts of famed celebrities; working towards an ever decreasing deadline on a royal commission. But, Friends, I would stop short at cutting off an ear!

   Absolute rubbish, Dear Reader.  The story of my life has never been one of stunning brilliance. Every attempt at dressing a part has always been doomed to an almost instant return to what I really am. I am a scruffy mess. So now dressed in my state of dishevelled dishabille with my unkempt beard I have added to my look a new level of inverse snobbery. What once was scruffy is now scruffier. Now when I put forth opinions, stun people with my knowledge, branch out into eclectic fields, suggest that I am a true fraterniser with renaissance thinking. Now, friends, I am become the old bore at the end of the bar who is tolerated but ignored. People are kind. They pass the time of day. They nod wisely. They smile agreement. But they are gone very quickly, anticipating that they may see me later crouching in a shop doorway. One should always accept who one is, don’t you know. There is no point in stepping up to a plate that isn’t yours. Of course, friends ,there is every point in taking a risk, otherwise one never does anything, trying something new but there comes a moment when one needs to return to what one is and where one has come from. So cometh the new year, departeth the old one, there will be a Davidson who sits down with himself, views whom he has been, where he has been and will try to be a better version of himself but realising at the same time that there is much he cannot change.

        So this new year, this 2026 I am on a collusion course. I am not going to make resolutions. I am determined to collude and not collide. I am minded to recognise finally who I am and understand what I should never and could never be. If you called me a wit you would be halfway correct. I am big and friendly and I try to be kind. I have some very weird ideas on how the planet and society should conduct itself.  I see the world through spectrums of spontaneity and round-the-next corner curiosity . I should render unto Pete that which is Pete’s and leave the rest to others. My New Year’s resolution is to let Pete be Pete until wiser heads prevail and the march of his folly is headed off at the pass. ‘Wiser heads’ will likely be wife and offspring and most other people who stumble across my path.  But here, Dear Friends, in my joyful aloneness, my solitary dreamscape,  I have been looking about to find quotations which might help me fit into 2026 and help me to understand better what sort of people rule our world. These are ambiguous thoughts at the moment but, I think, I am reassured enough by the wisdom I have found in what I have read to suggest that the wise and the thoughtful over hundreds of years have seen it all before. They have put wholesome thoughts into a clarity which I don’t have. Here, Friends, be quotations which I am going to take into the beginning of 2026 and nudge me into believing that all is not lost.

“Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”  Marcus Aurelius.

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” Marcus Aurelius

It is always relatively easy, Friends, to find a quotation to suit one’s needs. Old Marcus Aurelius always seems to come up with the goods.

So here at the beginning of 2026 it has not escaped my notice that we are entering the second quarter of the century. We are not only entering a new year but also a new quarter. In the first part of the century we seem to have forgotten a great deal that humanity learned in a period spanning several previous millennia!

“Speaking what is true, is not speaking what is desirable.” Albert Camus

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men or women he has around him,” Machiavelli

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” Ernest Hemingway

“The power of books—-J.K. Rowling became a billionaire writing books—Jeff Bezos became a billionaire selling books—-Warren Buffet became a billionaire reading books. “

“In a world where anyone’s meaning becomes as valid as everyone else’s, meaning therefore becomes meaningless.” Melanie Phillips

“Respect for religion has become a code for fear of religion. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire and our fearless disrespect.” Salman Rushdie

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. “ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.” Charles W. Eliot

“It is interesting to cut yourself to pieces once in a while and wait to see if the fragments will sprout.” T.S. Eliot

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” JRR Tolkien.

“Arrogance is asking a god who wouldn’t stop the holocaust to find your car keys.” Ricky Gervais

“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ Voltaire.

“Never in recorded history has a 4 year old found his father’s loaded book and accidentally killed his younger sister. Yet we ban books.”

OK, Friends, enough already. I am the adult who taught the child to begin to spell ‘banana’ but never how to end it! There is so much that is good and quotable out there but if I carry it on you will still be reading into 2027! 

Thanks for reading.

 An Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of you.           (Think I’ll have a shave).

                                              Several moons ago, Dear Reader, I was out toddling the neighbourhood on my ‘jack jones’ aka ‘alone’ when I stumbled across two of my walking companions, one of whom accused me of ‘wandering aimlessly’.  As we went off in our various directions I pondered upon that accusation and decided that it is true. I do wander aimlessly. Indeed it would be a worthy criticism if I failed to ‘wonder aimlessly’ in the process. But I combine both so I regard the accusation as a compliment rather than a slur.  On Sunday, 30^th November I arrived home after 35 days strolling around the UK. It was not entirely aimless because I did want to visit our daughter, Alison, visit my two brothers and my sister, introduce myself to two bairns who have arrived recently and watch four rugby games involving Scotland at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.  I also managed to touch base and enjoy the hospitality of old friends and, in the process, meet new acquaintances.

                                       Dear friends, amongst the wide diaspora of British acquaintances I have, there are some who will never return to ‘Blighty’ as the UK is endearingly known. “It’s not the same, Pete”.  “Where is the same and why would we want it to be so?’ I am tempted to reply. So now I think of myself as being weird for enjoying every moment of my 5 week stay. But with vast amounts of hither-and-thither  things were going to go awry and, inevitably, they did. Let me give you an example.

                                      Travelling down from one of my weekend sojourns in Edinburgh to see Alison and Brother George in London, it was recommended that I NOT travel back up the following weekend on the east coast line because of weekend repairs. Instead I was to travel Euston to Glasgow Central changing at Carlisle for a train to Edinburgh.  So I have booked a window seat and am aboard  a train that  is over half full. The window seat is not a window seat but is where a window would have been if the design had permitted one. It is a blank piece of beige plastic. The train leaves on time. People read, people check their phones, people watch sport on their i=pads, some engage with the strangers sat next to them. An apologetic voice comes over the comms. “We apologise but due to a broken rail, this train will terminate at Preston.” The apologies are profuse, sound sincere and feel frustrated.  Personally I have never been to Preston. I have heard of Preston North End FC but have no idea why.  The reaction of the people on the train is a deep philosophical sigh.  The young couple next to me, smile with a strange open faced joy as if this is the best thing that could happen to them. The train is approaching Preston and now that the seat next to me is vacant I lug my case from the luggage rack and place it beside me, ready to disembark. The train pulls in but just prior to its arrival an happy voice announces that the rail is fixed and we can now continue to Glasgow so now a cheer goes up and people clap. I would have done both but now I am desperate to return my baggage to the luggage rack so, like President Gerald Ford whose legend included the fact that he couldn’t chew gum and think at the same time, I am now confronted with new passengers who are blocking my passage. All is not lost. A friendly Glaswegian takes my case, places it and plunks himself down next to me. Train moves. We have a nice chat (his son plays on the wing for Leyton Orient FC in London). He expects to stay on the train now all the way home to Glasgow. I expect to detrain as the original plan at Carlisle.  All is good for me but sadly not for my new found acquaintance. The driver gets on the intercom and explains that he is happy to continue to Glasgow but due to Health and Safety and the fact that he has already exceeded his hours of work he is not being permitted so to do. We feel for him, we sense the slump in his shoulders, we imagine a quivering of his bottom lip but now all Glasgow- bounds are off the train at Carlisle with we Edinburgh travellers. So the Carlisle platform is full of disgruntlement and crowds. But all is not lost because a Glasgow train arrives, admittedly crowded, admittedly about to receive another mass which it will struggle to accommodate ,But on they get.  They are a horde, a standing army of proximate body odour, a sweaty mass of humanity with armpits not their own, hale halitosis invading privacy, anything closer, Dear Friends,  would involve sex or murder. They once were a people like me, they once had room, they could breathe an air which was exclusively theirs. Alas no more, my heart goes out to them. Meanwhile on the platform I am observing the congregation of Edinburgh bound folk of which I am one. I am now deciding that I will not be getting aboard the next Edinburgh train and take myself off to the café where I grab the last white bread toastie on offer, slices that may well have curled at the ends some hours before and a flat white coffee which would too have curled at the ends if liquid could do so. Similar on the Edinburgh train. Mass joins mass. Civilized nuance gives way to cheek by jowl. I am left with stragglers on the platform as it lurches out. And then 30 minutes later I am seated on an half empty Edinburgh train, reading my book and texting my friend that I am three hours late.  So why are you being burdened with this story? I guess it is because that I am surprised at what I have become in old age. The truth is that I enjoyed every minute of this disruptive debacle. I know that I spent most of the time smiling and some of the time laughing as people shared their experiences with me.  It would be wrong to say that this was the highlight of my trip, there was much, much more that was better than that.  But I guess that such events make me feel more than ever that I am at home even though I have lived in Canada since 1991. And I always say on the rare occasions that I am asked that we never left the UK because we were unhappy rather it was for a new experience, a new adventure and so forth.  So to this day, it is a joy for me to return. There is a lump in my throat when the lone piper begins the anthem at Murrayfield and 80,000 voices rise in support. There is a tranquillity of calm as I sit beside a dirt path on an azure day by a loch of my youth with a cold wind blowing, miniature white caps doing their best to impress and in the distance, the island with the Wolf of Badenoch’s ruined castle (the one from which he set off to burn down Elgin Cathedral all those centuries ago). Lochindorb is my youth. Nor can I sneeze at the pathetic wee trek I make uphill through mixed woodland in the Trossachs. The day was glorious, the breeze was vigorous. I brought along my arthritic right knee for the ride. It too wanted to continue upwards but hinted occasionally that I had to bring it down hill again and that it liked going down a lot less than going up. Age curtails but doesn’t remove all pleasure. The heather clad peaks held a dusting of snow, an urge to feel it crunch underfoot but the realisation that it would not be possible. A light hearted limerick of an outing would become an epic of Odyssey proportions, a pathetic attempt not to grow old gracefully. It would have been foolhardy of me to have continued so I had to be content and content I was.

                   Friends, there is always a temptation for me to epiphanize (there is no such word I know) when I go ‘home’. Strange that I should call it that after so many years away. But, Dear Friends, even if I had wanted to I cannot shrug off what the land and people gave to me all those years ago. The humour, the newspapers, the TV, the book shops, the countryside, the narrow roads, the accents, the eccentricities, the many different cultures, following the route of Robbie Burns, sniffing around the building where James Barrie created ‘Peter Pan’, climbing the Wallace Monument and seeing Bannockburn and Stirling Bridge below, understanding the feeling that every situation is desperate but not serious, the occasions, the events (The Constable/Turner Exhibition at the Tate, The ‘Secret Maps’ display at the British Library and, of course, rugby at Murrayfield), not to mention the wind. How I love a wind on my face, a breeze in the trees, the sound of the sea in a storm, the lap of a loch in a gale. A cold breath  on my face, a dyke or a tree or a hill to shelter behind, a temporary escape from an element which can still be heard, an attention seeking friend which dogs every step until one has had enough and shuts it away behind a car door or an hotel entrance. The wind always greets me like I’ve been away too long.

                 And yes, my friends, I know that not all in the garden is rosy; that homelessness and helplessness walks the streets; that not far away brutal wars are being fought; that dictators are laughing at democratic dithering and threaten us all.  But, Dear Reader, I cannot help but clutch at the straw of joyfulness and fun not because I am naïve (Although I have my share of gullibility), nor because I convince myself that I should. It is simply who I am. I am so grateful to be able to still do those 35 days at the age of 73 years when so many of my friends and acquaintances no longer can because of sickness and ill health or because they are no longer here. For that short time in the old country it was wonderful to feel a part again. So thanks to our daughter, brothers and sister, sisters-in-law, Sadie and Iris and their proud parents ,Holly and Chris, Matthew and Nicola. Words to for Audrey in Edinburgh, Malcolm and Elaine, Vikki and Helen, Peggy and Fiona and every stranger who bought me a Guinness, every youngster who gave up their seat or lugged my case upstairs at tube stations, the one employee who told me to ‘run’ because she was not going to charge me for the breakfast that she was ashamed of, the Romanian receptionist who found me a phone repair shop at Kings Cross when I needed it  and every varied vignette of friendly  customer service who told me that the broken sat nav was not my fault, or that the painting that I had inherited was safe in the hands of Air Canada. (It is now on our wall,)

                                                   ’All that is gold does not glitter,

                                                  Not all those who wander are lost,

                                                   The old that is strong does not wither,

                                                  Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”      J.R.R.Tolkien   

             Seasons greetings to you all.

           “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

The wind blew off the North Sea. The family had decided to camp in the shelter of the dunes. The husband and wife team put up their two tents and realised that it was almost impossible to find real shelter, the wind was howling and the sand was angry. But eventually the tents were pitched and they retreated to the car where their two children were asleep in the back seats.  They organised the sleeping bags and the cooker and set the interior of the tents ready for the night’s sleep. Mother and daughter were to be in one tent and father and three year old son were to be in the other.

It was with difficulty that the meal was cooked.  Heating the water was fine, keeping the sand out of it was a challenge. They managed to complete all of it including the washing up just before the rains came.  With the showers came a colder wind so it was for the best that the children were kitted and ready for bed and finally in the shelter of their tents.  The father reached for his son’s favourite bedtime read, ‘Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy’. They were both comfortable and warm in their sleeping bags. The rain pattered on the tents, the wind caused the canvas to bend and shift but they remained dry. Time for the lad‘s favourite dog story.

“Out of the house and off for a walk went Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.”

“Daddy, where’s my sheetie?”

An old bit of sheet, cut from a tattered sheet and given to the wee boy about a year previously had become his bedtime comforter. He never slept without it.

“It’s around here somewhere.”

“And Hercules Morse as big as a horse”

Back to the story with emphasis. Laddie searching for words.

“Daddy, my sheetie.”

Rummage around the tent briefly with no luck.

“Bitzer Maloney all skinny and bony”.

“Sheetie, Daddy”.

“Doesn’t seem to be here. Never mind, listen to the story.”

“Bottomley Potts all covered in spots.”

“Daddy?”

“I think it’s in the car, son. Don’t worry about it tonight. I’ll read the story again.”

And the wind blew and the storm raged and the little boy was searching for words, until finally…

“Get it Daddy.”

Inner groan, battle out of the sleeping bag, manoeuvre into waterproofs, rest on elbows, undo inner zip, muster on walking boots, unzip outer, step into the weather, realise car keys are back in the tent, unzip again. Voice from the dark.

“Sheetie, Daddy.”

Unlock the car, rummage in the trunk, find it on the floor of the back seat, reverse the process, give the boy his sheetie, get comfortable again. Deep sigh, prepare to sleep.

“Daddy”

“Yes, son.”

“I need a poo.”

Before I had children, my picture  of parenting hung level on the wall, it didn’t take long for the picture to become crooked.

                         ____________________________________________________

I had a friend with whom I played rugby. He had served in the British Army. There is a period in recent Irish History called “The Troubles”. Protestants were pitted against Catholics in the streets of Belfast. British troops were sent in to keep the peace between two factions which, at the time, didn’t really want the peace kept. So there were soldiers on the streets of Belfast and they were vulnerable. My friend was one of them. Of course, soldiers are taught to obey orders, but sometimes, Dear Reader, sometimes discretion says, “No”. On one street in the early 1970s, my friend’s unit was on patrol when they came under fire from a rooftop. They were sheltering behind parked cars and garden walls. The sergeant came up with an idea. My friend was ordered to run out into the open so that the sniper would take a shot and be exposed.  Understandably there were a few thought processes which occurred to him at the time. Making himself a target for an IRA marksman was not why he had joined up. Eventually he responded to the sergeant’s request.

“Sarge, there are three hopes in this world, Bob Hope, some hope and no hope. I’m not running across this street.”

No charges were ever brought as part of this breech of discipline, it was never mentioned again. As ever I return 2000 years to seek advice on such a matter.

“Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.” Seneca

Take note, Trump and cronies.

                      _________________________________________________________

“Take the laser for a sail, Pete, it will be fun.”

Thus spake Wattie Davidson, so I trekked down the road to the beach at Rock in North Cornwall where my father’s little sailing boat was moored.  A laser is a smidge larger than a sailboard, It has a tiller and a sail and one can sit in it.  I was never a very experienced sailor having been away from home when my dad gave full vent to his hobby which had always been a passion of his. But I could rig the boat, I knew a little bit about how to use the wind. So I was confident when I launched into the River Camel. Everything began well, the boat responded well to my actions. Eventually however it was slow to respond. It went from slow to sluggish to the extent that I no longer had control of it. The tide and wind were pushing me up the river. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the craft to return to the Rock side where my parents had their holiday cottage. I was floating past Padstow, heading towards Wadebridge and inevitably I was going to be beached on the far bank. Sure enough I drifted onto the shore. Nothing left but to derig the beast, make sure it was camouflaged and somehow find my way through the undergrowth for a path or road to walk the few miles to the town of Wadebridge.  Luckily I found the disused railway line and was able to walk along it with some ease. Nevertheless it was dark when I eventually arrived at the holiday cottage in the community of Tredrizzick.  It turns out that a laser has a hollow hull. To prevent water from filling it up one has to screw in the plugs otherwise the boat becomes a bloated blob of lard subject to the whims of the sea. I did not know this.  These plugs were ‘the unbroken heart of a well-rounded truth’ as Parmenides would have it.

 Dear Reader, I relate these three wee vignettes because they are ‘failures’, one of which I heard related and two of which are mine. I forgot my son’s sheetie in the car, missed checking for plugs on the boat’s hull. I had nobody to blame but myself. At the time I met these minor events with a muttered expletive and “How could I be so stupid?” But all of these incidents and there have been many more in my long life are useful lessons in humility which were good for me. And, Dear Reader, I did enjoy my friend’s company for many years, a part of my life and his which might not have been! To finish:-

“There is strife in a churning world but existence will always carry with it the seeds of its own redemption.”

‘How to Be’ by Adam Nicolson

Thanks for reading.

Anybody who trolls technology these days, does not totally understand what is true and what is not. I am a “Facebook” user, I watch TV. I try to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of believing nonsense. Sometimes I fail and spout rubbish to friends, stuff which I believe but which may have no basis in fact. I am a travelling gullible, Dear Friends.

When I was a young boy, something under the age of 8 years, I remember my father taking me to a house in rural Aberdeenshire. He was a General Practitioner based in the village of Methlick.  I was confused to find myself sitting on the edge of a complete stranger’s bed where this other young boy was obviously sick. I can’t remember what was wrong with him but it was likely German Measles, mumps or chicken pox. Whatever it was we left there and some days later I was laid up in bed with what he had.  My Dad wanted me to get the disease while I was young so that I would have a lifetime immunity. It worked. But advocating for that in this day and age might involve social services and, at the very least, would be frowned upon by mainstream society. In any case it would not have been necessary because there is a vaccination for most of these aforementioned. From a young age I, like everybody else I knew, was vaccinated against smallpox and polio. The vaccines worked. Not simply for me but for millions of others. The days of the iron lung and leg braces for polio victims are behind us.

My maternal grandfather lost two wives, one in late pregnancy and the other through pneumonia, three days after my mother was born.  My other grandfather went up to fix the leaky roof in a storm at the mill he owned , got soaked through, contracted pneumonia and died. He had four children aged 8, 6, 4 and two years. This was in 1929. My gran never remarried, brought those 4 children up on her own and died in 1989 having been a widow for 60 years. Had any of these illnesses happened today antibiotics would have stepped in and they would likely have cheated death.

Whenever I am back in the UK, I take time away from the crowd to visit graveyards. They reveal so much about what life was like in the past. They show names that were common to the area, sentiments commensurate with the period of their death and of course, lifespan dates. But what strikes me most is the prevalence of infant mortality. 4 children dead before the age of five. A litany of lives cut short, mostly in the Victorian era.  A lifetime of grief for the parents,  years of wondering what might have been had their children had full lives.  We know that infant mortality rates are nowhere near as bad as they were 100 years ago and more. Here are some extracts from Michel de Montaigne’s diary as summarised by Sarah Bakewell in her excellent book about his life, titled ‘How to Live”:-

28 June 1570 Thoinette ‘This is the first child of my marriage and died two months later’.

9^th September, 1571 Leonor was born.

5^th July, 1573 Unnamed daughter. ‘She lived only seven weeks’

27^th December, 1574 Unnamed daughter. “Died about three months later, and was hastily baptised under pressure of necessity.”

16^th May, 1577 Unnamed daughter; died after a month.

21 February, 1583: “We had another daughter who was named Marie, baptised by the sieur de Jaurillac , her uncle. She died a few days later.’

Bakewell then writes.

“Montaigne wrote that he had lost most of his children ‘without grief, or at least without repining’, because they were so young. People generally did try not to get too attached to children while in their early infancy, because the likelihood of their dying was great.”

Leonor was Montaigne’s only child to survive to adulthood.

So here, Dear Reader, Davidson could go down the rabbit hole of dangerous industries in the Industrial Revolution, how miners underground were continually at risk and had their lives abbreviated by a disease they called ‘black lung’. But the risks to them were not as challenging as that of their wives who were three times as likely to die in childbirth as they were in a mine accident.

So, Dear Friends, I guess this is not the cheeriest blog from Davidson and nor is it that well researched.  I could read more and rummage around and find statistics to support my arguments.  But then an anti-vaccer could also find numbers to support his argument.  Facts matter greatly when lives are at stake.  So in the United States there is an health department run by somebody it seems to me who has little knowledge of the facts; somebody who is happy to abandon the views of experts and risk child lives by denying the efficacy of vaccinations and women’s lives by denying them an abortion.  Mr. Kennedy is rivaling the Catholic Church in his foolhardiness. This would be the Church which would not allow the use of condoms for their African faithful thus increasing the risk of AIDS and premature death.

I will conclude with a story which I wish was true but is more likely a myth but it could have been possible.

Over 150 years ago a man was out walking on a Scottish moor. He ventured where he should not and found himself floundering in a morass of quicksand.  Exhaustion was setting in and drowning seemed inevitable when his cries for help reached the ears of a passing ghillie.  Through innovation and determination and not a little courage, the ghillie was able to rescue the rich landowner because that was what he was.  So grateful for his life was the wealthy man that he offered rewards and compensation to the man all of which he turned down, embarrassed that his human act should be seen in a mercenary light. Eventually he could hold out no longer.

“OK, my lord, will you educate my son?”

Years later Winston Churchill, before he became the famed wartime leader, contracted the death sentence that was pneumonia.  The administration of penicillin saved his life and the rest is history.  Except that if Lord Randolph Churchill had not nearly drowned in that bog and not been rescued by a ghillie called Fleming, then his boy, Alexander Fleming, may not have invented the antibiotic in time to save Randolph’s son, Winston’ life.

Of course this may be an urban legend but it is not beyond possibility I think you’ll agree, Dear Reader. Had penicillin been around earlier then I might have had a maternal grandmother and a paternal grandfather whom I would have known. Grace Tolmie and Jim Davidson might have bounced me on their knees.

So you know where I have gone with this and know where I am going. Kennedy is an antivaxxer. Most of the people I know had COVID vaccinations. Some of us caught the disease, all of us survived. I don’t know what the long term repercussions of putting something foreign in my body will be. I may become autistic, I may develop heart disease, something may creep up and get me and shorten my life as a result of these vaccinations. Time will tell.  What I have to tell you Mr. Kennedy is that I don’t care. I am here now and I might not have been.  It is fine for parents not to have their child vaccinated but if they don’t then don’t send the child to school, to hockey practice, any other child’s birthday party, anything that involves a gathering. Such acts are inconsiderate and irresponsible.

Just to finish this rather angry rant. My wife’s family have a long history of kidney disease. In the past she lost uncles and aunts way before their time.  Due to medical advances, our son has a kidney transplant, Irene’s disease is closely monitored and managed. Our daughter has MS. She too is closely monitored and managed and has been the beneficiary of medical innovation and research.

In short, Dear Friends, I have no time for people who cut funding for scientists and researchers who have proven their worth over the years in extending and saving lives. The annual Terry Fox Run has just been completed here in Canada. A cure for cancer has not yet been found but hearsay informs that the type of cancer Fox had 45 years ago would have been cured today. Apparently in the present day he would not only have survived but would not even have lost a leg.  That may be hearsay but personally I would rather hearsay than the heresy that is currently putting lives unnecessarily at risk. There are something like 5000 measles victims currently in North America and certainly most of them will recover but not without a sigh of relief from parents and medical staff. Get out of the way RFK and allow research scientists to innovate and experiment and to continue to increase our quantity and quality of life.

I shall try to be more positive in a fortnight.

Thanks for reading.