My brother, George, who has an excellent perspective which is almost matched by his extremely funny sense of humour, found the following quotation which I will ask him to attribute before I publish this blog:-

“The situation is outwith my wherewithal”.*

Ha, Dear Reader, we have all been in this situation, thankfully most of us recognise it.  Not realising it often ends in a Darwinian conclusion. The example of the gentleman who decided to weld the hole in his car’s petrol tank is one that springs to mind. Neither the car nor he remain on the planet.  He should have walked away with his wherewithal intact.

There are some, Dear Reader, who would suggest that if we never act ‘outwith our wherewithals’ then we never venture outside our comfort zones. And if we are to develop we do need to take steps away from the safe and the secure.

“A ship is always safe in the harbour but that is not what it is for.”

 Innovation, invention, experimentation does not come from prolonged contemplation of our navels.  We need to pause in our thumb twiddling and take a plunge.  For example, in the last couple of sentences I have drowned you with mixed clichés and skelped you with the bleeding obvious. There is probably nothing in the last 200 words which is new to you. Indeed I have remained, very much, inwith my wherewithal! I shall, Dear Friends, now endeavour to change all that, wherewithal permitting.

(After having written these first few paragraphs, Dear Friends, I, as usual, have no idea where I am going with these scribblings of mine.  Sometimes I feel I have entered Diatribe Alley and found it a cul-de-sac, but somehow, just somehow, this weekend something came together from several unusual unconnected occurrences.  And thus I had to look up Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity which he described as ‘meaningful coincidences’ because the Davidson dam broke as I was driving home from early morning coffee with a long time friend this Sunday morning.) Here goes:-

I have a friend, Keef, whom I have known since 1991. I have not seen him in years but I do hear of his exploits on Facebook. Sadly, he left me a message this past week which I missed. I could have seen him but didn’t and he is gone again.  Our son organised a jet boat this weekend to drop off friends on the other side of the Squamish River where they were going to hike up to Lake Lovelywater.  I have done this hike with my good friend , Keef, and his dog, Jed, and other dogs.’Twas very nearly a canine catastrophe.  Nowadays  such a journey would be ‘outwith my wherewithal’. Aha! I hear you cry, here cometh the link. Actually, no it doesn’t. I do, however, look back on my interminable blog collection and often equate them to President LBJ s statement about speeches about economics. They  are a bit like pissing down  your legs,you think they’re hot but nobody else does! But that is the problem with wherewithals, there are limits. That is the point.

Keef and I and assorted others climbed Mount Baker and Mount Rainier, indeed we climbed many other peaks as well but we never really got to the top of any of them. We also ‘climbed’ Sky Pilot near Squamish, up a logging road in his ex-wife’s rental vehicle, which her company was paying for.  Bumping across culverts, rocks and tree roots in a mini-van. “It’s fine,  Pete,  it’s only a rental.” We never made it to the top of Sky Pilot either. Hmmm! We did actually make it to the top of Black Tusk, a jagged volcanic plug, but then had to dash off it because of a thunderstorm.  I have been to the top of the West Lion as well, several times but I can’t remember if Keef was with me on any of those occasions.  But, I suppose, that my point here is, that I remember best the trips with Keef where and when we didn’t get to the top.  Not getting to the top remains the best memory.  Not getting to the top refrains the most memorable stories . Hmmm, we did once see a cougar and that was like getting to the top.

It is a strange reflection of mine that I find myself, a sort of bland beige bore of a man, befriended by some really great characters who have drive and ambition and ideas and innovation. It will always be a surprise to me that great people, Keef being one, have provided such great fun-filled company to me over the years. Keef has made a determined effort to outwith his wherewithal and has succeeded. Meanwhile T.S. Eliot is sitting with me and watching me watch.

“At the still point of the turning world there the dance is.”

“Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance and there is only the dance,

And I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where

And I cannot say how long, for that is to place it in time.”

It is only recently that I think that I have understood this but I was seated in the back garden early one morning. The sun was up. We live in a city where the sound of trains and sirens and construction sites is ubiquitous. But this Sunday morning there were only the birds. But alone as the sun strove to dazzle me through the sporadic cloud and the intervention of tree branches, I felt more than ever at the centre of my spoked wheel of a world.  I felt the gentleness and quietude of the day’s beginning turning, nay dancing, around me. I was the ‘still point of the turning world’ and my self centredness was the ‘dance’. Alone with my thoughts,

“Where past and future are gathered”  Eliot

OK, Friends, rereading this stuff it all comes across as pretentious claptrap, bumptious blether, an attempt to make everyday events into something other**.  But (And I have to ‘but’ you some ‘buts’ here), I am struggling to understand the chaos of the real world at the moment where powerful people are instigating a ‘march of folly”*** which is acting against their own best interests to say nothing of the people whose best interests they have taken office to uphold.  Sometimes, Dear Reader, not getting to the top is the better achievement because at the top one inevitably looks down on people and looking down on people is not an healthy place to be. Thus here be the Davidson link tenuous though it is.  And for Peter Davidson to understand this fully is way, way ‘outwith my wherewithal” but writing about it helps.

Thanks for reading.

*I have since learned that Brother George is the originator of this excellent turn of phrase.

**Sadly my fortnightly scribbles represent my many therapists, they are a catharsis. I do want you to read them and I love receiving feedback but it really is a selfish chest offing process for me.  Apologies.

***”The March of Folly” by the late Barbara Tuchman examines the road towards the devastation of the First World War.

El Presidente spoke from deep in his orange wilderness.  The greatest person who has ever walked the Earth, the best invention since sliced bred, the enema of the people, His Excellency the King of Nastiness, Naivety and Numbskullery has let it be known that FIFA kows tow. The erstwhile recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize at a stroke put Belgium on the map. A country with a population of nearly 12 million people suddenly found that the rest of the world had a vast Belgian diaspora. Billions reached out for souvenir football jerseys and flags. And yet, and yet, I see that a scatter-gun policy with many inaccuracies can hit a reasonable target. Europeans finally paying a proper amount for their own defence for example. But, Dear Reader, such achievements are few and far between and almost not worth wading through the mud of despond to reach. They do not mitigate the cutting back of USAID,  the ICE raids and the slandering of friends and allies.

Dear Friends, I don’t know about you guys but I have lost track of the number of enablers who by their passivity, their fence sitting,  their cowardice, their selfishness are allowing institutional skullduggery.  People in power need to be people in power, not sycophants and boot lickers.

There is something cringingly embarrassing in watching intelligent human beings being duped and led by nonsense and lies, Dear Reader.  Surely by now the people of the world have learnt enough to recognize dangerous drivel when they see it. All we need is a soupcon of sense, a wilderness voice to saunter into our consciousness and inspire us to stop this garbage. How can we be chained to an idiot for four years, and then having four years of relative sanity, decide that the world needs four more amateur stumblings? “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Surely  we have had enough time to realise that stupidity does not get better with age.  We never thought before that debacles would be achievements, that corruption would be the new next-best-thing, that self- aggrandizement would be recognized as a quality. We have become dazzled by celebrity and should have realized, after the first time that the emperor has no clothes.

Meanwhile in the real world. You know, Dear Reader, that place on Earth where people work to earn money, to pay taxes, to afford rent, to afford food, the real world, Dear Friends, discovers that what once they could afford they can no longer.  And while Chinese economic imperialists are cruelly and tragically exploiting the children of the PRC (Read “Cobalt Red’ by Siddarth Kara) in order to get our telephones to work, their football team is doing their best in the World Cup.  And while we no longer hear about the people of Gaza because the attention span of the world has flitted elsewhere. And yet we see Putin preening whilst we procrastinate with mealy mouthed platitudes and Ukraine continues its freedom fight, tragically outnumbering the many days of death and destruction In World War I. Old Arab saying.

“The dog barks. The caravan passes?’

 And sometimes we hear that people are starving in the Sudan and we want to help. And talking heads send out an appeal for money . And we listen and our heart is sorry and our head reaches for our cheque book. And then there comes scenes of the earthquake in Venezuela and a reporter on the ground standing near collapsed buildings and traumatized people and not a siren nor a high viz in sight, just a silence and a waiting and nothing coming. And then we hear that Iran is being bombed again and Iran is retaliating again.  And that, Dear Friends, is trouble in the playground because the children both claim to have won the war and a price is being paid and it is not by them.

And then there is the World Cup, Wimbledon tennis and smiles on faces and the tartan army and the Viking rowing, French artistry, the winning days of the underdog, the good sportsmanship of the loser, the joy of the winner. And through the cones on statues in Boston, big heartedness of generous Americans putting forth the generosity and kindness which remains their real DNA, the polite hosting of Canadians the country where ‘sorry’ is a greeting, the welcome of Mexico  for sombrero-clad gringos. Through all this one again realizes that the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, you and I for whom gold is garish, ball rooms are bowling alleys, limos are legs, we who take the bus and shower at night. We who hold the door open for others, we who buy a sandwich for a paraffin lamp who is down on his luck. We who lurk in the shadows of life, stand aside from show and glitter and ego, we who go about our business with quiet grit and steady plodding. We who cannot influence, cannot change bad things we at least can speak freely our thoughts, can discuss and debate and can act locally. We cannot do as Kipling suggests:

“Call my chiefs to council.

In the din of a troubled year,

For the sake of a sign ye would not see,

And a word ye would not hear.”

But there is no excuse for us, Dear Reader, not seeing and not hearing. The truth stares us in the face. It is not fake news if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.  Then, Dear Friends, it is a f !@# img duck.

“For life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.”  Joseph Conrad ‘Nostromo’.

But, Dear Friends, as usual I talk a line and do nothing.  Leo Tolstoy summed up how I feel about myself on occasions:-

‘I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible……..except by getting off his back.’

And yet every day I see acts of kindness, generosity, and good humour. I see an ex-president of the United States who forgot to salute a marine when he ascended the steps of his helicopter and descended to offer an apology. I see him holding an umbrella to prevent an aide from getting wet. I see him personally greeting veterans who are on a visit to Washington.  I see class and good manners and somehow I don’t care then whether or not his policies were right or wrong. I am glad of his presence, uplifted by his being and reassured by his humanity. And a smile creeps over the Davidson mug and all is suddenly a hope.

Thanks for reading.

Forgive this play on words, Dear Friends. Yes, I did watch “Four Weddings and a Funeral” back in the day. There are moments in our lives which are a surprise. The unexpected arrives and leaves us stunned, unable to speak but often with  a glaikit immovable smile stencilled to our faces. Such it was when I heard this story of four rugby coaches trekking off for ‘dinner’ at Milestone’s restaurant here on the West Coast.  Why would one go for dinner when one had already eaten? Well, I guess they were not thinking straight, having just witnessed a result that nobody expected. Hmmm, but then it would seem that there was method in their madness because there was a rather lovely white wine which was on special with 50% off.  When the waiter arrived to take their order the head coach said that he would like a bottle of “Murky Milch” (It’s real name hasn’t escaped me ‘cos I never knew it in the first place)*. One of the others asked what was to be done if he did not finish it. No problem, he would take it home. Waiter took his order,

“I would like a bottle of “Murky Milch” too.”

And so did all order.

“Anything else,” From the disappointed waiter.

A hand went up.

“I would like a dessert”.

And so we have our 4 bottles and a dessert.

This story flashed me back. I was working in Lincolnshire, some three hours North of London. Four of us had been down to London to go to a rugby international at Twickenham. I can’t remember the game, I can remember very little of the apres rugby. I do remember that we were a sorry sight on the Sunday morning.  The drive North out of the city was a quiet one where the main concern was to stay awake. About an hour up the A1, a sort of British Interstate with hedges and roundabouts and bungalows on the hard shoulder, a greasy spoon was spotted at the side of the road. We parked and sought the grease our constitutions needed. We seated ourselves in the café and awaited the arrival of the waitress. She suddenly appeared with a world weary pencil lurking over a scruffy order pad.

“Yes?” Gruff and to the point.

“I would like the Full English, bacon, egg, sausage, beans, fried bread and toast”.

The pencil remained poised, the head was shaking.

“We don’t do that”.

By this time, Geoff had the menu. He saw ‘eggs and toast’, ‘sausage and toast’, ‘beans on toast’, ‘bacon and toast’ but no combination thereof. Keith saw the light and the solution through one surprising glimpse of hangover clarity.

“I will have all four dishes please.”   The waitress didn’t blink. She wrote them down. Inevitably we all ordered the same. So eventually there were 16 dishes for four people and four cups of tea.  Ineluctably we each consolidated our goodies and loaded them all onto the one plate and asked the waitress to remove the extra plates which she did. There is no movie script called “16 dishes and 4 teas”.

Nary a smile, nary a comment, nary an uplifted eye, just a ‘seen-it-all-before’  world weariness.

Greased up and replete the rest of our journey was a more jolly affair.  

Dear Reader, I love reading about people who have the innovative confidence to break the rules and come up with a solution which causes very little angst but may cause a company or individual to rethink their work practices. In support of this I came across this rather amusing unattributable quotation the other day:-

“Can’t stop thinking about the people who first ate mushrooms through trial and error. You know, like, this one tastes like beef. This one killed Kevin and this one allowed  me to speak with god for three weeks.”

I chuckled at this. I guess that Milestones is not a pub therefore the ordering of food is required. This criterion was met through asking for a dessert but we all know that the purchase of an expensive wine inexpensively was the real reason for going.  Surely to goodness, the home of the English breakfast can indeed plate up an English breakfast on one plate, otherwise what do you expect?

I do love people who ponder such things as to whether or not  the ‘s’ or ‘c’ in scent is silent. Or Britain’s political system which allows ‘The Monster Raving Looney Party’ to have such items on its electoral manifesto as that of replacing immigration officers in the UK with doctor’s receptionists on the grounds that they are impossible to get past. Or “The Sun” newspaper in the UK where a journalist had the wit to drop into his local supermarket and buy a lettuce, put a picture of it on the front page betting the world that it would not rot before the new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, was  out of office. She lasted 49 days, the lettuce was wilting but still there.  To me these are people  with whom one  wants to spend time. Why?  Well, I suppose that it is these people  who are going to be innovative; are going to wander and wonder through life, seizing initiatives all over the place and, no doubt, annoying  everybody with whom they’ve ever worked or shared a beer.  Let’s face it, Dear Reader, there is never a dull moment with such people, they are never boring. Their company can, of course, wear a bit thin at times.  But that is mitigated when they come up with something which makes life easier for the rest of us.   In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:-

“Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus, and Luther, and Galileo, and Copernicus and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

How many rejections did JK Rowling have before she became this incredible phenomenon?  The truth is that if we all knew what worked every time then we would use it to work every time.  But we don’t and we can’t.

As a youth I would always conform to societal expectations. Subliminally I believed that everybody else knew better than me, I lacked the intelligence and confidence to have my own thoughts. So I relied on others to make decisions, to organise the next adventure. So it has to be said that some of my best experiences in life have been when somebody has done something unexpected. And, of course, we know that there are people who do not fit. They stand out in a crowd and are often labelled as weird, lambasted as non-conformist. As a teacher,  Dear Reader, it was hard to make time for the mischief maker, the pupil who got in the way of what I was trying to do. A better teacher would have stood to one side and facilitated, not enthused about the eight parts of speech and ‘I before e except after c’. And now the pupil who sprawled and flicked and chatted and cloth-eared his way through my spell-binding, audience-held-in-the-palm-of-my-hand lessons, is out there making a good fist of solving the problems of the world. Now that they are adults many have proved innovative, inventive and different. And they have done so much to improve the human condition. So yes I laugh at four bottles and a dessert and the creation of the Full English because so many people would have bowed before the altar of conformity and the world would have been the poorer for it.

Thanks for reading.

*Just discovered today that the real name for this New Zealand sauvignon blanc is “Kim Crawford”.

        The sun shone in a cloudless, azure sky. It was Spring and new life was appearing everywhere.  Buds were straining to burst into rosy flamboyance on the rhododendrons. The purpling of the heather was still someway off but it could not contain its excitement now that it was free from its wintry burden.  It danced with joy, flexed with anticipation, hugged the peat, no longer a frozen prisoner, now an emancipated freedom. The old Scots Pines dotted about the landscape had the air of the ‘seen it all before’. They patronised the earth with lordly condescension. They accepted who they were, superior to all, forthright through the ravages of winter, above the angst of the rest of the plant world which somehow had to cower beneath the ice and frost, had to shrink from the Arctic onslaughts, had to niche sleep, nook nurture to survive.

         The burns, no longer frozen, chuckled their ways down the mountainside, joyous in their renewed freedom. They trickled over rocks, danced over moss, rested in pools, greeted insect life with tolerance, cosseted their fish with maternal love. 

     As the day moved forward, swishing sounds arose from the tops of the trees, a gentle breeze kissed lovingly the upper canopies. The birds at dawn had announced their presence and continued their meandering  murmurations, bursting with susurrating  song, fluttering  wings, twig-lifters, fly-catchers, nest builders.

     I have walked through beauty like this, sat on the banks of beauty like this, listened to the sounds of beauty like this and been calmed by beauty like this.

    On a morning such as this many years ago, I woke early in my tent, pulled back the flap and eagerly reached for the day.  I pulled on my boots, rushed a breakfast that was never a breakfast, threw on my pack and walked off.  I followed the stream upwards. It was a gentle climb. Slowly the vegetation became less varied. I knew that soon it would be only rocks and heather.  I decided to make the most of the surroundings before I left them. A wee hillock, a rise to the side of the path looked like a place to sit and contemplate.

     It is not easy to sit or lie on a peaty bed of heather.  For one thing there are the mighty midgies, almost no-see-ums, which settle and irritate warm flesh. But the breeze sends them scurrying, the draft frees us from their nuisance. But halting is not easy for another reason. Walking through inordinate beauty is a drug. The next corner always beckons, gentle ascents demand the other side, we always want to be other than where we are.  So it took a conscious effort to force myself to sit for a period of time, that was something more than moments.  I tried not to look at my watch. I lay back and talked to myself about where I was and how when I returned to the maelstrom of life these moments would be an ointment to soothe; a balm in which to bathe; a hot bath in which to sud and soak and ease.

 I looked up at the Scots Pine its angled branches showing neither science nor purpose. It was a tree that could be whatever it wanted to be.  It was answerable only to itself. Passing passerines were welcome to perch in its branches; the golden eagle or osprey were allowed to settle on its top branches to watch and scan for prey. Insects were welcome to feast on its sap and twigs. Nothing threatened its majesty; its longevity and strength bestowed aristocracy. It provided shade from the sun, shelter from the rain, its generosity provided food for many.

Rolling onto my side I saw the peaks of Cairngorm and Ben Macdhui glistening white with the remnants of the winter snows. Over millions of years weathering had gnawed at their rocks, chipped away at their Himalayan heights until they were now gnarled diminished ancestors of their former selves. But they were magnificent in their own way remnant foothills of higher worlds in many different countries but with the wisdom of the elders; no longer the rash avalanches of youthful exuberance; the devastating rockfalls of freeze and thaw; the creeping groans of glaciers; the killing zones of thin air. The jagged presence of an alp or dolomite were not there.  Their youthful exuberance had given way to a gentler, wiser old age. They could rest in the knowledge of their experience; smug in their ‘seen it all before’;  they were the old man at the corner of the bar, scorning the loud music, waving away noisy venturesome foolish youth. They sat and watched and smiled with smug benignity but every so often a cold killing blizzard blast sprung forth and reminded that here was a dog that may be old but still had tricks in its coires and glens.

And through all these thoughts there was the constant joy of birdsong. Not the single cuckoo or grating squawk of a seagull  but so much variety,  so many different tones, all mingled together calling for mates and nesting and eggs and rebirth. Nature’s joyous renaissance coming alive in the Spring. And I the privileged interloper, forcing myself to be still, reaching for tranquillity, determined to milk the horizons for every last drop.

I think, Dear Friends, of what these excursions into the natural world have given me over my life. They have brought me to an indescribable place, a place of joy, wonder and calm, a place where the cares and anxieties of the world rise up from the ground like a bird in flight. My worries take off like a skein of geese honking its way northwards. There is a spirituality in nature which no manmade religion can give; no dogma or doctrine can furnish. In the great outdoors there is fact based on life and death, reality and being. There is no faith in a god required; no need to prostrate oneself before a mythical being. Nature tells us tooth and nail what works and what doesn’t. It is the solid basis for our being; the essence of our substance. It is our heaven and hell, our checks and balances.  We are a part of all it is and we need to ensure we do not stay apart from it for too long.

Thanks for reading.

“Sometimes the greatest lies are told in silence”

Or maybe not!

I suppose, Dear Friends, that experience is a great teacher. We all know that one of the concerns of living in a technological world is the fear of scams. We are all aware of people who talk a good line, people who are trying to convince or sell. But sometimes trying to fathom the real person is like trying to find a shadow on a very dark night.  And for that, I suppose, we need to see action rather than words. We have all at times been let down by people and have in our turn let others down. But there have been acts of kindness along the way which are so memorable.

I once worked for a building construction company called Duncan Smith and Sons.  Duncan was somebody whom I had met in the pub in which I worked in Clevedon, Somerset. I fancied working outside for a change and also doing a day job rather than the horrendous split shifts which were a part of bar work.  Duncan was a really good boss. He paid well. In those days he would come around at the end of the working week and give us our pay packet. On one particular Friday, for some reason, he paid us at lunchtime. Somebody decided (I will swear to this day it wasn’t me!) that flush with cash we should go to the pub for lunch. Oft we went and somehow the 30 minute lunch break went somewhat longer. And when the pub shut at 2.30 p.m. we had stocked up on a carry out to continue our session at a local park. By the time we returned to the site the concrete company had dumped their concrete in the middle of the customer’s driveway ready for us to barrow and lay. Only trouble was that the heat of the day made it no longer malleable. There was nothing we could do, indeed tying an undone shoelace would have been an achievement at this point in our beer-clad state.  Duncan sought us all out on Saturday morning. It was something a local boss could do in those days. So four hangovers found themselves jack hammering concrete on a punter’s driveway on a Saturday morning.  Through the misery of that day I thought that this would be our last day on the job; that we were all for the sack; that Monday morning we would turn up and be turned away.

Monday came. We were all surprised when nothing was said. We worked the week. It was almost punishment enough waiting for the hammer to drop. Friday came. At the end of the day Duncan came around with our pay packets. We all expected to be docked money. We were surprised that we had been paid our full whack with the addition of the 6 hours overtime for the Saturday we had worked. Duncan didn’t say anything. We never asked. But the following Friday after work he offered to buy us a pint at the local. We were confused and bemused. I thought that he had found a new work force and we would be out on our ear. Duncan was chuckling as he took his first sip of ale. He looked around at our worried faces.

“I should have known better than to pay you bastards early on a Friday. Owner went nuts when he phoned me on Friday night. That’s why you were there on the Saturday. My fault, boys, but don’t do it again.”

And you know what we never did. We worked a smidge harder for Duncan after that. The unspoken rule was that we would go the extra mile for Duncan and his company. Duncan Smith had inspired something in us. We were too immature to put a finger on it at the time. We didn’t voice it. But we certainly got it.

Some people we know, Dear Reader, are in the heart of a bewildering exercise in truth creation. Half of them can’t lie straight in their beds at night.  It’s the Duncan Smith’s of this world, those who are out to give and not out to get who really matter.

We found something’s noise in the actions, not the words, of Duncan Smith.

Squadron Leader McEwan-Mason was a teacher of mine at Millfield School. I was in the RAF section. Our cadets marched and strutted on a Friday afternoon. It was something that we all had to do. I can’t remember learning any particular skill other than polishing boots and ambushing an ‘enemy’ in the woods.   We did, however, have an end of the school year cadet force camp. We were despatched off to RAF Consett in the North of England.  It was allowed for me not to return to Somerset with the other cadets as I was to catch the train to Edinburgh whereupon I was to bike and camp to join my family on their annual holiday to Nairn in the Highlands. I was to travel on a warrant card. The Squadron Leader intimidated us all. Not because he shouted at us, punished us, became angry at us. I cannot remember any of those things. He was a man of few words. But there was a presence in his presence. He fixed me up with bus transport to the station in Newcastle and I was shocked and a little bit embarrassed when he boarded the bus to accompany me to the station.  I remember he had a war time injury which caused him to stoop. His back was slightly hunched over. We did not talk. But I picked up my bike and followed him to the ticket office where there was a queue. There was a long line up but the line was moving quickly. Mr. McEwan-Mason joined the snake and I fell in behind Him.  I was shocked and amazed.  I had never imagined that such an icon as he would ever be a part of anything so mundane as a line up for a train ticket.  Unreasonably I started to feel embarrassed and guilty. It is easy to say that I shouldn’t have because he smiled benignly and patiently at me as we waited our turn along with everyone else. I suppose that I had never imagined him ‘along with everybody else’. When we reached the counter he explained that I needed a ticket based on a warrant card which needed to be issued as I had been at cadet camp. He walked me to the platform, looked me in the eye, wished me an happy holiday, turned on his heel and moved away. The fact that I remember this 56 years after the event tells me that there was something about the character of this man which inspired awe and admiration. It wasn’t what he said because he said very little. It wasn’t a grand gesture because there wasn’t one. There was just something, something which I cannot touch or explain or understand.  It was much ado about nothing, a dust mote but a moment that held me then as it holds me now.

 I guess that sometimes speech gets in the way of genuine communication. It’s the gesture and the kindness which we remember. Sadly if we remember words they are often cruel words. Duncan Smith and McEwan-Mason had come through a war. They had faced danger, they had faced fear and they had faced themselves.  They were confident in their leadership, they had nothing to prove. The ‘High Horse”, upon which we petty men are wont to sit when we feel threatened, for them,  had long since bolted.  A bit of a concrete kerfuffle on a Friday afternoon or lining up to put a nobody  on a train were shrugs of the shoulders to people like these. I don’t know, Dear Friends, if greatness in those two men was real or not. But that doesn’t matter because to me it was very real and therefore they were great men.  I guess that I have learnt over the years that once the chess game is over the king and the pawn go back in the same box, that there is some form of equality in adulthood but with Duncan Smith and the Squadron Leader, whose actions spoke louder than words, I was in the presence of better men.

Thanks for reading.

Welcome to the May mind of Davidson, Dear Friends. Who knows which aimless meander it will visit this month? Minds are like that aren’t they. Just when we think we have a grip, we have produced a specific, have charted an immediate plan, cobbled together a distant future, then our mind which has been so focussed, so concentrated, so cyclopean then it suddenly gives common sense a body swerve. It finds a tangent where there shouldn’t be one, its eyes are pulled left fieldish and suddenly we are in thoughts which have no rhyme or reason.  Our ideas are suddenly a rusty old towel rail on top of the scrap metals at the local dump. Thus it was on a bright sunny Spring day here in North Vancouver when Davidson  suddenly  and strangely thought of statues!

Apart from providing a toilet for pigeons what good is a statue?  One of the key rules for putting up a statue is that the last person who should vote for it, push for it, decide on it is the person who is to be honoured. Nobody who has a ‘guid conceit o’themsels’, as they say in Scotland, should push for his or her own glory. That is for others to do. After all the statues of Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Ceaucescu  and other such nasties of the 20^th Century are now melted into the annals, maybe even anals, of history where they belong.

Seated on a bench in a rain shower with a breeze blowing and eating an increasingly soggy egg sandwich, I decided that I needed to put up my umbrella and walk.  Behind me was the modern building of the Scottish Parliament in front of me was the historic Holyrood House, home of royalty over the years.  It was an area of Edinburgh which had become increasingly familiar to me. I resolved to walk up the Royal Mile while I waited for my good friend, Audrey, to finish her working day.  The Royal Mile is certainly a tourist attraction. It is a strange mixture of the garishly modern and the historically old. There are tourist shops in abundance, a plethora of plaid, post cards, paraphernalia  for every occasion, a Christmas decoration to remind of a trip, tartan boxes of fudge and shortbread, frisky wee whiskies. All screaming to the far flung and envious that the carrier has indeed jet setted to Scotland and boasted, “See I have proof.”. But for all its touristy tomfoolery, Dear Reader, the buildings remain old with grime reflective of a time when Edinburgh was indeed ‘Auld Reekie’ and the enlightened “Athens of the North”. So  I knew that there was no point in going to the famed Castle at this time of day and so resolved to make it to one statue, pay it my respects and head back down the hill.

There are statues in museums in Germany which were rightly torn down after the demise of Nazism, there is the Colston statue that used to dominate the centre of Bristol until it famously was riotously dumped into the dockland waters because the man was a slave trader.  There is the statue of Saddam Hussein,  wrenched from its pedestal in Baghdad with the chaotic scene of a freed people beating it with their sandals.  There is the iconic edifice of the Duke of Wellington in Glasgow which is now officially allowed to have a cone on its head, (See banner photograph), a council recognition of Glaswegian humour which has been there for years. That to me is a great statue because it has been put there to honour and respect some famous person from history and the best way to honour and respect them without pulling them down is to blot arrogance with a tongue-in-the-cheek gesture. Hats, but not cones, off to the people of Glasgow.  There is Trafalgar Square where a short one armed, one eyed sailor sits atop a very tall column. The inference to me is that Nelson is such an iconic hero that he is out of reach of the rest of us. The man had a monumental confidence, a monumental ego and truly monumental column.  There is a square of statues outside Westminster Abbey. Churchill, Mandela, Gandhi, Millicent Garrett Fawcett the suffragetist. The poet, Robbie Burns, has a statue here in Stanley Park and in his native Dumfries, of course, as well as some 60 more of him dotted around the world. These are people recognised for their timeless contribution to something, possibly geniuses in their fields, quite possibly of singular focus.  Not one of them, Dear Reader, is without their flaws.  Some of their faults I could not name without a bit of research but I know they have them, we all do. Why? Because they and we are human.  The only way, it seems to me, to make a statue of an human being pure and perfect is to make it anonymous. Tombs of the unknown soldier do that.

 Spean Bridge does that. There stands the famous statue of three commandos overlooking the Great Glen in Scotland. They are anonymous and representative of all the men who trained there in the Second World War. I have been there on several occasions. On one such Spring morning I was wandering around the tribute area where individuals are honoured. There are old photographs protected from the elements by laminated coverings,  messages and remembrances of love for those who did not return. I was standing looking down on one such picture of a young soldier when I was surprised when a hand reached in and grabbed his photograph.  Righteous indignation was starting to bubble when the gentleman in question caught my eye and explained what he was doing.  The picture was of his father whom he never knew because he was killed in action in France. He was merely adding tributes to his memorial. This fatherless baby was watched over and cared for by his Dad’s best mate from the war. His Dad’s comrade looked out for him growing up and helped out the single mum whenever he could. That was the sort of human story which brought meaning and life to the statue in the best of ways.

Back to my walk up the Royal Mile.  I was ruminating about why this statue which I was about to visit may be the most important of all of the statues that vaunt their presence through town squares, city centres, sides of mountains, village greens. I decided that a short life which it was, a consistent life which never wavered, a loyal life which was devoted every minute of every day to one person should be honoured.  Beyond all this it represented love, a love  of the highest and purest integrity.  The weather remained dreich, it pattered on my umbrella when I eventually found myself standing before Greyfriars Bobby. He was a ‘wee dug’ , a Skye Terrier, who sat on his master’s grave for 14 years after his death until his own demise.  And now he sits on a pedestal for all to pass, an uplifting story with absolutely no human failings lurking in the shadows. Nothing there for the more cynical of us to ‘yes but’ at his heroism.  He was a dog, take him for all and all. We shall look upon his like again and, indeed, we do so every day.

Sometimes when we find a personality with whom we feel a bond, we have a tendency to overlook their faults.  We see in them all that we want to see.  We give ourselves the gift of a hero and in the process sweep their faults under an increasingly dusty carpet. When that happens we need to give ourselves a kick, bring ourselves up short and  look into our own characters.

“When we ourselves scarcely know who we are, how can we tell them who they are?”  John Le Carre

A life fully lived will have its share of Jekyll and Hyde. There will be moments that we wish we could take back, decisions which will have hurt others.  We, Dear Friends, are not the statuesque few who somehow find themselves circling the Earth on dubious pedestals and besmirched sanctity.  They are ethereal but we know that often the greatest genius has the biggest flaws. Like you, Dear Reader, I do not like it when my heroes fall from grace, blacken their purity with a behaviour or a point of view which becomes an important part of their legacy.  At times like that it takes the simplicity and honesty and the loyalty of a dog to ‘help the heart of man to know itself’.  Greyfriars Bobby did not win the battles of Waterloo or Trafalgar, did not bring apartheid to an end, did not gain the vote for women, nor write some of the finest poetry in any language but maybe, just maybe, he gave us something greater.

Thanks for reading.

                                                                                        The elderly man parked behind a tractor by a field. The field was next to an old village church. He strolled to the lychgate, opened it. It creaked with a sound he recognised from 55 years ago. He found the church door unlocked so he opened it. The clunk matched the lychgate in its familiarity, the same but different.  He entered the church, recognised the pew where Alan Salisbury, his Latin teacher had positioned himself every Sunday, noted the lectern from which Sammy Ashamu read the lessons on most Sundays. Lovely fellow, beaming smile, very keen but ‘could you find another reader only the local Somerset farm workers find it hard to understand his broad non-Somerset accent’? Well, OK, but without sounding contrary and arrogant, he doubted the congregation would understand the content of the lesson no matter who was reading it. Religion is like that isn’t it! The man smiled as he remembered being the pupil responsible for getting the Sunday readers.  He quietly left the church, ensuring the heavy door thunked behind him. He was now on the green sward, the grassy park that surrounded the old manor house. The large trees bespoke the confidence of a different age. He could see himself on a Sunday, freed from the formality of the church service, with a rugby ball in his hands and playing touch rugby with his peers.  He felt the joy of the pass that he did not give, the deception that fooled his opponent, the sudden amazement that the line beckoned and he was sprinting towards a score.  There was a sprint no more now. He wandered onto the driveway which stretched through the woods to the road where they used to pick up the school bus every morning. But he skirted the outside of the big house and found himself at the portals, the columns at the front door, where he used to wait for his father to pick him up at the end of every term and where his mother had dropped him off fearful and homesick on that fateful day in 1965. There was a doorbell. Should he press it or should he let sleeping memories lie? The pupils were all at school. There might be nobody there. He may not pass this way again. He could leave and get into his car and let what was, remain what was. A mental shrug of the shoulders, no regrets, a stepping away from 5 years of memories and nobody any the wiser. A moment of madness, he reached and rang the bell. Part of him hoped there would be no answer. He was about to turn on his heels when the door opened. A cheery, middle aged woman announced herself as the cook and asked if she could help. She obviously loved where she worked and he was soon being given the guided tour. The dining room was just the same, the room where he used to stand every morning to listen to the day’s moral message on the radio was now a lounge. He looked in vain for the impressionist picture with the message below:-

‘The cessation of strife will wither and wear the hopes and aspirations of a vigorous race.’

He guessed that message was now considered inappropriate for current youth. Probably should have been children skipping through a field of sunflowers with the message,

‘You can be what you want to be’.

 The rooms downstairs were now bedrooms which housed two students, not the 10 boy dormitory where he awoke that first morning to the mooing of the cows in the field. He found his pictures on the wall, the first a photograph of all 80 boys, the second the prefect’s picture with himself one of ten.  It was strange indeed to see such insecurity and immaturity, such an angst ridden interior, mustering a smile for the camera. Such a happy mask concealing deep anguished uncertainty. He was offered a cuppa tea and a biscuit which he accepted gratefully and indulged himself with 20 minutes of reminiscence which his guide tolerated with equanimity and, in the process, told her own stories. The environment linked their tales but the gap in time did not. He left Kingweston House and the village of Kingweston feeling glad that he had visited.

                 Dear Friends, I don’t know why I wrote the above in the third person, probably because the ‘he’ might have had a better hindsight, a more dispassionate perspective, than the ‘I’. Probably didn’t work, did it?  The journey home at the end of term was always a pleasure. The release was a relief. The sun always shone brightly on that hour long journey even when it didn’t.  So, for the last couple of paragraphs I can speak in the first person for those reasons. Thanks for your tolerance.

                                         On my drive back to my brother’s place in the village of Kenn, the road was much the same as it had been all those years before. Bypassing the city of Wells, one climbs up into the Mendip Hills, green farm land, wooded combs, descent through the gorge of Burrington Combe or was it Brockley, crossing the Bristol road and ‘home’.  There was time to think. I thought about the advice that I had been given years ago. “Never go back.” They had said it with a knowing smile, a condescending omniscience. The inference was that it would never be the same, never be what it was, would fall short of one’s expectations, there would not be the joy.  Aha, the joy! There lay the word. On this particular excursion I did not expect the ‘joy’ to return because it seemed that back then ‘joy’ was an infrequent visitor in my life.  I was too much of an oversensitive wimp to find joy at every meal, in every class, in every interaction.  Joy came to me through physical exercise. If I had visited Kingweston House as I did last November in hopes of renewing joyous memories of my teenage years I would probably not have made the spontaneous decision to drop by. It was not a hardship for me to visit. I was not nostalgic for the days of my youth. I was more inquisitive to see if it was ‘the stream that changed, yet stayed the same’. I do not regret going back to my old boarding house of 55 years ago.

                                Should we go back, Dear Reader, to places where we were very happy, where friendships and camaraderie were wonderful, unforgettable, life changing? Should I walk into the Strathspey Hotel in Aviemore where I was an hotel porter for some months in the early 1970s, where I first heard Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’ and cannot hear it to this day without a passing memory of the ski resort and village? Can I hear Neil Armstrong’s ‘one small step…..’ speech as he steps onto the surface of the moon in 1969 and not feel the flap of canvas and the smell of the Scots Pine in my tent at Coylumbridge? I can’t.  Should I not hear the crash of waves elsewhere when I walk and hear the surf on the seawall in West Vancouver? Sometimes I can.  I have been back to happy places of my childhood and have enjoyed the experience. The smell of a juniper hedge after a shower will always evoke.  A rowan tree or a foxglove will always beam me back to times and places. These are happy, calming moments, a therapeutic presence, a balm for troubled thoughts. Of course, a whole acreage of life and living has passed since those days and, strangely, life has gone along perfectly well in those places without me!? Of course, I wonder where they all are now, those people whose lives I shared.  Occasionally one hears the blast from the past and mostly it is not good news. But when we stumble on a memory, Friends, whether good or bad, should we not place it amongst the pantheon of other memories and recognise it for what it was and pay it some form of homage for where and what we now are?  I suppose that in some small way as W.B.Yeats said ‘because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike’. Going back is like taking a bag of  beads and  weaving  them together into the necklace of my life. I have no fears of going back.

                                 Thanks for reading,

                               In a moment of madness the other day, probably because I was becoming bored with the excitement of twiddling my thumbs, I decided to look up how many days there are in 1000 years. Yes, Dear Reader, it says much about the busyness of retirement that I should be enthused by this piece of trivia. Like most of you I am always impressed by people who intend to make the most of every day. And I know, Dear Friends, that many of you are out carping the diem as I scribble.  Indeed I have heard all too often the comment about life being too short and, of course, recognised the truth in this. But, in my naivety, I have never really recognised the reality. But, Dear Reader, I do now!

                                                                A chiliad = 1000 years = 365,000 days

                   Shock horror, Dear Friends, that is not a lot of days! (Please don’t nitpick me and remind me there should be the adjustment for leap years. This I know.) But as a British schoolboy I grew up ‘knowing’ that the most important date in British History, English History to be more precise, was 1066. Sometime in October that year William the Conqueror landed at Hastings in the south of England from his homeland of Normandy and proceeded to battle King Harold of England on a mound called Senlac Hill. Harold held the high ground, his men were told not to charge into the Normans if they retreated. They disobeyed. Harold looked up at the wrong moment, received an arrow in his eye and was no longer King of England.  William the Conqueror, aka ‘William the Bastard’ as a result of his birth and not because that’s what the English thought of him, then indulged in building works, gave land to his supporters, created a comprehensive census type record called the Domesday Book and created a dynasty in which many of his successors did indeed ‘die nasty’. Any rate here we are, not quite some 365,000 days later and we have made great, great progress. Or have we?

             We have invented things haven’t we, Dear Reader. My Grandfather who was born in 1880 did not see a motor car for all of his youth. There were no aeroplanes. He would have laughed if he was told that humans would be able to fly in machines. He died in 1965, four years short of the moon landing but certainly around to see Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn leave the Earth and venture into space. Back on the ground he did not begin with a telephone, there were nascent radio waves but no TV. It is true to say that there were more effective ways of killing people than arrow, sword or spear. Progress was indeed being made. More and more people were being taught to read. Medicine was increasing life expectancy.  And yet, and yet!

          I have the arrogant tendency to look back on history and feel superior. What have I to feel superior about? I never invented an antibiotic, I do not fully understand how the flush toilet works. If I built a viaduct it would likely not stand for one of those days let alone last for 1000 years and more. I wouldn’t recognise an engine part if I found it in my soup. I can gather but I can’t hunt. Mammoths would still roam freely and in abundance and my clan would be freezing and hungry after another failed attempt to drive one into a pit. I am not a great authority on the ancient writers although I recognise the wisdom in Marcus  Aurelius. Plato had some good ideas and Homer and Vergil wrote really great yarns. I think I understand what spawned the works of Marx and Engels and respect what good they were trying to accomplish. (It’s not their fault that a sequence of tyrannical clowns have warped their ideas). This is a long winded way of saying that many of our predecessors were better, stronger, more innovative, more aware than we are. Technology has advanced in steps. Latterly in leaps and bounds. And, yes, Dear Reader, the tomahawk missile is more efficient at killing than an arrow and in a numbers game as a killing tool it wins hands down. So with this tragic truth I come to where I want to be.  Humankind still kills each other but in a much more devastating way. And that, Dear Reader, brings me to the crux of my argument. In my humble opinion it is very dangerous for human beings to advance technologically when that is not matched in equal advances in human nature and moral compass.

         Women have advanced in the western world but there have been matriarchal societies before. And now there are countries which refuse to educate girls, and do not allow them positions of responsibility. So it would be reasonable to suggest that women in some societies a millenium ago were freer than they are now. So this is my example of lack of progress. And I always seem to fall back on the fate of women the world over. Why? Well, facts speak for themselves. I think that women having an equal say in our lives is so long coming because men are terrified. So many men do not have the attention to detail required to do a good job. They don’t possess the grit to follow through on mundane tasks, work that is boring but essential. They prefer to light the fires and lose interest when it is time to put them out. It is the easiest thing in the world to go into battle, to give your all for a limited time. It is not so easy to barrel through 1000 years of history creating more than we destroy. Men know that women will do a better job than they do which is why they continually seek to undermine them and do their level best to maintain females as second class citizens. And there are no more terrified men than those of the Taliban. And of course it may well have been a better civilization, Dear Friends, if women had been the dominant species for the last chiliad.

  I think, Dear Friends, that adults should be treated like children. They should not be allowed certain toys until they are judged to be mature enough to play with them safely. We are not going to let a five year old loose on a motor bike. No that would be irresponsible. We are not going to allow a 12 year old to put up scaffolding on a building site.  If we did we would have an experienced adult check it. We would not allow children to play with guns and knives.  But weapons have become so advanced, so deadly, so indiscriminate that we allow clowns we wouldn’t allow to make us a cheese toastie to fire them off at people they don’t like. Thus an arrow in King Harold’s eye becomes a tomahawk missile in an Iranian girls’ school.

    Every manager, military leader, teacher, politician should not be allowed to fulfil their ambitions until they have been sequestered in a retreat for a decade during which time they are required to read the great philosophers, study economics, endure character building hardships, have a six month stint cleaning washrooms in a hospital for the mentally handicapped, should have days alone in the wilderness finding themselves and foraging for food and drink. At the end of their time they should have a probation period during which their character should be judged on its empathy, sympathy and kindness. Altruism should be a priority, humility and humble pie should be ever present. If they have hubris they should fail.

Morgenthau said that ‘whoever wants to maintain his moral innocence must forsake action altogether’. But, Dear Reader, we need people to act. We ourselves do not need to be especially courageous. We just need to vote. We just need to read more and use what we have read to discuss and debate. We need to call out evil and self-serving wickedness. We need to be Minnesotan in our street presence, not stand by and watch as idiots and thugs rule the streets.

You are very tolerant of my blogging, Dear Friends, so I will understand if you think I have lost the plot in these current scribbles.  But if that is the case, and I do tend to agree with you,  that the Davidson plot may well be lost, then it has to be said that there are bigger plot losers than me out there and they have started wars!

Thanks for reading.

                                      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.