Water Worlds

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

I MUST HAVE BEEN NO OLDER than five when I noticed the rain rushing down the driveway in my mother’s garden at such a volume that it could not be absorbed or carried away quickly enough to keep it from flowing into our garage. In Bermuda we had sudden rainstorms, often with extraordinarily violent thunder and lightning, and if the Island had been having one of its frequent droughts, the ground would be packed down as hard as concrete. All moisture would puddle and flow, absorption might happen gradually, and saturation would take a great deal of time.

And I crouched in my bare feet, in my Bermuda shorts, in our garage as several inches of water collected on the rough cement floor. The water, I recall rather well, was warm, and there were bits of sand in it. It had a slight texture besides that of pure flowing water. I found some pieces of wood, remnants from the roof beams of the garage (it had been only recently constructed to replace an open trellis with stephanotis vines on it that did nothing to protect the car), and tried to get them floating. Some were too heavy, some too thick, to sail about easily on my own private inland sea. Some, however, became ships and boats.

As the rainwater continued to drain into the garage, the currents within it would move my wooden ships about. No need for me to guide them with my hands. Like some sort of lazy god I could watch my creation work itself out. Some of the ships sailed safely to ports within the garage, others snagged on the uneven parts of the floor, and a few were carried right out of the garage door and down the driveway to the lower road behind our house.

Many of my Eldridge relatives have served in the Royal Navy. A cousin is an officer in what remains of Britain’s navy at this moment. It is worth noting he was on HMS Manchester last summer when she was sailing off the shores of Bermuda during Hurricane Igor, in case the Island needed help when the storm had passed. As it happened, no help was requested, and one assumes none was required.

The closest I have come to boating was a spell of rowing a relative’s punt (called Swampy) in Hamilton Harbour on a weekend. My plan was to build up my scrawny body. It did not help.

On my travels I have seen a good deal of water, salt and fresh. I have sailed across Lake Michigan on a car ferry to Beaver Island. I have driven up a fairly shallow stream in the mountains above Salt Lake City in a Ford Bronco SUV, which was hardly kind to Nature. One of the most incredible rainstorms I have witnessed was in Hurricane, Utah, in about 1994. That is a desert area, usually dry as a bone, where tumbleweeds rolled down the gravel-coated Main Street and orange dust blew about and coated everything the colour of the landscapes in John Wayne’s western movies. One afternoon I was in a car with a friend at the junction of Main and State Street and a microburst opened above us. We pulled over to the side of the road and slowly moved into the parking area outside a Taco Time fast food outlet. The world vanished as the rain poured onto the Hurricane Valley, and in a minute there was a foot of water on the roads and low-lying areas in the centre of town where we were attempting to shelter. If the water had been much deeper it might have been a flash flood, but it was able to move quickly enough to even lower ground at the south side of town. Still, it was rather exciting, rather frightening.

Having lived through several major hurricanes in Bermuda, complete with tornados and water-spouts and deluging rain, I can answer the frequent questions I get regarding the Bermuda Triangle with my general theory that it just happens to be a part of the western Atlantic that has frequent and often sudden storms, and it is a busy area for shipping and air travel. I’m almost certain that there are no more UFOs near Bermuda than there are anywhere else. Wind and rain happen, waves happen, things go down.

Last Wednesday we had a spectacular day. It was so bright and sunny, and fairly warm, that we took the dogs for a walk by the River Coquet. We even sat in the sun and talked about the sparkling light on the water in the River and out towards the Harbour entrance. The dogs ran about at the end of their longest retractable leads and returned with clean feet. The bank of the River has been under ice, snow or mud since last autumn. This was the first walk there since then.

Since Wednesday, we have had steady rain. It is snowing on higher ground, but we’ve only had some sleet on the coast. Howling winds. Dark skies. Wet footprints (dog and man size) in the hallway.

To summarise: Summer of 2011 was on 16 February this year, and it was lovely.

This afternoon we went to lunch at The Fleece Inn up in Alnwick. The landlord opened the doors at noon and had a coal fire going. On a cold, rainy day this was appreciated. It is an old pub, full of character. It happens to have a men’s toilet (the Americans might call it a restroom) for customers only (reads the sign) that is the most hideous public bog I have ever come across. The walls seem to be running with moisture, the urinal is along two walls with a stinking trough at one’s feet, and the red-tile floor is puddled. The single cubicle does not lock. I am rather surprised that a business would present itself so badly, even if it may be that most of the lads who use the toilet are off their faces and cannot focus on anything at all. I can only guess that the toilet is so ancient that it is “listed” and cannot be renovated or replaced; it is caught up, trapped, in history. I like history well enough, but I don’t care to paddle across a toilet’s floor to reach a smelly urinal. To use the cubicle, to actually sit on the commode, one would have to push on the door with one’s feet to keep it shut while one did one’s business.

I recommend The Fleece Inn, but do relieve yourself before you leave home.

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts,

or my thoughts the result of my dreams.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

It is a little after five o’clock in the evening. I woke twelve hours ago having a peculiar dream about North and South Korea. In my dream the North had finally lobbed some sort of nuclear bomb at the South. It has not been mentioned during the day, I’ve not watched the telly though. I imagine the booming wind and the rattling sleet on my windows at daybreak may have turned my dreams to thoughts of war, or my thoughts of war to dreams.

There's high, and there's high, and to get really high -

I mean so high that you can walk on the water,

that high-that's where I'm going.
George Harrison (1943-2001)

It’s full moon just now and the water in the Estuary is as high as I have ever seen it, perhaps a foot more and the road to Warkworth will be awash. The pastures on the other side of the road were puddled this morning, and are pond-like tonight.

The sky is dark as I write this, the rain is merciless. I know there’s a spring and summer out there. The snowdrops are up and blossoming, the daffodils are several inches high. We don’t really do crocuses up here, not the way they do in, say, Hyde Park. We will have wild bluebells and then the cultured plants. I usually invest in daisy-like seedlings and petunias. Most years I am inundated with flowers on my side of the courtyard.

One has to remember all that when it is this grim. In this Water World.

Tea and Therapy

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene (1904-1991)

IT IS MY HABIT, for better or worse, to hurry home from certain occasions and experiences that are interesting to me and to scribble hand-written notes on the subject and to write up conversations word-for-word. When it is convenient, I type the notes up and keep them as work-papers in my computer. Eventually, the particular event may be revisited. For me, this is a kind of therapy.

And so it happens that I have fifteen pages of typewritten notes created from impressions gathered at a November birthday party spent with about a half-dozen friends of mine, and a subsequent afternoon tea party in December to celebrate a book that one of the same group had just had published. This happened in 2002, and the notes have been waiting to see the light of day (and reason) for over a year. The birthday party will have to wait a while to be recreated, but the gathering of about twenty friends and acquaintances for a literary tea is about to go down on the printed page. I'll call it "Tea and Therapy" and hope to amuse.

[This article first appeared in Defenestration, an online literary magazine, in June 2004.]

You are going to meet some of my friends and a very odd therapist. If my lay friends are peculiar, and they really are, it is my experience that one of the strangest people I have ever encountered is a psychiatric therapist. More than a psychiatrist, this gentleman is a psychoanalyst, with, I imagine, a wall covered in diplomas and, I trust, a file full of "Thank You!" letters. My own therapist knows him, and recommends him as a colleague and an amusing personality.

I first met this curious fellow at a combined Christmas high tea and book launching, so let us go there now.

Several of my friends attended the party, and I've known the host - a Bermudian writer who specializes in local history books - since he wrote about the ghost that haunts a home my father lived in for a time. I had not appreciated that my friend, the writer, was in therapy. His guest of honour was his therapist.

When I walked into the rather grand old Bermuda home, I was met by the anxious author of the book being launched (or dedicated, autographed and handed out at least ... no books flew through the air) who warned me that I could not under any circumstances review his book in the newspaper. It was not because of my poor reviewing skills on other occasions; it was simply that the book was a personal effort, not for commercial sale or profit. Rather, a gift to the author's friends and, I think, selected family members.

The book featured family photographs with captions, the writer was identified and his picture shown on the cover. It seemed obvious to me that it was hardly a secretive document.

"It's about my sexual awakening," whispered the host.
"I see. I can imagine you don't want that reviewed!" I tried to create a bit of humour to lighten the atmosphere. Actually, I'm a bit of a smart-arse and I couldn't resist making the remark.
“A very limited number of copies and all will be handed out personally,” and he pointed to a cardboard box much bigger than a breadbin.

In a large room with an open-beamed ceiling and a blazing log fire in the hearth, the author started signing books from the box and passing them along to each of his guests, who were sipping tea, and nibbling finger sandwiches, slices of cake and dainty pastries.

Every adult at the party, and quite likely the two youngsters present, eventually received a copy of the book, autographed and personalized. Each recipient seemed to examine the cover, open the book to the dedication, flip to a page or two at random, and then would slip the book onto a side-table or onto the floor. There were no public or private readings aloud from the text itself, and the book was not openly discussed, if at all.

The dedication in my copy indicated that the writer appreciated my "wonderful messages", which the author had detected in my weekly newspaper column.

It is not my intention to review anyone's sexual awakening here, except to say this one detailed by my friend was loud to the point of having his neighbours at a noted boys’ boarding school banging on the walls and, apparently, was more than satisfactory for all concerned. As I am a bit hard of hearing, anything at increased volume gets my thumbs up!

Playing at being a therapist, I now sense that the book that I will not review was discussed with, and encouraged by, the author's own therapist. It reads like the revelations you might offer to your professional confidant and close friends, if not all your immediate family. The therapist had been invited to the tea for the wisdom and encouragement given the writer, and I don't think he had the meter running for the hour he spent with us all.

My friend with the tell-nearly-all book must have spent a fair bit of money for his therapeutic publication. It is a beautifully designed and printed hardcover effort. I rather liked the story too. The writer entertained his readers, added to the body of artistic literature in Bermuda, and had some therapy in the bargain, all under the watchful gaze of a psychoanalyst. And what a curious fellow this analyst turned out to be.

I was eventually introduced to the honoured party guest. A firm handshake, as you'd expect from a medical professional. He had his wife and two teenage daughters with him. I met them quickly, more handshakes and first names exchanged (and forgotten, I’m afraid).

"So you are Ross Eldridge?" asked the doctor. "I read your column in The Mid-Ocean News each weekend."
"Don't be put off by that," I replied. "I'm not such a mad or bad person in real life." (I forgot that one should never use the words "mad" and "bad" and "real life" around those in the psychiatric field.)
"But, Ross, you don't look at all like the photograph in the newspaper by-line." It's true, the photograph was many months old and I'd grown my hair longer and had quit wearing my reading glasses.
"It's me, it really is!"
"Is there a copy of this week's Mid-Ocean News here?" asked the doctor. There was. He looked at the newspaper and looked at me, and again at the newspaper. "It really doesn't seem to be you. Are you sure you don't write for another newspaper?"
And I thought to myself: "Here's a conversation to write down tonight!"

After that introduction, I sat on a sofa with my tea (in a cup and saucer that had arrived in Bermuda in a barrel of sawdust or flour on a sailing ship more than two centuries ago, which made my hands shake to think on) and noticed that our host-author was engaged in loud conversation with the wife of the psychiatrist. I could hear the words quite clearly. She was talking to my friend while listening absent-mindedly to a mobile phone held to her ear, and looking around at the party guests. That might indicate a broad mind, the kind I lack, the ability to multi-task.

"I say," she said to the author, "did you celebrate Hanukkah this year?"
"Well, no. This is my only party this month. It's for Christmas and, besides, I'm not Jewish."
"I understand. Hanukkah was very early this year."
One of the daughters gasped and asked, quite audibly, "Mummy-Darling, doesn't that mean Christmas will be early this year too?"
"I'm afraid so."
"So early! So early!" The young girl looked to be close to tears.
Her sister, however, turned to the analyst, asking, "Daddy, what jewels are you getting us this Christmas?"
"They will have to be rubies or emeralds, of course. It is Christmas after all!"
"I do so adore rubies, Daddy."
"For myself, I'm thinking of getting some star sapphires. One can get so lost in star sapphires. I might even have a diadem made for me." The analyst reached up and posed his fingers like a crown on his head.

I'd met quite a few therapists over the years, but never one like this. Of course, he was not sitting behind a doctor’s desk or alongside a couch on this winter’s afternoon. It seemed that psychiatrists might be people too. Weird people! The daughters, who I probably should not lampoon bearing in mind their ages and delicate sensibilities, then seemed to forget about jewellery and precious stones.

"We sat next to two virgins on the flight to Bermuda," one daughter informed us all.
"Yes, one was seventeen and the other twenty-five," chirped her sister.

At this point, I very nearly had to be a nosy reporter. "How," I wondered, "did they know these fellow passengers were virgins?" I restrained myself and figured that they probably simply asked, and were given clear answers to their rather personal questions. This sort of thing might not be strange in the First Class Cabin on British Airways.

The best part of an hour having passed, the psychiatrist and his family grouped together and prepared to take leave of the party, clutching their four copies of the book we'd received in a kind of Holy (or Unholy) Communion. Kisses and thanks were exchanged with the host; they were that kind of guests.

I thought the party would surely grind to a halt. Could a group such as this continue to function without a resident therapist? Yet, there were a few more public offerings and notes for me to take.

One guest was trying to convert an elegant young woman to the Animal Rights Cause. Cleverly, he used the description of the person stroking a warm bunny's fur to inform her how such things lower our blood pressure, get us in touch with nature, and benefit us in so many ways.

"Yes," replied the well-dressed woman, "I quite understand that. I have a fifty-two-inch mink coat and I love to stroke it." [I have a sudden memory of my blue, lucky rabbit's foot that I lost while on holiday at the seaside in England as a little boy. My luck never really recovered from that.]

The PETA activist immediately looked nauseous and almost speechless, and stuffed some angel-food cake into his mouth hurriedly with his stubby fingers. I know that eating is often a symptom and result of anxiety and distress for some of us. The man was somewhat overweight. "This needs hot custard! Hot custard!" and then there was a horrified silence.

When it came time for me to leave, my host whispered again the words he had inscribed in my copy of his book.

"I got the inspiration to write my story partly from some things I read in your newspaper column. I feel you are sending me messages. Thank you for the messages!" The host did not kiss me goodbye.
"I am not that kind of guest, or it is not that kind of party," I thought to myself. "But what do I know? I only write a newspaper column, not a tell-nearly-all book."

I'll mention all this to my own therapist.

Abstracts & Brief Chronicles

This I wrote in 2005, about a year before my grandmother died at the age of 104. She spent her last few years at the Westmeath Residential Home, shown above. This article appeared in FRESH YARN, an online magazine.

THERE WAS A MAN, a composer of poetry, without a chin. He had lost it to a cancer. He kept some of his mind, however, and recognized an opportunity when one came along.

My grandmother, at 103 years of age, watches the other residents of Westmeath slip away, and most go down in the elevator to the ground floor, and then out the back entrance. I think you know what I mean here.

The man, the poet, stayed on longer than most; he seemed a prisoner of the past in the present. He had passed around a book of some of his poems that he had written during a love affair that had ended unhappily eighty years earlier. In his present deformity, he could hardly read them aloud easily, assuming poetry is to be spoken, heard and perfectly understood. I never heard him try. He feared facing the public so damaged as he was, this poet, and his only excuse for using what was left of his face was a certain hunger that remained. There was no starving to death by choice or through circumstance, only hunger.

His craving never eased as he allowed himself to be caped and covered by a large, moisture resistant cloth, because no matter how carefully he spooned his food towards his throat, it tended to slip down from where his chin once had been. He didn't want help with his difficulties.

He would walk up and down the corridor in the Intermediate Wing, such a tall man, he had been in the British military and it showed. An officer, I believe, but I didn't see the obituary.

For a time, a contemporary of the poet with his own cancer came to visit him and they were able to converse quite satisfactorily. There is much to be said silently between friends. And the friend from the outside died first. After that, the poet often got lost. Which door on a corridor might be his room there on the upper floor? How many paces to get you to the place where you belong? Right turn? Left turn?

The poet's room at Westmeath had a view through a south-facing double window directly opposite the door to the corridor. He found his room on his own at times, more by luck than calculation. Often he would step into another room and be ordered out with a "Go to your own room!" When he did end up in the right place, he could go and look from his windows to see orange trees, oleanders and a jacaranda across the lawns and below.

One morning, the poet raised his window, pushed out the screen, and slipped away to the concrete below. He did not die immediately, but days later in the main Hospital. His was a big body, he'd kept himself active: upright posture, no bending over a cane or walker. He'd have needed to push very hard to go through the window, and to go quietly as well.

My grandmother was not sure who might have gathered up the poet's clothes. His late friend had been his only visitor. Copies of a slim volume of his love poems had circulated among the residents who were well enough to see them -- if not to understand the revelations and sentiments -- but the poems slipped away too. I am wondering if, when my grandmother moves along, we might come across the poet's work, tucked away in a bag or parcel, or below some underwear she no longer requires. She wears diapers now. Perhaps hidden with something of hers that we had not known about.

The residents at Westmeath do not discuss those who have gone down in the elevator a final time. Rather, there is an empty seat in the dining area for a day or two, and then a new face arrives that few notice. My grandmother is the only resident on that floor with a functioning memory. She tells me all the gossip. She knew her neighbour, the poet, had slipped away, and how. We spoke of him for no more than a minute, and then she moved on. I found I could not leave it behind that easily -- I've tried to write poetry myself -- and wonder if these words on this page will mark the point of a departure.

I've assured my family members that I will not write about them -- as if they really had important or necessary secrets -- in their lifetimes. I'm afraid of losing my own memory, or my ability to convey my words. Sorry, folks.

Since she turned ninety-eight, my grandmother has lived in Westmeath. Five years have gone by; we've observed one crisis of health after another, one departing face after another. This former grand home is a desirable residence for seniors, with monthly fees that suggest some luxury of food, excellent medical treatment, care-giving, and companionship. Of course, I would be correct in admitting that most of the residents haven't a clue where they are, many don't even respond to their own name being voiced. It might be wasteful to feed them anything but macaroni and baked beans. They do better than that.

My grandmother has lived on and kept her senses because, I believe, she has many visitors. She reads the newspapers, does jigsaw puzzles, and converses about politics and religion, and -- very reluctantly -- how it was to work as a child in a mill in Lancashire. The memories of the cobblestone streets of Harle Syke are not lost -- we can pick things up where we leave off, and go into details. Sometimes I have to draw her stories out. We are hearing of events that most of us, in her family, had not a clue about. I feel I must mark these, get them on the page.

It is the latest missing face in the dining room, noted succinctly, that gets left behind as my grandmother and I continue our own journeys back in time, and in the present whilst draped in a cloak, a patchwork of everything that has happened 'til that moment. We don't look far ahead; I have no idea if my grandmother has given my uncles her preferences for when her funeral comes. Around me, she wishes aloud that there were a crematorium in Bermuda. So do I. When she is tired or bored, I offer to open her bedroom window just as I'm leaving. I'm making a joke. She says: "Don't bother, it might rain." I leave smiling, and she waves me out. That's what you do at 103.

Another writer showed me some of his poetry this week. I had felt impressed to try and contact him after many years. He had been a long time friend of my parents, an employee of the same bank where my father worked, and a neighbour for forty years. His late wife brought flowers each week from their garden to my mother who had such bad luck with her own. I felt that if I did not see the man immediately, I would have to admit, head bowed, to the memory of the poet: "I didn't see you, old friend, while you lived among us, but now that you're dead I wish I had."

So, I telephoned the elderly man, now in his nineties, and quickly told him I was coming 'round to see him the next day, and gave him a time. I felt sure he'd have settled for a telephone call if I'd paused on the line, and I wanted to avoid that. I still wondered if he'd be at home when I turned up, or hiding away, not wanting to answer the door.

As children, we had visited the couple often, until the wife died, and I always went to the kitchen door -- in Bermuda it is unusual to use a front door, no matter how grand the occasion -- and rarely stepped inside. Rather, we might be offered a cold drink on the back patio and a look at the friends’ cats. This week, with one part of me in the past and another part a bit worried about the present, I went to the kitchen door. It was closed, but there was a doorbell, and I pressed on it. I heard the "pong" inside.

A voice called out my name, "Ross, you'll have to go 'round to the front door, the back one's jammed shut." I walked through the garden, noting how overgrown it was, and how the house was in poor condition. The shutters were closed, and had missing slats and hung crookedly, paint peeling off them.

The closed shutters were not all that surprising as our police force and security people now tell us that we should not only close and lock our homes when we leave them, but also when we are home. We should lock ourselves in. As a boy, I believe I could have walked in and out of two dozen houses in our neighbourhood without worrying anyone and not needing to force a lock. I could call out: "It's Ross!" without frightening anyone. I might be given a biscuit and a glass of milk, from a real bottle, milk with the cream on the top. If it looked like rain, I'd take the neighbours' laundry in from their clotheslines if they were not home, or were taking a nap from the humidity of a summer day in Bermuda.

I rang the bell realizing that I'd never been through the front door at the old friend's home. His wife grew African violets in the reception area so many years ago. Those did not interest me then, though it might have been an emotional moment to find them now. The main door opened, and I saw it had been pushed into the closed position by several large bricks wrapped in cloth on the floor. We got the door open, and the reception room had no plants at all in it. Things change, I thought. Shaking a very firm hand, I stepped into the darkened room.

I was offered several seats, as my host settled back into his own reclining chair. I sat near him, and directly faced him. I knew he was blind in one eye and had limited vision with the other eye. We both felt awkward, and I wondered what to say to get things going.

"How's your health these days?" was how I started. I'd noticed that besides his firm handshake, he was well-dressed in clean, casual clothes, and had nicely cut hair -- more than mine -- and a trimmed moustache. There was no odour in the room, and I know about those from visiting my grandmother in her upscale residence. There was no dust on the coffee table in front of me, but there were several boxes on it holding medallions and ribbons below glass lids. I knew enough to appreciate they had been awarded to my friend's wife by the Crown.

"I'll start at the top," he replied. And we got through headaches, dodgy hearing, a blinded eye, sore throat, tummy troubles and gall bladder surgery. That was as low as I wanted to go. I mentioned that he'd certainly trumped any aches and pains I might confess to. And then I asked how long it had been since his wife had died. He told me the exact date and time, 17 years earlier, and in the darkened room I noticed that the house was not furnished the way an elderly gentleman might do it.

Everything was set in its place, upholstery was worn and split, photographs and portraits on the wall remained from the days I'd seen them as a child -- old men with beards, now I noticed they'd been done when the subjects were much younger than I am now -- and the paint on the walls was peeling in sheets. Curtains slumped next to the shuttered windows.

Odder still, were several quite lovely cigarette boxes and lighters -- his wife had been a smoker, and died of cancer -- I wondered if the boxes might contain cigarettes still, 17 years later.

There was something different, unusual: The dining room table was heaped in bottled water containers. He offered me a drink: "Water or Sprite?" He explained he took a diuretic for his blood pressure and peed a lot and needed to replace the fluids. The water in the tank under his house was not potable, and he only used it for laundry and flushing. He used bottled water for everything else.

At that moment, he went off to pee and I opened my knapsack and took out a newspaper and slices of plain cake and fruitcake, and rested them near all the water bottles.

"What's this?" he asked at his return.
"Ah, I brought the newspaper, thought I'd read it to you if you wanted."
"Can you leave it for me?"
"Of course."
"Cake?"
"I figured you probably were told not to eat cake, and you could enjoy some."
"Oh, yes."

The spell was broken. We talked about old times, really old times, when their home was built a few months after my parents' place. Neighbours that we shared. We quickly realized nearly everybody of his -- my mother's -- generation on that street had now died. But we raised them up for an hour.

This old family friend revealed that he only went to the grocery store once every three weeks with a volunteer who took him in her car. I asked: "Fresh vegetables?" and he shook his head. "Many visitors?" and he shook his head again. I'd noticed a radio, but not a television. He listened, he said, to call-in radio shows. I told him that I found those too confrontational. I confessed to having a home computer, one nine years old now. "I mostly write these days," I offered. "It's a compulsion. I have to get things down on the page."

He reached over to a table at the side of his recliner and drew several pages from a yellow pad. He studied them carefully, put a few back and finally handed two pages to me.

"These are some poems I wrote recently." He explained. "Would you like to read them?"
"Of course, let's have a look."

They were written in impeccable handwriting, in ink -- he had been a bookkeeper at the bank so many years ago -- and two lines into it I realized they were comedic. The first was about his poor, worn out body with everything broken or bent or missing, and all written in clever rhymes, and going south of the gall bladder that we'd discussed earlier. He'd written it very recently. I was reminded of a famous gravestone that reads: "I told you I was sick!" Might it be Mark Twain? No, don't think so, but worthy of Twain.

The second poem was a commentary on the loss of innocence in Bermuda: Crime, gangs, fear, high prices, shortages, rude children and their rude parents, and endless industrial disputes. In the poem he had not written in so many words that he missed his wife, though as I read his couplets, I appreciated that he missed her more than anything else, but was glad she had not lived long enough to see these days. The house they had lived in - closed and shuttered against time, the master of all thieves - is still as it was the day she died, only the dust has been removed.

I did not offer to open any windows. This poet had almost completed his love affair with his wife; it was still evolving. When I left, returning another firm handshake, I warned I'd like to come back soon.

"Yes. That's OK, Ross," he said.
"Don't forget the cake."
"Oh, I won't!"

Walking out of his garden that was so unchanged, I passed the house my mother lived in for 40 years until her death in 1992. I knew it had been rebuilt. The house itself had been rundown but the land was valuable. The hedge of bougainvillea and hibiscus that I'd planted for my mother was now so high and thick that I could not see the house behind it. I saw some children's toys in the driveway.

And I walked to the bus stop. Feeling good about love.

And on the Eighth Day ... They Wrote it Down

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.
D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

ULTIMATE TRUTHS are those that we reject first of all. It is the Great Lies that one draws to one’s bosom and allows to burn there, a cold confusion, a universal counterfeit currency. I have seen young mothers whispering poisoned verses to their tiny, scarcely-formed children, held up to the crowd: “Tell them you know this [or that] is true.” Sometimes the little boy or little girl struggles and weeps, and refuses to speak, and must be put down to toddle back to its seat. There is wisdom. One hopes that the day or night will come when the child runs outside, stands below the sky, beneath creation, and listens not to its mother, but to all that it observes by eye, ear, taste or touch.

This week it has been reported that the Hubble Space Telescope is studying an enormous green blob in distant outer space. The news reports use words like “mysterious”, “bizarre”, “gigantic” and “strangely alive”, the panic headlines of a 1950s science fiction B-Movie.

The great green blob has a name: Hanny’s Voorwerp. The blob is the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, 650 million light years (each light year is six trillion miles, if you care) away from us, and it is giving birth to new stars as parts of the blob collapse and result in pressure enough to create stars. It’s mostly hydrogen gas swirling about from a close encounter with two galaxies, and is illuminated by a quasar, a bright object full of energy supplied by a black hole.

Ms Hanny van Arkel, a Dutch elementary school teacher, first spotted the phenomenon in 2007 while studying archived photographs. She says that the blob originally appeared to be a blue smudge; now it seems more like a vast green (wait for it!) dancing frog. If that worries you, take a deep breath, Ms Arkel has discovered that the frog not only has limbs, but eyes.

And there it is, creation observed over the past three or four years: A gaseous frog god named Hanny’s Voorwerp spewing stars, lit by a quasar powered by a black hole. If it had not been on the morning and evening news, one might have missed it. Worlds without end (or beginning). Amen.

Let’s talk about sexual creation. Hanny’s Voorwerp is a tale waiting to be told: grand green sex, but it is the business of the religious amongst us to sort that out; I just scribble on Post-it Notes and write a thousand or so words from time to time on what I might have seen or heard in the light or dark. I struggle free from my parent, and run outside in tears having not said: “I know this [or that] is true.”

The Ancient Egyptians were creative and inventive, and wrote things down. Their histories on the walls of their tombs and temples, and on papyrus scrolls that have survived the souvenir-hunting tourists and the uncomfortable, yet looting Victorian explorers, give varying versions of the creation of the Universe.

According to Egyptian tradition, the god Amun [also spelled Amen, Amon and Ammon] existed alone, all alone, in an aqueous sort of world before there were time and times. This First Being was described as an attractively-built, human-like male wearing a crown depicting a goat’s head. Amun’s symbol was the always randy, sexually insatiable ram. The eminent Victorian explorers, scientists and Egyptologists destroyed, damaged and hid references to the Amun creation cult. Here’s why.

Lonesome Amun created the universe sexually. He masturbated and ejaculated into his hand, drank his own semen and so impregnated himself. Following this monotheistic sexual act, Amun spat out Geb, the (male) Earth-God and Nut, the (female) Sky-Goddess, who then copulated heterosexually and produced the rest of the gods and their mortal offspring. That’s the way they saw it.

The Egyptian Pharaohs with their royal wives would re-enact Amun’s creation, the Pharaoh of the day would get inside a hollowed-out statue of Amun, including a hollow penis, and go to it.

You might find, in your research, that the First God was called Atum rather than Amun, and after ejaculating directly into his own mouth he spewed out Shu (male) and Tefnut (female), the rest of the story is the same.

The Egyptian priestly class was not the only one to act out the Creation Story. I myself have attended a session in a Mormon temple [in St George, Utah, if you care] which featured snakes and altars; Adamic-language chants; really strange, mysterious, bizarre clothing; signs and symbols (Mormon temples have been called the International House of Handshakes); lights and mirrors, washings and anointings. There are suns, moons and stars and many gods. This is called “Temple Work” and is considered to be surrogacy. One of the Mormon Holy Scriptures, The Book of Abraham from The Pearl of Great Price, was [Joseph Smith said] a translation from an Egyptian papyrus retrieved from the wrapping around a mummy in a travelling road-show. The Mormon Temple Ceremony is not quite as interesting as the Amun offerings would have been, but you are just as knackered after two hours of it.

We have scientists that postulate a creation from a Big Bang. From nothing to everything in almost no time at all (there being no time). This is akin to Amun, is it not? There are many religious folks who consider any form of science to be sinful. In fact, they consider anything outside the Christian Bible to be the work of the Devil. Never mind the Bible is convoluted, confused, contradictory and badly constructed. The latest translations have even destroyed the glorious language of the King James Version. Christian sects are at war with one another. A preacher threatens: “Tell them you know this [or that] is true. Or it’s hell for you!”

Run outside, boys and girls, and take your parents and grandparents. There are tadpoles falling from the heavens, and the sap is rising.

Living the Life I Lead

Well, I was happy here at home
I got everything I need.
Happy being on my own
Just living the life I lead.
Well suddenly it dawned on me
That this was not my life.
So I just phoned the airline girl
And said: “Get me on flight number 505.
Get me on flight number 505.”
The Rolling Stones (Flight 505)

YESTERDAY A FRIEND WROTE TO ME (put your hands up, Richard) suggesting (with bleak January not so many hours away) I start my autobiography (to write it, not read it, for it has remained hidden from you and me). If that were not enough, I might also begin a novel. January could be awfully busy.

One has come across the remark: "Each of us has a book within us." I don’t believe that, not for a moment, and the proof is in the pudding (as they say). How many novels by driven (if uninspired) writers are clearly over-egged? One could spend January making a list.

Allow me to confess (sorry, Richard) that I do not have a storybook in me, not at either end. Novels should be, I’m thinking, new somehow. The novels that do haunt my mind are those that I have read, and they retain their novelty years, indeed decades, after I have read them. The Waves belongs to Virginia Woolf, and water carried her away, but not her words; Island is the optimistic child of Aldous Huxley (that novel altered my life in 1967, everything changed as I read the last paragraph); The Magic Mountain came on loan from Thomas Mann, a trip to the snow and the consumptive death there; André Gide’s Fruits of the Earth has nourished me without being diminished; DH Lawrence gave me (and you) Women in Love and he stands in the room watching me when I read it, or think of it, a bloodied handkerchief at his lips.

I have come across would-be novelists, wordsmiths, who seem to write to a formula. (The oddest goal was to write an entire novel of 50,000 words in the calendar month of November just gone. I wondered whether there might be a 20,000 word short story of some brilliance, or a 90,000 word oeuvre that was sidelined in the cause of high speed bad art.) I do understand the need to write, the need dictated by the necessities of life (food and electricity), having written a newspaper column and also having played at being an art critic some years back. In the more distant past, I tended to write the bulk of our grammar school newspaper (Quid Novi) that I edited; bulk being a good word to describe my contribution (ballast would work as an appropriate word too).

Not all writers can be dismissed on the basis of their writing schedules. One hears of noted, successful authors who go to the office (as it were) at a certain time each day. I believe Roald Dahl would head for a shed at the bottom of his garden and put in his hours. Virginia Woolf wanted a room to herself where she could stand at an elevated desktop. I hope those that shut a door behind them and in their secret (the Mormons would say sacred) chamber weave wonders do not force the pen or pencil across an unwilling page, or type for the comfort of the clattering keys; I hope that the Roald Dahls have heard a voice (and only when it wanted to be heard, not when its source was having its bottom pinched).

When we remember we are all mad,

the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

There are writers who come by their gifts in ways that everyday boys and girls might not wish to share. I have read the words, the beautiful words, words tending to degrees of genius, that are the silver linings to lives (some wit noted that every silver lining has a dark cloud) that most of us would attempt to run away from (or to escape by way of spirits and substances and transcendental obfuscations). These are not writers with a word-quota (1,666 a day in November, damnit), but with a struggle for being, and are wrestling with all the angels that life can fling down on them. These are the creators of words, chapters, stories, poems, plays that nearly break my heart (perhaps they really do break my heart, nothing nearly at all) when I see their flesh and blood sacrificed represented on the page (and no God to stay the knife).

No (Richard), I shall not write a novel, starting in January. A biography then? In my case, if I could conjure up the words of my life, they would be delivered in the mouths of so many ghosts. I try to live my live in the present day (Buddha said we should not dwell in the past or think of the future), however, my ghost-writers would be hard to avoid if I was looking at my personal story from “In the beginning...” My Mother, dead over 18 years, might materialise as I sit at my desk (or on the sofa, or when I’m struggling to sleep), reminding me, as I see her eyes wide and lost under her glasses, that there is madness in me; my Father, who passed away in early 1996 could pop up (wearing the naff smoking jacket, cravat and smoking a pipe that made him an embarrassment for me) with the details of my conception and nativity (thank Christ!); my much-loved Nan Eldridge, taken by the cancer almost 35 years ago, may suddenly pour me a tiny glass of sherry, ask if I have a spare tab, and relate the family history that her father told her in 1910. (I know people who see and hear visions; one thinks himself a simple psychic as he deals daily with very real dead people. A psychiatrist would have a longer name, difficult to spell, more difficult to understand, for the would-be psychic. I think all apparitions are real, even if one might put a hand through one’s late brother to reach a glass of spirits at the bar.)

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz (1951-)

In my writing, the blog entries and the smart-arsed remarks on Twitter, I do try to stay close to the now, even if I’m here and there. I worry that the real current life is no better revealed than in our shopping lists (I needed cranberry juice yesterday, and Brie cheese, and this, in algebraic form, actually tells me a great deal about my life on Wednesday, 29 December, 2010). “There’s more to life!” (than my diet lemonade and lettuce). How many writers, real and hack, have said that? But it is true. Pushing through the old ghosts, my life is rolling along in the books I am reading. I usually read three or four books, not at the very same time, but I pick up the story that best suits my mood in the hour and might best stimulate my mind. Yesterday I was in Germany in 1943, the British and Americans were dropping bombs, and ragged Jews were struggling on foot to take showers at Dachau; today I was on board the Pequod in search of that most famous of whales (the little children would say: “Free Willy?” And I would say: “Dick! Moby Dick!”).

My ghosts appear (I suppose I’m looking like an Ebenezer Scrooge now) and remind me that the males of a generation of my family, known to me personally, fought the Germans in World War Two (I ask them if they feel comfortable with Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the annihilation of Dresden, for I do not from the supposed security of 65 years). And my Great-Auntie Maud, in her wonderful Lancashire accent brings back to me the memory of clambering aboard a nineteenth century sailing ship on the front at Morecambe when I was very young, and the ship, built for a movie, was called “Moby Dick”. (If it had been named Pequod the average tourist walking along the promenade would most likely not have made a connection, would not have found the three pence for the ticket to climb up the steep gangplank.)

Last night I read a number of poems that a friend has written over recent years. I immediately realised that many had a subtle musical underpinning. There was beat, there was movement, there were highs and lows, and all done with words. I’d love to write poetry. Virginia Woolf told her nephew, and others, that things did not become real until one wrote them down. She suggested poetry. Looking back on my life, there are many musical songs (poems, if you like) that mark the path on which I have travelled. (Not with breadcrumbs, the birds have not misled me.) The Beatles turned me on.

My family members tend not to be long-lived, and good physical health seems to avoid us like the plague. My parents died young. One of my real passions is genealogy (combining my love of family traits, family connections, culture and history itself) and so often one sees Father and Mother having ten or more children, and six die. Several times they try to hold on to a daughter named (for example) Mary, and each one withers within a year or two. (I’d have been superstitious and would not have used the names of the dead over and over; the next Mary would be Eliza instead or Hermione.)

Looking at my family tree (which is actually better described as a fairly large computer file on over 1,800 relatives going back a thousand years in some lines), I wonder at the lives cut short by disease, accident, poverty and over-work. My great-grandfather James Henry Proctor was sent to work in the mill at age nine because he was a tall child and could fool the mill owners into thinking he was eleven, and he was dead before he was 50. One morning, early, my great-grandmother, Sarah, called down the stairs to her daughter: “Elsie, bring some brandy, your Daddy is dying.” The brandy was not to attempt to resuscitate James Henry, or to alleviate his pain and fear of the dying he was busy with; the brandy was for my great-grandmother. Happened that Elsie became my grandmother and lived to be 104, more than twice her father's age at death.

There is a great deal of artistic ability in both sides of my family, I have several cousins who paint, makes films, act, design and photograph in ways that I’d love to. (Perhaps my spell as an art critic was my attempt to stand with them?) But how many brilliant painters (or writers, or musicians) in my family have died young (usually without having had families of their own)?

Life is precious. To be a bit strange (I am permitted that, because I’m quite mad, as the Cheshire Cat would say: "We are all mad here!") one is something of a bivalve mollusc, an oyster. One might be rather rough on the outside (or at least feel that way), yet be smooth, iridescent, exquisite inside, and some have a pearl, the result of dealing with a tiny parasite, some have pearls forced upon them. Some pearls are beautiful, many are not so judged, but the oysters have all dealt with the irritant within their shells, amidst their soft tissues.

And another ghost whispers something that I’d quite misplaced (not forgotten, obviously, because here it is) for a lifetime: My two sisters had matching clothes for special occasions, like Easter Sunday church services, dresses with uncomfortable crinolines to make them stand out nearly like ballerinas’ tutus. Little straw bonnets. And pearl necklaces that were not complete, but were added to on occasion. Certainly the clothes were soon outgrown, perhaps given away to a relative or a thrift shop, but where did the pearls go? The oysters’ hard work.

Well, I sat right there in my seat.
Well, feeling like a king.
With the whole world right at my feet.
“Of course I'll have a drink!”
Well, suddenly I saw
That we never ever would arrive.
He put the plane down in the sea.
The end of flight number 505.
The end of flight number 505.
Alright.
The Rolling Stones (Flight 505)

Oscar Wilde said, perhaps a little cruelly, but he did almost everything for a laugh and cruelty is a common cause of laughter: “Youth is wasted on the young.” Looking at that, I can say that it is only now, when I’m getting on in years, that I can see all the good things of my (often difficult, troubled) youth. And when one looks back, one’s youth is always just behind us. My youth was last night. I was wonderfully youthful. I intend enjoying my youth tonight, and will hope that it seems delightful when I struggle awake on the (most likely) bone-chilling morning of the last day of 2010 ... tomorrow. My alarm is set for 6.30am.

Purple Lights & Prophets' Promises

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
André Gide (1869-1951)


A YEAR AGO I MADE FUN of the public Christmas decorations in the village, in particular the lights on our main street which were outshone by the sign at Euro-Pizza; the parade to mark the holiday season also seemed unusual to me with its escort of heavy motorcycles and Alice in Wonderland theme.

It was too cold and chucking rain on the night of this year’s parade and I stayed inside. Our community newspaper reports that a good crowd turned out to watch a Cinderella-themed trek down Queen Street, again with the motorcycles, and drummers. Santa Claus (as we now must refer to Father Christmas) was in Amble’s new ice-cream parlour at the far end of Queen Street, an encouragement to the children to ignore the ghastly weather, struggle down to Spurreli’s, and place their gift orders with the Bearded One. Ho! Ho! Ho!

We are having a brutal winter up here in God’s Country again this year, and it has been looking a lot like Christmas for over a month. Not exactly like Christmas in the mountains above Salt Lake City (I’ve been there, done that, several times) where vast quantities of snow, dense fog and mind-numbing temperatures are handled fairly easily. Here in our frozen north, everything tends to grind to a halt as the first flurries begin. I think that Northumberland could do with some free enterprise when it comes to ploughing the snow from the side roads (it’s all narrow country lanes up here) and car parks. In Salt Lake City, people with trucks and tractors would attach ploughing devices and head off to make a few dollars. I went with a friend to clear some parking areas at Mormon chapels in SLC, and experienced the worst motion sickness I’ve had before or since; but there are people who enjoy that sensation (the same people who enjoy Disneyland’s rides, I think).

There’s a tree, barren of leaves, but well-lit by silvery fairy lights just outside my front door and twenty-five yards over to the right. It’s rather attractive, and I do not know if it is a public display or provided by the householder next to the tree, but it greets everyone coming into Amble from the north, from Warkworth. There’s a bench below the tree and I suppose a hardy soul could sit there and enjoy the glitter overhead. Well, there’s a foot of snow on the bench, so a very hardy soul with thick trousers.

The overhead lights on Queen Street are new this year, and are purple. Small, purple and plentiful. I have been walking Cailean after dark (which is not that late in the afternoon just now, think three o’clock) to the Town Square at the bottom of the street, with the world somehow transformed by the bluish colours above. Other lights are attached to the first floor outside walls on Queen Street, in most cases above shop-fronts. Several of our shops have lovely displays in their windows which can still be seen at about 3.30pm as the businesses are open. Shutters tend to come down at five and the village world is less beautiful.

Our pavements are not always clear of ice, and the snow on the road gradually gets filthy and shifted up onto the pavement’s edges, narrowing any pathways. One must walk most carefully. I plod along hardly lifting my feet. Cailean, in his dark blue or tartan overcoat pads along quickly on short dachshund legs. By the time we get home he’s shivering and his underside is very grubby. I’m cold as well, no matter how many layers I’ve dressed in, and even my sturdy shoes are soggy and need to go by the fire. For all that, we are enjoying our walks in the purple world.

When I went to get my fibre-optic Christmas tree out of the cupboard in the back porch a week ago I found it below no end of boxes, bags and bits of furniture. That cupboard is a catch-all. So I decided to empty the cupboard, remove the tree in its box, and then restack things neatly. And I did all that, in a little over an hour. There’s no heating in the back porch and it was not exactly pleasant work. My cupboard is now as tidy as one could get, the tree in its box is still in there, on top of everything; I was so tired that I couldn’t be arsed to take it out and assemble it. I’ve settled with arranging my greeting cards around the fireplace in the front room. Perfectly happy with that, I am.

There is a tall brass standing lamp with a very large pink shade in my front room. It looks like something I imagine a Victorian whorehouse might feature. This is conjecture; I’ve not been in a Victorian whorehouse. But one sees films. With the lamp lit the room glows pink. The electric fire is disguised as a coal oven, and that gleams nicely. With the greeting cards along the hearth, on the mantelpiece and around a large mirror, the room is very seasonal. If my curtains are open, there’s usually snow flying around outside and icicles hanging about. Yes, it works rather well.

I have put up some lights. This meant that I had to stand on the one chair with a flat, fairly hard seat; not something I like doing as I do not enjoy heights, ladders, wobbling and reaching. Two days ago my overhead light fixture in the bathroom suddenly made a popping noise, and one of its three bulbs went dark. A few hours later a second bulb blew. Now my bathroom is in the centre of the flat, and there is no window to the outside. There are no electrical outlets; one could not even take in a small lamp in an emergency. It is always like midnight in there! In the past I’ve only been able to get the particular bulbs from a shop up in Alnwick, so I was wondering how I’d manage that in the ice and snow. However, I was plodding past a little shop in Amble that sells electrical goods (radios, hair-dryers, clocks and TVs) and thought to go in. The shopkeeper now has light bulbs and (Hallelujah!) had the very kind I needed. A secular prayer answered?

I headed home with my bulbs (I bought extras, the darn things seem to burn out every six months) and got out my chair. A few unsteady minutes later my lights were up and the bathroom was well-lit once more. No peeing or shaving in the dark!

Yesterday the electricity went off all over the village. The snow was falling heavily and the roads had not been ploughed or gritted, and few cars had even tried to navigate them. Coast Guard, fire and hospital ambulance vehicles crawled past the flat, a helicopter was overhead somewhere, sirens going off. Despite the falling snow and cold, suddenly the street outside was heaving with people on foot heading down the hill after the emergency crews. Hours later the lights came on again, but I have not been able to discover what the brouhaha was all about.

For some, this is a most holy season. I grew up singing carols and Christmas hymns at grammar school and in church. We usually had a tree in the living room, and we had dodgy lights on it; if one burned out, they all switched off. Which was the bad bulb? An hour to try every last one.

Christmas Eve was reserved for a family meal. The turkey tended to be dry and for some reason we had nasty tinned Danish hams. A sherry trifle (without the sherry) was usually served for dessert. When I was in my mid- to late-teens I used to attend a candle-lit service at St Paul’s (Church of England) with friends at midnight on Christmas Eve, usually fortified with eggnog. Gifts were opened early on Christmas Day. We always had a tin of Quality Street chocolates. Christmas Day meant The Queen's Speech on the telly. Boxing Day meant more visiting with family.

I hardly think of Christmas in a Christian context now. I’m not really alone in that. I’m fairly sure not one of my greeting cards has featured a Nativity scene this year. I have had several dogs wearing Santa hats, which Cailean appreciates.

I think there’s no Christian church or sect that holds strictly to the belief that 25 December is the actual day on which its Jesus was born. The Mormons, I think, say it’s on their magical 6 April. If one believes the Bible (and I cannot say I do now) the indications are that Jesus was born in the spring.

It would be nice to mark the season as a time of peace. The birth of the Prince of Peace if you wish; though the Bible has him saying (prophetically, accurately) that he was not bringing peace, but a sword. Looking at today’s headlines, we seem further from peace than ever. The bright lights might well be explosions in the East.

Here’s a lovely bit of Shakespeare (Richard II, Act II, Scene IV):

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change;
Rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap,
The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
The other to enjoy by rage and war:
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

Shakespeare seems to have sad tidings, little comfort and joy. Despite that, the words he uses are exquisite. Little purple lights above a cold, dark street.

What to do? Back to André Gide:

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Today, at the Demonstration ...

DUKE OF AUMERLE: Where is the duke my father with his power?

KING RICHARD II: No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

William Shakespeare (Richard II. Act III, Scene II)

WE HAVE HAD SOMETHING OF AN UPRISING here in England as students faced with university fees increasing threefold have painted banners, hitch-hiked, rented buses and otherwise found transportation to the main cities. London, of course, has been at the top of every protestor’s list; in particular the area of London, Westminster, near the Houses of Parliament.

A few weeks ago rioting students smashed their way into the headquarters of the Conservative Party. Watching the television coverage (Today’s riot will be shown from early afternoon until the evening, with little or no commercial interruption...) it seems to me that glass doors and windows can be smashed, demolished, breached rather easily. There seem to be a good many scruffy lads in hoodies and balaclavas taking to the streets with tins of spray paint, rather than fountain pens and artists' HB pencils, and the means to make hand-sized missiles from larger blocks, and to create flaming torches, which can be pitched at the overwhelmed lines of police. Some of these “students” have managed to get interviewed on the major television networks, out on the battle lines. Curiously, some speak little English, and rather than challenge the Government on its Education policy, they’ve ranted about the Middle East and Afghanistan. I cannot imagine this sort of behaviour being tolerated in the USA. Let’s not import anarchists!

Last week’s pitched battle in Parliament Square featured a good deal of damage. Winston Churchill’s statue in the Square was defaced. Up in Whitehall the Cenotaph was also desecrated; one of the thugs has been arrested and charged and he turns out to be the son of one of our more famous rock musicians. His eloquent apology, so heartfelt and beautifully phrased that I imagine the finest (most expensive) lawyers wrote it, was issued within a day. He claimed not to know what the Cenotaph was. As every city, town and village has a war memorial, and the Cenotaph in Whitehall is the focus of national attention every year in November (so just a few weeks ago), I find it remarkable that a university student could be so blissfully ignorant concerning its identity and purpose. During last week’s goings-on, the national Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square was attacked, and attempts made to set it on fire. Then Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, were set on in their car on the way to the theatre. Mobsters yelled: “Off with their heads!” The Prince has armed escorts, but no shots were fired. I imagine that sort of restraint would not be found in many cities of the world. Put President Obama’s children in a car in Washington DC and have dozens of thugs smash at it, and poke through the window, and spray paint about ... I’d not expect a royal wave. Security would take out the perpetrators.

Now, I sympathise to some extent with our university students, but the fees they are going to have to pony up are far less than those that students in, say, America do. I’m interested in scholarship opportunities. I’d rather see working class, but intelligent and determined boys and girls in our great universities than rich kids with parents who sit on the boards of our corporations who are in Oxbridge to party and punt and poke fun of the lower orders in footlights productions. The best, and not necessarily the wealthiest, should rise to the top.

I am in favour of peaceful protests. I know the temptation to play to the television cameras is overwhelming, and the youngsters probably feel strongly about the War in Afghanistan (Britain is broke, we hear day after day, yet we can pour money into a losing battle for a distant land with little but sand, scrub and opium poppies to offer us), but let’s talk about what the day’s banner is highlighting. I’d go to an anti-war rally and march under that banner. I cannot multi-task so well, the banner could get too large.

As our economic crisis and the increasing cuts in government funded programmes, and huge job losses, are felt, I expect the workers will join the demonstrations. We may be seeing only the beginning of a long, hard winter. Seems to me that if people dislike our governing parties, the Coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats, we should be getting rid of them at the ballot box, starting in the villages and towns, and then the counties and if parliamentary seats can be freed up for new elections by disenchanted electorates, that’s fine.

So, that’s a picture-postcard of Britain as Christmas 2010 approaches on icy feet. And I wondered what quotation I might use. One always associates King Richard II with a disenchanted populace. Richard II was born in 1367, became King at the age of about 10, and had to deal with the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 when he was just a lad of 14. I dare say, as do the historians, Richard had a fair bit of help in putting down the Revolt. He actually gave in to many of the demands of the peasants and their noble supporters, but a few years later he got his revenge on everyone he could. Richard II was the first of our kings (and hardly the last) to be convinced that he was King by the Grace of God. He had a bit of a superiority complex.

Richard’s peasants were up in arms over three sets of Poll Taxes imposed to fund unsuccessful overseas wars (in Europe). Richard married the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, King of Bohemia, and started sending considerable amounts of money, raised by taxes, to his father-in-law’s causes in Europe. An EU of the 1380s, if you like.

Of course, if you’ve read your Shakespeare (and Richard II is a popular live production as it has some glorious speeches) you will know that in 1399 King Richard was overthrown by Henry Bolingbroke who declared himself King Henry IV, as one does. Richard, who had been something of a gourmet, who was fond of new and interesting foodstuffs, expanded the Palace kitchens and even commissioned a cookbook, was, after his abdication, a bit of an embarrassment and a focus for enemies of the new King Henry IV, and was gaoled and starved to death. Dead in 1400 at the age of 33. He did not lose his head. He eventually was buried in Westminster Abbey with his wife. They’d never had children.

If you are demonstrating in Parliament Square, you should notice Westminster Abbey over to one side. I suggest you go in the Abbey at the end of the day, you may be able to go inside for free (even more likely if you can persuade the doorkeepers that you’re going to attend evensong). Get yourself a guide and find the tomb of King Richard II. Pop round to Poets’ Corner too, and look up at the monument to William Shakespeare, who oversees all, and appreciate that it is probably Shakespeare who we should thank for our perceptions of King Richard II and the difficulties he had with his subjects, both high and low born.

Shakespeare worked hard, came from a fairly humble family but worked at his schooling. He phrased his opinions in words that we hug to our breasts 400 years later. He rose to the top.

Go to the demonstration, speak well (and learn how to do that, it can be done at home and at the public library), and deserve our support and respect. Represent us well.

At the end of the day, when night is darkest, we will all be gone. Our marks on the earth will dissolve and fade. Perhaps a few words will linger on for a thousand years (The Holy Bible and Valley of the Dolls come to mind). The best we can do, should do, is to teach those coming up after us to be an ensample, to create history from our footfalls.