Glad All Over

Thousands of thunderous claps

About a recent graduation day I’ve got little to say. Neither has Sally. Those who know us, know how profoundly proud we are of both our daughters. But this day… oh, on this graduation day… there was such a realisation… oh my… And I’m feeling Glad All Over.

Don’t mention the….

And the Vice-chancellor mentioned the pandemic and used Hashtag Hero Tropes (LOL). But she did avoid mentioning the (historically unprecedented) forthcoming strikes by health professional (and many other hard-working groups of people.) Wasn’t it funny how the government helped settle the lawyers’ strike in October with very little press attention? (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) Wasn’t it funny how MPs received a no-dispute, guaranteed 2.7% increase? Wasn’t it funny how big industries paid bonuses to their shareholders? Wasn’t it funny how PPE contracts were awarded to…. Oh, shut up. What's most important?

Looking the other way

There are people who spend countless hours gnashing teeth because of some royal nonsense (and I’m a royalist, don’t forget) because the newspapers want us to focus our rage on celebrities and not on government decisions (or lack of decisions.) The government (and the majority of the newspapers) want us to focus on Meghan and Harry. So we will forget food banks, child poverty, the rotting fruit and vegetable fields of England and the understaffed, underfunded social care system and understaffed, underfunded NHS. Look the other way, everybody. We’re in this together. But just because it’s my blog, please see below:

• the Brexit bus promise (lest we forget) (LOL)
• UK hospital beds compared to Germany, France, Italy, Spain (2005 – 2019)
• a right-wing newspaper doing my statistical work for me
• UK Food Bank use (just Trussell, not independent) (2009 – 2022)
• MP’s salaries (2010 – 2022)

I’m Glad All Over for my Echo Chamber, but Distinctly Unglad for our (Potentially) Great (Diminishing) Nation.

Graphs: hospital beds, food bank use in UK, MP's salaries over time

Self-Isolation Birthday

Of Mice and Men

Wise poet Robbie Burns observed in 1785 that it is a shame when little mice construct their shelters, carefully, lovingly – but unwittingly – in the path of the plough. And so I, dear reader, had planned for my 61st birthday to be at Castle Garden in Sissinghurst staying in the Priest’s House with the family. (If I’m still blogging and you’re still reading in the Spring of 2023, pop back to hear all about it.) Any road up, last year, I was condemned by government regulations to spend my 60th birthday outside and this year I have mostly been having Covid….

Faint line (top left) day one and not so faint (top right) day two

With fevered apologies to Craig David

Was it for real? Damn sure

What was the deal? Let me update

Sunday a tickle or two

Then got a lottta hotter on Monday

A faint line – so fine – real deal so hit me with a PCR

Results by Tuesday – possessed by heat and coughs

Smooth talker Covid they told me

They’d love to unfold me all night long

Cheesegrater throat and hacking hawking

From back to front I flipped it back

And breathed it big

Wednesday was a hell but

Thursday felt more me
Friday was my birthday and love came down the line
And stood at the end of my garden table
We chilled on Saturday and hope to do the same through Sunday

Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Until isolation ends on Thursday....

Last supper with taste and smell for a while....

Unlucky for some
Having been the most cautious person I know since March 2020, I feel as if the Tories’ confusing and contradictory strategy was designed – specifically and personally – to smite me just when I was about to relax. I’m double vaccinated (thanks, NHS) so have been fortunate and I hope I’ll have some natural immunity for a time at least. And I have a loving support system so had a smashing birthday anyway. Smell and taste seem to have departed (hopefully for a short time) but thankfully not before I enjoyed delicious stuff on the day of my nativity. I was also allowed to control the remote so resorted to an old comfort watch with the (to me) magnetic Vanessa Redgrave. The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, but as Robbie Burns points out, mice have it easier than men because they don’t know their ultimate destination…. Here’s to a few more birthdays, wee, timorous beastie!

Coral

Garden Cottage at Nun Monkton

Garden Cottage

For our (Coral) wedding anniversary we returned to a tiny AirBnB where we stayed in 2019 (when visiting the Yorkshire Heart Vineyard). The oasis “Garden Cottage” is not far from York along a road going only to a remote village where cows graze freely on the village green, a green skewered by the fattest, tallest maypole I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few, madam. Nun Monkton is the name of the village. The garden hummed with insects and wrapped us in its verdant peace. The dawn chorus was full of beauty.

Alice Hawthorne Inn

Alice Hawthorne

Nun Monkton is also home to the Alice Hawthorne Inn where we ate two nights in a row, the first with long-while friends, Sue and Brian. Stoked by delicious food (Crab Mayo, Roast Beetroot, Popcorn Prawns, Yorkshire Dales Lamb, Waterford Farm Steak, Sticky Toffee Pudding, Crème Catalan, Mini Sundae), the venue felt safe and welcoming.

Beningbrough Hall Estate

In The Moment

Our anniversary hike was around the nearby Beningbrough Hall Estate, alongside the River Ouse for much of the time, picking over gnarly roots and picnicking on tree stumps. Cooling forest sections on the walk provided welcome shelter. The house had an indoor exhibition (In The Moment: the art of wellbeing) aimed at reminding viewers to stand and stare, to pause, to slow down, to reflect, to be in the moment. Some of the pieces achieved that (for me) more than others but, on a hot day, it certainly slowed down the old heart rate.

Food and Nature

Amidst medical/political uncertainty and the competing noises of the media, some constants Remain True. The sights, sounds, smells and colours of nature continue to enchant. And eating, drinking and being merry all continue to drown out the stresses of the age. The messages about the “roadmap” towards “Freedom Day” Remain Confusing: Be Free/Be Cautious, Be Released/Continue Shielding, Do/Don’t/Maybe Wear Masks, Do/Don’t/Maybe Socially Distance, Go on holiday to a Red/Amber/AmberPlus/Green/GreenPlus Country/Staycation in the UK but Don’t Go to A Crowded Place (unless it’s a nightclub), Go Anywhere/Go Certain Places Sometimes/But Don’t Go There (small print = we might change the rules overnight and we’ll bury our heads in the sands about the understaffed, underpaid, overwhelmed NHS until we “beg” private companies to swoop in with greedy shareholders….)  But Nature and Food Remain True. And so do New Arrivals.

New Kid(s) On The Block

Welcome Earnest, my latest great nephew. Welcome Gertrude Jekyll, our climbing rose. Welcome Gabriel Oak, our potted rose. New things happen. Children grow. Roses bloom. Another day begins.

Three Resolutions

The weasel in the garden

And 2021 has begun. I resolve to Keep Walking and Keep Creatively Visualising images like the one above and the one at the end of this post. And I Resolve to only check on the news once a day. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Winter sun. Flurries of snow. Wintery frost. Lockdown Three Point Zero. Rising Covid cases, hospital admissions and deaths. As Reignier says in Henry VI Part One

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.

This is a Shakespearian line that should be tattooed onto the UK government’s eyeballs. For the best part of the last year, life-saving decisions have been slow, many have been contradictory and, from the week of Cummings-gate, have been interpreted to suit everyone’s own circumstances because that was the lesson learned from BoJo’s support of the weasel in the Rose Garden. Hopefully the newest campaign to take Covid seriously will make an impact and bring down cases. Time will tell.

The coward on the hill

The President of America, in the dying days of his reign of misinformation, vulgar speechifying and inconsistently perverse decision-making, has incited a crowd of his supporters to invade and riot in the Capitol building leaving (to date) 5 dead bodies, broken glass, stolen goods, vandalised furtniture, and a (future) string of court appearances and prison sentences Although Trump shouted “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…. I know everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building…” he only meant a “royal we” and “everyone” didn’t include his own bloated orange self, so he sent his supporters into notoriety and infamy as he returned, I imagine, to put his feet up on a padded cushion in the White House and eat a cheeseburger and pretend he was innocent.

Cartoon by John Shakespeare for The Age

The rebel without a plan

As ever, something in Shakespeare nagged at me and I realised it was Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two inveterately boasting and inciting a mob. Even though his promises to the angry and starving peasants are impossible, the promises are still effective at rabble-rousing the mob to march and, of course, many are killed.

Valiant I am…. I fear neither sword nor fire…. When I am king, as king I shall be…. I thank you good people…. I will make myself a knight…. Burn all the records of the realm…. My mouth shall be the parliament…. I must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art…. Thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb…. Away with him – he speaks Latin!.... Take him away and behead him…. I’ll defy them all…. (Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two)

Jack Cade's rebellion

The gardener with a pruning sword 

But Jack Cade’s life becomes (like Trump’s is likely to be), not a bang but a sad whimper away from the crowds. The witness to Cade’s death (indeed his unwitting executioner) realises who Jack Cade is as he dies and calls him “monstrous traitor” and ends the scene with a grim final action:

Hence I will drag thee headlong by the heels

Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave….

Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.

The identity of Jack Cade’s nemesis is – future High Sheriff of Kent in history, working class gardener in Shakespeare’s play – Alexander Iden – an English spelling of Eden…. Let’s hope 2021 becomes more of an Eden than 2020. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News.

An Edenic Future Visualisation using snapshots of the past

That Was The Year That Was

What do I know?

As screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride) wrote in his 1982 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade

Nobody Knows Anything

And looking back to January 2020, I could not have predicted that I would live through historic times:

• the stout guarding of George Eliot’s statue in Nuneaton Market Square in case any protestors felt the need to vandalise the author of Mill on the Floss;
• the (final) Brexit deal, heralding months and years of further bureaucratic wrangling (thank goodness the deal is “oven-ready”) but hopefully there is an end to the Tory EuroPsychoDrama which distracts, deflects and divides;
• the clear and democratic defeat of President Trump in a corrosive American election;
• the clamping down by Chinese authorities on civil liberties in Hong Kong;
• the (to date) almost 83,000,000 cases and almost 2,000,000 deaths from a global, deadly pandemic.

What I DO know.

I know I’ve done a lot of local walking, completed a lot of jigsaw puzzles, re-read Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son, read a lot of other books (including my book of the year, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet), watched a lot of TV, attended lectures, interviews and Tai Chi classes online, watched theatre online and extracted every ounce of pleasure I could from the family and friends I’ve managed to see with the changing (and sometimes confusing) restrictions, lockdown and tiers. I know one daughter was furloughed for a time (and has worked from her home for much of the time.) I know another daughter continued training to become a nurse (including working on Covid wards and now helping deliver the vaccine.) I know my wife attended French and ballet classes and a book group online and I know she continued to work (safely) at a local Food Bank which, in 2010, delivered 600 bags a year and currently delivers 600 bags a week…. anyone care to speculate what social policies have led to the increase in the demand for food parcels?

Rainbows everywhere

In windows, on hillsides, in the sky…. Rainbows expressed appreciation towards key workers. Compassion, kindness and solidarity triumphed over selfishness after the initial panic of the approaching first lockdown and before the cynicism of the Autumn. The environment bounced back. Birds filled the air. Nature triumphed. In the Spring and Summer children rode bicycles freely on emptier-than-usual roads. Until this year the record for the speed of developing a vaccine was held by the 1960s mumps jab, but the glory (and hard work) of scientists cooperating around the world have produced two safe and effective vaccines for Covid-19 within a year, and a third vaccine is imminent. Hopefully the days are over for those who believe Michael Gove’s soundbite that “people have had enough of experts….” (Particularly those who never heard Gove’s pitiful attempts to wriggle out of saying it in the months following.)

Women-led countries

An analysis by academics at Liverpool and Reading Universities of the initial governmental policy responses to Covid-19 up to 19th May, adjusted for variables (GDP, population density etc), concluded that countries led by women handled the pandemic “systematically and significantly better” than those led by men, particularly ones following a populist agenda (take a bow, Trump, Bolsanaro and BoJo.) So, let’s hear it for Finland’s Sanna Marin, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel. “When women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”

So, looking back through the diary of my little life for 2020, what did I comment upon?

January & February 2020

• Confirmation reaches the UK Media that Chinese people are dying of a novel virus, probably originating in a wet market in Wuhan. (As the weeks go by, I convince myself that my 33 days of coughing and high temperature in November and December of 2019 are not connected. I am NOT Patient Zero.) The Republican-controlled Senate acquits President Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstructing congress; in February President Trump tells a rally that the now-identified Covid-19 virus will be gone by April.

In my little life I saw Cats, Little Women, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, Jojo Rabbit, EMMA. and Parasite at the cinema. At the theatre I saw King John, A Museum in Baghdad and The Whip at the RSC, the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Ballet Rambert at Bradford Alhambra and I went to a Van Gogh audio-visual display in York. I enjoyed a cheese and wine evening in Leeds with a pal, attended a school reunion in Wakefield and marvelled at the National Space Centre in Leicester. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Sally and I chugged along on a steam train with Prosecco and afternoon tea. (Meanwhile, Covid-19 rolls down the line to Italy….)

March & April 2020

• The World Health Organisation declares that Covid-19 is a pandemic, Italy goes into full lockdown and, after increasing clamour from health experts, the UK government locks down, and the “Clap for Carers” begins on Thursday nights at 8pm. For a fortnight, supermarkets struggle to fill shelves with particular items. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister is diagnosed with Covid-19 and Keir Starmer becomes Labour leader. Captain Tom Moore becomes a hero by doing laps of his garden on a zimmer frame and raising £32m for the NHS. The Queen reassures the nation. President Trump suggests injecting bleach and bringing light inside the body (worth quoting verbatim for the record):

"I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs…. I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too... So, we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute - that's pretty powerful."

In my little life I saw Dark Waters, Military Wives and Onward at the cinema and Acosta Danza (Carlos Acosta dance group) at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. They were the final trips to the cinema and theatre until the Autumn because of lockdown or tier restrictions. Final meals out, final family gatherings, the beginnings of Skype and Zoom group calls, the scheduling of WALKING began. Emily returned home to live in our attic in isolation as she worked on a “hot ward” and subsequently recovered from what was almost certainly Covid symptoms. My niece, and then my sister, were diagnosed with (and hospitalised by) Covid-19 in April – thankfully both went on to recover. NT Live, YouTube, quality TV and lectures online filled time and Tai Chi classes switched to online.

May & June 2020

• Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim of delivering 100,000 Covid tests a day is debunked when he has to admit that what he meant was that the bulk of them had been put in the post. UK government credibility is undermined by advisor Dominic Cummings’s ludicrous version of his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle. George Floyd, an unarmed black man, is unlawfully killed by police in Minneapolis. Marcus Rashford leads a successful campaign for free school meals for disadvantaged children.

In my little life I attended my first Zoom funeral (very impressive) and phrases like “socially distanced” became ubiquitous. The Hay Festival successfully broadcast its talks and performances online. Our future holidays were cancelled. We got a new bed and in May became an “empty nest” again.

July & August 2020

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak launches an Eat Out To Help Out scheme to revive the hospitality industry. Joe Biden chooses Kamala Harris as a running mate to stand against Donald Trump later in the year. The awarding of GCSE and A Level results is a fiasco that was predicted and could easily have been avoided and the hapless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, keeps his job after the first of what seems like a series of gaffes and U-turns that continues through the rest of the year.

In my little life we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary with a picnic and walk on Penistone Hill. We were able to meet friends in the garden – but only until August 1st. The birth of Great Niece Charlotte added new life to the wider Johnson clan, a welcome miracle in the middle of the year. The RSC started broadcasting the Talking Shakespeare series of interviews. Pre-Covid arrangements and maskless supermarket shopping seemed to be a very distant memory.

September & October 2020

• The “world-beating” (organised by the PM’s private sector chums) Test and Trace system fails as schools and office workers return at the same time to superspread Covid-19 and kickstart the second wave of infections. Jacinda Ardern wins a landslide victory in the New Zealand elections having shown clear leadership in dealing with the pandemic. Having publicly argued with the Mayors of Middlesborough and Manchester about regional lockdown rules, Boris Johnson announces a second national lockdown for November.

In my little life I went to the cinema once: The Perfect Candidate and, gloriously, went to Leeds Playhouse to see some socially distanced theatre: Orpheus in the Record Shop, Krapp’s Last Tape and La Voix Humaine. My 60th birthday came and went without pomp but with good food, a terrific hike and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

November & December 2020

• The second national lockdown makes some, but not enough, impact on the rising cases of Covid-19 but the world celebrates as a German-Turkish couple, Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, produce an effective vaccine at Pfizer. Dominic Cummings (and Lee Cain) exit from UK power struggles in 10 Downing Street and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decisively win the US Presidential election with a bigger margin than Trump beat Clinton in 2016. A 90-year old grandmother from Coventry, Margaret Keenan, becomes the first (non-clinical-trial) person in the world to receive a fully-tested and approved Covid vaccine. Second in line for the jab in Warwickshire was 81-year old William Shakespeare….!

In my little life, I squeezed in one cinema trip: Uncle Vanya and was deliriously happy when the US election made sense of my hope in humanity. I started my re-reading of all Shakespeare’s works with Two Gentlemen of Verona and we began having posh takeaways delivered once a week to “celebrate” another week survived. As the year ended we managed to see a good number of friends in outdoor venues and the Christmas spirit endured in spite of the government’s poor communication skills.

So what next?

It would be good to think that 2021 will be the year when lessons learned from the pandemic begin to bear fruit. That....

• the “rat race” is not the only way to live
• home working is possible
• a long daily commute is not conducive to good living
• nature is indispensable
• a cleaner environment is achievable
• community resources are value for money
• the arts bring entertainment, inspiration and solace to millions
• local expertise is invaluable
• experts are worth attending to
• heroes come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and colour
• an equal right for one is an equal right for all
• carers, volunteers and key workers are more important in a crisis than pin-striped hedge-fund managers
• compassion and kindness are free
• the welfare state is as precious as the NHS
• magic money trees are not and have never been real – because where there’s a (political) will, there’s a (financial) way.

New Year. New Decade. Welcome to the future....  

Advent 2020

Countdown to Christmas

So muddy walks with family, jigsaw puzzles and posh takeaways continue to distract from Tier Three Restrictions. As do creative ways to meet up with longtime friends to catch up and Only Connect. It was easier this year to follow my instinct that Christmas fol-de-rol can only manifest on December 1st because lockdown meant that most shops were out of bounds and I’ve fine-tuned my ability to block out Christmas music in October and November…. Over the years, certain “traditions” mean that the Christmas countdown can begin: the Blue Peter Advent Crown (tinsel and wire coat hangers, anyone?), the decision about what day to choose (and who will decorate) a Christmas tree, the flutter of (fewer and fewer) Christmas cards through the letterbox (who will be first off the mark?), the slowing down of Autumn as Winter approaches and the military-style lists of “Things To Do” get gradually crossed off and, naturally, some form of Advent Calendar. Last Christmas Sue (in collage above) gifted us Advent Stockings and this year Sally secretly filled the Evens and I’m (naturally) Odd.

Out with the Old, In with the New

As Advent began, global miracles were occurring – yes, there’s the familiar….

• the rising Star of Bethlehem/Comet
• the approaching of the Three Wise Men/Kings/Astronomers
• the glimpse of Shepherds counting their socks and heralding Angels
• the longed-for arrival of a beloved baby in a Manger

But in the present-day, Advent 2020 heralds the start of a new world order with a few concrete miracles, in ascending order of importance….

• a new Christmas special episode of Call The Midwife
• the departure of some toxic staff from 10 Downing Street
• the very-nearly-complete dismissal of the TanToxic TwitterChundering US President
• the beginning of humanity’s vaccination FightBack against the Coronavirus – a triumph of international scientific collaboration 

– a sign of what the world can do with Wit, Wisdom, Will and Wherewithall....

Sighing after swallows flown

La Rue, Saltaire, posh takeaway

Lockdown 2.0

Another week, another jigsaw. This time, a birthday jigsaw featuring “The Harry Potter Film Club” named because we started the club to watch the Harry Potter films one after the other and have since graduated to Oscar-winners, foreign language films, strange comedies, cheesy romances, macabre crime movies and everything in between. The week has also seen the successful ordering and whole-stomached consuming of a posh takeaway from local British/French bistro La Rue – a new way for businesses to try and keep afloat in these challenging times. I’m assuming the UK Prime Minister has an excellent plan for dealing with the 2020 pandemic; I can only hope that upwards of a million infections and over 50,000 deaths were part of his vision. Otherwise, why would he keep trying to tell me it was all looking promising (me, with the rose-tinted spectacles)? To be honest, I wouldn’t want to be a member of the cabinet at the moment; though next week might feel better without Dominic Cummings who many government insiders describe as malignant and mendacious. Just saying.

Sever from my lot your lot

I can usually conjure something from Shakespeare or poetry to fit the times and Lockdown 2.0 brought to mind the Autumnal poem below. It is by one of my top ten poets: Christina Rossetti, author of the soulful In the Bleak Midwinter and the wild Goblin Market. The voice of the poem “live(s) alone, (and) look(s) to die alone” having ordered all her friends to stay away and “sever” themselves from her. “I have hedged me with a thorny hedge.” There are many interpretations of the identity of the character inside this Petrarchan sonnet, and why exactly she is in her own personal lockdown. But, in November 2020, the last four lines catch my mood during the latest Covid-19 national restrictions. (Incidentally that mysterious last line is a gift for teachers trying to demonstrate the technique and effects of assonance (on the “u”) and alliteration (on the “s” and the “t”….) God and Gaia bless you, Christina Rossetti. I thank you for your gifts.

Hirst Wood, La Rue Puddings, My homemade Chicken&Mushroom Pie, Christina Rossetti - all good things....

From Sunset to Star Rise

By Christina Rossetti

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

From Sunset to Star Rise

No Time Like The Present

 

Approaching 60: Carpe Diem.

Whatever gets you through the night

Carpe Diem has had a new potency in these unstable times – seizing the day, appreciating the moment, living in the present. (As someone once said….) Plan like you’re going to live forever; live like you’re going to die tomorrow. The Covid-19 pandemic and its fatalities, casualties, pressures, ripple-effect economic blights and uncertainties conspire to to drag hearts and souls into the abyss of despondency. On the other hand, Captain Tom Moore, Marcus Rashford, Jacinda Ardern and millions more people have lifted our aspirations towards a better world. In some ways, I have no idea where Time has gone since the middle of February 2020 when Coronovirus started being publicised internationally. Pre-Covid seems like 10 years ago. Copying Dickens’s opening to A Tale of Two Cities, (as I have done more than once in this blog) the past year has been “the best of times…. the worst of times…. wisdom…. foolishness…. belief…. incredulity…. light…. darkness…. hope…. despair…. we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….” And when I publish my next new post, I’ll be 60 years of age. Carpe Diem. In 1790, John Trusler, compiling proverbs, glossed the title of today’s post with “No time like the present, a thousand unforeseen circumstances may interrupt you at a future time.” So true.

Rainbows to Trumpkin, Sense to Nonsense

The bridge from Strasbourg to Kehl

Rainbows, bridges of dreams.... they get everywhere.... a perfect synthesis of science and imagination....

John Hume, Peace Negotiator
I regularly get drawn into an absorbing project, abandoning myself in the merciless whirlpool of the siren call of knowledge and thought…. Last week I reproduced a shortened version of John Hume’s thoughts about DIFFERENCE being “an accident of birth.” During the week I’ve read as much as I could find about the man and reproduce at the bottom of this post a longer extract from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (which explains the title of this week’s blog and connects the personal to the political.) But I’ll get there via the words of another historical figure who said some stuff that is still, 2000 years later, as radical as they come.
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind
The saying in the subheading above (An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind) was a favourite quotation of the late John Hume which he attributed to Dr Martin Luther King Jr, though many have suggested it was a Gandhi quotation.  My research reveals that Louis Fischer, the American journalist and author, used the phrase twice in books mentioning Gandhi but never claimed the peace protestor said them. The origin of the phrase is first recorded in Jewish scripture and it concerned legal arguments, but it became more well-known via the Old Testament’s An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth in the books of both Exodus and Leviticus.  Jesus, however, knocked the Old Covenant’s concept for six in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 5), with a typically challenging and subversive set of suggestions:

Turn the other cheek
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love your Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Standing on the bridge…. (John Hume Nobel Prize Speech)
In my own work for peace, I was very strongly inspired by my European experience. I always tell this story, and I do so because it is so simple yet so profound and so applicable to conflict resolution anywhere in the world. On my first visit to Strasbourg in 1979 as a member of the European Parliament, I went for a walk across the bridge from Strasbourg to Kehl. Strasbourg is in France. Kehl is in Germany. They are very close.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge and I meditated. There is Germany. There is France.

If I had stood on this bridge 30 years ago after the end of the second world war when 25 million people lay dead across our continent for the second time in this century and if I had said: “Don't worry. In 30 years’ time we will all be together in a new Europe, our conflicts and wars will be ended and we will be working together in our common interests”, I would have been sent to a psychiatrist.

But it has happened and it is now clear that European Union is the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution and it is the duty of everyone, particularly those who live in areas of conflict to study how it was done and to apply its principles to their own conflict resolution.

All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality. The European visionaries decided that difference is not a threat, difference is natural. Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace – respect for diversity.

The peoples of Europe then created institutions which respected their diversity – a Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament – but allowed them to work together in their common and substantial economic interest. They spilt their sweat and not their blood and by doing so broke down the barriers of distrust of centuries and the new Europe has evolved and is still evolving, based on agreement and respect for difference.

The UK is about to be a former member of, in the words of John Hume, "the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution." Time will tell if it's a price worth paying....