PACK THE KNIFE

I have watched the creation of a knife-carrying thug from babyhood to manhood and I am here to tell you, frankly, the new Home Office measures to combat knife crime are risible.We bought a ruin of a cottage on Anglesey and arrived there one day to find it occupied by a group of infants carrying a Welsh flag. There was a great deal of anti-English feeling at the time and my wife said in horror, “It’s a sit-in!”

In those early days “sits-in” were conducted according to a strict protocol. The sitters usually asked permission of the owner after promising there would be no damage. I had just done a story about a sit-in on the Lleyn.  Returning the key, the sitter congratulated the owner on his Peter Scott painting. “I haven’t got a Peter Scott painting,” said the owner. “Duw, “cried the anguished sitter, “we been sitting in the wrong house.”

The idea of a sit-in where the average age was six had the tills ringing in my freelance reporter’s head. Certain page leads all round, I told myself. Alas, the gang explained that it wasn’t a sit-in. Our cottage was their gang hut.

My wife, who is in strict training for sainthood, explained that we weren’t second homers and told them that they could still use it and when we moved in they must come to tea every Sunday. They were still coming to tea every Sunday fifteen years later, by which time they were bringing their “wives” and the next generation of thugs. Their behaviour, and that of the children, was impeccable. At Christmas they showered us with presents. They had their own spick and span homes because as soon as a girl got pregnant she was given a council house, which is probably why Britain has the highest number of teenage mothers in Europe. Parenthetically, one asked me to be his best man at his wedding. I said: “You have left it a bit late; you’ve got three kids.”  “That’s the trouble,“ he said, “the place we’ve got is too small and to get a three-bedroom council house you have to be married.”

By that time they had committed most crimes short of murder and were experts on prison life. They particularly enjoyed Willie Whitelaw’s “short sharp shock” in extra-tough prison camps. “We got meat three times a day,” they told me in wonder. At home they only ever had pheasant, rabbit, hare and salmon, which they poached, and as a diet they found it boring.

Very keen on his food, Raymond came to us every year for his Christmas dinner. We discovered subsequently he had gone just as religiously to three more houses. With presents for all. Trevor, his elder brother, usually spent Christmas in prison. One year there had been a wardens’ strike and prisoners were being held in police stations. Trevor was being held in Wrexham where I had many friends. So I rang the custody sergeant to get him to put Trevor on the phone so that Raymond could wish him a Merry Christmas.
The Custody Sergeant was outraged.  He said, “You should know better…” I said, “Come on, it’s Christmas and he’s about five yards away. Put him on the phone.” He said, “It’s not that. He’s not had his Christmas pudding yet. Can you ring back in half an hour?”

Although Trevor was a kindly soul, he was the most violent of the gang. In many ways Neanderthal. Though his younger brothers were not to be messed about with, they were also intelligent, kind and extremely generous. Qualities they hid under a quite frightening exterior.What turned them from happy infants into brawling thieves?

Principally, I think, because to the village they were known as the “Cacau”, which is Welsh for ”shit”. Their aim in life seemed to be to live down eagerly to the low expectation the world had of them. “You think I am bad? I will show you bad.”

It was tragic. Trevor, the eldest boy, was the knife wielder and the man who threw a policeman through a shop window. Once he asked me if I had got anything he could do in my garden. Alas, it was December. When I turned him down, he walked into the village pub, picked up the till and ran out with it. He got about five yards before he was dropped in a rugby tackle. I have been in a military prison so we had a rapport. When he came out of prison I told him he had been a prat. He said: “It’s your fault. If you had given me something to do I would never have pinched it.”

I have an uneasy feeling he was telling the truth. It wasn’t so much criminal intent as relief from boredom. Raymond, the next boy but one, came out of the womb fighting. He appeared to have no emotions. Yet when his Long Dog drank battery acid and I took him to have it destroyed I have never witnessed a human being so racked with sobs.

The family went to the same school as another young friend, the singer Aled Jones. Aled, a bright boy and naturally studious (while waiting to go on stage at the Hollywood Bowl he passed the time doing maths homework) benefited greatly from his schooling. The “Cacau” were just ignored. If they played truant there were sighs of relief. Yet one Christmas Raymond gave me a drawing he had done of a motorbike. It was perfect in every detail and I realised that with encouragement he would have made a passable draughtsman or a motor mechanic. Sadly bikes were his downfall. A good looking boy, he was taken as her lover by a middle class English housewife who had a second home outside the village. She bought him a powerful motorbike and when she dropped him he drove it at speed into the wall of her house. He is now badly disabled, unable to speak.

The biggest problem I had with ‘the gang’ was refusing their gifts of property they had stolen. The richest man in the village, a pillar of the community, had no such reservations. I bought them a set of sea rods. They were stolen by the police during a routine search of their house.

My wife and I loved them. Shown respect, they bloomed. Based on that experience, I am convinced that (a) prison is the thug’s equivalent of a good “A” Level; (b) short sharp shocks do wonders for their street cred; and (c) they form gangs as surrogate families There a very few born crooks but plenty of vulnerable kids who will prove you right if you do not show them kindness and respect.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………Age brings with it a list of Things You Can No Longer Enjoy. At the top comes sex and debauchery, which is rather a relief. But it is not long before it extends to going for walks, eating the foods you enjoy, reading for any length of time before falling asleep, gardening and killing things for sport. The list is longer for the overweight because you are usually on a diet. As a noble friend of mine says, “Growing old is not for Cissies.”

Some of us deal more successfully with retirement than I have. My chum Revel Barker had a distinguished career in our trade as managing editor and Consigliere to the infamous Bob Maxwell. In retirement he bought Hitler’s pinnace, moved to Malta and set up as a publisher. His fourth book in a year is coming out soon. He specialises in reprinting classic books by newspapermen which he markets as “Hacklit”and this one is by Tony Delano, a legendary reporter. It is called “Slip Up” and it tells the hilarious tale of how Fleet Street found the train robber Ronnie Biggs - and Scotland Yard lost him.

This week saw the funeral of the gang mastermind Bruce Reynolds. I expect it was a thoughtful reunion. Those concerned must have reflected that they got heavy sentences and all they stole was a million. More recently the banks from which they stole have held their hands up for fraud, theft and money laundering for drugs cartels. They got bonuses.

Now they have found a way of stealing money from the accounts of Cyprus savers. Trouble?  Bless you, no. The Eurobanks were so delighted they have promised to do the same all over Europe. Jail? Not a bit of it. Bound to be good for a dozen peerages at the very least.



DANGEROUS CUTTING

“At M.I.T., I learned a great deal about neurons, dendrites, action potentials, the localization of function, visual perception and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

"I learned that you can make a mouse 'depressed' by dunking it repeatedly in cold water, by giving it electrical shocks over and over again, by subjecting it to 'chronic forced swimming,' or making it experience 'social defeat,' by putting a mean mouse in its cage. The latter method is the best way to test antidepressants, because after such a negative social experience it takes a mouse three weeks of drug therapy to recover, an interval that neatly parallels the amount of time antidepressants take to reach their optimal effectiveness in humans.”

Columnist in N.Y.TIMES

THESE FEET ARE MAD ON WALKING

I expected to be mess at 84. I did not expect to be a laughing stock. Other people get nice, sensible diseases which inspire sympathy. I fall for the ones which verge on the downright comic.

I ask you, Wandering Leg Syndrome?  I have known enough thieves to be familiar with the phrase 'having it away on your toes' but this is altogether too much.

Every night I gather up my kindle and trot peaceably up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire. Ablutions done, the legs and I settle down with The Barchester Chronicles, every limb in peaceful accord. But the moment I fall asleep, off they go. I wake to find they have literally 'had it off on their toes'. Sometimes I catch them halfway to the door. If they weren't attached to the knees I wouldn't be able to follow them.

Still there is hope on the horizon, even if the legs haven't made it there yet. The last thing I wish to do is quarrel with Shakespeare but by the same token I can live without eyes, teeth, almost everything, but I will not have him bad mouthing second childhood. I am having a ball in this strange eventful history, second childishness.

Last week a fairy godmother called Mrs Merry flew in, made a few passes with her magic wand and by Budget Day the house was transformed into a luxury convalescent home. Hand rails abound, front step raised, armchair perpetually levitated, heat reflectors behind the radiators, sexy night light and dimmer switches all round. A Grand Pris Zimmer Frame with shelves which makes a bespoke drinks trolley; handles on the bed that forty years ago would have put the sparkle into bedtime; and finally a magic necklace with a button like Aladdin's lamp which I press to summon genies. All free courtesy of Age UK.

The help I have had since the body started to crumble makes me very cross at criticism of the National Health Service. I get a carer's allowance and a key to the cripples' lavatories. I have an excused seat belts chit, a disabled pass which means I can park pretty well anywhere, I watch TV free of charge and when I travel on buses others pay the bills. When I was ill I had 24-hour home nursing and my GP has twice saved my life. All that is needed for perfection is to get rid of the hospitals. 

The first time I was swinging from death's door I went to our old hospital and it was four star. Unfortunately we have a massive new hospital that has put the city in debt for the foreseeable future. It boasts new wards which are being closed down as an economy measure and since it opened there have been endless front-line redundancies. The ambulance risks million of pounds in fines because of slow pick-ups. Fines that will come from the Health budgets which are already under pressure to cut down staff they cannot afford to pay. I was rushed into hospital for an emergency transfusion because I hadn't enough blood left for a nose bleed. I got it two days later.

My old chum Herodotus  said we should be like the Medes and the Persians who made every decision twice. Once when drunk and again when sober. I assume the same formula applies to the European Empire (EU). Not that I'm knocking the idea. Presumably when you get the answer,  repeat the ritual.

For her final appearance on this septic Skidmoresisland, Kattyan Lachoo extends her view of the law.

Lawyer: “Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his

sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?’’

That is a true question asked by a real lawyer in a real American courtroom. So says Charles M. Sevilla who wrote Disorder in the Courts: great fractured moments in courtroom history. His anecdotes have been stolen and circulated online everywhere and friends are always sending me these real-life jokes because they know I love nonsense.

Sevilla developed an eye and ear for the ludicrous to get him through his legal education and practice because the law can be as exciting as the study of dirt. His cockeyed interest developed into magazine columns about the howlers in the halls of justice and the columns were appropriately gathered into two funny collections.

But as much as I respect a fellow discombobulator, this guy is an amateur of the absurd. He hasn’t heard a thing until he consults my specialist archive of true exchanges in real courts in Trinidad and Tobago. I am making up none of this. What you are about to read is all true, true, true. Proceed at your own risk of splitting the seams of your pants and spurting your morning cup of tea through your nose.

Lawyer: “Did you check for fever?’’

Pathologist: “You trying to insult me now? You asking me if I take the temperature of a dead man?’’

Lawyer: “How were you able to see the man?’’

Witness: “Because I have two eyes in my head.’’

Lawyer: “Are you able to continue? Look you sleeping on yourself.’’

Witness: “You doh worry about me. Ask your question.’’

Lawyer: “You said there was faeces on the body. Is there an explanation for that?’’

Doctor: “The explanation is that the body came in contact with faeces.’’

Lawyer: “You ever did recitation in school?’’

Witness: “Yes.’’

Lawyer: “You know what recitation is?’’

Witness: “Er, er, like mouth to mouth?’’

Lawyer: “I am putting to you that you are mistaken.’’

Witness: “You cyar put nutten to me, you wasn’t dey.’’

Lawyer: “I put to you your evidence is a pigment of your imagination.’’

Judge: “A what?’’

Lawyer: “A pigment, My Lord.’’

Lawyer: “How tall are you?’’

Defendant: “I never measure.’’

Lawyer: “My Lord, please instruct the witness to answer the question. He is oscillating.’’

Judge: “Only fans do that. I think you mean vacillating.’’

Defendant: “The cell was damp and cold. I had to sleep standing up whole night.’’

Judge: “I thought only horses did that.’’

Lawyer: “You’re a sweet man?’’

Witness: “Well, my perspiration not too strong.’’

Police prosecutor Sgt John Constable (name changed to protect the poor fella from fatigue from his colleagues): “Ma’am, I am not ready in this matter. Put it to next week, please.’’

Magistrate: “I thought my name was Mary Jones, not Mrs John Constable.’’

Judge: “Madam, you knew you were coming to court today? I don’t want to see your belly."

Woman, in midriff top: “Whey she say?’’

Judge: “You have a hearing problem?

Woman: “Eh?’’

ON THE FALKLANDS ISLE by DR SAM JOHNSON IN 1777:

The Spaniards, by yielding Falkland's island, have admitted a precedent of what they think encroachment; have suffered a breach to be made in the outworks of their empire; and, notwithstanding the reserve of prior right, have suffered a dangerous exception to the prescriptive tenure of their American territories.
   Such is the loss of Spain; let us now compute the profit of Britain. We have, by obtaining a disavowal of Buccarreli's expedition, and a restitution of our settlement, maintained the honour of the crown, and the superiority of our influence. Beyond this what have we acquired? What, but a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island, which not the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional; and which, if fortune smile upon our labours, may become a nest of smugglers in peace, and in war the refuge of future bucaniers. To all this the government has now given ample attestation, for the island has been since abandoned, and, perhaps, was kept only to quiet clamours, with an intention, not then wholly concealed, of quitting it in a short time.
   This is the country of which we have now possession, and of which a numerous party pretends to wish that we had murdered thousands for the titular sovereignty. To charge any men with such madness approaches to an accusation defeated by its own incredibility. As they have been long accumulating falsehoods, it is possible that they are now only adding another to the heap, and that they do not mean all that they profess. But of this faction what evil may not be credited? They have hitherto shown no virtue, and very little wit, beyond that mischievous cunning for which it is held, by Hale, that children may be hanged!
   As war is the last of remedies, "cuncta prius tentanda," all lawful expedients must be used to avoid it. As war is the extremity of evil, it is, surely, the duty of those, whose station intrusts them with the care of nations, to avert it from their charge. There are diseases of animal nature, which nothing but amputation can remove; so there may, by the depravation of human passions, be sometimes a gangrene in collective life, for which fire and the sword are necessary remedies; but in what can skill or caution be better shown, than preventing such dreadful operations, while there is yet room for gentler methods!
   It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splend id game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some, indeed, must perish in the most successful field, but they die upon the bed of ho nour, "resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with England's glory, smile in death."
   The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by heroick fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands, that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless ; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were, at last, whelm ed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance................

THE LAW IS AN ASSET

After all I have done for that computer, the gold coins I have hurled at its undeserving cartridge head... Only last week experts on two continents spent hours coaxing it to do a simple thing like delivering a few emails.

That is the last time. It's back to the biro and the cover of my cheque book to write on. I will probably sell Skidmoresisland to the Argies or British Coalite and go into business writing begging letters to footballers.

The Blog? I have put my name down for a course on blogging by IPad and for the next two weeks I am letting out this enchanted isle to a friend of mine. Her name is Kathyann Latchoo (nee Waterman) and she is the Deputy Director of Prosecutions in Trinidad. She also writes a weekly column in the Trinidad Express of which she was once the editor. She studied for a law degree with Leicester Distant Learning Project and qualified as a barrister.

My old, much lamented chum Neville Stack first brought her to Skidmoresisland. He wrote: "Inevitably she grew out of the newspaper job, its frustrations and - worst of all - its vicious office politics. So she quit. After a bit of trial and error at highish levels she used her academic prowess to become a State Prosecutor, where she shone so brightly that she is now Senior Prosecutor.

"Kathyann is 50, voluptuous, very,very clever and humorous. Her husband, Max Latchoo, also applied himself to distance learning and is now a graduate health and safety expert.

"Can't think why, but she enjoys the company of certain old hacks in these islands. She asks me to introduce her.......You will enjoy knowing her.”

I

Indeed I do, as I hope will you. Here she explains what you have to know to hold down her job in Trinidad: 

"Do not kill or wound pigeons. Never be quarrelsome in a shop. And whatever might happen, stop stealing dead fences.

"Did you know you can’t crook goods on a Sunday? That sounds like something that should be forbidden every day of the week and written into contracts of Italian politicians and Trinidadian contractors. But it’s actually a provision in the Summary Offences Act Chapter 11:02 and has to do with hard labour (the preferred punishment for other kinds of crooking, provided we can catch the well-dressed crookers). 

"Reading up on weird or obscure laws is a favourite contrarian pastime of mine. It brings out a spirit of anarchy which is one of my best features.

"Crooking is one thing but look out for the hooking too. Allowing known prostitutes, rogues and vagabonds to live on your premises can make you a guest of the State for up to three months.

"During Carnival, it’s forbidden to indulge in lewd behaviour or drive a car while wearing a mask. Taxi drivers have to provide a litter bin in a convenient place in their vehicles or they could be fined $500. Do not trundle hoops or fly a kite in Port of Spain or any borough.

"Internationally also, law is a source of divertisement. In Oregon - and I can think of no reason whatsoever for this prohibition - it’s illegal to strap children to the fender or hood of a car. In the United Arab Emirates, only married couples and close relatives who are of the opposite sex can share a hotel room. You can buy, sell and smoke marijuana in coffee shops all over Amsterdam. And in Greece women are not allowed to wear shoes that 'wound the monuments'. In Iceland you have to choose your child’s name from an approved list. If the name is not on the list, you have to apply to a committee. So if you are a boy, you can be Adolf but not Alistair. And if you are a girl, and you want to be called Gentle Breeze, you will be denied that right by officialdom and be referred to for 15 years as 'girl'. 

"The secret unwritten rationale behind these ancient regulations is that there should be less work for therapists who won’t have to treat traumatised patients, scarred for life because their evil parents gave them the first name of the lioness in Born Free. Therapists are already overworked curing the masses suffering from winter depression because, over there, the blasted sun never stops shining yet they still have 13 months of snow and ice.

"In the Cayman Islands it is an offence to insult the dignity of a woman, which, by the way, is what happens to me every month-end when I collect my salary cheque.

"But my all-time favourite is found right here in our Fisheries Act, Chapter 67:51:

You must not attempt to resuscitate a dead turtle.

But if you have one that is merely comatose, here is how you do it legally: place turtle on its back and pump its breastplate with hand or foot. Or you can place it face down and elevate its hindquarters for one to 24 hours.

"And you thought all those yoga classes practising your Downward Facing Dog would never come in handy..."

Katyann will return next week for another look at the legal oddities of life in the sun.

In the meantime, here's a thought to stay awake by:

In the 20^th century the cost of 165 wars was 5 trillion dollars. The result of this profligate waste of money? One in four children in the UK is living in severe poverty, three out of five classrooms are full, the NHS is saddled with massive debts and its nursing staff is far below strength. We have betrayed our warriors, and the people with the greatest need who can least afford it are having to pay a bedroom tax to have a separate room for a sick child.

DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THY SICK NOTE

The visit to the surgery was following its usual course. The Ferret had just finished telling the doctor what was wrong with me when I said I know what is wrong with me: I am gagging for a drink.

AND THE DOCTOR SAID: “WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ONE, THEN?”

The Head Ferret said: “I don't want him to be ill.”

AND THE DOCTOR SAID HE UNDERSTOOD THAT BUT added: “AT 84 ANY HARM HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE. AND LET'S FACE IT, THERE IS NOT MUCH ELSE HE CAN DO.”

I should explain that during these meetings both of them talk as though I am not there. But the point is I am drinking under doctor's orders. Not a lot, mind you. I have spilt more down my shirt than I'm currently allowed.

Five a day precludes organising orgies, even assuming, as I have, that he meant doubles. And what to drink? Something celebratory? Kir Royal, a mixture of champagne and a cube of sugar soaked in crème de Cassis, is celebratory but a fellow member of a dining club insisted the perfect drink is when the man drinks green chartreuse the woman yellow chartreuse and they kiss.The Head Ferret might judge that as liberty taking. A great favourite of my youth was Black Velvet, a mixture of Guinness and champagne which Count Otto von Bismarck invented and which was always drunk at the Grand National Winner's dinner at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. In the days when it was still a hotel.

All excellent aperitifs but there was something missing. Ritual. Non-drinkers do not realise that as important as the drinking is the preparation thereof. A pink gin, for example, when a drop of Angostura bitters is poured in and around the glass and then poured away before the gin is introduced.

Purely in the interest of historical research, I have collected over the years the signature drinks of many celebrities and famous watering holes, like the Cinnamon Club which was famous for its Rum Pomme, a delicious assembly of cooking apple purée, cinnamon tea bags and half a pint of golden rum. At Simpson's in the Strand the barman's Glogg was a mixture of red wine, brown sugar and golden rum.

When the Queen of Sheba asked the all-wise King Solomon for a motto which would apply in every mood and circumstance, he told her: “This too shall pass.” That is what I was looking for in liquid form. I have the recipes for Hemingway's daiquiri and David Niven's Bloody Mary. Both delicious but a touch too exotic for daily throat sprays.

What I was looking for was a drink for all seasons. I found it in a Dry Martini, which by wild coincidence is my signature drink. It fulfils all the requirements of ritual. I have the glass, generous in size, frivolous in shape. I have the shaker, the mixing spoon. It was the work of a moment to find Bombay Sapphire gin and I have friends who have studied the Martini at home and abroad. My oldest friend John Edwards, the Daily Mail columnist, has met everyone in the world. From his good friend Fred Astaire's daughter Ava he got the recipe for that great man's very dry Martini: 

Generous shot of gin or vodka. Tip up a bottle of Vermouth, then right it again, unscrew the cap and drip the contents in the gin (a little Astaire joke because there ain't any Vermouth in the cap). Shake or stir in a cocktail shaker with cube ice, not shaved, and drain into a frosted glass. Add a twist of lemon or an olive.

John, no slouch in these matters, suggests the best way to frost a glass is first to warm it, then put it in a fridge. Condensation quickly frosts. 

The legendary reporter Brian Hitchen has a million friends, including the late Johnny di Lustro, Capo di Tutti Capi of the New York Gambino family. A formidable ex-paratrooper who masterminded the hunt for train robber Biggs, I assume it was the Capo from whom Brian's muscular Martini originates. Use vodka not gin. Place four ice cubes in a frosted whisky glass, pour vodka to the slow count of ten and add two of the tiniest drops of the driest Vermouth. Slice a two inch long piece of lemon peel, twist to release the oil and drop it in the glass. Stir with your biro.

Three of either of the above before the main meal of the day, plus a large glass of 'The Singleton' single malt from Speyside as a nightcap - and welcome to Heaven.

                     ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Reader Brian Gesty writes apropos of my police car story last week:

The story of the coming together with the police car caused me to recall an old friend`s tale of when he crashed his Honda Prelude into a Morris 1000.

All the correspondence with the Insurance Company was ,apparently, headed  "Prelude in D Minor ".

A SOBERING THOUGHT

In 1899 the Hague Congress on Peace outlawed throwing bombs out of balloons on the grounds that it was inhuman.

In 1942 Bomber Command's role in the war was defined by the RAF thus: “The purpose of Bomber Command is to destroy the morale of the civilian population.”

In Tokyo in 1945 80,000 civilians living in paper houses were burned alive in fire bomb raids. In all, 350,000 Japanese civilians were killed.To improve the killing potential, tests were done on specially built paper houses and the quality of nitrogen refined so that it burned bodies more fiercely and when quenched on skin it reignited... In 1945 the Japanese sent an offer of near unconditional surrender via Moscow. They made only one condition. They asked to keep their Emperor. Truman and the Allied High Command refused. After the refusal they dropped the atom bomb, massacring Japanese civilians merely to frighten the Russians who were our allies at the time, according to historian A.C Grayling in “Among the Death Cities”.

It is OK for governments to be generous with agonising death. However, a patrol of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders is under investigation as I write. In the first Iraqi War they were ambushed and in the heat of a day-long battle which followed it is claimed they killed four Iraqi civilians. Three Royal Marines face trial for a similar offence.

Parenthetically, in our decadent society where crimes against children are endemic one wonders whether Cupid and his troop of cherubim are fitting symbols of innocent love. By the same token it would be interesting to count the number of endless TV detective dramas which involve the violent deaths of children. This week there were three.

A PORN THING BUT MINE OWN

They are gone the days of Daimler Jags and Lagondas, of Land Rovers and MG TDs. In their place is a walking stick. These days we are a tripod.

The odd thing is I prefer it. I never felt at ease with the combustion engine. For one thing they rarely combusted on command. Show me a blasted heath or a lonesome grott and I will show you the scene of a grotty me, kicking the wheel of a sulky saloon. Silent and not only on a Peak in Darien. At least the MG always broke down within walking distance of a pub.

The LG6 Lagonda was the worst. At the funeral of an old chum called Mike Quy it broke down when filled to the chrome rims with grieving newspapermen, than whom no-one is easier to drive to noisy scorn. What was worse it gave up its particularly showy ghost just as I was being beckoned into motion by a policeman on point duty. His first summons was slow and stately, not untinged with respect for a classic car. When it seemed the classic car was pointedly ignoring him the stately beckon was transformed into a shaking fist. 

"Watch him!” came a voice of a so-called friend. “Any moment now he is going to rip off his helmet, dash it to the ground and dance on it. Just like Charlie Chaplin.” "It wasn't Charlie Chaplin, it was Andy Clyde,“ offered a pedantic sub editor. “Rob Wilton,” suggested another and an argument ensued.

Can you believe the only car I ever owned which never let me down was a Lada I bought for transporting bloodhounds? It failed in its purpose by being so noisy the hounds refused to climb in. Forced, they howled piteously at passing vehicles and nothing does piteous better than a bloodhound in extremis.  Nary a car passed without a reproachful driver. 

Stepping into a motor car was like suddenly getting a starring role in a nightmare. It did not even have to be my motor car. A friend who owned a Citroen, once the property of the Paris police, wanted me to share its power so he took me to the Grand National. Heavily refreshed, we were driving home when for reasons unknown the car decided rather than go round a roundabout to jump over it. Jumped like a stag. Had it not been for the police car it hit on the other side I reckon it would have been a contender for best jump of the day.

Fair do's the policeman driver trapped well. He was out of the car like Mick the Miller, notebook at the High Port. He opened our door and invited the occupant of the front seat to step outside and tell him what he had drunk before getting in. It took a quarter of an hour and filled four pages of the policeman's notebook. At the death he asked: “And after all that drink, do you think you're fit to drive?" My friend was shocked. "Drive?” he said. “Certainly not. I am a passenger. The car is a left hand drive.”

With a walking stick you know where you are. It has gravitas. A comic character in the novels of a hunting squire of the early nineteenth century played a part in the creation of our greatest novelist. He whittled sticks carved with the heads of great statesmen which would make the fortunes of his descendants. R.S. Surtees also created one of the great comic characters of any age. John Jorrocks was a fox hunting grocer whose cry at table was “Pick me up, tie me to my chair and fill up my glass.“

Lord Scampersdale: “You think because I am a lord and may not swear you may do what you will with me.”

Surtees' publishers wanted him to add comic captions to the drawings of a fashionable artist called Seymour. Surtees refused so the publisher hired an unknown lobby reporter called Dickens. The result was “Pickwick Papers”, which is not without hints of plagiarism.

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The time has come to reveal that when I was a young and rather pretty provost sergeant I was chased naked from the showers and round the sergeants' ablution block in HQ 7th Armoured Division, Rhine Army, by a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Irish Guards, his moustache twitching with desire. I easily outdistanced him and reached the safety of my room. Some days later I was caught with little effort by a NAAFI manageress called appropriately Mrs Horne who rewarded me with 200 cigarettes. Several months later, she was charged with the theft of 50,000 cigarettes.

My Commanding Officer in a PR unit in Bad Oyenhausen transferred to the Royal Armoured Corps because the black beret brought out the blue in his eyes, causing him to be severely talked about.

As a small boy I came within an ace of suffering severe mental imbalance when I discovered I was the only child in the class who had not been fondled by our popular teacher Mr Harrison, long gone to interfere with the cherubim in the skies.

I mention these incidents in the light of recent disclosures, just in case there is any compensation floating about.

Even later in the Fornicating Fifties and Sexy Sixties I covered the early concerts by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and all Brian Epstein's stable of pop stars. The audiences were largely female teenagers and to get through the crowds of young girls who stormed the dressing rooms offering themselves to the stars was not a happy experience

                               +++++++++++++++++

Our trade paper Press Gazette got involved in a minor disagreement with the Sri Lankan High Commission over its reporting of an assassination attempt on a British journalist. The Commissioner questioned 'British'.

He insisted: "The fact that one is also British and is a reporter does not make him a British reporter. The unfortunate shooting had nothing to do with his being British. A woman and child is not the same thing as a woman with child.”

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The Nineties were 'Naughty', the eighteenth century was the 'Enlightenment'. Whatever word is chosen to sum up the present I fear it is not 'Caring'. How about 'Massacre'? We may not have invented it but, by golly, we introduced massacre by mass production. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did their best to wipe out the Native American, the Aborigine and the Maori but they lacked not only our expertise - they just didn’t have the technogology.
In the nineteenth century we invented the flame gun;  in the twentieth, the atom bomb, germ warfare, bombing defenceless women and children from the air, and we set the tone for the twenty-first...........Oh we are the devil’s golden boys.
There was no sense of race discrimination about us. We slaughtered Jews, Chinese and Russian peasants by the millions, street children in South America, anyone we could lay our hands on in the Balkans. Blacks almost anywhere. We weren’t fussy. If there were no outsiders handy we slaughtered each other. We invented the death camp, the blazing necklace of a rubber tyre. When our soldiers were reluctant to shoot that stranger, the enemy, we shot them instead. In the First World War when a sergeant in my regiment disobeyed an order not to reprise a Christmas football match with the Germans, he was sent for a morning stroll with a firing squad.
In the fifteenth century a woman called Christine the Pisan wrote a book called The Art of War. It was an instant best-seller. No prince planned a campaign without it. In it she pleaded with them not to harm the peasants. She wrote:
“They would full gladly always live in good peace and they seek no more. So ought they then, as it seems to me, be free thereof....because their estate is not to meddle in war...and have no other office but, poor innocents, go to plough and work on the land and keep the beasts.”
Fugh. We will have no truck with that sort of rubbish in these enlightened times. “Bring me your hungry and your homeless......and I will wipe them out.”
No, 'Massacre' is my nap selection, with anything to come on 'Just Plain Evil'.
BEST BOOK IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS.
Since Hilary Mantel, who looks like a badly painted plastic doll, was so rude about the Duchess of Cambridge I have discovered yet another reason for banning literary prizes. It confers on nonentities the right to make pronouncements on subjects for which nature has failed to qualify them.
If there was a best novel in the past twenty years I must have missed it. It certainly wasn't Mantel's turgid accounts of one of histories dullest politicans. A frequent winner of such prizes  is Eco's Name of the Rose. A  good enough read, I grant you; dripping with meaning, though basically about a search for dirty books in a monastery. All gloom and, in the inevitable film, a spectacularly  unshaven Sean Connery. Bond in bondage, desperate for flagellation. All shadows and sweaty monks. Monks and mayhem. A sort of Brother Cadfael in a Bolognese sauce.  I was happier about the choice of biography in the same awards. Juang Chang’s merciless Wild Swans was much more successful than Eco in showing how evil man can be if he really puts his mind to it. Mandela’s biography came second.
 I have to say I think  it would have come second even if no-one had written it. Nothing I have read this week about the South Africa he founded has redounded to the honour of the highest paid statesman in the world.
Ackroyd’s Dickens came third. I would have put it first, though, as Ackroyd justly remarked, Dickens’ best biography was in his novels. I thought the prologue the best thing ever written about him, though I seem to remember being embarrassed at Ackroyd’s conversations with his subject. And I certainly won’t quarrel with the Book Guide’s choice of Ellerman’s Oscar Wilde.
I prefer biography to fiction. Biography, indeed life, can be fanciful in ways that fiction wouldn’t dare.
John Julius Norwich’s account of murderous Byzantium, the bad empress Theodora, and chapter headings like “The Emperor who lost his nose”alone would entitle his three volumes on that empire to a place at the top of the history list. Though I would also include The History of the Cavalry, which was the work of his cousin the Marquess of Anglesey and won him the Chesney Gold Medal, the highest accolade of a military historian.
But there I go making lists.
If I were to make one of obsessions, Railways would come high. My railway notes last week provoked much interest.
Chum Revel Barker offers this:
"You correctly (of course) refer to variant village times "before the railways came", but do you know how they did it?
"They created Railway Time.
"So if the first train of the day was due at your local station at, say, 0730, when the train drew in to the station the station master set his watch... and the platform clock, at 0730. Even if the train (probably less likely in those days than in these) was 10 minutes late.
"The thinking was that if the first train of the day ran (say) 10 minutes late, so would the rest of them, throughout the day.
"And the trains with which your local one connected would have to wait... so they would be 10 minutes late, too, and the time would be adjusted all the way down the line.
"The other (slightly) interesting factoid about railway time is that if the clock at Moscow Central station shows (say) 8am, so does the station clock at Vladivostock -- although the local time there would be 3pm (7 hours ahead). This is because Russian trains run on Moscow time... otherwise, with so many time zones in the Soviet Union, they'd be having trains arriving in some places before they left the last one. And the timetable would be crazy.
"Of course, in the days before BR, people actually trusted (and relied on) GWR, LNER, LMS, etc to get things right, more or less.
"And, more or less, so they did.
"Oh... the station master's watch was a large shiny metal thing kept in the breast pocket of his jacket with the 12 on the face at the top where the winder, and the leather strap, was. So it was the right way up when he pulled it out. A gentleman's vest (or waistcoat) pocket watch was much smaller and came out sideways, so the winder was at 3 on the dial. My dad, former railwayman, had one of the former, I still have one of the latter.
"Oh... I used to go to school by train. The child's day return fare was three-ha'pence.The station near my old school (like the school) no longer exists.However the child's day return fare to the next stop is now 13 quid (10 pounds, single)."
A surprising number of readers have been kind enough to enquire whether I am dying. What is happening now, whatever it is, certainly ain't living. Indeed as I climb onto my eighty-fifth year dying has come with the territory. But, subject to what the doctor might find on Tuesday, it certainly is not imminent.
A dear friend, the geologist Margret Wood, one of the team that investigated Moondust, defended God's timetable for Creation.  She wrote:
"Just live life to the full - as much as you can. None of us is immortal and we know not when or where. So cheers and hope it is a long time yet before anything else gives out.
"Incidentally my father who could speak Hebrew said the 'days' translation was wrong and it actually should be translated as 'periods' of time not days."
Sorry, God.

So that is it. ?

Cancer, diabetes, kidney failure, depression, sarcoids, alcoholism and now heart failure. I cannot make up my mind whether there is Someone Up There who doesn’t like me or Someone Up There who likes me so much He cannot wait to issue me with harps one, angels for the use of, and a few brisk words on Commandment abuse.

Anyway, as I wait for Sinatra’s final curtain there is one thing of which I am certain. I think He was out of order boasting that He made the world in six days. We have two gardeners, Hipkin for conversation and Paul, and it takes them four hours every Monday to keep our tiny plot in good heart, aided and advised by the Head Ferret. I expect He, like them, has a touch of Gardener’s Fancy where effort expended bears little resemblance to effort reported.

I don’t know why He bothered. After all, He invented Time. In His place I would have gone for Natural Selection. Much more plausible.

This six day nonsense is terribly inconvenient for others who have Creation Moments. Of late, I have wakened ever morning just after 6 am with a complete Answer to the Mysteries of the Universe. Laid out before me. The trouble is…by the time I have got my teeth in I have forgotten what it was.

Very puzzling thing this business of Time. Remember how we celebrated the Millennium in the wrong year? On any reading of the form book it was  unlikely to occur during 2001 A.D.

We do not have “0” birthdays. Our first birthday arrives when we are one. It follows that those of us who live that long, amongst whom I profoundly wish not to be numbered, will be one hundred years old in 101 years after our first birthday. Otherwise we would have celebrated our 21st birthday when we were 20.

The structure of our calendar was first determined in the 6th century by a monk called Dennis the Short. Dennis began by dating countable years from the foundation of Rome and then again from Christ’s birth, which he wrongly set on December 25. His year restarted on January 1st, the feast of Christ’s circumcision, but not, alas, the New Year’s Day of Roman and Latin Christian calendars.

Dennis was wrong. Herod died in the year 750 (from the foundation of Rome, that is). For Herod and Christ to coincide, Christ must have been born four years earlier than Dennis claims - in 4 B.C. in fact. Not even Camerloon could successfully juggle those figures.

There is a further complication. In 1582, a sixteenth century (note that) pedant decided to drop the Julian calendar and replace it with the more mathematically exact Gregorian calendar. Wisely Great Britain, as it was then, ignored this until 1752. Now, like the rest of the world, we celebrate the original Christmas Day on Twelfth Night. Well, not all the world. In Jerusalem, Eastern and Western Christian sects celebrate Christmas on different days.

Time juggling is not an easy obsession to break. In days before the railways came each town followed its own time. You could leave town “A” at noon and it would still be noon when you reached town “B”.

The Millennium was mostly down to Lord Mandelson. His grandfather, the monumentally dreadful and universally hated Herbert Morrison, inspired and figure-headed the 1951 Festival of Britain – which, like the Millennium exercise, also went massively over budget and into debt.  

It was difficult to see the point of the Festival of Britain, except as a tourist attraction. But at least Britain existed.

The 2000 A.D. Millennium didn’t. Biblical scholars agree the birth of Christ, which it commemorates, happened - if it happened at all - in 4 B.C. So we missed the Millennium which was in 1994 - or five. Because you start counting from one and not nought.

The first cancer scare I had turned out to be sarcoids. When I asked the surgeon what that was, he confessed no one knew. “Very rare?” I suggested. “Very,” he said.

In those far-off days I used to fish with an acerbic Scots vet.

“I’ve got a touch of sarcoids,” I told him with quiet pride. ”Very rare, so the surgeon said.”

“Haud yer whist,“ he sneered in his impenetrable Scottish way (only Scots can sneer and be impenetrable at the same time). “It’s no rare. Bliddy dogs get it.”

Just my luck. Can’t wait to get Fowl Pest.