Another Nelson..............................

 

 

 

Captain Timothy Edwards (or to give him his nickname in Nelson’s Navy “Old Hammer and Nails“) was the squire of Nanhoron on the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales and a hero in the Nelson mould.He was every bit as dashing as was shown in his biography “Hammer and Nails” by David Beaumont Ellison.

Ellison was a friend of mine, a naval historian and former schoolmaster who took a retirement job as a supermarket shelf stacker.  Nothing was known of Captain Edwards until Ellison was asked to identify Edwards’ mourning locket, bought at an auction in Fife.  Fortunately an aunt had left him £20,000 so he was able to devote himself to his search.  By a fluke, he found a volume of historical memoirs in Cambridge Public Library which mentioned Edwards and his Nanhoron home.  He wrote to the house and got a letter back from Bettina, the wife of David Harden, who is one of Edwards’ descendants and also friends of mine.  They invited him to Nanhoron and one of the best books on naval history I know was the result.

In 1745, at the age of 14, Edwards signed on the frigate “Chesterfield“ as captain’s servant.  Eventually he himself became a captain and after a brilliant career died at sea on his way home from the American War of Independence.

 

He was a midshipman on the sloop “Sphinx”, the flagship of fifteen transports, taking 2,576 passengers, plus horses, cows, sheep and goats, to found a new settlement in Nova Scotia, which in time became the city of Halifax.  After the mandatory six years’ sea-going service, he applied for his commission and in 1775 was posted to the newly refitted 1,689-ton, line-of-battle second rater “Ramillies” as 6th Lieutenant.  Fortunately, because of his knowledge of the waters round Nova Scotia, he was transferred to the 75-gun “Terrible”, which was about to sail for that region.

The “Ramillies” would have been a bad career move.  She was commanded by Admiral Byng, who, aboard her, lost Minorca to the French, was court martialled and shot.

 

The Captain of the “Terrible”, John Lockhart, was more successful.  He was known as “Lucky” to his men because of the number of ‘prizes’ (enemy ships) he captured.  His total was 14 ships and Edwards’ share in the prize money was £813, the equivalent of ten years’ pay.

 

Edwards was promoted to captain and sent on spying missions off Toulon.  The many sea fights he fought brought him a fortune in prize money. 

He “swallowed the anchor” to develop his Llyn estate, Nanhoron, still today much the same as when he laid it out.  He was helped by his wife Margaret with whom he exchanged tender love poems. 

He re-mustered when the American War of Independence broke out, joined Rodney’s fleet and fought a great battle off Martinique which is excitingly described in this book.  He died of fever on his journey home, rich with prizes and honours. 

Unknowing, Margaret, his wife, went to Southampton to meet him.  By the custom of the day she did not to take money for her return, relying on her husband for that.  Not only did she learn she was a widow; she was stranded near penniless in Southampton.  The church refused to lend her the return fare but an unknown Independent minister did.

 

**********************************************************************

 

When the doctor called this week and told me I had cancer I thought of a column Damon Runyon wrote when his diagnosis ws made.

It began “ Why me ?”

And ended “ Why not?”

Perversely it has given me a new lease of life., I have been terminally bored since we left Wales. Now I have something to fight and I love a good battle. I have beaten alcoholism and diabetes. You couldn’t put the odds on paper for the Treble

I also remembered that in 1820, the English writer and wit the Rev. Sydney Smith wrote a letter to an unhappy friend, Lady Morpeth, in which he offered her tips for cheering up.  His suggestions are as sound now as they were almost 200 years ago.

“1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life - not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely - they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life - a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
          

 Another comforting contribution from an old friend and Master Blogger Geoff Mather:

 

Life begins at 80 by Frank Laubach

" I have good news for you. The first 80 years are the hardest. The
second 80 are a succession of birthday parties. Once you reach 80
everyone wants to carry your baggage and help you up the steps. If you
forget your name or anyone else's name, or an appointment, or your own
telephone number, or promise to be in three places at the same time,
or can't remember how many grandchildren you have, you need only
explain that you are 80.

            Being 80 is a lot better than being 70. At 70, people are
mad at you for everything. At 80, you have a perfect excuse, no matter
what you do. If you act foolishly, it's your second childhood.
Everyone is looking for symptoms of softening of the brain.

            Being 70 is no fun at all. At that age, they expect you to
retire to a house in the country and complain about your arthritis, and
you ask everybody to stop mumbling, because you can't understand them
(actually your hearing is about 50% gone).

            If you survive until you are 80, everybody is surprised
that you are still alive. They treat you with respect for just having
lived so long. Actually they seem surprised that you can walk and talk
sensibly. So, please folks, try to make it to 80. It's the best time
of life. People forgive you for anything.

*******************************************************************

Hipkin my gardener was in a bit of a hurry this morning. He has to buy an advent calendar for his dog.

Hipkin’s dog is one of the wonders of Fenland. He has four pieces of dog’s chocolate for tea and likes nothing better than sausages for breakfast.

Hipkin says “ Owd dog be fewrrus if’n I fergit the calendar.

“Every morning he sits in front of it and barks, till we oopen the little door.”

He also goes on holiday every year to Skegness and can count.

Hipkin is a constant source of wonder to me and I love him dearly. I am going out now to buy one for Taz

Yule Be Surprised........................

I must express my support for Oxford city council who have confirmed that forthcoming events in the city will be renamed 'Winter Light Festival' to make them more inclusive, even though it is provoking outrage among shoppers in the city who have called for a return to tradition.

The idea has come from the charity Oxford Inspires, the cultural development agency for the county which runs the celebrations.  Such a charity can begin at my home whenever it likes.

This gaudy drunken hangover from the pagan festival of Saturnalia has some unlikely supporters.

Sabir Hussain Mirza, chairman of the Muslim Council of Oxford, said: "I am really upset about this.  Christians, Muslims and other religions all look forward to Christmas.

Fr Brian Van-Dungey, a priest in Garsington, Oxfordshire, said: "I am a Christian and pleased to see my Muslim brothers joining in the condemnation of this stupid and dangerous idea; this sort of thinking creates racial problems and should be stopped in its tracks."

Rabbi Eli Bracknell, who teaches at the Jewish Educational Centre in the city, said: "It is important to maintain a traditional British Christmas.  Anything that waters down traditional culture and Christianity in the UK is not positive for the British identity."

Historically Christ has nothing to do with Christmas. He was probably born in September in A.D 04 if you see what I mean

It is  not even traditionally British.  Father Christmas was the nineteenth century invention of an American copywriter.  The tree is German; the Yule Log is Norse.  Look in vain among the great diarists for descriptions of the shopping and drinking orgy we will be undergoing shortly.

Oxford Inspires spokesman Tei Williams said: "In Oxfordshire we have Winter Light, which is a whole festival spanning two months.  Within that festival will be Christmas Carol services."

Liz Gresham of Oxford Inspires added: "We changed the name to be more inclusive."

Although my ancestry is blatantly Royalist I incline toward the Puritans.  A party that tried to ban Christmas cannot be entirely bad.  Similarly, I cannot bring myself to hate Napoleon because he had the good sense to shoot a publisher.  Name of Palme.  And there is a certain irony to think of the Palme outstretched in a gesture typical of his trade.

Christmas in its present form was largely invented by Charles Dickens but he could not foresee what a mess we would make of it.

                              *******************************************

In place of Christmas I will be holding a Dickens’ Festival in our Stately Bungalow.  On December 6th we visit Rochester for their Christmas Dickens’ Festival.  From then until Christmas Eve I will be showing Celia and Taz a collection of the DVDs of the great Dickens’ classics which I have assembled from raids on E Bay, ending with Pickwick Papers and Alastair Sim’s tour de force “A Christmas Carol”.  Traditionally on Christmas Eve we have a DVD of Peter Brook’s production of the Pepita Nutcracker, danced by the Royal Ballet.  I adore Dickens but I am not pedantic.  I have a friend who is and it is very wearing.  But I do not approve of the way that great author is being hacked about in the admittedly very watchable Andrew Davies’ versions on TV.  In Little Dorrit, for example, we are shown a coloured girl with the ridiculous name of Tattycoram who we are invited to believe is a slave.

In Dickens’ version she is not coloured.  She is a foundling who was taken in by the Meagles, her adoptive family, to replace a deeply loved daughter who died in infancy.  The family wished to love and care for one of the unhappy children banished to foundling homes.  By tradition, all such children were given the surname ‘Beadle’ after one of the most hated of public offices.  Her new family thought this demeaning and so changed her name to Harriet Coram, naming her after the philanthropist who founded the homes.  ‘Tatty’ was the diminutive they used to disguise her arbitrary name of Harriet because, in Meagles’ words, “we thought that as a new thing for her, it might have a softening and affectionate kind of effect.”  There is no suggestion her “protector” is a lesbian, and we are made aware in a masterly fashion by Dickens early in the narrative that Flintwinch has a brother.

*******************************************************************

From Tony Bilborough in Australiia come the following  wise words:

Political Correctness "is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

 

 

My old friend, former Daily Mail columnist and blog reader John Edwards, offers the following gem:

 

CHRISTMAS PARTY

FROM: Pauline, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: 21st October 2008
RE: Christmas Party
I'm happy to inform you that the company Christmas Party will take place on December 23rd, starting at noon in the private function room at the Grill House. There will be a cash bar and plenty of drinks! We'll have a small band playing traditional carols...please feel free to sing along. And don't be surprised if the MD shows up dressed as Santa Claus! A Christmas tree will be lit at 1.00p.m. Exchange of gifts among employees can be done at that time; however, no gift should be over $20.00 to make the giving of gifts easy for everyone's pockets. This gathering is only for employees! The MD will make a special announcement at the Party.
Merry Christmas to you and your Family.
Pauline

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM: Pauline, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: 22nd October 2008
RE: Holiday Party
In no way was yesterday's memo intended to exclude our Jewish employees. We recognize that Chanukah is an important holiday, which often coincides with Christmas, though unfortunately not this year. However, from now on we're calling it our 'Holiday Party'. The same policy applies to any other employees who are not Christians. There will be no Christmas tree or Christmas carols sung. We will have other types of music for your enjoyment.
Happy now?
Happy Holidays to you and your family.
Pauline.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM; Pauline, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: 23rd October 2008
RE: Holiday Party
Regarding the note I received from a member of Alcoholics Anonymous requesting a non-drinking table...you didn't sign your name. I'm happy to accommodate this request, but if I put a sign on a table that reads, 'AA Only', you wouldn't be anonymous anymore!!!! How am I supposed to handle this? Somebody? Forget about the gift exchange, no gift exchange allowed now since the Union Officials feel that $20.00 is too much money and Management believe $20.00 is a little cheap. NO GIFT EXCHANGE WILL BE ALLOWED.
Pauline.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM: Pauline, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: 24th October 2008
RE: Holiday Party
What a diverse group we are! I had no idea that December 20th begins the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which forbids eating and drinking during daylight hours. There goes the party! Seriously, we can appreciate how a luncheon at this time of year does not accommodate our Muslim employees' beliefs, perhaps the Grill House can hold off on serving your meal until the end of the party - or else package everything up for you to take home in a little foil doggy bag. Will that work? Meanwhile, I've arranged for members of Weight Watchers to sit farthest from the dessert buffet and pregnant women will get the table closest to the toilets, Gays are allowed to sit with each other, Lesbians do not have to sit with gay men, each will have their own table. Yes, there will be flower arrangements for the gay men's table too. To the person asking permission to cross dress - no cross dressing allowed. We will have booster seats for short people. Low fat food will be available for those on a diet. We cannot control the salt used in the food we suggest those people with high blood pressure taste the food first. There will be fresh fruits as dessert for Diabetics; the restaurant cannot supply 'No Sugar' desserts. Sorry! Did I miss anything?!?!
Pauline.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM: Pauline, Human Resources Director
TO: All F***ing Employees
DATE: 25th October 2008
RE: The F****ing Holiday Party.
Vegetarian pricks I've had it with you people !!! We're going to keep this party at the Grill House whether you like it or not, so you can sit quietly at the table furthest from the 'grill of death', as you so quaintly put it, you'll get your f***ing salad bar, including organic tomatoes, But you know tomatoes have feelings too, They scream when you slice them. I've heard them scream. I'm hearing the scream right NOW!!
I hope you all have a rotten holiday, drink drive and die.
The Bitch from HELL!!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM: John Benson.( Acting Human Resources Director )
TO: All Employees
DATE: 26th October 2008
RE: Pauline Lewis and Holiday Party
I'm sure I speak for all of us in wishing Pauline a speedy recovery, and I'll continue to forward your cards to her. In the meantime, the Management has decided to cancel our Holiday Party and instead, give everyone the afternoon of the 23rd December off with full pay.
John Benson.

 

**********************************************************************************************************

PER ARDUA AD ASDA

There was me and Flookie Anderson, both Black Watch (RHR), Paddy from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and Kerr, a PFC in the 8^th USAF.  The plan we hatched in the Malcolm Club at Fassberg on the Berlin Airlift was to steal a c54 Skymaster bomber, fly it to the Eastern Zone and sell it to the Russians.

 

We had it all worked out to the last detail.  The planes only touched down for a few minutes to be re-loaded and Flookie, who was a Hard Man, reckoned overpowering the pilot would be child’s play.  We might even be able to sell the cargo of potatoes on the black market, although Paddy thought we would get a better price if we stole one laden with coal.  Where the plan fell down was that none of us had the slightest idea how to fly a plane and, though Kerr said it was easy, we thought it better to err on the side of caution.  Had we not, and been caught, we would still be in the glasshouse half a century later.

 

So how come Prince William, who has admitted twice stealing helicopters, has not been court martialled and drummed out of the RAF?

 

And while we are examining royal behaviour, whose idea was it that the Earl of Wessex, or Dockland Daisy as he was known when he was failing as a TV tea boy, should read the lesson at the Festival of Remembrance?  His only taste of military life ended abruptly when he chickened out of a Royal Marine induction course.  And what WAS the uniform in which he was drowning at the ceremony at the Cenotaph?

 

As the Queen enjoyed the three cheers of the fighting men at the Festival, I reflected that she failed to overrule the ban the Foreign Office imposed on wearing poppies at a State banquet.  In case they embarrassed the diplomats from our former enemy countries.  How so?  The tradition embraces their dead soldiers; and the fighting men of World War Two saw nothing blameworthy in cheering the head of a German dynasty.

 

I confess to feeling sorry for the well meaning Prince of Wales who is ill served both by his relatives and his retainers.  His role model is clearly George 111 who was the best of a bad litter and mad in a much nicer way than the other Hanoverians.  I may be a bit prejudiced because my pension from the Royal Literary Fund was initiated by him.

 

I mistimed my shower on Armistice Day and had to leap out to stand naked and shivering for the two minutes’ silence.  As usual I wept copiously when the old soldiers marched past.  But I refuse to watch the rest of the ceremony in which the Establishment lays wreaths.  The same Establishment that started the wars and refuses to equip our soldiers.  (Russell was making the same complaint in the Times during the Crimean debacle and Halles in his Elizabethan Chronicles about Agincourt.)  An Establishment that refuses first pensions and then nationality to the Gurkhas.

 

Nor do I forget that private donations had to be solicited to give our squaddies a decent hospital and our Rulers even argue over their compensation.  I wasn’t a proper soldier and have become a pacifist.  That doesn’t stop me holding in great respect, even awe, those men who were ready to give their lives for the rest of us.

 

I suppose a case can be made for fighting the 2^nd World War, even though it was the result of the complete balls up Lloyd George, Wilson and the French premier Clemenceau made of the Versailles Peace Treaty, the Peace that Passeth All Understanding.  Their insistence on crippling Germany let the Nazis in, just as the broken promises to the Arabs were the nursery which spawned the Muslim terrorist.

 

That war apart, it is difficult to justify any one of the combats which punctuated the twentieth century and are set to define this one.  Do people realise we have just fought the second Hundred Years War?

                   **************************************************

 

This chap rang me up and asked if I wrote biographies for people.  I said “Only rich people” and he said “That is OK; I am rich.”

 

That is how I found a dear chum Captain William Higgin.

 

When I got to know him better and heard something of his life I said, “You must have got through a fortune.”  “Three to be exact,” he told me proudly,

 

He was one of the finest game shots of his generation.  His game diaries, kept since the age of eleven, show a total of 357,000 birds and vermin destroyed.  Not recorded was the Dornier bomber he shot down on his family estate at Puddington, Cheshire, or the two sacred peacocks he downed in India, which almost got him lynched by angry villagers.

 

He shot the Dornier bomber as it came in very low on its run to the iron works at Queensferry.  He recalled: “It was quite an easy shot and the next day Western Command in Chester confirmed it had come down.”

 

The peacocks he shot in India while on safari.  He was saved from the wrath of angry tribesmen by their Head Man, a Cambridge graduate, who smuggled him out of the village at night.

 

His shooting career almost ended when as a 19 year old company commander in the 5^th Baluch (Jacob’s Rifles) Regiment, King George V’s Own, a bullet whistled past his ear on morning parade.  It had been fired by a deranged sepoy.

 

Bill’s dilemma was that if he reported him to the CO, the sepoy would have been shot.  He had to think of an alternative.  He noticed the man was wearing a marksman’s badge and ordered another sepoy to rip it off as a punishment.  He said, “If you missed me at that range you are clearly wearing it under false pretences.”  He felt justified when six months later the sepoy won the Military Medal.

 

Fighting on the North West Frontier was conducted in a gentlemanly way.  If a sepoy was shot or a village became obstreperous it was given a warning that on an appointed day the Indian Air Force would bomb it.  On that day the villagers would scatter into the mountains, the Air Force would come over and drop a few bombs.  Not many casualties and very little blood letting.

 

Posted to the Burmese jungle in World War 2, he was struck down with polio and it took ten days to get him to hospital.  He told me: “I warned my soldiers I would shoot anyone I found drinking water from a pond.  Then twenty-four hours later like a bloody fool I drank from one.”

 

After a year in hospital, disguising his polio limp he was back on duty in India as ADC to an Army Commander, Sir Henry Finnis.  Subsequently he was Pandit Nehru’s warder when Nehru was imprisoned by the British.

 

He remembered: ”I looked after Nehru for six months and he didn’t address a single word to me.  Can’t blame him.  He was kept in appalling conditions, literally in a cage built onto a shed like a dog kennel where he slept.”

 

After the war Bill ran three farms, in Cheshire, North Wales and Shropshire, but still managed to shoot five days a week.  Then two years before we met, suddenly he couldn’t lift a gun.  After 69 years the legacy of the polio had returned.  Refusing to be defeated, he hired a beater to carry him on shoots and hold his shoulder whilst he shot.

 

The biography we wrote together “Koi Hai” was published the day he went into hospital.  He died two days later; a few hours after I had presented him with his first royalty cheque, which I had framed.

 

His ancestors included the Restoration rakehell 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who killed the Earl of Shrewsbury in a duel whilst the Countess looked on, and a Pendle Witch.

 

 

 

This from reader Judith Elliot: “The council may have a point about Latin, alas.  A friend had a cheque returned from the bank the other day because she put October in Roman numerals and they thought that meant she had crossed out the date.  And when she rang Delhi to explain, and said she was with the Ealing branch, the lady corrected her and said, ‘Madam, excuse me, you have made a mistake: there is no such place, you are spelling it wrong, there is an H in front.’  So now we keep our money in the Healing Bank.

“Another friend went to Homebase to buy a lavatory seat.  Met with blank stares.  Eventually she ventured toilet seat.  ‘Well, if that’s what you wanted, why didn’t you say so?’ said the man furiously.”

EGO MANIA

A number of local councils in Britain have banned their staff from using Latin words, because they say they might confuse people.

 

Phrases like "vice versa", "pro rata", and even "via" should not be used, they insist, in speech or in writing.  Latin is elitist and discriminatory, because some people might not understand it - particularly if English is not their first language.  Or so they say.  Bournemouth council's Plain Language Guide lists Latin under the heading "Things To Avoid".  Other local councils have banned "QED" and "ad hoc", while other typical Latin terms include "bona fide", "ad lib" and "quid pro quo".

 

There is a fitting precedent.  Sir Walter Scott, in Ivanhoe, has Gurth, a Saxon swineherd, talking to Wamba, a jester, on just the same subject.

 

“How call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?" demanded Wamba.

 

"Swine, fool, swine," said the swineherd; "every fool knows that."

 

"And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester, "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?"

 

"Pork," answered the swineherd.

 

"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles.  What dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?"

 

"It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate."

 

Clearly the councils do not go far enough into their fools’ pates.  There are 200 Latin words in Old English: cheese, oil, pepper, wall, kettle, table, pillow and wine.  Pope, priest, shrine, crystal, verse, theatre, rose, lily, church, grammar and paper must also be banned from the councils' communications.

 

Why stop at LATIN?  Our native language is Pictish.  Alas, it has disappeared, but surely that is no reason for using the Celtic words which superseded it?

 

Let us get rid of their names for plants and trees.  We cannot stand rebuked.  That is Old French and means to cut down, as in trees.

We cannot “favour” some Latin words because that too is Old French and describes a chestnut horse.  To the Angles and Saxons and Jutes we owe woman (wyf+ man).  No give and take, that is Scandinavian; as is cast, them, their and they; skirt, sky, rig and egg.

 

What about those words our soldiers brought back from service in China and India?  Are there to be no more Chars and Wads?  Can we no longer describe these councils as ’Doolally?

*****************************************************************************

 TEDDY BEARS PICNIC

The group noun for Teddy Bears is "A Hug".  My hug includes a haute couture bear given to me by a lady who was one of the great beauties of Europe as a "love" token.

 

Maria Sax-Ledger was 81 at the time.  She met her first sweetheart, an Englishman, when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Zurich.  When she was 17 they got engaged and Maria came to England.  Unfortunately she took a dislike to her future mother-in-law and broke off the engagement.  She subsequently married a GP called Peter.

 

One day she looked out of the window of her home in a valley near Llanbedr, in Gwynedd, and saw an old man walking his dogs on her land.

When she went out to rebuke him she discovered it was her schoolboy love.  He told her: “I have just heard that I am dying and I have come to tell you that I have always loved you and to ask if you will hold my hand on my death bed.”  In the event, Maria was not at his death bed but she invited his widow to stay after his death.

 

“We got on very well.  She brought my engagement ring which she had found among his possessions and I have worn it every day since.“

 

Sax is a royal name.  The Royal Family were Saxe Coburgs.  Any relation?

“They were probably a junior branch.  My family lived in Switzerland before it became Switzerland so originally they must have been German.  We had seven castles though only one is still intact.”

 

I met one of her forefathers in a church in St Gallen.  He was Philip of Sax, a student at Christchurch, Oxford, in 1558 and one of Elizabeth I’s courtiers.  He was mummified long before we met in a Swiss church but is still able to get about.

 

“They have to take him to the dentist’s regularly for attention to his teeth.”

 

In her Welsh home her studio was castle-baronial though it started life as a ruined barn.  Maria painted landscapes under a beamed roof.  There was a minstrel gallery, a long antique dining table with silver candelabra at which Maria, a brilliant cook, held legendary lunch parties.  Huge sofas and chaises longues were scattered about.  In one corner was an antique Provencal bed in which her collection of teddy bears - minus the one she gave me - reclined on hand-painted Indian cushions.  The walls glowed with paintings, mostly her own.

 

“I like my paintings to be cheerful.  I would never dream of painting anything morbid.  I am never depressed.  I wake up in the morning determined to create something before I go to bed in the evening.”

 

They are much sought after.  They follow no school.  Childlike, the landscapes of dreams, in bold colour, vigorously drawn.  When she painted a sun you could feel the heat.

 

In return for the Teddy Bear, I opened her fourth exhibition at Plas Glyn y Weddw on the LLyn Peninsula.  When she had her first major exhibition in Wales, at the Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno, the staff were so impressed they produced a book of her work, lovingly written by her daughter Tanya Harrod.

 

From childhood onwards she painted every day, though she has never had a lesson since an art teacher warned her that any attempt to teach her would wreck her style.  Tanya recalled that her mother painted on every wall in their home in Surrey.  Once she even painted over the windows and, when cracks appeared in the plaster in one room, she turned them into a trellis of creepers.

 

“I painted all my life until my sight began to go.  A specialist told me I was blind in one eye and going blind in the other.  So I gave away all my paintings, paints, brushes, canvases.  When I came to Wales 16 years ago I had only three paintings.  I recovered my sight after a cataract operation but I had no thought of painting.”

 

In compensation, she took up serial shopping and designing her very original clothing.  She retained considerable style.  She polished her hand-made soft leather boots with Nivea face cream to give them a sheen and her hats defied description.

 

“One day John Henshaw, a friend of Tanya who ran an Arts Centre in Wiltshire, saw my paintings and offered to put on an exibition.  He wanted 40 paintings.  I thought, why not?  I began to paint furiously.  They all sold on the first day and I have not stopped painting since.  Can you believe, it took over sixty years to be recognised?”

 

The paints she used were made by her own family according a secret recipe.  Churchill used no other make.

 

“He was a great friend of my cousin Willie who stayed at Chartwell where you can see the huge mahogany paint box he gave to Churchill.  Churchill only ever gave three paintings away.  One he gave to my cousin.  During the war my uncle built up a remarkable art collection by bartering paints, canvases and brushes for paintings.”

 

There was one point she never failed to make.  Orson Welles got it wrong.  The Swiss never made cuckoo clocks.  It was the Germans he was thinking of.  And probably a Sax.

 

ends.

               =================================================

 

Bus stop to nowhere

 

The bus shelter was erected on a main road in the Pennine foothills in 2006 to serve passengers in the village of Diggle, on the outskirts of Oldham.  But in the same week as the work was finished, local bus routes were changed by transport chiefs and services were diverted on to another road.

 

Every night the solar-powered lights flicker on automatically to light up the shelter but, two years on, no passengers have ever used it.

 

Saddleworth councillor Ken Hulme said: "It's in excellent condition and comes fully equipped with lights that come on every night “

“Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive told me they have a policy of not closing any bus stops.  I couldn't believe that.  It's bureaucracy gone mad.  There is a bus stop in Delph at the side of a main road, well, it's a pole, and it's dangerous.  Lots of schoolchildren use it and have to stand in the road.  I don't see why we can't move this shelter and use it instead."

 

Michael Renshaw, of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, said there were no plans to move the bus stop, in case a new route is introduced in future which would run past it.  He said: "The lights are solar powered and they reduce anti-social behaviour so we keep them on."

 

Manchester Evening News

 

P.S.  Surprised that none of the 178 BBC staff covering the US election has drawn attention to the fact that it has followed exactly the plot of "West Wing", the TV series.

 

How many voters were influenced by the show in which a new Hispanic president is from an ethnic minority, not unlike Obama?

 

And why did no one question whether the Republicans wanted to win an election only to run a country deep in hock to China, where icons like Ford Motors and great investment banks are on the brink of failure?

 

I cannot think of any other reason for putting up an ancient candidate with a weak heart, which might pave the way for a female president who isn't sure if Africa is a continent.  Perhaps party planners watched "West Wing".

The Ross-ing disgrace

A great week for those of us who believe the least interesting things on TV happen on the screen.

The Ross-Brand saga was disgraceful.  What worried me most was the insistence of  BBC "suits" that this untalented pair were brilliant broadcasters on the top of their game.  If that is so, I assume the BBC is now playing in the Fourth Division.

 

Their defenders claimed the massive reaction to their obscene telephone call  was the result of a Daily Mail campaign.  Rubbish.  It was the BBC which kept it in the public eye by constantly showing clips and transcripts of the item.  The News Division carries a lot of clout and someone was getting his own back.  Ross's £18 million contract upset a lot of broadcasters and his claim to be worth more than a thousand jounalists was unwise.

The resignation of the Controller has been heralded as a noble gesture.  It was an act dictated by petulance.  She had sought to protect her staff by threatening to resign if they were disciplined.  Dangerous tactic. She might have been wise to remember the former Director General Greg Dyke who has never quite got over having his own dramatic resignation accepted.

Brand has form.  In 2002 he was kicked off a radio programme for reading pornographic material.  The two pretend to be yobs but Ross is a graduate and Brand was privately educated at the Conte School. 

If possible, the TV critics are worse than the programmes.  After a documentary by the former Deputy Prime Minister, one Billen, in The Times, mocked the luckless John Prescott and suggested that his wife Pauline had been less than tactful in drawing attention to the fact that Lord Onslow, their host at a luncheon, had left his flies undone.  Had it been Prescott and not Onslow who appeared on TV  with his flies unbuttoned what a glorious time would Billen have had with it.  

Had it been Onslow and not Prescott who, according to Billen,  had been "an able  minister" how joyfully and not grudgingly would Billen have recorded it.  Had it been Prescott and not Onslow who repeatedly used the 'f' word on TV in the presence of ladies, his guests at the luncheon, how Billen would have sneered.

Idiots do not become Deputy Prime Ministers or perhaps a greater number of aristocratic Old Etonians would achieve that office.

What we saw was a devoted couple who had got over their matrimonial problems enjoying the sort of marriage which is rare in the political classes.  We saw a glamorous wife, proud of her working class origins, of whom any husband would be proud.  And a bruiser of a  husband who worked hard as a union official and, by dint of long nights of after work study, got to Ruskin College and was awarded a degree in Economics.  Certainly the most grown up of the Trinity which led Labour and one of the few socialists in the cabinet.

Finally, why has the BBC sent so many of its "stars" to America to cover the Presidential election?  The BBC always believed in "oversend".  I have been on stories for them where ALL the other reporters have been from BBC programmes.  Their combined expenses would re-finance a bank.  Nothing like Obama's, of course.  He, we are told, has an unlimited budget.  But no one has yet said where he got the money.  Gore Vidal has frequently written that America gets the President that Big Business wants and finances.  Big Business holds the only vote that counts.

What, one wonders, has attracted it to Obama? 

                                                      

                                    

                                          ***************************************

I am standing over the nest with the insecticide and my friend Ronnie Knox Mawer is saying to the wasps within, “Prisoners at the bar, have you  anything to say?”

Ronnie, a retired judge, first used these words when, at 26, he put on the black cap and sentenced a man to death.  Subsequently, as Chief Justice of the South Sea Islands, he handed down many more such sentences.  So I was puzzled to know why I had  been lured seventy miles  to kill wasps.  Then I recalled my friend has a fine legal sense of precedent and my family has a long connection with executioners.

My old man was the official driver to Albert Pierrepoint, the most famous public hangman.  My old man  did not mind his macabre role.  

It was a rest from his  unofficial job whilst serving in the wartime police, running a black market cartel.  Though he did find it a touch strange the way Albert, who had a fine baritone voice, liked to lead a singsong in pubs on the way home from work.

Albert had a pub himself near Blackpool called “Help the Poor Struggler“, which even my old man thought was not in the best of taste. 

Though the coachloads of trippers who called there every day thought it a great joke and all wanted their photographs taken standing under the sign with Albert.

Another hangman I knew called Wade had a cafe in Yorkshire called “Rest Weary Pilgrim“, so maybe a macabre sense of humour went with the job.  A third hangman, Harry Allen, was different: he kept a pub called "The Junction".

In the days of which I speak even bars on the road to Blackpool not run by hangmen did a roaring trade.  Gin and orange was the staple drink and glasses of it stood, ready poured, in rows on the bar top waiting for a charabanc to arrive.  Unscrupulous landlords filled the 

glasses with orange juice and wiped a gin stained finger round the rim.  No one ever noticed.  Another scam after a punter had drunk three genuine gin and tonics was to serve him plain tonic for subsequent orders.  The punter would still taste gin.  It works.  Try it.

                                                     ****************************************

I knew a man once who advised his friends of a change of address by writing the sort of letter to The Times it could not fail to print.  I use the Letters column to find out which of my friends is still with us.  So I was delighted to read a letter from Michael Senior.

Laid back and leisurely, the elegant Dr Michael Senior is the archetypal Victorian Man of Letters, attached to the 20th century for purposes of rations and accommodation only.

He lives in style in an elegant mansion on a hilltop, with views up, down and across the Conwy Estuary.  Every window a seascape.  Sunday afternoons he hosts a croquet party for his friends; he farms, chairs historical societies, dines out and knowledgeably wine tastes.  Even 

his house has a relaxed name, Bryn Eisteddfod - in English the 'sitting down place'.

Do not be fooled.  He is like the swan, relaxed on the surface but beneath going like hell.  A driven man.  He is a compulsive Open University degree collector, has written at least twenty-five books and has published prize-winning poetry and learned articles on folklore.  He paints at a furious rate, studied for his doctorate in philosophy in what he laughingly calls his spare time and gardens tirelessly.  His day is planned to the minute.

Although he is primarily an historian, he has written ten unpublished novels and began as a playwright.  His first play, “The Coffee Table“, was broadcast on Radio 3 and in Canada and New Zealand.  It had a stage production at the Toronto Playhouse.  He thought he was on the threshold of a glittering career.  

“The Literary Advisor of the Royal Shakespeare Company rang and asked if I had any other plays," he said.  "I hadn’t, but I said ‘yes’, and he asked me to send an example.  The company was putting on a season of new plays at the Barbican and he thought I might be one of 

the chosen playwrights.  I quickly wrote four or five and sent them off.  They were liked but, before they could be put on, the company’s policy changed and they were never done.  Kenneth Tynan encouraged me to write film scripts but they were never made into films.”

Heart-breaking?

“I am reconciled to that sort of thing.  Being a writer is like playing the one-armed bandit.  You get a trickle of luck and you think the next one is going to be the big one.  The next book is always the best.   It’s an addiction, like gambling.”

He toured Greece to write a book on “Greece and its Myths”.  That was the book he enjoyed most of the many.  The most scholarly was his “Tales of King Arthur”, a rendering in modern English of Sir Thomas Malory’s immortal and largely incomprehensible “Morte d’Arthur”, out of print in the UK but still a big seller in the US.

“ It is the best story ever told but it gets bogged down in the detail of jousts and genealogies, essential to the medieval reader but lost on us.  I wanted to make it more accessible to the ordinary reader.

“I believe the subject matter is related to Wales.  Dinas Bran at Llangollen, for instance.  Bran relates to the classic gods and there are early stories about it closely related to the Holy Grail.  Bran in the Mabinogion possessed a holy vessel which I see as a grail prototype.  

There are several reasons to classify Dinas Bran as the Castle of the Holy Grail.  For one, a Celtic scholar R.S. Looms has suggested it was the castle of the Fisher King, who was traditionally the keeper of the Grail.  Bran may well have been a river god.  Parsifal is Percival, who is also connected with the Mabinogion.  British myths have been neglected and I see it as my job to bring them back to the public.”

His “Figures in a Landscape” is the second in a series of eight books which tell the story of all the great men and women in northern Welsh history.

  “I have written about the places.  Now I am putting the people in the places.”

It is a labour of love, not money.  His UK and international books made money but he writes mostly for a small Welsh publisher, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, which brings him a few hundred pounds a year. 

“They are read and people enjoy them and that satisfies my reason for writing - to communicate.  People write and phone me from all over the world to say they have enjoyed my books.  That gives me a very good feeling and is really the only reward  I want.”

Painting he also does for fun.  “I paint four pictures a year.  I am Chairman of the Friends of the Royal Cambrian Academy and we have open exhibitions which allow us to put up our paintings there, which is a  great privilege. “

Another privilege is the situation of his house in the Conwy Gap.

“The Conwy Gap extends from Conwy to Deganwy; it is a sunshine trap.  I can sit in my window and see it raining on Anglesey and up the valley at Rowen whilst my garden is bathed in sunshine.”

Symbolic of a man whose life is suffused with the stuff.  

   

ends.

DON’T EAT, DRINK….AND YOU TRY BEING MERRY

 

 

It has been a funny sort of week. Last Saturday I was a guest at my grand-daughter’s deeply romantic wedding; on Sunday her sister got engaged on the top of the Brunelleschi tower in Florence and shopped for the ring on the Ponte Vecchio; on Monday my wife and I celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary; and on Thursday her seventieth birthday. The only other anniversaries I can think of which are celebrated at this time of the year are the battle of Hastings, El Alamein and Trafalgar, which is somehow fitting.

 

At all our celebrations not a drop (well perhaps just a drop) passed my eager lips. But it is not the drink I miss so much as the cut and thrust of the family battles which it provoked. I sometimes think it is no coincidence that our time of celebration should end in Hallowe’en, the Witches’ Sabbath.

 

“Come, come,” I once said in answer to unkind criticism from Madam, “I only graze in public once a week and take a modest slurp for the joy of having my fellow man around me.”

 

“The camel only goes to the watering hole every three months,” she countered with bitter cruelty, “but he can still put away enough liquid at one visit to last till his next. I often think,” mused the Moon of My Delight, “you display some of the characteristics of the camel.“

 

It was at this point I began to pout. Prettily, of course. Any hint at humps sends me off. Most pear-shaped chaps are the same. We cannot help feeling that if our humps had been on our backs and not fastened to our waists no one would dream of mentioning them. Much less patting them as though they owned them. Try patting them back, these indiscriminate patterers. If you don’t get landed with a sexual harassment charge, at least you get a dirty look. And as if being patted isn’t bad enough, it comes with the same weary witticisms. “Bet this cost you a fortune,” they say.

 

There is really only one reply to that, and I offer it to come to the aid of all stout parties. You fix the patters with a beady eye and you say: “If your parents had spent on your education what it cost me to achieve this contour, you would know that it is very rude to draw attention to other peoples’ appearances.”

 

Of course, the truth is that it is the burden of being an endomorph - round, soft and cuddly, as psychologists have perceptively defined us.

 

Better than being a squat, muscular mesomorph like Mussolini, or a lean, bony ectomorph like Hitler.

 

Endomorphs of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your weight. Just look who marches in our ranks: Sam Johnson, John Falstaff, Winston Churchill, Peter Ustinov. And the glorious beer-stained G K Chesterton. During the First World War a woman demanded, “Why aren’t you out at the front?” “Madam,“ said Chesterton, “if I turn sideways you would see that I am.”

 

Our list is endless, but who have the ectomorphs got? I’ll tell you. Twiggy. Mesomorphs? Rambo. Rambo? Sounds like a dog food.

 

· 

·A NOVEL WAY TO EARN A LIVING

 

If you think of life as a theatre, it is a great relief to have moved to the seat near the emergency exit. For one thing, the creative people I read about today are so much smaller than the ones I once knew.

 

Like a lady called Maureen Peters, who when I interviewed her had already written 168 novels, 25 magazine serials and 150 short stories. Her musical “Maid of Judah”, for which she wrote the book and lyrics, was about to have its British premiere after a successful American debut.

 

She filled her spare time knitting, tapestry making, studying the Cabala, travelling and reading at least six books a week. She had three children and nine grandchildren.

 

She confessed: “My head is full of ideas and I just have to get them out. At the moment I have ideas for sixteen novels either in my head or jotted down in note books. I don’t use real people as characters consciously, but my mum always said she recognised some of my characters from people we had known when I was a child.”

 

The practical mechanics of her writing life would make your head spin.

 

“When I finish a novel I give myself a day off and then I start the next one. I have to write. I couldn’t bear to sit around in the morning talking about the price of tea. It’s not an escape from life, because I am quite happy with my life, but I am just not a social animal,“

 

She had just come back from an extended holiday. Two days in Hawarth, the capital of Bronte Country.

 

“I love it. It’s still the nineteenth century there with cobbled streets. It’s where they made the Hovis advertisement. In the apothecary’s - NOT the chemist’s - they still sell Dolly Blue and wear 19th century dress. I was disappointed they didn’t have laudanum when I asked, but they said they weren’t allowed to sell it.”

 

Magic mushrooms had been found in Top Withas, the setting for Wuthering Heights, and Maureen wondered if Heathcliffe and girlfriend got their kicks from chewing them. Alas, the discovery came too late for her biography of Emily Bronte, “Child of the Earth”, which took her three years of research and is written in novel form from Emily’s letters.

 

Maureen wondered if Emily was an early euthanasia case. “She was bitten by a rabid dog and could have caught hydrophobia. There was some mystery about her death. Her Uncle Hugh was brought over from Ireland when she was ill and went back a totally changed man when she died. He would never talk about her death and the family maid at that time was left £300 in Pastor Bronte’s will, which was a fortune in those days. I wonder if Uncle Hugh assisted the death. The Parson couldn’t and Emily would not have been allowed to take her own life. It’s all fascinating.”

 

Everything is grist to the Peters’ mill. She has set family sagas in Kent, Anglesey and Manchester. She has written 12 thrillers about a detective nun. You might know her under her other names, Veronica Black or Catherine Darby.

 

The musical? “I was on the train coming home from seeing Billy Liar in the West End. I didn’t think much of it. I thought I could write a better musical than that. I had just published a novel about a little orphaned Jewish girl who is on the streets in the 1870s when there were 30,000 child prostitutes in Manchester. She is rescued by a pavement artist. Perfect plot. So I started to jot down some lyrics.”

 

 

A DEFINITE ARTICLE

 

According to H. V. Morton in the best guide book to Wales "In Search of Wales", Taffy is a corruption of the Dutch “Tayf” which is the name of the tall black hat worn by Dutch clergy. They were notorious for arriving at parishioners’ houses at lunchtime and devouring the beef.

 

“Tayf je was er wee hetsh naen, Tayf je was er drief,

“Tayf je gee em t’oom hye huys, Een stole er leech af beef.”

 

According to my Slang thesaurus (because of course I have no other knowledge of the activity), copulation at lunchtime is known as a nooner; the act itself is known as horizontal jogging, indoor sledging and parallel parking. The excreta of the butterfly is frass.

 

I cannot think why, but I am glad to know all that.

 

 

A WARNING

 

My wife had a Debenham’s Gift Voucher stolen from a letter. It came with a letter from the Post Office Customer Service Manager admitting it had been damaged “whilst in our care” and offering “for an investigation to be made”.

 

Debenham’s said there was nothing they could do to prevent the voucher from being cashed, even though the sender had the receipt. The Post Office refused to offer compensation because the letter was not sent by special delivery, thus giving a charter to the thieves they employ. And finding the Post Office Ombudsman proved more difficult than it would have been apprehending the thief, had anyone bothered to try.

 

A postman told me that there is one offence which, if repeated, is automatically sackable.

 

Leaving the Sorting Office without a cycle helmet.

 

Not all giants are tall men

Ernest Naish was 88 when he gave up sheep farming. He could still travel between his three farms at Cwm Pennant, Trawsfynydd and Anglesey but he was too tired to work when he arrived.

When he joined the pre-war Navy he was a dagger man, the fast track naval elite. He dismissed it.

“My only distinction is I hold the naval record for going on courses. Ten years. Alas, the day I joined my first ship I went for my typhoid inoculation and was jabbed with a dirty needle. I became seriously ill.”

Ashore, he commanded a trials party which inspected submarines on maiden voyages. He was about to board one when he was taken ill again. The submarine was HMS Thetis which sank in the Irish Sea on its first trial.

“My successor is buried in Holyhead. A very painful thought that is with me all the time.”

Invalided out, Naish bought an Anglesey sheep farm and weaving mill, though he knew nothing about either trade. “I just asked my neighbour what to do next.” Good neighbours, obviously. He became an international authority on sheep, and when he found his property included a disused mill, he restored it and wove tweed of such beauty it was taken up by fashion houses in London and Paris. The war intervened. When he came back, the tweed market had been wiped out by an 80 per cent purchase tax.

Fortunately he found a part-time job to boost his farm income. He set up and ran the Ty Croes Guided Missiles Station at RAF Valley, commanding 15 jet fighters and a staff of a hundred. In his spare time.

He remembered it was great fun: “I would do the morning milking; then fly down to the Air Show at Farnborough, say. Then fly back in time for the evening milking.“

The Air Ministry asked him to go to Woomara in Australia to report on a new pilotless plane. He barely had time to buy his second farm from a small advert in the Guardian. ”Five hundred-acre farm on Cwm Pennant, with cottages and fine Victorian villa, built by wealthy father of quarry owner, £4,500.“

He only had time to look at it from the road. He bought it the same day.

The bard asks: “Oh Lord, why did you make Cwm Pennant so lovely and the life of a shepherd so short?” Naish made a liar out the bard but agreed with the sentiment: “I am part of this farm, just like the pigs and the sheep. This is the worst land in the Cwm, a foot of peat on rock. But it is a lovely place to live. It is a hard place to make a living but my heart is here. In forty years I have only spent four nights away. That is why I have a hobby that keeps me at home.”

The hobby was painting. He wouldn't sell his paintings or exhibit them either. He did once and regretted it ever after.

“My arm was twisted to take part in this touring exhibition sponsored by the Countryside Commission. I put four or five in. They were valued at £500 a piece and I thought, that’s fine, they are safe, no one will pay that. Blow me if I didn’t sell two. I made a resolution never to do a silly thing like that again. I am a non-profit-making water-colourist because, frankly, I don’t need the money. I paint purely for my own pleasure. I get an idea by walking round the farm and looking at things; then I come back and ruin a lot of old envelopes sketching on them. I cannot start painting until the picture is complete in my head. I start in one corner and work across the paper. I don’t know any of the rules. Never had a lesson. Don’t know why I paint and why I paint such big pictures. It is very exacting. It takes hours and hours. My eyes and my limbs are going so I can only manage twenty minutes at a time.“

There isn’t space to tell how he designed a water-driven Aga in which an electric heater was powered from a generator he built which was fed from his stream. Nor about the machine he designed and built which extracted heat from cold air. As he said, “Nothing really. Just reverse the principle of the fridge.”

Just an ordinary bloke............and I am the Queen of Roumania.


ON THE CULTIVATION OF WEEDS

I am not an obsessive gardener. When I lived at Tattenhall on the Welsh border I had to remonstrate with an enthusiastic neighbour whose flower seeds blew over the fence and choked my weeds. At a subsequent flat on the Rows in Watergate Street, Chester, the single window box was tended by a firm of jobbing gardeners which was also responsible for the hyacinth bowl. So there is no need to warn me that lawn mowing brings on heart attacks. More active gardeners may wish to know that it is the first cut of the season that is the unkindest cut of all and does the damage. Doctors call it lawnmower angina and I can take a hint. When my doctor said I was so far overweight the slightest exertion could kill me, I acted at once. I gave up exertion. It is the same with the first lawn mowing of the season. That is the one I gave up. In fact I gave it up right through to November. At our property on the Isle of Anglesey I was proud of my traditional Cottage Garden. You would love it. Right in the middle of my land I grew this traditional cottage; the rest was nature, red in tooth and claw. I am sure Conan Doyle had my bindweed in mind when he wrote “The Speckled Band". I wouldn't go out after dark in case it had me by the throat and dragged me off to its lair in the ivy which was gradually dismembering the garden wall. The dog wouldn't go near the place. One summer she was so covered in burrs she was four times propositioned by kerb-crawling hedgehogs. And the cat was mugged by a robin. I had convolvuli that could bring down a running rabbit in their own length and dandelions that were bred from real lions. When you pulled my nettles they pulled back. Soil? I had nettle-strengthened soil so vitamin choked you could plant a seedling in the garden and by the time you reached the back door it was six foot tall and waving at you. Tendrils from my peas plucked passing pigeons out of the sky. The real trouble with gardening is that whatever you grow you always have two hundred over. Especially lettuce. Breed like triffids and there is no sight in nature more terrifying than a lettuce gone to seed. Mind you, I love gardens. Other people's, where someone else does the weeding and you can stretch out on a lawn without that nagging worry that it is growing so fast you are levitating. If you don't rush in for the mower you are going to have an angry giant fee-fo-fumming at you. Also you don't have to buy packets of seed which cost you more than the Indians were paid for Long Island. Can you understand it? Every year you weed away annuals that have sown themselves. Every marigold has enough seeds on its stem for the deposit on a house. Yet when you buy a packet the only variety you get is King's Ransom - because that is what it cost. And now we have something else to worry about. Killer tomatoes from outer space. Did you read where American schoolchildren projected 12.5 million tomato seeds into space? After six years they came back and no sooner had they been planted in schools across America than NASA warned that their exposure to cosmic radiation meant they could be toxic. All part of an experiment, I read, to find the effect of space exposure on living tissue. Now we know. Lethal tomato butties. On top of which I do not understand why grown men want to float around on their backs doing unmentionable things into plastic bags just to get to the Moon. I would almost rather go to the Costa Brava.

BOOK REVIEW

When I was a reporter for a BBC Wales magazine programme, the star of the network was a merry imp of a man called Allan Barham. If there was a forest fire, Barham was in the middle of it, interviewing firemen. An angry crowd at a strike meeting? Look for him under the banner, fearlessly waving his microphone at the most militant striker.

I could forgive him being braver than I am. What I could never forgive was his dexterity with a tape recorder. He was to the BBC issue Uhers what Kennedy is to the violin and Blumenthal of the Fat Duck Hotel is to whisky-flavoured ice cream.

The worst part of being a radio reporter was editing the magnetic tapes on which programmes were recorded. It was a fiddly business, best carried out in a studio with all the editing equipment the BBC could muster. It involved cutting out superfluous words, inserting linking narrative and generally making a broadcastable item the precise length needed for the programme.

The BBC ran a course where trainees were taught how to cut the “ums” out of interviewees’ responses, Barham needed no training in cutting out a section of tape, spooling on and then putting it back in logical sequence. But he did it on his tape recorder in his car, with clothes pegs to hold the tapes he had cut until he needed them. He took the tape from the play back head, kept his eye on the exact spot and cut it with a razor blade.

Comparatively poorly paid, he was nevertheless the uber loyal servant who lived and breathed BBC Radio Wales. For 32 years he covered an area from Chester westwards to Holyhead, down to Aberystwyth, then east to the English border. With a heavy tape machine on his shoulder, he climbed mountains and burrowed underground over an area of many thousand square miles. He interviewed heroes and villains, adventurers and the barking mad. He seemed to know everyone in Wales.

His reward? When we got a new nationalist editor, he was, like me, made redundant, because he wasn’t Welsh enough. He wrote to the Controller of BBC Wales to ask if there were odd spots in any programmes he could fill. Five years later he is still waiting for a reply.

Amazingly, he doesn’t bear grudges.

He says: “A letter saying ‘Goodbye’ would be nice and a party would have been even better. So to all Heads of Departments I say this……….if you didn’t appreciate my thirty two years completely loyal and unbroken service, it’s a pity, and if you didn’t enjoy my career as much as I did, then never mind - I enjoyed it and that’s all that matters.”

The good news is that he has written those biting words in a book “Radio Reporter”, published by Toby Books (enquiries@tobybooks.co uk or www.tobybooks.co.uk) at £10.99, in which he has reprised the best of his stories. It is a nice fat book, an hilarious, tender account of sometimes highly improbable people doing strange and wonderful things. It should be required reading on all Media Studies courses and at everyone’s bedside. Especially those bedsides which are occupied by what passes for interviewers in today’s radio.

I was interviewed about my recent book for Radio Manchester. The only question I was asked was “Have you met any famous people?”

Pretty well all the famous people I have met have been boring in the extreme. Barham knew more than most how far from ordinary, ordinary people are.

end