Sunday bloody sunday

I felt the need to walk to Sainsbury yesterday rather than drive there.

Two virtually exercise free weeks in Corfu has done me no good, apart from in my head.

Despite a surfeit of fruit consumed in recent weeks, much of it in the form of Thatchers Gold admittedly, I felt a brisk walk was in order.

I walk these days without the assistance and distractions of an MP player or a radio because it does me good to think for myself and I tend to notice more.

So here was what I noticed.

Mid morning on a Sunday, North Road was quiet.  It’s a country road that isn’t in the country these days; long and narrow with mixed housing on both sides, some new, some old.

At the end of the road is the village church, St Michaels.

Now, I don’t do god and I don’t respect any religion but only a fool would deny that this church has a positive effect on the village.

Whether they do nice things to impress god because they want to go to heaven or because it’s a good thing to nice things, I don’t know, but I suspect it’s a little of both.

Anyway, I like walking through the graveyard (the dead centre of Stoke Gifford) and there was a service going on.

A churchman was reading extracts from the old testament (I know this because he said so).

This always makes me laugh because church folk pick and choose the bits they like and presumably pretend the nasty bits don’t exist.

God inflicting plagues, floods, fiery serpents and murdering millions of people slips into the background whilst they read the nice bits like ‘thou shalt not shag thy neighbour’s wife’ (I think this is how it goes: I haven’t read it for a while).

But it makes them happy, I suppose, and at least they don’t go round cutting people’s heads off or throwing acid in girls’ faces. Or not yet anyway.

I walked on a bit and passed a children’s football tournament.

I knew it was a football tournament because I could hear coaches and parents shouting very loudly at young children.

I paused but only briefly because I have had a guts full of children’s football and have seen how it has given us the England side we have today.

I never heard a ‘good pass’ shouted by anyone but there was much encouragement for ‘great battling’ and ‘effort’.

No wonder almost all these boys will drift out of football before they even reach 16.

And then to Sainsburys where I bought my newspapers and some salads for the week.

There was, quite frankly, too much bare flesh on display and certainly too many tattoos.  There was an old guy wearing a flat cap but wearing a vest.  And he had tattoos like David Beckham.

My bet is that they looked ridiculous when he was younger but they looked absolutely mad now.

And I frown all the time as someone picks up a Daily Mail.

Then I walked home.

The tournament was still going on and the smell of cheap burgers and fatty bacon wafted across the way.

The church was bolted shut and doubtless the faithful were now home, studying the bible for some nice things to tell the kids.

There were people outside the pub too, it being almost midday. 

I could have driven but at least I had some good exercise.

Then I spoiled it all by eating a cheese and ham Panini.

Thoughts about Bill and Kate Windsor

Let's get this straight to begin with: I am not an anti-royalist and I am not a republican.

I know some people who like the idea of a royal family and others who don't. But it seems to me that the vast majority of people have no feelings either way.  And on the basis of that, if it ain't broke, then there's no need to fix it.

I have nothing against Bill and Kate Windsor either.

They seem to be a nice enough couple, normal enough whilst living within the most unreal bubble possible.

And now they have had a baby.

There is nothing exceptional about Kate having a baby because there were another 370,000 of them born on the same day, as there are every day.  But the media has ensured that only one gets any kind of coverage other than in the announcements pages of the local rag.

Yes, you could argue, as I'm not arguing, that we now have another burden on the state.  A dysfunctional family with almost no one in work adding to the welfare bill.  But that's not how I feel.

Bill and Kate's life is something I will never understand.

Bill has a job flying helicopters and from time to time he joins Kate to rush around shaking hands with people and opening things, as well as 'supporting' charities.

And sometimes, as Bill's late mother showed, the attitudes of society can be changed by engagement in controversial areas, such as AIDS and land mines.  So Diana Spencer, who lest we forget, was absolutely loathed by the press (and the rest of the royals, so it seemed) in the summer before she died made a difference.

Maybe Bill and Kate will do the same.

As things are, they have had a baby and I am happy for them.

I'm still not clear what the point of the royal family is but there's something quaint and eccentric about it.

I don't like the stuff about 'your highness' in this modern era but it doesn't really mean much.

Like I said, I think the general British attitude is ambivalence.

They don't harm anyone, they're better than the alternative (whatever that is: we shall never know) and they cost an awful lot less than a Trident missile.

We live in a country of 63 million people of which some 500 turned up to the luxury private hospital when Bill and Kate's baby turned up and almost all of the 500 were media folk.

But the newspapers don't run souvenir issues (who keeps a souvenir issue for goodness sake?) and countless photographs for nothing.  People must buy them.

I don't envy Bill and Kate, or baby Windsor (my money is on Keith or Wayne, by the way), their future lives.

Perhaps they can make some sense of it all but they will never do anything remotely normal.

They will 'serve' and 'do their duty' and all being well live healthily into old age and we'll get on with our own lives, usually glimpsing them from time to time during the 'And finally' bit of the TV news.

We do this sort of thing very well in Britain.

In the National Lampoon European Vacation, Chevy Chase's character Clark Griswold is asked by his children what the queen does.

"She queens!" replies Griswold.

I think that's our understanding of what she does too and for most of us it's not going to change anytime soon.  And why should it?

I hate hospitals

One of the silliest things people say is "I hate visiting hospitals" and I know some who use their hatred of hospitals to avoid seeing sick friends or relatives.

And it's a silly expression if you follow the golden rule, that I do, if you can't imagine anyone saying the exact opposite.

"I love visiting hospitals!" would see that person being carted off to one, probably by men in white coats.

Much more sensible would be "I hate visiting hospitals because it usually means that someone, possibly myself, is ill."

I have the same issue with dentists.

Now normally, I don't mind visiting the dentist because the routine visit usually means nothing more agonising than having my teeth cleaned but today I do mind visiting the dentist because I have to.

It's nothing to do with the dentist who is a perfectly nice chap.

I have an abscess in one of my back teeth and it's bloody painful and I am trying to take my mind off the pain by...er...writing about it!

It all started on Saturday when my jaw started to ache.  At the time, my teeth were okay but I have had abscesses before and I knew that within 24 hours at least one of them wouldn't be.  And so it came to pass.

I am not quite so panic-stricken this time because the last two I had were made far worse by my anxieties and depression.  I became even more anxious and tense and the pain seemed far more acute.

I'm in a slightly better place these days so I am not panicking, even if my tooth - and part of my jaw - is throbbing and I can't eat anything more substantial than a mulched up banana.  Pork scratchings are out of the question today.

I have a mere four hours of this until I visit the dentist's surgery and undergo what I suspect will be root canal treatment which, given my previous experiences, is seriously unpleasant, especially on what is the hottest day of the year.

Eventually, maybe even tonight, I should be over this and I'll look back and give a crooked anaesthetic smile at how much pain I was in.

Then, I will hopefully put things into greater perspective and realise that in the great scheme of things it is only - only! - toothache and I should get better.

Cricket and cheating

A minor incident occurred in the first test match today between England and Australia.

In amongst all the action, England’s Stuart Broad got a big fat edge and was caught in the slips.

Everyone on the pitch saw it, including no doubt Broad himself, except the two umpires who deemed Broad not out.

It really was a joke decision, or rather lack of one, and the arguments are raging as to whether Broad should have ‘walked’ rather than leave it to the umpire.

In the heat of the moment, Broad decided to chance his arm and, as luck would have it, the umpire hadn’t been paying attention.  He got very lucky.

The Aussies, no ‘walkers’ themselves, were furious and there was plainly a bad atmosphere for the rest of the day.

Personally, I thought Broad should have walked.  He will certainly have known he had hit the ball and known he was out.  The argument that the Aussies never walk so why should Broad have walked is, I suppose valid if you accept, as I don’t, that cheating is an acceptable part of the game.

Take it a step further, to local cricket and even children’s cricket where everything is in the hands of untrained amateur volunteer umpires.

Do we tell our kids to try and gain every type of advantage?  Do we, basically, encourage dishonesty?

We have been holier than thou about football, decrying the likes of Suarez and Bale who go to ground at the earliest opportunity in order to seek an advantage, and now we have a cricketer doing the self-same thing.

Let’s not bring out the lynch mob for Broad who has made a decision, there and then, to preserve his wicket and help England win a cricket match.

But he was wrong and that has to be said.

If he was right, were Ben Johnson and Lance Armstrong justified in seeking an advantage by taking performance-enhancing drugs?  After all, isn’t it up to the officials to adjudicate?

Just say sorry, Chris, and be done with it.

Cricket will need to look at itself following this incident, one which has undoubtedly swung the match in favour of England and maybe it has affected the entire series too.  Momentum and all that.

Tunnel vision

Rarely a day goes by without me passing a railway tunnel.

More often than not, it’s the little one in St Annes (Bristol, this is, for you non Bristolians) or the Sea Mills end of Clifton Down Tunnel.

This might seem an odd thing to write about but then I am (insert your own joke here).

And I have obsessed with railway tunnels since I was a small boy, when I should really have been playing the silver ball.

It started with St Annes where once stood a small railway station. (Younger readers should ask their elders as to what a small railway station was.)

There were advantages to the tunnel lovers like me (are there any others?) because I could stand at the tunnel end and be very near it.

The trains, hauled by diesels, thundered along from Bristol Temple Meads on their way to London, or roared out of the tunnel itself towards Temple Meads.

I found it utterly captivating.  It was a huge size, large enough for two trains on top of each other, as are many of the tunnels built by Brunel.  Even in those days, I wondered at the ingenuity and grit of the Victorian navies for building it with minimal tools.

And if I ignored the signs to leave the platform and advance to the entrance of the tunnel, which was only a couple of hundred yards long, and I could see the far more daunting and considerably longer Foxes Wood Tunnel glowering in the near distance.

I was utterly fascinated with and captivated by the longer, darker tunnel.  I felt excitement and fear at the same time.

Foolishly, we walked through the small tunnel one day to get a closer look at the big tunnel.  On the left was a river, on the right a steep wooded area, curving to the right the two lines slipped into the blackness of the tunnel.  Fear overtook excitement, especially as a large express tore out of it, its locomotive blurting out an angry ‘toot’ at us.

Somehow we summoned the courage to walk back through the little tunnel, crossed the lines (I know, I know: it was bloody stupid but my excuse is that we were bloody stupid) and walked home through the woods, rather than walking back to the platform.  After all, those pesky police might have been patrolling.  My mum would have killed me.

I needed more tunnels so my friends and I cycled to Severn Beach which although sounding vaguely glamorous was anything but.

A rickety fair and an open air pool from which the owners removed the flies before anyone was allowed to swim and a grim housing estate bereft of any charm whatsoever (which is how it remains today).

But we didn’t want anything but the Severn Tunnel.

Another Brunel build, this tunnel plunged below the River Severn and for four and a half miles gave you a lot of noise and darkness.  Today all I wanted to see was the tunnel entrance.

These were innocent times and there was little to stop the irresponsible and idiotic child climbing down the steps to the tunnel itself.

Massively tall, it was blacker and bleaker than any tunnel I had seen before and we felt the need to walk a few steps into the darkness.

The first thing I became aware of was the drip-drip-drip from the water that, well, drips into the tunnel and the next was the distant sound of a train, the hissing of the rails followed by the Vroom of the engine which got louder very quickly and there was barely enough time for us to scramble onto the bank.

You would think that this was a passing phase, one I would dump before reaching my twenties but no, it carried on.

I drove to places like Box tunnel and Chipping Sodbury just to look at tunnel entrances.  I agonise every time I pass the Sea Mills entrance to Clifton Down Tunnel when the foliage by the road has obscured my view.  

When we went to see Ribblehead last year for me to achieve a lifelong ambition and standing next to the epic viaduct, I forced the family to trudge miles past the viaduct itself so I could see the entrance to Blea Moor tunnel.

It’s mad, I know, and in middle age it’s not getting better.

It’s better than railway line gradients, I suppose, because that’s my other railway hobby, obsessing on steep railway lines like the famous Lickey Incline near Birmingham (this was in 2012, so ages ago, obviously), Shap Summit in Cumbria (we were on a hike across the Lake District but took a 30 mile detour so I could see it), various embankments in Devon and, most pitifully, a train ride to Exeter to see a very steep hill and nothing else.

I’m sure people have other hobbies that are just as bad, like plane and train spotting but without actually taking numbers (oh wait a minute, that’s me too), but few so difficult to explain to a sane world.

Remind me I wrote this when I next criticise someone else for having a stupid hobby.

Fathers Day

I do like to read people’s messages about fathers day, mothers day and birthday and in memoriam pieces too.

I am always touched by those messages of love and even more so by messages of love and loss.  They are personal, poignant and when people decide to share them with us, I love it.

Now me, I don’t do anniversary remembrances.  And that’s just me.

My dad died on 28^th February 2011, my mum died in 1999 (no idea of the date October, was it?).

I was, for most of my life, much closer to my mum, both physically and spiritually (not in the religious sense), but as the years went by my dad and I found each other in so far that two disparate folk could ever be.

My mum died suddenly; my dad’s death dragged out over two months, half the world away.  I can’t even remember the year in which my stepfather died, nor any of my grandparents.  Is it because I don’t care?  Of course not.

I cried once when my mother died and that was when I rang her brother to tell him the news.  Oddly, he didn’t seem at all bothered and after a subsequent awkward exchange of letters (ask your parents, kids) I concluded he didn’t seem bothered because he wasn’t.

I arranged the cremation, chose the music and moved on, occasionally cheered by the memories, occasionally dispirited by what I perceived was a lack of fulfillment in her life.  But maybe that was my perception of what her life could and should have been.  She never actually told me she wasn’t fulfilled. 

And I moved on.

Of course I think about her from time to time and remember the love and sacrifices she made but I never felt melancholy or felt the need to make visits to the crematorium. What would flowers achieve?

I have no religious superstitions so maybe that was it.  I never believed she would survive her own death and that we would somehow meet again so I must have decided, sub-consciously, to not waste time hoping for it.

I honestly don’t think about her on mother’s day any more than I think of her on any other day of the year. But I don’t begrudge for one moment those who do.

My dad is a different story.

For years, we were not that close – hardly surprising, you might think, given that he lived in Canada – but in latter times we grew much closer.

In 2004 I attended his 75^th birthday and five years later his 80^th. 

So the last time I saw him was in 2009.  As I arrived at Ottawa airport to fly home, I never dreamed for one moment it would be the last time I would see him.

Two years later and I was flying across the pond to attend and speak at the celebration of his life (he didn’t do funerals, least of all his own).

Do I miss him?  Very much, of course I do.

Do I wish he was still with us?   More than anything.

So should I be having sentimental thoughts and shedding tears of what was and what could have been?

I cried all the way to Canada, off and on, following his death.  I reasoned that this was because I had not prepared my mind for all the steps that I would be taking.  I was a blubbering mess in departures, an angst-ridden wreck.

Perhaps the devout gain comfort from their faith and they believe they will meet the dead and when they too are dead?  Good luck to them, I suppose, but the comfort doesn’t make it true.

Sometimes I walk through the beautiful churchyard near our house – it leads to the railway station – and I see people tending the graves of loved ones and laying flowers.

It’s rather sweet and, I guess, fulfills a need.  A need to connect, a need to hang on to someone who has died, perhaps?  I’m not going to knock it.

So it’s fathers day today, the day when shops make a fortune from people buying things to express their love for their dads, just like Christmas really.

The less cynical might say it’s a day to celebrate dad, dead or alive.

I’ll be in the less cynical camp for once.

Stephen Fry

I was both saddened and heartened to learn of Stephen Fry's admission that he had attempted suicide last year.

Saddened that such a brilliant man should have been so ill that he would even contemplate such a thing and yet at the same time heartened that he felt able to reveal it to others.

Why so?

I have followed, as a TV viewer and a reader, his glittering career and marvelled at his humour and intelligence.  And his openness as a gay man and as a manic depressive.

It cannot have been easy.

He 'came out' as gay at a time when it was, shall we say, less fashionable and came out as suffering from a bi polar condition when the subject is not only unfashionable and, moreover, remains taboo for a lot of people.

"What," say some, "Has someone like Fry got to be depressed about?  He's rich, he's talented.  What more could a man want?  Snap out of it."

Those of us with less extreme mental issues have been here before, hearing the ignorant pontificate on illnesses they don't understand or even wilfully misunderstand.

I have had it before, although not to the depths that he has plumbed.

"What on earth are you depressed about?  You've got everything!" and of course I have, or very nearly, but mental illness shows no favours.

And there's the difference between happy and sad because with depression you can be both at any given time.  

A psychotherapist once told me that depression, or more generally, mental illness is the great unknown in society.  It's the unspoken unknown too because even today many people - and many people do suffer in silence - dare not mention its name.

In recent years, governments of both colours have allowed provision on mental health to wither on the vine and things are now worse than ever.

There are anti-depressants for most people, anything for the well off and nothing much for people with more than minor issues.  That's not to say that depression for the well off is any better, it's just that some people can afford the extortionate levels of private care.

Stephen Fry's private hell becoming public benefits us all because if he can come out, then anyone can.