Author Archives: Tim Lenton

There was nobody in the cemetery today. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I’m sure there were a large number of bodies in the cemetery, because that is what it’s for. But there was nobody above ground, apart from the maintenance staff.

You may think this is a strange thing to be remarking on, but it was a sunny day, though a bit chilly, and during the various lockdowns we have been enjoying over the past year or so, the number of people walking round the cemetery has grown gradually, until last week we were remarking on how many there were.

The Rosary, as I have mentioned before, is a beautiful place to walk round. It is hilly (for Norfolk), wooded and beautifully laid out – in that rather unusual way that makes you think subliminally that it hasn’t been laid out at all.

It is easy to see why it should attract people who want to walk for exercise (what other reason could there be?). At the outbreak of lockdowns, hardly anyone was there. Then gradually people noticed it, but it never became crowded. Crucially, dogs were banned, and still are.

So why nobody today? Because today people can go to non-essential shops. There are queues outside Primark and Debenhams. The roads are full of traffic. And of course if you can queue outside a shop or sit in traffic, why would you want to walk round a cemetery?

I sometimes think there are two different human races, and I don’t mean a sprint and a long-distance. There is the race that will stand in long, cold queues for non-essential shops, buy a dog during lockdown, drop litter without thinking about it, and rush out to the pub and sit outside in a bitter wind drinking a pint, just because they can today and couldn’t yesterday. And there is the other race.

It would be invidious to say one is right and the other is wrong. I wouldn’t say that, obviously. But there is a gulf fixed between them. Isn’t it remarkable how different we are?

I know what you’re thinking. You like dogs but don’t stand in queues. You like pubs but don’t drop litter. Perhaps I’d better rethink it. There must be an equation that solves it. Let’s put Sage on to it, do some computer modelling and invite a few research studies.

I know what will happen. We’ll end up with several million human races – or mutations or strains, as they will be called – and we will need another lockdown to cope with it. That’s when I shall head back to the cemetery, possibly for the last time.

Don’t get me wrong. I happen to believe that the COVID vaccine is an excellent thing, created in the main by beautiful people with the good of mankind at heart. They have worked hard, often at personal expense, to save many people’s lives.

I am strongly in favour of vaccination, not least because it protects people other than the vaccinee. I think we should be prepared to put up with discomfort, and possible mild side-effects, if it helps prevent the spread of what can be a very nasty disease.

But this does not prevent me from having slight misgivings about vaccination in general, partly because I do not understand it. I am not a biologist or a chemist, or a doctor. I certainly don’t think it contains micro-chips designed to control our lives (one off-the-wall conspiracy theory), but does it have a prolonged effect on our immune systems and our DNA? I have no idea. Is vaccination generally behind the many and varied mood disorders, like attention deficit disorder and types of autism, that seem so rife in children nowadays and were notably absent in my schooldays? Or is this total rubbish?

What exactly is being injected into us? I don’t know. Even those who do know may not understand completely how it interacts with all the other stuff in our bodies, but it is a question of proportion. Prevention of COVID is an important, possibly vital, thing to be able to do, as was prevention of smallpox, polio, measles and other once-feared illnesses. It seems worth the risk. That is the best I can say, and so that is what I do say.

What I do not say is that we should create a society where these things cannot be questioned. To dismiss everyone who does not want to be vaccinated, for whatever reason, as “stupid anti-vaxers” and to deny them a platform is the first step (maybe not even the first) down a slippery slope.

Some people have very weird ideas. Take Galileo, for instance. We are at liberty not to believe them, but if we deny them access to publicity or publication, we may be refusing to believe something that turns out to be true. Science changes day by day. If we refuse to read about anything except what is generally accepted, that is anti-science, not the other way round.

We are dangerously close to taking this position on climate change. When was the last time you heard anything other than the “official” position on climate change from any major news outlet? And yet very many scientists have different ideas. I may not believe them, but I want to hear them. No, I am not a “climate change denier”.

To shut out dissenting voices opens the door to a totalitarian society. One commentator from the transport sector sees a real risk of “environmental totalitarianism” in a post-pandemic world, “bypassing any democratic process….The costly climate agenda is all about controlling you, not the climate.” 

Similar threats to freedom occur with movements like Black Lives Matter (of course they do) and the no-platforming of people with controversial ideas at universities, not to mention the refusal to let high school pupils learn about blasphemy. I am against blasphemy, by the way.

Propagating violent views is one thing….. THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED TO AVOID CAUSING OFFENCE. IT MUST NOT BE DEBATED IN ANY WAY.

If you are, like me, an avid watcher of old movies or a keen gazer at old photographs, you may have been struck by the way 2021 seems in one respect to be heading towards the past.

To see the resemblance you must steer clear of shopping centres. They tend to be on the empty side. But riverside walks, woods, parks and beaches are, in my part of the world anyway, surprisingly busy.

Obviously they are frequented only by local people exercising in accordance with Government regulations – the temptation to remain law-abiding is almost irresistible, I find – but they still seem to be much fuller than they were a couple of years ago.

Recently I watched Brighton Rock, a film set in – you guessed it – Brighton, in 1948. This was unusual in that it was filmed with hidden cameras, featuring Brighton residents and tourists engaged in their day-to-day activities, unaware that the 25-year-old man in a hat rushing through their streets and looking ten years older was in fact playing a 17-year-old hoodlum in a Graham Greene story.

Don’t be put off by the age problem: it’s a great film. But what impressed me as much as anything was the number of people in the streets. The streets were packed. And if you look at old real-life pictures and films, you’ll find the same thing. Everyone is out of doors.

Why? Because something is missing from their lives. Television.

It was only recently that I realised how much time I spend watching television – mainly dramas and documentaries. It is not because I’m bored. It’s not even because the Government wants me at home, where it can keep its eye on me. It’s because I really enjoy dramas and documentaries. Well, most of them. I try not to think of what I might accomplish if television didn’t exist.

If I had been around in 1948 (actually I was – but only just) I would have been out in the street. True, they had radio, but it wasn’t that exciting. So why stay at home? There was a big world out there to explore. Well, biggish.

My childhood days were like that, and I suspect it may happen again. When the restrictions are relaxed people will be so relieved that they will rush excitedly outside, form crowds and start interacting like mad. We won’t be able to move for people, and they won’t even be part of a protest. Television will be moved to the back shelf.

Am I mad? Possibly. “We are all born mad. Some remain so,” as Samuel Beckett wrote in Waiting for Godot. (Good drama. If it were on television, I would watch it.) But you can be mad and right at the same time. Anyway, watch the streets, especially if you live in Brighton. And keep an eye out for hidden cameras.

I may have mentioned the Rosary cemetery. When I “took my exercise” there during the first lockdown, it was almost always deserted. Now, word seems to have got round, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because thousands of people are reading my posts. Perhaps people are getting so bored with their daily street walks or the overcrowded riverside gangways that they’re looking desperately for somewhere different that can still be described as “local”. Eventually they stumble on the Rosary. They strike lucky.

As we ease into spring, the Rosary is probably at its best. New blankets of crocuses appear every day, among many other spring flowers – snowdrops, primroses, daffodils. You know the sort of thing. Pretty irresistible.

However, unlike many others, I don’t think our appreciation of this phenomenon has suddenly arisen because our lives have slowed down, allowing us to appreciate nature more. Either you appreciate nature or you (inexplicably) don’t.

Most of us love nature, and we don’t go out of our way to ruin it. As I tiptoe between the graves, I try hard not to tread on any tiny shoots. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Nevertheless, there seem to be people who are so focused on themselves and their own convenience that they really don’t care about their surroundings.

I’m not talking about the highways department. I’m not talking about car drivers, or dog walkers, or climate change deniers, or anti-vaxxers or secret huggers, or elves and fairies.

I’m talking about ordinary people who could have an immediate impact on the environment by simply refraining from one activity that has a huge negative impact on city streets and country verges. I am referring, of course, to dropping litter.

Do you actually know anyone who drops litter? Nor me. But it happens on a huge scale, all the time. The Rosary seems to be an exception, and I wonder why. What sort of people don’t go there? People who regard cemeteries as gloomy and forbidding places? People who aren’t impressed by trees and flowers? I was going to say dog walkers, but that’s just me being prejudiced. Maybe it’s people who just don’t notice their surroundings, or are frightened by the whole concept of death, or by the invisible “big picture”.

Somebody left an embroidered notice on one of the seats in the Rosary. It reads: “Not to ruin the ending for you, but it will all turn out ok.”

It is this kind of optimism – some would say reality check – that makes us look round at what I like to call Creation, and want to enjoy it. You don’t have to call it Creation to enjoy it, but it seems to help.

During the first lockdown of my life, last year, everywhere seemed empty. When I took the car to the chemist’s to pick up a prescription, there was almost nothing on the road, and hardly anyone walking either. It was weird, and quite exhilarating. For a while.

This time round we know all about lockdowns. When I go out for my daily exercise (you know, the sort of thing we always did every day and need to keep doing, ho, ho), I can hardly move for other people doing the same thing. On the roads there is loads of traffic – all of it no doubt on essential business.

I read about people travelling vast distances to do trivial and ridiculous things and wonder why I don’t take my wife over to North Walsham – a distance of about 15 miles – to put flowers on her parents’ grave. Such an action would not precipitate any increase in coronavirus infection, but it might attract a fine from some over-zealous marshal or police officer “only doing their job”.

So my parents, buried only ten minutes’ walk from my home, get all the attention. Dead lucky.

Yes, our almost daily wanders to the cemetery, by the river and round the cathedral close are never lonely as a cloud, but packed with bursting bubbles of eager walkers, or runners, or cyclists. Fair enough. I can hardly complain about people doing the same things as I am, even if far too many of them have dogs.

Covid is worrying, of course. What really worries me, though, is the number of people who will flock to our coast and other beautiful spots when the virus eases its grip, and the law is relaxed. I have a feeling my usual favourite haunts will be overflowing with strangers who still can’t get on a plane to Tenerife and have to go somewhere.

There is a whole bloc of people who have to go somewhere. I call them the Restless Ones. They can’t stay home for more than a few days without feeling the urge to go on “holiday” – if only in a tent, or only for a day or two. They bundle all their children into a car and take them somewhere that used to be lovely.

Someone once said (I think it was Jerry Seinfeld) that there was no such thing as fun for all the family. They refuse to believe this.

The problem, I’m afraid, is not people going to beauty spots. The problem is the number of people going to beauty spots – people who would in the normal run of things be out of the country. This is a serious problem. What if air travel doesn’t resume for years? What if these people suddenly realise that the country they live in is full of undiscovered, stunning countryside and excellent restaurants?

I may be vaccinated and optimistic about our ability to cope with the virus, but I can’t help fearing that I am nevertheless going to be overwhelmed – not by illness but by other people.