Author Archives: Tim Lenton

I’m not sure if I should admit to this, but just over 50 years ago I was in the United States illegally. For a fortnight – and I hope that will confuse the authorities enough to let me get away with it, because Americans have no idea what a fortnight is.

It happened when I worked, fairly briefly, for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. They had just bought a very old British newspaper called The Christian, and by an amazing coincidence, the previous summer I had been on holiday at a guest house in Minehead, Somerset.

Not an obvious coincidence, unless you know that a Scottish journalist with four theology degrees was staying at the same guest house. I don’t know why. Somehow, he and I got talking, and he discovered that I enjoyed writing. I showed him some short pieces I had written, and the following autumn he gave me a ring at my home in Norwich.

He had just been appointed editor of The Christian and was looking for writers. At the time I was training to be an accountant. I don’t think I would have been a very good one. Dr J D Douglas (for it was he) asked me if I would like a job in London, and I – or whoever was inhabiting my body at the time – said yes. I soon found myself in a bedsit with shared toilet and bathroom in North London. I was on my own.

It was the start of my journalistic career. I made my way each morning to Bush House in central London and reported on various meetings and events. The first press conference I went to was in French. Fortunately there was a translator.

J D eventually decided that it might be a good idea if I went to a writing school. The one he decided on was in Minneapolis, headquarters of the BGEA. It was my first flight. I had been outside the UK before, but only on school trips.

And there was some kind of strike. Instead of flying straight to Minneapolis, I had to travel via Prestwick to Toronto. From there I had to find myself a flight to Winnipeg – also in Canada – and from there a train to Minneapolis. It was not straightforward.

I did however manage to get a flight on a rather shaky old propeller-driven job from Toronto to Winnipeg. It went via Thunder Bay, which was appropriate, because there was a lot of lightning around at one point. Quite spectacular, if I remember.

It was about midnight when I arrived. I found a taxi and asked the driver, who came originally from Horsham in Sussex, to take me to a hotel near the station. I didn’t have change; so we had to into the hotel to get it. To my young and cynical eye, the hotel seemed rather less than trustworthy; so once in my room I propped a chair against the doorknob and put my passport under the pillow.

You may wonder where all this is leading. But no, I was not robbed – not at that point, anyway. The next morning I trotted over the station and bought a ticket to Minneapolis, which was pretty much due south, across a very large number of wheatfields. Just over 450 miles. The cost? Ten dollars. I was deeply shocked, and very pleased.

And of course during the rail journey I passed from Canada into the United States. I don’t know exactly when, because there was nothing to indicate it. But eventually the conductor came round, looked at my ticket, and I explained I would be here for a fortnight. There was a long conversation, and eventually I twigged that in the US, two weeks do not make a fortnight.

Probably confused by all this, he said I needed to sign some kind of form, and he would come back with it. But he never did.

So when I came to leave the United States, a fortnight or two weeks later, it could have been tricky. I did not have the paperwork. Thankfully, someone was looking after me. I met a man who knew a travel agent, and she sorted it out.

I have been to the Unites States since then, once via Canada to Florida, and twice directly there. I can recommend Captiva Island. It was all perfectly legal.

“All of humanity’s problems,” wrote Blaise Pascal, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

He was probably not thinking of coronavirus when he wrote it, but it seems a useful observation in the current crisis, and one that Boris Johnson might find helpful as a variation on “Stay alert. Stay at home unless you go out. Wear a mask”, which lacks something in depth and subtlety. 

I’m sure it would help if more of us could sit quietly in a room alone and not rush off to the nearest beach in a panic because the package planes are grounded. Now that there are so many more things you can do in a room on your own – television, radio, video games, recorded music – it’s bit surprising that the urge to get out is so strong. 

I have always been attracted by Corey Ford’s dictum, “I’d go away if it wasn’t so far.” Perhaps we could adopt is as a kind of subliminal slogan popping up between programmes.

But there are many comments from the past that could be adapted to current circumstances. For instance, if you’re feeling the urge to travel unnecessarily, you might be influenced by this philosophy, which I believe came from the Peanuts comic strip, one of the world’s great sources of wisdom: “Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. It might not be necessary.”

I wonder what motto is hanging on the wall of those who make decisions about our behaviour in Covid times. I feel folk singer Tom Paxton’s comment many years ago would be appropriate: “If I’m absolutely sure of anything, I probably forgot what it was.”

Or maybe this from Mark Twain: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”

Super-scientist Albert Einstein felt that when explaining complex problems you should “make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”. In the years since he said it, almost everyone in authority has routinely forgotten the vital last three words, and this has continued during the critical last six months, resulting in such conflicting idiotic instructions as “Go to pubs and restaurants, but not church, because that’s obviously much more dangerous, especially if you sing.”

But how do we – the locked in, masked and socially distanced – feel about the way the world is going? Poet Philip Larkin comes into his own with “Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives”

Or maybe another poet, Stevie Smith:
“I was much too far out all my life.
And not waving but drowning.”

The effect on us all is really one of disorientation. Before March this year we were comfortable, in the sense that we sort of understood the world and how it worked. We may or may not have liked it, but the familiarity of it made it bearable at worst and wonderful at best. The bits in between were understandable. 

But all that was just a delusion. Most of us didn’t really know what was going on – and as Donald Rumsfeld would say, we didn’t know that we didn’t know. Now we do.

Life, we now see, is unpredictable, and that must affect the way we approach it. Two vastly different writers saw this clearly. First, the singer Leonard Cohen, who described someone as “starving in some deep mystery, like a man who is sure what is true”.

And the writer and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge: “Some see that life’s a mystery. Others think it can be grasped.”

As we step wonderingly into the second half of 2020, the others must surely be shrinking in number. 

Twelve years ago, when I was in hospital recovering from a radical prostatectomy (removal of prostate and accompanying cancer), I had a peculiar experience. More than one, actually – but one in particular.

I woke in the night, and I could see the clock clearly. Everything was wrong. For some reason, I was no longer in Norwich but in King’s Lynn, and this was quite frightening, because there was no reason for it. I tried to get back to where I knew I should be, but I couldn’t, because I was not connected. It was as if I had been shifted very slightly out of sync with reality.

A long sequence of bizarre events ensued, during which I seemed to wander round the ward, looking for a way back. The two nurses ignored me. At last, exhausted, I sank back into my Norwich bed, closed my eyes for a while and then opened them again. According to the clock, the whole tortuous episode had lasted no more than a minute – and that in itself was terrifying, because it was impossible.

I was reminded of this when I was in hospital again last week, on antibiotics for a problem with my gall bladder, and a stone stuck somewhere near my pancreas. Again, I woke in the night – one of many, many times – and had trouble recognising where I was. The curtains seemed familiar (or did they?), people moved backwards and forwards, and so did the room. I was struggling to connect. Was it real?

Eventually my brain slid into sync and I walked hesitantly to the toilet. But the impression I retain is one of confusion: was I slightly out of sync with reality again? What was going on?

The only other time I have felt anything like this was in the weeks following a serious car accident in which I broke my arm – less than a year ago. On at least one or two occasions while walking by the river afterwards I felt I was in some other reality. Had I died in the crash, or was I really here? Was the real me walking just behind me, catching me up?

OK – all this is weird. Most of the time, I think I have a fairly good grip on reality, as most people do. It is hard to express how frightening it is when this is called into question.

In hospital time itself distorts. Most of the time nothing happens, and happens very slowly. Without meaningful contact (especially in these coronavirus times) none of it seems to make much sense.

I’ve been here all day. How can it be 10am?

All I can say is that my wife’s daily visits just about kept me sane. Or did they? I’ll let you be the judge.

First of all, I’d like to make it clear that I’m very aware that there are many people who are in more pain than I was over the last couple of weeks, and even more of them are in pain for longer. The thing with pain is that it’s very personal. If you’re in pain, it doesn’t help that someone else is hurting more.

I woke up with a pain in my abdomen. At first it was sort of tight and gripping, and spread out quite a bit. It nibbled at my ribs. It kept me awake most of the night; eventually I took a Paracetamol and after a few hours got to sleep. The next day it was much better.

A couple of days later it came back again, only more precisely located. It was quite a different kind of pain, really, but they had one thing in common: they were strong and frightening, because I didn’t know what was causing them, and it all seemed to be getting worse.

Eventually, I rang 111. They told me to go to the walk-in centre, and the walk-in centre took it pretty seriously. They were quick, too. They said I should go to A&E if it got any worse. It did, and I did.

I do not like A&E. I know many people love it and seem to spend half their lives up there, but to me it’s just a massive waste of time, with no-one seeming to be in a hurry or connecting with each other. I’m sure that’s an illusion. Or it may be the IT system. I have been known to say I’d rather die than go to A&E, but that’s not strictly true. Obviously.

It was tortuous. Morphine didn’t affect the pain, but they eventually found something that did – about three hours after I arrived. I was moved here and there, had an x-ray and an ultrasound and eventually was taken to a ward by a nurse who thought I’d come from there in the first place. She was very nice. All nurses are nice. When I clap the NHS, I’m clapping the nurses and not the organisation.

The surgeon I saw a few hours later wasn’t sure what was wrong. To do him credit, he didn’t ask me to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I would have had no idea of the answer to this. I never do. It seemed pretty painful to me, but if someone was cutting my leg off without anaesthetic, I’m sure that would have been worse. I usually say 7 or 8. If someone were to try out the full range of pain on me and then ask, I would know, but I don’t really want that to happen.

The surgeon wanted me to have a CT scan urgently, but of course that wasn’t possible. It was Sunday, and there were lots of people who needed CT scans. He asked if it would be all right if he discharged me, and I came and had the CT scan as an urgent out-patient in a day or two. Foolishly, I said yes.

Still in quite a lot of pain, I waited patiently at home for a day or two. Then my wife rang the CT people. Yes, I was scheduled. Yes, I was marked urgent. It would be ten days or so.

This did not thrill me, but I buckled down, because the painkillers seemed to be working. I rang my GP, who couldn’t take my call but would ring me back. When he did, it was on a different number, and I didn’t answer it within 10 seconds. I rang back and was told I had to ring the following morning. I persisted, complaining about my pain and eventually got to speak to him. Rather reluctantly, I thought, he prescribed some more painkillers. It wasn’t my usual GP, of course. It wasn’t anyone I had ever spoken to before.

Anyway, with the help of the painkillers the pain eased, and when I went to get my scan, it had departed – for a while, at least. I should mention that during all this post-hospital time I had been eating a fat-free diet on the instruction of the surgeon. It would have been easier if I didn’t love fat so much: butter, cheese, steak… Now I had naked bread, bits of fruit and salad, boiled eggs and some jam or honey. I wasn’t hungry anyway.

I asked how long I would have to wait for my scan results, and it turned out to be two weeks or so. Probably. As it was urgent. I did not get upset with the radiographer, who was very pleasant, or with anyone else, because I suspect they’re all trapped within the system and don’t know how to get out of it.

The radiographer wasn’t sure why I was not eating any fat. But I have lost half a stone, which can’t be bad. Or can it? I don’t know. There’s no-one to ask.

I am coming out of lockdown. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but at the moment I can’t quite make out how long the tunnel is. Nor how wide, come to that: in many respects it is a tunnel of contradictions, with rough walls and large patches of damp.

And as the tunnel progresses, I have a growing suspicion that many of the other people in it with me are from a completely different species. I mean, would you queue up for four hours in the blazing sun to buy a flatpack from IKEA? Four hours? Really?

And would you go to a world-famous beach and jostle together with like-minded enlightened gentry, while encouraging people to jump from a nearby cliff and stand a good chance of killing themselves? 

Would you gather in small groups and shout at each other from a foot or two away as though you were a character in EastEnders or Coronation Street?

Would you discard assorted unsavoury litter by the side of footpaths in as yet unspoiled countryside? 

Admittedly the litter-sprinklers have been encouraged by the interesting decision to keep public lavatories closed in many areas. There seems to be an opinion rife in some management areas that people go to the loo as a way of passing the time. So in schools “bubbles” of pupils are being allocated a specific time to go to the toilet. This ignores the basic human biological fact about going to the loo, which is that you go when you need to, and there are times when you need to go.

This was brought home to me a while ago on an EasyJet plane back from Israel, already poorly provided for on the toilet front, where whenever we hit a bit of minor turbulence, we were told that the toilets could not be used for the next half hour. So what were we supposed to do? Play video games instead?

I am also a bit nervous about that light I can see. What kind of a light is it? The nearer we get to it, the more it seems like a world designed for young and fit people – the sort who have been joggling and cycling their way vigorously through the pandemic. 

I am over 70. I may have mentioned this before. Although I walk a lot (and many of my age simply can’t), using a car makes life much easier in many respects. It’s also safer, when roads are uncluttered by distracting features like road bumps and contraflows. So why do post-pandemic plans centre on more cycle lanes and wider pavements, especially when we are being discouraged from using public transport in case we breathe on each other.

Interesting thing, breathing. Apparently gasping joggers and cyclists are no risk, but allowing people to get in a church and sing could be disastrous. I can only assume that people putting this view forward have not been in a church for a few years. 

Praying of course, is even more risky. I hope I don’t have to explain to you why that is.