Author Archives: Tim Lenton

 As I sit here in the middle of Storm Ciara, well protected (I hope) by several walls and a roof, my thoughts turn to Westray, in the Orkney islands, where there are no trees.

Admittedly, that does avoid the possibility of one falling on you, but it also means that the wind sweeps across with virtually nothing in its way, which can be annoying. Apparently you get used to it – or so I was told when I was there last summer.

We went by air – in a very small plane which held eight moderately sized people – and we were deposited fairly early in the morning on a very small airstrip at the north of the island, from where we were transported to our B&B some miles away, the other side of the main village, Pierowall. 

Unfortunately the B&B was not ready to accept us until 4pm, which meant that we had about six hours to kill. We had no car and no provisions. There were no buses. The weather was not exactly warm, and there were very few people, but at least it didn’t rain much.

Nothing much happened, but it was one of the most memorable days of my life.

We took in a castle, a white beach, some links, a number of tracks and the only café on the island, which served me some absolutely stunning raspberry and rhubarb cake. We then found an ancient church and a hotel that served the only evening meal on Westray. 

We booked, and then found that we had to walk over a mile to the B&B, back for the meal, then back to the B&B again. If there had been a choice I would not have contemplated this. There was no choice. We did it. It was amazing.

It is often said that Westray is beautiful, and it is. But I’m not sure why. A lot of it is quite ordinary, with abandoned farm vehicles, wire fences, uncared for tracks and no hills to speak of. The coast is something else, but it was not so much the view that entranced us as being thrown on our own resources, with nothing to do but walk.

Sometimes not having a choice can turn out to be the best choice possible.

Family trees are awkward customers: they can lead you badly astray. For many moons, thanks to sloppy detective work and a series of guesses, I was under the impression that my mother’s family – the Browns – came from Cambridge, probably en route from Brighton.

This was based mainly on the fact that my grandfather was a gardener, and maybe he came from a long line of gardeners. I found a gardening Brown in Cambridge, and another in Brighton. Other things seemed to fit.

Brown of course is not a helpful name. It’s right up there with Smith on the unhelpfulness level where family trees are concerned, with the additional complication that you can spell it with an additional e if the fancy takes you.

To say I was confused would be an understatement. I was completely deceived. And I might have gone on with my self-deception for ever, if I had not had a shocking message from a woman called Nicola.

She had been dabbling in DNA and had discovered that she was my second cousin. Her grandmother was my mother’s cousin. Great! New relatives: what’s not to like?

In this case, nothing at all. Both Nicola and her mum, Jill, were delightful, and Jill turned out to be something of a Miss Marple (her daughter’s phrase). She had done some proper detective work, found that her grandfather was my grandfather’s brother, but almost 20 years younger. It was a big family.

What’s more, it was about as solidly Norfolk as you could get. Not a trace of Cambridge or Brighton. More Cringleford, Hethersett, Thurton and Bawburgh – among others. And many of them living in Norwich, just down the road, as it were, from my grandparents’ house on Hall Road, next to the butcher’s and now demolished.

I don’t know why my mother never mentioned them. Maybe she did, and I wasn’t listening. I am now returning to look at the maternal tree with more diligence and intelligence, and hope I can add to Miss Marple’s already impressive investigations. Relatively speaking, that is.

(Incidentally Nicola and Jill are not their real names. We don’t want to make this too easy, do we?)

Little did I think at the beginning of 2019 that I would end it being angry at the abuse of football by technology. I mean, really. Football is only a game, and there are one or two more important things going on.

But I am a bit concerned now that someone is going to get killed – probably a referee.

Referees are used to being disliked, and I’m sure they enjoy the amusing little ditties sung to them by peeved spectators – ditties of which “You don’t know what you’re doing” is the most common, and probably the only one quotable on a family website like this.

So what’s the problem? Decisions are being made about games in the Premiership by a monster called VAR, probably from the planet ZOG. Or as some would have it, “the morons inside Stockley Park”, which, in case you were wondering, is in Middlesex, not far from ZOG.

Good goals are being disallowed by machines that have no concept of the spirit of the game. And if you’re going to argue that the decisions are actually made by referees, those are the machines I’m talking about.

So we have technology that can draw lines on a screen fed by a multitude of camera angles, which enables referees miles away from the action and atmosphere of the actual game to pronounce that a scorer’s elbow or eyebrow is offside, and therefore a memorable goal cannot stand.

This is not the only example of technology enabling people to make incompetent judgements. Speed cameras: I say no more. But if you give someone technology that enables spooky action at a distance (to quote Einstein) the odds are that those in charge are going to want to demonstrate its wonderful accuracy, even if it isn’t accurate or wonderful.

Give a linesman (or assistant referee) a flag, and he will be inclined to wave it, even if he isn’t sure. Give the same official a complicated bit of technology and he will want to wave that too.

It’s not the technology that’s so bad: it’s the people using it. Why is there an offside rule in the first place? To stop players lingering upfield waiting for a long ball and forcing the opposing team to cover them – to the detriment of the game as a spectacle. It is not there to mention distances in inches, or millimetres, or toes.

If someone is not obviously offside, he should be judged onside. It’s as simple as that. More goals, more satisfaction, happier spectators.

A moderate and kindly friend who attended a recent game at which VAR reared its ugly head – and messed up yet again – told me they were so frustrated that they were on the verge of rushing on to the pitch, and so were many others. One day soon, it’s going to happen.

Don’t wait till the end of the season. Get rid of this monster now, before it’s too late.

In this coming Christmas season St Augustine’s Church, Norwich, will be holding an Alternative Carol Service, as it has for the last 20 years or so. Part of this event will be a series of dramatic interludes, taking place this year mainly in Bohemia. (Don’t ask.) Obviously I would like to give you a detailed preview, but this is prevented by the Official Secrets Act. So here instead is another secret document, which has featured in previous years:

Enter angel:

Report of the Angelic Health and Safety Committee.

Star date – oh, I’ll skip that bit. Actually, I’ll just read the summary. Then you can tell me what you think.

OK. It is the unanimous decision of the committee that Project Incarnation should be abandoned as unsafe. We have done a thorough risk assessment and survey of the area that was targeted, and a number of extreme hazards presented themselves. 

First, the planet itself is unstable. It is subject to unpredictable events like floods, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and warms up and cools down all the time.

Second, the country chosen is in turmoil. It is occupied and full of people who may turn violent at the slightest provocation. Armed soldiers are everywhere, and relations between different parts of society are strained.

Third, the time chosen adds significantly to the risks. They’re organising some kind of census, or election, which means people will be travelling around, which means more crime, more chaos, more risk of illness, injury or even death.

Fourth, the people targeted for inclusion in the project are unreliable. They could fail completely to carry out the roles allotted to them. They could do almost anything.

In conclusion, we feel that Project Incarnation is doomed to failure. We feel it will not be welcomed; it may even be rejected out of hand. And there is a real risk that someone could get killed.

What do you think? I just hope he sees sense and abandons the whole thing.

Enter Second Angel: I think you may find it’s too late.

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.

I did not say that. I wish I had, but I didn’t. It’s rather like Christianity, in that you wish everyone would “get it”, because if they did, the world would be a better place.

It’s probably something to bear in mind when approaching the General Election. Does your candidate have a sense of humour? It’s probably a more important question than most we’ve heard so far.

The person who did say it was Clive James, who has just died. One day in the late 20th century I met him as I walked across the Barbican in London. I wanted to stop him and tell him what a huge inspiration he had been to me, in the way I wrote and what I wrote about.

But of course I didn’t. I thought, Why should he care? He looked worried enough already.

Some of you may be puzzled about my being inspired by a TV personality, but of course to me he was always a writer – more specifically, a television reviewer. His witty, beautifully written columns in the Observer in the 1970s led me to try my hand at the same thing. I got hold of one of the earliest video recorders, taped programmes while I was at work (in the evening) and spent a few priceless daylight hours writing a TV column for the Church of England Newspaper.

This later became a more general column, and I was eventually able to write a weekly page for the Eastern Daily Press, which lasted for eleven years, as well as many other pieces, including fiction and poetry. But that’s another story. Several other stories, in fact.

There are many things Clive James and I did not have in common. I could not be Australian – I have never even been there, because it’s too far, as Corey Ford almost said. And I could not share his lack of belief in an afterlife, because I think it’s an absurd position to take up in face of all the evidence. But you can admire someone without agreeing with them.

“All I can do is turn a phrase until it catches the light,” he said. He always caught the light for me. I may be the only person in the world who would say his three strongest influences as a writer were Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Clive James.

I hope this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, but I suspect it might. You have to laugh, don’t you?