Author Archives: Tim Lenton

Call me Scrooge, but there are certain things I could do without at Christmas time.

One is companies who try to persuade me to buy things I quite obviously don’t want, just so that they can be delivered in time for Christmas.

They and others of similar ilk might like to know that I do not consider 12 December to be “last-minute shopping”. Last-minute shopping is the afternoon of Christmas Eve which, incidentally, is quite a good time to shop because there’s no-one about.

One company (one?) warns me that time is ticking, and I should therefore check out last-minute deals. Time may be ticking, but time always ticks, unless you mute it. That’s what it does. I do not want a last-minute deal, last-minute flowers, last-minute accommodation or half-price gifts.

And just because it’s Christmas, it doesn’t mean I want to book up next year’s holiday. In fact it’s probably the last thing I want to do.

Almost the last thing. The very, very last thing I want to do is go to Santa’s Grotto for Dogs. I am sad to say there is one in Norwich, my home town, and a lot of people seem to think it’s a good idea.

What is this all about? There are no dogs in the Christmas story, and there were no dogs at the birth of Jesus. Come to that there there was no Santa either, no grotto and almost certainly no cows. I just throw that in in the interests of accuracy. There were definitely sheep. I have a lot of time for sheep.

What else do I find irritating? David Attenborough. But that’s another story.

If I were Scottish, I might be a little annoyed by the courier service. Apparently the people living in Moray, north-east Scotland, have been reclassified as islanders by a certain delivery firm.

This is not a marginal point. There is no causeway involved. It’s a bit like saying South Wales is an island or, if you happen to live in Norfolk, North Norfolk District Council.

Customers ordering online from the north and north-east of Scotland apparently pay up to four times for delivery compared to the rest of the UK. And you can see how that could be useful to certain people.

“North of Edinburgh? Must be an island, mate. Special needs. I mean rates.”

Unsurprisingly, Moray’s MP has suggested that geography lessons may be required. Last-minute ones, I suggest. Time is ticking.

We approached Little Gidding across the Fens, through Ramsey and into the middle of nowhere.

This particular Nowhere, in case you should stumble into it, is a stunning piece of countryside away from the bustle of suburbs and motorways, – a distance measured not so much in miles as in degrees of reality.

It is not far south-west of where my great-grandfather – and probably his father – lived and died. That was Norman’s Cross, and it has been pretty much brushed out of the landscape by the A1(M). But it nudges up against Folksworth, which is where those two ancestors are buried, the wording on their tombstones fading visibly in the short time since I had seen them last.

We ate Sunday lunch there, in the Fox – which I can recommend highly.

I had been rather embarrassed about originating from an area I had regarded as “near Peterborough”, which seemed about as boring a bit of Middle England as you could get. Having spent a couple of days at Little Gidding, which my ancestors must have known, I feel rather differently.

Some of this comes from reading the poem of the same name – the last of T S Eliot’s magical Four Quartets, which contains the same quiet beauty as the place itself. We read it right through on the Sunday morning in Ferrar House, a matter of yards from the beautiful little church dedicated to St John, with whom Eliot had much in common. Use of words, most obviously.

From the same house the previous day we had watched a rather haphazard attempt at a hunt, with horses and dogs milling about and another fox racing across the middle distance. Not my choice of Saturday afternoon leisure, but it reinforced the “nowhere” feeling. Or maybe it was “somewhere else”. Maybe it didn’t happen. Who knows?

The following day we took the short, slightly muddy walk up to Steeple Gidding, with its empty, pewless church and wonderful views. And after lunch in the Folksworth Fox we slipped on to that destructive A1(M) and headed south towards Cambridge.

A quicker route, but cruel: sadly, and without warning, Nowhere vanished.

A list is doing the rounds of what might make the news in the year 2030. You know the kind of thing – “Baby conceived naturally: scientists stumped”; “Average weight of a British male drops to 18 stone”.

Chaos is clearly on the way, as it has been for so long. I suspect, however, that it is nearer than we might have thought.

Already the police have more or less abandoned their traditional roles. I understand that ordinary, untrained people with plenty of axes to grind are sporting video cameras with which to trap unwary motorists and others – even cyclists and, in some cases, actual criminals. Evidence from these cameras can in some cases be accepted in court. Technologically speaking, it can only get worse.

No-one ever sees a police officer on the beat nowadays, unless there is a football match or concert in the vicinity.

Parliament is apparently about to fall apart because no-one can tell the difference between flirting and inappropriate touching. I once asked a female friend about this, and she said it depended on whether the man was attractive, which seems unfair, but I’m not sure who on.

This is not to excuse anyone who actually assaults a woman sexually, which is despicable at all levels. I know a few women who would leave such a perpetrator with serious injuries – and good luck to them. Bullies are pathetic, which is sad, as there are so many of them, and most of them are in positions of power.

Which reminds me of the old quote: “The wrong people are in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong people.”

Meanwhile it will not be long before the world is ruled by lobby groups. I am constantly being asked to add my name to an online petition – often one where I cannot possibly know whether or not it is justified. I am sure many people sign such petitions purely because they sound right, or because it makes them feel better.

As I write, Avaaz – perhaps the most vocal such group – is crowing that “we could be about to beat Monsanto, crumbling the cornerstone of its billion-dollar empire”! Why? Because Monsanto produces “toxic mega-killer glyphosate”.

Obviously toxic mega-killers are bad. Anyone could tell you that. And if enough people sign a petition, politicians terrified by popular pressure will ban glyphosate, which is a rather successful herbicide, improving our ability to feed people.

Why don’t Avaaz like it? Well, it’s been classified as probably carcinogenic, on the same level as – wait for it – night shifts, alcoholic beverages and solar radiation (sunlight).

I’m not a scientist; so I don’t know whether glyphosate is more or less dangerous than sunlight. But I do know that getting gullible people to sign that kind of a petition is simply attempting to bully your way to getting what you want.

And that is what chaos is all about. No rule, no law, no love. Just bullying.

I have obtained a blood pressure monitor. Whenever I feel the urge, I strap it on and take a reading.

This can get quite compulsive, although I am not sure why. It does not make me feel better: there’s no rush of adrenaline, or sudden warmth, or a mysterious, inexplicable calmness.

It is more like a driving curiosity: trying to work out what time of day gives the best results. I have not managed this yet – the readings vary alarmingly. Should I take it just after having a bath, just after getting up, just after a meal or while watching television? Should I try to catch myself by surprise? Not easy.

Of course there is the additional complication of not knowing what it means. Say I have 130/97. I have no idea what is 130, or what is 97, and why one should be above the other.

When it comes down to it, I am simply trying to get both as low as possible, because I know that is what doctors like. I guess there is a point below which is advisable not to venture. Zero blood pressure does not sound good.

I like to try to keep my doctor happy (I should say doctors, because one rarely sees the same one twice in succession: the appointment system seems to prevent this). As it is well known that doctors are obsessed by blood pressure, especially if you are over 60, getting it right sometimes allows you to mention any other problem that you might have, like feeling lousy all the time. As the latter does not involve statistics, doctors tend not to be too interested.

I met a nurse the other day who took my blood pressure. She took it twice, actually, and it was much better the second time. Possibly this was because she had been chatting to me about how I felt. It did make me feel a bit better – or a bit more optimistic.

Of course there is a limit to what nurses can do. Doctors don’t like them to get above themselves; so they can’t diagnose or prescribe anything, even though they’re probably good at both those things. What she did do was make an appointment for me to see …well,  a doctor.

This does seem an awful waste of NHS resources. But I shall continue taking my blood pressure in the hope that the doctor will be distracted enough by my good results to listen to my symptoms without realising she’s doing it. At the moment I feel I’m more likely to die of feeling lousy than high blood pressure. But don’t try telling a doctor that. She (or he) will laugh in your face.

In these days of TripAdvisor and other websites that carry reviews of people’s holiday experiences, I may have become a little blasé about what I expect to find when I reach my  destination. It must be pretty good, mustn’t it, or no-one would go there? If it wasn’t close to perfect, it would have been exposed by dissatisfied customers, wouldn’t it?

In just such a frame of mind, tinged by the tiniest touch of trepidation, I travelled to Wales – to a cottage that I had found on the net but which did not seem to figure on the usual websites. I will not say exactly where in Wales, because I don’t want to put you off, or upset anyone.

The information online was a bit limited; so I rang to check exactly how far up the ramblers’ path it was situated. No distance, I was told – about two minutes – and I could park at the hotel.

In fact it was less than two minutes, if you were fairly fit. What wasn’t mentioned by anyone was that the narrow ramblers’ path in question ascended steeply from the main road, with loose stones and deep steps, some of them uneven and made of slippery slate. Oh, and the hotel car park was small and usually full; so you often had to park on the busy main road.

My wife had just twisted her knee; so progress was a bit slow, and I had to haul all the baggage up and down myself. I didn’t mind that – at least, not until the day we left, when it rained very hard throughout the process. Still, it was an interesting experience, and by then we had bought some on-offer walking poles.

The cottage itself was cold and a bit damp on arrival, but a girl from the hotel quickly explained the central heating to us, and we had no trouble from that point onwards. The bedroom closet was musty, but then it was Wales, wasn’t it?

The mirror in the bathroom had fallen off the wall and seemed to have lodged behind the taps. It lurched frighteningly towards me when I turned a tap on. Still, no problem. We moved it to somewhere safer. There were a few small holes in the outside door, but other than that the main room was comfortable and had everything we needed, though three of the lights didn’t seem to work.

The view was almost lovely, and would have been if you liked scaffolding. The hotel roof was being repaired, though I’m glad to say no work was done while we were there; so there was no noise problem. No WiFi either, and no phone signal. But to be fair, no-one had said there would be.

The ramblers’ path continued past the cottage and within a metre of the bedroom window, which was a bit worrying at first, though I don’t think a single rambler (other than us) used the path while we were there.

All these things made an impression on us in the first hour or so, and we were a little worried. It all seemed a bit edgy. What might go wrong?

But here’s the thing: nothing did. Electricity and water worked perfectly, as did the bath and shower. The kitchen was well enough equipped, and the bed was comfortable. The TV worked on various channels, and played DVDs. (Tip: Do not watch The Lady Musketeer. Ever.)

I am sure those who enjoy complaining could have had a field day here, right from the outset, but in fact we had a great week, and it was with a sense of disappointment that we negotiated the descent of the ramblers’ path for the last time. We had dinner in the hotel twice, and that was good too. We also reached the summit of Snowdon, but that’s another story.