Author Archives: Tim Lenton

I was walking through our local park the other day – I say park, but it’s basically a roughish piece of grass surrounded by nameless plants and bushes that are kept under control by the Old Library Park Collective.

You may be wondering what a Park Collective is. It’s a loose group of individuals who are trying to keep the park free of drugs and prostitutes. Oh, and litter. I am very much in favour of them. The council should do it, but they’re far too busy.

Anyway, I was walking in the litter-free park, and there were a couple canoodling on the grass. They looked at me, and I could see their minds working. “Look at that old guy,” they were thinking. “I bet he’s disapproving of us canoodling on the grass. He’ll never have done anything like this. He thinks we should be working.”

Actually, I was thinking it was rather nice to see a couple canoodling on the grass, because there was a time when I did that a lot, and I seem to remember that it’s very pleasant. I would do it now, but people would laugh, and I might not be able to get up.

On the whole, I like young people, not least because I used to be one. There seem to be an increasing number of young people, however, who think I never was young – who regard people of my age as a completely different species because we use words like “canoodling”.

In fact the main difference between young people and older people is that older people have been around longer. We have seen more mistakes made; we have seen where certain paths always lead. That’s why the surge in more younger people voting is not necessarily reassuring.

I have a lot of friends who despise Mrs Thatcher. They were not around (or not old enough) in the 1970s, and so do not know why Mrs Thatcher was voted into power, and why many of us were relieved when she was (though not necessarily delighted that she stayed in power so long). I have a lot of friends who hated Cameron and Osborne, but then suddenly decided Cameron and Osborne were right about the EU. Odd, to say the least.

It’s hard to read people’s minds, and as a result, many of us are wrong quite a lot of the time. Especially politicians. The trick is to make sure that those who could do the most damage never get into power. Unfortunately that trick is well-nigh impossible to pull off, because it’s hard to tell exactly who they are. Especially if you’ve never seen anyone like them before.

Politically, I share by no means all the views of Tim Farron, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats. I do however deplore the way he was hounded out of that position by the “illiberal elite” who find Christianity hard to stomach and easy to condemn.

I am therefore quoting in full an article published on the website of Christian Concern, an organisation which – among other things – exposes unjust treatment of Christians whose views just don’t fit with the “spirit of the age”. While I may not share all such views, I think it’s important to listen to them.

Tim Farron’s resignation as leader of the Liberal Democrats “demonstrates that Christians are simply not tolerated by the illiberal elite”, says Andrea Williams.

In his resignation statement, Farron said that to be leader of the Liberal Democrats and “to live as a committed Christian…felt impossible” to him. He added “we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant society”.

Andrea Williams, CEO of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre, which represents hundreds of Christians mistreated for living out their faith in Great Britain, commented:

“At the Christian Legal Centre we have seen first hand the pressure Christians have been under to conform to the new morality of sexual liberation and radical secularism. From street preachers arrested for quoting the Bible to students thrown off their courses for holding to a Christian view of sexuality, there can be no doubt that the supposedly tolerant society of 21st century Britain is deeply intolerant of Jesus Christ and his teaching.

“Tim Farron’s story demonstrates that even those who accept the liberal political agenda wholeheartedly become targets who are unfairly hounded and bullied. He was forced to answer questions on the morality of ‘gay sex’ and abortion. During the election campaign he had to choose whether to surrender his conscience and forfeit his soul to the intolerant, marauding elite.

“Even though he capitulated, this did not stop the hunt. Today he felt he could no longer lead, and had no option but to resign.

“Tim Farron’s treatment demonstrates that Christians are simply not tolerated by the illiberal elite in positions of influence. This, alongside the widespread reaction to the DUP’s views on abortion and same-sex unions, is further evidence of this anti-Christian morality.

“The vilification of the DUP for its opposition to abortion and same-sex unions and castigation of Tim Farron is shocking and upsetting. If we continue in this crusade of ‘totalitolerance’, we will enter a harsh and conformist world where Christianity will be ‘no platformed’ and eventually squeezed out of every sphere of public life. The elite determines what are toxic unacceptable views. Unless you approve of their ‘new morality’ you are punished. At first comes the loss of privilege, a political position, a place at university, then the detriment: the refusal of a grant and ultimately criminal sanction.

“The history of our nation proves that when Christianity was firmly at the heart of public life there was freedom, prosperity and beauty. The hard atheism that currently dominates our political discourse is cruel and doesn’t tolerate dissent. Tim Farron is another in a long line of casualties. It is time to fight back before it is too late.”

The other day I popped into Suffolk Poetry Festival for a couple of hours. It was held at the John Peel Centre in Stowmarket, and we got there by train. We left Norwich in blazing sunshine, and by Diss the sky was dark grey and it was pouring with rain. Fortunately, by the time we reached Stowmarket it was sunny again. Poetry is like that.

I read a couple of poems (one of them is printed below) and some tanka authored partly by my friend Joy McCall, who is described in her latest book, Fieldgates (published in America), as “the quintessentially English tanka poet”.

Tanka are Japanese in origin, of course, but Joy is pretty English, and certainly expert in the field of tanka – which in case you were wondering, are five-lined verses with a fixed number of syllables per line. In my case this is 4-6-4-7-6.  Joy’s versions are a little more flexible, which is why she is quintessential, and I’m not.

Actually, she is not only quintessential; she is incredible. Confined to a wheelchair by a road accident some years ago, she is in more or less constant pain and has repeated operations to stave off various kinds of collapse. But she is a prolific poet with enviable spiritual insight. The calm in the midst of the storm, you might say.

At the festival, I read my own tanka, and my wife read Joy’s responses. Joy not only finds travel difficult (though not impossible); she is also too shy to read for an audience; so this was a rare public performance of a tiny part of her work.

Funny things, poetry festivals. As well as readings of poetry and associated lectures and workshops, there was also at least one funny literary sketch, a lovely folk song and assorted monologues, one or two of them inspired. There was also a café run by the Green Party and an anti-Brexit rant in poetic form.

Not that this was a political or exclusive gathering. In fact poetry groups, and by extension festivals, are remarkably uncritical and welcoming – at least in Suffolk. There are no auditions, nor any obvious quality control. This is sometimes irritating but more often gives you a nice warm feeling in the stomach. Or maybe that was the coffee cake from the Green Café.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that if I was walking in the city somewhere, minding my own business, and a building fell on me, my wife would attribute the resulting fatality to my not eating the right food.

I know I am not eating the right food, because she tells me so quite often. She herself is eating the right food, which is why she looks about 20 years younger than me and is beautifully formed. No building would dare fall on her. If it tried to, it would undoubtedly miss.

It so happens, sadly, that I like food that is not right. In fact, the way you can tell which food is not right for me is that I like it.

I am not beautifully formed and would like to weigh rather less – an inviting target for a psychopathic building. But I have this strange feeling that if I go over to the bright side and stick to food that is good for me, I will not like it, get bored quickly and probably die (possibly of starvation) way before the building starts to look unsteady.

I am not a particularly fussy eater, but I once had lemon curd tart at school. I didn’t know what it was, went home and told my mother we’d had Vaseline tart, which I think was fairly accurate, taste-wise. I still don’t know what they do to lemons, which I love as a fruit (in small bursts), to make them taste so off-putting when they appear with meringues or drizzle cake. Or tarts.

As for couscous, hummus and tofu, I have doubts as to whether they are really meant to be edible. I could say the same for beetroot, and what is the point of vinegar, except to ruin perfectly good fish and chips?

While I am on the subject (or adjacent to it), pasta, rice and vegetables are not meals: they are things to have with meals, preferably in smallish quantities. This is not as widely known as it ought to be.

I would not like to give the impression that my wife is single-minded. She is funny, clever and laughs a lot, often at herself. So I don’t really mind what she says about my food.

Anyway, there is a slight chance that she would put the building death scenario down to my not getting enough exercise. This would obviously be harder to believe, because if I had been getting less exercise at that precise time I would not have been walking in the vicinity of the fatal building.

Still, I would not dismiss the possibility entirely.