Author Archives: Tim Lenton

caverns

we lit candles
in the ruined church
and wept –
where is the God
to save us from ourselves?

wax spills outwards,
accidental patterns
on empty air:
prayer fills the vacant space,
sending unexpected love

the emptiness
of deep pits and dark caves;
the silences –
let me not rush to fill them
with mindless broken words

from the caverns
of too reluctant hearts
water rises:
filling the flood plains where
we build fortresses of sand

candle flame dies,
the winter tides erode
unsettled sand –
holy water and dark earth
are strange bedfellows

 

[This is one of the tanka strings from my new book, written in conjunction with Joy McCall and called Stillness Lies Deep. In this particular pentaptych, Joy’s words are in italics. The book is available from Mousehold Press.]

Posted on February 13 2014 in Poetry

Money can’t buy you good weather

Some people go for sandbags; others prefer money. Possibly sandbags full of money would do it.

Is your home flooded? No problem. The Government has lots of money, so everything will be fine.

Whose fault is it anyway?   Perhaps the Environment Agency, who are so infatuated with wildlife that they don’t have time to dredge rivers. Perhaps the Government, who don’t live in Somerset and are in love with high-speed trains. Perhaps the planners, who are keen to build on flood plains. Perhaps local authorities. Perhaps the police. Perhaps the fairies.

Someone should have stopped it.

Remember King Canute, who tried to stop the tide coming in and couldn’t – presumably because he hadn’t allocated enough money – or sand. Haven’t we progressed any further than that?

Well, Canute was not quite that stupid. If you read the story carefully, you’ll find that he was not making foolhardy attempts to stop the sea coming in. He was demonstrating to his wrong-headed supporters and subjects that he wasn’t all-powerful, and some things cannot be stopped.

Of course he was right. He had a level-headed view of humanity’s limitations – a view that we seem to have jettisoned as life has got easier and easier.

We are used to being safe. We are insured. We take precautions. If something goes wrong, there is someone to put it right.

Except that no-one has yet mastered the sea, any more than they have mastered the rain or the wind. Or the climate. We like to think that we can, and it’s just a question of making the right decisions, using the right energy, making everything completely safe.

But this is a delusion. We happen to have been living in a very quiet period. In past centuries there have been huge sea floods of unknown origin. That story about Lyonesse – the land between Cornwall and the Scilly Isles that was lost during a “huge sea flood” – is usually described as a myth. Couldn’t happen, could it?

Or could it? We forget that in Roman times the coast of my home county, Norfolk, was very different, with the sea pushing much further inland. We forget the Fens – drained relatively recently. Stories of huge, destructive storms filter down the centuries.

The sea is not easy to push aside. The weather cannot always be easily handled.

Some say there is no such thing as bad weather, just inadequate clothing. I don’t think so.

There is nothing we can do to stop continuous rain, hurricane force winds or months of snow – any more than we can predict or defend against tsunamis and meteorites. Money won’t do it, and nor will sandbags.

The odds are against extreme weather – which simply means that it doesn’t happen very often. But it does happen, and it is just as likely to happen now as at any other time. We take the best precautions we can.

I took the precaution of not buying a house on a flood plain. But the hill on which I live is made of chalk, and there are tunnels in it. Even a small amount of snow and ice makes our steep road hard to use. There are large trees that could fall on us.

Nowhere is completely safe, and we have no right to complete safety. Many parts of the world are forced to be aware of this. Why not us?

What we do have is responsibility – to do the best we can, to protect each other, to have compassion and to recognise that we are not yet ready – nowhere near ready – to conquer the universe. That is not what the universe is for.

Posted on February 13 2014 in Articles

Are banks that won’t speak to you dumb?

We spend so much time criticising bankers for being greedy at the highest level that we forget the incompetence lower down.

I have just spent many hours over several days trying to get a very straightforward current account usable on the internet. This would undoubtedly be easy if it was my personal account, but it happens to be the account of a small charity – to be precise, a church.

First, of course, I tried the bank that already had the account. Could I speak to someone in the branch? No, they didn’t deal with internet banking. But they could give me a number to call.

I spent close to two hours on the phone. It took them much of that time to work out why they couldn’t do it. They were embarrassed. They arranged to refund the cost of the phone call (which they never did).

They then discovered that this particular account was very old and had been opened “wrongly”. No, they couldn’t make it available on the internet. I would have to open a new account.

Could they transfer all the standing orders and direct debits to the new account? No, they couldn’t. I would have to do all that myself.

This seemed nonsense to me. Perhaps if I switched the account to a new bank, they would do it (this service is advertised widely nowadays).

I tried a new bank. They couldn’t speak to me in the branch about it. They had a feeling another bank might do it. I tried the other bank. They didn’t.

I went back to the main branch of the previous bank. They couldn’t talk about it in the branch either, but they could supply a phone so that I could speak to Rotherham.

I spoke to Rotherham, which is slightly better than speaking to India. Oh yes, they said. We can do that. They would send me forms.

They sent me forms. They sent me so many forms that it would clearly need several hours to complete them, especially as many of the questions were irrelevant and therefore unanswerable. They also required a meeting of the church council to pass a resolution, and credit ratings from three different people.

They gave me a phone number that I could call for assistance. I could actually feel my blood pressure rising.

In the end, I resigned as treasurer. Life is too short – or it soon would be. A sympathetic colleague responded by offering to contact the first bank…

Meanwhile I decided to put in a Gift Aid claim form. The Revenue people, who apparently are former bankers, have a new system, which I had sweated blood to register for some months ago. The system got confused (or maybe it was me) because I was already registered for self-assessment. I needed a new log-in number and password. Don’t talk to me about passwords.

Anyway, I accessed the system and downloaded the claim form. I couldn’t open it. Apparently the Revenue are unaware that many people use Mac computers and have decided to use a file that Macs can’t open. Brilliant.

I downloaded some software that should have opened the file. My Mac wouldn’t accept the new software because it suspected it contained malware. So I took several deep breaths, downloaded some other software, and it did open it.

Eventually, after several false starts, I filled it in. It was not straightforward. It could have been. But it wasn’t.

I am reasonably computer literate. Goodness knows how the average church treasurer manages. Perhaps they have to employ accountants.

Of course all this is not confined to bankers. I tried to take out some travel insurance recently and got so frustrated by the obscurity of the medical conditions element in online forms that I went to a broker.

Yes, they did speak to people personally about travel insurance. But not people who were over 64. Of course.

However, they had a number I could ring…

I do hope bankers don’t take these criticisms personally – especially those nice cashiers who smile at me and take my money on a regular basis.

But if they (or their superiors) do take offence, I’m afraid I can’t speak to them about it. However, I do have a number they could ring.

Posted on January 23 2014 in Articles. Tagged , , .

New year

I lie in a cooling bath on New Year’s Day
thinking about redemption,
unresolved

Outside the streets are empty,
reluctant to make a start:
the sky is gallows grey, and
a half-read novel slumps on the mat

Downstairs scraps of food
wait to be cast out,
but it is too early:
my head is unprepared

The future strolls past,
glances in
and ambles onwards

It is time to wash my thinning hair:
I persuade the last shampoo
into my right hand,
knowing and forgetting
last year’s bottle is now empty

I shrug, and the water ripples:
I take the bottle in my weak left fingers
and throw it across the room
towards the bin:
an impossible shot

It goes in
without
touching
the sides

It is a new year:
there is nothing I cannot do

Posted on January 16 2014 in Poetry

Luck and the beautiful game

I enjoy watching sport for aesthetic reasons. I am almost as perplexed by people who treat football as if it were a kind of war game as I am by those who don’t like sport at all.

If games are not beautiful, why bother with them? Most football enthusiasts (at least, those as old as I am) remember Danny Blanchflower’s famous comment: “The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

The team I happen to follow (because I was born in the same city) does not have this problem at the moment. It wins neither gloriously nor boringly; it rarely wins at all. But flashes of beauty persist.

Winning is important of course; there is no point in playing any game if you don’t take it seriously – by which I mean accept it on its own terms. Someone who is not really interested in playing destroys the game. And by taking it seriously I don’t mean being insanely set on winning.

I was once accused of being overly competitive at croquet – an accusation that mystified me until I realised that the person who made the accusation was not really interested in games.

I was trying to win because if I did not try to win, the whole game was pointless. If I did not win (I can’t actually remember whether I did or not) it was not going to affect my life, or even the rest of the day. It’s quite possible to try hard to win, but not mind if you don’t.

This is harder if you play football in the Premiership or cricket for England. There, defeat can affect your whole life. Sport has become more than a game, and that is difficult to take, because when it comes down to it, when there is not much to choose between teams, winning or losing is often a question of luck.

This seems to me to be obvious, but it is often ignored by commentators, who say that “these things even themselves out”. Do they? I have seen little evidence of it.

In cricket a batsman may be dropped on 5, 6 and 7 and go on to score 200. This is praised as a remarkable innings. If he had been caught on 5, 6 or 7 – as he should have been – he would have been criticised for giving his wicket away cheaply.

There is always one ball that will get you out as a batsman. If this comes along in the first over, that’s bad luck. Logically this could keep happening; so it could be that there are superb batsman who have never made many runs.

In football split-second decisions can change everything. I have functioned briefly as both referee and linesman in very low-level matches, so I know how difficult it is. But the fall-out is huge at top level.

In a game I was watching recently a clearance was blocked by an attacker with his arm. It should have been a free kick to the defending team, but the referee was unsighted and quite a long way away. The game continued, and the player who blocked with his arm raced forward and came down in the penalty area – and was awarded a very dubious penalty.

So what should have been an advantage to the defending team turned out to be a goal against them.

This kind of thing happens all the time, even without the added ingredient of players diving or simulating fouls.

Does this spoil the game? It depends on the stakes. The chief executive of my local football team said recently he would rather die than see the team relegated.  Bill Shankly, former manager of Liverpool, said: “Football is not a matter of life and death… it’s much more important than that.”

They were both lying, of course. To be relegated is unlucky, and not at all beautiful. But sport, like life, is not an exact science: the best team doesn’t always win, any more than the best people live longer.

Would we have it any other way? Think hard before you answer.

Posted on January 16 2014 in Articles. Tagged , , , , .

Like a lamb

On the dark hills at first
shepherds watch
the dance of the stars

In the dark shelter
a fragile child,
bare arms outstretched

Outside, angels deliver
the glory of God:
heaven’s light comes down,
flows like a river

into the dark tower
where lambs
are wrapped for slaughter

Swaddling cloths
are borrowed:
like a lamb,
the child
is covered

ready for sacrifice
full of glory
full of light

Shepherds rush in
out of the darkness:
and the night dissolves

 

Posted on December 21 2013 in Poetry

Paying attention to Christmas

Confused by Christmas? Finding it hard to picture the whole manger scene, with the donkey and the Christmas tree? Not sure whether the angels and the reindeer would have frightened the sheep?

Is wishing on a star any better than trying to persuade Father Christmas, against all the evidence, that you have been good for a whole year?

Well, you are not alone.  According to a recent poll, one in ten young adults thinks that Santa Claus appears in the Bible, a Christmas tree featured in the Nativity and December 25 is stated by the Gospel writers to be the date of Jesus’ birth.

Presumably a good deal more than one in ten think it doesn’t really matter, since my own poll has revealed that for 90% of the population, life is what happens when you’re not really paying attention.

As a result, Christmas has become something of a muddle. Traditional rather static figures rub shoulders with the manufactured excitement of computer-generated images and super-heroes. To 21st century eyes,  Father Christmas and God have identity problems. Angels hover in the wings.

They don’t actually have wings, of course. At least that’s what Vatican expert Father Renzo Lavatori says. He says they are more like shards of light, which I have to say I find quite a reasonable and attractive idea.

Novelist Tom Clancy said that the difference between reality and fiction was that fiction had to make sense.  He meant, of course, that what actually happens in life often isn’t easy to understand from a logical point of view.

What happened at Christmas was a one-off, and not easy to understand in the 21st century. For the record, Father Christmas is not God. He did not appear in the stable and nor did the Christmas tree.

So what did happen? Well, we all know that Jesus almost certainly wasn’t born on December 25. Intriguingly, it has been calculated that he was born on September 11 in 3BC, on the Jewish New Year. Jesus was a Jew, if you remember.

There were angels and shepherds, but one fascinating idea is that the actual birthplace was a structure called Migdal Eder, the Tower of the Flock, within the bounds of Bethlehem, where lambs were prepared for sacrifice in the temple at nearby Jerusalem. It’s mentioned by the prophet Micah.

The three wise men (or however many) weren’t there. They didn’t come along till Jesus was a toddler, probably between one and two years old. So no star. No celebrities either. No carols. Which of course is taking it a bit far.

Do these details matter? In the end it’s a question of belief. Do we believe in God, and if so, do we believe he became man? Is that a stretch too far? Is it possible? Does it make sense? Is it easier to begin thinking about something else?

Posted on December 21 2013 in Articles. Tagged , .

Breaking news, broken news

At about high tide on the east coast on the evening of December 5, as waves beat against the sea defences, water flooded on to roads and into houses and thousands of people were evacuated from their fragile homes, something world-shattering happened.

Nelson Mandela died.

Immediately the BBC went into auto-news mode. All resources were switched to covering the death of a world statesman, all the ready-to-air snippets painstakingly gathered over recent years were assembled, shuffled and placed into order.

Within minutes, it was clear that nothing else was happening. Anchorman Martyn Lewis switched on all his gravitas and assured us solemnly that this story was going to be covered from all possible angles. We sighed. World leaders were going to say roughly the same thing, though sadly not at the same time. Ordinary people like you and I were going to have stories to tell.

I have the greatest admiration for Nelson Mandela. I also admire the way that the BBC is able to provide us with in-depth information about significant world figures. But I think they are muddled about what is news and what isn’t.

Mr Mandela was not assassinated. He did not die unexpectedly. He had been ill, and then he died.

We needed to be told this as part of a news programme, probably the lead item. Depending on what else was happening, this could have been expanded on as part of the news, and then a dedicated programme could have been aired sooner rather than later. With time to prepare such a programme properly, much of the repetition, hesitation and deviation could have been eliminated.

Instead, the BBC took the easy but totally wrong option of ditching everything else, pretending that Mr Mandela’s death was the ace of trumps, and everyone else could throw in their cards.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people (possibly millions) were switching on the news to try to find out what was happening during what the BBC themselves had told us was the biggest storm surge in 60 years.

There was huge risk to property and human life. We all wanted to know what had happened when that high tide point had been reached during gale-force winds.

The BBC was not interested. Nothing on the national news, and the local news was bumped back to a mere ten minutes half an hour late. This from an organisation that had been telling us constantly to tune in to keep up to date with what was happening.

Mr Mandela’s death, we were told, was breaking news. No, it was broken news. It had already happened. The east coast storm surge was breaking news – a real, live, dramatic story where the outcome was totally unpredictable.

This kind of thing is usually done well by the BBC. It would have been disappointing if it had been done badly. But it shows ludicrous lack of judgement  that it was not done at all.

Posted on December 6 2013 in Articles. Tagged , .

Fantastic exercise for the mind

To my horror I have discovered that more than ten million people switched on their television sets on November 23 to watch a show that was totally beyond any kind of rational belief, featured weird creatures outside space and time, had no relevance whatsoever to life as we know it and occasionally made you think you were going to be sick.

Why do people watch Strictly Come Dancing? I’ve no idea. The only relief for me was that almost as many watched Dr Who, which is as mind-stretching as the show they call Strictly is mind-numbing.

In fact Dr Who is so mind-stretching that your mind has trouble keeping up. I mean, three different versions of the main character skipping backwards and forwards through time? How does that work?

Did John Hurt blow up a galaxy? Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Is the said galaxy now frozen and hidden in a cup of tea? Clearly one of the key questions of our time. It would explain a lot of things.

The real joy of Dr Who (apart from the consistently lovely companions of recent years) is the fact that anything can happen, and often does.

Some of my friends don’t like this. They prefer things that can be explained, however dull the explanation is. They read serious literature and would not touch fantasy, regarding it as irrelevant. They suspect I am out of touch with reality.

Albert Einstein said: “Reality is merely an illusion, even though a very persistent one.” Dr Who would probably agree with that, and you have to admit, that Einstein guy was quite bright.

You see what I’m getting at? We’re wasting our time concentrating on the so-called reality that is placed before us, and which we try to explain by dissecting and examining it in mainline fiction, or enliven by turning it into massively hyped TV trivia like Strictly Come Dancing or I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Life is much more than that, or we are beyond help.

Joseph Heller, the author of such magical books as Catch-22, once wrote, in the ironically titled Something Happened, that “Someone had distorted reality for the sake of neatness”. I suspect (though I have not asked them) that the writers of Dr Who feel the same way. They want to get behind the distortion and find out what’s really going on.

I have to say that on this I am one with J B S Haldane, another quite bright guy, who suggested: “Reality is not only more fantastic than we think, but also much more fantastic than we imagine.”

Shows like Dr Who may not have the answers, but at least they make us think about the questions, and marvel at them.

Posted on November 24 2013 in Articles

Too cunning, the nightingales

Rumours of nightingales
on the heath
draw me in,
my eyes and ears wide open.

Drawing blank at dusk,
I dare the dangerous dawn
that breaks like a wound
over the grey bay –

I push apart the brambles
but the birds hide well,
their tiny camouflage
too cunning for a
shadowy figure like me.

Maybe I am too late
and they have slipped
over the border,
flown back to Africa,
singing their secrets all the way:

spies on the run,
glad to have escaped
the torture of wintry prison here,
another assignment
successfully completed.

Posted on November 6 2013 in Poetry. Tagged , .