DOGS FOR EVER

I was much struck by an item on the BBC website yesterday reporting the conviction for false accounting of the Tory peer Lord Hanningfield. The accused stated that “He had to return home to look after his Bernese mountain dog, Jefferson, and had incurred costs, including £20 a day for dog walking and housekeeping costs, which he could not claim. He told the trial: ‘As I lived alone I wouldn't survive without my dog.’

At first I thought the remark pathetic and self-serving, but then it came to me that dog-owners are a really fine body of men (I have been one myself) and the flame of human sympathy began to glow in my heart.  In truth, the Bernese mountain dog is one of the most attractive dog breeds, large, good natured and needing plenty exercise. Jefferson is a famous name, redolent of courage and intelligence – I bet Hanningfield’s dog is a handsome beauty. Then his punch-line “As I lived alone I wouldn’t survive without my dog.” My heart melts. It is not because Hanningfield lives in Essex, which he does, and needs protection; it is because he lives alone, that he needs Jefferson to give him that loyal affection and quiet company that only a dog can bring. Please, kind Judge, do not give him a custodial sentence, but if you must, allow Jefferson to come along too!

The relationship between Man and Dog is often thus. Homer sings the story of Argos, faithful companion of Odysseus, who recognises his master on his return home after 20 years. Argos is too old and weak to stand but can only drop his ears and wag his tail. Odysseus is moved to tears and then the old dog quietly dies. Remember Greyfriars Bobby, the Skye terrier, who kept a daily vigil for 14 years over the grave of his master, commemorated by a charming statue in Edinburgh. Then there is ever-resourceful Lassie, the Scottish collie, always actually played by a male dog, who had the great good fortune to be pressed against the warm breasts of a pubescent Elizabeth Taylor in the 1943 movie “Lassie Come Home”. More recently, the true story was told of Hachiko, the Japanese Akita, who waited 9 years in vain at the railway station for the return of his academic owner, victim of a lethal heart attack. It was made into a Richard Gere movie and moved from Tokyo to Rhode Island – with not a dry eye in our house, anyway. Faithfulness is a prime canine quality.

A great merit of dogs is that they seldom complain, unlike wives, children and the outside world in general. A dog will whine when it wants out, but humans also know the discomfort occasioned by postponing calls of nature. Dogs can be rather picky about their food. Many dogs happily gobble up canned dog-food, and do not even seek a variety of flavours; however our Yorkie disdained such fare and only ate what we ate (“Don’t over-grill the steak please”). All is well as long as they have enough food; one of our West Highland terriers quietly and contentedly chewed through a Persian lamb coat on a train journey. Our Norwegian elkhound appalled a visiting dowager lady baronet by gulping down the cucumber sandwich she recklessly waved about in her hand. But these are the exceptions to prove the rule; a well-fed dog is a happy dog and gives you no back-chat and no whining.

But the cheering thing about dogs is that they like to play and have fun. You may have the blues, but the dog, our Pekinese was a case in point, will want to tumble over, have his tummy rubbed and nuzzle against you. How many weary returns from a day in the City have been enlivened by a riotous welcome of jumping up and frantic tail-wagging. This welcome is often the preamble to the long anticipated “walkies”, an unbreakable part of the daily routine, come wind, rain or tempest. Of course walkies relax you too, as the dog strains at the lead wanting to sniff this dustbin or chase that squirrel – you are no longer thinking of that tense confrontation in the office or the necessity of completing and filing your tax-return. Dogs appreciate a spacious garden, where they can roam around unsupervised, dig up recently planted blooms and, in the case of our Peke, go into paroxysms of excitement on encountering at night the resident hedgehogs. Indoor games are a joy too, our elkhound being an easy winner of “Hunt the Apple”, quickly discovered under a cushion or in his master’s slippers. Yes, dogs are not remotely serious – they are fun.

Dogs are superb ice-breakers. Within two minutes of walking your dog down the road, someone walking theirs will approach you and ask about your animal. This may lead to other things you have in common and within minutes a new friend is made.  One of my sons borrowed the dog so that he could walk up Hampstead High Street and chat to a young lovely dog-walker who had caught his eye. They certainly got into conversation but history does not record whether it went any further.

It will have become obvious that I am infatuated by dogs (though I am intimidated by those tweedy, rather masculine ladies, who show at Crufts and breed champions). I am sure there are contrary voices who speak of yelping, poop-scooping, endless grooming, of animals more like Cerberus than Lassie, and all the heavy ties and responsibilities of ownership. Our time with a particular dog is seldom more than about 15 years and the parting of the ways is inevitably sad (how lucky they are to have the unquestioned right to euthanasia). I reckon we should make the most of our 4-legged family members, laugh and play with them and cherish their comforting presence in a world where disinterested affection is a rare blessing.

SMD

27.5.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011

TWO OXFORD HISTORIANS

To my generation of Oxford undergraduates, two historians in particular were much admired – Hugh Trevor-Roper and AJP Taylor. I have recently re-read some of their books and have been struck by the qualities of both men. Their rivalry and academic feuding were legendary.

They had very different backgrounds: Trevor-Roper came from a Northumberland gentry family now in reduced circumstances. A brilliant pupil at Charterhouse, he was an undergraduate and scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, and became a lecturer at Merton in 1936. He admired and sought to become a member of the Establishment.  

Taylor, 8 years his senior, was also a Northerner from a wealthy pacifist family and was always a non-conformist in life and in politics. His promiscuous mother was a member of the Comintern and all were wildly left-wing. Educated at various Quaker schools, Taylor went up to Oriel College, Oxford in 1924. After studying in Vienna and becoming heavily involved in pro-Soviet organisations he taught at Manchester University and then in 1938 became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

During World War 11, Taylor was modestly in the Home Guard. Trevor-Roper was recruited by Military Intelligence, became a captain, and after a chance meeting with Dick White, then head of MI6 in April 1945, he was asked to investigate the death of Adolf Hitler. He produced a masterly report and in 1947 this was published as The Last Days of Hitler. It became a best-seller and Trevor-Roper, now a Fellow and rich, parked his grey Bentley in the Christ Church quad, indulged his taste for fox-hunting and developed a circle of friends among the country house set. He had arrived with a bang.

Trevor-Roper, the Establishment man

Professionally however he had really shot his bolt. An early biography of Laud in 1940 was his only substantive work and his promised magnum opus on the Great Rebellion never appeared.  Trevor Roper was a master of the essay in professional journals, book reviews, articles for the Sunday papers. His sardonic prose style made him a highly effective, if cruel, controversialist and he punctured the reputation of the historical philosopher Arnold Toynbee, of the Marxist historians Tawney and Namier, he ridiculed the Catholic Church and indulged his prejudices against the Scots. He wrote plenty (allegedly to finance the extravagance of his wife, a daughter of Earl Haig) and was read avidly. A powerful figure in Oxford, he managed the winning campaign of Harold MacMillan to become vice-chancellor in 1960. MacMillan was his publisher and had in 1957 made Trevor-Roper Regius Professor of Modern History, an appointment in the Prime Minister’s gift.

Alan Taylor was very embittered by Trevor-Roper’s appointment, which he thought he, Taylor, more deserved. Certainly Taylor’s output as a historian was more solid and impressive. Books on the Italian Risorgimento, on the Habsburg Empire, and on Bismarck flowed from his lucid pen and his 1954 The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918 is considered his masterpiece, though it is a dense and scholarly diplomatic history. He was very popular among the undergraduates at Oxford and I attended two of his lectures, in a packed audience.  But then Taylor’s politics were hardly going to endear him to MacMillan. An opponent of the Korean War and Suez, a supporter of Soviet repression of Hungary in 1956, a founder member of CND, Taylor also wrote for the popular newspapers and by the late 1950’s had become a well-known telly-historian, giving splendid half-hour lectures to the camera without notes , with his owlish appearance and nasal delivery. Taylor’s private life was none too respectable either as he tolerated an open marriage with his first of three wives Margaret, who included their lodger, the bloated, drunken, if brilliant, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, among her many lovers.

Taylor the tele-historian

                                         

In 1961, Taylor published his The Origins of the Second World War, a wonderfully readable book, but whose thesis was challenged robustly by Trevor-Roper and many others. Taylor argued that Hitler had no plan to dominate Europe but pursued an opportunistic foreign policy, taking advantage of the diplomatic blunders of Mussolini, Chamberlain, Daladier, Benes and Beck to acquire Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. A picture of Hitler as a rational German politician was painted. The received view was that Hitler was an evil genius with a definite plan to dominate Europe and this view prevailed. An exchange between Trevor-Roper and Taylor gives a flavour of the catty academic in-fighting;

Trevor-Roper: “I am afraid this book will damage your reputation as an historian.”

Taylor: “Your criticism would damage your reputation as an historian, if you had one.”

Taylor paid a price for his revisionism. Magdalen College did not renew his lectureship in 1964 but he bounced back from this reverse with his English History 1914-1945 a hugely successful history in the Oxford series. Taylor remained a respected figure into the 1970’s and wrote an admiring biography of a most unlikely friend and hero for him, Lord Beaverbrook, the right-wing Canadian adventurer and Tory. As the years passed he became more cantankerous until Parkinson’s, a motor accident and a stroke disabled him before his death in 1990.

Trevor-Roper continued to write historical essays of astonishing range, about Homer, the medieval Jews, Erasmus, 17^th century religious controversies, the Spanish Enlightenment, Karl Marx, to name just a few. Elevated to the peerage by Thatcher as Lord Dacre in 1979, Trevor-Roper made the mistake of leaving Oxford to become Master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge for 8 unhappy years as he quarrelled with the far right-wing Fellows there. In 1983 catastrophe struck him when as a director of the Sunday Times and Nazi expert, he vouched for the authenticity of purported Hitler Diaries, serialised by the paper. They were quickly exposed as forgeries, when the ink and paper were analysed. Trevor-Roper’s reputation and judgement were in tatters and he was humiliated. He retired eventually to Didcot dying in 2003.

Both men were fine historians, Taylor the greater achiever, Trevor-Roper the better man. Both gave enormous pleasure to their readers.

SMD

24.11.10

Copyright Sidney Donald 2010

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BONNIE SCOTLAND

                                        

“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said

This is my own, my native land?

Whose heart has ne’er within him burned

As home his footsteps he has turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?”

Sir Walter’s familiar lines always make me feel a tad guilty, in that I love my country profoundly, do not believe my soul is dead, yet often enough (too often perhaps) pass critical judgements on its contemporary inanities.

It is beyond question that physically Scotland is uniquely blessed with some of the loveliest scenery in the world. The hilly verdant Borders, the wonderful interplay of sea, loch, mountain and glen in the incomparable West and Highlands, the romantic and varied offshore Islands, the wonderful Tayside, Speyside and Deeside landscapes ravish the eye. Even the Lowland industrial belt has its gems. Two great cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow, give the country European distinction and there are many fine aspects of Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Perth. Truly the Scots are fortunate in their environment…… (That’s quite enough cliché-ridden shortbread-tin sentiment, before I end up wallowing in Burns, kilts and the skirl of pipes!  Now, get real!)

The Scots are notably less fortunate in their climate, wetter and cloudier than that of England and, with the 1,850 annual hours of sunshine in none-too-balmy Southern England amazingly 65% more than the 1,200 in Northern Scotland, the Scots really need their cashmere woollies and Harris Tweed overcoats. Scarcity makes the Scottish sun particularly welcome though the rhododendrons still bloom and glistening grey granite enlivens the sadly few days of summer in Aberdeen, more typically enveloped in a damp North Sea haar. No wonder the Scots Diaspora to England and points South is so pronounced – it’s not the economy, stupid, it’s the chilblains.

If England and the United States are two countries separated by their common language, how much more so are England and Scotland. These days the most ubiquitous Scottish voice is that of the football manager and I am surprised the TV companies do not play their interviews with these gentlemen with sub-titles. A cacophonous salvo of illiterate gabbling streams from their mouths, punctuated by outrageous glottal-stops and gurning expressions. Luckily this is not typical Scots speech; the douce educated Edinburgh voice brings fastidious clarity to any company and even a heavily accented Glaswegian contributes vivacity and wild humour; indeed intelligent conversation is one of the great native joys, but too often the worst pushes out the best.

The Scots nation has a strong heritage. This is made up of a rich compound of a stirring, if convoluted history, an admirable respect for education, a distinctive Kirk and legal system, a prudent financial attitude, a cultural life of quality and a vigorous love of sport and the great outdoors. This heritage is beset by many threats in the modern world against which all Scots would do well to man the barricades. I will briefly discuss them in the above order.

History

History has created a tide of ever-closer links with prosperous England. Independence won at Bannockburn in 1314, the limits of this independence displayed at Flodden in 1513, the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, the political and social opportunities seized by Scots in Georgian and Victorian Britain and in the Empire, Scots in senior positions in the 3 main parties in the 20^th century. All this quickly implodes with the devolving Scotland Act of 1998 establishing the Scots statelet. The much-vaunted political class, leaders like John Smith, Gordon Brown, Derry Irvine and Donald Dewar (not to mention the enfeebled Tories) showing a lack of political imagination and skill, instead jump on the chippy nationalist bandwagon. Be sure it is a leap in the dark, whose consequences could be very damaging: but the pass is sold and there is no point resurrecting old arguments.

The current signs are not encouraging; an SNP government led by a second-rate opportunist bribes a deluded electorate with the abolition of prescription charges and university tuition fees, to the chagrin of the English taxpayer who will inevitably sooner or later abandon the Barnett formula and sharply reduce Scotland’s revenues. A financial and maybe a constitutional crisis loom, pregnant with peril.

Education

The Scottish education system used to command great respect. The esteemed dominie was a prominent figure and it was obvious that the Scot was often better-read and had superior powers of application than his English brother. The tightly effective, if rather elitist, school system made this possible but the levelling spirit of the 1960s onwards overthrew this with its comprehensives, pupil rights and manipulated academic standards. Universities grew like asparagus in May; useful technical institutions became third-rate “Unies” with the entirely predictable result that Scottish universities have tumbled down the admittedly controversial world rankings. Edinburgh stands in 40^th place – it was 20^th – the only one in the top 100, with St Andrews (103^rd), Glasgow (128^th) and Aberdeen (149^th) limping behind. As a small nation of 5m, Scotland needs to live on its brains and its centres of academic excellence should be better represented in the top 100.  Education is being overhauled by the clear-thinking Michael Gove, and all strength to his elbow, but it is a Sisyphean labour in an age glorifying the lowest common denominator, that is to say, the moronic.

The Kirk and the Law

The Kirk and the Law are distinctive Scots institutions. The loss of faith is universal in Christendom, cannot be reversed and is itself a kind of blessing. But the Kirk was an ethical glue in society; remove even a primitive notion of conscience from some Scots and you are left with a dangerous feral beast. Such people are not likely attendees of humanist lectures: channelling their enthusiasm to worthy, moral causes is a challenge of our time.

 Scots Law is an historic legacy worth protecting, not least for the institutions, scholarship and intellect it requires to support it in Edinburgh, whatever its doubtless considerable legal merits. Without the Law, Edinburgh would descend into a provincial backwater and one-size-fits-all English statutes will wreak havoc with our delicate social fabric.

Financial competence

At my school in Edinburgh, the ambition of at least 50% of the pupils was to become a chartered accountant (what a tragically cramped horizon for young spirits!). In any event Scotland is stiff with accountants, actuaries, bankers, fund managers and assorted bean-counters. This should bring the country some financial expertise and certainly historically Scotland has provided more than its share of successful bankers and men of business. This good record has been spoiled mightily in recent years. Where was vaunted Prudence when Scot Gordon Brown provided the UK on the eve of the financial crisis with the world’s 3^rd worst deficit at 12.6% of GDP, only capped by Greece and Iceland?

More parochially, why did the Scottish Parliament Building cost £414m, at least 10 times its original budget? Why has the grossly mismanaged Edinburgh tramways project cost to date £714m, and still counting, against an earlier cost of £365m? The “private” sector is no better, as taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland reported a loss of £24bn for 2008 after a woeful saga of reckless acquisition and lending. The whole UK economy was endangered by RBS and yet heads have not rolled even if upward careers have been quietly blighted. The Establishment ever protects its own.      

Culture              

Although modern Scotland has never matched the golden age of Adam Smith, David Hume, James Boswell and the Adam brothers, it produces a respectable number of good novelists, historians and film directors, rather fewer dramatists or poets, but it does host the splendid Edinburgh Festival. There are plenty, in point of fact too many, competent actors, comedians and singers and certainly a surfeit of pop groups. Traditional tastes are catered for in bibulous Highland Gatherings and overall Scotland’s cultural heritage is safe.

Sport and the Great Outdoors

With its wide open spaces - 65 people per sq km in Scotland (only 9 in the Highlands) compared with 395 in England – Scotland remains an incomparable European playground. It was once a great foot-balling nation, but now ranks as 66^th in the world. How the shades of George Young, Dave Mackay and Alan Gilzean will tremble! It is the home of golf and bred many early champions but since 1920 only two Scots have won the Open, and the Scotland rugby team torments more often than delights its fans. This decline can hardly be ascribed to some kind of national failure so I pass over it. The traditional expensive aristocratic pursuits of pheasant shooting and salmon fishing continue unabated although the image of deer-hunting has never quite overcome the alleged practice of the Ferrantis, machine-gunning from their helicopter! Easing public access to remote estates is a rare benign achievement of the devolved parliament.

Valete

My check-list of Scottish qualities and shortcomings is certainly invidious and arrogant, but it focuses on those matters which strike me as currently relevant to the eternal national debate. As a Scot in exile, I am alienated by the inward-looking attitude of contemporary Scotland. I value the social inclusiveness of the country, but also believe that standards are vital and that often the mild exercise of intellectual snobbery is a solemn duty in their defence. Scots need to play on a world stage, not to revert to the kale-yard. If failures result, let them be failures of ambition not mean-minded failures. In short, to adapt de Gaulle “Scotland cannot be Scotland without greatness”

I have criticised my country and some may judge with Sir Walter,

“The wretch, concentrated all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown

And doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung

Unwept, unhonoured and unsung!”

I hope for a kinder epitaph. Scotland awake!

SMD

14.4.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011

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SCOTTISH BANKERS

All nations have their national myths and a favourite Scottish one is that their bankers have always had a great reputation as thrifty and prudent men of business. The actual truth is rather less flattering and much more interesting.

The first Scottish banker in a recognisable guise was William Paterson, born in Tinwald, Dumfries, a man of many ideas, not all of them good. He is credited with founding the Bank of England in 1694. He certainly in 1691 proposed a Bank to manage England’s national debt, and while others executed his plan, he was a founding Director. Another of his grand ideas was less happy. He persuaded a large body of Scots investors that Scotland should establish a colony in Panama, which faulty information had told him was a very agreeable destination. The resultant Darien Scheme of 1698 proved a disaster and cost the sponsoring company the then astronomical sum of £232,000. Lack of due diligence, and reliance on business instinct, may well be an endemic Scottish failing. The Darien Scheme ruined many Scots and was a powerful spur towards the safer haven of the 1707 Act of Union with England.

Another persuasive early Scots banker was William Law, but he did not ruin his native land but instead ruined France. A native of Lauriston, Fife, a gambler with an acute calculating mind, Law was a fugitive from England after killing a love-rival in a duel. After 10 years of continental travel, Law gained the confidence of the Regent of France and was appointed Controller General of Finances. He set up the private Banque General in 1716, acquired by the French nation and becoming the Banque Royale in 1718. He organised tax-farming, imposed tolls, stimulated overseas trade introduced paper money and had notions on credit which his biographer Antoin Murphy generously claimed were 300 years ahead of their time (so not much practical use) and “captured many key conceptual points which are very much a part of modern monetary theorizing.”

Law’s career ended ignominiously when he sponsored the Mississippi Company, underpinned by the alleged riches of Louisiana. A speculative bubble developed in 1719 leading to the precipitate collapse of his bank, losing the savings of many thousands, firmly prejudicing the French against banks and in no way arresting the long slide to Revolution. The South Sea Bubble exploded at much the same time in London – no Scotsman spotted this time!

Scottish banking did settle down in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The Bank of Scotland (founded by Englishman John Holland in 1695) - it had given the Darien Scheme a wide berth - and the Royal Bank (founded 1727) competed abrasively. The Bank of Scotland was allegedly Jacobite in sympathy (spun by the Royal?) and was out of favour with the London government. Edinburgh goldsmith Andrew Drummond established his private bank in 1717 in London, becoming the Royal’s first acquisition south of the border in 1924. Thomas Coutts, whose family hailed from Montrose, took the helm in 1775 of the private London bank originally named Campbells, and built up a glittering clientele, as Coutts & Co, together with a personal fortune.

More modest customers were attracted by the world’s first Savings bank founded by the Rev Dr Henry Duncan in his parish of Ruthwell, Dumfries in 1810, the forerunner of the TSB and many other such institutions. Although Scotland itself remained chronically overbanked, opportunities in the Empire and the East beckoned. James Wilson, a hat-maker from Hawick, opened the first branches of the Chartered Bank in India in 1856, while John Paterson from Aberdeen started the Standard Bank in South Africa in 1862. They flourish together as Standard Chartered today. Thomas Sutherland, also from Aberdeen founded in 1865 the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, soon to be joined by Ewan Cameron from Inverness, forbear of Prime Minister David Cameron. The Hong Kong Bank evolved over the years into a huge enterprise, acquiring the Midland in 1990 and, as HSBC, became one of the largest banks in the world.

There was a golden age for Scottish bankers in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, indeed for all bankers, although there were the occasional nasty set-backs. The City of Glasgow Bank failed in 1878; false accounting was uncovered; 1200 shareholders with unlimited liability were impoverished and the entire Board was jailed. In 1906  the collapse of Arbuthnot & Co, mainly operating in Madras, was ascribed to fraudulent trading; London depositors lost heavily and the senior partner, Aberdeenshire born Sir George Arbuthnot, received 18 months hard labour.

Nemesis was on hand in the early 21^st century. The banks gloried in the Thatcher, Major and Blair years of prosperity and globalisation, not least the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank. Rivals as ever, both bid for the much larger NatWest Bank and the Royal won the prize in 2000. Sprawling NatWest was a turkey ripe for the plucking and the task was gleefully undertaken by Fred “the Shred” Goodwin, a native of Paisley, whose accountancy career had included the liquidation of the fraudulent BCCI and who moved through National Australia Bank and Clydesdale Bank to the Royal. The talented and dynamic Goodwin became CEO in 2001, quickly axed costs at NatWest and was a City favourite.

Goodwin then embarked on a further massive acquisition programme. Insurance brokers were bought, US subsidiary banks expanded and an excessive $10.5bn paid for Charter One Financial of Cleveland. When $1.6bn was paid for a mere minority interest in the Bank of China, alarmed institutional shareholders, worried by the growing leverage, exacted a pledge from Goodwin that there would be a halt on acquisitions. RBS had assets of £1.9 trillion, making it the largest company in the world by that measure, but its lending had increased greatly and it was very dependent on wholesale money market funding. Moreover its US investment banking operation RBS Greenwich had been encouraged to expand and it had a large position in collateralised debt obligations (no, don’t ask), soon to turn toxic.

A common ailment of bankers is deal fever, when the visionary clouds part and the blood runs warm at the sheer grandeur of their plans. Goodwin may have had a bout of this fever when he was stung to frustrate Barclays, who were poised to buy ABN-Amro in 2007. He devised a complex 3-way bid led by RBS, splitting the target with Fortis and Santander. He agreed a deal totalling €71bn. His Board, stiff with the supposedly prudent panjandrums of Scottish banking, were apparently ineffectual and the deal completed. Timing could not have been worse, as October 2007 saw confidence quickly dissolve in the City following the US subprime crisis. The inter-bank market froze and RBS faced a funding crisis.

Two rights issues were made but it was too late. RBS was too big to fail and a taxpayer rescue had to be organised with the state taking 70% and later 84% of the equity. In due course a record-breaking £24.1bn loss was announced. Over-lent Halifax Bank of Scotland was also in a desperate position and after a nudge from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hitherto prudent Lloyds Bank bought HBOS in haste, a transaction it repented at leisure after the full horror of the loan book emerged. The state had to inject funds and Lloyds became 43% taxpayer owned.

Thus two great Scottish banks were laid low by mismanagement and over-ambition. Their ultimate fate is uncertain. Scots are no better than the English, French or Spaniards at banking; all humans make misjudgements, but global banking magnifies the consequences of error. So when an eloquent Scots voice waxes lyrical about the new business empire to be conquered and expatiates upon the profits to be made, give him a steadying glass but do not give him a free hand.

SMD

8.12.10

Copyright Sidney Donald 2010

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SCOTS AND THE DEMON DRINK

The relationship between a Scotsman and his tipple has long been ambivalent. The genial, positive stereotype has old Jock lovingly nursing his “wee doch-an-dorris” or taking “a right gude-willie waught for auld lang syne” and beaming benignly. Not only the language is impenetrable to the neighbouring Englishman, but he sees a different, rampaging Scot, crazed with booze, head-butting all and sundry and delivering fetid Technicolor yawns upon the streets of London or worse, on top of our Englishman’s polished boots. Do the Scots have a problem?

Well clearly something is amiss. Although Scotsmen only rate 8^th in the world for alcoholic consumption (11.8 litres of pure alcohol per year), this is 25% higher than the English and Welsh (9.9), despite Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton, and higher than the wine-soaked French (11.4), the morosely drunken Russian (10.3) and much higher than the boasting Australian (9.0) or loud American (8.6) and far eclipses the gloomy Swedes (6.0).  Mind you the convivial Germans drink more (12.0) as do 4 other Mittel Europa states, the bibulous Irish get to 13.7, but top of the league bizarrely is obscure Luxembourg (15.6), surely a statistical oddity generated by constant Eurocrat champagne-swilling at the taxpayers’ expense. Statistics need proper analysis but we all know in our water that we Scots have a tendency to drink too much and this is the cause of many social evils and human tragedies.

The expression “the Demon Drink” was coined by the Temperance Movement which prospered in Victorian and Edwardian Britain especially in non-conformist circles. The Movement totally opposed the culture of drink, supported strict licensing laws, sponsored temperance hotels and in the USA won Prohibition in 1919. My paternal grandfather was teetotal, provoked to a righteous fury when his “demonic”, alcoholic father stole the funds of the bicycle club of which grandfather was treasurer and drank them away.

My father, as a boy of 12 in 1916, in common with many other children, signed the Pledge of Total Abstinence at a meeting of the Band of Hope in Aberdeen. The Band of Hope was supported by the Scottish Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Methodists. Their crusades were noisy and rather gaudy entertainments, with temperance anthems sung, organs rumbling, tambourines a-jangling, feet stamping and bawling revivalist ministers inviting the youngsters to “take the pledge!” My father only drank lemonade until he was married at 30 in 1934. His brother Dick stayed on lemonade until he died in 1993.

But times were changing. The churches were losing their influence. After the Great War, women were emancipated; they smoked, they certainly danced and why not sip a fashionable cocktail or two? My maternal grandfather was an Ulster Presbyterian, straight-backed and virtuous, but tolerant of an occasional sherry. After mother and father married they graduated slowly to gin and tonic, whisky and ginger ale and even Highballs and dry Martinis. A pre-prandial sherry became a daily landmark. These drinks were taken at home or in the cocktail bar of up-market hotels: they never darkened the door of a public house, then considered disreputable.

Disreputable they remained, for at least a generation. You still see in Glasgow and other cities the garishly painted squalid drinking shops, so well depicted in the Rab C.Nesbitt comedies. Scotland somehow failed to adopt the agreeable local pub arrangement of the English, where the different social classes mingle, drink and converse in a generally civilised way. Only in a planner’s fantasy could the Scots have embraced the 24-hour Continental café culture – the tables would be vandalised, the waiters assaulted, the pavements desecrated, the drinking hours abused.

By the 1960s the drink industry was prospering mightily. Some improvements were made, with the drink and driving laws sharpening the consequences of misbehaviour. Reform of the licensing laws in Scotland swept away the peculiarities of Sunday drinking whereby a bona fide traveller could be refreshed at any time on Sunday, bringing a boom to out of town hostelries and making everyone a traveller that day. People began to drink more at home, with cheap booze freely available at off-licences and supermarkets. The Scottish street drunk cradling his bottle of fast-acting Buckfast became a common sight.

The problem of over-consumption remained. It was not just a proletarian phenomenon. Even as early as the 1830’s Henry Brougham, the Scots Lord Chancellor of England disgraced himself in his ceremonial robes, roaring drunk at Musselburgh Races. Who can forget Highlander Charles Kennedy, erstwhile Lib Dem leader, sweating profusely as he stumbled through a speech in the Noughties? Many professionals and middle-class stalwarts succumbed to addiction to drink, dying prematurely to their families’ and society’s loss.

The Scottish government tinkers with minimum booze prices and other restrictions, probably easy to evade. What are the root causes?  It is not the weather (c.f. the Swedes) or Calvinism (c.f. the Irish). Perhaps the buttoned-up Scot, not naturally a bundle of fun, finds himself more agreeable after a drink or three and cannot stop. The great Dr Johnson talked of “the gust of sinning,” that additional thrill from knowingly doing wrong while doing something pleasurable. This may explain the Scottish psyche when the glasses gurgle and the bubbles dance. Let the bottles be opened, but educate and police the Scot with compassion and understanding.

SMD

30.11.10

Copyright Sidney Donald 2010

THE TROUBLES OF GEORGE

                                  

A City accountant friend of mine once took up an appointment as Compliance Manager at a firm of Italian stockbrokers. He was a conscientious and precise person but when I later saw him he always had a bemused and puzzled look about him and I quietly concluded that my unhappy friend had landed one of the worst jobs in the world.

I see the same bemused and puzzled look on the face of George Papandreou, who has landed what truly must rank as the worst job in the world as Prime Minister of Greece. To see Mr Papandreou on one of his frequent visits to Brussels, trying to hobnob with the powerful and ingratiate himself with the dismal apparatchiks of Euroland is really a pitiable sight. The body language is so eloquent: George puts on his lop-sided grin and hovers hopefully around the edges of many an informal group. Angela adopts her frozen mask, Nicolas briefly finger-prods and smiles but soon turns away and George is left to chat with the 3^rd X1 representatives of Latvia and Cyprus. For George is not really a participant at these gatherings, he is an abject and unwelcome petitioner from a country whose problems bore Euroland and perplex and stupefy all Greeks.

It is little comfort to George that these problems are not wholly of his own making. Since its liberation from the Ottomans in 1830, Greece has struggled to become a viable and effective state. It is estimated that Greek bonds have been in default for about 50% of this period. Successive governments, run by a selfish and avaricious political elite, have totally failed to control the nation’s finances. George’s populist father, Andreas, made a difficult situation worse by lavish subsidies to his supporters, Mitsotakis and Simitis were no better, despite the windfall stimuli of Eurozone entry and the Athens Olympics, Costas Karamanlis baled out as soon as he saw the size of the storm brewing, leaving the luckless and unregarded George to pick up his dynastic baton.

As the IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn crudely if accurately put it “Greece is steeped in the shit.”  The country’s catalogue of failure is too long to set out in detail.  Suffice to say, government expenditure 50% of Gross Domestic Product, a black economy estimated at 25% of GDP, generous state pensions payable after 35 years contributions (rest of Europe 40 years), relatively high wages, dismally low productivity leading to an estimated budget deficit in 2009 of 13.6%, after revisions from 6.7% (EU ceiling supposedly 3%) and an external deficit of 115% of GDP (EU ceiling 60%).

The situation is worsened by Greece’s large and woefully inefficient public administration, the endemic corruption and cronyism of its public life and slack control over the years from Brussels. When Brussels woke up it was horrified at being fed false economic data in the past and, with a very ill-grace, it and the IMF cobbled together a rescue package of €110bn, which it already has had to extend and modify. In truth Greeks do not see telling fibs about their finances as any kind of sin; it is part of the weave and weft of everyday life and if Goldman Sachs can via currency swaps make this even less transparent, Greece reckons that is a splendid wheeze. Not surprisingly the German and other North European taxpayers are reluctant to bail out the feckless and slippery Greeks and imposed strict deflationary conditions in its notorious Memorandum, which George’s government did not read very carefully and whose impositions have generated whines of pain from the allegedly victimised Greek populace.

It is possible to feel some small sympathy for the Greek man in the street. Normally wage cuts and tax rises are accompanied by some kind of safety valve promising a better future, like a substantial devaluation. As a member of the Eurozone, Greece cannot act unilaterally in this way and the loading of Greece with even more debt cannot provide a complete answer. Quite what the long-term answer is has not yet emerged, if leaving the euro is not an option.

Popular anger is not so intense that it encourages Greeks to pay a proper amount of income tax. Over many generations evading taxes has become the Greek national game, like cricket to the English, adultery to the French or marching on Poland to the Germans. Nobody likes paying taxes, but in Greece hatred of taxes is visceral. It, alas, leads to a demoralising of society, the bribing of tax officials, the corruption of judges, the squaring of politicians. The politicians have over the years passed parliamentary immunity laws and very tight statutes of limitation which in effect shield them from any kind of prosecution for graft and corruption, however blatant, so an exemplary public trial is not within the bounds of possibility, however desirable it might be. As tax revenues have little hope of covering expenditure, Greece may have to stagger on as a permanently crippled basket-case living on the crumbs from the tables of the richer Eurozone countries.

This is hardly an enticing prospect. Greeks are talented and ambitious. Surely the best and bravest will head for the exit and swell the Greek Diaspora. Maybe a Herculean strong-man will emerge, cleanse the Augean Stables (a gigantic Labour) and restore the nation’s pride – but I would not hold my breath. Otherwise, whither Greece?  A Mediterranean dependency of Russia, renamed Hellarus? The Great Idea in reverse with Greece the European province of a buoyant Turkey? Odious outcomes to all Greeks!

Meanwhile George wrings his hands and keeps his sadly haunted look. Who can doubt that David Cameron, observing Greece from a semi-detached vantage point, mumbles a quiet prayer of thanks to his maligned predecessor “Bless you, Gordon, for keeping us out of this unholy mess!”

SMD

15.3.11

  

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011                 .

THE PLEASURES OF DIARIES

 

The reading of other peoples’ diaries is a slightly sinful pleasure, which one would not easily undertake if the diarist were very close to you. Some wonderful diaries have been published, usually heavily edited to protect the living, the tender feelings of the families of the recently dead or to avoid the libel courts. Only historic diaries, Pepys’ (1660-69) and Boswell’s (1763-1795) can completely ignore these restrictions and the pleasure of reading them is sharpened by this freedom.

Samuel Pepys

James Boswell

Some modern diaries are only lightly edited although all are selections. One feels that Alan Bennett’s flow without much restriction, Alan Clark’s seems very candid and Joe Orton’s glory in gay abandon. The editors of fine diarists like Chips Channon and James Lees-Milne have, one believes, discreetly suppressed significant passages. Diarists are a heterogeneous group of widely differing character but there are some common threads.

The setting

Normally a memorable diarist needs to have a wide social or professional circle. Pepys held high office. Boswell relentlessly pursued the London literary world, the Continental courts on his Grand Tour, lions like Voltaire and Rousseau and was a member of the Scottish gentry. Lees-Milne knew the aristocracy well through the National Trust and was a lively, if snobbish, social asset. Diplomat and journalist Robert Bruce Lockhart met everybody in 1920-30’s London but sadly failed to illuminate anyone as he was not a perceptive writer. Beaton, Bennett and Orton throw a vivid light upon the world of the theatre and fashion. Channon and Clark combined high politics with moneyed ease while Alanbrooke and Tommy Lascelles saw dramatic events on the wide canvas of world war decisions and royal concerns, though the former was rather too tight-lipped for modern tastes.

The human touch

Meeting the famous is in itself not enough: it is the small events which give the diarist

sympathetic humanity.

Thus Pepys:

 “A silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray to God to make me able to pay for it.” (1.7.1660)

Plutocratic Chips Channon had more lavish tastes:

“It is very difficult to spend less than £200 a morning when one goes out shopping” (27.9.1935)

A young Boswell enjoys iced Twelfth Night cakes in London:

“I took a whim that between St Pauls and the Exchange and back again, taking the different sides of the street, I would eat a penny Twelfth-cake at every shop where I could get it. This I performed most faithfully. (6.1.1763)

Chris Mullin MP helps a humble Sunderland constituent:

“I rescued a woman and four young children facing eviction because their housing claim had been rejected. So rare these days that I do anything useful apart from collecting the litter in the street.” (30.8.2007)

Lees-Milne and his wife upset the fox-hunting 10th Duke of Beaufort, when their dogs disturb a vixen and her cubs:

“The Duke was almost apoplectic. Said he would not have our bloody dogs on his land. Bloody this and bloody that. He would get his gun and shoot them….Then he called at the house…again he ranted…Ghastly values, ghastly peoples. How I hate them. I shall never set foot in the big house again, in the unlikely event of being asked, and shall never speak to the hell-hound again beyond a curt good-morning if I pass him on the road” (21.5.1979)

Lascelles expects sobriety at Buckingham Palace:

“Augustus John, the painter, came to receive the OM from his Sovereign. I did not see him but trust it was one of his sober days. Not long ago I asked Ainslie, the Steward here, why a certain footman had been dismissed. ‘He took to drink, Sir’ he said. ‘On one occasion, I even suspected him of being fuddled in the Presence”

Idols

Often diaries are enlivened by a touch of hero-worship, most famously by Boswell of Dr Johnson, earning him this sardonic comment from Mrs Boswell:

 “I have seen many a bear led by a man but I never before saw a man led by a bear”. Yet Boswell went on to write the finest biography in the language.

More recently, Alan Clark comparing his Mrs T to her predecessor:

 “….Ted was a rude and arrogant flobbo without an ounce of patriotism in his body; whereas The Lady is a most wonderful person and could still work miracles” (2.6.1981)

Chips Channon

Chips Channon’s admiration for Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies reached heights of hysteria:

“An unbelievable day, in which two things occurred. Hitler took Vienna and I fell in love with the Prime Minister” (11.3.1938)

Later Chamberlain agrees to fly to Munich:

“I felt sick with enthusiasm, longed to clutch him….then the House rose and in a scene of riotous delight, cheered, bellowed their approval. We stood on our benches, waved our order papers, shouted….-a scene of indescribable enthusiasm-Peace must now be saved, and with it the world …..I don’t know what this country has done to deserve him” (28.9.1938)

Cat’s claws

Theatrical diarists usually have a feline aura and some of the most colourful are or were gay.

 Thus Alan Bennett strikes his characteristic note:

“Spike Milligan dies and the nation’s laughter-makers queue up testify to what it was that made his talents unique, how irreplaceable in his inspired lunacy, and how they personally have benefited from his instructive anarchy. All of which is, I suppose, true, though comedians are never reluctant to provide such posthumous attestations of one another’s genius. It happened when Peter Cook died and with the same maudlin affection. “Dear Cooky”. “Dear Spike.”  The necessary element of suffering, the cost always sought for in the deaths of comics, and which in Peter’s case came with the drink, is here supplied by mental illness (‘No less than 12 nervous breakdowns’ the price he had to pay)…..The disciples were always the problem, The Goon Show was very funny, the people who liked it (and knew it by heart) less so.”

(28.2.2002)

Cecil Beaton first meets Noel Coward on a trans-Atlantic liner:

“I staggered from my bed this morning, dressed in plus fours and managed to walk to my chair on deck without being ill. There I met Noel Coward and Mrs Venetia Montagu, whom I had always imagined to be charming and interesting people. At once they attacked me. ‘Why do you write such malicious articles? Why do you say such nasty things about Mr Coward?’ I staggered, my knees quaked. ‘You must not attack me now. I am feeling ill’…The blows came raining down upon me

…..As for Noel Coward, the truth is I’ve wanted to meet him for many years. I admire everything about his work…. Why then have I hated him?... I hated him personally, out of pique. I was envious of his success, of a triumphant career that seemed so much like the career I might have wished for myself. (5.4.1930)

Joe Orton reveals his macabre side a few days after burying his mother:

“I’d taken my mother’s false teeth down to the theatre. I said to Kenneth Cranham, ‘Here, I thought you’d like the originals’ ‘What?’ ‘Teeth’, I said. ‘Whose?’ he said. ‘My mum’s’ I said. He looked very sick. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘it’s obvious you’re not thinking of the events of the play in terms of reality, if a thing affects you like that.’ Simon Ward shook like a jelly when I gave them to him.” (4.1.1967)  

Mrs Orton’s dentures subsequently served as castanets in the production of Loot.

Notable events

We like diaries if they give graphic eye-witness accounts.

Tommy Lascelles recalls resigning in 1929 as secretary to Edward, Prince of Wales and telling him some home truths:

“..The Prince himself sent for me. The resultant interview was the most exhausting experience I’ve ever had. I did not consider myself any longer in his service, and when he asked me why I wanted to leave, I paced his room for the best part of an hour, telling him, as I might have told a younger brother, what I thought of him and his whole scheme of life, and foretelling, with an accuracy which might have surprised me at the time, that he would lose the Throne of England.

He heard me with scarcely an interruption, and when we parted said, ‘Well goodnight, Tommy, and thank you for the talk. I suppose the fact of the matter is that I am quite the wrong sort of person to be Prince of Wales’ – which was so pathetically true that it almost melted me.” (5.3.1943)

Samuel Pepys observes the Great Fire of London:

“I walked to my boat… So near to the Fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops…When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside .. and there stayed and saw the Fire grow...in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire… It made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin.” (2.9.1666)

Boswell surreptitiously introduces high Tory Dr Johnson to demonised Radical John Wilkes:

“When we entered Mr Dilly’s dining-room, he found himself in the midst of a company he did not know. I kept myself snug and silent, watching how he would conduct himself….. ‘And who is the gentleman in lace?’ ‘Mr Wilkes, Sir’ This information confounded him still more. He had some difficulty to restrain himself, and taking up a book, sat down at a window…At dinner, Mr Wilkes placed himself next to Dr Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness that he gained upon him insensibly.’ After helping Johnson to fine veal, the conversation turns to Foote, Garrick and Cibber. Mr Lee mentioned some Scotch, who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they should choose this. “Johnson: ‘Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren. Boswell: Come, come, you have now been in Scotland and say if you did not see meat and drink enough there. Johnson: Why, meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants strength sufficient to run away from home!’….Johnson: ‘For you know Boswell lives among savages at home and among rakes in London. Wilkes; Except when he is with grave, sober, decent people like you and me’…. Somebody said ‘Poor old England is lost’ Johnson ‘It is not so much to be lamented that old England is lost, as that the Scotch have found it.’

I attended Dr Johnson home, and had the satisfaction to hear him tell Mrs Williams how much he had been pleased with Mr Wilkes’ company and what an agreeable day he had passed.” (15.5.1776)

Men behaving badly

Some diarists are far from saintly.

Pepys dallies with Betty Lane:

 " I had my full liberty of towsing her and doing what I would but the last thing of all; for I felt as much as I would, and made her feel my thing also, and put the end of it to her breast and by and by to her very belly - of which I am heartily ashamed. But I do resolve never to do more so." (24.9.1663)

Boswell rampages through London on 3 consecutive nights;

“I madly drank a bottle of claret by myself and this made me brutally feverish. So I sallied to the Park again, and again dallied….As I was coming home, I was picked up by a strumpet at the head of St James’s Street, who went with me to the entry of the passage from Hay Hill by Lord Shelburne’s,  and in my drunken venturousness, I lay with her. (29.3.1776) I observed a pretty, fresh-looking girl… told me her name was Nanny Smith…. She agreed to go with me to the One Tun, Chelsea, a house of lewd entertainment in a garden, and there I enjoyed her. (30.3.1776)  When I got into the street, the whoring rage came upon me. …I went to Charing Cross Bagnio with a wholesome-looking, bouncing wench, stripped and went to bed with her. But after my desires were satiated by repeated indulgence…I parted from her after she had honestly delivered to me my watch and ring and handkerchief, which I should not have missed I was so drunk.” (31.3.1776)

Orton indulges his tastes with 8 men in a public convenience after a boring, sex-free trip to Libya: (the details are much too graphic to reproduce).

“The little pissoir under the bridge had become the scene of a frenzied homosexual saturnalia. No more than two feet away the citizens of Holloway moved about their ordinary business. I came….and quickly pulled up my jeans.

I told Kenneth who said, ‘It sounds as though eightpence and a bus down the Holloway Road was more interesting than £200 and a plane to Tripoli.’” (4.3.1967)

The trials of politics

Many of the best diarists have been steeped in politics, a bubbling arena for intrigue and jealousy. Richard Crossman and Tony Benn had too many axes to grind but Chips is a great favourite while Alan Clark and Chris Mullin are the pick of near-contemporaries.

Alan Clark

Clark attends the annual Privy Councillors’ dinner at the Palace:

“Royal Gallery, and overflow in the Robing Chamber presided by Prince of Wales and including various – Cranborne, Ancram, Tom King and – God alive, how did he get one?- Atkins R. Copious and excellent wines.

The Queen is transformed, no longer the wicked stepmother with her frumpish and ill-natured features that have been permanently in place since Mrs T rescued the 1979 election. As I said at the time, the whole Royal Family delighted in the elimination of Diana, and now has settled back comfortably into their favourite role – preservation of their own perks and privileges at the expense, whenever necessary, of other individuals and institutions. The Empire, the Church, the Law, the hereditary principle, the Lords, even a yacht, and now there are faithful servants who are being dismissed in droves as they modernise Sandringham and Balmoral.” (10.12.1997).

Mullins does not admire aspects of New Labour:

“Much speculation about which members of the New Labour elite will be parachuted into the safe seats vacated by MPs retiring at the last moments. Ed Balls and David Miliband are among the names being mentioned. Not for them the cutting of teeth in hopeless seats or the long, wearying slog around the selection circuit. A few high-level phone calls, a quiet word in the right ear and….Bob’s your uncle….a safe seat for life. And who knows, within two or three years a foot on the ministerial ladder, first steps on the inevitable rise to the Cabinet. Most resentment, not to say anger, is reserved for Shaun Woodward, who is being touted for St Helens.” (11.5.2001)

“Shaun Woodward has been selected in St Helens. Hearing him on the radio this morning promising to be the champion of the poor and downtrodden made my flesh creep. This is one of New Labour’s vilest stitch-ups.” (14.5.2001).

It is not possible to do justice to all diarists and the literature must be huge. The selections above are certainly idiosyncratic and the omissions are glaring. Diarists are a very mixed group – almost exclusively male, women are more protective of their reputations than men – and to write well you normally must have an obsessive interest in your own person – a huge ego in other words. Boswell was for ever analysing himself as did Channon and Clark. Chips put his finger on a key aspect “What is more dull than a discreet diary? One might as well have a discreet soul.” Long may the indiscretions flow!

SMD

25.5.2011

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011

THE GREAT GAME

The Great Game has nothing to do with deadly power rivalry in Central Asia and about who controls the Silk Road, the Hindu Kush or the Khyber Pass.  It is all about the serious activities daily occurring at Muirfield, at Royal Birkdale, at Augusta, and at thousands of venues throughout the world, furrowing the brow of nations and giving participants 18 chances of triumph or disaster. In short the Great Game is the game of Golf.

Golf is called a game but it is in fact a kind of religion to be approached in hushed tones. PG Wodehouse writes comically in Those in Peril on the Tee, about how Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch play a round of golf, which they both desperately try to lose, for the hand in marriage of the formidable Agnes Flack, under the baleful gaze of lovesick but violent Sidney McMurdo. It is funny but a touch blasphemous. On a golf course you seldom hear peals of laughter only the odd groan, impossible to suppress, as the ball disappears in a dense stand of brambles. I recall guffawing loudly when my convivial partner Spike, at an otherwise jolly company golf day, drove off wildly hitting the ladies tee box causing the ball to rebound over the starter’s cabin and land 30 yards behind him. The spectators and other golfers were po-faced and silent and I realised I had committed yet another gaffe.  

The Scots claim to have invented golf and they certainly codified its rules. As Scots are known to be serious-minded to a fault, it is not hard to see where the reverence for the game comes from. One can imagine an early McTavish, horny-handed son of toil, trudging over the windswept shore at St Andrews, calculating how a fiendish bunker might be fashioned and gaining some dexterity with a primitive club and pebble. A later McTavish learns the arcane secret of the gutta-percha ball and profitably carries the clubs of the snootily well-born and famous. Our modern pro McTavish rubs his hands in anticipation of the arrival of bus-loads of Americans in vivid checks, eager to kiss the sacred soil and spend mega-dollars on the paraphernalia of the great game. Much too serious a matter to be laughed at.

The vocabulary of Golf is an early obstacle. When I first was conscious of the game in the 1940s people still talked of mashies, niblicks and brassies (no, not peroxide blonde ladies in Soho), all clubs of varying lofts. The names were sensibly standardised by the Americans but we still have eagles, birdies and bogeys (triple-bogeys in my case), not to mention fairways, GASP and Mulligans. It all adds to the mystery - not unlike albs, orphreys and chasubles in matters ecclesiastical.

Learning to play the game only to a moderate competence is a labour of many years to all but the precociously talented. Depending on your mood, psychological state or hangover, you are likely to duff this drive, foozle that chip and miss a sitter of a putt. These frequent setbacks must be shouldered with a philosophic steadfastness although even Tiger Woods has been known to throw away a club and many lesser golfers attempt to snap one over their knee – but this is very bad form. This is where GASP comes in, (Grip, Address, Stance and Posture), steadying ordinances murmured to yourself, but hard to get all four right.

Having achieved some small ability, you should then try to join a club. This used to be a great and snobbish trial but now, apart from a few famous names, most clubs will at least consider your candidacy as the economic crisis has seen membership rolls nose-dive. To be admitted, you will have to be “played in”, an ordeal usually involving a round with the Captain and an Old Member to see what you are made of. In my case I was made of soggy meringue and I committed the horrid solecism of putting my ball hard against the Captain’s so that he was knocked away rather like a cannon in snooker. If looks could kill, I was toast. Somehow however I was admitted through pure cronyism – a revered former Captain, a business friend, had kindly proposed me!

After 30 years hacking round a variety of private and municipal courses, my own club golfing career was short and undistinguished. I enjoyed my club in leafy North London with its convivial bar and gentle undulations. I later joined one in the Cotswolds. There the members were very friendly too but the course was built on the side of a steep hill making a round a challenge for alpine troopers, let alone middle-aged gents with cardiac premonitions. After moving mainly to under-golfed and baking hot Greece, my enthusiasm gradually fizzled out, to the silent disappointment of my eldest brother who has been a good golfer all his life and who would still cross continents to attend the midweek Medal.

I can understand his dedication and that of proper golfers. I once watched Tony Lema, sadly soon to die in a plane crash, and Peter Alliss, later to succeed Henry Longhurst as the BBC voice of golf, play in Scotland and the power of their play, their long drives and accurate irons bowled me over. For much of the last 60 years, the Americans have dominated with charming Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in their pomp walking off with all the trophies. Even Nicklaus became fallible however, taking 4 shots to get out of Hell Bunker at the 14th during the 1993 Open at St Andrews.

Gradually the Europeans reasserted themselves. Who can forget the excitement of Tony Jacklin winning the Open in 1969 and then the US Open in 1970 or of the epic demolition of Greg Norman by Nick Faldo at the 1996 Masters? Drama was evident too as Jan van de Velde, paddling without his socks, threw away the 1999 Open at Carnoustie with a catastrophic triple-bogey at the 18^th and we could not watch Rory McIlroy go to pieces, shooting an 80 after 3 rounds of glory at Augusta in 2011. After a wait of 65 years, Sandy Lyle became the first Scotsman to win the Open in 1985 and the first Briton to don the green jacket at the 1988 Masters.

The Ryder Cup, long an American victory procession, burst back to life when the continental Europeans joined it in 1979 and Europe has won 4 of the last 5 competitions. Golfing talent is abundant. Great players like the mercurial and much-missed Seve Ballasteros have graced this event and curiously super-golfer Tiger Woods has never shone, even before his private demons undermined his game.

Apart from these public highlights, regular golfers the world over enjoy smart club-houses, beautiful courses and convivial company (although golf bores do pop up) - and they get away from their spouses. I now depend on my TV for viewing golf and I play Nintendo WII golf with my lovely wife every day. We are well matched, both unable to better a 4-under-par round and blissfully I do not have to don windcheater, waterproof trousers and lug caddie carts and bellow “Fore!” as my drive slices to the wrong fairway. Currently my namesake Luke holds the World No1 spot and I bask in reflected glory. Although I cannot prove it, I am quietly convinced he is a 6^th cousin twice removed.

SMD

1.6.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011

CLOSE SEASON

 We have entered the blissful annual period, lasting this year to 13 August, of the Premier League close season. The stadiums lie silent, the TV channels turn to darts and synchronised swimming, the hustlers and hookers seek out their summer prey elsewhere and the sale of red-top newspapers plummet as the public finally weary of their endless diet of shock-horror player revelations. The erstwhile Manchester United scorer must for 10 weeks forgo the dubious pleasure of a wet congratulatory kiss from the ample lips of Rio Ferdinand.

The players and managers disperse to all corners of the globe. Thus John Terry cavorts on an Abu Dhabi beach with his curvaceous Toni, Wayne Rooney pays belated attention to his tonsorial challenges and I imagine Harry Redknapp curling up to a Guinness and a pint of whelks in a Whitechapel pub. Tortured Arsene Wenger perhaps plays alfresco chess upon the promenade at Deauville, forgetting the setbacks at the Emirates for a few weeks and Sir Alex Ferguson transfers his grumpiness to jockeys and horses rather than under-performing defenders at Old Trafford.

I wonder what they actually do during the close season, after they have counted their money (a huge task). Do football stars have surprising hobbies and pastimes? I can see Wayne knitting woolly comforters for the elderly ladies he once so much admired: perhaps Sir Alex enjoys taking the Professor Henry Higgins Elocution Course or maybe Didier Drogba avidly reads Kipling on how “to play the game”. It would be unwise to speculate on Ryan Giggs’ spare-time activities – I think I can mention him; it is only Sir Fred whose exploits are protected from the public prints by the High Court.

It is not the case that nothing happens in the close season. Transfers abound and team-building forays occur but the public cannot get too excited about them, however hard the sports writers try. The fans know that some new faces will appear and some familiar ones will go. Paul Scholes, supreme ball passer, but a tackler in the mould of Chopper Harris, bows out as does lanky Edwin van der Sar after sublime Barcelona put 3 past him. Last season’s heroes, Gareth Bale, Jack Wilshere and Andy Carroll can easily morph into next season’s villains, but all this can wait until 13 August.

The close season is also a time for stock-taking. The fans of the relegated Premier League teams, Blackpool, West Ham and Birmingham must wonder what the new season holds. The looming fixtures with the likes of Barnsley and Doncaster on a wet November afternoon frankly do not have the glamour of a clash with titanic Arsenal. A big decision approaches; do they transfer their allegiance to neighbours Blackburn, Spurs or Aston Villa or do they harbour the ardent hope that their club’s stay in the Championship will only be for a year or two?  Pragmatism or principle; treason or blind faith!

I imagine the accountants, too, make good use of the close season. The business of football defies the normal laws of economics. A recent survey recorded that three of the top clubs do return profits but Chelsea and Manchester City made large losses and the Premier League collectively lost £445m. Shareholders in football clubs hold trophy assets and only make money on a change of ownership – unfortunate for the holder when the music stops after the parcel has been passed, as it will when clubs must normally break even from 2015 under new FIFA rules. The era when clubs can be endlessly subsidised by a megalomaniacal oligarch or an Arab Croesus is coming to an end.

Meanwhile Premier League soccer stars are laughing loudly all the way to the bank. There must be something supremely comforting about, say, £200k per week (yes, week) hitting your bank account – or more likely your agent’s account in some cosy Caribbean tax haven. For Rooney the figure is said to be £250k per week and Yaya Toure is on £220k. Poor Carlos Tevez has to struggle by on a mere £170k per week – no wonder he looks so surly, as his differentials are mercilessly eroded. I say let them make hay while the sun shines: I know that the likes of Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Nat Lofthouse and Jackie Milburn earned a maximum of £20 per week - but other times, other manners. The lifetime of a professional footballer is nasty, brutish and short. Alan Sugar, one-time chairman of Spurs, once harshly remarked that most players would be in prison if they were not on the pitch – so our support is really a kind of social service and we can look forward to the new season with a clear conscience.

For the next 10 weeks there are great sporting events galore and not a tattooed midfielder in sight.  Wimbledon will feature the volatile Andy Murray, Adam’s apple a-quivering, somehow not wowing the crowds as equally morose but less talented Tim Henman once did. The Wimbledon ladies will emit their orgasmic screams in a way too indelicate to analyse. A cricket test series against first Sri Lanka and then India should bring victory to an English side much leavened by talented blood from the Transvaal, as long as Matt Prior keeps his temper and away from windows. Ascot and Henley will add their incomparable elegance (though swaggering hedgies and bankers often lower the tone) but the main treat is the Open at Royal St Georges, Sandwich from 14 July. Surely it is time for a Luke Donald, Lee Westwood or Rory McIlroy win and let the foreigners be the gallant runners-up this time.

Inexorably, 13 August and the new Premier League season will creep up on us. Purveyors of meat pies will check their stock; Chief Constables will make sure their forces have sufficient truncheons and tear gas. Season-ticket holders will goggle at the new price scales. News of the World reporters will return to their offices with notebooks laden with scandal, complete with compromising photographs and hacked telephone calls, all recording, with a huge dose of hypocrisy, the lurid summer indiscretions of the rich and famous players.

Whatever sport you most enjoy - participant, travelling fan or TV couch potato – have a great summer!

SMD

12.06.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011