JOYS OF LIFE

 

If you have the misfortune to be a pessimist, or more accurately, a party-pooper, for sure there has been plenty in 2021 to be dismal about. Let us draw a discreet veil over this difficult year and contemplate pleasant things, wherever they can be found. Let us look about us and rejoice at what has survived The Flood, The Tsunami and The Great Plague and all the pains that flesh is heir to. Actually, although there have been some nasty moments, The Apocalypse never arrived and we can look forward to 2022 with ever-burgeoning confidence.

Perhaps, my good readers, you can join me in a little game. List a very pleasant sound, an agreeable smell and a memorable sensation: Take your pick - My choices:

Sound – the satisfying pop as a cork under pressure takes its leave of its bottle of Champagne, Prosecco or other such bubbly delights.

Smell – the highly inviting aroma of frying bacon, to stimulate the taste buds and fortify your day.

Sensation – (not one I have experienced for 50 years!) the shudder on your fly-fishing rod as at last you hook a plump sea-trout, which will give you a gallant battle but end up deliciously that night grillé en beurre on your dinner plate.

All these simple blessings survive, thank goodness!

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Some simple Joys of Life

Moving on from these fragrant memories, I thought of the lives of people we admire or who have given us moments of pleasure. Many of these reveries will be private or otherwise sensitive but I believe many will share my respect for HM the Queen indomitably embarking from February 2022 on her Platinum Jubilee Year, now widowed and carrying the burden of a somewhat dysfunctional family. We might also salute retiring Angela Merkel, who has steered her great country for 16 years through many crises and retained a hand on the tiller of an often-chaotic European Union. As the baton of formidable interrogator moves on from splendid Jeremy Paxman, we welcome soft-spoken Clive Myrie and the more abrasive Laura Kuenssberg. We celebrate the life of dynamic Desmond Tutu, who fought so doughtily to make South Africa a more just Rainbow nation, showing there was some life in Anglicanism at least overseas.  Surely all were delighted that pretty Emma Raducanu won the American Open tennis in her debut year.

                                                             

 

                    Some Life-enhancers of 2021

These people allow us to forget the many Dismal Jimmies infesting our world including First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, Imperial College, London’s Professor Neil Ferguson, Public Health England’s Jenny Harries, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Remainer Andrew Adonis and a host of sour others whose apparent main aim in life is to depress us.

Begone dull care, and let’s have fun and laughter in 2022! Nostalgically I summon up one of my earliest cinema memories to set the mood, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland performing A Couple of Swells from Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade of 1948. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3aUAiLU0TI&ab_channel=WarnerBros.Entertainment

 

SMD

29.12.21

Text copyright Sidney Donald 2021

TOWARDS SERENITY

 

TOWARDS SERENITY

Watching profoundly deaf Rose Ayling-Ellis with her partner Giovanni winning Strictly, I was struck by her serenity, fortified of course by her gossamer lightness of foot and classic posture. In conversation she is naturally and cheerfully outgoing, ignoring her handicaps, although she dedicated her win to the deaf community. Her serene quality probably won her the trophy (others were maybe better dancers technically) as it is an unusual gift in our hectic world and one I believe we should all emulate.

                                                    Giovanni and Rose dance serenely

The world is short of serenity, if you exclude the Dalai Lama and the resigned inmates of life’s bulging last chance saloons. Certainly, in public life there is plenty passion, much vociferousness and bile galore – serenity hardly gets a look in. Close to home, our dynamic Boris, beset by enemies has to fight off assaults hourly, though many of his wounds are sadly self-inflicted. I wonder if his past Turkish ancestry attracts him to sessions of dervish-whirling at no 10, so much more relaxing than hostile press conferences or Cobra meetings about the perils of the omicron Covid strain. After such a twirling session, a serene Boris would be ready for valiant action, which he and the country dearly need.

                    Boris dreamily contemplating?

But we are much too passionate nowadays about politics. I admit to some personal guilt; on occasion I can be vehemently partisan, usually in the Tory cause, perhaps defending the indefensible. Yet the class-based venom of Angela Rayner, the weary pomposity of Ian Blackford and the smug grand-standing of Ed Davey greatly annoy the long-suffering UK electorate. We would, for example, prefer to be on amicable talking terms with the EU, despite manifold provocations and perhaps the shock resignation of the excellent, if combative Brexit Secretary, Lord Frost, gives a chance of promotion to Jacob Rees-Mogg, an ardent Brexiteer but also a civilized toff who is never impolite and is an English gentleman down to the tip of his pin-striped trousers. In truth he is an acquired taste as his opinions are often a throw-back to Edwardian times, but they were, after all, “the good old days”.

                                      A serene Jacob Rees-Mogg

We do need to inject some serenity into our universities. Free speech used to be its prized possession, but now a speaker or academic who expresses an opinion offensive to the Woke is liable to be “cancelled” and persecuted with the approval of boneless-wonder Vice-Chancellors and the baying insults of the local rent-a-mob rabble. The Canadian sage Jordan Peterson suffered nastily from the attentions of the Woke, mainly at Cambridge, but he has fought back and has been reinstated. He graced The Spectator with a flattering article on “Why I love Great Britain” – our strength comes from our traditions of intellectual freedom, not from military might nor brutish behaviour. May the towers of Oxford dream on, Jeremy Bentham’s body preside over UCL and Rhodes’ statue smile upon Oriel and the University of which he was such a generous benefactor.

I have the good fortune to be in Athens for the festive season, whose intellectual pedigree is unsurpassed. The shades of Plato, Socrates, Aeschylus et al will smile here at the corruption of the political classes and at the army of ignorant anti-vaxxers awaiting the scythe of the covid plague. Our world is full of good and beautiful people and achievements. Drink deep of this bounty, enjoy the love of family and friends, have a splendid Christmas and plan and prepare for a stimulating 2022.

Acquire serenity!

 

SMD

19.12.21

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

MELTDOWN

 

It has been a very frustrating period of Covid concerns, Brexit bickering, cross-Channel catastrophe and climate hand-wringing; we were at least hoping that Covid was being stopped in its tracks here by the vaccination campaign. Then out-of-the-blue, a perilous new Covid variant from South Africa has emerged from its sinister lair quite likely to torpedo many of our plans and hopes for Christmas and the New Year. Continental Europe, already struggling with a Covid winter wave, has reported a case in Belgium. Inevitably the variant will spread to us in the UK, perhaps hidden in a consignment of sprouts or luxury chocs. Let’s hope it will not prove as virulent as some fear and we are not back to square one – what a thought! Prof Chris Whitty soothingly urges calm - Don’t Panic!

                                      Our new South African friend – the Omicron variant

With all these heavy matters, there has been little in the way of comic relief. I suppose Boris’ speech to the CBI, with his desperate monologue on the merits of Peppa Pig, qualifies as some kind of (tragi)comedy. Boris had lost the place but one wonders if there is a streak of, let us say, instability in his exotic make-up. He certainly lacks the gravitas we normally expect of our politicians and if he has also lost his knack of keeping the electorate spellbound, then his future is indeed bleak. Yet at his best, Boris is an effective negotiator, a vote-winning asset and a popular comic turn.    

                                               

                  Tory Mascot Peppa Pig

The pandemic has pulverized social life and I was particularly happy I was able to take a train to London last week and meet 7 old friends over a convivial pub lunch after almost 2 years absence. We were older, if not wiser, and one of our company, with whom I heartily agreed, raised the tricky question of colour balance on TV. He reckoned a completely false view was being fed to the young by TV adverts and TV programmes. In almost every advert, a family of people of colour is featured, eating cereals, walking down a village street or buying furniture. In itself there is nothing objectionable about this, and the dignity and recognition of all citizens is crucial, but a visitor from outer space might conclude that at least half (probably more) of the population of the UK was of colour and that whites were in a minority. In fact, England and Wales are 86% white with 9% Asian and 5% Afro-Caribbean. Scotland is 96% white, so together the true picture is wholly different from the one projected by the media. I think it is important to get this narrative right.

Lloyds Bank’s version of its typical Britain

Moreover, I do not believe Britain needs to be at all defensive about its record of tolerance and inclusivity. Britain is in many ways a role model of diversity. It welcomes hundreds of thousands of Europeans as workers. It has allowed substantial immigration from the Commonwealth creating vibrant communities in many British cities, Asians in Bradford, Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets, Caribbeans in Brixton, Indians in Southall – hundreds of ethnic concentrations all over the land. More to the point, Britain’s political life has been enriched by these communities - senior positions being held by British Indians Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Alok Sharma, Pakistani Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javid and Iraqi Nadhim Zahawi. The UK remains a land of opportunity, as the flocks of illegal migrants prove.

While we have been subject to mainly Muslim terrorist attack, inter-communal relations here are generally cordial and we have none of the ingrained racial prejudice which so disfigures the otherwise civilised societies of the USA, Italy and France. The UK is not perfect, but it has plenty of which it is rightly proud.

SMD

28.11.21

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2021

UNEASY TIMES

 

UNEASY TIMES

Somehow, I had optimistically hoped for a gentler transition from the post-Brexit and the post-Covid era to a new season of goodwill amongst all men. The last weeks have been sadly disillusioning – snappy internal conflicts and an atmosphere of enmity towards Britain from the usual suspects but also from once-cherished friends. While we are beset by external problems, I have to admit that the Tory government I support has not performed with the competence I would expect, adding to my own feelings of unease and disappointment.

So, what has gone wrong with Boris? Boris has been a vote-winner extraordinaire, the darling not only of the comfortable parlours of the true-blue Home Counties but the hero also in the gritty hearts of aspirational Midlanders and striving Northerners. Yorkshiremen have unbent, Geordies have cheered and Lancashire has embraced the WI, jam-making and Jerusalem. These great achievements are in some danger of melting away in the current malaise.

                Boris in a vacant pose

Boris is often his own worst enemy. That spluttering caricature of a heedless Old Etonian which normally so enchants the voters, hides an acute political brain who understands the EU and the world in general. He is less sure-footed in Westminster, whose procedures bore him or in Scotland where he does not play well with chip-on-the-shoulder Nationalists (viz. Anglophobes), who there abound. Boris is a get-up-and-go character who does not take kindly to stubborn opposition and can be ruthless. But he has a tin ear to the cautious feelings of many Brits – caution about relations with the EU, caution about the fight against Covid, caution about upsetting the conventions of Parliament.

Consequently, fishing disputes with the EU, torrid arguments about the Northern Ireland Protocol, scandals about defending Owen Paterson, acrimony over the role of MPs, turn off an electorate who just want these matters to be settled quietly and diplomatically in the time-honoured British way. We do not want too much drama from our politicians – we already have actors and players enough.

Boris has been shooting from the hip and that is fine when it comes to defying tin-pot Napoleon Macron, determined to “punish” us for Brexit, sinister Putin and fanatical Sturgeon. He may even have to nudge old Joe Biden from his slumbers and put his hat straight about the follies of impossible (and economically disastrous) carbon zero targets.

Of course, the COP26 jamboree in Glasgow has given a platform to every oddball and crackpot in the universe and, as expected, the guff emanating from this dire UN event has bemused and depressed most observers. We have had to endure St Barack Obama virtue-signalling ponderously, Sir David Attenborough wringing his wokeish hands and pronouncing eloquently and idolised Greta Thunberg regaling the Glasgow mob with “You can shove your climate crisis up your arse” to the classic Scots tune of “Ye canna push your Granny off a bus”- surely a low-point in the proceedings!

               

                                                                Greta in full voice

COP26 is well-meaning and the effort to lower emissions is laudable but with China, Russia and Brazil disengaged, any worthwhile global agreement is far away.

Shaking off Covid remains a challenge. Dismaying numbers refuse to be jabbed and restrictions may easily be tightened. The non-vaxxers rights (to spread the pandemic) will surely be curbed, to noisy, and possibly violent, protest.

Boris’ government has the talent to perform better and needs to get a grip on these thorny problems. It should turn its combative instincts towards deserving targets and run a clean ship. It must avoid charges of “Tory Sleaze” and its sources of financial support need to be properly vetted. Millionaires inhabiting tax havens are suspected of many sins and should be supped with using a very long spoon!

 

SMD

10.11.21

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

 

LIFE’S RICH PAGEANT

I have borrowed the title of this piece from the modest autobiography of my much-cherished Arthur Marshall, the humorous writer and acute stylist (1910-89). Arthur was a most entertaining fellow, who found amusement in almost everyone he met and whose gentle mockery of some contemporaries among his amazingly wide circle is an example of us all – beam warmly at mankind and avoid being harshly critical!

                            Arthur Marshall, humourist

I have now been 22 days in Greece, much of it bucket and spade time with our delightful 3-year-old grand-daughter, Theodora, on sandy beaches near Athens. The internationalism of modern life is striking. Despite gnashing of teeth from Macron, the world speaks English even though the speakers originate from Germany, Poland, Mexico, Egypt or wherever. Theodora made sand-castles with a 2-year-old Chinese boy appropriately called Theodore, whose charming Anglophone parents now live in Vienna.

French is of course a fine language and its literature is unparalleled, although one has to admit to some longueurs emanating from the over-fertile pens of Corneille and Racine. Macron, Barnier and before them de Gaulle were anachronistic in expecting the world to return to an unattainable Francophone paradise. I have always loved France, notably Paris, Normandy, the Champagne Country (all those delicious bubbles!) and my favourite, majestic Rococo Place Stanislas in Nancy. Long may they prosper and add lustre to our proud Western civilisation!

I must now leap to the defence of an old gentleman, much disparaged in the popular prints. Joe Biden is admittedly an old git, painfully miscast as President of the USA. He is a mere 79-year-old (like me), forgets names (like me) and shuffles around with a tottering gait (ditto me). His recent speech proclaiming the triumph of the Kabul evacuation, was humiliating nonsense but he had to cheer up his domestic audience. Charitably I would concede “he means well” but that is faint praise indeed. The truth is that the US and UK should have quit Afghanistan 10 years ago and left it to its peculiar ways. No vital Western interest was ever at stake. If it ever threatens the security of Pakistan, Iran and Uzbekistan, that is a matter for those countries to sort out.

                                                     Beleaguered Joe Biden

As for inept Old Joe, he was elected on the ticket of “Not Trump”, his only visible virtue. If the strain gets too much, Biden could resign to be succeeded by his VP Kamala Harris, ten times worse, certain to dispense heavy doses of Californian Wokery. She would thereby lay a strong foundation for the predatory return of Donald Trump, a most alarming possibility. So, let’s keep Joe going, supported by blinking Blinken and his gang and pray that meanwhile the Republicans return to some semblance of sanity.

Oddities among US politicians are not new. I have been re-reading some of the inter-war pieces by hard-boiled and hilarious H L Mencken and his verdicts on Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and perennial presidential candidate W J Bryan are far from flattering. Even in our time, genial Ronnie Reagan was no streak of intellectual lightning, although he actually did very well.

Current affairs are just too depressing to contemplate – Boris’s lot foul up almost everything they touch. I have taken some solace from leafing through the Oxford Dictionary of The Popes, a weighty reference book produced by the then-retired Principal of my Oxford College, St Edmund Hall, John Kelly, a vivid Oxford character. The Renaissance Popes were a very rum lot, much prone to outrageous nepotism and with Borgias about, not above spiking the drinks with lethal poisons. Not much had changed with Pio Nono, (Pius IX) the mid-19^th century “reformer” who fought for and lost the Papal States, promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, enunciated the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and declared war on the modern world with his Syllabus of Errors. Not a life-enhancer in my book.

So, to life-enhancers I speed. In Athens I always read the Mr Mulliner story The Truth about George by incomparable P G Wodehouse which has me guffawing even on my 20^th reading. For comfort reading, I peruse Arthur Marshall on show-biz as a child in Barnes theatre-going with his mother, or as a performer himself meeting such luminaries as the Oliviers, Terence Rattigan, Ivor Novello, Somerset Maugham, Gielgud, the Lunts, Noel Coward, Dame Edith Evans – wonderfully anecdotal and light of touch, or experiences at prep school or at his beloved Oundle both as pupil and school master or rhapsodies on his beloved Devon cottage at “Myrtlebank”.

Frank Muir once described Arthur as “England’s Unofficial Sunbeam”, most apposite, and no other writer has given me such consistent and gentle pleasure.

SMD

2.09.21   Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

 

STIRRING FROM MY DEN

Thanks to the best efforts of our allegedly conservative government, foreign travel currently is a bewildering labyrinth of regulation and restrictions, echoing a regimen concocted by Walter Ulbricht or Clem Attlee on one of his bad days. The cost of air tickets has soared and there are wholly unnecessary and amazingly expensive mandatory tests that even the dutifully vaccinated must take on re-entry to their native land. The rich can shrug this off but most people cannot, and for sure many spivs are lining their pockets at our expense. Despite all this we are planning to fly to Greece soon to see our charming, ever-helpful middle son and 3-year-old grand-daughter there, not embraced since November 2019. We want some sun (probably we will get an excess) to warm our aching joints and lots of Mediterranean cooking and cold vino to leaven the suety Northern European lump.

                        

                                                            Tasty Greek Food

I have been a little out of sorts of late and the trip is in part recuperative. Normally I approach the journey out with excited anticipation but this time there is also a strong dash of trepidation – what nasties do London Airport and Greek Border Control have up their sleeves? We hear of half-mile queues at UK passport control, planes at remote departure gates, anti-Brexit fines (the Macron tax) on incoming Brits, Greece burning at 40C and electricity supplies collapsing, shutting down the aircon. Wild fires are very dangerous, killing 102 at the seaside town of Mati, well known to us, in July 2018. Maybe I can avoid these horrors – I can only hope and pray to that frisky group on Mount Olympus.

To instill some degree of serenity, I loved the recent Albert Hall Prom given by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev, of Mozart’s last 3 symphonies, the skittish and cheerful 39^th, the deeply felt 40^th and the triumphant 41^st (the Jupiter). What joy! – I was proud again of being Scottish, a volatile emotion as Boris and Nicola supposedly have an on-off meeting today – inevitably a dialogue of the deaf, sowing discord, perhaps best avoided.

While on holiday I will read and my thoughtful and golden-hearted eldest son gave me a couple of choice books. The first is Doom, the Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson, which will be fascinating, but perhaps too near the bone for holiday reading. The second book, The Best of A. A. Gill will be perfect. Gill was a clever Scotsman who wrote for the Sunday Times, as a foodie and as a wide-ranging critic of politics and international affairs, written in a flamboyant fashion, with much sympathy for refugees, the dispossessed and the helpless. He was not blameless, but given to drink and infidelity. He also was married for 5 years to Amber Rudd, later the offensively outspoken Remainer, who somehow was appointed to May’s cabinet as Home Secretary and who could not work with Boris. Anyhow Gill was a memorable writer, joining those belle lettristes like H L Mencken, Arthur Marshall, Tom Wolfe and even Boris himself in his Brussels days, all of whom much enlivened literature with their humourously trenchant short pieces.

Our Greek holiday is most wonderfully subsidised by our youngest son, a high-flying banker, – limos, business class travel, the works – who is our constantly generous benefactor – how lucky we are! Our next expedition will be to his house in Charlotte, N Carolina, which we have never seen and I am sure is very civilised (if we can avoid wokeish fans of cataleptic Joe Biden and crackpot nostalgics for Donald Trump!). America will find its admirable feet again soon.

My lovely wife will shepherd me through our journey to her native Athens. She will miss some TV, especially American house-renovation series as she is an avid fan of Chip and Jo Gaines’ Fixer-Upper, The Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, and of Nate and Jeremiah, all full of advice on how to change our house, probably at vast expense! They feed a fantasy, at least.

So, we’re off – fingers crossed!

 

SMD

5.08.21

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

 

HERE AND THERE

I try to keep cheerful but the wind this week is not blowing in a favourable direction. The UK has supposedly the highest Covid infection rate in the world (if we accept, as we should not, the figures from Russia, Turkey, India, China and dozens of other unreliable states) and while restrictions have been relaxed, many voices are calling for their early re-imposition. Inevitably epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson, arch doom-monger and influencer, has added his tuppence-worth of predictive gloom about new variants and the rate of contagion. Some other “expert” forecast “possibly” cases of 100,000 per day in a few weeks – I suspect yet another gross exaggeration. The medical profession seems to be oblivious of the necessity of maintaining public morale and that of ordinary NHS workers. Milton would have given the attitude of these experts short shrift:

                                            Dismal Jimmy Prof Neil Ferguson

Hence loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

      'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;

Find out some uncouth cell,

      Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

      There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

      In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

-----------

 

Another event to endure from 30 October to 12 November will be the COP26 United Nations climate conference in Glasgow. Gallons of eyewash will be pumped out, grand-standing-resolutions will be passed, hot air will warm the globe even further and all past troubles will be blamed on white imperialists and their successors. Our woke elite will revel in this fiesta of cant – we will be blessed by the gracious presence of Obama, Biden, the ineffable Greta Thunberg and the inevitably ageing Her Majesty the Queen

 

Of course, precisely nothing will be achieved. The worst polluters, Russia and China, are only sending junior delegations, not their leaders. The resolutions will be kicked into the long grass by the harder-headed governments in the cold light of day. Boris made a good joke of the purported movement towards heat-pumps rather than gas boilers with his flippant assurance;

 

The Boiler Police’s Greenshirts aren’t going to break down your door with their sandal-clad feet and seize your trusty old combi at carrot-point.

No Western government is going to commit political and economic suicide by kowtowing to the minority ravings of climate warriors, anti-vaxxers, Greens and LibDems. Yes, global warming is an issue. It can only be tackled on a realistic and affordable time-scale. The UK does not need to be a pioneer. It still has large reserves of coal, shale and lithium. We should press on with fracking shale and lithium extraction. Coal-fired power plants should be re-opened and precautionary coal supply contracts signed with friends like Australia and South Africa. Nuclear power generation should be enhanced, if need be, in cooperation with the insufferable French.

Meanwhile scepticism on climate change is my order of the day.

I mention the French and I am struck by the poor quality of recent Presidents. Sarkozy, Hollande and now Macron have not filled the office with the distinction one has come to expect. All three have displayed a compound of petulance and arrogance, which I find deeply unattractive. Of course, the French are not easily regulated – as de Gaulle observed:  How can you govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?

French politics seem historically unstable. As in the UK, an increasingly conservative electorate is dismayed by an increasingly woke and lefty metropolitan elite. Presidential elections are due in April 2022.  The Jewish-Algerian Right-wing pundit Eric Zemmour is the current darling of the anti-Macron faction and strikes a sane chord. I wish him well.

                                Eric Zemmour, probable candidate

Political violence is a deplorable area, widely incited, and the slope is slippery from Insulate Britain blocking the motorways, to Michael Gove being harassed in the streets of Westminster to the foul murder of Sir David Amess in his constituency surgery. Yet we must not despair: I trust the resilience of Fred and Ginger who advised:

Nothing’s impossible I have learned

But when your chin is on the ground

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down,

And start all over again

SMD

21.10.21         

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

 

HYSTERIA ON THE HIGHEST

 

We have long known that we often live on the edge and in this particular year we know that we have rather easily fallen over the edge. The UK had had some form of collective breakdown and has gone completely potty, her normal eccentricities morphing into serial insanity.

Boris wows the Tories

Starting at the top, Boris Johnson treated us to a barnstorming and jokey oration at the Tory conference, all about “levelling up” and how raising the cost of labour by shunning migrants and hiking up prices will somehow make the population rich and happy. There was plenty flannel about British ingenuity and about the beneficent influence of free markets. The ghosts of Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes might whisper a remark or two about inflation and deficit financing but all that was ignored as Boris rallied the troops, leaving Rishi Sunak and “Jon Bon Govi” to find coherence in it all and pick up the pieces. The conclusion is inevitable that Boris makes policy on the wing, opportunistically, and that our own government has a weak grasp on events and does not possess a plan to see us through the winter, let alone until the next election. Yet he rules the national roost with his potent frivolity.

Boris has many political enemies but their grip on reality is equally tenuous. Sir Keir Starmer is a seriously-minded fellow but he is boring and he presses no buttons to enthuse the electorate. He is irredeemably Woke, a successful but limited lawyer, old-fashioned in his vision for the country and quite devoid of the popular touch. He is a Clem Attlee throwback. His Deputy, Angela Rayner, the Stockport shock-trooper, gets so worked up by her partisan oratory that she is a froth-in-the-mouth public danger. Her latest tirade, berating the Conservatives, included these immortal, if illiterate, words:

"We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute pile of banana republic, vile, nasty, Etonian, posh... piece of scum."

 

             Angela Rayner, noisy spokeswoman of the Left

When in 1948 Aneurin Bevan described the Tories as “lower than vermin” he was kicked down the steps of White’s Club in St James’ for his pains. He had crossed a boundary. La Rayner appals most people. She shows no restraint, only visceral hate, and she uses the language of the Nazi Brownshirts or a show-trial prosecutor in Moscow. She and many others on the Left incite violence – something UK politics tries hard to suppress. In Parliament there are plenty other malcontents such as the Remainers like vocal Lord Adonis and all the LibDems, self-righteous to a man and likely to be decimated at the next election or the residual Corbynites, whose extreme views are anathema to the voters. What keeps these crackpots going?

Outside Parliament the madness spreads. We are bored to tears by sour-puss Nicola Sturgeon and her Scottish independence fantasies but the Union will hold firm. Anarchic Insulate Britain mobs glue themselves to motorway slip-roads and infuriate travellers. Idiotic plans are laid for compulsory filming of anti-covid lateral flow tests by any UK entrant – meat and drink for every obstructive bureaucrat. Our Royal Family (the UK’s Disneyworld) persists in extravagance, and needs a thorough pruning, just as the House of Lords is a scandal and disgrace. Our police forces deserve a shake-up (not just for the Wayne Couzens murder) and the scope for reform of the out-of-control NHS must be immense. There is thus a huge UK resurrection agenda.

In the outside world, things are no better. A hostile EU makes mischief in Ireland, giving credibility to nationalist terrorists. Macron threatens to cut electricity to the Channel Islands, blockade our fisheries and curtail Eurostar. A leaderless Germany bows to Russian gas blackmail. Spain claims control of Gibraltar and watches expat Brits flee the new red-tape of the Costas, never to return. The UK economy is threatened as supply chains seize up without adequate numbers of HGV drivers.

Gloom and Doom stalk the land, as it has for about 18 months. We must rely on our reserves of resilience and optimism and stiffen our upper lips!

SMD

7.10.21

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

 

AN ENGLISH SUMMER

 

Our Continental and American cousins frequently deride the “English summer” and this year I must concede that it has been particularly dismal. It has rained with monotonous regularity throughout May, June and July, and if you are not wet, you are unseasonably cold, crabbed, cabined and confined.  Cavorting in the bracing sea, tanning on the sandy beach or eating deliciously alfresco have been rare, much-desired pleasures.

 

                    

                                                                A typical wet Summer scene 

Yet there are compensations. Driven indoors, we have revelled in TV sport. Roland Garros, Eastbourne, Queens Club and Wimbledon have given us ample opportunities to follow our ephemeral tennis favourites – Stephanos Tsitsipas, Cam Norrie, Matteo Berrettini in our household and the only occasionally admirable Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka. A feast indeed, and so many stirring memories of Jaroslav Drobny captivating us in 1954, of the epic battles of Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall in the 1950s and the long dominance of Rod Laver, followed by the era of Borg and brat McEnroe (You can’t be serious!) - now a sage white-haired pundit. The ladies had Little Mo, Maureen Connolly, winning everything in the early 1950s while British hopes often rested on chubby, smiling Christine Truman evoking Betjeman’s famous poem:

Miss J Hunter Dunn, Miss J Hunter Dunn

Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,

What strenuous singles we played after tea,

We in the tournament – you against me.

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,

The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy…

The tennis was closely followed by the Euros football, which brought moments of joy but ultimately despair to the English fans. Yet the truth is that the Italians were the better side and Southgate made a bad mistake asking last minute subs Rashford, Sancho and Saka to take crucial penalties. After the game, recriminations have bubbled up into racial discord, a sad and unnecessary outcome. We now move on to The Open golf, the Lions in South Africa (how much we still miss the darting brilliance of Joost van der Westhuizen), cricket in a bewildering variety of formats, ushering in the Tokyo Olympics (with no spectators). Let’s hope there will be plenty to cheer us up!

Lockdown is gradually easing up amid much dithering by our government and a Cassandra’s chorus from “the experts” prophesying doom, aided and abetted by the ever-sensationalist media. People of my generation (the 70s +) rather like Lockdown, as we have been terrorized into seeking security at any cost. Frankly, restrictions on our movements are no great imposition as we are no longer up for exploring the Wookey Hole caves, trekking along the Great Wall of China, ascending to the heights of Manchu Picchu, Bungy jumping in New Zealand or mooning around the Taj Mahal. For me, a leisurely stroll down the Leas at Folkestone is plenty excitement, as a recent fall saw me break a front tooth and painfully injure my ribs, so I shuffle about with a stick, groaning like some old codger. Yet my spirits remain high, full of optimism and warm goodwill to my fellow men. Carpe diem!

 

SMD

14.07.21

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2021

 

 

SOME BRIGHTER MOMENTS

 

SOME BRIGHTER MOMENTS

I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies after an appalling 2020 and, so far, a pretty grim 2021. We are told that by July 18, with any luck, the many restrictions on our lives will be lifted and a semblance of normality will return. As a nation we will emerge rather poorer, decidedly frazzled, certainly more divided and yet reassured and fortified in the belief that the worst is over and that we retain the ambitious capacity to rebuild our prosperity and reinvigorate our way of life.

               The Queen enjoys Trooping the Colour at Windsor

In recent days some events have cheered us up. Without being rabidly patriotic, most of us will have enjoyed the traditional Trooping the Colour, scaled down to the grassy courtyard of Windsor Castle from the open spaces of Horse Guards Parade off Whitehall, this year led by the proud Scots Guards but with all the usual martial music, brass and bagpipes, scarlet tunics and esoteric ritual. Her Majesty, a spritely, smiling 95, tapped her feet in pleasure. For a native Scotsman, a particular treat was the medley The Aberdonian, dominated by the iconic North East song The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie.

Not everything went Scotland’s way, however. Scotland lost 0-2 to Czech Republic in their opening game at the Euros. The Scots were predictably pedestrian, probably under the baleful spell of La Sturgeon. There was a comic side too, as the Czech second goal, a beautifully executed lob from far out by Patrik Schick over the out-of-position Scots keeper David Marshall, saw him entangled in goal-net confusion!

                                    David Marshall netted

It pains me to say that England need lose no sleep over their game against Scotland on Friday. Mind you, Wales are looking good after victory over Turkey, in Baku, Azerbaijan, that typically European opponent and venue!

Much the most engrossing event last week was the French Open Tennis at Roland Garros. My lovely wife is Greek and we were therefore cheering on Maria Sakkari and Stephanos Tsitsipas. Maria battled through to the semis, only to be pipped by the eventual champion, unseeded Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic.

Stephanos Tsitsipas

                                    
                                

The progress of Tsitsipas was sensational. With his confident winners and hard-hitting tennis, he swept aside 2^nd seed Medvedev, 6th seed Zverev and in the final against top seed Novak Djokovic he breezed to a 2-set lead. But uncharismatic yet icily composed Djokovic is not world no 1 for nothing. His sublime placement and lethal dropshots finally overcame the Greek, who will no doubt bounce back. Djokovic had earlier deposed Raphael Nadal as King of the clay courts in an unforgettably epic match. Everyone’s favourite, Roger Federer, now in the twilight of his career and trying to recover from knee injury, won a sticky match against Koepfer of Germany and them withdrew from the competition.

               Novak Djokovic, a worthy grand slam champion.

This week we have been watching the tennis from the Queens Club, West London. There was a cameo from Scots hero Andy Murray, rusty from a long lay-off. He won his first match but succumbed to the no 1 seed Italian Mateo Berrettini. Sadly, Murray is a shadow of the great player he once was. Some up-and-coming British players have done well, notably Dan Evans, Cameron Norrie and Jack Draper. Inevitably the Old Guard changes and new faces will compete in all sports at the highest level.

This summer we can look forward to Wimbledon, to great rugby from the Lions in South Africa, to golfing magic from the various Opens, and for excitement at the Euros. I fear there will be thin pickings for the Home Nations but do not let failure and the British weather get you down.

Remember in extremis, there is always Fred and Ginger! I attach Isn’t this a lovely day to be caught in the Rain from Top Hat (1935).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl6FLfHTC68&ab_channel=RyanWenzel.

 

 

SMD

17.06.21

Text © Sidney Donald 2021