Day 1 – Cheltenham to Beckford – Going Round in Circles
Once again, Jane and I – and of course, Moses the dog – are setting off on a “circular” walk. And as was the case last year, rather than staying in the homes of kind ZANE supporters, we will be sleeping in our own bed at home for much of the trip. (That’s Covid for you!)
But before we begin, a reminder… Many of my pieces are written late in the evening when I am tired. I try to stick to the topics that interest me most: sex, politics, religion, money and death (though not necessarily in that order). Occasionally, though, I stray off the beaten track into uncharted territory – you’ve been warned!
Please note that the views expressed in this commentary are mine and mine alone: they do not represent the views of anyone else working for ZANE, or the body of the trustees or council of reference.
I can have no idea of the political stripe of ZANE’s supporters, so I try to take some – though not excessive – care. If living in a free country means anything at all, then freedom of speech is vital as is the right to give offence. If you don’t agree with my sentiments, then of course, that’s fine – but please don’t take anything personally. I used to be on the centre left, but the tide and mood have shifted. Astonishingly, all political parties are today liberal, leaving me stranded on the centre right. I try not to do party politics, but as a former Conservative MP, sometimes I cannot resist the temptation to growl the odd sour comment.
As ever, I have been influenced by others, including Richard Holloway, Rev’d Professor Nigel Biggar and Douglas Murray, and stimulated by Rod Liddle.
I am also indebted to my UK co-workers who do most of the work (and put up with me), and to the ZANE trustees for their tolerance. Thanks to Brigadier Clendon Daukes for his friendship and candour, our design team under Tom Van Aurich and our wonderful cartoonist, Tony Husband.
Warm congratulations to the leader of the ZANE team in Zimbabwe, Lynda Crafter, on her well-earned OBE, and much credit must go to the other members of the ZANE team in Zimbabwe who work tirelessly and bravely in often challenging circumstances.
Starting How We Don’t Mean to Go On
Miles of spider’s web tracks, all guaranteed to make me irritate map-reading Jane who is going the wrong way – I’ve been writing about it and muttering: “Here we go again!”
Poor Jane. It wasn’t her day. I charged on and didn’t know she had fallen flat on her face breaking her vastly costly specs in half and bruising her eye. She will have a multi-coloured black eye tomorrow, and people will think I thumped her!
It’s fascinating walking through the Cheltenham suburbs to count the number of expensive cars parked by modest houses. The cars must cost around £60,000 each, and I wonder at the strange – to me anyway- priorities. Why buy a new car? So people really admire their neighbours more if they have a new car? If so, why?
The Forgotten Legion
Ahead of the walk, we spent some time pondering the work of which ZANE supporters can be most proud. It is a difficult contest with so much valuable work completed over the years. It includes the work assisting pensioners, including food aid to care homes; the “pop-up” classrooms; the work to assist damaged women; and, of course, our clubfoot programme, where some 4,300 previously disabled children can today jump for joy.
ZANE supporters generously supplied funds that paid for medical supplies and additional food for the many veterans who form the “Forgotten Legion”. Prior to April 2018, some 600 pre-Independence veterans and their widows living in Zimbabwe were struggling on just one meal a day. They received no medical aid whatsoever. Can you imagine living in a country with no medical state aid of any kind? Despite serving the Crown and being promised an entirely different retirement, all these old soldiers were living in extreme poverty. Through the generosity of ZANE supporters, we were able to increase food provision to two meals plus a snack each day, and we implemented a life-saving medical programme.
It is this programme of which ZANE supporters should be proudest. As a direct result of your generosity, ZANE was able to fund over 3,800 medical claims. Our dedicated team in Zimbabwe encountered tragic and desperate stories, mass hunger in their communities, and children and grandchildren struggling through a lack of work and hunger. But today, veterans who were previously exhausted and malnourished are thriving with the right medication and increased calories.
The ZANE medical fund has provided diagnosis and treatment to save and prolong lives. Over the course of three years, it has provided over 280 hypertension prescriptions, 135 diabetes treatments, 99 rounds of prostate cancer drugs and 36 cataract operations. (In many cases, veterans claimed for treatment more than once).
Take the life of 80-year-old Corporal Enoch Moses. He was enlisted into the Signals Corp in 1961 and discharged in 1966. He suffers from severe asthma and is prone to pneumonia, especially during the winter months. Funded by the ZANE medical programme, he was at last seen by a doctor. Being able to procure a regular supply of asthma medication saved his life.
I have witnessed first-hand the life-changing impact of the medical fund for these veterans and widows – the weight gain, the change in complexion from a deathly pallor to a healthy glow, and pride and dignity restored. Best of all, I have seen lives saved and the quality of lives enhanced.
From all of these veterans, their message is that they have not been forgotten, that their service has been recognised.
ZANE will continue to provide a medical fund for these veterans who assisted us in our hour of need; we owe it to them to help them in the evening of their lives.
Thank You…
Please note that this commentary is not a self-important indulgence on my part. To my surprise, it generates far more income than the cost of its printing and despatch.
If you have already sponsored this walk, then thank you. And if not please do so.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)
Day 2 – Beckford to Lenchwick – Pub Grub Grumble
Another lunch in yet what sadly turned out to be yet another bog-standard pub. It was sited by a river with all the natural romance of Wind in the Willows: you could imagine mole and ratty rowing lazily by on their way to their famous picnic. Anyone with even the beginnings of design sense – any sense – could have made the interior far more interesting than it turned out to be. Instead, we had the same old swirly carpet that makes your eyes water, and the rest of the decor was like a down market old persons home in Scunthorpe.
To get over the national shortage of cooks, today’s pub food appears to be manufactured in a vast shed somewhere in the UK North and thence delivered weekly to pubs. Therefore, pub cooking is reduced to waiters shoving frozen food into a microwave and banging it on tables. Complaints are pointless: any shortcomings are the fault of COVID. So Pub menus are the same everywhere. The waiters are masked with muffled voices so that no one can understand a word.
We walk towards Evesham. The town is doughnutted by estates of new-build. Despite the fact all these new houses are tiny and exactly the same, they are overhyped as “stunning”: the estates are called grand names like “Simon De Montford Estate” that fools no one.
Evesham smells of poverty and is suffering the collapse of retail chains: empty shops that will probably end up filled with charity shops scar the High street.
A great deal of political capital is being spent on the so-called “red wall” constituencies that turned Tory at the last election. We are told a great deal of money will be spent to “level” them with the richer south of England. I wonder how the voters of the likes of Evesham will feel about this promise at the next election.
A New Jerusalem
How sad to see the Labour Party in steady decline, for all governments need vigorous opposition.
I suspect there is little chance that Labour will form a future government. This is in part because it has lost nearly all its Scottish seats to the SNP – and to be blunt, without them, that’s it. It’s an irony that Blair, who had so many gifts, was the agent of his party’s destruction – it was his government that introduced devolution and created Sturgeon. It’s the law of unintended consequences biting viciously.
Labour’s forlorn election tally is lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, lose, lose, lose, lose. And there is no return to the Blair years. Though there are plenty of voters who loathe Boris and all he stands for, many are now totally opposed to Labour. Meanwhile, the Liberals are often seen as sitting to the left of old Labour. Sadly, Labour will produce another lefty who will fail yet again. What can be done?
Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man – or Woman!
I believe that somewhere, in a school or college perhaps, a bright, young person has the Mandela, Obama, Clinton, Blair, Thatcher and Boris qualities needed to form and lead a new centrist party (not easy in our first-past-the-post system). Perhaps this individual hasn’t even been born yet, but when he or she arrives on the political stage, they will understand that many voters aren’t instinctively Liberal but right of centre. They will see that such voters intuitively distrust those who tarnish British history or who spend their time indulging in national flagellation and running down our heritage – and that in the broad sweep of things, Britain has been a force for good in the world.
This new leader will distrust those who bang on about “my truth versus your truth” vapidity (dear old Meghan) that is endemic amongst Labour’s youth wing and the default position of many universities. This is the idea that “lived experience” counts for more than objective reality.
They will understand that many voters distrust “cancel culture”, whereby people of opposing views are denied a platform. Such voters do not believe that culture wars should be all-or-nothing fights to the death, and nor do they agree that people with opposing views must be destroyed. Most want to eradicate racism and other forms of discrimination, but calmly please – they are unimpressed with people who “take the knee’ and they distrust change that is brought about by hatred and confrontation. Instead, they believe in the nation state and look for a feeling of national solidarity. They seek controlled borders, pride in Britain and free market economics.
Cometh the need, cometh the talent! We need a fresh young leader with foresight and brains – someone with a stout heart and a short sword.
I forecast that he or she would in time sweep the pool. All today’s political parties should beware. This new party would change the face of Britain!
The Man’s Not for Turning…
“Darling! You have to turn round. Now!”
Please note the way she weaponizes the word “Darling!” so it crunches my skull like a sledgehammer.
So commanded General Jane after a lunch near Watford.
“Why”?
“My satnav says there are crashes on the M4… If we continue on this route, it will take us five hours to get home instead of 40 minutes!”
Readers of my past blogs may recall that one of my beloved’s little endearing ways is to double-guess the car satnav with two competing satnavs and sometimes a map. Then she argues with them all.
Something about it all emboldened me to ignore Jane, so I drove on trusting my instincts and praying.
She repeated her instructions rather like Montgomery before the Battle of Alamein.
I ignored her and kept praying.
Suddenly the traffic melted. We soared along the empty road and then onto the uncluttered M4.
There was a sulky silence from the passenger seat. “I have to admit,” she eventually conceded, “that I inadvertently clicked a bike timing on the satnav.”
I promised to say nothing.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)