Day 9: Weedon Bec to Northampton – A better day.
Moses’ Crossing
We nearly faced a disaster. Moses faced a major road: just before I grabbed him, he darted across the road towards our excellent driver, Richard. A lorry flashed by…it missed him by an inch.
Benyon’s law of pain
It’s simple: unless you have a clinical issue – in which case go and see a doctor- most pains and ills fade with walking.
I’ve proved this on each walk. When I started this year’s walk, I had pains in my toes and discomfort high on my left arm. Rheumatism, I suspect, mixed with gout. A week into the walk, I’m in a pain-free zone. Both Jane and I sleep like the dead and awake refreshed for the next adventure.
I see a friend has decided to emigrate to Greece. A visit is one thing; permanent living there is another. I reckon it is wise to grow old in your own language.
Apostrophes
“Apprentices close” is just one example of hundreds of offending street signs that upset me as I totter past. Why don’t the sign designers put in an apostrophe? Is it sheer ignorance? Or idleness? Ratepayers should rise up and march in protest!
Nice as Pie
As a member of the older generation, I wince when the phone rings and an unknown voice chirpily says, “Hello Tom!” I always presume I must know the caller and am a touch confused and irritated when I learn that he or she is in fact a complete stranger from, say, the gas board.
Niceness is everywhere and I’m getting used to it. When someone tells me to have a “nice day” I always reply, “Thanks but I’ve made other plans”.
And my answer to the ubiquitous “Take care”? I usually go for, “No, take a risk!”
But all these people with their cheery pleasantries are doing is trying to be instantly “nice” – and in so doing, they are seeking to cut out formality by charging straight towards informality. Today’s unease with formality is a concern not to be unfriendly pompous, frosty or old-fashioned. Is this a nice idea?
The army knows from centuries of experience that command relationships should not be blurred. Formality is vital when orders must be instantly executed. In wartime, there is no, “Dear Freddie, old bean, please can you find the time to do X and Y”. Instead, an urgent order is issued in the clearest possible English.
Formality is useful. When you are telling someone, “No” or when you are firing someone, it’s surely crass to end the letter with “Cheers”, “Have a good weekend” or “Lol xx”.
In English, the gap between formality and informality is always harder to establish than say in France and in Germany where they signal grammatically whether they are being formal (vous/sie) or informal (tu/du). If we had that device in English, we would be calling everyone “du”. We are not just changing what we say to those we don’t know; we are changing the way we say it.
The thing I dislike about general “niceness” is that it’s all too easy somehow. It seeks to lazily blur the crucial divide between the mere crowd and the few who really care about us – those who, as in the words of actor Sarah Bernhardt, “know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence.”
In previous generations, before formality was stripped away, people got to know others before presuming to be informal, so friendliness was in fact of real value.
Formality is useful. It puts a bit of distance between us and the job we do, and it allows us to engage with strangers in a way that is polite without suggesting we have an affectionate relationship.
The Great Equaliser
She sniffed in surprise when I told her I did some prison visiting. “All prisoners are losers,” she said. “I don’t know why you waste your time!”
“It’s easier than you think to find yourself in the nick,” I replied. “Even you!”
“Nonsense.”
“What about these examples?” I asked. And I proceeded to describe three scenarios.
Say you are driving out of Oxford on a February evening. You hit a cyclist wearing dark clothes with no bike lights, and he or she dies. The cyclist was at fault for not having the proper equipment, but you were going at 34mph and not 30, or you had just made a fly call on your mobile to say you were running late. As you were breaking the law, the death is moved from being an “accident” to a criminal offence and you will probably serve a prison term.
Take number two… You have nine points on your licence, and you ask your husband to take the points for you. Something goes wrong and your harmless ploy is discovered (in one case a child told his teacher about his parent’s “game”, and she reported it!”). It’s not considered to be a harmless middle-class parlour game, but rather a case of perverting the course of justice, with at least six months inside.
Or number three… you fiddle probate and nick the pictures from an estate. Then there is a family fall out and so to get their own back, the aggrieved person tells the police or HMRC about your harmless little plan…”
My friend quickly fell silent.
There but for the grace of God go I.
* 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 10: Northampton to Hanslope – Can’t See the Route for the Trees
Hot and hot again. Lost in the woods as usual. Our maps are dire, and we waste time. I am reminded of the eight POWs who escaped in 1944 and used a map of the route to England one of them had purloined: after they arrived in Dover after months of travelling, they discovered that their “map” was of the London tube Northern Line.
Pop Boris?
The word is out that Boris is too keen on personal popularity to be much use as a Prime Minister.
I would like to see what evidence can be presented to sustain this proposition, for from where I am sitting, indications are all the other way round.
In November 2020, he removed the whip and thereby destroyed the careers of 25 rebellious Tory MPs, including three former chancellors. He axed his one-time buddy Dominic Cummings. Now he has just increased taxes on his supporters and removed the so-called “triple lock” on pensioners’ incomes. In the main, they are the ones who vote and when they do, often vote Tory.
Funny way to win popularity!
Shades of Absurdity
Of course, I lost my sunglasses because I always lose them. Anyway, I stopped at a shop in Stratford and chose a replacement.
“How much? I asked.
“£420.00!
I left and bought a perfectly adequate pair at a chemist for £5:99!
Losing It
Don’t worry about losing things. I read somewhere that if you go into the kitchen and can’t recall why, not to worry – we all do that. But if you go into the kitchen and can’t remember what a kitchen is actually for, then you have a problem.
I see that Apple have stopped only catering for the needs of the young (you know, the unmissable apps that facilitate having sex with strangers, looking at Chinese porn or having one’s toenails painted vermillion at midnight by a Brazilian transvestite).
Now the Apple clever clogs have designed a device for those of us of a certain age who lose things! It’s called AirTag. The technology consists of a small stainless-steel disk that you can stick in your wallet or whatever it is you worry about losing. You can ring the device by Bluetooth, and cleverly – don’t ask me the details – it will tell you where the lost item can be found. This will be a change from my having to endlessly ask Jane where I’ve left stuff. She gets fed up with it, and who can blame her? Sometimes she thinks I’m going doolally because she can see the lost item sticking out from my back pocket.
But I’ll need a box of a dozen of the things to help me find my mobile, my car keys, my wallet, my glasses (all three pairs), my watch, my various books, my good pen, the TV remote and my walking shoes. Sometimes I need an app to tell me why I have gone upstairs, for I’m blowed if I can remember.
It’s a £29 for one AirTag and £99 for a pack of four – and just for the suspicious, no, I’m not on commission.
I hope in the future Apple will develop an invisible device to be connected to my hearing aid that can quietly tell me the name of the person I am talking to. Were they at Sandhurst or at Wycliffe, are they a major ZANE supporter, were they involved with me in Lloyd’s rows, or are they a distant cousin of Jane’s? These people always seem to know me well enough, but often I don’t have the foggiest who they are. After all, Apple can do darn near everything, so why not this?
And keeping the best for last, listen to this idea. An app called Bladder Pal has been designed to calculate the number of times you’re getting up in the night and measure it against the national average for your age and gender. Big market for this one.
Remember you heard about it from me first!
Fake News
Emma Revie – head of the foodbank umbrella Trussell Trust – implied in a recent Guardian article that the rise in the number of foodbanks and food claimants has come about because of Boris’ Tory government and cuts to social security provision. It’s a good job Jane’s Oxford charity, CEF (Community Emergency Foodbank), never joined the Trussell Trust.
I knew when we started it that as sure as you can say baked beans, Trussell would swing left – such charities always do – and start to spout drivel in our name by implying that the wicked Tory government is more or less solely responsible for the rise in the numbers of those attending foodbanks.
All such charities end up being run by Revie types who virtue signal compassion as they spend other people’s money. I don’t mind opposing political views, but what I can’t abide is people who know better, such as Revie, writing things that she must know are patently false.
The facts are these: in 2006/07, under Labour, Jane and I founded CEF. Since its foundation, we have supplied emergency food to more than 40,000 of Oxford’s poorest.
Foodbanks stretch right across the world from Tasmania to Los Angeles and are found in all EU countries. No government, of any political stripe, has created a benefit system that caters for the varied reasons people need foodbanks: these include alcoholism, mental illness, desertion, drugs, prison, divorce, family breakdown, loss of work, gaps in benefits, gambling and human folly.
Revie ought to be ashamed.
* 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)