WHERE'S THE LOO?

Of course we‘ve no intention of moving but every so often I scan “Right Move” wondering what it would be like to live in Rye, Lewes or Salisbury (near that cathedral which is on every Russian’s must-see list…’spire reaching up 123 metres’). The appeal of cathedral music is huge. Like living next to a free Wigmore Hall.

So when I saw a picture of a rather nice house close to Chichester Cathedral I thought “what fun”. When we were next in Chichester I went to have a look.  Facing the loading bay of the House of Frazer – lorries,  dustbins and mournful signs (“store closing down  January 2019) it didn’t look promising. Nor did it smell good - unmistakably of urine. Sadly the house was next door neighbour to a large and extremely popular public lavatory.

Nothing is quite what it seems. I‘d dreamt of potentially being a neighbour to the incense filled cathedral. The reality was smell of a different kind. Time to stop cropping the picture  and missing an essential feature.

This reminded me of the film called  “The Impossible”. In it a family is caught up in the nightmare of a tsunami in Thailand. One image vividly stuck with me. The mother sees her sons playing in the sea  with the tsunami behind them in the distance. She runs towards them waving frantically in warning. Uncomprehending they wave back in play and salutation.

In a week in which the increasingly strange Donald Trump infuriated his liberal critics by again insisting there are only two colours in an argument - black and white ….only two, only two…there’re no others. In a week in which nuance therefore takes another beating I realise that a bit like the public lavatory in Chichester the elephant in the room is ignored – “what elephant? Fake elephant. I see no elephant.”

We are all guilty of conspiring against balanced arguments. We read newspapers that simplify information. So this week, for instance, there was a headline in the Times on page1 which claimed “Eating organic food makes you 25% less likely to die young”. They’ll  doubtless be one next week saying “Science shows organic food is bad for old people”. It’s the cropping of information that makes the photograph lie. Thus the response of Guy Singh-Watson, who owns Riverford Foods, the organic farm and  veg box delivery company, to the blanket condemnation of plastic saying in some situations plastic wrapping is the best way.

Two of the most potent words in disputing a categoric claim are “not necessarily” . But in this black and white world the response to most offences would be that of Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts “off with their heads.”

Whilst the Chinese as we learnt this week seem keen on mass re-education it’s us who could with some ourselves. It’s time to see the whole picture not just the bit that fits our argument.
To the side of every piece of scenery lurks a metaphorical public lavatory.
 

TAKING A BREAK

We have gone. We are not accessible. We are being selfish.

The idea of the “staycation” became briefly fashionable but it wasn’t until we did one we realised how refreshing it could be. Forget “chillaxing” which is what David Cameron did posing with a fat tummy for the paparazzi in Ibiza. Forget walking in wet Wales and coming up with whizzy ideas like calling a General Election - yaki da Theresa.

The idea is simple - you create a programme of things you want to do - a series of restaurants you want to visit - the rest is conversation, looking and listening. Oh and reading, lots of reading. The rules are no work, no e-mail, no news, no phone and absolutely no surreptitious visits to the office.

We shall visit Stockbridge to see friends and then Winchester for evensong - a magically uplifting experience; Rye because it’s so fabulous, quirky and unspoilt ; the bluebells at Arlington; Eastbourne for the nicest seafront in the world; Salisbury for the infinity font, the Cathedral close which is one of the most pleasant places in Britain outside Oxbridge and that spire - the tallest church spire in Britain (no wonder Constable was so smitten by it); we’ll go to Guildford  for lunch with friends taking in the RHS Wisley Garden; to Gun Wharf Key at Portsmouth for some retail therapy; to Parham House, one of the gems in the South East, a superb Elizabethan house reeking of history  (it has a long gallery 160 feet long where the Parham troop of yeomanry were drilled in the late 18th century - when it was raining).

We’ll stroll around the wonderful gardens and finally have a day in Chichester and a wander round the Cathedral and listen to some sublime music.

That’s the idea. A reasonably busy, flaneur sort of week absorbing, going to places we’ve been before but discovering things we’d missed. Reasonably busy but not a route march. We’re happy to go on exciting detours and miss out some of this if we discover something we like. This is meant to be a slow movement week where whatever we see will stew deliciously in our minds (hopefully).

We spend too much of our lives in “transmit” mode - well I do anyway. I get up earlier than my wife so by 7am I may have already read the Times and the key issues on the Today programme ready to loudly present the news together with my commentary on the important issues in what my poor wife, cowering helplessly under the bedclothes, describes as “that hectoring voice of yours - as if you were addressing fifty and not just me”.

We shall see if the “staycation” does the trick, whether we shall both be more affable, receptive and happy people as a result of it. The prospect of escaping the refrain of Conservative candidates saying “strong and stable leadership” and the whole electioneering process will be reward enough for me.