A Ukranian Spring

Thank you, Justin Webb, for reminding me in Friday’s Times of what Trotsky said:

“You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.”

Friday was chilly but with a brightly blazing sun in Brighton. The stridently yellow daffodils fluttered in the breeze muttering: 

“all’s well, Spring is coming, relax …. all is well.” 

The daffodils were wrong.

In Kyiv it was raining, cold and about to get much colder. War was being declared. No, not “declared” so much as “visited upon us” and the world was waiting aghast as the missiles flew. We were living in a world gone mad. After 77 years Europe was once again a warzone.

I recalled Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy written after the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.  The second stanza stuck in my head, now slightly re-written (sorry Percy):

I met Murder wildly shooting 

He had a mask just like Putin

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven blood-hounds followed him.

The most unlikely people have suddenly become militaristic. Quentin Letts, political sketch writer, observed with astonishment that the Liberal Democrats, of all people, were in the Commons with a bellicose “Come on Vladimir let’s be having you” attitude.

How did we let this Russian thug and our own greed get us to this ultimately predictable point? Chelsea football fans lament your ownership. Estate Agents in Knightsbridge be very ashamed. But despite my initial horror and anger something else has replaced it. The courage and the spirit of the Ukrainian people in slowing down and in places thwarting the Russian advance made me feel just a bit better. There was something epic about the tragedy of Snake Island in the Black Sea where 13 Ukrainian Soldiers and their families were slaughtered after refusing to surrender to a Russian Warship … “Go f*** yourself Russian Warship” were their last words. Courage and resilience are an enviable epitaph. And it’s their resilience that heralds the Ukrainian Spring because it is Springtime that characterises resilience.

Keats didn’t manage an Ode to Spring. Pity. The best we can find is, nonetheless, terrific.  Either the beginning of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales – “sweet showers” - or Gerard Manley Hopkins will do – just these glimpses from him:

    “Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush” 

  

And “the racing lambs too have fair their fling….”

     

   

 And then     

“What is all this juice and all this joy?         

     A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

     In Eden garden…..”

“Long, lovely and lush …all this juice and joy” – yes that does it for me …that’s my kind of Spring. And this year’s Spring is delivering already – primulas and violets vigorously doing their thing and tiny tête ά tête daffodils laughing in the chill.

Spring is about innovation, new beginnings and a simple celebration of growth. A blitz of Russian missiles can’t change that. Spring cleaning is one of the most useful of occupations discarding the unused and unusable, simplifying our possessions and cleaning our shelves, our cupboards and our minds. 

I for one have spent too many seasons worrying about newspaper headlines about which I can do nothing. My mind is full of “stuff” -  much of it negative. Time for a good Spring-Clean. Time to think positively. Time to walk through woods where buds are bursting and birds are finding their voices.

It's too late to stop the stupidity. But never too late for hope. Nature always helps our perspective. Flowers grow out of rubble. Juice and joy cannot be blown away by a bomb.

A STORY OF EXCESSES, RAGES AND A BAD APPOINTMENT

This weekend following the British Museum exhibition “Beckett: Murder and the Making of a Saint”, we are going to a conference which is about Thomas in Canterbury.

It’s the 12th century. England has been ravaged by 14 years of civil war between Stephen and Matilda. The country is in chaos. In 1153 Henry 1’s grandson, at 21, becomes King.

What’s he like? He has hyper-energy, eats standing up, is always on the move, he’s petulant and impetuous. But in his short reign this man-of-action restores order. The barons submit to him; castles built without permission are torn down. The mercenaries who’d been hired in the Civil War have a few days to leave England or be executed. They decamp in a hurry. He sets up trial by jury and assizes (old French for “sittings”) where judges hear cases. Prisons are built and villages and towns are repurposed with proper market days. The country becomes less mediaeval, more civilised and calm; much of this owing to Henry’s decisiveness. 

Yet he only speaks French and Latin and lives 2/3 of his life in Anjou. A key to his success is Thomas Becket, who is recommended to him by his Archbishop, Theobald. They get on tremendously well, so well that Henry makes him Lord High Chancellor. Thomas is smart, charming, a fixer and a man who makes things happen. He’s the King’s right hand but also his best friend.

He’s a show-off, dandy and poseur. He keeps monkeys and wolves. He has a vast array of silk garments. When he goes to France to negotiate the marriage of the King’s daughter he does so in fabulous luxury with a huge entourage. He behaves as if he were King. He loves bling.

Then something awful happens. When Archbishop Theobald dies Henry has a brainwave. Why not make Becket Archbishop as well as Chancellor?  Henry has been irked for some time by something called “benefit of clergy” which simply means whatever a member of the clergy does they’re immune to civil law. So, if they commit murder, say, a Bishop’s Court might defrock them or exact a penance. That’s all. But there’s a bigger game to play. The church represents a sixth of the population and is very wealthy. Henry wants to clip its wings. Thomas is the man to do that job. He’s proved this before.

 Huge mistake.

Becket’s transformation from super-rich courtier to Man-of-God takes two days. One day Thomas next day the Reverent Thomas, next day Archbishop Thomas, answerable to the Pope as well as the King. 

But he won’t do what an increasingly bemused and enraged Henry wants. He becomes as saintly now as he’d been epicurean before. For 8 years he’s an absentee Archbishop in France. From brilliant Chancellor and best friend  to intransigent churchman and obstructive foe (as Henry sees it). Thomas cannot be judged a success in his new role. He has constant rows with Henry causing great distress to the people who’d seen this previous effective partnership  collapse and create national disharmony..

Henry’s increasing frustration and rage is interpreted by four loyal but not too bright knights as a wish that Thomas be silenced. So, they come over from France and butcher him in Canterbury Cathedral.

It’s the most infamous murder ever. For the last 19 years of his life Henry bitterly regrets it, lamenting the loss of a friend, his own rashness and poor judgement, the tarnishing forever of his previously brilliant reign and becoming just a footnote in history.

We instead have the most famous Saint. 

Lesson for today: Be very careful about senior appointments. Especially if it’s a friend.

 

NOTHING MUCH TO LAUGH ABOUT

I was unsurprised to hear a joke that must have been around for ages during the Olympics.

A man walking through the Olympic village sees a tall guy carrying a long aluminium tube. He sidles up to him and says:

“Are you a pole-vaulter?”

“Nein” says the man “I’m a German … but how did you know my name was Walter?”

As the late comedian Frank Carson said “It’s the way you tell them”. 

He also asked “What’s the difference between a Rottweiler peeing on your leg and a cocker spaniel peeing on your leg? Answer … you let the Rottweiler finish.” 

I went to a celebration of the life of Richard Attenborough a while back which was full of actors like Maggie Smith, Charles Dance and Judy Dench. A drunk Frank Carson interrupted the praise of “dearest Dickie” with a stream of filthy jokes. The funniest thing was the expressions on the luvvie actors’ faces. But it was hard to laugh.

And it’s been hard to laugh this week. The Kabul catastrophe has been chilling;  a reminder of a new world and the disappearing hegemony of the USA and the NATO Alliance.

On both sides of the Atlantic, politicians and leaders have been characteristically shifty, squirming, prevaricating and shameful.  I recalled the refrain “say it ain’t so Joe” relating to the baseball legend Joe Jackson who cheated in the 1919 World Cup. Another Joe – the US President - seeming not to care about the marooned thousands deserves the same reproach. And then … the Donald was back. Just when it couldn’t get worse he gloated:

"What Joe Biden has done with Afghanistan is legendary. It will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history!"

No, Donald, that was Hillary Clinton’s in 2016.

There is absolutely nothing we can do about what’s happening across the world. But  I note all the embassies seem to be closing down in Kabul apart from Russia’s, Iran’s and China’s which are working hard, ablaze with lights. 

What is horrifying to most of us is the inhumanity and mediaeval attitudes of the Talban (or rather the Taliban as was - maybe Taliban 21 will be better.) Being horrified but helpless is not a good situation. So what can we can we do?

Nothing apart from cleaning up our own act. Power and might are no longer ours. Maybe we have to accept more refugees many of whom are going to be very bright and make themselves and us much richer. Maybe we should become a better example of good citizenship and kindness. Maybe we should strengthen our security and foreign policy ties with the EU. They need us as much as we need them.

But most of all we need to start laughing more. If we lose our legendary sense of humour we’re sunk. And we must beware of the extreme woke attitudes that we’re seeing here which contain traces of Taliban puritanism. 

The great comedies of our time – Monty Python, Blackadder, Fleabag and anything Robin Williams did …we need more of those. We need satire and as Charlie Chaplin said:

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in a long-shot”

No comedy about Afghanistan, not now, but certainly about politicians and crackpot ideas. 

As I look around me at nice, broadminded people I wonder how we are in a situation where this happened:

“Popular Afghanistan comedian Nazar Mohammad, was murdered in Kandahar province last week. He was kidnapped and his throat was slit.”

I’m speechless. Laughter was his trade. RIP Nazar.

SAY NO TO WOE

I must be living a sheltered life because  I recently heard a word new to me. “Doom-scrolling”. It’s defined as  "an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news" (!).  I realised I was becoming a “doom-scroller” watching the American Dream crumble as the Capitol was invaded by bearded hippies.

I then saw Covid infection rates soar in the UK, the economy totter, Brexit lorry jams and food shortages (no Stilton reaching Northern Ireland), our Government wobble, Covid naysayers like Katie Hopkins saying she’d walked through empty hospital wards so – obviously - the whole Covid thing is a sham (they’re all crammed in the Covid wards and ICU, you buffoon) and please don’t have an accident and need an ambulance…there are none.  Then we had a murder of a local celebrity in Hove…yet Hove never has murders. 

So yes, the world has gone mad, bad and sad. Scroll; scroll; scroll.

I started 2021 bounding from bed and bellowing “hurray for today.” Just ten days later I was turning over in bed in the morning after realising the beast from the east had paid a nocturnal visit and that all I wanted to do was snooze. But then I remember that horrid refrain “snoozers are losers” so I stumble out of bed and settle for another day of house- arrest. But just writing this has helped me realise how foolish I’m being. I have my health, well actually my hypochondria, which is a source of considerable comedy. 

Ooh my foot, ooh my head, ooh my leg etc. I eat well. I drink well. I have many friends and my wife, nurse, chef, psychiatrist, motivator and chum is keeping an eye on me. As Matthew Parris wrote on Saturday:

“Covid, Brexit and Trump have created a national mood of anxiety but don’t despair – the future looks a lot brighter.”

He advises that we write lists of things to do … because as you get them done the ‘black dog’ that’s terrorising you is tamed. So no more snoozing. Just lots of listing.

And of course he’s right. Despite the government being allegedly in despair at the civil disobedience the electorate is showing, I’ve been impressed by how little traffic there is and how empty the streets are as we go for exercise (another thing ticked off the list.)

In fact I think people are being amazingly compliant and tolerant. When two young women drove five miles to a beauty spot in Derbyshire for a walk clutching a coffee and were fined £200 each by a intimidating squad of coppers for not following the spirit of the lockdown and claiming coffee constituted a picnic, I stopped being like the legendary Victor Meldrew and spluttering “I just don’t believe it” but instead started laughing, certain that the fine would be revoked. It was. 

Living in this Monty Pythonesque world in which “not following the spirit of the lockdown” are deemed criminal offences is silly and it’s comedy and satire and burlesque are what will get us all back to calm and sanity. 

And that’s why I’m creating an even newer word. One we need to use and celebrate every day for the remainder of this lockdown. Laughter-grafting. Everyday we all need to find at least six things that make us howl with laughter. If in doubt look for the funny side. With politicians and activists like we have it shouldn’t be that hard. 

Which is not to ignore the misery and loss many are feeling right now. But even when events  hurt we need to recall Ken Dodd’s words  “laughter is the greatest music in the world”… and, of course, the vaccine our greatest hope.