C.J. Stone's Blog, page 13

Autophagy for the people

If you read my last column, you will know that I’m moving: from a two-bedroom flat, into a room in a shared house. Don’t ask me why. I have my reasons.

What this means is that I’ve been forced to downsize. My life at the moment is entirely taken up by a process of sorting and selecting, sifting and filtering, going through all the accumulated material of the last ten years and making increasingly hard decisions about what I want to keep, and what I can afford to lose.

On an more fundamental level, I have two large boxes of notebooks containing extensive writings going back fifty years or more: interviews, notes, poems, articles, columns, sketches, unfinished novels, short-stories and incoherent accounts of adventures long past. Much of it is indecipherable rubbish, but there may be some hidden gems in there.

This is where the process really starts to get serious: having to read through all these half-remembered scrawls, in order to select out what might be useful at some point in the future.

Meanwhile, and entirely coincidentally, I am on a diet. This is because I have finally admitted that I am overweight. I’ve spent the last eighteen years denying it, even as the evidence of my ballooning midriff has been contradicting me.

“Look,” I’d say, whenever anyone commented upon my size: “no fat.” And I’d pinch the flesh on my arm, where there is, indeed, no fat. What I didn’t know then is that there is such a thing as visceral fat: that is, fat that forms around the internal organs.

That’s the worst kind of fat. Hidden fat. Dangerous fat. Fat that could kill me.

So I’ve decided to do something about it. The method I’ve chosen is intermittent fasting.

It’s not easy, but it is simple. No counting calories. No tasteless, fat-free, sugar-free food. No Weight Watchers, visits to the gym or obsessive use of weight machines: just moderate exercise and two days a week without food.

I’m choosing to do 36 hour fasts: that is, I eat dinner the evening of the first day, stay off food the next day, and don’t eat till breakfast on the third day. I’ve been doing it for several weeks now.

I’ve also been reading up on the subject. Now here’s the interesting bit.

In fact we are designed to fast. As hunter-gatherers – which is how we lived the first several hundred thousand years of our existence on this planet – there were many lean periods. That’s why we store food up as fat. It’s so we can use it when no food is available.

What’s more, fasting brings on a process called autophagy. That literally means: “to eat yourself”. When you are in fasting mode, your body scours itself for sustenance. It sucks up all the old, dead cells, and the discarded cells, and the rubbish you have stored throughout your body, hoovering it away and making your whole system clean and more efficient.

It’s only in our modern age that our bodies have not had to do this, and it’s one of the reasons we are so unhealthy as a society.

Your body needs to fast, just as a diesel engine needs to run flat-out on the motorway occasionally, in order to burn off the grime.

So there are parallel processes taking place in three areas of my life at the moment. I’m clearing out the cellular rubbish from my body, the physical junk from my home, and the spiritual clutter from my brain, all at the same time.

As to where all this might lead: I’ll let you know.

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 25/10/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

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Reclaim The Sacred

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION HAS NO MEANING UNLESS IT IS EXERCISED. EXPRESSIONS OF THE DIVINE, SACRED OR ETERNAL ARE PART OF WHAT IT IS TO BE HUMAN. RECLAIM THE SACRED SEEKS TO AWAKEN THE PUBLIC TO THE SPIRIT OF PLACE. THIS HOLDS THAT THE LAND ITSELF IS SACRED. IT HOLDS THAT LONG BEFORE RELIGIONS BUILT UPON THIS LAND, OUR ANCESTORS LIVED, DIED AND MADE RITUAL UPON IT. WE HONOUR THAT HISTORY AND WE EXERCISE OUR RIGHT TO FREE SPIRITUAL EXPRESSION BY PERFORMING ACTS OF PEACEFUL RITUAL IN SACRED SPACES.

On the first Monday of each November, a mixed group of around 50 Pagans, Magicians and other unconventionally spiritual people gather in the City of London to perform a series of public Rituals. Money Burners are well represented within their number.

[image error]https://www.facebook.com/events/338581106908753/
[image error]From left to right: Chris Stone, Jon Harris, Arthur Pendragon, John Crow, on the concourse outside St Paul’s

Chris Stone (aka C.J. Stone) is a writer and journalist best known for his Guardian column Housing Benefit Hill and his books Fierce Dancing, The Trials of Arthur and Dear Granny Smith (as Roy Mayall: see left). Chris was the instigator of Reclaim the Sacred. Here he tells the story of how the idea of a day of public ritual emerged and recounts the events of the first two years.

The first series of public Rituals conducted within the bounds of the City of London, on Monday November 7th 2016, didn’t have a name at the time, but became known as “Money, Magic and the Imagination” after the event.

The day had a clear political purpose. Its aim was to highlight the subject of money. Money, we were suggesting, is a magical tool. It only works because we believe in it. Otherwise, it has no actual material existence whatsoever. You can read the ‘mission statement’ I delivered at the dragon boundary to the City of London, here.

By creating a sigil – a magical symbol – which we then placed on a bunch of old five pound notes – collected on the last day before they were due to be withdrawn from circulation – and then handing the notes into the Bank of England for destruction, we were planting our magic in the heart of the primary institution of World Capitalism – the place of Capitalism’s Original Sin, as it were – as a sort of psychic seed waiting to grow. If the first Original Sin had been eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, our response was to take the seed of that fruit and to replant it in the Bank of England’s privatised Garden of Eden in order to grow.

It is knowledge we need in this day and age, not ignorance. The more we understand that money is magic – is the original magic, in fact, conjured out of nothing as a store for wealth – the more we will be able to release that money from its current bondage, held in offshore accounts and secret hoardings in British Crown Dependencies throughout the world.

The sigil, created by the great contemporary Occultist Julian Vayne, was called “The Equaliser”. It consisted of the mathematical symbol for ‘more than’ – > – crossed by the symbol for ‘less than’ – < – and crossed again by the symbol for ‘equals’ – = – making a sort of criss-cross pattern not unlike the Chinese Ideogram for Hexagram 48 of the I-Ching, the Well.

The Well is the Chinese symbol for good social order. It represents a well surrounded by eight fields, and suggests eight families sharing a central well. The well is not owned by any of them. It is shared by all. All have equal access to it. All are nourished by its gift of healing. In this sense, it a perfect symbol for what we want money to become: a central source of wealth, shared by all.

Another significant ritual took place on the concourse outside St Paul’s Cathedral. This was led by John Crow – legendary alter ego of playwright John Constable – companion spirit to the Goose, a late medieval sex worker who John had channelled on an unforgettable night of psychic exploration on the 23rd November 1996.

John invoked the spirit of Phatty in his poem of that name, asking us to recognise him in ourselves. We then released him, ‘redeeming his debt’ by walking clockwise in a circle. Next, we drew in the positive energies of transformation, travelling back around the circle counter-clockwise – or widdershins, as John preferred to say – chanting lines from William Blake (with a minor variant): “Mutual forgiveness of each Vice, Open the Gates of Paradise”.

Finally we came to the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, and there, in the spirit of the Ancient Bronze Age Kings, we had our own King Arthur Pendragon read out a proclamation forgiving all debt and declaring a “Clean Slate” – a new beginning – on what was the exact half-way point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice, and therefore, by some calculations at least, the correct date for the Celtic New Year.

So that was last year. Originally it was meant to be a one-off, a piece of Situationist theatre in the heart of the City of London, to bring attention to the question of money. But Jonathan Harris, who had been my co-organiser in setting up the event, and who had delivered the inaugural ritual at the Monument to the Great Fire of London, was keen on repeating the process. We had several meetings in London to discuss it, which involved a lot of walking, punctuated by the occasional beer or cups of tea, and a lot of blethering to-and-fro.

Jon and I don’t quite see eye to eye on a number of issues. For instance he would probably disagree with the explanation for the origins of money, above. In his theology, money is “an aspect of being”: itself a mysterious statement which we spent many hours discussing. In the end I came to agree with him. We also had a number of exchanges about the nature and importance of political action. In Jon’s view ritual with a political end was tainted in some way and he tended to shy away from the notion.

The name “Reclaim the Sacred” came from a discussion we had in Trafalgar Square. I was telling Jon about Reclaim the Streets, and the great demonstration in support of the Liverpool Dockers in April 1997, when they had attempted to bring a sound system into Trafalgar Square, in order to hold a party there. Reclaim the Streets used a lot of magical symbolism in their actions and were a driving force for a great deal of political activity in their day. It was at this very same Docker’s march that Arthur had had his sword confiscated, a point that will become significant later on.

That discussion must have filtered into Jon’s brain, because it was not long after hat he came up with the name “Reclaim the Sacred”. He also came to agree with me that, by claiming our right to hold our rituals, we were effectively making a political demand.

So that’s one-all in the game of ideological football. One to him and one to me. Such is the nature of conversation: by listening respectfully to what another has to say you can often reach some kind of consensus.

So “Reclaim the Sacred” it was: a series of public rituals in order to assert our right to spiritual expression in sacred space.

2017’s event was originally envisaged as a walk from the Monument to Trafalgar Square, but was thankfully cut short at the Temple Church near Fleet Street. “Thankfully” because, as Arthur Pendragon pointed out, trying to keep pagans in any kind of order is like herding cats. We were constantly losing people on the way, constantly having to go back to recover the stragglers, there being four quite distinct rates of progress:

Slow, lead by Jon Eldude, who tends to amble, Dude-like, along life’s laid-back processional highway;

Even Slower, as lead by Michelle and Tommy, who were too busy snogging to have any idea where they were half the time;

Fast, lead by me, with my postal worker’s pins, still trying to deliver the Christmas mail even when its not Christmas, and there’s no mail to deliver; & finally:

Like A Rocket, lead by Bapu on his mobility scooter, who must have thought he was taking part in the mobility scooter TT races, and was seen at one point waving buses aside as they loomed towards him along Fleet Street, brandishing his stick, with his flat cap perched akimbo on his bonce, scattering everyone out of his way by emanating sheer unadulterated grumpiness as a form of psychic forcefield. The word “irascible” was invented to describe Bapu. I’ll say no more.

We met at the Monument to the Great Fire, which was apt as we were attempting to light a conflagration of awareness in the public consciousness and, once we had finally assembled, made our way to the first ritual space, on the concourse outside the Royal Exchange Building, opposite the Bank of England, where Jon Harris, using ashes from money burned on 23/10/17 in MASS BURN Four at the Cockpit Theatre, mixed with the last drop of special whiskey he and the other pilgrims had brought back from the Isle of Jura – where the KLF had burned a million pounds 23 years previously – lead a ritual forgiving the Bank its debt.

The whiskey was special because it was 23 years old and so the water used to make it had fallen as rain on that night in 1994 when the million quid was burned. And there was only one drop left because Jon had shared it with all the participants at MASS BURN FOUR where 23 people had burned £230. There are a lot of 23s in Jon’s life.

Jon’s ritual consisted of a reading from David Graeber’s book, Debt, about the origin of the Bank of England, after which he anointed those that wished on the forehead with the ashes; after which we each took a thumb-print’s worth of the ashes and, surrounding the Bank – which lies on an Island above an underground river – we pressed our thumbs to the external wall and, from the bottom of our hearts, forgave it its debt.

As Jon anointed us he intoned the original words from the Lord’s Prayer “forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us”; the more familiar version, “forgive us our trespasses”, being a mistranslation of the original Greek, and a misrepresentation of its true meaning.

[image error]John Crow kneels on the concourse of St Paul’s Cathedral in the midst of his Ritual of forgiveness.

The second ritual of forgiveness took place on the concourse outside St Paul’s, as it had the previous year, lead the the inimitable John Constable in his guise as John Crow, visionary priest of the literary underground, and channeller of the Goose.

Bapu was very accurate in his assessment of John. “You’re giving off a priestly vibe,” he said.

“That’s because he is one,” I said.

John added that he may well have been a priest in a past life, but that he was “defrocked for going native with the witches”.

We repeated last year’s ritual pretty closely, invoking the spirit of Phatty, the Fat Cat banker, with a recitation of John’s great poem Phatty, from his book, Spark in the Dark.

I won’t repeat it here. I’ll recommend you buy the book instead.

We then shuffled around in a circle clock-wise, in the manner of the San Pedro Long Dance, rhythmically repeating the following chant:

“Here Phatty’s Debt I now redeem / Awaking from his Deathly Dream.”

We did this for some minutes.

After that we reversed the direction, and, calling in the positive powers in the form of a line from William Blake’s Gates of Paradise (as noted earlier) we forgave Phatty and, by that process, forgave ourselves as well.

As John had pointed out earlier: had a banker been walking by while we were finger-pointing our anger in his direction, he would almost certainly have turned and walked the other way; had he heard us forgiving him, however, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he might even have joined us.

We left an alchemical sign which John had drawn on the floor in chalk in the form of a six pointed star with various arcane-looking magical symbols at the apexes, and a generous scattering of coins, which we hoped a homeless person might find; or, if not, at least a kind-hearted City worker who might donate it to a homeless person. John also offered the playful thought that our magic sign might be regarded with awe and wonder and still be there in a thousand years.

One last moment to relish. John had approached a policeman before the ritual, telling him what we were going to do. The policeman was fine with it, and looked on amiably as the ritual took place, but, after it was finished (in other words, when it was too late to do anything about it) an officious-looking security guard approached him. “We don’t allow demonstrations here,” he said.

“Well that’s ok, cos it wasn’t a demonstration,” said John, “it was an act of faith. You do allow acts of faith, don’t you?”

There wasn’t much our security guard could say to that.

After this we went to St Bride’s Church on Fleet Street where, under the guidance of Caroline Wise, we evoked the Spirit of Brigid.

St Bride’s, she told us, was possibly one of the oldest churches in London, there having been a church here since the 7th century. St Bride, after whom the church was named, was an Irish saint and a Christianised survival of of the Gaelic goddess Brigid, goddess of springs, healing, poetry and the forge; but also of more humble things, such as milkmaids and dairy, farmyard animals, and especially the Goose (a nod here to John Crow).

She was also a solar goddess, born into a halo of sunlight. There was an ancient well on this site – currently blocked off – so our plan was to invoke the goddess as like a river of gold which we would draw up from the well through our feet and our bodies to emerge as a chant. We were chanting her name, visualising the chant as golden light, seeing the light as the body of the goddess spread out across the City.

While chanting we were encouraged to remember the millions of young men who had given their lives in the two great wars of the 20th century.

Finally, our last ritual space was the square behind Temple Church, between Fleet Street and the Thames.

It was here that we began to notice a severe diminution in our numbers as certain members of the group got lost in the London throng, and there were frantic phone calls in order to locate everyone. Eventually, however, everyone managed to turn up.

[image error]Arthur leading us in the Druid’s Vow at the Temple Church

It was here, also, that Arthur manifested his own particular brand of magic, in the form of a barrister who had been a witness to his court case almost 20 years ago to the day, on November 5th 1997, when he had had his sword returned by court order at Southwark Crown Court, after it had been confiscated by the Metropolitan Police at the Reclaim the Streets Docker’s March in April of that year. Thus it was that the wheel turned full circle this day: Reclaim the Streets became Reclaim the Sacred and the events of 20 years before were brought vividly back to life; or as Arthur put it, more succinctly: “Here’s one I prepared earlier.”

The square behind the Temple Church is remarkable. Surrounded on all sides by buildings, with a hushed echo and a column in the midst, on which stands a statue of two knights riding a single mount, it is already laid out in circles as if preordained as ritual space.

It was around one of these circles that we gathered and Arthur made the best joke of the day.

“Religion, as they say, is a bit like a penis,” he said. “It’s all right to be proud of it and have one, but you don’t flash it in public.”

He also made the one statement in the whole day that I would personally disagree with.

He said, “there are only two types of people in the world: those that believe, and those that don’t. It’s really that simple.”

Sorry Arthur, but no: there’s a third type too, my type, the professional agnostic, the one who neither believes nor disbelieves, but who reserves his judgement before giving commitment to anything.

But anyway….

After this we did the Druid’s vow – “We swear by peace and love to stand, heart to heart and hand in hand, mark, oh Spirit, and here us now, conforming this our sacred vow” – repeating the refrain three times, after which Arthur invited people to come before him to be knighted in the ancient virtues of Truth, Honour and Justice. Many people stepped forward to be knighted by his wand – the sword having been left at home for fear of a repeat performance of its confiscation 20 years previously.

It was at some point during these knighting ceremonies that the significance of the day was brought home to us, in the form of a belligerent Scottish security guard, who broke into the circle, tapping Arthur on the arm in order to tell him he shouldn’t be there. Arthur carried on regardless, in the proper English style, while the security guard was passed on first to John Crow, and then to me, to handle.

He was very concerned that what we were doing might have some commercial value, in which case, he suggested, we needed to pay. This was private space, he told us. It was privately owned, even though a public right of way. At the very least we needed to get permission.

This was the perfect culmination of the day’s events. Earlier, in St Paul’s, we had reminded ourselves that today was the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Charter of the Forest, the companion document to the Magna Carta. The Charter of the Forest guaranteed the Commons for public use, and now, here we were, in what appeared to be public space, being told that is was, in fact, private, and that we needed permission to be there.

Where better to assert our right to “public ritual in sacred space” than in one of London’s many pseudo-public spaces, being warned off by a private security guard?

*******

The third annual Day of Ritual will take place on Monday 5th November 2018. Meet at the Dragon on the South East side of London Bridge at 1pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/338581106908753/

This article originally appeared in Burning Issue Super Deluxe edition and is reproduced with kind permission of the editors.

To see the article as it appeared in the magazine, you can download the pdf here.

To buy Burning Issue follow the link below:

Turn and Face the Strange…

I’ve been having a weird time of it lately. First of all my good friend Julian Spurrier died. That was on New Year’s Eve, so it kind of set the tone for the coming year. I don’t think I quite processed it at the time. It’s only recently that the implications have started to filter into my confused little brain.

After that, in June, I retired. That was a good thing, of course, but still very disruptive. So I don’t have to get up for work any more, but that also means that my routine has been broken. I keep having anxiety dreams where I’m supposed to be in work. It’s obviously taking time for me to process this one too.

After that – and barely two weeks after my retirement – my Dad died. I don’t need to go into detail on how devastating that has been. I’m sure readers who have lost a loved one will already know. For those of you who haven’t: there really are no words which can describe it.

Again, it takes time to work these things through. I still find myself, over three months after the event, caught short on a memory, suddenly aware that he is gone, as if I’d somehow forgotten; after which I’ll find myself having to turn my back to wipe away a tear.

It was only after Dad’s death that the implication of Julian’s passing became clear. Julian was my contemporary. For the last forty years or more, for most of my adult life, I’ve been seeing him on a regular basis.

We lived with each other for a time and, more recently, he was a near neighbour. I would expect to bump into him at least three times a week. And now he is gone, whisked away into the unknown, that great mystery we call death.

And as if all that wasn’t disruptive enough, now I find that I am moving.

I say that as if it’s surprise to me; and, of course, it’s the consequence of a decision I have made, but, just like everything else, it takes time for the mind to process.

So it’s only now, as I’m surrounded by boxes, attempting to pack away the contents of my life, that the implications are becoming clear.

I’m moving in with a couple of friends: in fact into Julian’s old house. It’s a temporary measure. I have no idea where I will be in a year or two’s time.

Meanwhile I’m attempting to sort out and filter down the contents of a whole flat and ten year’s worth of accumulation, in order to squeeze it into a single room. Like the retirement, it’s a positive change, but highly disruptive. Where is all this stuff supposed to go?

There’s a mathematical theory known as Catastrophe Theory. I remember watching a TV programme about it some years back. As I understand it, it suggests that massive and extraordinary moments of change are actually built into any dynamic system. Not only is change inevitable, but also, every so often, the accumulation of small changes leads to big changes that will literally change the world.

I seem to be going through such a process myself at the moment. The world I thought I knew is gone. The world that is to come is still a mystery. I’m poised in a moment of transformation wondering what will happen next.

I’m not the only one. Everywhere I look, changes are occurring. The accumulation of small changes is building to a critical point. Who knows where any of us will be in a few years time?

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 11/10/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

 

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Caged Beeste

And then he brings out the star-feature from the cupboard. It’s a collection of trees made out of green and brown crepe paper on a painted cardboard base. “ Cobham Woods ,” he says, with a grin stretched across his gnome-like face. “I ‘aven’t figured where to put it yet…”

The Guardian Weekend November 4th 1995

HE lives in a Warden-assisted council home for the elderly, one of those red-brick, characterless buildings from the ’70s, flat-roofed, with glittering picture-windows on the ground floor, situated in a soulless housing estate on Clement Attlee Way. There’s a intercom on the door. You have to hold the buzzer down a long time. He’s deaf.

It’s been over two years since I last saw André. It takes him a minute or two to recognise me. He must be knocking on 70 by now. A gnarled pixie with a tangled mane of grey hair and a full beard, wiry-looking and tough beneath his clothing, clenching a pipe in his mouth, he looks at me with a puzzled expression. And then it dawns on him. “Chris!” he says in his peculiar nasal squawk, “come in, come in! You’ve made my day.”

He leads me upstairs to his self-contained flatlet and, while he’s fiddling with the keys, he indicates the uniformly painted pale blue corridor stretching out behind him. “Look at it,” he says. “It’s a glorified nick. The only difference is, we’ve got our own keys to let ourselves in and out.”

His name is André Van Beest. It’s an extraordinary name. He’s an extraordinary man. His flat consists of a bathroom, a kitchen and a bed-sitting room. His bed is tucked away beneath the window. There’s a chair, a desk, and a TV facing the bed. And that’s it. The rest of the room is entirely taken up with a huge model railway. He draws the curtains and switches off the lights. And, one by one, he flicks the switches lined up along the chip-board surface holding the set. And then it’s as if you’re transported, drawn into a rattling fairy-landscape, as miniature trains buzz round on their tracks, and the Ferris wheel at the fair spins, all lit up, with all the neat-looking houses spilling out light like a welcome home on a gloomy Winter’s evening. He points out the features. There’s a working fountain, squirting a tiny jet of water. And a coal-mine with a pit-head wheel that turns. A large, arched, glass-roofed station like Temple Meads in Bristol. A working crane. A windmill, its sails turning in the imaginary breeze. A church with a spire. A bridge. And then he brings out the star-feature from the cupboard. It’s a collection of trees made out of green and brown crepe paper on a painted cardboard base. “Cobham Woods,” he says, with a grin stretched across his gnome-like face. “I ‘aven’t figured where to put it yet.”

Not any old woods, you notice. Cobham Woods. Because André lived in Cobham Woods near Rochester for nearly 16 years, and in a field near Sittingbourne for another nine. For 25 years he was a Hermit, maybe the last of his kind. And he misses the woods. He misses his friends. He misses what he calls, with typical innocence, his “four-legged friends and two-legged feathered friends”. He misses the trees. He used to talk to the trees. And he misses the wild animals, the rabbits, the foxes, the squirrels, and the deer that got so used to him that they would eat from his hand. He was the Old Man of the Woods.

He had a dog called Judy who was – like him – one of a kind. She was half fox. And he had two goats and 40 chickens and numerous ducks and geese and rabbits. And he made a clearing in the woods by lifting all the saplings and replanting them around his property like a fence. “Mother Nature’s fencing.” So he had a vegetable plot and a neat flower garden. I’ve seen the photographs. It was just like Paradise, this perfect blend of wild nature and cultured garden, a tumbling cascade of colour beneath the crooked trees.

An ex-railway man, he moved into the woods in the mid-’70s. He bought the land and, far from wanting to be a Hermit, he thought of himself as a farmer. But he lived in a hut made of branches stretched over with shopping bags, and sold eggs to pay for his luxuries, his tobacco and his sugar. He lived like this for two years before anyone even knew he was there. He used to have to walk a 4 mile round-trip to collect water. And one day he got back, exhausted, with two plastic containers full of water stretching his arms, when he saw a neat-looking man poking around by his shed. The man had a note book. He was scribbling notes. He was the Inspector from the Council.

“Now I was in the middle of building a greenhouse – plastic one, for temporary measures – to start growing grapes. I’d already got my lawn and my flower bed and everything like that. He looked at me. He says, ‘you’re not supposed to be here.’ I says, ‘why, you gonna stop me?’ He says, ‘you don’t own any part of these woods.’ I says, ‘oh yes I do, that’s where you’re wrong.’ He says, ‘you got planning permission for this?’ I says, ‘I ain’t from you.’ He says, ‘well that’s not good enough.'”

I wish you could hear his voice. André has the strangest voice. He speaks through his nose as he has a cleft-palate and, when he gets carried away – as he frequently does – his voice rises to a high-pitched twitter. It’s really funny. He’s a really funny man.

“One week he come down, he says, ‘the form’s here, gonna have to sign it.’ I says, ‘what’s it for?’ ‘Application form for planning permission,’ he says, ‘course, you won’t get it.’ ‘Oh won’t I?’ I says, ‘whether I get it or not, you’re too late, cos I’ve already done it.’ He says, ‘you’re not like other landowners. You’re little. You’re a piece of cake.’ I says, ‘what’s that got to do with it?’ He says, ‘we’ll get you, just like that. You’re little. You’re easy.’ So I says, ‘right!’ I says, ‘see these boots? You just tread on ’em lightly – and I mean lightly – and by truth and by the devil himself, I will step on you till you are buried! Mark my words.'”

It took the council 14 years to remove him. He fought the case right up to the High Court. The council had to allocate extra funds to pay for the legal costs.

“All right, if I was a piece of cake, what was I doing up there for 16 years? So how was I a piece of cake? And as you will find in the reports, I have cost them a fortune to get me off. I’ve still come off better.”

André was famous for a while. He was in all the papers, and on the TV and the radio. The local people backed him. Hundreds signed a petition. They collected funds for his court case. And at Christmas time a delegation would come over to visit him in his woodland retreat with a hamper full of goodies. He got so sick of mince-pies he had to feed them to the goats.

The law was too strong for him in the end. He lost his Appeal. He was evicted. The bulldozers came and knocked down his sheds and his greenhouse and his plastic bag shelter. They ripped up his lawn and his vegetable plots and his flower garden. They tore down the chicken run and the fencing for the goat’s compound. They destroyed it all. In the name of the planning laws they tore down paradise.

 

YOU have to ask why, don’t you? People get planning permission for all sorts of things. For roads that rip through countryside. For industrial estates and trading estates and shopping complexes. For leisure-centres and theme-parks. For hotels and for soulless housing estates like the one on Clement Attlee Way. But a harmless old man can’t get planning permission to live this simple way of life, out in the woods with his plants and his animals and his trees and the deer that ate out of his hand. He was a Hermit. It’s an ancient occupation. Well it niggles me. It bothers me. Why? Who in God’s name is the law meant to protect?

He moved to Clement Attlee Way over two years ago, after living in a caravan in a field for another nine years. He was getting too old for the outdoor life. His old bones were beginning to creak. He wasn’t allowed to bring his animals with him, of course. Imagine forty chickens and numerous ducks and geese and rabbits in a warden-assisted council flat for the elderly. He wasn’t even allowed to bring Judy. He had to have her put down, which nearly broke his heart. She was a wild-thing, she could never have borne the indoor life.

Someone said to him recently, “you know you’re a famous man?”

“No I’m not,” he said. “Cos I don’t feel famous. I’m pop’lar, but that’s a different thing. But I’m not famous.” And he let out a wild cackle, like some woodland creature’s ancient call.

From Housing Benefit Hill & Other Places by CJ Stone: available here.

About the illustration accompanying this text: https://hubpages.com/art/Ian-Pollocks-Illustrations-for-Housing-Benefit-Hill

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Waspi Women

I’m on holiday in Dundee as I write this, staying with Anne Park who, friends will remember, used to live in Whitstable.

Anne is 62 years old and angry.

“At the age of 57,” she says, “it was ordained by the powers-that-be that I wasn’t going to be able to retire at 60, as I’d been promised, but I was going to have to wait till I was 66.”

That’s six years stolen from her. Six years she’d dreamed about and planned for. Six years of her life that she will never be able to get back.

It was such short notice that it only gave her three years to make any kind of an alternative plan. As a consequence she was forced to sell her three bedroom house in order to downsize, in order to pay off her mortgage.

She’s been fiddled twice over. “Not only have I had six years’ worth of pension stolen from me, but I’m expected to pay six years’ worth of National Insurance that I wouldn’t previously have paid, which will make no difference whatsoever to the final figure as it currently stands.”

In other words, she’s already paid enough National Insurance to get the full pension; it’s just that she’s not allowed to gain access to it.

I’m sure that Anne is not the only woman reading this who has been subjected to this injustice. According to the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign website, 3.8 million women have been affected by the lack of notice.

[image error]It’s not that the WASPI women are arguing that the retirement age should have remained unequal, with men continuing to retire five years later than women: it’s just that, they say, proper notice should have been given, or compensation offered to those women who, through no fault of their own, have found their retirement plans seriously undermined by the changes.

Even the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) website itself says that it should give ten years notice of changes in relation to State Pension.

The WASPI campaign was set up in 2015 by five ordinary women incensed at the injustice. They say that their aim is “to achieve fair transitional state pension arrangements for all women born in the 50s affected by the State Pension law (1995/2011 Acts).”

Their website includes template letters you can use to send to the DWP in order to underline their claim that there has been maladministration in the implementation of these laws.

Every women affected by these changes should make it her business to send off one of these letters, to get involved in the campaign, and to make sure that the government is held to account for its duplicity in relation to its own citizens.

There’s always enough money for wars, royal weddings, and MPs expenses, it seems; never enough for the needs of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

Indeed, the civil servant responsible for the increase to the retirement age to 67, Sir Robert Devereaux, is retiring at the age of 61 with a £1.8 million pension pot. He will receive £85,000 a year, and a lump sum of £245,000.

What this case does is to highlight how easy it is for the government to break the social contract between the state and its citizens. Most women born in the 50s grew up expecting to retire at 60, but by a couple of swift strokes of the pen, as it were, and a little parliamentary debate, they have been deprived of that promise.

What other expectations might be stolen from us in future? Democracy itself could be at risk.

Waspi Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WaspiCampaign/

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Labour Club: 40th Anniversary

Whitstable Views

I’m sitting in the Whitstable Labour Club, looking at the board above the fireplace on which is written the names of the honorary and founder life members. Of the 33 names up there, I recognise 19.

So, just to give you a flavour: there’s Peter Seymour, who had been a communist but who converted to Labour. He was also a member of the Co-op Party. I remember one conversation with him, when he told me about the years after the war, when the council estates were being built, and the Co-op was in the ascendency. “It was like the revolution had already happened,” he said.

There’s Maud Ehrenstein, who was like this dowager socialist from the 30s. Rumour has it that on her death bed she ripped off her oxygen mask and shouted: “up the Miners!” She was very impressive to my younger mind: this older person with real…

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Final thoughts as my dad joins the ancestors

I wish there was something else I could write about, but there’s not. My dad, Eddy Stone, passed away just over a month ago.

His death was sudden but not unexpected. His grip on life was becoming more tenuous by the hour. I knew as early as May that he wouldn’t last the year. Even so, when I got the news, it came as a complete shock.

It was my sister who told me. She said, something honest and simple, like, “he’s dead.”

“It’s for the best,” I said, in my most reasonable voice. But grief is entirely without reason. The next thing I knew there was a great animal wail erupting from my chest and I was in floods of tears.

So that’s it. I haven’t had time to get involved with anything else. I haven’t had time for research. I haven’t read any newspapers. I’ve hardly watched the news. I’ve been fully engaged with the process of dealing with my father’s death, both practically and emotionally.

I wonder if they do this on purpose: make sure there are lots of things to do when a loved-one dies, in order to keep your mind off the grim reality?

There are some bits that I don’t understand. For instance, why does everyone act in a such a solemn manner when you tell them your father has died? It’s not their father. Sure, you don’t want them skipping down the road and doing bad Morecambe and Wise impressions, but neither do you want them acting as if they’ve suffered a bereavement themselves. Simple empathy will do.

Also, why do the undertakers wear top hats, and why do they stop the hearse at the bottom of the road and walk up? It all seems a little unnecessarily showy to me, and it doesn’t diminish by one iota the extent of your grief.

The whole death industry is based upon a model that is literally centuries out of date, being grounded in the Victorian era rather than the 21st Century.

The registrar – who doubles as the head librarian apparently – was much more appropriate in his response. He was very precise, both in his demeanour, and in the way he dealt with the issue. There was no false solemnity there. He got on with the business, making it as clear and concise as possible.

The funeral service was arranged by the family with the help of a celebrant, Tara Snedden.

There was one thing we did that we are all proud of. We arranged for Rabbi Cliff Cohen, of the Thanet and District Reform Synagogue, to say a Hebrew prayer.

My dad had a Jewish father, and a Christian mother, which makes him not Jewish, officially; but he went to synagogue on a Saturday for the first nine years of his life, and he was proud of his Jewish heritage.

Having a Rabbi recite the Kaddish as our Dad’s body was committed to the flames was the most important symbolic moment in the ritual. It was the still point around which the events of his whole life turned. It connected Dad to his ancestors through a prayer that goes back to Biblical times.

None of us knows what happens after death. The body is real, and the body dies, but if you’ve ever seen a corpse you’ll know that the body isn’t the person. Whatever it was that animated my Dad, it has long since departed.

But I like to imagine that he hung around long enough to witness the funeral, and that his final thoughts were:

“They did me proud!”

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 09/08/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

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Eulogy For my Dad Eddy Stone

As read out at his funeral 30/07/18
[image error]Order of service designed by Helen Stone: http://www.helenstone.co.uk/index.html

It’s Wednesday 25th July as I’m writing this, four days before the funeral, seventeen days after you died, one day after Helen, Robert and I went to see your body at the funeral parlour.

I’m sitting in your house: the house you and Mum shared for twelve happy years, and then, latterly, where you lived out your last days.

I’m in the chair where I usually sat: the one by the fireplace, near the shelves with all your pictures on it. The room is full of pictures, most of them of your family.

Just glancing around I can see Beatrix, Marley, Jake, Danni, Kirian, Sam, Isaac, Carissa, Joe and Bella: all your grandchildren and great grandchildren. It’s a testament to the future and to the hope you nurtured for the generations to come.

The house is quiet now, at peace, though I can still sense your presence everywhere. It’s there in the chair where you sat, where you ate your meals and watched TV. It’s in the remote controls lined up on the coffee table: too many remote controls for too many devices, which caused so much confusion in the end. It’s in the TV and video player, in the BT box and sound bar, in the wireless hub, all quiet now, a nest of wires in the corner, switched off at the mains.

Seeing your body was very strange. You didn’t look like you. Your nose was too thin and your eyes were too sunken, and the expression on your face was too solemn, too fixed, too grave. I never saw you with such a look in the whole of my life.

Robert and Helen both cried when they saw you, but I was being all brave as the older brother, giving Robert a hug, and Helen the space she needed; but when I was alone with you, I spoke your name, and it was then that all the suppressed grief from the last three weeks came welling up, like a wave of anguish and loss.

Dad, I knew you were going to die. I knew it from April or May, or even earlier, when it was obvious that you’d lost all heart, all enthusiasm for life, and there was hardly anything any of us could do to coax you out of that chair and out of the door. I’d make arrangements over the phone, but then, when it came to carry them out, you were too tired, or your legs hurt too much, or you just didn’t feel like it any more. Yes there were a few good times left, but they were becoming rarer and rarer and I knew that eventually they would stop altogether and that you would never get out of that chair again.

Your personality changed towards the end too. There was something distant in you which gleamed out of your eyes when I found you still in bed at three in the afternoon: something vulnerable and appealing, like a child, as if you had reverted back to your younger self, when you were a little boy and there was only Sam and Alice and Leon in your world. I know you spent many hours in bed remembering the past. The past had become more real to you than the present. Memories of your childhood in Birmingham, of the synagogue you used to go to on a Saturday, and the Church on a Sunday, being the child of a mixed marriage. Of the war. Of your evacuation to Wales and the Methodist family you stayed with there. Of your life in the Navy. Of your many trips abroad, to the Far East and beyond. Of getting blind drunk with your brother on shore leave. Of your exploits in the Korean War, being shot at by hostile forces. Of when you first met Mary at a dance in . Of your courtship and marriage. Of Arthur and Edie, and your brothers and sister in law, David, Enid and Robert. Of your entire extended family.

So many memories. So many good times. So much love. It’s like you were born into an ocean of love, so vast and all-encompassing it was easy to forget it was there.

Now the house is busy again. Julia and Peter have just turned up with Jake and Kirian. Everyone is over for the funeral, so I’ve asked Julia to add some words to this.

She says she remembers you as a hard-working family man who always had two jobs so you could take us on holiday. She has fond memories of helping you to decorate, scraping wallpaper off the walls – that was always our job – and how you loved to take us out for meals, enjoying it most when the family was all together. She says that, unfortunately, living so far away, she didn’t see you as much as she would have liked, but that she always enjoyed your visits to Tenerife. She says your grandchildren and great grandchildren will miss you. Sadly you never got to see your new great granddaughter, Kali, born just before you died, but then she adds, philosophically, “It’s one in, one out I suppose.”

So that’s it, Dad, you’re gone, where to no one knows.

Me, I think there’s more to life than what the theologians of materialism preach, and while our individual existence might come to an end, life itself goes on. So I like to imagine that you are still here, on some level, still with us, entangled up in our memories, evoked for us every time we speak your name.

I called you Dad most of my life, but you were Eddy to all your friends, and as I got older, and you got younger, so you became Eddy to me too. Steady Eddy as Julia always called you.

So it’s to you Eddy, Eddy Stone, I speak: I hope even now you are floating in that ocean of love from which you were born, and to which we all must return.

*************

The next thing I’m going to read are Eddy’s own words, dictated to me about two years ago, before he had his pacemaker fitted, when his heart was slowing down and he thought he was going to die:

“To all of you who’ve come to see me off, I want to say a big, big thank you for putting up with me for what have been some years. I’ve had a good life, I’ve made some good friends and I’ve been lucky in many ways. My time in the Navy taught me to to grow up and become a man and it’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten. You’ve all been so good to me and so helpful over the years, especially after my wife died. To my neighbours Roy and Marilyn, Terry and Janet, Dave and Sylvia: all of you helped me in various ways over the period of time when I moved down with Mary. A big thank you to all of you. Moving down to Whitstable was the best thing we ever did and made all the better by meeting such nice people as you. To all my friends in the Labour Club I’d like to say thank you for your friendship, your time, and especially the Pusser’s Rum! I have had some very good nights down there. Thank you to Hutch for doing my garden, and to Carol for looking after me. With a bit of luck I might meet Mary again. I’m not sure, but nobody else is, but I hope that I will. And now, goodbye and thank you all again. End of story. Eddy.”

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Reading from Helen Stone

To Those I Love by Isla Paschall Richardson

If I should ever leave you whom I love

To go along the silent way,

Grieve not,

Nor speak of me with tears,

But laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you there.

(I’d come – I’d come, could I but find a way!

But would not tears and grief be barriers?)

And when you hear a song

Or see a bird I loved,

Please do not let the thought of me be sad

For I am loving you just as I always have

You were so good to me!

There are so many things I wanted still to do

So many things to say to you

Remember that I did not fear

It was just leaving you that was so hard to face

We cannot see beyond

But this I know;

I love you so

‘twas heaven here with you!

Reading from Robert Stone

Just A Common Sailor

Adapted from a poem by A. Lawrence Vaincourt

He was getting old and paunchy, and his hair was falling fast,

He sat around the table telling stories of the past,

Of a war that he had fought in, and the deeds that he had done,

Of his exploits with his Mates, they were heroes every one.

And tho’ sometimes to his children his tales became a joke,

His wife she listened carefully, for she knew of what he spoke.

But we will hear those tales no longer for He has passed away,

And the worlds a little poorer for a sailor died today,

He’ll not be mourned by many, perhaps by his children and the family of his wife,

For he lived a quiet , ordinary, uneventful life.

Who worked to raise his family, till to old to earn his pay,

No the world won’t know his passing, tho’ a sailor died today.

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Our thanks to Woollard and Kent for organising the funeral and to Tara Snedden, the celebrant, for leading the service.

Finally, a special thanks to Rabbi Cliff Cohen of the Thanet & District Reform Synagogue for the closing prayers.

1.

El malei rachamim

God full of compassion

whose presence is over us, grant

perfect rest beneath the shelter

of Your presence with the holy

and pure on high who shine

as the lights of heaven, to

Eddy Stone who has gone to

his everlasting home. Source of

mercy, cover him in the shelter

of Your wings forever, and bind

his soul into the gathering

of life. It is God who is his

heritage. May he be at peace in

his place of rest. Amen.

2.

The Kaddish

Let us magnify

and let us sanctify in this world

the great name of God

whose will created it.

May God’s reign come in your

lifetime, and in your days,

and in the lifetime of the family of

Israel – quickly and speedily

may it come.

Amen.

May the greatness of God’s being

be blessed from eternity to eternity.

Let us bless and let us extol,

let us tell aloud and let us raise aloft,

let us set on high and let us honour,

let us exalt and

let us praise the Holy One,

whose name is blessed,

who is far beyond any blessing or song,

any honour

or any consolation

that can be spoken of in this world.

Amen.

May great peace from heaven and

the gift of life be granted to us

and to all the family of Israel.

Amen.

May the Maker of peace

in the highest bring this peace

upon us and upon all Israel

and upon all the world.

Amen.

[image error]Eddy with his great granddaughter, Bella


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Why is cannabis illegal?

Cannabis has been much in the news recently.

First of all it was the story of Billy Caldwell and the cannabis oil his Mother used to treat his epilepsy. If you remember, the oil, legally bought in Canada and originally prescribed by the NHS, was confiscated at Heathrow.

It was going to be destroyed, but the family successfully lobbied to have the oil returned after Billy suffered a number of severe fits which no other medicine could control. Savid Javid was forced to use his power as the Home Secretary to issue a special license.

The government’s official line on the use of medicinal cannabis is that it has no benefits, although, following the Billy Caldwell case, the Home Office has undertaken a review.

Since then another little girl from Northern Ireland has also been prescribed cannabis oil by the NHS to treat her epilepsy.

More recently there was the news that prosecutions for cannabis use have fallen by 19% since 2015. What this suggests is that the police are effectively decriminalising the drug by refusing to prosecute in a growing number of cases.

Theresa May, meanwhile, has rejected calls by William Hague and opposition parties to legalise the recreational use of cannabis, insisting that there is evidence of harmful effects.

She has also distanced herself from the review, saying “there’s a very good reason why we’ve got a set of rules around… cannabis and other drugs – because of the impact of that they have on people’s lives, and we must never forget that.”

This is despite the fact that her husband, Philip May, through his company Capital Group, is the largest single investor in GW Pharmaceuticals, one of the biggest cultivators of cannabis in the world, and that her current Policing Minister, and ex-Drugs Minister, Victoria Atkins, has had to stop speaking for the government on cannabis issues, because her husband, Paul Kenwood, is managing director of British Sugar, which last year started growing the drug under license from the Home Office, the department of which she is a minister.

You could call this hypocrisy, if you like, but to me it speaks of something more venal: the use of legal privilege to create a monopoly.

If ministers have the power to keep a substance illegal but, at the same time, also the power to license the production of that substance to members of their own family, doesn’t this suggest corruption of the worst kind?

May’s line about the impact of drugs on people’s lives is complete hypocrisy, since much of the evidence points to the fact that it is the illegality of drugs which creates most of the negative impact.

If a drug is legal and licensed – as it is in the case of alcohol – this protects the consumer from contaminated product.

If, on the other hand, we hand over the sale and production of our drugs to gangsters, then this inevitably creates risks for the user.

Let’s also remember that cannabis is a plant which grows abundantly in the wild, and which has a number of uses aside from its mind-altering or medicinal effects.

In fact, it is one of the fastest growing plants on the planet. It can be used to make quality, hard-wearing clothes. It can be used to make biodegradable plastic. It can be used to make paper and packaging. It can be used to counter deforestation in vulnerable landscapes.

The idea that this useful, socially beneficial and benevolent herb should be kept illegal in order to create a monopoly for a few wealthy and privileged families is abhorrent, and shows how insane our world has become.

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 26/07/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

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CJ Stone’s Columns: The Home Front

Accommodationally challenged after a disastrous foreign trip in 2007, CJ Stone was forced to take refuge with his parents. It was the first time he’d lived with them since his teens, and he was surprised to find himself in a war zone. Following are CJ’s bulletins from the front line in the eternal war of age and sex.

2. A Surprise Attack

It was about 8.00 in the morning when Mum came down the stairs. Dad was late. But there was an extra twinkle in her eye. You could see she was relishing the morning’s adventures.

She said, “He’s in for a surprise when he gets up this morning. I’m going to make him change his own bed,” and she let out a throaty chuckle, rubbing her hands with glee.

She’d obviously been planning it.

“I’m going to say, ‘When I made those marriage vows I don’t remember promising to make your bed for you.’ He’ll hate it. No matter how many times I show him how to change the duvet cover he always gets himself into a knot.”

This must have been a Tuesday or a Sunday. All the other days are already occupied by Dad’s impenetrable defensive routines.

Monday and Friday it’s golf. Wednesday it’s bowls. Thursday he makes his wine. Saturday it’s the shopping. Monday afternoon he goes to the bank to collect cash from his account. Always from the bank, never from a cash-machine. Always the same amount.

The night before golf he goes to bed early – at ten o’clock rather than his customary 10.15 – but not before he’s made all his preparations. The car has to be loaded with his electric trolley and his golf bag, and the car put away. This is usually done in the afternoon, which puts the car out off commission for the rest of the day. He doesn’t like to leave the car on the drive or go anywhere in case someone notices the clubs glinting temptingly in the back, so he tucks it up neatly in the garage instead.

Then, just before he goes to bed, he lays out his flask, his gloves, his mobile phone, and a banana. I always know it’s golf day when I see this enigmatic assemblage in a little bundle on the kitchen table, like some sort of a surrealistic commentary on the meaning of existence.

Why a banana? Why anything?

It’s a kind of warning to the rest of us, like one of those triangular road signs indicating hazards ahead. “Warning!” it says. “Routine in Progress. Move Carefully. Do Not Distract Golfer From His Arrangements.”

In the morning, he gets up at precisely 7.15, gets dressed, comes downstairs and makes himself a cup of coffee while filling the flask with boiling water; after which he goes back upstairs to clean his teeth and collect his e-mails.

I think this is what describes my Dad best. Not the routines. We all have our routines. It’s that hot water in the flask while he gets on with the rest of his business – not wasting a moment of his precious morning – so that the coffee later in the day, on the green, or wherever it is he drinks it, will be at the optimum temperature when required.

This is both my Dad’s genius and his weakness. He plans everything like a military campaign. Meticulous down to the last detail, calculated and precise, you know that he’s worked this all out in his head years ago, each move being timed and slotted in with an exact formula, like forward planning in a battle strategy.

The problem is that once he’s set these plans in motion it takes an almost supernatural effort to break him out of them again.

Take breakfast for instance. Breakfast on non-golf days takes place at 9.15. It consists of cornflakes, tomato juice, and a handful of pills, both medical and dietary. It’s at this point that he’ll watch one of his tapes: a cowboy movie with John Wayne, say, with lots of shooting and shouting, the volume turned up to some unbearable level (he’s quite deaf these days) or some creaking 1950s stop-gap animation movie which Dad still thinks is the height of cinematic sophistication.

This takes place in the kitchen. But you have to be very careful if you walk in on him. He’s in such a state of concentrated abandon – completely lost in this other world – that he physically jumps with surprise, like he’s forgotten your very existence. He IS John Wayne at this moment, the tough guy with the heart of gold, growling out some laconic, pithy commentary while he shoots down all the bad guys in a blaze of guns and glory.

This is where Mum can launch a surprise attack. She has her own routines, of course, but she’s much more adaptable, much more open to change. So while Dad plans his day like a military campaign, she uses guerilla tactics to undermine him, ambushing him in the midst of his drill like a rebel army sweeping down from the hills.

Hence the bed-changing arrangements today. Hence the look of mischief on her face.

“Eddy,” she says, walking in on him even while John Wayne is engaged in a standing battle with the man with the scarred face, “I want you to change your bedding this morning.” And she goes into the well practised routine about what she did and didn’t promise in her wedding vows.

Dad, meanwhile, is completely surprised, completely flummoxed, unable to resist or argue or even to think of anything to reply.

What would John Wayne have said?

Something strong and clever, no doubt, something menacing, grinding his jaw and looking the other guy straight in the eye while he goes for his gun. But that tough guy has nothing on our Mum.

The best our Dad can come up with is, “can’t I watch my movie first?”

But, of course, she’s completely ruined it for him now.

Later on I see him, red-in-the-face and flushed to his roots, his hair all awry, after struggling with the duvet cover for half-an-hour, a look of defeat in his eye.

“Mary,” he squeaks despairingly, “I can’t get the cover over. Can you help me?”

And she tuts and takes it off him, bundling on the duvet-cover with quick efficiency while casting me a glance that speaks of triumph.

Read more here .

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