Day the Leader Died

The Day the Leader Died

A stone’s throw from the house and George Stringer turned around and went back. Had he left the gas on, the fridge door ajar, the upstairs’ window open? He could never throw off this lurking fear of disaster waiting to occur the instant he departed. A premonition of extinction following on from separation, he faintly recognised the underlying anxiety symptoms but couldn’t change old habits. After a careful check, he found all in order and started out again. He had enough time, about half an hour, to walk to the station. Good to take regular exercise, the doctor told him, but not to overdo it. A perfect spring day in May, he snapped along briskly, shadows lifting off the pavements in bright sunlight. People looked contented, one or two familiar faces, heads nodding as they passed by. Checking his watch, he decided there was no need to change the walking pace. Shouldn’t have wasted time, though, returning to the house. When he was some four hundred yards from the station, he began to trot, arriving breathless three minutes before the train was due.

Third in the queue at the ticket office, he held a twenty pound note in one hand, his senior citizen’s card in the other. A foreign lady with limited English was having difficulty explaining to the clerk about her travel requirements. The bored official behind the glass screen waited impatiently for the woman to state her precise requirements. Eventually, she slid some money into the tray, the clerk on the other side turning the table and then giving it another spin with ticket and change included. George heard the swelling sound of a train pulling into the platform. On time, it was the one he’d hoped to catch, missing it meaning an hour’s wait. He breathed out noisily.

“You go next, I’m in no hurry,” the man in front said.

“Thanks a lot,” he replied. “Day-return, London, please,” he said to the clerk.

The ticket clenched between his teeth, fingers gripping loose change, a carrier bag containing a book and some sandwiches in the other hand, he dashed for the train. Still waiting but with the doors closed he expected it to draw away. Instead, when a guard opened a door for him, he stumbled in. He felt grateful to the fellow as the train pulled out of the station and he slumped into the first available seat.

A lady, about his own age and sitting opposite, smiled. He made a gasping sound, shaking his head from side to side in exasperation. She nodded, still smiling. A trickle of sweat running down his neck and when he stroked the hair on the back of his head it felt warm and extremely damp. He patted his face with a handkerchief, still sweating.  As the train picked up speed, the sensation of acceleration comforted him, a thumping inside his chest rhythmically uneven. Gazing out of the window, he caught a glimpse of glittering sea before the train entered a tunnel.

The coach rattled violently, cool air rushing through an open window taking his breath away. Old rolling stock, all the upholstery looked stained and worn, graffiti marking every carriage wall. Someone, a youth no doubt, had succeeded in scratching a message on the window. It read, “no dope, no hope”. George ran his fingernail across the lettering, thinking a special tool must have been used to make such deep incisions. The train emerged from the tunnel, sand dunes and sea on one side, high cliffs on the other. Breathing in and out steadily, feeling more relaxed, he read his book.

They clattered through miles of rural Kent, oast houses and thatched barns scattering the landscape, before pulling into a main-line junction. A few people got out and a few got on, plenty of vacant seats. The wait seemed interminable, the train silently still along the platform. Finally, a voice crackled over the tannoy, “All change, please. This train is terminating here. All change. Make sure you leave no possessions behind.”

“What the hell’s going on?” George said. The lady opposite began to collect her things together, apparently quite unperturbed. “Are you going to London?” he asked.

“Not today,” she said gently, smiling. He picked up his carrier bag and followed her out. The passengers, hardly more than a couple of dozen, waited listlessly on the platform. A rather scruffy railway official turned up. He wore a braided cap but that apart might well have been one of the cleaners. “There’s been a points failure further down the line,” he explained, wearily. “For how long?” George asked.  “About two hours, I think,” the man replied. “Two hours! Why didn’t they tell us before we got on?”  “I dunno,” he said.

They had to proceed to Platform 3 for the next train, which would stop at all stations before reaching London. The line of passengers trailed up a steep set of stairs, across a bridge and descended to an empty platform the other side, a further wait of fifteen minutes in store. When the train arrived, it proved to be even more ancient than the first one, rattling into the station like a huge bag of loose metal parts. It was already three-quarters full.

George found a spare seat in a single compartment near the guard’s van. Two other seats remained vacant until an elderly couple arrived. The man, supporting himself with walking sticks, was accompanied by a lady, who looked almost as frail. She asked if the places were free. A West Indian woman leaped to her feet and moved position so that the incomers could sit side by side.

“Come on, darlin’,” she ordered him, “this way.” Putting an arm around the invalid’s shoulders, she manoeuvred the gentleman into position. They thanked her. “Weren’t nothin’,” she said. “I’m forty-three and still pretty young. You gotta ‘elp the old folk, haven’t you.”

“We’re not that old,” the elderly lady said grimly. She stared in front of her, watery eyes, deep creases down the side of her face, much loose skin beneath the chin. Their tweedy clothes hung about the old pair like the cerements of the dead, apparel waiting final interment with the corpses.

“You gotta ‘elp the old folk,” the Jamaican lady repeated, turning her head and nodding at each one in turn inside the carriage. Her voice rich and throaty, she wore dark glasses that gave her face both anonymity and authority. A row of dark beads hung down a purple jumper, revealed by an open, very worn black topcoat. The ebony skin, the crimped inky hair with the odd grey streak, the large rings and bracelets on her fingers and wrists created a smouldering presence. The coolest thing about her was her gleaming white teeth.

“The trouble today,” she now announced, “is that the young people don’t do nutthin’ for the old folk. I was always taught to respect my mum and dad. They don’t anymore, do they?” George nodded, convinced the eyes behind the sunglasses were staring directly at him. “I’ve always looked after my old dad but he’s gone back to Jamaica. If he was still here I’d be taking care of ‘im. Young people should. I’m forty-three but I can still ‘elp the old.”

Apart from a shuffling of shoulders and an almost imperceptible tremor of lips and twitching of cheek muscles here and there, no one in the carriage made further response. The invalid looked the most impassive, his very wide mouth with thin pink lips fixed in a kind of smile, except he wasn’t smiling. He wore a sporting cap, pulled well down across his forehead, just above a pair of spectacles with thick lenses. Gnarled and arthritic, he sat very still, clutching the sticks between his knees. His trousers were pulled up high and not far short of his armpits, held there by a strong pair of braces. The drama of the
one-sided conversation ending, a somnolent silence took over, the train’s lullaby rocking everyone to drowsiness. 

*****

Despite all the delays, by the time George Stringer arrived in London he still had over an hour to spare before his appointment at the hospital. He decided to visit the National Gallery, a habit he’d formed whenever coming up to town, and always to look at the same picture, Georges-Pierre Seurat’s Bathing at Asnieres. Coming out of Charing Cross Station, he made straight for Trafalgar Square.

On the way, his eye caught a newspaper placard with three words in large letters on display. He read John Smith Dead and couldn’t help thinking of his school days, about a friend with the same name, the most familiar one in the country. The last word, too, was one of the most common in the English language. Later, he decided, he would buy a ‘paper and read about it.

The airless gallery rooms were full of visitors as he hurried through. When he came to the Seurat, the crowds had thinned. He stood and stared at the painting for about ten minutes and then left. Twenty-five years had passed since his son’s death. At the time, he’d grieved heavily but now had to make an effort to recall what he’d once felt. That was the point about coming to see Bathing at Asieres, to keep the boy’s memory alive. It was easy to be shocked and saddened by someone in the public eye dying. More difficult to mourn for your own kith and kin as the years rolled by.

The red-haired boy in Seurat’s picture looked about fifteen years old, the same age as……..   It had been his idea to give him a bike for his birthday. The accident happened on the way to school. George’s wife, who had not approved of such a present, worried about the traffic, never forgave him. She herself died not long afterwards. One daughter remained, now living in Australia. George had spent a few weeks with her last winter, enjoying a sunny spell on the other side of the globe.

The boy in the picture looked so thoughtful, the weight of youthful concerns heavy on his bowed shoulders. Yet he appeared determined, the future his, the portrait keenly truthful. If only George could meet Seurat and ask how he came to know things that were too deep for ordinary mortals to fathom. The painter had created life in its daily flux of common appearance. The boy in the frame lived on and looked remarkably like his son, that red hair, the blade-like nose, a sullen adolescent, the whole posture exactly right

Out in the street again, a lovely day in May, he watched the people hurrying by. Again, he saw the fatal news headlines and bought a newspaper. Many others must have done the same and everyone by now would know. Why, then, did they carry on as if nothing has happened? What are they all rushing about for? Why no mourning?  Why no protests?  There it was, the writing on the wall, and no one took any notice.

*****

He arrived well in time for his appointment and didn’t have to wait long. If he hadn’t collapsed, in the first place, on a London bus, he wouldn’t have had to travel all this way. The hospital they’d taken him to insisted, after discharge, that he return for further checks. Really, they were very nice and he trusted them. This time he got a good report, the specialist saying it was unlikely that he’d need a by-pass. Just watch the diet and take plenty of exercise, that’s all.

A little later, in Soho Square, in the gardens, he sat on a park bench to eat his sandwiches. A group of winos sat on the grass, a bottle wrapped in brown paper passed around, each taking a swig in turn. A young woman with them, she had so much metal inserted into her scalp, lips, nose and ears a strong magnet might easily have forcibly dragged her out from the throng. She didn’t look well. None of them did yet they talked animatedly, like friends sharing the intimate knowledge of arcane matters.

George liked the little garden, didn’t even mind the tramps, who did him no harm. It was comforting to be among people who appeared to be in no hurry to go anywhere, just relax. Even the traffic seemed distant in this quiet oasis right at the heart of busy London. As pigeons jerked around, inches from his feet, he threw them a few crumbs. His lunch eaten, he closed his eyes, lifting his head to feel the warm sun against his face. When he looked again across the patch of grass, the winos had left. The Colley Cibber statue now in view, it reminded him that an artistic colony once gathered here. Then the idea came to him that he might go to the theatre.

Having checked his newspaper, he saw that there was a matinee show at a theatre nearby. He managed to purchase a cheap concessionary ticket and get in just before the play began. A seat in the stalls gave him an excellent view of the stage and the actors. During the interval, a handsome woman beside him, wearing a bright red silk scarf around her neck, asked if he were enjoying the performance. Very much, he told her. She then confided that this was her third visit because she so much admired the male lead. After writing to him, he’d sent her a signed postcard, which she kept at home, on the mantelpiece.

The play was really very good. A drama based on a tale by the writer,  Turgenev, it told a simple but sad story of the family lives of upper class Russians living in the nineteenth century. The unfulfilled desires of even the most mighty and richest in society were shown to be pitifully human and, therefore, quite recognisable by poor mortals like George Stringer. He left the theatre feeling very contented, having thoroughly enjoyed the drama. Talking to the handsome lady had been nice, too.

*****

At the main line terminus, he only had a few minutes to wait before catching the train home. Then he noticed a group of people staring at the electronic notice board. A message flashed on and off saying there had been a points failure. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Another bloody points failure! The weather perfect, what the hell was going on! No one else seemed the least put out, unlike him all hardened travellers. Instead, everyone waited and watched.  Soon, a message on screen told them to go to London Bridge.

One stop up the line, they arrived there shortly, plenty of trains. At London Bridge, confusion reigned, hundreds of passengers in search of direction. No announcements, no officials around to ask, the crowds swelled first in one direction, then in another, George propelled along with the mob. Finally, when it turned out that the coastal train would leave from Platform 8, a silent and hurrying procession took itself off in the general direction.

A packed platform, passengers waiting three deep, an empty train slowly pulled in. George, finding himself being buffeted forward, managed to get in and take a seat. Catching the eye of another passenger sitting opposite, he said, “I thank God I don’t have to do this journey every day.” The gentleman, a commuter type with a small black travelling case, murmured that it could be very tiresome. Then he added, “Perhaps we shouldn’t complain about trivial matters, today of all days,” before reading his evening newspaper.

George took the man’s comment as a mild form of rebuke, but didn’t mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the open pages of the commuter’s ‘paper displaying a large, recent photograph of the political leader who had died so suddenly that very morning. Then, observing the face of the reader, he was startled into realising that his features were remarkably similar to the picture of the deceased leader of Her Majesty’s opposition in Parliament.  The same pale skin, dimple cheeks, moon-shaped spectacles, owlish face, high domed forehead, perhaps the gentleman belonged to the identical political party.

Left to his own meandering reflections, he looked out of the window as the train picked up speed, taking him home. Soon green fields, rows of trees and little running streams came into view. George loved the light evenings, the prospects of more to come and lots of fine summer weather. He was doing well, they’d told him at the hospital. He felt very contented and glad to be alive. The day had gone well, for him.
 
 
 
 
 

Zipped

Advice to Men:
Button Up.

Recently, I bought a pair of lightweight trousers from the clothes’ section of a large supermarket for a paltry ten pounds. They were very likely made in China or Pakistan and I wondered how they could be sold so cheaply. Possibly, the store took 33%, the manufacturer ditto, the transporters the same, leaving the workers who made the garment with what was left, probably about tuppence.

If at first I felt a measure of guilt at being part of the exploiting process it soon evaporated once I tried them on and decided I’d made a bargain. The previous lightweight pair I’d bought cost nearly four times as much and looked only half as good.  What delighted me most was that the flies were fastened by buttons, not a zip. Indeed, there were four stout buttons that secured the opening very nicely and in addition some pretty twine that could be tied to a neat bow at the top, a belt optional.

I go back a long way, to a time when buttons along the flies were the normal, no danger then of boys being rushed off to the local hospital’s A & E department because of tender flesh becoming enmeshed in zipper jaws. It may be nostalgia for a lost childhood that makes me appreciate how a slow fastening or unfastening at the openings is preferable to the quick zip up and down. In my lifetime, things have speeded up incredibly and everyone now rushes around at breakneck speed. For example, I had a friend, Reggie, whose dad owned a horse and cart and delivered to local shops. On an average day, the vehicle covered fifteen miles and unloaded goods weighing little more than two or three hundred weight at most. Compare that with the monsters that thunder along our roads day and night and do hundreds of miles. Everyone’s in a hurry. One minute you’re twenty and the next, zip, you’re sixty-five.

Novels once depicted seduction scenes tenderly as couples quietly unbuttoned.  Now lovemaking is a quick zip, often described and enacted brutally. That’s sex, and it’s over. Zip, find someone else. Zip, that’s over, too. Zip, you’re dead.

The zipper was invented in the U.S.A. in the nineteenth century but could not be used on clothes until a tab at the top enabled it to be fastened firmly. The device made its universal debut post-1945 and after the first atom bomb had been dropped. Europeans soon incorporated it into their own tongue, called a zip fastener in the U.K., a Reissverschluss in German, a cerniera-lungo in Italian and a fermeture-éclair in French but, interestingly, the Arab world took longer to catch on, their word rarer and difficult for some of us to pronounce.

Essentially part of the nuclear age, the zipper closes down rather than opens up a new period of history.  A masculine symbol, the man stands legs apart, thumbs inside his belt, the silver zip on his jeans there for all to see, no evidence of buttons and braces.  A sign of power, it matters not who is wearing the trousers. Men and women are equal, provided the female imitates the male and everyone flies the flag of feminism. Soon, we will all have shaven heads, tattooed bodies and zips in our noses.

Since we have discovered to zip up our clothes we have also learned to do the same to the human body. Zip, open the chest and put in a new heart. Zip, rip out your bowels and replace them with plastic tubes. Zip, crack open the head and insert a new brain.  Zip, get cloned and live forever.

The buttons of a more leisurely past began to come loose as the skills of using needle and thread declined. Once people become accustomed to rely more on machinery than on the use of their hands, they easily turn into victims of the manipulators.  Western leaders in the twentieth century confronted the public with flies undone, everything exposed. Unable to stitch things together in peace they tore people apart in wars. Then came the devastation of victory followed by a standoff where it was more important to look rather than be tough. Zip, you wanna fight me, comrade?  Zip, my bombs are bigger than yours. Zip, get your tanks off my lawn, or else.  When the Soviets’ trousers fell down they decided they, too, had to have zip fasteners, with a little help from the financial markets.  Soon, everyone started to look good and prosperous, with zips on pockets, zips on pullovers, zips on frocks. We were urged to pull up our socks, with zips, of course. Tragically, not everyone wanted to.

In the world of Islam, they don’t go in for zip fasteners. The Qur’an insists on modesty in dress. You must not show off or accentuate your physical shape, hence no zips. Instead, the men wear long flowing robes called thobes and sometimes baggy pants, held up by belts, perhaps. These were the garments worn in Arab countries, a style of dress than went back hundreds of years and has persisted through to modern times, apart from  a significant number of poor folk who left their homes and migrated westerly, to more prosperous lands. Some, mainly the men, particularly young men, began to dress like the indigenous inhabitants, but they did not forget the lands of their forefathers and the peoples left behind.

Really, they didn’t much like western dress, especially that of women, and although they wore zips like everyone else, slowly their minds zipped up as well.  Everyone in such apparel, including themselves, should be destroyed, they decided. Zip, the bombs went off, killing men, women, children, Muslims, Christians, atheists and those of no address, or redress.  An ancient culture in turmoil confronting a flourishing but newer, albeit decadent one, sees suicide as the only solution. It used not to be like this.

It’s become a sad fact in the West that only the old remember the past.  It wasn’t better then, of course, and even if it was you can’t go back. In that we have no choice but in other respects we do. Somehow, the idea has become prevalent that for our ancestors life was short, nasty and mainly brutish.  We would do better, however, to feel the cloth not measure the length if we wish to know how people coped in the past. The idea that everyone was oppressed, miserable and exploited is a particularly distorted version that derives largely from those in the present who feel unhappy with their current lot and possibly want modernity to hand them out on a plate an easy life.

If we express the way we feel about ourselves and others in the style of attire we wear, perhaps we should begin to wrap ourselves round with clothes that suppose delicacy, tenderness, privacy and intimacy are the norms and not cut loose in order to let everything hang out.  The zip, like convenience food, lacks proper taste; it opens and shuts with an awful finality, quite exclusive of anything subtle. 

Was not always thus. Indeed, where now the ubiquitous zip rules supreme there was once far greater variety. The lederhosen of the Bavarian hunting fraternity, for example, their knickerbockers were made of stout leather kept up by buttons, made of rough-hewn Elkhorn, leather braces ditto, what they call suspenders in the USA.  Or consider the kilt which folds around the legs in swathes of pleated cloth, not even a button required, just a belt or buckle round the waist.  As for buttons themselves, they come in all shapes and design, the Pearly King’s costume a good example, and can be made of many kinds of exquisite material.  A row of pretty buttons or bows on a lady’s dress can look much more alluring than broad stretches of exposed flesh. Once upon a time soldiers would array their tunics with a display of the most gloriously shaped and coloured buttons as a sign of their manliness and charm. Possibly the Victorians gave buttons a bad name; their tight-fitting jackets from waist to neck are now seen as a sign that they were too buttoned-up, a state diagnosed as being without spontaneity and dash.

The Victorians were not all that bad but have suffered a rather bad press. For example, we forget they favoured good manners. This meant people were polite to one another and courteous in relationships. It is said they were hypocrites, not practising what they preached, or rather hiding from sight many of their darker practices. Not like us who go zip and seal ourselves off so completely we can’t even pass the time of day with each other. Zip, lonely inside our cars we race around the country, encased within little boxes. Same at home, becoming more like Plato’s cave, as we stare constantly at flickering pictures on the walls. Zip, you are free to do and be what you like and I am free to hate you for it.  Who lives next door? No idea and don’t want to know. What do we think of each other?  Zip, “All politicians are out to feather their own nests.”  Zip, life is unfair because we are oppressed, abused, discriminated against, cheated and not told the truth. Zip, we all want to be famous and rich and then enjoy a state of schadenfreude when those who enduring this unhappy state become exposed as cheats and liars.

Can we, then, really put down all the ills of society to the zip fastener?  Absolutely. No matter if, like me, you have arthritic fingers and find it time-consuming to button up at the start of day. Carefully push the button on the shirt or trousers into its buttonhole, knowing that fresh air circulates between the gaps, and you are fit to face the world. Say “Good Morning,” to your neighbour when you meet him along the street, even if he is wearing cufflinks. With a button on your cap, raise the headgear to his lady wife as she smiles upon you. Make sure that three buttons are required to fasten your jacket but leave the top one undone.  Above all, insist that your tailor places buttons along the flies and keep them well secure, except in an emergency.  By all means, use a belt or braces and when you see a pretty button adorning a lady’s blouse always compliment her. As for zippers, leave them to be used to fasten the lips of those who say and do ugly things.

Conquering Heroes

CONQUERING HEROES AT TABLE

In these days of much junketing among VIPs at summit conferences, readers might be amused to read what one writer thought about such a gathering taking place in the early months of 1944. The Italian novelist Curzio Malaparte, (born Kurt Suchert), narrates how, as liaison officer operating between the Italian Liberation Corp and the Allied Supreme Command, he was invited to dine with a group of American Generals and senior officers. Malaparte in his early days supported the fascist regime in Italy, then went to live and write in Paris and was confined in prison for five years by the regime on his return home.  Here, a meal is prepared at the old palace in Naples once occupied by the Duke of Toledo and is given in honour of the lady commander of the WACs, recently arrived from the USA.  One has to bear in mind that this meal was taking place while American soldiers were fighting and dying on Monte Cassino. It might be considered bad taste for Malaparte to sound so snobbish at such a time.

Our conversation was interrupted by the sudden presence of waiters dressed in full livery and carrying huge, solid silver trays. First we ate creamy carrot soup, with chlorine tablets and Vitamin D added. The main course arrived, a disgusting dish of slices of purple pig meat called SPAM, the pride of Chicago slaughterhouses, which had been piled on top of a heap of boiled polenta. I recognised the breeding of the waiters, old hands at this kind of work, more by the look of disgust on their faces than by the way they displayed themselves in blue livery with red lapels. I have never seen such distinct signs of disdain quite like theirs. They conveyed the highest, oldest, most obsequious and freely bestowed expressions of scorn by Neapolitan servants long accustomed to kow-towing to uncultivated foreign potentates.

A people that has an old and noble tradition of service, and much experience of hunger, cannot respect masters who lack refined taste and civilised manners. There’s nothing more humiliating for a servant class than to be governed by those who have scant discernment for the fine things of life and whose appetites are gross and crude. Of the many foreigners who have come to rule in Naples, the most acute memories are preserved for the Frenchmen, Robert d’Anjou and Joachim Murat. The first knew what fine wines went with choice sauces and the second could mount and dismount from a horse elegantly, and not just because it had an English saddle. What is the point of crossing the seas to win a war, place the laurel on the victor’s brow, and not know how to dine at table? What kind of heroes were these Americans who ate food only fit for chickens in the farmyard?

Fried spam and boiled polenta, displayed on the finest chinaware and delivered on solid silver trays, were brought in by waiters with noses in the air as if they’d been ordered to serve up Medusa’s head. The reddish, violet look of the fried spam had all the signs of rotting meat left out in the sun. The wan, yellow appearance of the polenta, cooked to a mushy heap, resembled the swollen goitre of a chicken whose neck had just been rung. Around the walls of the hall hung gilded Murano mirrors and ancient Sicilian tapestries. This noble dining room of the Duke of Toledo, with its antique furniture and golden-framed portraits of Spanish monarchs, Luca Giordano’s “Triumph of Venus” painted on the ceiling, now celebrated a meal in honour of Mrs Flat, commander-in-chief of the Fifth Army’s WACs.  Strangely, the atmosphere in the palace had become completely coloured by the violet light suffused from the spam and polenta, like the dead reflections given off by the moon. The old honour and glory of the House of Toledo had never known such mortification.

In this room others had celebrated the “triumphs” of the noble families of Aragon and Angevin, feasting in honour of Charles VIII of France and Frederick of Aragon. It had been customary for there to be much junketing, dancing and tournaments of courtly love before the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was to fade away sweetly in the opaque light of a bleak dawn. Now, as the waiters served the honoured guests from silver trays and the awful royal feast began, I fixed my eyes on them, fascinated by the utter look of disgust and disdain in their faces. These servers, attired in the livery of the House of Toledo, knew me and gave me a special, knowing smile. I was the only Italian sitting at table and I was the only one who could fully understand and divine the humiliation of the lackeys having to serve fried spam and boiled polenta!  Their disgust was displayed in the manner by which their white-gloved hands moved in placing the plates on the table.

Translated by Jack Dale from the novel, La Pelle (The Skin) by Curzio Malaparte.

The Happy Garden State

The Happy Garden State

The Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find.

Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other Worlds and other Seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.  

From Andrew Marvel’s poem “The Garden”

The year 1979, when Mrs Thatcher became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, turned out to be a momentous time also for me. I moved house and job and became divorced. Feeling the need for renewal I decided to go Vegetarian. The display of gory chunks of animal anatomies on show in supermarkets, the faint aroma of blood hanging around in butchers’ shops, the occasional glimpses of the chopped-up remains of sheep and pigs in friends’ freezer compartments had finally become too distressing for me in my tender condition. Also, before I moved, I lived near an abattoir and occasionally saw reluctant sheep being dragged to their doom.

I like food and even enjoy a spot of cooking. To be frank about my conversion, I never entirely gave up meat or fish and the truth is that then and now I can eat such fare without much of a conscience about the processes of production that caused the meal to arrive on my plate. Could I personally kill an animal to eat it?  Yes, if I had to, but I admit I prefer others to do that rather nasty job.

What going veg meant for me was trying out all kinds of non-meat dishes I’d never eaten before. This made me much more considerate of animal welfare. If I eat eggs now I have to know that they come from chickens given the freedom to roam around the farm. I never eat farmed fish and choose meat cut from animals reared humanely and without drugs. In fact, nowadays, I eat very little fish or meat at all.

When I delved into the literature concerning the diet and cooking of Vegans and Vegetarians I was amazed to discover so much variety. That beans were pulses and their variety legion was news to me. If I’d always enjoyed spices and sauces I was now introduced to meat-free foreign riches never dreamed of in my former incarnation. The linguistic pot-pourri was equally flavoured and sensual, words like creamy, crunchy, pungent, penetrating, piquant and even aphrodisiac abounded in cookbook recipes. Above all, I found I could survive quite well as a Veggie.

The American writer Henry Thoreau wrote about how to live the simple life in his splendid book Walden. He describes how a farmer said to him, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely for it furnishes nothing to make bones with.” Thoreau noted that the man was “walking all the time he talks behind his oxen, which with vegetable-made bones jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.”  For my own part, I took particular pleasure from the lost meals of childhood, like macaroni cheese and porridge. Wholemeal bread and brown long-grain-rice suited my bodily functions admirable. Experimenting, I felt I was thriving.

Most of the food I cooked and ate tasted all right but wasn’t much to look at. Nearly all meals tended to turn out as undistinguished mush that might have been eaten with a single spoon out of an all-purpose porringer. Above all, the meals didn’t come cheap as you might expect from a kind of peasant diet. Many recipes involved buying quite
pricey ingredients, especially herbs and spices, which might be used once only and then left to go mouldy in the larder. And nearly every meal resulted in many pans and dishes lying piled up in the sink.

The big test would come, I knew, when my sons visited. At that stage, two were at university and two about to leave school and follow suit. The eldest, Martin, became intrigued, even mildly enthusiastic at my conversion; two stayed neutral; the youngest, Peter, remained definitely hostile, his favourite repast hamburger and chips. Nearly twenty-five years later, Peter, his wife and two small children are all Vegetarian and claim they always will be.

I believe I impressed him and the others at the time with a few culinary surprises. For example, they loved the savoury-filled pancakes and artichoke flan, gobbled up the wholemeal pizzas and were delighted with Portuguese eggs and lentil rissoles. The one unmitigated disaster was marrow pudding, the delicious smells inviting them into the kitchen only to discover a soggy dish with no particular taste.

My sons now live in various countries across the world and I see them and their children infrequently. In the run of time, two became Vegetarian but now only Peter has kept to the diet. When they and their families came for the big Christmas feasts, some would eat the traditional fowl others nut-roast, tolerance shown all round. I admire Peter for sticking to what he believes is right but I couldn’t follow his example. What he and his family eat is reasonably balanced in terms of protein and healthy food. God knows, we’ve seen some pretty ghastly examples of malpractice in the rearing and butchering of animals in recent years, public health suffering as a result. For myself, occasionally I like eating fish and some varieties of meat.

Until and unless animals do what they did in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and parade with their own slogans and policies, I cannot bring myself to believe that they have any rights. To ill-treat dumb creatures will always leave a stain on the human character and it is right that we should enact laws to protect them. To rear and then slaughter animals for human consumption is not a crime, however. Moreover, of all the world’s major religions hardly any prohibit it. It is hard to conceive of a society where animal husbandry does not exist If it did disappear how many farm animals and species could continue to go on living among us?

The real issues reside in the area of consciousness, or philosophy, even. In one sense, the vegetarians are on the side of the angels, refusing to kill or cause suffering in order to eat. On the other hand, Mr Hitler was a vegetarian, not that that proves much. The point being made here is that what you think, or don’t think, can affect what you eat. The majority of people nowadays buy their food from supermarkets. Possibly many of them perambulate with large trolleys along the aisles of the stores piling up the goods indiscriminately. Everything neatly packaged, everything has a similarity, some wrapped pieces of chicken not looking all that different from a micro-wave oven to cook them in. The methods of production take place well out of sight of customers.

For quite a lot of children, the concept of living creatures involved in the process is actually difficult for them to grasp but a good few people, many of them young, have become outraged at the way we treat animals. As a result, life styles have changed and political action has followed.

A few years ago, political rallies were organised at the Port of Dover, where I live, as a form of protest against the transporting of livestock from England to the Continent in cattle trucks, resulting in much suffering on the part of the poor beasts. In between bouts of slogan shouting and banner waving, I succeeded in speaking to one or two of the protesters.

Generally, I found them civilised and highly articulate. One young anarchist tried to persuade me that shipping sheep abroad was related to capitalist exploitation, the police and the judges involved in the plot. I soon shook him off and listened to other, more reasoned arguments concerning animal welfare. With this I readily sympathised but when a young woman informed me that the treatment of animals was equivalent to the Holocaust I parted company.

If we argue that what we eat is very much a matter of chacun a son gout this it is not to deny that there will always be social, economic, political and moral questions involved in that choice. The culture of our particular environment, especially the culture of the early years of our upbringing, very much determines our daily diet. In former times, it was all much simpler. For example, the shops now offer us “organic” food. In my childhood, a good few years back, I confess, all food was grown organically. The industrialisation of farming began long ago but has accelerated phenomenally in the last fifty years with chemical fertilisation, not to speak of current methods like genetically modified crops. It behoves all of us to think about what we eat, but not think too much, possibly.

I quoted a few lines from Andrew Marvell’s poem “The Garden” at the top of the page. It comes from wonderfully rich versifying, the whole poem celebrating a kind of paradisical world of fruitful and vegetable plenitude. In such a garden we live happily forever, that idea also strong in much medieval religious literature. For myself, I’ve always had difficulty in envisaging a heavenly state. I mean, what do you do all day if, like me, you’re not much of a gardener? I note particularly that the poet speaks of “annihilating all that’s made to a green thought in a green shade.”

I can’t help wondering if that is what we do when we seek perfection – ie destroy everything except the one perfect ideal condition. The trouble is that if you do that you might not only sweep away injustice but also that very variety and freedom of choice that is somehow linked to our very imperfect human condition.

It is partly because I know a little of my own imperfections that I shall continue to eat food derived from living animals. I share the concern for animal welfare of those who choose not to eat any meat or fish at all but I somehow obstinately feel that I continue to live in the real world and that they don’t. 

Four for Christmas

Once More into the Breach

Christmas is always a battle, especially if you live alone and have four sons coming to stay. It seems I’ve only just put away last year’s decorations but in a few weeks’ time up they’ll go again. There’s all the tinsel and two tufted birds to go on the tree, one a chaffinch, the other a robin, both predating the eldest boy, now twenty-seven. The youngest is nineteen, the other two in between. They will all turn up sometime on Christmas Eve, stay for a week and then join their mother and her new bloke for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Since the separation and divorce, they have joined me for this major festivity every year.

It’s odd, really, my having sired four offspring, for I am by nature an isolate and perhaps should never have married in the first place. Taking Dr Johnson’s advice, I have not repeated the error, instead remained single and have recently retired from full-time employment.

The boys were still children when I first had them alone for Christmas and it amazed me how well it all went. Despite the hard work on the day itself, every year was a success and they enjoyed the repeats. The tough bit has always been the preparation, especially choice of presents. Each boy had at least twelve small items in his stocking and then four or five more substantial ones under the tree, to be opened after attendance at church. They tucked into the feast, traditional fare, with gusto and later played games, including cards, with me. In the evening, we’d watch a spot of Telly, usually a film.

Because they were memorable and quite uncomplicated times, all four still come, possibly in the hope of prolonging their childhood happiness. Nowadays, it’s less simple, despite my having convinced them that the stocking ritual can go. There are still plenty of presents under the tree but the major gift is now a personal cheque and much welcomed since three are impecunious students, only the eldest in full-time, paid employment. Even he likes being given a cheque, despite earning a good salary.

Working and living in London, with his current girl friend, he spends every penny he earns on having what he describes as a good time. It pleases me that they still come, possibly turning up with more separate selves than was the case in their innocent childhoods. Each his own man, they have become more than my equals.

If their arriving together separately is an oxymoron, they actually came with excess baggage last year. The eldest brought his partner, Annie, and a pet cat, which left a mess for me to clear up on Christmas morning. It wasn’t the only mess. Before very long, personal belongings were strewn all over the house. When I wander into the bedroom they occupy, to open windows and air the place, I have to tread very carefully for fear of stamping on possessions tipped carelessly out of suitcases.

In the bathroom, toiletries are lined up on every flat surface, like dandified soldiers in some exotic war. An array of sinuously shaped bottles and cans containing every kind of unguent, cream and scented liquid imaginable surround my solitary shaving bowl. As the days pass, I trail through the house collecting their refuse, scattered in the most unlikely places: apple cores and tangerine skins under the bed, even an empty French letter packet. Annie drinks coffee all day, half full cups left all over the house, one I found on top of the lavatory cistern. She chews chocolates non-stop, the wrappers let fall where they will. The box, with the lid off, bites taken out of a few in the collection, looks as if it has been rifled by a mouse.

The other boys enjoy Annie’s company and are sorry when both leave after Boxing Day to spend a few days in Paris, the cat remaining in my care. Son No 2 will also leave a day later, to visit his girl friend in Surrey. I haven’t met her but the others have, and don’t approve. They say she’s skinny – they mean flat-chested – but what they most dislike is her “posh” voice, preferring Essex glottal stops to RP English. Son No 3 told me that he has a girl friend, Meg, and she will also be visiting and staying, after Boxing Day. Like him, she’s a second year medical student.

She comes, is plump, rather quiet and retiring. In fact, although she stayed for three days, I didn’t see much of her or him, since they disappeared into any vacant room or place whenever they could get away from the rest of us. Finally, son No 4 announces that his girl, Becky, will turn up for lunch during the week. She’s still at school, in her final year and will become an undergraduate, like him in the autumn. This will be the first time I’ve seen her but have heard good things from the others, that she’s direct, lively and “original”.

When we meet, I am surprised to discover a shy schoolgirl who looks and acts rather like my own youngest offspring. They both have short, cropped and dyed hair. He wears an ear-ring, she has one like it plugged into her nose. The girl also wears big boots, laced well up to the ankles. This youngest lad plays the guitar rather well and has been “punk” for a few weeks, so their dress style strikes me as fairly normal. They have become vegetarian, along with Meg, so I prepare them a nut roast for lunch, a great success.

The cat owners return from Paris, mollifying me with a bottle of brandy for looking after the cat. Everyone seems to get on fine, a good time had by all. When they leave, I can’t say I am too sorry. I love it while they’re with me, a great festive atmosphere, but by myself I can listen to the music I like, read quietly and generally relax without having to think about the needs of the hordes. And that was last year.

The headache of buying presents and organising everything for their arrival is once more upon me. I always leave everything to the last minute but spend weeks worrying fruitlessly about how I am going to do it all. This time round, the eldest boy will not be here, for he’s gone to work in San Paulo, Brazil, having broken up with Annie. Son No 2 will be here with another girl called Marie. They are to marry next year. No 3 says he’ll arrive by himself, the youngest will bring Becky again. Let ‘em all come, provided they leave before epiphany. They can come when they like and do so on a fairly regular basis, and keep in touch at other times.

Son No 1 phoned me a few nights back, at 2 a.m., asking what he should do about sun burnt shoulders. Take an aspirin, I advised. I believe Christmas is special yet in the run up to it often wish it never happened. What is it going to be like when there are grandchildren! Only when it’s over do I fully appreciate its significance, but am glad it won’t happen again for at least twelve months.