Week 1.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

My New Year Resolution

My late wife Heather continually urged me to ‘count my many blessings’, quoting from a chorus that many years earlier she had used as a Methodist Sunday School teacher; ‘Count your blessings, count them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done’.

Looking back on the year that is drawing to a close I realize that, probably like many old people, I have in this blog and elsewhere, been much more ready to grumble and find fault with the customs and institutions of the 21st Century, than to be thankful for the many that have benefited me.

I shall however never cease to be grateful for television (including much-maligned daytime tv), for video tape recording, and for DVDs during the last two years of my wife’s life. She had been an avid reader and a great letter writer but progressive disability made her unable to do either. She could though, still watch and enjoy tv programmes. During the brief times that I had to be absent for essential shopping and so on, these made life tolerable for her.

Then again, I have been more than thankful for computers, printers and scanners! I had never touched a computer until I was 79 but have since taken to them, if not like a duck to water, at least like an elderly dog that late in life discovers that it enjoys a swim. In the ‘70s and ‘80s I wrote half a dozen books on domestic plumbing and drainage, first on an Olivetti portable and later on a Brother electronic typewriter (more sophisticated than a ‘manual’, but not very much!). When these books ran to a second edition, I had in each case virtually to rewrite the entire book. How much hard labour (and how many pints of Tippex correcting fluid!) would have been spared if I had then had the little lap-top on which I am typing these words.

At my electronic typewriter in the 1980s, with my plumbing books all around me!

I must not forget either how much being able to send and receive emails means to me. By means of email I can be in almost instant touch with my scattered family (including a grandson settled in Taiwan and another whose work takes him to the four corners of the globe!) Old age has made my hand-writing increasingly illegible and often means that my hand, holding a pen, resolutely refuses to obey the orders of my brain! Fortunately I can still use a keyboard with a measure of competence. Then there’s my digital camera and my mobile phone; other people’s ‘mobiles’ can sometimes be a nuisance but, my word, I wouldn’t be without mine. I must I remember too, my electric mobility scooter which makes it possible for me to do my shopping, go to church and to our Quaker Meeting and visit local friends, despite no longer being either a motorist or a cyclist.

All of these things have been benefits conferred on me by the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They were unknown to my parents or indeed to myself during by far the greater part of my life.

I am also well-endowed with life’s timeless and, ultimately I am sure, much more important blessings. I have a loving and attentive family consisting not just of my sons and grandchildren, but caring nieces and a nephew, and great-nieces and a great-nephew who are more like grandchildren to me. I have a wide circle of friends both in this country and, fairly recently acquired, in Germany. I have a comfortable home, wonderfully supportive neighbours, an adequate income and, so far, few health problems that can’t be attributed simply to old age.

My New Year resolution for 2009 is stop grumbling and count those blessings!
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Happy New Year!

New Year's Day 1979. My bungalow, in which I have lived since 1956, is the one on the left. Outside it is parked the Toyota motor-caravan in which my wife Heather and I spent many happy holidays, in Britain and in mainland Europe.

It must be said that my determination to ‘look on the bright side’ and ‘to count my many blessings’ is being sorely tested by virtually every news bulletin that I hear on radio or tv and by the headlines of every newspaper that I casually pick up. I can’t personally complain. I have had my ups and downs during 2008 but, on balance, it has been a good year for me. It hasn’t been good for everybody though and for many people 2009 looks even more threatening.

Perhaps we should think twice before carelessly wishing friends, relatives and casual acquaintances a ‘Happy New Year’. For a great many of our fellow-countrymen and women 2009 seems likely to be a far-from-happy year. It is certainly beginning badly for those (the employees of Woolworths for example) who have already lost their jobs or will lose them within the next few days. There are too, many thousands of others who are in work at the moment but fear that the next few months will bring them the dreaded redundancy notice.

Nor does the New Year promise much happiness for those facing eviction and homelessness because they have been unable to keep up with their mortgage payments. Those who haven’t quite reached that stage may take some comfort in the fact that the government seems to have at least postponed their eviction for two years. The government evidently feels, as did Mr Micawber, that during that time ‘something is bound to turn up’.

Perhaps it will. Some economists believe that Britain will emerge from recession by the end of 2010. Others think that it may take five years, or even longer. None of them seems very clear about how or why our economy will eventually recover. Could their prophecies simply be based on the conviction that ‘nothing lasts for ever’? J.D. Galbraith once said that there are two kinds of economists, those who can’t predict the future, and those who don’t know that they can’t predict the future! Certainly the predictions of the financial experts during the past few years haven’t been remarkable for their accuracy.

My experience suggests that very little in life proves to be quite so good as one hopes, but that few things are ever quite so bad as one fears. There is a lot more to happiness than security and material possessions, and I have no doubt that for many of us 2009 will prove to be a Happy New Year. I certainly wish it to anyone and everyone who reads this blog.
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The Judgement of the Bishops


When a year or so ago I revived and renewed my membership of the Church of England, I didn’t sign up to approval of every opinion expressed by its hierarchy. Nevertheless I am quite pleased to find myself in total agreement with the five senior bishops who have recently voiced their criticism of the New Labour Government. I think it highly unlikely that any of their Graces have ever glanced at Tendring Topics.….on Line but, had they done so, they would have been likely to have found the same or similar criticisms voiced in this column.

They would have found concern about modern society’s enthusiastic embracing of the ‘consumer economy’, of the relentless pursuit of material wealth (bishops in an earlier age might have described it as the worship of Mammon) and of the consequent break-up of family life and downgrading of moral values. They would have found anxieties about the level of personal debt that has come to be regarded as ‘normal’, and about the gambling culture that believes that a town’s prosperity depends upon whether or not it has a thriving casino; where the best hope of getting out of debt is, for many families, 'coming up on the lottery'! They would have seen continuing concern about the ever-widening gap between the incomes of the poorest in this country and the very wealthiest; the biggest gap in western Europe.

I believe moreover, that the concerns of the Bishops would have been shared by such pioneers of the Labour Movement as Keir Hardie, George Lansbury, Nye Bevan and Jennie Lee, of whom the members of the present government claim to be the political heirs.

The bishops didn’t say whether or not they considered that a change of government would heal the country’s malaise. I think it unlikely. The objectives of the present government are shared by an opposition, which appears to differ only in the means by which it believes those aims may best be achieved.
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Week 52a.08

Tendring Topics…….on line

Happy Christmas!

I'm not quite sure whether I should offer Christmas greetings 'to all my readers', 'to both my readers' or 'to anyone who has accidentally found his way to this blog'! Perhaps it is safest just to wish a Very Happy Christmas and New Year to anyone and everyone who may be reading it.

As I shall be spending the Christmas holiday away from Clacton there won't, strictly speaking, be a Tendring Topics posted this week. However, for those who would otherwise miss their weekly on-line read, I'll post a copy of 'The Innkeeper's Wife's Tale', a monologue from the landlady of the Bethlehem Inn where there was 'No room' for Mary, Joseph and their expected-any-minute baby. It was written by my wife Heather and myself seven years ago. I think you'll find it entertaining and not in the least sanctimonious!

The Innkeeper's Wife's Tale

I'll wager that if that Caesar in Rome had asked his wife, she'd have told him straight. 'If you want to count people, and get the answer right, you'll make sure they're not on the move. Keep them in their homes. Bring in the army if you must but don't let them stray until you've got them all totted up'.

But is that what Caesar did? Not a bit of it. He had them trailing all over the country in the dead of winter finding their home towns. Half of them didn't know where they were! That's men for you! Still, it didn't do me and Nathan much harm as it turned out.

Nathan? Didn't I explain. He's my husband and he's the landlord of the Bethlehem Black Bull. We'll never be rich but it's a good little earner. Plenty of hard work mind you. We've got four nice guest rooms and do a good line for the passing trade in ploughman's lunches, shepherds' pies, lamburgers and all-day traditional Judaean breakfasts. We're near enough to Jerusalem to catch visitors to the Temple and the city-going business trade, but far enough away to escape the riff-raff.

We get a few Roman soldiers in. They're not a bad lot (quite like our own boys in fact) so long as you don't allow them a free hand with the wine-skins. Peacekeepers they call themselves. As for government snoopers and tax collectors – my daughter Ruth can spot one of them at five hundred cubits. They get short shrift from us, I can tell you.

Well, as I was saying, that census of Caesar's did us no harm whatsoever. Every room was taken – and in the dead season too.

One night I remember well. The wind had swung round to the north-east and it was bitterly cold, with occasional snow flurries. Yes, of course we get snow sometimes in Bethlehem. From Nazareth – it's somewhere up north – we had unexpected visitors I'll never forget.

It was Ruth who saw them first. 'Hey Mum'. She said (she came to me rather than her dad. She knows who really runs this inn!) You'd better come and see this lot. They want a room for the night. I told them that we were full up but they're not inclined to take no for an answer. The girl seems younger than me and she's expecting – any minute now by the look of her. I didn't think you'd want a dead mother and baby on our doorstep, even if they are only vagrants.

But they weren't vagrants. That was clear at a glance. The man was middle aged and a not-too-badly-off craftsman, I'd have said. The girl was less than half his age – sixteen, seventeen perhaps. No doubt an arranged marriage, but it's not for me to criticise.

The husband, Joseph his name was, was pacing up and down with worry – and with good reason. Ruth had been right about the girl's condition. She had been riding on a donkey but had got off it by the time I got there. She was as white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf, and that baby certainly wasn't going to wait for more than another hour or so to be born.

Well, perhaps I'm a soft touch, but when I learned that her name was Mary, the same as the young daughter I'd lost to a fever a few years earlier, I knew I had to help. 'Come into the kitchen Love', I said, 'Sit down and have a hot drink. You can't have a room because we haven't got one – but we'll get you out of the cold somehow'.

Then it came to me – the stable. It was part of the inn and had always been bigger than we needed. It would take them – and their donkey too.

'Nathan', I shouted, 'We've got a lady in distress here. Get a couple of your good-for-nothing regulars to come round to the stable and shift those bales of hay to make a nice warm and private place for her to have her baby. Tell them it'll earn them a free drink each.

And so they did. In half an hour we had a little nest in that stable as warm and comfortable as any bedroom in Herod's palace – and a lot nicer people in it too than he'd be likely to have!

'Now it's our turn', I said to Ruth, 'Get that Joseph out of the way. Set him up with a lamburger and a pint in the lounge, and come back with hot water and towels'. Well, as you may have guessed – the baby was born just before midnight; as lovely a little boy as I have ever seen. They called him Jesus. When we told those regulars in the bar who'd helped with the hay, they were so pleased you'd have thought they had produced the baby themselves.

Nor was that the end. Before the night was over some shepherds turned up demanding to see the baby. They said that they'd had a message from some angels about him – I know what you're thinking, but they were stone cold sober. I'd know if anyone would!

After that events moved swiftly. A guest room became vacant and we were able to let Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus have more suitable accommodation. Mary regained her strength and they made their formal visit to the Temple.

Just as Joseph was planning their return to Nazareth a camel caravan arrived from the east. Travelling with it were three wealthy foreigners bringing gifts for the new baby. It seems that they were magi – some kind of holy men – who claimed that a study of the stars had told them that what we now thought of as our baby was destined to become a king who would change the whole world.

Hussein, the caravan captain who had brought the magi to Bethlehem, terrified us by warning us that King Herod had learned of the baby's birth and was likely to regard him as a threat.

That could have spelled disaster for us all so – sorry as we were to lose them – we felt safer when Joseph, Mary and Jesus departed the next morning for Egypt while the Magi's caravan headed off in the opposite direction.

You'll have heard of the terrible events that followed. Hussein had been right. Herod did regard the baby as a threat and sent his troops to slaughter every babe and toddler in Bethlehem.

I'm glad to say that some escaped. We hid two in our cellar. Roman soldiers would probably have searched the Black Bull from rafters to cellar and found them. However Herod's rag-tag militia quailed before my angry glare and slunk away. I know too that some of the soldiers – perhaps they had babies of heir own – were less bloodthirsty than their master. Several ignored babies sleeping peacefully in their cots and came out to show their officers sword-blades crimson with goat's blood.

It was six years before we learned that, after Herod's death, that little family returned safely to Nazareth. Another six years have passed since then and we've kept in touch. The last thing I heard was that young Jesus had been having a long chat with the doctors of the Law in the Temple. Think of that – at twelve! He'll go far that boy – and I was there at the very beginning!

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After several unsuccessful attempts at including illustrations with Tendring Topics….on Line, I think I have discovered where I was going wrong. The above picture of Heather and myself is one that I very much like. It was taken by our younger son Andy during a long-ago Happy Christmas holiday. If this attempt at illustration is successful you may expect occasional pictures on future blogs.

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Week52.08

                         Tendring Topics……on Line

 

'You picked a fine time……'

 

            Do you remember 'You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille…' a 'country and western' ballad about a subsistence farmer in the American Mid-West whose wife, after years of virtuous drudgery, had left him, 'with four hungry children and a crop in the field', to sample the joys of a less-than-virtuous life?   It had a haunting tune and a simple straightforward lyric.  It isn't surprising that in the days when every pub and quite a few cafes had a jukebox (it must surely have been in the '70s) it was a firm favourite.

 

            I thought of the ballad's opening words when the government's latest solution to one of the country's ills was announced.  Those in receipt of sickness and disability benefit are to be compelled to seek employment to the limit of their capacity.  Those who fail to do so will have their benefit reduced.  Meanwhile family doctors are to be asked to issue 'medical certificates' specifying what their patient is still capable of doing, rather than what he or she can't do!

 

            It might I suppose, have been a good idea if business and industry were booming and there was a heavy demand for any sort of labour.   But just now, at the beginning of a worldwide recession when long-established firms like Woolworth are closing down in high streets throughout the United Kingdom, when the number of unemployed is nearing two million, and it is feared that the three million mark may be reached next year?

 

            Any jobs that may still be available to unskilled and inexperienced workers are likely to be the heavy, dirty and unsocial ones that nobody else wants to do, and that even moderately disabled men and women are unlikely to be capable of attempting.

 

            I can't make up my mind whether this latest initiative from the government is dafter, or not quite so daft, as the idea during the Thatcher years of reducing the unemployment figures by allowing unemployed men over 60 to take early retirement (from being out of work!) and draw their state retirement pension, provided that they promised not to seek a paid job.

 

            The present scheme once again takes my memory back, this time a bit further, to World War II when the government was urging everyone to work longer and harder for victory.  Huge posters appeared in which Herbert Morrison, then a Labour leading light in the wartime coalition government, gave a message:  'Three words to the whole Nation; GO TO IT!', which positively invited the irreverent reply, 'OK, but where the (expletive deleted) is it?

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                              Dickens reborn in 2008!

 

                Have you been watching 'Little Dorrit' on BBC tv?   If so, you'll have watched the collapse of the great Merdle Bank into which thousands had invested their entire fortunes, in the firm belief that the great Mr Merdle 'the man for the age' would be able to make them grow and keep on growing.  Hundreds of people were ruined, the hero of the novel found himself in the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison, and the disgraced Mr Merdle took his own life.

 

                Having watched these fictional events unfold on the small screen on Sunday evening, we were faced with an almost identical situation on the new bulletins and news headlines on the Tuesday morning.  Of course, this is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and the events took place in the USA, not England.  Everything was therefore, as might have been expected, on a much larger scale.  Nor has the principal actor in the real-life drama taken his own life.  Today's top rank miscreants are made of sterner stuff, and can probably afford better lawyers to get themselves off the hook.

 

                To Mr Bernard Madoff, until recently the toast of Wall Street, the few hundred thousands that Mr Merdle had embezzled would have been little more than petty cash.  He is claimed to have defrauded multi-millionaires and struggling charities alike out of something like $50 million!

 

                I feel desperately sorry for the charities and the small investors that are among the victims though I can't help experiencing just a slight feeling of schadenfreude at the fact that others were super-rich pals of Mr Madoff who had trusted him with some of their millions, confident that their brilliant friend (another man for the age) could turn those millions into billions.  British banks and British investors have been caught out too.  I'm glad that, this time, HBOS, in which I own a few hundred virtually worthless shares, hasn't so far been reported as being among the dupes.

 

                Those banks and those wealthy investors really should have known better.  Mr Madoff's enterprise was regularly paying dividends of ten and eleven percent to its investors, far in excess of any others in the market place. Some of the  people who have been caught out are the ones who have told the rest of us until we're sick of hearing it;  'If something looks too good to be true…….it probably is!'

 

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                                     The Humbug Club

 

            A small all-male club of 'grumpy old men' based in a Walton-on-the-Naze pub must have been surprised to find themselves featured, if briefly, on national tv a few days ago.  I don't suppose for a moment that they are the only people in the country who are disenchanted with the approach of Christmas and everything associated with it.  They are though, as far as I know, the only group who have actually got together and declared their agreement with the unredeemed Scrooge's comment on the festive season: 'Bah, humbug!'

 

            When questioned, it seemed that their leader wasn't quite wholehearted in his abhorrence.  He thought that it was a good idea to celebrate Christmas on the 25^th December (he didn't actually say so but I had the idea that he might be tucking into some turkey and plum pudding himself!) but he was sick of all the commercial and other activities that had been going on for weeks!

 

            He, and the members of the Humbug Club are not alone in that.  Nowadays the celebration of anniversaries begins long before their actual date and often carries on for long afterwards. Almost immediately on the heels of the disappearance of all the Christmas holly, mistletoe and fairy lights, we'll have the appearance on the retail scene of hot cross buns, Easter eggs and little fluffy chicks!  Guy Fawkes day or 'bonfire night' used, at one time, to be restricted strictly to 5^th November.  Nowadays it seems to have merged with All Halloween and the sound of exploding fireworks begins as early as mid October. It finally tails away as the pre-Christmas shopping spree really gets into swing.

 

             Christmas is a festival that really does need some prior preparation. It is surely a good idea for people to send a little reminder that they are remembered to all their friends and relatives just once a year.  Children (and those grumpy old men from Walton were children once) expect Christmas presents, and for adults Christmas is a season of giving. This is surely a good thing.

 

            I remember, some years ago now, feeling a little guilty about contributing to the commercialisation of Christmas by writing for the local press such inspiring features as 'Christmas shopping in Holland-on-Sea (or in Pier Avenue, Little Clacton, Old Road or whatever)'. My conscience was eased when I came to realize that there were businesses, especially small ones, whose ability to provide a useful service to the community throughout the year depended upon a  pre-Christmas shopping boom.

 

            Christmas celebrations involve a Christmas tree and Christmas decoration.  They can't all be put up on 24^th December and dismantled directly after the 25^th. The Christmas turkey and in particular, the Christmas pudding and Christmas cake, not to mention all the mince pies and sausage rolls, need to be prepared beforehand.  Perhaps you dash out on Christmas Eve and buy yours at the supermarket.  Nowadays, with both husbands and wives working, this is often unavoidable.  However, before the sad loss of my wife I never needed even to taste shop-bought Christmas delicacies.    I'm sure that she wasn't alone in taking a pride in always 'making her own', a process that began weeks before the day.

 

            The Christian Church has from earliest times defined a period of about four weeks for spiritual preparation for Christmas.  This time of Advent begins on the Sunday nearest to St. Andrew's Day (30^th November).  This year St Andrew's Day actually fell on a Sunday so that was when Advent began.

 

            It might be a good idea if that date also saw the beginning of most material preparation for Christmas.   The association between the spiritual and the material preparations for this festival was clearly recognised by Thomas Cranmer, the martyred 16^th century Archbishop of Canterbury, who was largely responsible for compiling the Church of England's incomparable Book of Common Prayer.   The collect or short prayer appointed for the last Sunday before Advent was, with its mention of 'stirring' and 'fruit', clearly a reference to pudding-making in Tudor England. My mother, who also always did all her own pre-Christmas cooking, took it to be a thoughtful reminder in the prayer book that it was time to prepare the Christmas puddings.  It has a message relevant to us all and at all times:

 

            Stir up, we beseech thee O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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                                 More Advent Thoughts

 

            Writing about Advent brought to mind a poem by the late Sir John Betjeman entitled Advent 1955, and published in his 'Uncollected Poems' (John Murray 1882), which satirises the artificiality of some of our pre-Christmas preparations.

 

                         The only cards that really count

Are that extremely small amount

From real friends who keep in touch

And are not rich but love us much.

 

            He goes on to speak of the Christmas presents given out for commercial reasons. These could count as business expenses and thus be exempt from income tax.  The late Sir John would perhaps be pleased to know that that particular loophole has since been closed!  

 

            He concludes though with lines that are as relevant today as they were when they were written over half a century ago:

 

'The time draws near the birth of Christ',

A present that can not be priced

Given two thousand years ago.

Yet if God had not given so

He still would be a distant stranger

And not the Baby in the Manger.

 

            That surely is the unique feature of the Christian Faith.  Our God is not a 'distant stranger' but Emmanuel, God with us.  He is present with the abused child, the family dispossessed from their home, the prisoner, the hospital patient and the down-and-out junkie, begging in the street.

 

            Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done them unto me, said Jesus Christ, Son of God, who was born in a cattle shed, of a temporarily homeless couple from an obscure village in the north of the land of Israel. He was destined to become a political refugee within weeks of his birth and, some thirty years later, to be tortured to death. Yet he was the True Light for all the world, showing in his teaching and example, the way in which God intended men and women to live together in peace with each-other and with the whole of his creation.

 

            His birth was an event that should most certainly be remembered and celebrated every year.  ' O Come, all ye Faithful, joyful and triumphant!…………'

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Week 50.08

                            Tendring Topics….on Line

 

'Manners makyth Man'

 

'Why are people so rude?' asks a somewhat disgruntled lady from Holland-on-Sea in a recent issue of the Coast Gazette.  She is, so she says, 'a mum with a buggy' and has been made to feel like a second-class citizen. 

 

            Older people on their mobility scooters knock into her on the pavement and in some of the larger shops and expect her to get out of their way.  Car drivers won't give way when they should, or to ease traffic congestion.  Drivers in the vicinity of the shops in Clacton's Coppins Road,  (just a few hundred yards from my home!) are particularly guilty of this. It is a spot where there are always cars parked.

 

            No-one wants to help her get the children to school by letting her get past the parked cars. Then, returning in the other direction, other drivers just use their cars as weapons to nudge by her.   She has even been forced to drive on the pavement because one car just wouldn't wait, even though she had the right of way and was halfway along the parked cars.

 

            All this rudeness and bad manners, she says, has occurred in and around Clacton.  She had worked in Colchester for a long time and didn't find the same problems there.  'So maybe Clacton people think it is their right to do just what they feel like'.

 

            She concludes by assuring us that she is not 'just another old person moaning'. She is forty-nine and definitely not old.

 

            Well, I hope that she will live to be old one day.  I am old, and I use one of those mobility scooters of which she complains.  I have to say how friendly, courteous and helpful I have found practically everyone I encounter in our town.  People I see regularly never fail to give me a friendly smile and wave, pedestrians gladly make way when they see me approaching (I don't think it is because they are terrified!).  Motorists almost invariably stop and wave me on when they see me at a pedestrian crossing. They quite often do so when I am waiting to cross the road where there is no crossing.

 

            When I dismount and, usually with the aid of a stick, walk a few yards along a street or into and round a shop or supermarket, I find that I receive similar courtesy and help from fellow-shoppers and shop assistants alike.

 

             I always try to greet people with a friendly smile.  I always apologise if I cause a pedestrian the least inconvenience.  I never forget to say please and thank-you and, where someone thanks me for having made way for them, I always assure them that I was pleased to do so.  If the occasion did arise (which fortunately it hasn't yet) I wouldn't hesitate to say, 'Sorry, that was all my fault'. My experience is that if you want respect you must both earn it and give it in return.  If you want to receive smiles, thanks and sometimes apologies you must be prepared to give them.

 

            About one thing I am in full agreement with the Gazette's exasperated correspondent.  Courtesy and good manners are important.  If we were always courteous toward each other the world would be a happier place and there would be no need to bother with political correctness, courtesy's unattractive distant relative.

 

            There are a couple of lines by Edwardian poet, novelist and essayist Hilaire Belloc that are pertinent.  I quote from memory:

 

Of courtesy, it is much less

Than courage of heart, or holiness.

Yet, as I walk, it seems to me

That the Grace of God is in courtesy.

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Global Warming?  I'm Freezing!

 

            It is surely ironic that the day on which an international conference on global warming began in Poland and a huge demonstration on the subject was held in London, the temperature here (and, I have little doubt, in Poland!) only managed to climb a few degrees above freezing point.

 

            That is why I think that it is better to talk of 'climatic change' than 'global warming'.  Although the whole globe is undoubtedly becoming warmer, it doesn't mean that everywhere on the globe is warming up at the same time or in the same way.  When this issue first received public attention there were undoubtedly many on the Essex holiday coast who eagerly anticipated the prospect of our climate warming up. Surely it must mean that Clacton's somewhat fitful summer weather would be transformed into that of the Costa del Sol?  If so, there was no need to worry about global warming.  'Let's just lie back in our deckchairs and enjoy it!'

 

            The last two summers have taught us that warming can bring the climate of a

tropical rain forest (but with the temperature moderated by thick clouds and strong winds!) rather than that of Mediterranean beaches. As for the winter?   I suspect that when this winter is finally over it will be found that the average temperature will still have been higher than that which we used to consider normal for the time of the year.

 

            Just now, of course, the world-wide financial crisis gives politicians and industrialists who would rather not take the drastic action that is needed to slow down the pace of climate change, a perfect reason to procrastinate. 'Yes, of course we know all about the seriousness of climate change, none better.  But you must be able to see that we first have to deal with this financial crisis, which is not just threatening, but is actually upon us.  Then we'll be better able to cope with the climatic situation'.

 

            It all sounds so reasonable, but climatic change is also actually upon us. Its accelerating progress is far greater than had been anticipated even as recently as five years ago. A spokesman for the Green Party said on tv this (Friday 5^th December) morning;  'Using the financial crisis as a reason for delaying action to combat climate change is like someone about to be run over by a steam-roller worrying about the loss of a five pound note!'

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Funerals; A Taboo Topic?

 

Music at the Crematorium

 

            Few of us care to give much thought to funeral services until the need arises.  However it falls to practically all of us to make the arrangements for the funeral of a relative or friend at some time in our lives.  In his latest Church Newsletter Rev Chris Wood, Minister of Clacton's Christ Church United Reformed Church describes the way in which a new sound system at Weeley Crematorium can lighten one aspect of committal arrangement.  I'm sure that Chris won't mind if I describe the system in his own words:

 

            Basically, the sound system is connected to a central control via the internet, which means that the 'Playlist' for every service is prepared beforehand from instructions provided, and then downloaded to the Crematorium on the day.  The facility equally could be amended at the last minute should the need arise.

 

            The main advantage is that the system removes the need for each family to provide CDs or tapes of their favourite music to be played at the service.  All the attendant has to do is to press a button on the remote control pad and hey presto!  This includes a 'fade' button as well.

 

            In their central library they have access to thousands of items of music, from Classical to Goth (!) and from the most popular to the obscure.  We were even assured that if a family didn't know the name of a tune but could hum it, there would be someone on hand at the end of a telephone to identify it and make it available.

 

            Should there be a family member who has, for instance, sung at a social gathering and it has been recorded on tape or CD, they have a facility to transfer it onto their equipment and to make this available on the day of the funeral. Nothing appeared to be too much trouble.

 

            Finally, I was assured that the organists would still be available at every service, but if only a few people were expected there, and the family wanted hymns sung but weren't sure if they could manage it, then the hymn could be played with a recording that included the voices of a small choir.

 

Here's yet another example of how local facilities are incorporating modern technology for the benefit of the local community.  Brilliant, and thank you!   Chris.

 

More about funerals.

 

            Incidentally, did you know that one doesn't need to be a priest or minister, or to have any other qualification, to officiate at a funeral?  When my father-in-law died my wife Heather, who was responsible for the funeral arrangements, particularly wanted a cousin of hers who was a Methodist Local Preacher and, of course, knew her father well, to conduct the service at the local Crematorium.  He declined, saying that he wouldn't be permitted to do so.

 

            Well, I suppose that had he specifically described it as a Methodist funeral service, the Methodist Church could have objected (though I doubt if they would have under the circumstances) but there could otherwise have been no objection.

 

            Five or six years ago an acquaintance about whom I really knew little except that he had, like me, been a POW in Germany in World War II, asked me if when the time came, I would conduct his funeral service at Weeley crematorium.  He was adamant that he didn't want a Quaker funeral (I suspect that he didn't think that his family would be able to cope with periods of silence) but that he would like me to officiate.

 

            It wasn't the kind of request that I felt able to refuse but I didn't seriously expect I would ever be asked to keep my promise.  However, a year or so later I received a phone call from a local undertaker telling me that he had died and had left a request in his will that I should officiate at his funeral. The relatives also wanted me to do so, so I went ahead.

 

            It wasn't a Quaker funeral.  There were no periods of silence. I don't think though that anything was said that couldn't have been said at a Quaker funeral, or indeed at a funeral held by any other tradition of the universal Christian Church.  I was glad too, that several local Quakers supported me on that occasion. I deeply appreciated that support.

 

            I won't say, as I would about many other things that I have done, 'If I can do it, anyone can!'   It wasn't really quite as easy as that, and I was an experienced public speaker. It is certainly not a responsibility to be undertaken lightly. However, if you're really sure that the departed person, and those closest to them, wouldn't want a priest, minister or someone from the Humanist Society or some similar organisation, officiating at the farewell to their mortal remains, then any friend or relative who is capable and is prepared to do so may undertake this task.

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A more cheerful subject – my photos

 

            If you have accessed this blog via my blogspot  www.ernesthall.blogspot.com  you will have seen some of my photos appearing and disappearing in the right margin of your monitor.  If, on the other hand, you have reached it via my website www.ernesthall.net you will be able to click on 'photos' to view them.

 

  You can also reach them via the link www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea This gives access to all three-hundred-plus of them, all titled, and most of them carrying comments about them and the circumstances to which they relate.

 

            Most are family photos dating from the end of Queen Victoria's reign.  Some are rare archive photos such as glimpses into classrooms in primary schools in the early 1930s, and of the winter when the sea off Clacton's beaches froze!  At least one other is unrepeatable; the beautiful and historic packhorse bridge at Mostar in Bosnia, taken by Heather and myself not long before its destruction in the disastrous civil war.

 

            Take a glance at them.  I think you'll find them interesting.

 

Week 49.08

                           Tendring Topics…….on Line

 

Good News for those with blood problems

 

            You don't have to have a very serious health problem these days for your family doctor to suggest that you should have a blood test.  I'm not sure whether it is because of my age or my blood pressure that my doctor suggests that I should now have one once a year.  They're not entirely a formality.  Once it revealed that I had a sodium imbalance and on another occasion, too high a cholesterol level.  In each case a simple change of medication or diet resulted in a satisfactory result when a repeat sample was taken a couple of months later.

 

            Turning up at the Phlebotomy Department (the 'blood clinic' to you and me) at Clacton Hospital, my heart would sink if I saw half a dozen people standing about outside.  It always indicated that the waiting room inside, which is little more than a widened corridor, was full of patients, sometimes with companions, awaiting attention.

 

            First timers to the Blood Clinic often turn up promptly at 9.00 a.m. when the

Clinic opens, imagining that that would mean that they would be dealt with first and get away early.   They are a mistaken.  Before blood is extracted from the arms of ordinary routine patients like myself, priority patients (those, for instance, for whom it is important that the sample should be taken when they have an empty stomach, and consequently have had no breakfast!) have to be dealt with.  That's reasonable enough but it does mean that we run-of-the-mill patients sometimes have to wait till ten o'clock or later before the phlebotomists (blood takers) even begin plunging their needles into our arms.   Meanwhile we have to wait in that totally inadequate waiting room where there is sometimes standing room only.

 

            It must be said that, once they do start on us, they proceed with a speed and efficiency that would earn the approval of Count Dracula himself!   The queue moves on quite rapidly even though it is likely to be continually replenished by newcomers.  I have found that if I turn up at about 11.00 a.m. I don't have too long to wait.  However, I do go only very occasionally and it could be that I have just been lucky.

 

            In the New Year there's to be a big change for the better.  I mentioned in this blog a few weeks ago that Clacton's Minor Injuries Department had moved to much-improved accommodation immediately opposite the Outpatients Department.  Their old accommodation, opposite the present blood clinic, is currently being altered, refurbished, redecorated and re-equipped for the new Phlebotomy Department.   There will, I have little doubt, be just as many patients as at present and those with priority needs will still have to be attended to first.  However, those of us who have to wait our turn will be able to do so under more comfortable conditions and it is just possible that the refurbishment and re-equipping of the Department will make for an even faster turnover.

 

            I am due for a routine visit to my doctor in Mid-December. She may well suggest that it's time for me to have a routine blood test.   If she does I think I'll put off my visit to he hospital until the New Year!

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                                  Home Rule for Essex?

 

            It was only a few months ago that I congratulated Essex County Council on taking over failing post offices and rescuing them from closure.  It was a move that was widely applauded, the county council receiving enquiries and letters of support from all over the UK.  Could that success have gone to the heads of those in power at County Hall?  Certainly some odd messages have emanated from them since.

 

            Remember County Council Chairman Lord Hanningfield declaring that the County Council had a cash turnover exceeding that of a number of independent states and wondering if the County should make a bid for independence from the United Kingdom.  He hastily assured us that he had, of course, been joking.  But, I wonder!

 

            There was his assertion that if the Government didn't move to improve the A12, the County Council would deal with the matter themselves, totally ignoring the fact that it is unquestionably a central government responsibility and that there is a considerable area of Essex, from Southend-on-Sea to Saffron Walden whose residents really don't give two hoots about the A12 and wouldn't welcome having to pay for it.

 

            Then there has been the County Council's education policy.  They, considering themselves wiser than either the Government's Inspectors or the vainly protesting parents of the children concerned, have decided that two Colchester Schools are failing.  Their remedy is to close them down and distribute the children among other schools in the town.

 

            Only a week or so ago we learned that the majority party on the County Council, without bothering to consult or even inform the opposition, were advertising for contractors to privatise and take over virtually all of the Council's many services.

 

            Now we have Lord Hanningfield announcing that the council intends to protect the county from downturn by making sure that annual contracts, worth millions of pounds, go to local firms.   The intentions are admirable, but what will the auditors say if the Council rejects lower tenders offering better value for money, from contractors just outside the county?

 

            He also announced plans to go ahead with a plan to give a £100 council tax rebate to 30,000 of the most hard-up households, in the first instance to pensioners in their eighties. The scheme would later be extended to include struggling single mums and families of Colchester based soldiers who have been killed or wounded in Afghanistan.  Well, I am a pensioner in my eighties but I'm well aware that I am better off than many people younger than I am.   This, I hasten to add, is not because I have a large income but because I have no debts, no commitments, no dependents and few expensive tastes. How in any case, is the County Council to know who is, and who isn't, hard up unless they have access to the records of the Inland Revenue.  Surely these are strictly confidential.

 

            All of this largesse, however welcome, comes strangely from someone who, not so long ago and after returning from an expensive trip to the USA funded by tax-payers, was wondering sagely whether local authorities could afford the cost of pensioners' bus passes!

 

                                Saving the Naze!

 

            The very first Tendring Topic (in print) that I ever wrote, way back in 1980, was on the subject of saving Walton's Naze, threatened as it had been for years, by its crumbling cliffs and the encroaching North Sea.  A Government Minister, accompanied by our then MP, had been photographed striding along the edge of the cliffs 'to see for himself'.   I suggested that he might have done better to have remained in Westminster, and studied the report of the exhaustive public enquiry into the subject made just a few years earlier by the government's own inspector

 

            This report had recommended following a course of action suggested by the Council's Chief Technical Officer (Mr Colin Bellows) after a survey by his team conducted very shortly after the creation of the new Tendring District Council in 1974.  I don't remember the scheme's estimated cost but I do know that it was this that resulted in its being turned down by the government.  It was, as is so often the case where a local project is concerned, 'not the right time for it'.

 

            There have been several suggestions for saving the Naze since then, none of which have come to fruition.  Meanwhile, the wrecked concrete machine gun emplacement on the beach, built during World War II clearly shows the progress of encroachment. Having toppled from its original position, the distance between it and the foot of the cliffs on the summit of which it once stood gets yearly greater and greater.

 

 Tendring Council's 'cabinet' is now backing the Naze Protection Society's £800,000, 'Crag Walk project' which will include a 100 metre long retaining wall along the beach in the vicinity of the Naze Tower which it is hoped will reduce erosion. There will also be educational public access and a viewing platform in front of the sandstone cliffs.  These are rich in relatively recent fossil shells while in the layer of clay at their base fossils of a far earlier age have been found.

 

The Council will share with the Naze Protection Society the £25,000 cost of an appraisal report before seeking lottery funding.

 

I hope that the appraisal will include consideration of the report submitted by Colin Bellows shortly after the birth of the Tendring DC.  One of its important features was the conclusion that rainwater falling on the surface of the Naze is an important contributory cause of the crumbling of the cliffs.  This water passes through the soil and the permeable red sandstone beneath, to the layer of impermeable clay lying deep below at just a little above beach level.   The water then flows along the surface of this clay stratum to exit near the base of the cliffs.  In doing so it 'lubricates' the surface of the clay and destabilises the red sandstone above it.  This causes the sandstone to crumble, fall, and collect at the cliff base from whence it is washed away by the encroaching sea.

 

Anyone seeking to 'save the Naze' would be unwise to ignore the effect of rain-water falling on the surface of those crumbling cliffs.

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A qualified apology to the Royal Mail

 

            I appear to owe some sort of an apology to the Royal Mail after my criticism of them last week for the secularisation of the special Christmas postage stamps.   It seems that there are in fact, religious first and second-class stamps available, if you specially ask for them.  They are quite attractive too; two studies of the Blessed Virgin and her child.

 

            My apology is only a qualified one though.  The 'religious' stamps (I'd be more inclined to call them the actual Christmas stamps) don't cover the whole price range.  There are, for instance, no 'religious' 50p stamps.  These are the stamps that are needed for letters and greetings cards to our mainland European friends and neighbours.  These mainlanders may well be better acquainted with the story of the Nativity than many people in this country. They are however unlikely to be familiar with the British tradition of pantomime and even less likely to be acquainted with Peter Pan.

 

            I can well imagine the question being asked in a score of different languages at European breakfast tables during the next few weeks:  'Why on earth have the mad English decided to put a picture of a one-armed pirate on their Christmas stamps?'  Then again, the religious stamps should have been better publicised?  I didn't know about them.  It's true that I don't regularly buy a national daily newspaper but I do watch both national and local news bulletins on tv.  Other friends of mine, who possibly get out and about more than I do, didn't know about them either.

 

When, a week or so ago, I went into my local branch post office and asked for Christmas stamps, I was simply offered the secular ones and not told that there was an alternative.  This morning I went to Clacton's main Post Office and specifically asked for religious Christmas stamps, so I now have some.  The Post Office and the Royal Mail (I find it difficult to work out which is responsible for what!) manage to give plenty of publicity to their other services.  The religious alternative stamps though, are about as well advertised as the vegetarian option in a butcher's shop! 

 

May I urge readers who feel as strongly about this matter as I do, to stock up with 1^st and 2^nd Class Christmas stamps.  Their use isn't limited to Christmas.  You can use them throughout the year and the year after that.  They quietly and unostentatiously proclaim your Christian faith and, since they are labelled simply 1^st and 2^nd Class, they could  prove to be a useful investment when mail charges go up  again as they surely will in the not-too-distant future.

 

What is also important is the fact that every religious Christmas stamp that is bought will make it more difficult for the Royal Mail next autumn to claim smugly:  'We issued a religious alternative to the secular mid-winter festival stamps last year.  Few people wanted to buy the religious stamps though so we won't do it again'.

 

It is surely the religious stamps that should be printed in every denomination and sold as the norm.  Secular ones, for some notional mid-winter festival, could be made available for those with a conscientious objection to the Christian faith.  These, I think, would prove to be quite a small minority.

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