Week 4 2011 25 Jan.2011

Tendring Topics…….on Line

‘There is no new thing under the sun’

The author of the Old Testament’s Ecclesiastes exaggerated a little when he made the assertion above. However it is amazing how often, brilliant new ideas turn out to have been tried in the past – sometimes with success, sometimes with failure.

Take the English Baccalaureate for instance. This is an exam aimed at obtaining a broadly based educational standard for school leavers. Candidates will be expected to achieve at least ‘C’ level in five subjects – Maths, English, a foreign language, two sciences and either History or Geography. It seems that only 16 percent of sixteen year olds taking their GCSE exams last year achieved the Baccalaureate standard. That though, is hardly surprising, as that standard had yet to be set and many candidates hadn’t even studied the subjects required!

In the 1930s I was one of the privileged minority who went to a secondary school and stayed at school until I was sixteen. The majority of my contemporaries were thrown onto the Labour Market at fourteen. We studied for and, before leaving, took what was called the University General Schools Certificate Examination. We had to take English (language and literature). Mathematics (arithmetic, algebra and geometry), a foreign language (French was the only one taught at my school), and at least two other subjects one of which had to be a science. Those who achieved the pass mark of 40 percent in five subjects, including the compulsory ones, passed the exam. Those who achieved a credit mark (50 percent) in those five subjects were awarded ‘Matriculation exemption’ – exemption from the entrance exam of the University (in our case London University) setting and marking the examination.

The examiners were granted a little latitude in deciding who had passed, who had failed and who had matriculated. I, for instance, was awarded Matric exemption even though I only achieved a Pass Mark in French, because I had a credit mark in five other subjects, including a Distinction – the highest mark – in English and History.

I took English, Maths, French, History, Geography and General Physics. The last of these was my science subject. It could have been tailor-made for me. It was guaranteed to be about general principles only – no nasty problems involving the use of maths!

I didn’t go to University. My parents couldn’t afford it. There were a limited number of scholarships in those days but neither grants nor loans. In any case the only working class boys that I knew who had been to university became either teachers or priests and neither profession had any appeal for me.

The General Schools Examination of the 1930s may not have been called a Baccalaureate but it was surely remarkably similar to one. No, we didn’t receive any vocational education. School education was aimed at turning us into literate and numerate adolescents, with some knowledge of the world’s history and geography and of our own country’s culture. Vocational education was something one acquired after leaving school and was primarily our employers’ responsibility.

I wonder whether today’s state education has the same goals – or is it aimed at preparing young people for futures as docile Human Resource Units (HRUs), the third millennial equivalent of medieval serfs and of the blue-overalled ‘proles’ of George Orwell’s ‘1984’; with no purpose in life beyond making fortunes for more privileged people, and no leisure interests beyond boozing, promiscuous sex, football, celebrity-worship, video games, and the lottery?

How the Magi got there!

A fortnight ago, I included in this blog a photo I had taken of the ‘Christmas Crib’ at Clacton’s St. James Church, depicting the ‘Epiphany’; the arrival in Bethlehem of the ‘three wise men’ bearing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. On Sunday 16th January, my younger son Andy, with his wife Marilyn, visited Southwark Cathedral and has sent me a picture of the depiction of the Epiphany there. It certainly is very splendid – but I reckon that for a parish church in a small provincial town, St James’ effort has few rivals.

All of this made me think of the monologues that my wife Heather and I wrote nearly ten years ago giving imaginary accounts by ‘ten witnesses’ of their experience of the Nativity. These monologues were, in any case, in my mind. A friend of a friend in Germany, who was very enthusiastic about them, had recently translated all ten into German! Among those ‘witnesses’ was the ‘caravan captain’ who had guided the Magi to Bethlehem – and safely home again. It occurred to me that it might interest blog readers. So here it is, complete with a preamble that I wrote at the time of publication.

The Caravan Captain

‘The Caravan Captain’ was another of our wholly imaginary characters. The three Magi (St. Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t say that there were three of them – that has been inferred from the three gifts) must have come ‘from the East’ in some kind of a caravan, which must have had some kind of organiser and guide.

We invented the thoroughly professional Hussein, whose caravans were renowned for getting to their destination ‘on time and intact’, to fulfil this role. He provided the common sense, which the ‘wise men’ for all their wisdom, seem to have lacked. This is his story.

I’ve heard them described as ‘three kings’ – a ridiculous idea! Can you imagine three kings travelling together in a camel caravan for as much as a couple of miles without falling out, and probably starting a minor war? ‘Three wise men’ is closer though, as you’ll hear, in the ways of the world they weren’t all that wise.

No, they were three Magi, men who claim to be able to look into the future, read and interpret the movement of the stars and to have a lot of other mysterious powers. Their skills are much sought after in Persia. Consequently they’re pretty wealthy, which is how they were able to hire my services.

Me? I’m a professional caravan captain. From Baghdad to far Byzantium, ask any regular traveller. He’ll tell you, ‘Hussein’s caravans get there on time – and intact’. I get the camels together, supervise the loading, plan the route, guide the caravan to its destination and hire sufficient reliable armed guards to deter and, if necessary, fight off any attack.

I needed them too, for the project for which the three magi had engaged me. They wanted me to take them to Judaea to welcome a new king who was to be born there. According to them he was to be a very special king, whose arrival would change the whole world. Judaea, by the way, is a little place way out west. You have to pass through some real bandit country to get there. I suppose that it was the splendour of the Magi’s dress and equipment that made the ignorant and poverty-stricken natives imagine that they must be three kings.

It was just the worst time of the year for a long journey but I got the caravan together and found a few other travellers who were going that way and were glad of our protection. The modest fee that I charged them added to my profits of course. Eventually we were ready and we set out.

Well, we got there without losing a camel, a traveller or any of the travellers’ goods – and we got safely home again! Hussein’s caravans always do. It was touch and go though and once or twice I found myself regretting having accepted the Magi’s gold.

The worst moments arose when we reached Judaea. It is part of the Roman Empire of course but there was a kind of sub-King there, Herod was his name, on whom my Magi insisted on calling to pay their respects and to ask for advice. They needed to get to Bethlehem, where they believed the new king was to be born. They wanted Herod’s help in getting there.

Well, I know the way to Bethlehem, of course. I had strongly advised them to give Jerusalem, Herod’s capital, a miss. You’d have thought that they would have realized that no king, however unimportant, is likely to welcome news of a potential rival in his little kingdom – especially a king who is going to change the world! They took no notice of me. They said that courtesy demanded a social call. It’s my belief that after weeks ‘on the road’, they had hoped to be invited to a slap-up meal in palatial surroundings.

And so they were. They enjoyed their evening of luxury and Herod enjoyed hearing about the baby who was to be the new King of Judaea. He asked them if, when they found the new king, they would let him know, so that he could come and pay appropriate homage. Would you believe it, in their innocence, they had promised to do just that!

While my bosses had been wining and dining with the mighty, I’d been having a cosy chat with some of the palace staff. They were willing enough to talk for a few shekels once they had satisfied themselves that I wasn’t one of the king’s spies. They told me that Herod the Great was a cruel and unprincipled cut-throat who thought nothing of murdering members of his own family if they thwarted him. Fat chance a new baby king would have with Herod looking out for him.

We hastened on to Bethlehem. I doubled the guard at night and told the sentries to look out for anyone following us who might be a spy or an assassin.

Well, they found their baby all right and handed over to his parents the expensive gifts that they had brought – gold, frankincense and myrrh. I looked in on them. The father was in early middle age and – I thought – probably a pretty successful artisan. The mother was a lovely girl, still a teenager I’d have said, and as welcoming and courteous to me as she was to my wealthy clients. The baby was lovely too – he seemed to have a special smile for me – almost as though he understood my problems! He didn’t look much like any king I’ve ever seen though. I enjoyed my brief visit and it saddened me to think that the whole family were almost certainly destined to be slaughtered by a power-drunk tyrant.

Next morning though, events really made me begin to believe for the first time, in the Magi’s superhuman powers. We were to pack up immediately and get out of Judaea as quickly as possible, giving Herod’s Jerusalem a wide berth. At the same time I learned that the parents, with their baby, were packing up and heading for safety in Egypt. I hope that they got there and missed the blood-bath that I was told followed our departure.

I wonder if I shall ever hear of them again?

Times – and attitudes – change!

One would expect attitudes toward marriage and child-birth to have changed in the 2,000 years that have passed since Christ’s Nativity. Listening to the current debate about maternity leave and paternity leave made me realize how much such attitudes have changed in the last half-century! In the 1940s and ‘50s it was normal for couples planning to live together to get married, and for the husband to be the breadwinner, the wife the home-maker. Quite a few young women continued working for the first year or so of marriage but, once children arrived, most of them (some at least, with a sigh of relief!) found that making a comfortable and welcoming home and bringing up children was, in itself, a satisfying and sufficient career.

No doubt as a result of this, a great many potentially brilliant women scientists, public servants and entrepreneurs were lost to society. On the other hand, because mums were always at home to welcome their offspring (and to keep a watchful eye on their activities!), there was much less juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, juvenile drunkenness and drug-taking, and occurrence among juveniles of sexually transmitted disease. There were too, far fewer broken homes and far fewer single mums in those days. Things were very different. It will be for future historians to decide whether they were better or worse.

As for maternity and paternity leave; I took a week or two off work when my sons were born in 1953 and 1955, but I fully expected to have to deduct that from my annual holiday entitlement of, at that time, three weeks. Heather, of course, never thought for a moment of any career other than that of bringing up our two sons and 'Keeping the Home Fires burning’. She was a great success at both!

Week 1. 2011 4th Jan. 2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Always Winter…….but never Christmas!

Since I last posted a blog I have spent several happy hours in C.S. Lewis’ imaginary world of Narnia. I watched ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ on tv before I left Clacton to spend Christmas with my two sons. On Boxing Day my elder son took me to watch the recently released ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ and on my return I watched Prince Caspian that had been recorded for me by my ‘freeview box’ in my absence. I liked the first – ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ best, though The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ came a close second. I had – some years ago – read all the Narnia books. There are three others yet to be filmed; The Horse and his Boy, The Silver Chair and the award-winning The Last Battle.

Those acquainted with ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ will know that prior to the fortuitous arrival of the evacuated Pevensea children in 1940, Narnia was under the spell of the Wicked Witch. It was a world in which it was always winter – but never Christmas.

C.S.Lewis must have had truly prophetic vision since that seems to be the fate that awaits us. Our world hasn’t been taken over by the Narnian Wicked Witch. We are threatened by another witch though, Courtesy’s ugly sister – Political Correctness. Increasingly ‘Christmas’ is being phased out in the ludicrous belief that its mention might offend non-Christians. Greetings cards manufacturers nowadays prefer to offer ‘Seasons Greetings’ rather than ‘Happy Christmas’. Christmas (the time of thanksgiving for the birth of Jesus Christ) has become The Festive Season or The Mid-winter Festival.

I was disappointed to discover that Tendring Careline, a local institution for which I have the highest regard (and on which at some time or other my life may depend!) has fallen under the evil spell. I and – no doubt – all other Careline clients have received a useful Careline Calendar indicating when they would like us to check the efficiency of the system. The calendar didn’t come with the Christmas Greetings of the Careline Staff (Christmas is becoming one of those words that are not used in polite society) but with Seasons Greeting. Recipients are told that The Careline team would like to offer all our service users a Happy Holiday Season and a safe and peaceful New Year.

There’s nothing wrong with being wished a safe and peaceful New Year, but a Happy Holiday Season is a pretty poor substitute for a hearty and sincere Happy Christmas! To many of us Careline clients – old, possibly disabled, living alone, almost or completely housebound – ‘holidays’ are things of the past, suggesting activities that are now far beyond our capabilities.

Christmas though, is something different. It is a time when we hear, if only via scribbled Christmas cards, from almost-forgotten friends and relatives far away. A time when, on the whole, people are nicer to each other, and to us, than at other times in the year; when we can enjoy the fairy lights and decorations in other people’s homes even if we can’t manage them ourselves. We can enjoy Christmas church services on radio and/or tv. Some of us, perhaps with help, can get to a Christmas church service ourselves. Had I spent Christmas in Clacton my mobility scooter (my iron horse) would have made it possible for me to attend 8.00 a.m. Mass at St. James’ Church followed by a special Christmas Meeting for Worship at the Quaker Meeting House. As it was, on Christmas Day my younger son Andy took me to a Choral Eucharist that I thoroughly enjoyed at St. Mark’s Church of England parish church in Enfield.

It is a time too when we can enjoy our memories of Christmases past, though ironically it is the happiest memories that are most likely to make us feel sad.

A happy Christmas memory. My late wife Heather manning the Quaker ‘white elephant’ stall at the annual CCVS (as it then was) Christmas sale in Clacton's Princes Theatre in, I think, the early '70s.

I hope that, should I still be around next Christmas (not a possibility on which I would advise anyone to bet too heavily!) Tendring Careline will feel able to send me, and all their other clients, a traditional Christmas greeting. In recent years, our winters have been long, cold, dark and miserable. Please don’t rob us of the interlude of warmth, love, light and joy that Christmas brings!

The Big Freeze – the aftermath!

When, a fortnight ago, I warned in this blog about the risk to domestic plumbing systems arising from successive days and nights of sub-zero temperatures, I hardly expected my gloomy forebodings to be realized quite so spectacularly. On 29th December news bulletins recorded that 40,000 Northern Irish homes were without a mains water supply because of the loss of water from tens of thousands of burst pipes. Scotland, although it had more severe weather for a longer period, was not so badly affected and there have, so far, been no reports of interrupted water supplies in England as a result of burst pipes. The Irish Republic where, in many areas, the weather cannot have been wildly different from that in Northern Ireland, has had many crises recently – but widespread loss of water supply has not been among them.

The Northern Irish Government and the Water Authority are being criticised for not having reacted quickly and effectively to the situation. I think that there should be an investigation into the cause of the crisis as well as into the ineffective attempts to alleviate it. Do building regulations in Northern Ireland incorporate proper frost precautions and, if so, are those regulations rigorously enforced? I saw, on a tv news bulletin, water jetting from a burst in what appeared to be a supply pipe from the water main rising to the upper storey of a house on an external wall. On the same news bulletin we saw a branch pipe taken several feet along an external wall to an outside tap. If builders can get away with such obvious and easily spotted design faults what about the less obvious and invisible ones?

Are water mains buried at a sufficient depth below the streets or footpaths? And what about the connecting pipes (or ‘rising mains’) from the water main to the premises? That connecting pipe should be at least 1ft 6in below ground level throughout its length. In a large housing development reducing that depth by a few inches overall can save quite a lot of money and – once the trenches have been filled in – no-one is aware of anything wrong until, of course, there is a cold spell like the one that we have recently experienced!

We all know, because we have heard it so often from know-it-all politicians, that pettifogging regulations enforced mindlessly by faceless bureaucrats, stifle enterprise and inhibit wealth creation. It is worth remembering that they also prevent disasters like that which, as I write these words, we are witnessing in Northern Ireland.

Footnote – I was disquieted to hear the Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Water Authority, who really should have known better, blame all those burst pipes and leaking water mains on ‘the suddenness of the thaw’. Had he been a reader of this blog he would have known that it was the severe and prolonged freeze that damaged the province’s plumbing systems. The thaw merely made it evident.


‘Give all thou canst. High Heaven rejects the law of nicely calculated less or more’

The above quote by William Wordsworth was inspired by the government’s wish to encourage us towards charitable giving, and their making it easier (by any means other than putting extra cash into our pockets or handbags!) for us to do so. Little ‘nudges’ to urge us toward philanthropy are to be included in Council tax and income tax demands and other official communications.

One of the now-totally-useless skills that I acquired as a PoW in Germany was that of driving an ox-cart (yes, oxen were quite commonly used to pull heavy loads in Germany in 1943/’45). The ox would have a single cord attached to the right-hand side of its mouth, connecting it to the driver. When the driver wanted the ox to turn to the right, he pulled long and hard on the cord. That pulled the ox’s head round to the right and it followed its nose in that direction. If, on the other hand, he wanted the ox to turn to the left he gave a series of short, sharp tugs on the cord. This, the ox disliked and instinctively turned his head away from it – toward the left. ‘Simple!’ as the meerkat says in the well-known tv advert!

I have a feeling that those little nudges toward charitable giving, especially when accompanying some kind of a tax demand, are likely to have the same effect on us as those irritating sharp tugs had on the ox. It’ll turn us away from them.

Most of us, in any case, get plenty of reminders of charitable giving landing on our doormats almost every morning, as worthy charities ply us with heart-rending stories and gifts (ball-point pens, pictorial calendars, greetings cards, shopping bags, electric torches – even a few small coins!) to make us feel guilty if we fail to support them. There are two or three charities that I regularly support as generously as I can. If I attempted to give to all who ask, I’d be in need of charity myself.

I don’t think that I am being unduly cynical in suggesting that the government is well aware of the sterling work that many charities perform, and that they realize that their funding cuts to local authorities are limiting, if not stopping altogether, the financial help that charities have come to rely on from that source. They are hoping that their ‘give more to charity’ campaign will encourage us, as individuals, to make up the shortfall.

Possibly men and women of good will, will respond as generously as they are able to. Surely though, it is the government’s job to ensure that less benevolent citizens also make their fair contribution towards the well-being of the sick, the disabled and those otherwise in need. There’s just one way to do that. Reform the Income Tax system, adding a penny or two per pound to the general rate and making it more progressive, so that the seriously wealthy pay their fair share towards national recovery. Stamp out tax evasion and currently-legal tax avoidance. Those are options that, so far, do not appear even to have been considered in the corridors of power.

‘On the twelfth day of Christmas……..’

…..down come the Christmas trees, the holly and the ivy, the fairy lights and the tinsel. In medieval times that was the end of twelve days of celebration. The fact that Shakespeare wrote a play ‘Twelfth Night’ especially for the occasion suggests that the final day of Christmas (6th January) was reckoned to be almost as important as Christmas Day itself.

On the twelfth day – ‘The crib’ at St James’ parish church in Clacton-on-Sea depicts the Magi arriving and presenting their gifts to the new-born Messiah.

It was remembered and celebrated as the anniversary of the day on which the ‘Three Kings’, ‘Three Wise Men’ or ‘Three Magi’ from the east arrived in Bethlehem to give their gifts of gold, frankincense and Myrrh to the newly born Jesus. It was Epiphany (the ‘showing’), the day on which the Christ Child was presented to the Gentiles, whereby God made it clear that the Christ was his revelation of himself to the whole world, not just to the Children of Israel. All the man-made decoration could therefore be put away because ‘The Light of the World’ had come.