Dumped on

The annual litter-pick in our village.  And the annual musing of why some people think it's OK to use verges as linear refuse tips.

What exactly goes through someone's mind when they hurl rubbish into the countryside?  Maybe that's a stupid question, as surely if they were thinking at all  they wouldn't do it.   Or maybe I'm naive...

We collected several bags' full of rubbish on just a small stretch of road out of the village.  

Some of the things we recovered:-

    Two bottles of banana-flavoured milk, but unopened.  

    A pair of pants (black, size large).

    A single shoe, almost new.

We also picked up over two dozen empty Gordon's gin and tonic mixer cans, all crushed in the same way and thrown randomly on a long stretch of verge.

Clearly someone has been regularly using the road while necking the contents and then tossing the can out of the window. 

Let's hope it was a passenger and not the driver.

Call it what it is

BBC Radio 4 news at noon, and a report on the death of two men after a police chase.

It was said that the Audi was driven away from police at speed; jumped a red light; hit a van and then smashed into a bridge.

The reporter described it as an "accident".

I have lost count of the times that totally preventable fatalities on the road are described on the news as accidents.  

This description never seems to be applied to planes and trains, as they have crashes.  

I'm not holding my breath, but it would be great if reporters would start describing these incidents for what they are - preventable crashes -  and not dilute drivers' responsibilities on the road by euphemism.    

Road kill

It was a heart-stopping moment when the barn owl appeared. 

I was driving early morning across the moors when it rose from the field and swooped along the hedgerow fringing the road.   Quite a rare sight, even in Somerset, and one that brought me an inexplicable surge of pleasure.

It’s been an unusually harsh winter, but the owl and, hopefully, its mate had survived.

Two hours later, I drove back and saw a mass of whitish-brown feathers flattened on the road.

The bird had coped with snow, below-zero temperatures and weeks of cold winds.  But not a speeding car.          

No soaps, just opera

About twice a year, we treat ourselves to the opera, and find ourselves in the comforting company of other middle-aged (I'm being generous) people.  Sometimes, there might be a few under 40s in the  audience, but always heavily outnumbered by the grey and balding.

So it was a bit of a surprise to reach the auditorium of the glorious Marinsky Theatre in St Petersburg (my 60th birthday treat) and find ourselves surrounded by younger people. 

It had nothing to do with it being a modern opera, as it was tried-and-tested Verdi -  Un Ballo in Maschera.   Enjoying the experience were a large number of well-dressed young Russian men and women, out for an evening of cultural indulgence.

The couple front of us, who looked to be in their early 20s, seemed to have great difficulty keeping their hands off each other. But even they disengaged and gave rapt attention once the curtain went up.

Clearly, operas in St Petersburg attract a much younger crowd that in the UK.  But why?  Are Russian young people more culturally sophisticated? (There’s a value-judgment.)  Or is there a deep seated fear of doing things differently from previous generations (I’m thinking of the appalling treatment of  Pussy Riot)? 

Whatever it is, the future of classical music seems a bit healthier than the UK.    

Monday 25 March 1963

Today is the  anniversary of my father's death. Not a particularly unusual circumstance, except that he died 50 years ago when I was just a few days past my 10th birthday.  

Even after all these years, it still feels raw and freighted with emotion.   I think that's largely because, in an attempt to reduce my hurt, the adults around me didn't talk much about him. It was left to my headmaster to break the news that I no longer had a dad. Or at least one that was alive.   "Least said, soonest mended,"  my mother explained years later. Which is about as far removed from the theory of appropriate grieving as you can get.

I wanted to commemorate this sad anniversary and, as we often do, turned to religion. I don't have a particular faith myself, although am respectful of all.  But I have a strong sense of spirituality, and am particularly drawn to the tenets of Buddhism.

But today I fell back on Christianity;  the faith of my parents and my childhood.  But where to go on a Monday in March?  To my slight surprise, I discovered the office of morning prayers, starting at 7:30am at Wells Cathedral.  

There were about a dozen of us, all middle-aged or older and mostly male and dressed for the reality of an early-morning service in a cavernous cathedral on a bitterly cold morning.   Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, I found the silences more profound than the litany of the psalms and Bible readings.  

I sat looking at the beautiful, ancient stained-glass windows, and experienced both a heightened sense of loss but also gratitude for my life, and the reality that I have already outlived my father by 22 years, with hopefully many more to come. But, as evidenced by events this day 50 years ago, you never know.

If nothing else, I owe it to him to live each day to the full and make the most of every moment.

Thanks, Dad.  

For Pete's sake

"Roads were not invented for cars."  I've often pondered those words, but never so intently as when waiting by the side of the road in St Petersburg, during a 60th birthday visit to that spectacular city.

St Petersburg might be famed for many things :  golden-domed churches, priceless art collections, the Hermitage.  But it is not famed for courteous motorists. 

I'm guessing, but it must surely  be the case that there are more pedestrians in the city than cars. But there is no comfort in numbers when another battalion (perhaps that should be panzergruppe) of Bavarian driving machines come barrelling along, reckless as to the plight of  poor pedestrians trying to scramble across the road. 

Forget the old Soviet images of smoky, dented Trabants backfiring in grey streets.  St Petersburg is now vibrating to a decidedly Western ethos of bulky 4x4s, driven by confident young men and women in suits and sunglasses.

We learned quickly of the unwritten rule : cars (in this case, it seemed to be mainly black BMWs) can do what they like, oblivious to the presence of anyone too stupid or poor not to be in a vehicle of their own.

I lost count of the times that we waited obediently for the pedestrian green light, only to be nearly run over by a driver jumping red, and usually talking into a mobile at the same time.  They seemed more callous than indifferent to the plight of the car-less, and  gave not a glance as they squealed past. 

The wonder is why pedestrians meekly put up with all if this. Have no lessons been learned since the down-trodden overthrew the aristos nearly 100 years ago?  

Taken for granted

I don't want to come over all right-wing and reactionary.  But  I was astonished at a piece in yesterday's Guardian online regarding the decline in chapel attendance in Wales ("Census and religions: churches lose their appeal in struggling Welsh valleys" Guardian online11/12/12).

Chris Phillips, from a cultural centre in Ebbw Vale, was quoted as saying: "A hundred and fifty years ago everyone worked in heavy industry. It was hard, dangerous work and there was a fair chance you wouldn't be coming home. When you did get home safely with a bit of money in your pockets, you were prepared to go and say thank you to God. 

"Frankly there's f*** all to be thankful of these days."

I take into account that life in that area, now devoid of industry and with high unemployment, is no doubt a lot tougher than some parts of the UK.

But "f*** all to be thankful of..." ?

I'm sure there was much more of a community feeling around in those rosy Victorian days.  But what about some of the benefits we enjoy today, compared with our whiskered great-grandparents (sorry great-grandma)?

Free health care, free education, universal welfare benefits, pensions for all, emergency services a phone call away, laws to protect workers, minimum wage, massively reduced work-place accidents and deaths, social housing, central heating, comparatively cheap foreign travel, supermarkets full of food, entertainment at the flick of a switch.  

I could go on.

"F*** all to be thankful of..."?  Really?

Unlocked voices

I’ve always believed in the power of music.  And on Tuesday evening it brought together two very disparate groups : life sentence prisoners in a local jail, and a collection of respectable men with (probably) no more than a few speeding convictions among them. 

We were in the prison (the inmates could hardly come to us, could they?) to join forces for a choral evening: the Brue Boys, and the prison choir, Voices Unlocked. 

I found it surprisingly moving and a reminder, which as a former probation officer I really shouldn’t need, of the humanity and friendliness of so many offenders.

Looking at their faces, it was hard not to wonder what they were in for, and what backgrounds they had. A couple were particularly confident and socially-skilled, which made the wondering even greater.   But many radiated that curious combination of naivety and experience : faces etched with hard living, but also with qualities that seemed almost child-like.   But perhaps that’s not surprising, given the appalling backgrounds of so many offenders, which can so often lead to emotional stunting. And personal responsibility is then pared by living in a total institution. 

But for one evening our two groups were joined in song.  It was touching just how well-received our contribution was.   One young man in the audience was beaming with pleasure, and came up afterwards to say the music had brought back good memories. And others seemed very glad of the chance just to chat over a cup of tea.

Then we went our separate ways : the lifers filed back to their wings, and we were unlocked into the street, and freedom.