Author: jamescalumcampbell

For some years now I’ve been resisting the pressure to acquire a smart meter to monitor my electricity usage.  Won’t one form of electronic surveillance just lead to another?  It’s a snoopers’ charter I tell you!  But I finally succumbed to the persuasiveness of the electricity board – “Dr Campbell, traditional meter reading is being phased out.  Your smart meter is ready to be fitted.  Please choose one of the following times at your convenience…”  

I have to say they were very good.  They came on time and the whole thing only took about half an hour.  It has been salutary to monitor my energy usage.  It is reassuring to wake in the morning, glance at the monitor, and see the dial at zero, despite the fact that the fridge, the broadband hub, and the phone are all ticking away.  I put on a few lights and the usage goes up to tuppence an hour.  I sing a ditty from Mary Poppins – “Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence an hour.”  Then I put the kettle on.  Good grief! 

The fact is, the smart meter has turned me into a miser.  I sit, like Scrooge, in a greatcoat and three jumpers, with the lights out.  And I don’t have gas.  Now electricity, per kilowatt hour, is about six times as expensive as gas.  How can that be?  A friend of mine has her own personal windmill and sells electricity to the national grid.  She watches the vanes go round and says, “Kerching, kerching.”  Yet I’m glad I don’t have gas.  I think we should leave the fossil fuels under the seabed.  Spend a bit more and save the planet.  It’s only money.  On Saturday evening I allowed myself the luxury of watching The Last Night of the Proms.  Two hours of music for a groat.    

It occurs to me that its 125^th outing, on Saturday, really was The Last Night of the Proms.  Nothing lasts for ever.

It was a lovely concert, if, for obvious reasons, ill-attended.  The BBC Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Dalia Stasevska, and they were joined by South African soprano Golda Schutz, who sang the aria Deh vieni, non tardar from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Richard Strauss’ Morgen!, Night Waltz; ‘The Glamorous Life’ from Stephen Sondheim’s A little night Music, and, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, You’ll Never Walk Alone.  Magnificent voice.

Lisa Batiashuli was due to play Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending but unfortunately she was indisposed.  The remarkable Nicola Benedetti stepped in at short notice.  She has previously played The Lark at a Prom, and indeed she has previously played (Max Bruch) on the last night, so she was right at home.  Wonderful. 

I greatly enjoyed the modern short pieces – Andrea Tarrodi’s Solus, and Errollyn Wallen’s Jerusalem – over clouded hills, a BBC commission and world premiere, whose dissident take on a cherished anthem perhaps served as a reminder that, on this night, everything could not be as it once was.  There was a truncated whistle stop tour of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  The piper playing outside Dundee’s V & A with the backdrop of the Tay Bridge was extraordinarily good.    

So we moved on to the area of controversy – whether or not to celebrate Britain’s imperialist past.  Actually the controversy appeared to evaporate.  Thomas Arne’s Rule Britannia was given an “authentic” rendition by the BBC singers, which turned it into a museum piece.  Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 was similarly pared down, and Parry’s Jerusalem was in its composer’s original form, with organ accompaniment.  Benjamin Britten’s version of the National Anthem is always arresting.  Auld Lang Syne was not sung.  Maybe the absence of an audience made it impossible. 

Splendid concert, spoiled by some naff production.  I could understand cutting to a scene from Wiltshire during The Lark, but the Old Man of Storr?  Nothing could be less evocative of Skye’s wild Trotternish silhouette, and the terrifying buttresses of the Quairang, than RVW in his most pastoral mood.  Maybe the stark recognition of that grinding, forced juxtaposition is the reason why Saturday night might have been the last hurrah.  I just can’t see 6,000 souls in September 2021 packing the Royal Albert Hall to the rafters and waving Union flags.  As I write, Westminster is about to debate whether or not Her Majesty’s Government should break the law in a specific and limited way.  Sir John Major and Tony Blair, in the Sunday Times, urged Parliament to defeat the government.  Good luck with that.

There are some things you can’t do in a specific and limited way, like falling in love, falling pregnant, committing murder, succumbing to Botulinum toxin.  (“I’ve got a touch of Botulism!”)  Also, there are some circles you cannot square.  Actually there are no circles you can square.  Try as you might, you can’t leave the European Union and then pretend that a border isn’t going to be created, somewhere.  I have an idea that Mr Blair might be able to say once more, “The kaleidoscope has been shaken.”  Where will we all be a year from now?  So many imponderables: constitutional issues, Brexit, global warming, pollution, mass migration of peoples, mass species extinction, Covid.  I can’t see the BBC resuming “normal service”.  The Last Night of the Proms was certainly different this year.  Next year, if it exists at all, I think it will be unrecognisable.   

Gotta Get Theroux This

My Life and Strange Times in Television, Louis Theroux (Macmillan 2019)

How obtuse of me not to get that “Theroux” meant “through”; I had imagined some American TV producer with an appetite for the bizarre picking up a strange artefact relating to some obscure mid-west religious sect, and thinking of Louis.  But then the penny dropped, and as I read on, I actually began to say to myself, “Gotta get through this” – because I found it a tough read. 

Not tough like Proust.  Gotta Get Theroux This was readable and interesting.  I think it was just the subject matter that got me down.  Maybe I just didn’t want to be around weird people for that length of time, but there must have been something compelling me to read on, just as something must have nudged me last night to watch Louis Theroux: Life on the Edge (Sunday, 9 pm BBC 2).

I am intrigued by the Theroux brand, and product.  Looking at that wide eyed, dead pan expression of his on the cover of his book, you can see why he is sometimes described as “faux naïve”.  On telly last night he interviewed a man who went into a trance, and was possessed by an extra-terrestrial who proceeded to address us in a voice with a somewhat electronic timbre.  Louis’ expression remained dead pan.  Is that the point?  Is he laughing at the people who invite him, with his film crew, into their homes?  And if we laugh along, is not that a kind of voyeurism?     

Oddly enough, I am reminded of a TV presenter from a previous generation who also had a fascination for the bizarre, particularly among the rich and famous – Alan Whicker.  He had a similar knack of using his charm to gain the confidence of the interviewee.  He could also live life on the edge; didn’t he once interview Papa Doc?  Alan Whicker became something of a cult figure.  Cult figures inevitably begin to parody themselves.  The glitzy lives lived within gorgeous palaces by the eye-wateringly rich were all described in slickly crafted journalese delivered with a characteristic nasal whine.  Monty Python cloned multiple Alan Whickers slouching around with microphones, doing a piece to camera in the same nasal whine. 

But I’m inclined to think there is nothing “faux” about the Theroux persona.  And I don’t think he’s taking the mickey.  Of course he is aware that he is exploring strange worlds, and that many of his interviewees will come across, frankly, as crazy.  He must also be aware that should tensions arise, should the interviewee suspect that he is being observed critically, this can make for compulsive viewing.  Yet Louis is clearly interested in his subjects, insatiably curious about their world view, open-minded, and, initially at least, non-judgmental.  That is why he is able to delve so deeply into other people’s lives.  It can be no surprise that much of his work has been in the United States, not just because the US is home of the weird – “only in America” is the accepted trope – but because there is a tradition of openness and hospitality that would be welcoming and generous to the courteous young man from England.  Of course it could all turn on a dime; if they decide you are not what you appear… well, that’s what introduces a certain tension to these documentaries. 

It is sometimes said that the last thing any reporter should do, is to become part of the story.  That Louis Theroux has ignored that dictum is perhaps the defining element of his originality.  The edges get blurred.  Sometimes he is a mix of a doctor, a pastor, and a social worker.  There is an episode in which he follows the life of an alcoholic who continually seeks detox, defaults, and scarpers.  Louis stuck with him.  Well, he was making a TV programme.  But he was also doing something else.  He steps voluntarily into people’s shoes.  That comes at a cost.  And perhaps that is why Gotta Get Theroux This is such a difficult read.  Surely his most famous – infamous – subject, was Jimmy Savile.

Savile haunts the book.  Louis keeps returning to him, as one might palpate an abscess to see if it remains excruciating.  Was he fooled?  Did he get it all wrong?  Is he consumed with guilt because he rather liked Jimmy? 

Heavy stuff.  I think my copy of Gotta Get Theroux This is heading for the charity shop.  Yet no doubt the next time Louis has a chat with some Nazis armed to the teeth and ready to inaugurate the new world order, I will eavesdrop for a while.  It’s as well somebody’s keeping tabs on what’s going on out there, and that that somebody should remain sane.  I don’t know how he does it.                                 

What a relief that the Proms are back.  Granted there is no audience present, and the great auditorium of the Royal Albert Hall is plunged in darkness, but the orchestra is there, and the music is live.  Over the last couple of months Radio 3 has broadcast some magnificent historic Proms from the archive; I think especially of Barenboim’s Wagner feast with his West-East Divan Orchestra, and Dudamel’s showcase of Latin America with the Simon Bolivar, which brought the house down.  All well and good, but there is nothing to surpass live music, which has been such a great miss for nearly six months now.

So on Friday the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo performed at the First Night of the Proms.  Aaron Copland’s Quiet City, with these poignant solos for trumpet and cor anglais, seemed apposite.  And they played Beethoven’s Eroica.  I’ve heard the Eroica a lot during Beethoven’s 250^th anniversary, but it never fails to have an impact.  Was it my imagination, or did the requirement for social distancing actually lend clarity to all the orchestral lines?

Last night, Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra played Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony.  Another inspired choice.  The spiritual nature of the music suits this vast, deserted space.  I remember going to the Albert Hall to hear RVW 8.  The eighth is dedicated to John Barbirolli, and Sir John was supposed to conduct it that night, but he had passed away in the interim, and it was Charles Groves who at the end of the performance, I remember, held the score up before the audience in a gesture of acknowledgement to “Glorious John”. 

Then in 2008 I was back in the hall for the fiftieth anniversary of RVW’s death.  The BBC Symphony with Sir Andrew Davis played the Tallis Fantasia, the Serenade to Music, Job, and the Ninth Symphony.  Extraordinary.  What a responsibility that night for the orchestra’s leader Stephen Bryant, who had extended violin solos in every piece.  I remember Andrew Davis pointing at him with a wry smile, so to say, I told you you’d be wonderful.   

And in the same 2008 season I was back to hear the rarely performed Sinfonia Antarctica, as it so happened, the night the conductor Vernon Handley passed away.  I recall the uncanny ethereal quality of the wordless voice of soprano Elizabeth Watts, coming from a gallery on high, and conjuring the pitiless majesty of the inhospitable southern continent.

Why, last night, was RVW 5 so apt?  It seemed to me to be a reminder of all that is to be cherished in England.  Post Covid, let’s hope our dear English cousins don’t get “back to normal”. Let’s hope they get back to RVW.

Of course two weeks is a short season.  The Last Night will be here in no time.  The singalong, with these bellicose party pieces, has become controversial.  The silver lining to the cloud of Covid, you might say, is the opportunity to hear the music without the words.  The question is, will six thousand souls be back in the hall in 2021 to declare that, whoever else in the world may be enslaved, so long as we rule the high seas, it won’t be us?

I’m not holding my breath.  The BBC have tried to put a stop to it before.  Sir Malcolm Sargent died in 1967, and in 1969 it was mooted then that Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory be scuttled.  But the audience were having none of it. 

North of the border, we have similar running sores.  The Scottish Government tried to legislate against the singing of sectarian songs at football matches, and failed.  We agonise about our National Anthem.  Flower of Scotland?  Wee bit hill and glen?  No wonder our rugby players keep dropping the ball.  Highland Cathedral?  What a dirge.  Scots wha hae?  Bit bloodthirsty.  Welcome to your gory bed. 

Maybe we shouldn’t take the thing too seriously.  Most National Anthems are humbug.  I’d sooner sing The Drunkard’s Raggit Wain than Flower of Scotland.

He stands at Jimmy’s corner,

Till Jimmy cries him in,

To see if he’s got ony bits

Or mibby, ony shin…

(Or, in another version, gutta-percha shin.  Other translations are available.  My grannie in Saltcoats used to sing it to me, and then say, “Is that no pitifu’?”)

Personally, I favour Auld Lang Syne.  So, incidentally do the prommers.  It ends the Last Night every year, even if the prommers don’t know the words.  They are kindly, and of gentle sentiment.  It might be argued that Auld Lang Syne is an international rather than a national song.  That’s just fine.  Anybody in the world can feel free to sing Scotland’s National Anthem.  Let’s bring it home.                    

Sean Connery turns 90 tomorrow.  Seems hard to believe.  The Herald Magazine on Saturday ran a piece on him, and BBC2 repeated a 2015 tribute, followed by a screening of Entrapment (1999).  The Herald has a picture of James Bond leaning on his Aston Martin DB5 (strictly speaking it should be a DB3), against an Alpine backdrop, in Goldfinger (1964).  Surely the picture shows that Connery was – is – the definitive Bond.   

And yet, initially, Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, thought otherwise.  Possible contenders for the Bond role included David Niven, James Mason, and Cary Grant.  But Dr No was a low budget movie and it is said that these actors would have been too expensive.  With hindsight, we may say it is just as well.  The Bond phenomenon was something quite new and really needed a fresh face.  Saying that, it seems to me that Cary Grant could have played Bond.  He shared with Connery (if it is possible that such a phenomenon can be shared) a quality of isolated uniqueness.  It is difficult to think of Grant, or Connery, or Bond, as belonging to any particular social milieu.  Archie Leach from Bristol joined the circus, disappeared, and reappeared in Hollywood as somebody who had buried his past and reinvented himself.  Grant was tremendous at light comedy, but Alfred Hitchcock recognised in him a quality of underlying menace, which would have played well to the Bond role.  On the other hand, when Dr No came around in 1962, Grant was 58 years old.  Connery was 31.  

It is hard to conceive of two persons more removed from one another in terms of social class, than Ian Fleming and Sean Connery.  Fleming went to Eton and Connery was a milkman in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh.  Yet it seems they both eventually recognised the qualities they each possessed.  Fleming once remarked that when he was writing his novels, he didn’t have an image of somebody like Connery in his mind, but that now, with hindsight, he would.  And on BBC2’s tribute, Connery remarked that he had got on very well with Ian.  He said he was a very interesting man, somebody of immense knowledge; a snob of course, but then – he offered it as an apologia – he went to Eton.     

It is easy to imagine that without Connery, the Bond films might have fizzled out.  But there were other important contributions too.  The soundtracks contributed to the exotic and intensely colourful atmosphere.  The original Monty Norman theme with its garish brass outbursts sits well with the atmosphere of threat; Shirley Bassey’s rendition of Goldfinger is extraordinary.  And the supporting cast was always well chosen; I think especially of From Russia with Love’s Red Grant (Robert Shaw) and Rosa Klebb (the remarkable Lotte Lenya).

But despite all that, despite the fact that we await the unveiling of Bond 26, I don’t think a satisfactory film of an Ian Fleming novel has ever been made.  The combination of extreme menace with high farce – it’s all there on the page; why would you wish to tinker with the script?  Maybe the movie moguls are afraid our attention span isn’t long enough.  Perhaps Sean Connery recognised that the Salzman and Broccoli creation was limiting him, and he moved on, only looking back over his shoulder once.  But you might argue that he carried on playing Bond, as Bond might have been in his later years.  He ended up an elder statesman of machismo, intimidating younger male leads like Kevin Costner (“He puts one of your men in the hospital, you put one of his men in the morgue.  That’s how you get Capone!”) …and Nicolas Cage (“Do your best?  Losers do their best!  Winners **** the Prom Queen!”)    

To the current zeitgeist, certain aspects of the Bondian world view have become untenable.  Didn’t Judy Dench’s M call Bond a dinosaur?   As a child, I was rather obsessed with Bond novels.  I have a vivid recollection of summer 1964, walking from the garden into the kitchen of a house in Midhurst, to hear on the radio that Ian Fleming had died.  He was 56.  Bond had, essentially, killed him, or at least the 100 pack-year habit of the Morlands specials, with the characteristic three gold bands of the RN.  Looking back, I don’t think Bond was a very good choice of role model.  It’s not so much the cigarettes and whisky and wild wild women that I regret; it’s the fact that Bond was a loner.  Early on in life, I came to believe I was living in an inimical carnivorous world, and I would need to survive through my own wits.  It would never have occurred to me to seek out a mentor and say, “I’m struggling with such-and-such.  I can’t see a way through.  Can you help me?”  It never occurred to me that I really didn’t need to do it all on my own.

But that is what makes Connery so remarkable.  He never belonged to any old boy network.  Big Tam the milkman never went to Eton.  My father caught sight of him on one of the Scottish links courses and remarked that, while his fellow golfers seemed each to have their entourage, he was alone, carrying his own clubs. 

So tomorrow I will raise a glass to Sir Sean.  Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. 

Shaken, not stirred. 

Half a century ago, Professor Bryce convened a meeting of the Higher Ordinary English class at Glasgow, to advise us on whether, come Michaelmas, we should proceed to Junior and then Senior Honours.  Unless we were prepared to immerse and lose ourselves completely in the “Realms of Gold”, he said, then we should not go down that path, but rather, and quite honourably, complete an ordinary degree.

A class member stuck his hand up and said, “Realms of Gold are all very well, professor, but I want to teach English in school, and under the current rules, unless I have an honours degree, I will not be able to become a principal teacher.”

Prof Bryce frowned.  “Really?  I had no idea.”

That’s the trouble with these pesky exams: they matter.  So if your future health and wellbeing, prosperity and happiness depend on your grades (or you think they do), you will naturally seek out a mentor who “teaches to the test”.  Forget the “Realms of Gold”.

Exam setters are well aware of the fact that “teaching to the test” can be an extremely non-educational experience, so they try to devise exams which will identify and reward originality and creativity in the candidate, rather than the parroted mantras of somebody who has been drilled.  I remember Question 2 in the Ordinary General Philosophy (Logic) exam at Glasgow:

2. Is Question 2 a proper question?

Fortunately, you could pick and choose your questions.  I thought, don’t go near it with a barge pole.  You will be lured, as by a Siren, on to the rocks.

What is the purpose of an exam?  During the educational phase, it is a means of demonstrating, to yourself and to others, that you are ready to progress to the next phase of learning; and at the end of the educational phase – speaking from the vocational point of view – it is a means of demonstrating that you are competent to perform a task.  I suppose exams are a necessary evil.  After all, you could hardly let a surgeon loose in an operating theatre, or a an airline pilot in a cockpit, without first checking that they were up to the task, and subsequently periodically checking that they retained their competence.  There’s even some justification in allowing that examinations be a stressful experience, because the examinees will doubtless encounter stressful situations during their career.

But it seems to me that exams ought to be straightforward; not necessarily easy, but in their format largely predictable.  They should be like a driving test.  You demonstrate that you are able to carry out a series of tasks safely and competently.  You don’t need to be Lewis Hamilton.

My heart ached for the young lady who phoned into Any Questions on Friday to ask why it was that, her teachers having advised she was going to get a bunch of A+ A levels, a computer algorithm decided to award her a bunch of Ds.  I don’t think she was reassured by the barrage of obfuscating prevarication that ensued.  Don’t worry – I’m sure there’s been a mistake.  All you need to do is appeal.  How long will it take?  Three weeks.  But today, that answer no longer applies, and nobody is quite sure what’s going to happen.  But something will turn up.  The expression “Kafkaesque” is overused but surely pertains to this young lady’s situation.

Why is life made so difficult for young people?  Take medicine.  If you want to get into Med School, in addition to a clutch of A*** +++ advanced A levels, you need to craft a faultless “personal statement”, present yourself to an interview panel and satisfy its inbuilt prejudices that you are doctor “material”, and sit the absurd UKCAT test which is an exercise in mental gymnastics akin to the Sunday Telegraph’s fiendish crossword Enigmatic Variations.  Then you must render succour to a lost tribe in the Amazon during your summer hols, and come back with a Covid vaccine distilled from the Cinchona bark.

Meanwhile, here, a sick person can’t find a doctor for love nor money.  Well, maybe for money.  We need to train more doctors.

I think if I’d been Health Minister – Education Minister, sorry, Freudian slip – this year I’d have tried to organise on-line exams.  It would have been easier in some subjects than in others.  The essay form would be easiest to manage.  You switch on your laptop on the appointed day and at 9 am the exam paper appears.  You submit at noon, with a declaration that your submission was all your own work, and you never looked at a book.  So, an opportunity to lie and cheat; no change there, then.

The scripts submitted could have been used to moderate the assessments of teachers.  I think the students would have preferred the opportunity to show what they could do, rather than be compartmentalised by some sophisticated computer program that was designed to be applied to a population, and not to a unique individual.  Human souls are unquantifiable.  They are not designed to fit an algorithm.  They are created to become immersed in the Realms of Gold.

I wrote to The Herald last week, for the first time this year.  Speech after long silence.  I’d become scunnered by letters launching vitriolic political attacks on opponents, without any apparent provocation, and full of assertions devoid of any reasoned argument.  I decided not to write to the newspapers unless I thought I had something constructive to say.  Then an issue came up, and I felt a letter, like an illness, coming on.  The issue was precisely that about which I blogged last week.  Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary in England, has suggested – perhaps even insisted – that remote consultation in General Practice be the new norm.  Now I happen to think that that is A Very Bad Idea.  Mr Hancock would call me a “naysayer” but there is nothing negative about the advocacy and the championship of the sanctity of the beautiful medical consultation.

But I raise the issue again this week, not to explore it further, but merely to provide an example of an issue over which people take sides.  Why do we form one particular opinion over another?

Ever since I got chucked out of somebody’s house for expressing a particular political view, I’ve sought a means, in social situations, to lower the temperature when I sense that rigorous debate is beginning to get out of hand.  A useful strategy, I have found, is to ask the person who expresses a view diametrically opposite to my own, “Why do you think that?  What is it about that viewpoint that particularly attracts you?”  It started as a technique, adopted simply to maintain a convivial atmosphere, but I have since found that – most of the time – I become genuinely interested in the origin and substance of the opposing point of view.  I would go further.  It seems to me that unless you have some understanding of, as it were, the opposite bench’s way of looking at the world, and even some sympathy for it, you probably haven’t thought your own opinion through, with any rigour.  So I ask the question, and I try not to hope that my debating opponent will trip themselves up with their own inconsistencies; rather that I will find out what makes them tick.  And who knows?  Maybe their argument will convince me, and I will have to change my mind.

I have two books that sit uncomfortably beside one another on my book shelf: The Two Cultures, by C. P. Snow (Part 1 first published, Cambridge University Press, 1959, 50^th Anniversary Printing, Canto, eleventh printing 2008), and Two Cultures?  The Significance of C. P. Snow, by F. R. Leavis, with an essay on Sir Charles Snow’s Rede Lecture, by Michael Yudkin (Chatto and Windus, 1962).  I periodically reread them, as I did this week.  F. R. Leavis’ attack on C. P. Snow is the ultimate exemplar of a deliberate attempt at demolition, not only of an argument, but of a personal reputation, without any apparent attempt to acknowledge that there might be some legitimacy in the opposing viewpoint, and perhaps even something worth salvaging.  I’ve written about this before and I don’t want to go over old ground.  Actually when you strip away all the personal animosity the core of the argument doesn’t seem to amount to any big deal.  Snow thought that scientific academics didn’t understand literary academics, and vice versa, and that that state of affairs was not good for society.  Leavis, being a literary critic, did what literary critics do; he subjected Snow’s essay to a merciless analysis.  He completely dismantled Snow’s argument, and left it in pieces.  It’s a blood bath, if you are attracted to that sort of thing.  Leavis characterised the broad sweep of Snow’s utterances as “panoptic pseudo-cogencies”.  He might have taken the view that Snow had expressed himself very clumsily, and then sought to uncover that which Snow was trying to say.  In other words, he might have asked Snow, “Why do you think that?  What is it about that viewpoint that particularly attracts you?”  But that would have gone very much against the grain of mid-twentieth century literary theory: if the text does not convey the meaning, the meaning is not there.  Leavis rubbished Snow’s thesis that there existed “two cultures”.  Yet paradoxically, precisely because he refused to concede anything to Snow, to engage sympathetically with him, because there was a total absence of meeting of minds, he rather demonstrated that Snow had a point.  There can be no doubt that Snow touched a nerve.

The distinguished American critic Lionel Trilling thought that Leavis’ critique was broadly right, but he deplored Leavis’ tone.  It was tantamount to his declaring, “Sir, you are not a gentleman.”  The other essay included in the two books in question, by the biochemist Michael Yudkin, is in my view the best piece of writing in the collection, because it makes all of Leavis’ points, while still affording Sir Charles courtesy and respect.

A deeply contentious issue, of course, has dominated the news this week.  A huge quantity of highly inflammable material has sat for years sequestered in a port in close proximity to a living, breathing city.  An accident waiting to happen.  When the explosion comes, those who survive are incensed at the incompetence of a corrupt government.  I refer of course to the repository of nuclear weapons at Coulport, which happens to be 25 nautical miles from my house.

Hiroshima was remembered on Friday, Nagasaki on Sunday.  In the current pandemic when live music has virtually been silenced, I was privileged to hear a live performance of Debussy’s Berceuse Héroique (1914) pour render Hommage à S. M. le Roi Albert 1er de Belgique et à ses Soldats.  It is a sombre piece, of great strength and moral power, incorporating at its core La Brabanconne, the Belgian national anthem.  Debussy was commissioned to compose it, and he said, perhaps apologetically, it was “the best I could do.”  But I think he meant it.  It’s right up there amongst his greatest works.  A fitting piece to hear on Nagasaki Day.

Brian Quail, a retired Glasgow classics teacher who writes eloquent letters to The Herald and The National in support of dismantling the hellish contraptions at Coulport, used these sombre anniversaries to write again in furtherance of the cause.  I am with Mr Quail – no, I can’t say that.  I don’t have his guts.  He lies down in front of the convoys en route to Aldermaston, gets arrested and goes to jail.  But I agree with his viewpoint.  His is a moral stance.  Yet I must try to understand somebody like Mrs May, who does not look like a mass murderer (then again, what does a mass murderer look like?) standing in front of No 10 saying she would “push the button”.  If I woke up tomorrow morning and found myself prime minister, would I really be prepared to alter the delicate balance of power, and unilaterally disarm?

Yes I would.  Even pragmatically, I think Coulport is an accident waiting to happen.  There has always been the possibility of detonation by mischance – a computer glitch (Failsafe), a terrorist heist (Thunderball), a rogue general (Dr Strangelove).  Add to these now the curse of our own age, managerial pseudoscience as purveyed by IT enthusiasts in sharp suits.  It’s about rebranding the CASD to keep our feet under the Top Table and lead the world going forward.  Yah yah yah.

BOOM!

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary in England, has made a speech to the Royal College of Physicians in London, entitled “The Future of Healthcare”, in which he has called for an end to routine face-to-face appointments with GPs.  He also said that even in some emergencies, people should try to go online before turning up at “A & E” (sic).  He is hailing a new era of “Zoom Medicine”.  He says we don’t need to attend our GP surgery “unless there is a compelling clinical reason”.  He also said that following the pandemic the NHS “must not fall back into bad old habits”.

Response from the medical profession has been typically low key.  Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of Council, Royal College of General Practice, has acknowledged that the Covid pandemic has altered the way GPs practise.  Previously, 75% of GP consultations were face to face.  During the height of lockdown, it fell to 15%, and has now risen to about 30%.  Prof Marshall thinks it might settle down at about 50:50.  He is not comfortable with the “remote by default” position.  It doesn’t feel very patient-centred to him.  He also points out that remote medicine will not be an attractive career option for junior doctors.

For the doctors’ union, The British Medical Association, Dr Richard Vautrey has said, “If doctors are given access to the right technology, they will embrace it.  However, (Matt Hancock’s) suggestion that all appointments going forward will be remote by default must be approached with caution.”

All very nuanced.

The subject was raised on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions.  The responses from the panel were predictable: an acknowledgement that the ability to consult remotely has been a boon during the pandemic when we have had few other options, tempered by an appreciation that a face-to-face consultation must inevitably be a better means of communication for both patient and doctor.  The issue came up again on Any Answers, and Dr Carey Lunan phoned in to draw attention to the many disadvantages of remote consulting, as well as to question the assumption that consulting by video saves time.  I think it would have been helpful if she had stated that she is Chair of RCGP Scotland.  She drew particular attention to the many groups of vulnerable patients who would struggle to cope with remote technology, as well as to the advantages of face-to-face consultation.

It strikes me that there is something very odd about Mr Hancock (PPE, Oxford, MPhil, economics, Cambridge) telling a bunch of physicians, (MB ChB, FRCP etc) how to practise their craft.  Well, not really their craft, because Mr Hancock is primarily talking about the delivery of primary care.  Physicians in internal medicine by and large don’t see patients who haven’t already been seen by a GP or an emergency physician.  They might have said to Mr Hancock, with some justification, “Well, we are actually doing what you ask already.  Our colleagues in primary care communicate with us; we vet the referrals and issue advice or arrange to see the patient if required.”  So why didn’t Mr Hancock address the Royal College of General Practitioners rather than the Royal College of Physicians?  Did he have a sense that the audience he chose would give him an easier ride?

But is it not passing strange that an economist should tell a doctor how to do his job?  Imagine the Minister of Transport addressing BALPA, the pilot’s union, and saying, “From now on, you’re grounded.  With drone technology, you can fly the A380 to New Zealand, and back, and never leave Surrey.  No jet lag.  Much more efficient.”

But to return to the Health Minister, given that he addressed his remarks to the wrong college, we may suppose his approach has not been very collegiate.  It doesn’t appear as if he has consulted extensively with the medical profession to come up with his Zoom plan.  This sounds much more like a directive from on high.

The medical profession must be much more robust in telling Mr Hancock not to dictate how medicine is to be practised.  The idea that a Zoom consultation should be superior to a face-to-face encounter is preposterous, chiefly because remote physical examination is impossible.  Once again, the sanctity of the medical consultation is coming under attack.  We must put this attack in historical context.  In 2005 when GPs handed out-of-hours care over to health boards, they gave up power as well as responsibility.  As a result, a third party entered the consulting room, the poltergeist within the computer screen – the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) – dictating how GPs should work.  Now that Mr Hancock wants to digitise primary care, the big tech companies are itching to manage our data.  Zoom Medicine will be the QOF on steroids.

Medicine is fundamentally a “hands on” profession.  No medical students will contemplate a career in general practice because they will not wish to spend all day staring at a computer screen.  If no GPs are trained, general practice will collapse.  If general practice collapses, the public hospitals will come under enormous pressure and they, too, will collapse.  The only winners will be the patients who can afford to consult their physician in the private sector, who in turn will be delighted to see them, in person.

Fortunately, here, north of the border, health is devolved.   We don’t need to go down Mr Hancock’s dreadful path.

‘Would to God that all the Lord’s people were Prophets.’

Numbers, xi. ch., 29 v.

 

Dear Brother Suetonius,

Greetings from the edge of the world, believe it or not, my birthplace, here in the farthest reaches of the Empire. I came up yesterday with a detachment of the legion from the fort at Kalendrium.  I was curious to revive the memories of my childhood.  Did I ever tell you that my father had been Caesar’s envoy, charged to treat with the local King Mettalanus?  The King occupied a fortress at the end of a very long, gloomy and savage defile.  There is a monk’s cell by a river at the foot of an escarpment, and a village, more a shanty town of miserable hovels, if the truth be told.  The people are reserved, yet friendly enough, and happy to deal.  Trade is our only interest, not conquest.  Why would we wish to conquer this desperate wilderness?  The winters are protracted, cold, wet, and wretched.  The landscape?  Steep mountains separated by narrow lakes.  The gods only know what lies further to the north.  There are scatterings of remote tribes, endlessly warring with one another.   Rumour has it there is a large island shortly across the sea where the sun sets, but the 59^th legion has no wish to explore there.

For the moment, it is summer, and everything is lush green profusion.  There is a tree here, a yew.  It is very old.  The natives say it has already been here for a hundred generations, but can that be possible?  Would that not make the tree older than the earth itself?  And how could people know such a thing?  Children have always climbed this yew – I did so myself!  We played under its protective foliage, as did our fathers.  And the next generation will do the same.  Hence the tree becomes the stuff of legend.

So, yesterday being a hot and sunny afternoon, I wanted to sit in my old familiar place.  Sure enough, a swarm of ragamuffins were playing a game around the yew’s broad trunk.  They were excessively noisy.  I shooed them away.  You know I am quite patient with children, but I confess I was already irritated.  There is a species of mosquito peculiar to these parts, which thrives in a warm and humid atmosphere, causing an intensely itchy eruption of the skin, a scrofulous inflammation, which, if unchecked, can drive a man to insanity.  I fear my pelt to be particularly sensitive to this intolerable affliction.  Why, had I been in Rome I might have been cast out as a leper!

Once the children had retreated I sat down in the shade with my back to the trunk.  A voice very close to me said, “You ought not to send them away.  They are what keeps the tree alive.”  I started.  The only living creature I could see close by was a tethered white colt, grazing peacefully by a hedgerow.

A tall young man in a rather fashionable white robe, unbidden, sat down beside me.  You may imagine I was minded to censure him for his gross impertinence, but I did not.  I was completely taken aback, because he addressed me in Aramaic.  Instead, I remarked, “Pestiferous urchins!  Their incomprehensible and incessant jabber would drive any man to distraction.”

“Really?  I find the cadences of their speech to be soft and beguiling.  I believe theirs is a very ancient tongue.”

“As ancient as this tree?  They say it is as old as the pyramids.  And they are indeed from the realm of prehistory.  You have travelled in Egypt?”

“Once.  My parents took me.  But I was very young, and have little recollection.  There was trouble at home, in Judea.”

“There’s always trouble in Judea.  You’re a long way from home!”

“As are you.”

“What brings you here?”

“The Imperial Fleet.  A hewer of wood can always find work on a ship.  My father has allowed me to travel before I return home to start my career.  I believe our scholastics call such a break between study and work, an hiatus.  I have walked upon this island’s green and pleasant southern reaches.  Mind, I think I prefer this more rugged, northern wildness.  But, like you, I am soon to return across Mare nostrum.  Perhaps we will travel aboard the same vessel.”

“You seem to anticipate my movements.”

“You are required to take the post of prefect at Caesarea.  You lack enthusiasm for the task, because the peoples of the east are fretful.  They are born to trouble.  Yet for you it is a step closer to Rome.”

“You must not believe everything that is written in the military gazettes.”

“I never read them.”

“Then you should not gossip with the soldiers in the taverns.  But to what station do you yourself aspire?  What are you going back to?”

“My life’s work.”

“Carpentry?”

“The construction of household furniture, or indeed of ships, has been important to me.  Someone who exercises the faculties of mind and spirit should also be practical, and live in the real world.  The head controls the hand, but the hand also informs the head.”

“And how do you intend to use your head?”

“I will embark upon my mission.”

“Mission?”

“To teach.”

“Is that a life time’s work?”

“I anticipate, three years.”

“What will you teach?”

“That which my father tells me.”

“Do you always do as your father instructs you?”

“He is very loving.  He allows me great freedom.  Yet in some things, we are of one mind.”

“And whom will you teach?”

“Whoever cares to listen.”

“All right.  I’m listening.”

He smiled, and absentmindedly drew patterns with a finger, in the dust.  “My time has not yet come.”

“What will be your teaching method?”

“I will tell stories.”

“To what end?  What is your purpose?”

“I am going to turn the world upside down.”

Suetonius, I remember at this point I took a deep breath and let it out slowly through pursed lips.  I suppose I should have told him to shut his mouth, but the truth is I rather liked this young man.  He had a combination of strength and vulnerability quite unlike anything I’d ever come across.  I merely said to him, “My young friend, we can sit here, you and I, on the edge of the world and talk metaphysics to while away an idle afternoon, but when we return to the centre of the world, I strongly advise you to be guarded in what you teach.  The emperor Tiberius is a benevolent and humane ruler, but he would not wish to have the world turned upside down.  He believes in tranquillity and cohesion in a world in which each knows his place.  If you insist in inverting the social order, then some people must be cast down, just as others must be elevated.  Who would you elevate?”

He rapidly enumerated a list; he’d clearly thought it through.  “Those who are sick at heart, bereft, downtrodden, disenfranchised, yet still forgiving, sincere, calm, graceful under pressure, especially when reviled under false accusation.”

“Ha!  Good luck with that.  And who would you topple?”

“I wish ill upon no one, though I confess I have difficulty with people who are smug in their own sense of righteousness.”

“Yet you seem so sure of yourself.”

“It is a paradox I need to resolve, before I return home.”

“You had better tell me one of your stories, and I will tell you whether you should look forward to your ministry.”

He began without preamble.  “A certain young man held a modest position in the administration of a great empire.  He was not prominent, but he was ambitious and hard-working, and determined to do his best and to see how far he could go in accessing the centres of power.  He believed in the sovereignty of the empire, and its divine rite to propagate its culture, even if that meant utilising warfare as an instrument of policy.  If he was commissioned to work in a remote location, he would perform his duties as best he could, always in hope of acknowledgement and reward.  Part of his responsibility was to govern in a colony as a suzerain, there to quell unrest, and to administer justice fairly but dispassionately.  The protection and the prosperity of the empire were paramount.

“One day a man was presented to him, on trial for his life, on charges of sedition.  He listened to the charges.  The activities of the man in question did not sound terribly seditious.  Frankly, they sounded trumped up.  There were being brought against the accused by his own people.  The accused was characterised as an enemy of the state, and yet the man in the dock seemed the absolute antithesis to anybody’s notion of how a violent terrorist might look, or behave.  It occurred to the bench that the people who were bringing the charges rather resented the fact that the accused was not a political activist and revolutionary.  When they realised that this man chose, in fact, to be meek, they turned against him.  There is nothing more revolting than the baying of a disappointed mob.  The bench wanted to find a way to let the man walk free, but he could see that that would incense an already angry crowd, and the last thing he wanted was trouble.

“The dilemma was compounded by the fact that the accused seemed quite indifferent to the ruling of the court, whichever way it went.  He made no plea.  He offered no impassioned defence.  He was content to let events run their course.  The bench sensed that the accused recognised the dilemma set before it, the dichotomy of natural justice as opposed to expediency, and that he even sympathised.

“In the end, the bench prevaricated.  He handed the affair back to the representatives within a locally devolved council, telling them to exercise their own judgement.  He literally washed his hands.  As a result, the man was put to death in a particularly cruel and ignominious manner.”

At this point, the man who was telling me this story drew a chiasmic sign with his finger in the dirt.  “Now,” he said, “you must tell me what you think of this imperial procurator.”

“I say he is a rascal.  He allowed an unruly throng to kill an innocent man.”

“What should he have done?”

“He should have offered the accused the clemency and protection of the empire.”

“And, since he failed to do that, what should become of him now?”

“He should be granted no privilege, save that of falling on his own sword.  So how does your story end?”

“The governor, in time, came greatly to regret his role in this extraordinary episode.  He did, as you say, contemplate falling on his sword.  But he did not.”

“Do not tell me he went on to amass power, wealth and status!”

“These were indeed within his grasp.  Yet to him they had become worthless.  In the end, he made a long pilgrimage, back to his original home, perhaps to sit under the rich green foliage and in the protective shade of an ancient yew tree.  It was in such a place he came to realise that I had already forgiven you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t follow the last bit.”

“Probably my fault.  Work in progress!  My stories are too abstract.  I think they need to be closer to the soil.”

“I have a notion your stories will sell like hot cakes, yet nobody will understand them.  Now I’m going to have to go.  These mosquitos make a madman of me.”

“You are plagued?”

“Incessantly.”

“Here.  Take this.”  He produced a vial from his robe.  “It is a concoction of local herbs.  Bathe tonight, apply this across the inflammation, and sleep.  Your malady will be gone by dawn.”

“You are a very interesting fellow.  But you must take care.  I hope we meet again.”

“Depend upon it.”

“Next year, Jerusalem!”

And you know what, dear brother Suetonius, I woke the next day, and my affliction was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

With the general easing of lockdown restrictions, I almost feel as if this past week I’ve had a punishing social schedule.  I’ve had visitors, and been able to show them my secret deep pastoral haunts, my broch, my lake isle of Innisfree.  I dined al fresco with friends in the local Biergarten on the day it reopened.  On Sunday I barbecued under the flightpath along the extended centre line of runway 23 into Glasgow.  (The traffic on the roads and in the air was heavier than I’d expected.)  And, at long last, my piano tuner has conducted a compassionate home visit.  His patient was in a bad way.  An A flat in the lower register had fallen silent, and a C sharp in the upper register had gone AWOL.  Not surprisingly the piano was ill-tempered.  But now, all is concord.  Next stop, for me, a haircut.

The Prime Minister is being characteristically bullish.  Back to normal by Christmas!  When he said that, I recalled that the troops were saying something similar in August 1914.  Next stop, Berlin, and home for Christmas.  Yet, when we look at the facts, there is little cause for such optimism.  The only reason the picture is improving is that we have cut down the rate of transmission by social distancing.  But nothing else has changed.  Same pathogen, same host, no vaccine, questionable antibody protection, no silver bullet therapies.  If we start to mingle, we can expect the R number to rise again.  Also, the worldwide picture, particularly in the western hemisphere, is not good.  The PM must know that a second wave is very possible.  This is why he has pledged more money to the NHS.  The idea of a second lockdown is as unpalatable to him as it is to the rest of us, so the contingency planning has been for local lockdowns, as hot spots spring up.  We may have to live with this thing for the foreseeable future.

The Scottish people have accepted the compulsory wearing of face coverings in shops without demur.  No one that I can see is flouting the law.  I was reminded of the banning some years ago of smoking in public places.  That also was accepted by common consent and rapidly became second nature.  If I may say so, young ladies have quickly seen the potential of face coverings as a fashion adjunct.  They are worn with a certain allure.  It’s all in the eyes.  The First Minister wears a rather fetching tartan mask and, inevitably, one of her fiercest critics wrote in to The Herald to complain.  It’s no accident that mask is tartan!  Everything’s political!  Such letters used to make me splutter into my cornflakes but now they just make me laugh, they are so absurd.  There’s a cabal of Nat-bashers.  I think they have a roster.  Whose turn is it to tell The Herald that Scotland is a basket case?

All this week I’ve been reading Anne Frank’s diary.  It is the ultimate lockdown memoir.  It’s terribly sad – but only because we know the outcome.  Ms Frank’s last entry in the diary was on August 1^st 1944.  She was not to know that she, and the rest of the occupants of the warehouse’s secret annex on the Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam, would be arrested on August 4th.  She knew about D-Day and the advance of British and US troops from the west, and she knew the Russians were advancing from the east.  She knew about the July bomb plot against Hitler.  So the entry of August 1st, albeit introspective, is full of hope.  Reading Anne Frank’s diary is poignant because it turns the usual relationship between writer and reader on its head.  Usually it is the writer who knows what is going to happen in a book, and it is the reader who is kept guessing.  With the diary, precisely the opposite is true.

For those of us lucky enough to steer clear, thus far, of the virus, it must surely be self-indulgent to compare our situation with the plight of Anne Frank.  Certainly we have a sense of uncertainty about the future, but at least I am reasonably confident that if I go out for a walk I am not going to be arrested by a bunch of gangsters in long black leather coats.  At the BBQ under the flightpath yesterday we were talking about the surveillance, overt and occult, via multiple apps and platforms and under the auspices of various governments and multinational companies at home and abroad, which we must endure, assuming we recognise its existence.  One of the group didn’t care what was known of them by “the authorities”.  After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

But what if the bad guys get into power?  And what if your views, or your activities, or your provenance, or your appearance, is unpalatable to them?  It can all turn on a sixpence, and change overnight.  Before you know it, you are in secret lockdown, dependent on the goodness and courage of a few beneficent souls, wondering how long you need to live like this.  A week, a month, a year?  Forever?

 

When Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled his mini-budget last week he said, “No nationalist (sic) can ignore the undeniable truth” that the furlough scheme financed by government borrowing “has only been possible because we are a United Kingdom.”

I used to think economics was an esoteric “mistery” only understood by Oxford dons who would tell you why it was economically sensible to pay men to dig holes and then fill them in again.  But I’ve changed my mind.  I suspect economics to be fundamentally simple.  Mind you, that which is simple is not necessarily easy to grasp.  Who was it said that the trouble with simple ideas is that they need to be understood very well?  Still, it seems to me, if you have fresh air and clean water, if you can grow crops, feed, clothe, shod, and shelter yourself, then you are economically viable.  It’s pure thermodynamics.  You just need the available energy resources.

The trouble is, economics is a behavioural science.  That is why it is so dismal.  Greed and chicanery can pose as beneficence and altruism.  The art of the scam is the art of smoke and mirrors.  A scam is nearly always an attempt to persuade you that economics does not have to obey the laws of thermodynamics.  Look at the South Sea Bubble, the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the 2008 banking crisis.  It’s okay.  The economy is a perpetual motion machine.  It can run on empty.

It occurs to me that we could learn a lot about economics by looking at ourselves, that is, Homo sapiens, and specifically our physiology.  After all, we have evolved from a unicellular to a multicellular organism over billions of years.  In the management of our resources, we must have done something right.  Physiology is said to be the study of body function.  That is a shorthand for all these billions of years of evolution.  Physiology is the study of the way multicellular organisms have developed systems whereby cells removed from their immediate environment can survive.  They have had to create a “milieu intérieur”.  In order to survive and prosper, cells have had to specialise.  That is economically a very sensible thing to do.  Adam Smith starts his enquiry into the Wealth of Nations by noting the importance of individual workers specialising in one area, rather than personally undertaking every aspect and stage of a given pursuit.

This idea of looking at the body as a model of community organisation is not particularly original.  St Paul compared the early Christian Church to the human body in chapter 12 of the First Letter to the Corinthians

But now are they many members, yet but one body.

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.      

Nay, much more these members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.

This idea of interdependency, and respect for that which has heretofore been considered lowly, has become all too relevant during the Covid pandemic.  Often the people we have depended on the most to keep the show on the road, have been the low-paid.

What is the currency of the human body?  The high energy phosphate bonds of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).  There is an equation in thermodynamics, ΔG = ΔH – TΔS, where G stands for the Gibbs’ free energy, H is enthalpy, T is temperature, and S is entropy.  It is very beautiful.  It was formulated in 1878 by a quiet and retiring physicist at Yale, J. Willard Gibbs.  Not exactly a household name, and yet Gibbs is the Newton of thermodynamics.  Interestingly, the Scottish physicist James Clark Maxwell knew how important Gibbs’ work was.  His equation predicts whether a physical process, say the formation of a compound from two molecules, will occur spontaneously, or whether energy is required to drive the reaction.  Spontaneous reactions have negative G values and are said to be exergonic.  Non-spontaneous reactions have positive G values and are endergonic.  The Gibbs free energy equation is probably the fundamental equation of the biological sciences because it allows us to quantify the energy requirements of all the biochemical processes fundamental to our survival.  I haven’t looked at the syllabus for Oxford’s politics, philosophy, and economics (PPE) degree, but I would hazard a guess that the Gibbs free energy equation is not covered.

The human body can lodge currency in the bank, in the form of adipose tissue.  It is better to have a cushion, than to subsist at starvation level.  But clearly this can be overdone.  Obesity becomes extremely counterproductive.  It is only recently that we have begun to realise just how self-destructive obesity is.  We ought not to hoard.

It is interesting to note that the human body has no mechanism of debt.  Briefly, you can run up a so-called “oxygen debt” – I did yesterday, running up a hill.  I paused at the top, to “get my breath back”.  But that is not the same as running up a fuel debt.  You can’t burn fuel if it isn’t there.

Imagine trying to construct an economic system that did not rely on debt.  I think the UK national debt has just topped £2,000,000,000,000.  Some people think this is a healthy state of affairs.

Smoke and mirrors.