9th MARCH 2008
Tim's blog has been a regular feature since May 2003...
Not a dry eye in our house . . .
THE FIRST serious event of this period off-air was a talk at an expat
tea-house and bookshop at Mur de Bretagne in France where I was
talking about Princess Margaret to the Association Integration Kreizh
Brezh. You’ll have to take my spelling on trust. It was an attractive
bookshop which offered English titles and “sandwichs anglais” and my
audience was around twenty and consisted mainly of ex-pat Brits now
living in Brittany. I spoke, without notes, for just under an hour and
we sold a modest quantity of books. The audience seemed appreciative
and well-disposed. Afterwards people came up with the usual
revelations about the time Princess Margaret had visited their
hospital or failed to wave from the window of her car.
Lots of droning. I did a drone in the Teign Valley, at Christow
Village Hall. Really good audience – friendly, intelligent, just very
nice. The blogmaster is back and I have a horrible blank feeling about
what I have been doing since he went away. Apart from droning I feel I
have been working and the word count on the latest crime novel has
slowly increased. I have completed an acceptable proposal for a new
humorous offering for the Readers Digest. I have been
communicating with various people – sending out emails, fielding same,
trying to sort out an accumulation of papers, and, of course, talking
or “droning”. But I don’t have a huge sense of significant
achievement. I just feel I’ve been chugging along and ticking over.
Surviving.
One week-end the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Bedivere came to
Fowey for a visit. She is – or was – “our” ship and this was her last
visit as she is about to be scrapped or possibly join her “sister”,
Sir Galahad who was recently sold to the Brazilian Navy. It was
her last time in port here.. The rather ugly old ship – a sort of Royal Naval support vessel –
was in the Falklands and Penny had seen her on several occasions in
Hong Kong. She had recently returned from the Gulf. I learned that
many of her old pictures and other memorabilia had already been
removed and she was preparing for death or a South American rebirth. * * * The knives are out for First Great Western which is the company
responsible for the train service between Cornwall, where I live, and
London. Government, the press and most significant of all, the
travelling public are all having a go at them on account of their
unpunctuality, expense, cleanliness (lack of) and general awfulness. I agree with most of the strictures and have suffered dreadfully at
their hands but I have a niggling doubt about whether any other
company is going to do significantly better. It’s true the service is
a nightmare, mainly on account of its unreliability. It doesn’t help
to get grovelling letters of apology together with a refusal to pay
compensation without producing the original ticket which has either
been eaten by one of the new (superfluous I think) ticket machines at
the mainline stations or gone to the accountant to assist in his
struggles with the taxman. But I have a nasty niggle which says that
the problem is not really about individual companies, crummy though
they be. The real problem is that we simply don’t regard the railways
as an acceptable part of the travel system. Government ministers and other fat cats have chauffeur driven cars
and attitudes to match. Train travel is for have-nots. I seem to
remember a remark of Mrs. Thatcher’s to the effect that any man over
thirty who took a bus was a failure. I sometimes feel that
decision-makers feel the same about people who travel by train. I have
spent some time recently travelling on trains in continental Europe
and they seem to be cheaper, speedier and cleaner. First Great western may come and First Great Western may go but I
have a horrible feeling that come what may the train service is not
going to get better.
In other words it was all very agreeable yet curiously surreal. What
on earth were we all doing in the middle of a misty north-western
French province in mid-February, discussing the Queen of England’s
sister? What would our mothers have to say about it? Who would have
predicted such a thing when we all set out on our individual voyages.
Jolly odd, life!
On our way home on the good ship Normandie Express we must have
picked up the mandatory bug because about twenty four hours later we
both went down shivering, vomiting and generally feeling at death’s
door. I suppose it served us right for crossing the Tamar let alone
the Manche. But maybe it was the oysters outside Morlaix. Or something
I cooked. We’ll never know and, actually, we should never care.
This vague sense of tedium is about to be shattered by a further
explosion of talks this time to a number of cricket societies in
Derbyshire and Lancashire. To be specific I am talking in
Chesterfield, High Peak, Old Trafford, Southport and Liverpool. We
will be driving, not least because I have to take my own books to sell
(for which I have paid albeit at discounted rates), and will be
spending part of the trip in a self catering cottage in the “plague
village” of Eyam.
I shall take the laptop and my boots and try to keep my wits about me.
More in due course!
THOUGHTS MEANWHILE....
She sailed out one Sunday with the ship’s company lined up in
traditional style though when Penny, standing on our little terrace,
waved farewell some of them waved back, reminding me of Bernard
Fergusson’s defence of his New Zealand troops during World War Two
(“No, sir, they’re not much given to saluting but they’re very
friendly. If you wave they’ll wave back!)
Not a dry eye in our house. I do accept that politicians and others
who shape our futures can’t be dictated to by matters of sentiment or
history but I am depressed by their apparent ignorance as well as
indifference. I was very sorry to see the old ship sail away into the
sunset. Her departure seemed emblematic of decline and failure and the
end of hope. I would like to think I’m not being too pessimistic but
it was a sad moment.
Tim Heald
