The Chess Valley

This is one of three weblog postings about the events of one day: Friday 6 November 2015. The other two postings are À la recherche du temps perdu and Friday 6 November 2015.

The River Chess is a chalk stream rising in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, in southern England, running south eastwards into Hertfordshire. Its sources are some springs in Chesham, and the river ends just south east of Rickmansworth at its confluence with the River Colne. Over its short 18 km (11 miles) length, it falls only 60 metres. (In contrast, the River Thames falls 110 metres, the River Wear: 340 metres; and the River Severn: 610 metres.) The River Chess is fed by groundwater held in the chalk aquifer over which the river runs: when the water table is very low, the river can disappear in places, and not reappear until the groundwater has been adequately replenished. For much of its length the River Chess runs through or close to the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The valley through which the River Chess runs seems to me to be far too wide and deep to have been created by the existing river, and my guess would be that it was carved by glacial run-off towards  the end of the most recent ‘ice age’ about ten thousand years ago. An undemanding extended walking route, called the Chess Valley Walk, mostly utilising footpaths and lanes, roughly follows the line of the river through the valley from the source of the river in Chesham to its confluence with the Colne.

It wasn't cold, but the sky was leaden, and a light drizzle was lubricating ground, grass and leaf, when I joined the Walk from a network of paths crisscrossing Chorleywood Common. The approach involved a descent into the Chess valley through an autumnal beech wood. The browns, golds, yellows and pale greens, mostly leaf litter, were a riot familiar to Gerard Manley Hopkins. Being the fag-end of the year, much of the vegetation, weeds such as coarse grasses and nettles, was already rank and overblown, some of it yellowing or turning grey. Perhaps there was the smell of leaf mould. A grey squirrel was noisily ferreting around among the leaves. A rabbit skipped silently out of sight. An untidy snap and clatter of feathers on twigs signalled the panicked flight of a wood pigeon. Rooks, magpies and jays called obscenities at each other. However, behind the alarm calls of blackbird, blue tit and robin, and not entirely unlike my tinnitus, was the constant sibilant roar of traffic on the M25 that was finally stilled only later, at the furthest extent of my walk.

On reaching the valley floor, I turned north. I could not yet see the river. Whilst the path ran fairly straight, with such a slight gradient, the river meandered around the valley floor, sometimes dividing into several channels, and so wandered away from the footpath. An interpretation board described some of the flora and fauna of the valley, including about the water voles (Ratty, from The Wind in the Willows).

As I walked on, still unable to see the actual river, I noticed a footbridge, almost completely obscured from view by vegetation. I experienced what I often experience when walking in the countryside: a desire to 'learn the landscape' by following every path. Discovery and the possibility of adventure beckoned. I was reminded of Robert Frost’s yellow wood. Unlike Frost, however, I chose the path muddy with the imprint of boot and paw.

Immediately before the next footbridge, the footpath finally approached the riverbank and showed me the river for the first time. The place was not especially pretty, but could have been a delightfully peaceful place to sit for a while, reading, writing or simply contemplating. A meander had carved out a broad shallow bay that formed a natural paddling pool. Out in mid-stream, river weed quivered inviting fingers and hands to explore its texture and movement. Had the weather been an order or two of magnitude more pleasant, I should not have hesitated to unlace my boots, peel off three pairs of socks, roll up my trouser legs, and paddle on the flinty gravel in the flow of the water as though I were four or five years old once again. Two aspects of the scene did not match the visual memory from my childhood: there was no backdrop of trees, and there was no road bridge a short distance downstream. However, the obviousness of this as a safe place for young children to paddle suggested that I had indeed found the place that I sought.

A woman and her dog arrived, and in my mind's eye I put back on my socks and boots. The dog was in the water without hesitation. I went to stand on the footbridge, over the middle of the river. The water was so intensely clear that had it not been for the surface reflection of lowering clouds, one might have been forgiven for being uncertain that an alternative dimension existed beneath that surface. As though disturbed by an eddy of moving air, the water rippled: a brown trout glided by silently heading downstream. My eye was then caught by a flash of movement upstream. The iridescent turquoise of a kingfisher darted up from the water to sit on the branch of a willow. The action was happening a hundred metres upstream, but by the time I had relocated myself for a better view, the kingfisher was gone. I began to have a sense that the valley, its river and its inhabitants might be willing to reveal something of themselves to those who trod lightly.

The rain subsided as I walked on. Initially close to the banks of the river, but getting gradually further away again, the footpaths crossed soggy fields, ran through woods, and at one point skirted a substantial marsh or bog. The path seemed to be heading out of the valley. What I had missed, it transpires, was the sign to cross the river on that first footbridge, and to follow the Chess Valley Walk along lanes to the east of the river. It was this latter route that I adopted on the return leg.

I was utterly delighted to discover a watercress farm at Moor Lane, Sarratt Bottom. There is something wonderful for me about watercress beds with sparkling water flowing over biscuit-coloured flinty gravel, contrasting with bright, chlorophyll-green leaves. I felt a sense of peace in proximity to its freshness and cleanness, not unlike proximity to a waterfall. I crossed the footbridge to the east/north side of the river. A sign read "Fresh Watercress", so I felt authorised to approach the farm buildings. Just before the first building was a metal cabinet with sliding glass doors, sellotaped to the front of which was a notice that read "Bags of watercress £2. Put the money in the blue box." Relieved to discover that I had £2.00 in change, I popped four 50p coins in the blue box and helped myself to a bag of watercress. The bag was river water cool, and the watercress it contained felt firm and substantial, not like the bags one buys from a supermarket. Considerately, the farm owners had placed two garden benches on the bank overlooking the river. It had started to rain again, albeit lightly. I retrieved the heavy duty carrier bag I had packed in my knapsack for this purpose, spread it out on a seat, and sat on the bench in the drizzle, eating my sandwiches while listening to the bubble and rush of the water. A small weir created a tiny waterfall downstream, although nothing that would trouble a trout. Upstream the river ran over a gravel cascade, producing a gentle sibilance. I wondered whether to get out my umbrella. An aeroplane from a different world moaned overhead, and a chainsaw whined somewhere in the distance. I realised that I could no longer hear the M25.

While gazing abstractedly upstream, I saw the flicker of movement, and the tell-tale iridescence of another kingfisher. I was watching it sitting on the handrail of the footbridge. Every so often it would about-face and I could see a blob of dark red plumage, then it would turn back and become a sliver of turquoise once more. From time-to-time it would dart into the river, and quickly return, but each time to a different place on the bridge. I realised that I was being permitted to witness the quiet charm of the Chess Valley and one of its residents.

I walked a little way further upstream along a footpath that was partially board-walked. This was the Chess Valley Walk proper. At a place where the river bent sharply away I stopped to survey the view. With its woods and fields, a valley and a river, footpaths and footbridges, its birds and mammals, this was an environment in which I should be happy to linger and to revisit. However, it was time to turn back towards Chorleywood Common.

I became aware of a disturbance of rooks. Where I live in eastern Kent, such a disturbance is typical when a buzzard is wheeling overhead. I looked up, and there was indeed a raptor, in fact several. However, unlike a buzzard with its rounded, owl-like wings and convex tail, these birds were leaner, more angular and with a pronouncedly forked tail: red kites. There were at least two adults and several juveniles. Although flying immediately above me, as well as over the neighbouring field, settling in a tree, one even landing on the grass, I was not certain that they were aware of my presence. I was treated to a remarkable display of aerial acrobatics. Their agility was stunning and mesmerising, and I was captivated. I rued not bringing my video camera.

The muddy lanes that speeded me back to Chorleywood were sparsely populated with pleasant rural houses. They were neither country palaces of the nouveau riche, nor tumbledown cottages, just ordinary nineteenth century and twentieth century houses in a delightful location. No doubt too remote for the taste of most people, and maybe considered impractical for full engagement in modern life, these properties spoke of a quieter way of being not unlike life in parts of the North Downs of eastern Kent.

As I climbed up out of the valley through the beech woods back onto the Common, I could feel green tendrils tugging gently at my wrists and ankles. I was already yearning to return.

Friday 6 November 2015

This is one of three weblog postings about the events of one day: Friday 6 November 2015. The other two postings are  À la recherche du temps perdu and The Chess Valley.

The day began about ten days before. It came about due to my daughter being invited to attend a meeting at Pinewood Studios. I told her that I was considering offering to drive her there, guessing that I could probably find some interesting place in which to occupy myself until it was time to collect her: Hampton Court Palace, Kew Gardens, Cliveden and the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley were some of the many places I considered but then rejected on the grounds of expensive entrance fees that I was unwilling to afford. Examining the map closely, I saw that an area named Chorleywood Common was not too far away, and as though some distant echo, I recalled that I had been taken there as an infant. Moreover, a quick online search revealed a walking route along the Chess Valley, and I was feeling ready for a walk. The weather forecast looked promising, so I resolved to go. My resolve wobbled a little when the meeting venue was changed to Shepperton Studios, some twenty five miles from Chorleywood, hardly close by. However, recognising that I felt disappointment at the prospect of not undertaking the trip, I recommitted myself to the adventure.

I do not use a satellite navigation system. Whilst I have in fact done so on several occasions, it has only ever been with mixed success, and I have on each occasion found myself disputing, or even arguing with, its robotic instructions, and become extremely fed up with being exhorted repeatedly to make an immediate U-turn. I prefer to use maps with which to plan my route, from which I write detailed lists of abbreviated instructions and observations. Several features make my lists superior to those of the Google Maps route planner: I include visual way-points (turn right at the traffic lights with a BP petrol station on the corner); I carefully detail how to handle particularly confusing junctions; I insert means of realising when something has gone wrong, and I devise instructions for getting myself back on track. My care stems partly from the frequency with which road signs in built-up areas do not show the road number, and partly from the fact that street name signs are too often obscured, located in places not visible to a passing car driver, or simply absent. I do use Google Maps street view to examine road signs and lane markings. Preparation of my in-car instruction sheets effectively rehearses sections of the journey which means that, as I drive along a road for the first time, I am recognising various features as though I had driven that way before.

Car parking is important: parking somewhere safe is paramount; parking somewhere for free is better than having to pay; parking somewhere convenient is helpful. Searching online I found several car parks listed for Chorleywood. I noted, however, that the railway station car park charges a substantial fee; a free shoppers' car park has a two hour limit; but a somewhat less-convenient shoppers' car park offers four hours parking without charge. I decided that four hours of parking would be sufficient, so used Google Maps street view to see how I would recognise the car park entrance, which was not especially obvious. While using Google Maps satellite view, I noticed that there is also a car park not listed on the web, eating into the southern edge of Chorleywood Common. The satellite photograph revealed a less formal looking shape, as though there would be no charge, and showed the car park full with parked cars. Provided there were space on the day, this car park would be most convenient.

As I intended to be walking in the countryside for three or four hours, and driving in the car for several hours either side of that, I would need a toilet before setting off on my walk. I am not a fan of attending to my bodily functions en pleine nature, public conveniences are seldom adequately clean, and I prefer not to have to ask to use a toilet in a pub when I have no intention of buying a drink. On the other hand, superstores usually have toilets, and it is possible to check online the availability of this facility. The Sainsbury's superstore closest to my route from Shepperton to Chorleywood would be at Staines.

My sister and her partner live in Maidenhead, over a hundred miles from the village in which I live, so we do not get to meet very often. The trip to Shepperton would take us within twenty five miles of Maidenhead, so the occasion seemed like too good an opportunity to miss a visit.

On ruled paper I wrote myself detailed lists of directions from home to Shepperton Studios, from Shepperton Studios to the Sainbury's superstore in Staines, from Staines to the car park on the edge of Chorleywood Common, from that car park (if full) to the shoppers' car park in Chorleywood, from Chorleywood back to Shepperton (avoiding Staines), and from Shepperton Studios to Maidenhead. Using Google Maps route planner I was able estimate how long each leg of the journey would take, and thereby calculate the required start time for each leg. The two fixed times were the start and the end of the meeting at Shepperton studios. Anyone who knows the M25 will be aware that, despite an American number of lanes along stretches that are often congested, during 'rush' hour, the traffic can slow to a standstill: a journey typically taking 35 minutes can be expected to take twice as long, and can in practice take much longer, depending on traffic density. Arriving on time when using the M25 requires planning and a following wind.

Over the days between my decision to go and the day itself, the weather forecast deteriorated until it became set to drizzle for most of the day. In a knapsack I packed some waterproof trousers and an umbrella, along with a heavy duty plastic carrier bag on which to sit. I charged my digital camera, and ensured that its memory card was empty. Never before having visited the area, at least not as an adult, I have no Ordnance Survey map of the area. I feel more comfortable when out walking if I can follow the route on a map, so I downloaded a pdf brochure of the Chess Valley Walk that I found online. Of particular significance was that it gave instructions about how best to join the Walk from Chorleywood Common. I printed the relevant page of the brochure and popped it into a punched plastic pocket. With optimism comparable to that of a compulsive gambler, I included with my gear for the day a small towel, just in case I got the opportunity to paddle in the River Chess. For once I remembered to pack a hair brush: I guessed that, come late afternoon, having being out walking for several hours, I would probably look like a wild man of the woods. I topped up the car engine with oil and checked the tyres. Late on Thursday evening I set up the bread-making machine so that I could make and take fresh sandwiches. First thing on Friday morning I prepared a flask of a herbal infusion.

Friday morning did not dawn well. Not only was it raining hard, but I had slept, when I had slept at all, remarkably badly. I felt thick-headed with a mild but intrusive migraine headache that subsequently lasted for several days. As usual in such circumstances my tinnitus was also quite pronounced. However, we managed to leave precisely on time, which is unusual. Traffic on both the M20 and M26 was busy but moving fast. Traffic on the M25 was busier, but there were remarkably few queues. By the time we left the M25 I was feeling too travel sick to be able to read my list of directions, so I had to have them read to me, but having researched the route thoroughly, I was able to recognise most of the route as we arrived at each way-point or junction. We arrived forty five minutes before the meeting start time (which I am informed was valuable).

The journey into the centre of Staines was more confusing than I had envisaged, and would have been more comfortable had I researched it better. The toilets in Sainsbury's were adequate but nothing more, and despite a quick look round several departments of the shop, I was unable to find anything I wanted to buy. Entry onto the M25 was via a highly complex road junction, and the northbound traffic was heavier than before. I had no choice but to read for myself my written directions.

An arrow flies straight from the bow to the target. Okay, it travels in a gravity-induced parabola, and in the open air its flight may be influenced by the wind. What an arrow does not do is swing round objects, hug contours, or travel in the wrong direction in order to find a faster path to the target. I have often felt fascinated with the concept of travelling from one point in space and arriving at another. Journeys rarely involve a single straight line, and a journey in a city often requires one to zig-zag this way and that, like a sailing boat tacking in order to travel upwind. Longer, more complex journeys may even demand, unintuitively, that one travels south when the destination is north, and west when the destination is east. Sometimes the two places are already well known to us, and like the sequential memory involved in reciting a poem or singing a song, what happens next on the journey comes into view as we approach it. However, when the destination is unfamiliar, the journey inevitably involves performing a precisely-designated sequence of unconnected actions, like when following the instructions for performing a complex operation on a computer: miss out or change a step and one ends up somewhere completely different, such as Watford, St. Albans or Luton. Sometimes the journey involves trusting to an intuitive sense of direction, and whilst this has worked spectacularly well for me on foot on many occasions, it has also led to some spectacular failures when driving (such as trying for an hour to free myself from the ring of hell that is the one-way system in Milan, Italy). Junction 17 on the M25, it turns out, is signposted to Chorleywood. On seeing this, I immediately wondered whether I had been mistaken in writing J18 on my list. I knew from the map that Chorleywood is only a very small town, and it seemed unlikely that it would warrant the attention of two junctions of the M25. Had I exited the motorway at Junction 17, I should have found that the sequence of right and left turns recorded on my sheet of paper had failed to bring me to the car park on the edge of Chorleywood Common, and I could have been driving around for a quite while trying to work out how best to rectify my error (which is what happened to me in Rhayader, Powys; in Hannover, Germany; and at Olomouc, Czech Republic). It is on those occasions when one is confronted by the fact that roads signs, for all that they look like they are pointing the way, are more reliably an aide-memoire. One of the reasons why I include way-points in my route list instructions is to bolster my confidence that I am still on the correct route. Doubt comes easily to me. All that is required to throw me off course at a road junction is ask whether I ought be heading in a different direction. I very nearly left the motorway at Junction 17 because what was written on the road sign was the name of the place to which I was travelling. Although very much in two minds, I chose to adhere to my instructions and drove on to exit the motorway at Junction 18. Once off the M25 and back onto better-rehearsed smaller roads, I found my way without hesitation. I arrived at the car park I had identified on the edge of Chorleywood Common where it seemed that a single vacant parking space was waiting for me. Somewhat frazzled and distinctly thick-headed, I had arrived.

The car park looked as though it was and ought to be free of charge, and the cars parked either side of mine were unadorned with parking ticket machine tickets. No parking ticket machine was visible. Ever wary, I walked over to read a small but official-looking notice that, from its appearance could just as easily have been making explicit some by-laws about the use of the Common, such as restrictions on the public use of alcohol, and that all dogs should be kept on a lead. In a sentiment reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, the notice in fact indicated that between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm (what is wrong with using the twenty four hour clock?) parking in the car park was free provided that one displays a parking ticket machine ticket, and that failing to display a ticket would be considered a contravention for which punishment would be meted out. A parking ticket machine remaining stubbornly elusive, I walked towards the other end of the car park and accosted a dog owner who was just returning to her car. She pointed to a hitherto hidden machine, but then added that it wasn't working. Not entirely reassured, I went to investigate and found it perfectly operational. Clutching my ticket (no charge), I returned to the woman and her dog who were on the point of driving away. She observed that as she had arrived well before 11:00, maybe the machine had simply refused to issue her with a ticket. Lewis Carroll or Franz Kafka?

Boots laced, knapsack strapped, and clutching my plastic-pocketed map, as soon as I set off walking across Chorleywood Common two things became evident: one, that although I have no specific memory of the place, it felt so natural to be there, that I was certain that I had visited long ago. It is precisely the sort of place that a young couple would take their two young sons for a day out from the grime of poor city suburbs. Acre upon acre of grass on which to run like the wind; stands of tall trees hundreds of years old amongst which to hide. Surely that is where we learned to play 'hide and seek'. Second, the entire Common was speckled with polite-looking women walking polite-looking dogs. Frequently in pairs, their dogs mostly on the lead, the women were out for their morning walk to encounter and talk with their friends. I wonder if their stockbroker husbands take their turn to walk the dog in the evening and at weekends. (I apologise for stereotyping.) I encountered a group of women who had found a quiet corner in which to do some dog training together - reminding me of the many ways in which New Yorkers use Central Park in Manhattan. Elsewhere a woman was training her dog alone. It was only down beside the River Chess that I began encountering men with their dogs, and couples with their dogs, as well as more women with their dogs. There are plenty of dogs where I live in eastern Kent, but Chorleywood appears to take dog ownership to an entirely new level.

The descent off the Common was through beech woods. Despite a gentle drizzle, it was a delightful place to be walking. In order to try to avoid arriving back at Shepperton late, I calculated that I needed to be driving away from the car park no later than 15:00. I had set off at 11:40, giving me three hours and twenty minutes, or an hour and a half outbound, plus twenty minutes to eat my sandwiches. I knew that I could not hang around, although it would have been lovely to have lingered.

On reaching the valley floor I arrived at the signposted Chess Valley Walk. Although I had printed the documentation I found online, it would appear that the font size had been chosen by Lilliputians. Consequently I was unable to make out clearly that the Chess Valley Walk crosses the river in a number of places. A footpath spurred off to a just-visible footbridge. Tempting though it felt to cross that bridge, I decided to press on, following signposted footpaths running along the west side of the valley. Initially close to the banks of the river, but getting gradually further away, the footpaths crossed soggy fields, ran through woods, and at one point skirted a substantial marsh or bog. What I had missed was the sign to cross the river on that footbridge and to follow the Chess Valley Walk along lanes to the east of the river. It was this latter route that I adopted on the return leg. I describe elsewhere the delights of the Chess Valley because tonally it was an experience very different from the logistics associated with the day.

Ever anxious to remain on time, and mindful that my return drive along the M25 could coincide with an early exodus for the weekend from London's shops, offices and factories, I strode along the valley floor at a pace that would have a Chihuahua trotting, and might even have had a Dachshund a little out of breath. Certainly I was dizzily gasping for breath as I climbed up out of the valley through the beech woods back onto the Common. It took an age to cross the A404: it would appear that Hertfordshire car drivers may be a little less courteous than those in the corner of eastern Kent where I live. The car was in the place where I had left it, which is always a relief, but not, in my experience, always to be relied on. I had time to drink some herbal infusion from my flask before setting off exactly on schedule. The drive back to Shepperton, by-passing Staines, was mercifully uncongested (the stationary traffic queue on the M25 began from the junction at which I exited) and uneventful, but did require that I navigate a nightmare traffic junction. Although I had encountered the junction some hours earlier that day, traffic bound for Staines used a left-hand filter lane, so I did not have to take too much notice. No such luck this time. The issue is that whilst traffic turning sharp left is predictably required to be in the left-hand lane; traffic merely bearing left is required to use the three right hand lanes; whereas traffic bearing right (along with traffic turning right towards Staines) is required to use either of the two left-hand lanes. At root is the idea that left-turners and right-bearers / turners should use the junction as though it is a roundabout, but those bearing left should drive straight across roundabout's island. It would be reasonable to propose that this arrangement lacks intuitiveness for the uninitiated, and although it has a rationale that makes intellectual sense, it sent my quick-to-doubt driving-self into a tail-spin. I wonder how many other motorists quail the first time they encounter this road junction from the west. I wonder how many road traffic accidents have resulted. Maybe this road layout was devised to reduce the number of accidents. My gut sense is that a flyover would eliminate the complication, confusion and congestion. (Of the six so-called 'magic roundabouts' in the UK, I am unhappily familiar with that in Hemel Hempstead.)

I arrived at Shepperton Studios half an hour early, and my daughter was 37 minutes late from her meeting. Looking for all the world like an industrial estate, which is effectively what the place is, the Studios was not an inspiring place to wait for over an hour. There was little to see but industrial units, no sets at which to marvel, no actors to accost for their autographs, no sense that this is a village in which dreams and illusions are created. The only minor note of interest was seeing a youngish man using a so-called hoverboard (in reality a cross between a skateboard and a Segway Personal Transporter) to travel from one building to another. I wished that I had been able to spend the time walking further along the Chess Valley.

The trip to Maidenhead delivered me back to the nightmare road junction near Staines, but approaching from the east was somewhat easier. Traffic on the M25 was now at a constipated standstill so I immediately filtered off to the left onto Plan B. However, towards Windsor the congestion became so bad that many motorists were turning round to find another route. Although tempted to follow suit, I was unwilling to return to the motorway, and therefore we had little choice but to wait patiently. The sun having set while I was waiting, at Shepperton, the world was all bright headlights and yellow streetlights. We were all in need of a nice hot drink, and we were running late. Once the traffic got moving we were disgorged onto a roundabout for which I was unprepared. I ought to have identified this as a junction at which we might stray from our route. Suddenly we were on a fast dual carriageway heading in the wrong direction. "At the next junction, make a u-turn." I knew enough to feel confident that we would soon reach the M4, on which I could travel west to Maidenhead, after which the remainder of the journey was uneventful.

It was lovely to see my sister, her partner and their dog, Crosby. The Friday being sandwiched between Guy Fawkes Night and Diwali, firework detonations were frequent. Crosby was seriously alarmed by each explosion, at which he would bark loudly, and constant attention was necessary to keep him calm. It quickly became obvious that Crosby was incapable of becoming inured to the sound. However, if offered a dog treat as soon as he barked, he would immediately forget about the firework. A cynic might have imagined that he was simply 'onto a good thing', but the degree of his distress at every explosion was evident. My sister and I talked about family-tree matters while my daughter ate chocolate cake. All too soon it was time to leave and begin the long drive home.

Being nearly 22:00 when we arrived back, it was too late to be cooking and eating a full evening meal. Instead, I chopped the fresh watercress I had bought beside the River Chess, and prepared easily the best watercress soup I have ever made. In both a somatic and symbolic way it felt as though I had internalised an authentic aspect of the Chess Valley: a fitting end to a long, intense and meaningful day.

À la recherche du temps perdu

This is one of three weblog postings about the events of one day: Friday 6 November 2015. The other two postings are Friday 6 November 2015 and The Chess Valley.

When I was young in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I lived with my parents and brother on the ground floor of a modest two-storey terraced house in Willesden, a grimy, working-class suburb in north-west London. My parents were poor, and the rent was cheap. At the back of the house were railway lines including what was then the Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo line (now Jubilee line), a non-stop section of the Metropolitan line, and what was the Great Central Main Line (most of which fell under the Beeching axe) and is now the London to Aylesbury Line operated by Chiltern Railways. Whilst I remember the soot-blackened wall at the boundary of the tiny garden, and have some sense both of the clickety-clack of iron wheels running over fish-plated joints, and of the hum of industrial-sized electric motors, I have no visual memory of seeing a train on the lines. I wish that I had. Maybe the wall was too high to permit a small child sight of the trains.

That trains ran along the tracks I was in no doubt, both then and now, for we would catch Bakerloo line trains both from Dollis Hill tube station to the north west, and from Willesden Green tube station to the south east. From Willesden Green we would travel into central London, often changing trains either at Finchley Road tube station onto the more-limited-stop Metropolitan line, or at Baker Street tube station, a station so complex for a young child that it has appeared in my night-time dreams, often nightmares, ever since. From Dollis Hill (a name with which I have been proud to be associated ever since I discovered in the 1970s that it was the home of the Post Office Research Station, where Tommy Flowers designed and built the Collosus machines, the world's first ever programmable computers, for and in collaboration with Alan Turing) we would travel out of London, most often to Aylesbury, where, every-so-often, always on a Sunday it would seem, the four of us would visit my maternal grandmother, appropriately referred to by my brother and me as “Nana Train”. Apart from the delights of a television (my parents could not afford one) on which it was possible to watch Gerry Anderson’s exciting marionette shows, Supercar, Fireball XL5 (my favourite) and Stingray ("Standby for action! ... Anything can happen in the next half hour!" Thunderbirds came later, and I was too old for Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons), and an upright piano at which my grandmother was accomplished and would often play for us, even the journey was a refreshing break from the humdrum routine of pre-school, and later nursery school, home life. We would catch the Bakerloo line train to Wembley Park tube station where we would change onto the Metropolitan line. We would take this through to Amersham where we would disembark and wait for a “green diesel”. I believe that these diesel multiple units (as I now know to call them) would simply ply the route between Amersham and Aylesbury, although their journey might have begun at Marylebone station. I have neither memory nor knowledge of how we travelled from Aylesbury railway station to my grandmother’s flat. Imprinted on my memory, however, are the names of the final stations on the Metropolitan line. Almost a litany, the names were rich in promise, and the places pregnant with potential: Rickmansworth, Chorleywood, Chalfont and Latimer, and Amersham, the terminus. Intriguingly, there was an alternative  terminus: Chesham. Little did I understand quite how rich in promise those places are, lying in and on the edge of the Chiltern Hills.

There were occasions, however, when we did visit Chorleywood. I have this abiding memory from when I was either four or five years of age, right at the beginning of the 1960s, paddling in a shallow gravel-bedded river at a place named Chorleywood Common. Leaves dappled golden sunshine. Emerald-coloured river weed quivered in the burbling and sibilant flow of the water. It was a magical place, like a little bit of heaven. I may have been taken there only once, and we moved away up north not too long after. The occasion has been secreted away in my memory ever since. The memory is a single, albeit multi-layered, image. I have no memory of travelling there, although I am in no doubt that we travelled by the route outlined above.

I am reasonably confident that we visited Chorleywood Common, although not that river, on several occasions. I can imagine young parents in their early to mid twenties, taking their young sons to run free in the open air, to shout without being hushed, and to burn off energy bottled-up by life spent in a contained urban environment. As I walked over Chorleywood Common recently, I could feel my feet wishing to take flight, taking me to hide behind tall trees, and to explore bracken thickets. Apart from that sole image of paddling in a river, I have no explicit memory of any one occasion in the past, but simply being there recently whispered to me that this was all familiar from a very long time ago. Moreover, commons and heathland with copses, spinneys, avenues and rides, whilst admittedly far from an acquired taste, was not the kind of terrain with which I subsequently became remotely familiar, and I am guessing that the pleasure I experience now when encountering such terrain arises from those occasions before the formalisation of my memories.

I am getting a little ahead of myself. To backtrack, I was recently offered the opportunity to visit the area to the north west of London. On examining a map I happened to notice the small town of Chorleywood, and from deep in my memory I remembered the name and the promise that it carried. To be precise, the name that I remembered was Chorleywood Common. A different kind of image with which I associate the place name is an E.H.Shepard illustration of a verse by A.A.Milne in When We Were Very Young, called 'Market Place':
"...
I had nuffin',
No, I hadn't got nuffin',
So I didn't go down
to the market square;
But I walked on the common
The old gold common ..."

Then I saw on the map that that there is a river that, by all accounts, has a gravel bed. I am in no doubt that somewhere along the River Chess (I never knew the name of the river when I was a child), between the M25 and Chenies, is that magical place from my childhood, and as though rising out of the mist of my past, the idea of visiting Chorleywood Common, of walking along the river, and of searching for that place in the river where I paddled when I was very young, slowly clarified in my mind. Almost immediately I could hear the voice of Alan Bennett reading Wind in the Willows.

I turned my attention to an online search. This revealed photographs of the River Chess, a Chess Valley Walk, and a delightful weblog posting about how the place was magical in the childhood of other people too. I determined that I would drive there and walk the stretch of the River Chess in search of the paddling place of my memory. In planning the trip, I also hoped to create some new gentle memories, including looking for the footbridge that was mentioned in the weblog posting, seeing some of the less common flora, and perhaps some bird-life, and maybe even once again paddling in the gravel-bedded river.

Tempering mounting excitement, and reining in my expectations, however, I considered it possible that the image in my memory may be inaccurate in some way, or has been distorted by subsequent experience. I also wondered whether I might pass the spot and not recognise it, for much can change in fifty years. Indeed, Google Maps coldly informed me of the distinct possibility that the place for which I intended to search was brutally obliterated many years ago beneath concrete and tarmac that is now the M25.

It is a long journey from the North Downs of eastern Kent to playing in a gravel-bedded river, watched over by parents who have both since died, on a summer's day in the Chilterns.

Dungeness

14:24 - 16:24 Saturday 13 September 2014

The sea is uncommonly restless. In fact, the sea is distinctly agitated. A stiff wind is stirring up great lumps of water like distant tumuli, and gashes of white are to be seen everywhere. The water is an inscrutable milky turquoise. Gusts of wind fret its surface, while deep waves incessantly scythe into the shore, hurling themselves onto the shingle. There is a perpetual sibilance of breaking and crashing waves, changing only in the ever-shifting sources of sound, and in the relative intensity of bass notes. Wet pebbles glisten in dappled sunlight. Cloud shadows play ducks and drakes over the waves, sometimes streaking across the water like dark ghosts. Out on the horizon the misty forms of supertankers move as imperceptibly as the hour hand of a clock. A buoy, warning of shoals, rocks drunkenly several hundred metres off the beach. Further out a small trawler appears lifeless. Three cormorants, silhouetted against the sky, fly past in formation. Gulls hang on the wind.

People arrive. They arrive excited. However, they are soon bored. They don't know what to do with the place. The abundance of shingle suggests distraction so they pick up and throw pebbles out to sea, or up in the air for others to aim at like skeet. Men with high-tech fishing tackle pit their 420 million years of evolutionary advantage over and against invisible fish, which prove to be too canny, or else simply not there. More people arrive, with yelling children and barking dogs. In time they move on. Whatever they came looking for, it is not here. That is almost a definition of Dungeness: absence, emptiness, there really is nothing here. I notice that the place even has no smell, merely a sense of freshness. Vacancy is the antithesis of what most people want. The correct way to come here is silently, on one's own, with neither expectations nor desires. Only then can one begin to hear the whisper of its elemental message: wind, sea, shingle.

The sun is turning inexorably westward. The inbound tide brings waves lapping ever higher up the beach, presaging the inundation of the shingle shelf on which I am sitting. The as-yet dry pebbles are mostly a warm biscuit in the saturated light of late afternoon, but there are also many chaste shades of grey. The trawler is now inching back to an unseen berth, bucking in the heavy swell like an unbroken stallion. Most of the fisherman have packed up and left - gone home to watch television reports of football matches. A seal surfaces, watching the backs of people as they disappear along the boardwalk. Soon the beach will be as deserted as it should be. Indeed the wilderness that is Dungeness is Britain's only officially-designated desert.

Sarah Tether to stand down

I composed the following posting for Facebook on learning that Sarah Tether, Liberal Democrat MP for Brent, was to stand down as an MP.

I consider it likely that the political reality of managing a nation state involves interfacing with huge numbers of powerful vested interests, and to achieve anything requires forming alliances with organisations one might personally find distasteful. I have little doubt not only that the issue is the same the world over, but also that one's own moral purity could be preserved only under a highly authoritarian regime, assuming, of course, that one's moral principles aligned with that regime. The part I am not so keen on is that UK government ministers are required to pretend that they like the decisions that are taken in their name. I should rather they were honest, told it like it is, and then MPs such as Sarah Tether, and formerly Estelle Morris and Claire Short, would not be required to say things that we know they don't believe.

Against Western Military Involvement in Syria

Pouring petrol onto a fire tends to make matters worse, and also risks burning those who do the pouring. In terms of the likely consequences, in the history of bad ideas, Western military involvement with the civil war in Syria, however well-intentioned, would be very high up in the charts.

It is, of course, possible that, as with any war, there are vested interests, like crows around a battlefield, eager for the financial rewards of a military conflict.

It is the job of military leaders to think about military involvement in any situation (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq), whereas there can only be political resolutions (Northern Ireland, South Africa). Without a political resolution, there is no resolution: the First World War begat the Second World War begat the Cold War, usw.

Military spokespeople tend to talk earnestly about ‘surgical strikes’. Yet In Afghanistan there have been many civilian causalities, as well as so-called ‘friendly-fire’ incidents. I suspect that the explosions in Baghdad that we watched on television at the start of the Bush (junior) administration military adventure in Iraq, however well-targeted, killed many people who themselves had been victims of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Explosions do not discriminate who they kill – best not to use them. And besides, soldiers are people, too. Just because they have got caught up, some of them probably fairly arbitrarily, on one side or the other, does not mean that they deserve to die violently.

I may be quite wrong, but I suspect that some of the Syrian anti-government soldiers are not polite, liberal-minded people fighting because the Syrian government is a jolly rotten lot. I suspect that a proportion of the anti-government soldiers are motivated by an ideology that is as implacably opposed to western liberality as it is to the current Syrian regime. In supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Russian ‘occupation’ in the 1980s, the CIA inadvertently spawned the subsequent wave of international terrorism through which we are still living. Giving military assistance to such people sounds like a seriously bad idea.

I am as terrified of weapons of mass destruction as anyone else. However, I believe that Western politicians are responding with their hearts not their heads about the suspected / likely use of chemical weapons in Syria. 

Although it goes against the grain for many people, non-interference by the West could be the best course of action. Western electorates generally appear to support the idea that almost any action carried out by Western states must be experienced as desirable and beneficial for the people on whom it is inflicted. I suspect that the Islamic world, post-colonial Africa, and parts of Asia think somewhat differently.

If the West wishes to do something constructive, then giving significant humanitarian aid, both for the direct benefit of the casualties in the conflict, and also to the neighbouring countries to accommodate the huge number of Syrian refugees, would be a good start. At the diplomatic level, trying harder to build bridges with the Putin regime in Russia (with which the Assad regime in Syria has some kind of ongoing relationship), and trying even harder to broker a rapprochement between Israel and a Palestinian state, could, in the long-term, be of much greater benefit to the people of Syria and of countries surrounding Syria, than simply firing missiles into Damascus.

Reform of the House of Lords

The first, and most obvious thing to admit is that reform of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK parliament, is not the highest of priorities for anyone much at present, with the exception of Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. In these economically straitened times there are more pressing issues. Perhaps the constitutional issue of Scottish independence is more deserving of centre stage.
However, even though not pressing, the House of Lords does still require reformation, and if not now, then when? The chamber is populated mostly by 92 hereditary peers, 26 Lords Spiritual and a large number of political appointees. Many of the hereditary peers were cleared out some years ago by the Blair government..It would be very hard to assert that the 786 peers who currently make up the House of Lords are a representative sample of the UK population. A majority of the lords passed middle age quite a few summers ago. There are too few (181) women, too few black and Asian people, and too few people with disabilities. I am happy to support reform of the House of Lords.
The popular solution to the objection that the House is unrepresentative is to suggest that membership should be by popular election - either 80% or 100% of members being elected. However, I see little value in replicating the process of electing members of the House of Commons. Instead, my preference would be for an all-appointed House, made up of every facet of British life. So there would be representatives from:

1. trades unions (TUC)
2. the employer's federation (CBI)
3. BBC radio
4. commercial radio
5. BBC television 
6. commercial television
7. the film industry
8. the live music and recorded music industries
9. the theatre 
10. the visual arts
11. the Consumers' Association
12. the construction industry
13. the road transport industry
14. the rail industry 
15. the airline industry
16. the airports 
17. the sea ports
18. the coast guard
19. the police 
20. the fire and rescue service
21. the ambulance service
22. the British Army
23. the Royal Navy
24. the Royal Air Force
25. military intelligence
26. the Anglican Church 
27. the Roman Catholic Church (this might require a change in Canon Law)
28. the Greek Orthodox Church
29. the Methodist Church
30. Jehovah's Witnesseses
31. the Salvation Army
32. the Baptist Church
33. the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
34. the Unitarian Church
35. the Humanist Association
36. an Orthodox Jew
37. a Reformed Jew
38. a Sunni Muslim
39. a Shia Muslim
40. a Hindu
41. a Jain
42. a Buddhist
43. a pagan
44. every significant ethnic group in the country, including Roma people;
45. Russell Group universities
46. Million + universities
47. FE colleges
48. sixth form colleges 
49. secondary schools
50. primary schools
51. teachers' unions
52. headteachers
53. hospitals
54. the British Medical Association
55. nurses and midwives
56. dentists 
57. chiropodists;
58. social work
59. probation
60. prison service
61. the charitable sector
62. volunteer organisations
63. the National Trust
64. animal protection organisations
65. conservation organisations (such as CPRE)
66. political parties across the political spectrum, including the far right and far left
67. London
68. English Midlands
69. North East England
70. North West England
71. South East England
72. South West England
73. Southern England
    
74. Northern Ireland 
75. Highland Scotland
76. Lowland Scotland
77. Wales
78. the EU
79. the US
80. the BRIC countries
81. the Commonwealth
82. young people
83. pensioners

The purpose of this rainbow of representation would be to ensure that any significant legislation could be exposed to scrutiny by every group that has any kind of interest in it, and that the views expressed would receive a formal public platform. Whilst I have lobbied MPs (members of the House of Commons) on several occasions, I have never seen the point in contacting a member of the House of Lords. My proposal would mean that everyone in the country would have someone to contact about any legislative issue. I believe that such a House would command respect across the UK. However, the politicians in the House of Commons, when it comes to choosing how to reform the House of Lords, will, no doubt, simply plump for popular elections, as they always do, claiming that "it's more democratic". Does SMS text voting for one's preferred celebrity constitute high quality democracy? After the Second World War, Winston Churchill, hardly a bastion of socialist values, was instrumental in enhancing the quality of democracy in North Africa by promoting the creation of trades unions. Organisations (such as a trades union) give ordinary people a voice.
What would the reformed House be called? How about the House of Representatives?

Tories announce bad ideas

Yesterday, just ahead of the Conservative Party Annual Conference, Eric Pickles announced that £250 million had been found to enable local councils to re-instate weekly refuse collections. This is a terrible idea. Weekly bin collections encourage people to throw away things that could be recycled.Our bin is emptied two or three times each year, simply because we re-use or recycle everything else.It is not difficult, although clearly the commitment to recycle is beyond many people.

Also yesterday, Philip Hammond, Minister for Transport, announced an intention to raise speed limits on motorways to 80 mph. This is a bad idea not only because the number of accidents will increase and the intensity of the damage to life, limb and vehicles, but also because petrol consumption will worsen, thus increasing CO2 emissions.

Climate change mitigation versus democracy?

Following a broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme (20:30 Monday 24 May 2010) presented by Justin Rowlatt (the BBC's 'Ethical Man'), I posted the following text on the BBC's Ethical Man weblog:

"I listened to the radio programme with much anticipation. I was pleased that the issue was taken seriously in terms both of the science and the politics. There were various aspects with which I variously wholeheartedly agreed or disagreed. Three aspects, however, that I considered to be very weak were: 1) democracy is not one thing; democracy means different things to different people in different places; the UK has a system of representative democracy (hence no capital punishment despite the untested preference of the electorate). 2) Much of what is already taking place (erection of wind turbines, replacement of incandescent light bulbs, new hybrid and electric vehicles) is happening between government and industry, not by popular choice at the retail level (we will buy whatever is available)- this is about the relationship between government and corporations in which the electorate never get any say anyway. 3) Too often "the expressed will of the people" has more to do with the relationship between government and the popular press - were the red-tops to champion major lifestyle changes to ameliorate climate change, their readership would almost inevitably follow."

I wish to develop these ideas further, although this weblog is not the place where I intend to leave the text. The issues belong on my Green website.

The radio programme is reported to be currently available on the BBC iPlayer.

1. Democracy under threat?
The term 'democratic' seems to be used frequently in a wide variety of circumstances to indicate that something is politically good in some way. It seems obvious to most people who choose to live in economically-developed western countries that even the most imperfect of democracies are superior, say, to the society portrayed by George Orwell in 1984. If nothing else, this points to democracies that fall short of some notional democractic ideal. A democracy probably requires regular, popular elections (as distinct from elections by a small minority) and a voting system that delivers an outcome readily acceptable to the electorate. In the US it is considered democratic to vote for a variety of public officials beyond politicians, e.g. police chiefs. In the UK such an election is viewed with suspicion, believing that public officials should be impartial. In the UK, the rights of trades unions to require their members to withdraw their labour are enshrined in law - trades unions being seen as an example of dispersed democracy. Winston Churchill saw the dispersal of democracy amongst the institutions of a country as a process of democratisation. It is not clear to me what aspects and features of democracy would have to be suspended to effect a political programme to counter AGW (anthropogenic global warming). It is, however, clear to me that to suspend all that we call democracy would so fundamentally change the nature and fabric of contemporary UK society that inentional suspension would be beyond contemplation. More realistically, the suspension of certain aspects of the democratic political process could happen, as it did during the second world war. This does not have to be a slippery slope towards totalitarianism.

UK General Election 2010: 27 days to go

I was out yesterday evening delivering LibDem leaflets through local letterboxes. I wonder if people really read the leaflets. I know that they moan about feeling ignored if they don't receive leaflets. "I shan't vote for X because they didn't bother to canvas my vote." I do look at the leaflets I deliver, but rarely consider them of interest. They are usually full of platitudes, with attention being given to knocking one or other rival parties / rival party leaders / rival candidates.

I live in a constituency where the LibDems are contending with Labour who are long-standing incumbents. The City of Durham constituency, in the heart of a former heavy industry region, and until recently one of Labour's safest seats, and at which the Conservative candidate used to poll the second largest number of votes, has gradually become a marginal seat at which the Conservative candidate now risks losing their deposit. The presence of Durham University means that there are undoubtedly some people who hold Liberal Democrat values. However, there is no way on Earth that half the voters are Liberal Democrats at heart. The only way in which the LibDems can hope to have their candidate elected is to persuade would-be Conservative voters to vote LibDem instead. This is done by emphasising that the Conservative candidate has no chance of winning, and that the best way to avoid returning the Labour candidate, the incumbent MP, to Westminster, is to vote LibDem. Would this not be a dishonest distortion of the political complexion of the constituency? For in reality the constituency is about 50% Labour, 25% LibDem and 25% Conservative. Surely the votes cast should reflect these proportions? However, underlying the attempt at distortion is the antiquated, unsophisticated, first-past-the-post voting system. Other elected governmental bodies in the UK use a form of proportional representation to elect their representatives, resulting in a more honest picture of the political complexion of the electorate. I should much prefer an immediate switch to a voting system that is better than that which encourages local parties and voters into a kind of dishonesty. I am enthusiastic to be part of the democratic process, even if it is merely delivering leaflets, but I am not comfortable being part of a system that attempts to persuade people who hold Conservative values to vote LibDem simply to prevent the Labour candidate from winning. My political philosophy, although most closely expressed in party political terms by the Liberal Democrats, is still much closer to that of the Labour Party than that of the Conservative Party.

UK General Election 2010: 28 days to go

One of the less seemly aspects about the run-up to a general election is that politicians of one or other persuasion will offer tempting words that seem to contradict what they have spent the previous 4 or 5 years asserting. Whilst I can remember back into the 1970s talking enthusiastically about exchanging the still-current unrepresentative first-past-the-post system voting system for some form of proportional representation, the issue remains a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy. However, there is a significant credibility gap when Johnny-come-lately Labour Party politicians (such as Ben Bradshaw on last night's edition of BBC 2's Newsnight programme) bob their heads above the parapet and state that they too have long been staunchly supportive of proportional representation. There is an equally yawning credibility gap when Conservative politicians propose wacky populist ideas such as the direct petitioning of parliament for debate, as though they, the Conservative Party, have forever championed the wishes and rights of poor and ordinary people.

Although the attention being given to whether National Insurance tax (paid by employers as well as employees, as distinct from income tax which is paid only by employees) should be raised feels like phoney sparring, the issue has drawn out into the open the Conservative sympathy towards business leaders: should the cost of repairing the economy be borne by the little people, in the form of reduced public services, or shared between the people and business, in the form of a tax? Public engagement in the election will begin in earnest when the politicians begin talking about migrant workers, immigration and the EU. I regret that the somewhat nationalistic prejudices (about which they feel proud) and mildly xenophobic attitudes (which they deny, but cannot refute) of many white British people makes it difficult for them to listen to fact, reason and rationality. Were the Conservative Party to propose strict limitations on 'foreigners' taking work in the UK, I believe that the Conservatives would easily win an outright majority. Were the Conservatives also to have the courage of their deep-seated convictions and offer the electorate the tantalising possibility of somehow distancing the UK from the EU, the Conservatives would win a landslide victory. I do not understand the Liberal Democrat enthusiasm for a referendum on Britain's engagement with continental Europe - turkey's voting for Christmas is a phrase that comes to mind. I believe that these are the issues that many people would prefer the electioneering politicians to be addressing.

UK General Election 2010: 29 days to go

It is with a sense of relief that I greeted yesterday's announcement by Gordon Brown about the date of the next UK general election. The coming four weeks will be reminiscent of that passage in George Orwell's 1984 when Winston Smith and his colleagues are frantically busy with Party activity. In contrast to the UK system of government, elections are held on a regular, cyclic basis in France and the US. I wonder what things would be like were the UK to hold general elections on a regular, say, five year cycle.

Although I am not a member of a political party, I have a deep prejudice towards participatory democracy. Accordingly I am a volunteer, posting political leaflets through letterboxes in some of the streets close to my house.

I find it interesting how I have constructed my voting preference:
1. partly on how I have voted in the past (a kind of inertia - I am the opposite of a floating voter);
2. partly on a comparison between my political values and those of party policies (I have already visited Party websites and downloaded/read some of their policy statements);
3. partly on who I see supporting each party (am I ever likely to vote for a party that draws its support from men who vie with Yakuza to cover themselves in body art?);
4. and partly on how 'attractive' I find the political leaders and their team (on this basis, I should prefer to have voted for Ted Heath over Margaret Thatcher; for Michael Foot over Tony Blair; Tony Blair over Gordon Brown; and Paddy Ashdown over Charles Kennedy or Nick Clegg). Were I given the choice, I should rather vote for Barack Obama, who I consider to belong to a class above most British politicians.

My Predictions
The Labour vote will reduce by 5% (77 seats) some votes going to the Liberal Democrats, some votes going to the UKIP/BNP, some votes going to the Conservatives, and some Labour voters choosing not to vote. This desertion will be more pronounced in the Home Counties, Midlands and East Anglia, where there will be the greatest number of seats changing from Labour to Conservative. In the north of England the Labour vote will decline, although by not as much, and it will have less impact on the seats held. Total number of seats: 272

The Conservative vote will increase by 5% (79 seats), some votes coming from Labour, some from the Liberal Democrats, and the rest coming from people who did not vote at the 2005 general election. The Conservatives will lose some votes to UKIP/BNP. The greatest number of newly-won Conservative seats will come from London, the Home Counties and the Midlands. Total number of seats: 289

The Liberal Democrats will neither gain nor lose total votes, being a beneficiary of deserting votes from Labour, but losing votes to the Conservatives. However, as a result they will lose four marginal seats. Total number of seats: 58

UKIP will do well in the south of England, and the BNP will do well in London, possibly East Anglia and parts of the north of England, but will not have any seats in the House of Commons.

The Scottish Nationalists will gain some votes from Labour, but lose some to the Conservatives. The situation in Scotland will remain mostly unchanged.

Plaid Cymru will lose votes to the Conservatives. On the other hand, if they can gain some votes from Labour, the Labour marginal at Arfon might give them a further seat at Westminster (from 2 to 3)

The situation in Northern Ireland will remain largely unchanged. Most of their MPs will vote with the Conservatives, but this will be insufficient for the Conservatives to secure a working majority.

Result: a 'hung parliament' at Westminster. A coalition government will not be formed. Instead, the Conservatives will enter a working agreement with the Liberal Democrats (as happened with the former Lib-Lab pact). There will be a further general election in March 2011.

Eric Blair: 25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950

From what I have read about him, Eric Blair was not an easy person to get along with, and enjoyed challenging the status quo. He had strongly-held political opinions and was reluctant to be silenced. He resigned from his job with the BBC because he opposed censorship. His family supported the British establishment, but he came to oppose it. Blair was a proponent of a federal socialist Europe, a position outlined in his 1947 essay Toward European Unity. He was left-wing in his politics, but was also highly critical of the left. He hated anything politically authoritarian, which is how he came to write Nineteen Eighty Four. In Why I Write (1946) he wrote "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."

Green: traffic speed and climate change

When a motor vehicle (car, van, lorry) is travelling steadily at its optimum speed for minimising fuel consumption (usually between 25 mph and 50 mph), its fuel consumption is very much lower than when it is travelling fast or changing speed. I now know this for sure because my replacement car has a fuel consumption computer. I am able to see in numerical terms, the effect on my car's fuel consumption of driving style choices that I make.

During the mid-1970s, in response to massive increases in the price of crude oil imposed by the OPEC countries (and therefore causing a significant shift in the balance of trade), the UK national speed limit was reduced in order to reduce national fuel consumption. From Wikipedia: "It was reduced to 50 mph (80 km/h) in response to the 1973 oil crisis, and restored to 70 mph (112 km/h) in 1974."

In relation to the US, I found the following paragraph here:

"In the midst of an energy crisis touched off by conflict in the Middle East (see October 17, 1973), President Richard Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, establishing a maximum national speed limit. No highway projects may be approved in any State having a maximum speed limit over 55 m.p.h. The Act, part of a nationwide effort to save oil, is a result of an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that forced Americans into long lines at gas stations. President Nixon estimates the new speed limit can save nearly 200,000 barrels of fuel a day."

Were the UK national speed limit to be reduced again to 50 mph, the consequence would be a significant reduction in greenhouse gases produced by motor vehicles. Additionally, motorists would save money because they would need to buy less fuel. Lower road speeds would permit roads to carry denser traffic, thus, perhaps counter-intuitively, reducing some congestion. Further, according to the police, excessive speed is indicated in a majority of road traffic accidents. Limiting speed to 50 mph has the chance, therefore, of reducing the number of accidents, their severity and the number of casualties. (I read somewhere that reduction in the number of casualties of road traffic accidents had plateaued, and that further measures were going to be required if the numbers were to be reduced further.) Longer journey times for lengthy journeys might mean that more journeys would be undertaken using public transport, and there might be a long-overdue increase in the use of video-conferencing, and thus a reduction in the number of journeys undertaken.

To my knowledge, no-one is talking about this proposal as an option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Is there a reason for this? Am I missing something? As a first step, it would seem like an obvious and relatively cheap and pain-free adjustment that could be made.

Some further thoughts:

1. The speedometer in most UK cars runs up to 160 mph. This is bizarre because the national speed limit in the UK is 70 mph, and (with the exception of Lower Saxony) nowhere else in Europe exceeds 130 kph. The unnecessary range of the speedometer dial achieves two things: I am less clear about my precise speed because the reading is always limited to a small proportion of the speedometer dial; I am always given the sense that I am driving slowly compared with the apparent potential of the car.

2. My car has the potential to travel much faster than I shall ever be legally allowed to drive it.

3. Every morning when I commute to work, an overwhelming majority of the traffic noticeably exceeds the speed limit for substantial portions of the journey.

4. Despite huge negative attention devoted by UK motorists and news media to speed cameras on UK roads, the reality is that the number of speed cameras relative to the extent of roads on which speeding takes place is pitiful.

5. Few UK cars are fitted with cruise control. The price for retrofitting cruise control is prohibitively high. Cruise control could help motorists to observe speed limits.

6. The overwhelming majority of car advertisements in the UK emphasise using cars for fun and excitement. This is not a message that is compatible with attempting to reduce CO2 emissions and traffic. Resolving issues related to climate change requires that people stop seeing their car as a form of recreation.

7. The points I have made above impact on the daily lives of ordinary people. I suspect that many people are willing to make token efforts to mitigate climate change, provided that they are not required to change how they live their life. I believe that climate change is orders of magnitude bigger than the majority of people are appreciating. Token efforts sound to me like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. Until people realise that real change needs to take place, across a range of lifestyle issues, such as the speed at which they drive their cars, CO2 emissions are not going to fall.

Beatrice 16 May, 2008 15:11 commented...

Yes, you're absolutely right about deckcahairs on the Titanic. I think people just cannot cope with the enormity of the implications of runaway climate change and so refuse to accept it is real. There are some interesting articles about on the psychology of climate change denial eg this one by George Marshall:http://www.ecoglobe.ch/motivation/e/clim2922.htm

Postscript
Whilst what I have written above sounds a little like pious polemic, I believe it sufficiently both to have reduced my driving speed to 50 mph where the speed limit is 70 mph, and to have changed my driving style so that I accelerate only slowly and, within the limits of safety, brake as little as possible. It has taken a while to drive more sedately, detaching myself from the frantic impatience of other motorists. I sometimes resort to singing "I feel pretty" - it helps.

A Twentieth Century man

I have several dictionaries. Working as a counsellor, words and language mean much to me. William Shakespeare is my hero: I watched my first Shakespeare play (Twelfth Night) when I was ten years old. I have four generations of Chambers dictionaries: from the 1950s (Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, recently acquired second hand), 1972 (Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, a Christmas present), 1988 (Chambers English Dictionary, my own choice) and 2003 (Chambers Dictionary, also my own choice). I prefer Chambers because its definitions tend to be more liberal-minded, less conservative, less reactionary than other dictionaries. However, I have an extreme objection to Chambers' progressive acceptance and incorporation of the '-ize' suffix, an appendage that, in spite of my Classical education (I studied Latin for five years, Classical Greek for two years, and some years ago made a serious attempt to teach myself Biblical Greek), I consider to be affected (as in an affectation, used by someone who wishes to puff up their language, making themselves sound clever and important, like people using the word 'whilst' when they mean 'while') and/or elitist (its 'correct' use - to use it incorrectly flagrantly demonstrates 'ignorance' - is only when the word's root is from Classical Greek, and who but a Classics scholar is likely to remember which English words have a Classical Greek root?), and gratuitously unnecessary. Use of the '-ize' suffix sneers at both ignorance and dyslexia: it is anti-language. In contrast, use of the '-ise' suffix is universally applicable, and to be favoured by the proles, the hoi poloi, the sans culottes - the people who make a reality of democracy and democratic language.

I have a reverse dictionary that has been useful only very occasionally. I have a dictionary of words first used in the twentieth century. This latter, although of little practical use, is interesting. I have a much-used Roget's thesaurus, and much-less used Brewer's dictionary of phrase and fable, Brewer's concise dictionary of phrase and fable, and Brewer's twentieth century dictionary of phrase and fable. There are also the Oxford dictionary of quotations, and Oxford companions to both the English language and English literature. Beyond English alone, there are dictionaries of signing (BSL) and of other European languages. Were I to be required to shelve all these dictionaries in an attic, I should probably guess that they weighed in at about 50 kg. So why is my first port of call always the internet? Reading The Wisdom of Crowds, recently, I came across the word 'fungible'. The context in which the word was being used offered few clues about its meaning. I checked it out on the internet. As well as definitions, I read the Wikipedia entry. I felt enlightened. I then checked Chambers. The definition was clear and concise, just as I should expect. Yet had I not also read more widely, including the Wikipedia entry, my understanding would have been as thin as gravy made only with a vegetable stock cube.

The words and phrases that I use, and the thoughts that inspire my articulations, belong to the twentieth century. I was born in the middle, the heart, of the twentieth century, the century that provided the context and backdrop for everything I thought and said and did. I learned to speak and think twentieth century, and I have twentieth century preoccupations, such as a concern for technology, for communication, for identity, for democracy, for equality, for spirituality freed from the shackles of traditional religion. Whilst it could easily be shown that none of these is unique to the twentieth century, their assemblage certainly is. It is true that being born and raised in Western Europe, and in Britain in particular, I also became, and continue to become, progressively more aware of previous centuries; but this itself is the root and relativism of post-modernism, a philosophical framework that belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. Simply by being brought up in the second half of the twentieth century, without the requirement of an elite education, I have the capacity to identify with the industrial entrepreneurs of the nineteenth century, the enlightened free-thinkers of the eighteenth century, the radical Commonwealth republicans of the seventeenth century, and so on.

What of the twenty-first century? I am not sure. If the twentieth century could be characterised as a battle between the old and the new, between empire and new democracy, between generations, between the sexes, between enforced adherence to stereotype and searching for new identities, then to a large extent we won. At the start of the twenty-first century, Britain is much closer to France than to Britain at the start of the twentieth century. However, now those battles are over, apathy appears to have set in. Politicians bemoan the public's lack of interest in politics, whereas people vote in their millions for ghastly television trash such as Big Brother and the X-Factor. (Whilst Marx's aphorism about religion is widely misunderstood as a criticism of religion, when he was observing the solace that drown-trodden workers were able to find in it, his 'misquotation' could more aptly be applied to the early twenty-first century addiction to television soap operas.) People no longer appear to have much interest in raw spirituality, and the church pews tend to be occupied by people who have chosen to leave elsewhere and make Britain their home. Concern by adults and children alike for technology seems to focus on games consoles, and battles and wars that are fought look increasingly like computer games and disaster movies. Royal Mail, the UK postal delivery organisation is close to collapse because no-one writes letters any more - it is not that I am knocking e-mail, it is my sadness that the text-message culture hardly favours deep and careful thought.

What of the twenty-first century? The battles having been fought, apathy and lethargy won. I think that ordinary, everyday, twenty-first century Britain lacks a sense of direction, purpose and aspiration. Maybe that is one of the reasons I remain a twentieth century man.