Chapter 56 - to the end

Chapter 56. Towards The End, 1983 - 1998

Halloween, 1998 - and the memory of a ‘Ducking Apple Night’ in Wallington in, I think, 1968 (maybe not, but it’s a good date - thirty years on ...). I don’t know why Welsh children grew up with the tradition that, on October 31 each year (the Eve of the Feast of All Saints, or Halloween), apples were floated in a bowl or bucket of water, and everyone was invited (forced?) to duck into the water and (‘no hands’) to try to get an apple out by biting into one. Very difficult: very splashing: much laughing - and mess on table and floor. Anyhow, in 1968 (or so) our young curate, Father Hough, called to our house when, with much pushing and shoving, ducking and splashing, the bigger children were trying to get a mouth on to an apple. “You have a go,” we told the fresh-faced young priest. Poor lamb; he tried - and we pushed his head even further into the bowl. Small wonder that, many years later when one of the children (Peter?) returned to Wallington to get a Baptismal certificate, the now parish priest Father Hough, said, “Lane? Park Hill Road Lane?” Maybe the memory of Halloween 1968 is engraved on his memory.

But memory is a funny thing. I have been reminded of that by Anthony Paul who has laboured long and hard to get these 200,000 words or so on to discs and into a decent typescript. About the chapters on life in Plymouth he chided me because I hadn’t mentioned the lovely ex-nurses, Miss Parnell and Miss Wood, who lived next door to us in Honicknowle Lane and who were so fond of Christopher and the two girls (and who gave us the piano which we still have). Nor, as Tony noted, any mention of blackberry picking below the stock-car racing track, or of Mrs Graham from whose garden we got to the blackberry bushes, or of her son who was killed while running from London to Brighton. No mention either of the pond in the front garden with the mulberry bush, or of our neighbour failing to get his car up his drive because of the ice in 1963. Anthony remembers, too, birds flying into the windows “as we ate” and, as I have re-thought things in the light of his comments, I remember girls in brownies and guides, boys in cubs and scouts, music lessons, football games.... and so on almost ad infinitum.

Memory, a new biography of Antonia White has just come out. She may be best remembered for two autobiographical novels - Frost in May and The Lost Traveller. She told of a very unhappy childhood - a harsh convent schooling and an overbearing father. Her accounting reminds me of something I read a while ago:

“If you drag the past around like a burden, you sour the present and throw away the future before you’ve even tasted it”

Antonia White had two daughters. Their memories of childhood are starkly contrasting. One, Susan Chitty, would not speak to her mother nor allow her to meet her grandchildren. In Now to My Mother she remembered only an almost mad, self-centred and much married woman who ignored or ill-treated her. On the other hand, her sister’s (Lyndall Hopkinson’s) memoire, Nothing to Forgive, is, as the title suggests, much more sympathetic to the memory of Antonia White. Memory - or as Oscar Wilde wrote in The Importance of being Ernest:

“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”

More recently, and with more publicity, the noted presenter of Channel 4’s News, Jon Snow, published an attack on his mother - only to be contradicted by a brother who had widely different memories of their childhood and their mother. Memory: peculiar business.

Anyhow, back to work here and with a pile of cuttings on the life and times of the last fifteen years. I can’t even begin to try to get it all down, so here are some suggestions for reading, and my own summary of things. On the politics of the period, from a Labour activist’s point of view, I’ve read nothing more enjoyable than John O’Farrell’s Things can only get better, the sub-title of which is self-explanatory: Eighteen Miserable Years in the life of a Labour Supporter, 1979-1997.

O’Farrell gives the story from the viewpoint of a lowlife Labour worker. You can read longer, more detailed and always self-seeking accounts of the politics of those years in memoirs by Dennis Healey (maybe the best read), Thatcher, Peter Walker, Nigel Lawson, Alan Clarke, Lord Carrington, Ted Heath ....

My own brief comments on the politics of the period?

1983. A Labour Party Manifesto which the oily Gerard Kaufman described as “the longest suicide note in history”. It led to Labour losing 3 million votes compared to 1979, and Thatcher having a majority of 144 in the Commons.

Neil Kinnock being elected leader to replace the hapless Michael Foot, and being caught up in the trauma that bedevilled the Party. There were ‘Labour Loonie’ councils, mainly, but not only, in London which created ‘nuclear free zones’ (such nonsense), did away with Mayoral and Lord Mayoral offices (Manchester), organised a hard left ‘jobs for all - and money for some’ councils (most notably under Hatton in Liverpool).

1984. The year of the miners’ strike by means of which Scargill hoped to overthrow the Thatcher government but which led to divisions among miners and which ended in a total victory for the Iron Lady.

In May 1984 I wrote a piece attacking Scargill’s stupidity - but also noting Thatcher’s undemocratic tendencies.

Down Memory Lane by Peter Lane

Unholy Alliance

Ever since her electoral victory in 1979, the Prime Minister has insisted that there is no alternative to her anti-inflationary policy. Indeed, she has used the words so often that political wits have coined TINA as an acronym with which some try to mock the ‘Iron Lady’.

Who, then, would have imagined that her pet phrase would be used by Arthur Scargill during his anti-closure campaign? The country, he claims, has to accept the policies of the NUM - for maintaining coal output whatever the cost and for ensuring the retention of existing pits, whatever the demand for coal. “There is,” thunders “King” Arthur, “no alternative”.

It was Tory Prime Minister, A J Balfour, who said of another odd pairing, “This is a singularly ill-contrived world, but not so ill-contrived as all that.” If he were alive today, he might well wish to shorten his comment.

To vote or not to vote?

Both the ‘Iron Lady’ and ‘King’ Arthur have a facility for using voting figures and, indeed, the voting habit, as best suits them. Mrs Thatcher, for example, claims that she received a mandate in the last election for among other things, the abolition of the GLC and the other large councils. And she went to great pains to ensure that the workers in Cheltenham were provided with the choice (in a sort of vote, I suppose) of accepting Government policy there, or not.

However, she has driven a coach and horses through electoral practice in the matter of the GLC which was due for re-election in June which will now be abolished, (‘in keeping with the promises in the manifesto’), without being replaced by an elected counterpart, so that its powers will be shared out among a variety of bodies, including, paradoxically, a number of freshly-formed quangos, before the Bill to abolish the GLC has passed into law.

Ted Heath won more approval than Mrs Thatcher can have foreseen by his attack on this ‘redefinition of democracy.’ And other of her critics have wondered what her reaction would have been if a Labour government had thus dealt with a Conservative-controlled body. Certainly, as had been pointed out, she had provided a political hostage to a future Labour government.

But, on his side, ‘King’ Arthur has shown an equal fecklessness towards democracy. There was not to be a national strike; every area would have the right to follow the union’s constitution and decide for itself whether the miners in that area came out on strike or not. So far, so constitutionally good.

But some areas voted not to come out on strike. ‘King’ Arthur’s minions then summoned up the flying pickets to come out in their motoring hundreds to picket the mines where men wish to follow their decision to remain to work. Some 50 pits or so are now at work - much to Scargill’s annoyance. So he now claims that since 70-80 per cent of miners are out on strike, the rest should come out, because ‘the majority are on strike.’

My grandfather may have known Lloyd George; he certainly did not know Scargill. A hundred years ago, in 1884, he worked as a blacksmith in what had once been the ‘iron capital’ of the world, Merthyr and Dowlais. He was one of the many blacksmiths in Dowlais when horses were more valuable than, and almost as numerous as, men.

Even now, a visit to Dowlais provides, in the stables, a reminder of how important the horse was in the 19th century. The iron works owned hundreds - to pull carts carrying limestone, coal, ore and finished metal. Collieries owned hundreds more, while every business in the still booming town depended on horse-drawn wagons to carry milk, bread, furniture and domestic coal; goods were brought from the station to the shops in horse-drawn wagons, the better-off travelled in horse-drawn carriages, cabs or buses. I don’t know what so many horses did for the pollution of the environment. I do know that it provided my grandfather, and many others, with plenty of work - making horseshoes, rims for wheels, new wheels and so on.

But in 1884 two Germans, Daimler and Benz, were, independently, busily inventing a petrol-driven internal combustion engine. The rest, as they say, is history. Came the internal combustion engine - and the lorry, bus, car and cab. Out went the horse-drawn traffic - and my grandfather’s employment.

The industrial revolution, which followed the development of the petrol-driven engine, created more and greater changes than were provided by the earlier industrial revolution which had, in its time, made Dowlais so important a centre. The developments of the 20th century have, obviously, provided the British people, including my grandfather’s descendants, with a higher standard of living, better employment and more educational opportunities than ever he could have dreamt of as he sweated his way through the day at the forge in 1884.

Of course, if he had known some earlier version of Scargill, he might have been persuaded to support a move for the retention of the horse and for the “blacking” of the petrol engine, in the name of “preserving jobs for our men and their children.” He might have agreed with the argument that he and his fellows produced the “cheapest” and “best” and that “their skills” ought not to be lost to the petrol engine.

Economic reality

And if, unhappily, British blacksmiths had managed to impose their will on the government of the day, arguing that there is no alternative” but to maintain the number of smiths (and horses)? Britain’s economic decline would thereby have been hastened as other countries would have produced cheaper goods in their more modern industries.

And my grandfather’s descendants? They would, presumably, be living in a car-free country - but without any of the benefits which have followed from the second industrial revolution. Britain would, indeed, have become a backward off-shore island of the thriving continent.

Fortunately, there was no earlier version of Scargill to try to hold back he inevitable march of time. Nor, in his own life does he follow the principles which he publicly proclaims. His union, along with the AUEW and the left-wing led TGWU, has decided to end its contract with the Co-operative Press which once handled the bulk of all trade unions’ printing. In 1982 that Press lost £458,000 and had to be subsidised by the lucrative union contracts. In April 1984, the unions, including the NUM, decided that “We cannot afford to stay with inefficient, uncompetitive firms” and they have switched their contracts o cheaper, more efficient, privately run businesses. This has led to the loss of many jobs at the Co-op Press, a loss brought about by Scargill’s acceptance of the reality of economic life - when it affects the funds of the NUM. Oh that he would see other realities equally clearly. There is no alternative!

Western Mail, Saturday, May 5, 1984

Kinnock and the Labour Opposition, as well as the leaders of the Trade Unions movement were on a hiding to nothing during the miners’ six-month long strike. Kinnock, son of a miner, and MP for a mining area, had a natural ‘soft-left’ sympathy for the plight of miners, doomed to lose their livelihood. On the other hand, he had little but contempt for Scargill, whom he compared with the generals of the First World War, when ‘lions were led by donkeys’. So while refusing to condemn the strikers ‘and so ensuring the loss of middle England), he sought to condemn the lawless violence of Scargill’s bovver boys’ (and so was howled down by rent-a-mob from the hard left). His ally Norman Willis, General Secretary of the TUC, spoke at a Labour Party rally in Aberavon during the strike. It was TV which showed the noose at the end of a rope dangling from the rafters of the Afan Lido slowly descending towards Willis’s head. Thatcher didn’t need spin doctors: the left did its own dirty work on her behalf.

On this lawlessness I wrote a piece in June 1984 while the strike was at its violent height.

Labour Without Law: A Lost Cause

As an ex-labour Party member and candidate, Peter Lane foresees the current miners’ dispute with its own opposition to the law, its swing to the Left, as a major threat to the Labour party, and a danger to democracy.

This article was written before the IRA bomb attack at Brighton

Wordsworth believed that poetry was emotion recollected in tranquillity. Politics, too, are, or should be, concerned with emotions and now that the dust has settled on the Labour Party’s conference, it is possible, I hope, to look at some of the things that happened there in a Wordsworthian tranquillity.

There have been a variety of reactions to the Scargill-dominated events of some two weeks ago. My own, ‘recollected in tranquillity,’ are those of a former and long-time member of the Labour Party, an active constituency worker and a candidate at local and GLC elections when I lived in Surrey. And what are the emotions that have been stirred?

Despair is the first word that comes to mind after having watched a once-great party seeming to go out of its way to further alienate itself from the vast majority of British voters. But that led to the CONCERN which all politically-conscious people must feel at the continued decline of the Labour Party in public esteem. For one doesn’t have to be a died-in-the-wool Tory to believe that a healthy democracy requires the existence of an Opposition which can be seen as an alternative government.

Delusions

If, in fact, there is no such alternative, the governing party may, indeed, suffer from delusions of grandeur, come to accept TINA, and succeed in maintaining a set of policies which fail to cope with the nation’s problems.

This despair has become even deeper after having watched the Chancellor of the Exchequer in action at the Tory Conference. In defence of the policies which have been pursued by the Treasury since 1979, Lawson claimed, among other things, that there was in Tory Britain no sterling crisis, suggesting that, under Labour, there had always been a succession of such crises. And, so concerned is the Labour Party with its own internecine warfare, the Chancellor may well get away with such a claim; for who, in the decaying but warring party, will want to point out that sterling’s value has slid disastrously under the Howe-Lawson team?

Remember when Wilson fought to maintain it at a parity of $2.80? Remember when the pound in your pocket was worth, even after a Labour devaluation, some $2.40? Who would have thought that the pound would become so worthless (sic) that we can look forward to the rate of exchange being merely $1 to the pound?

But, because of the absence of a viable Opposition this Lawson-engendered ‘sterling crisis’ will be allowed to become a virtue for the Government. The pound in your pocket was used against Wilson; Lawson, on the contrary, intends, apparently to campaign on the slogan of ‘a falling pound is good for the soul.’

However, remembering the events at Blackpool, the main emotion which surfaced and which will not go away was FEAR; fear that Labour would continue to decline, certainly, but an even greater fear that by some electoral mishap, Labour might, just might, once again win power. With that thought in mind one watched and listened to the people who, in such a scenario, would lead or influence the Government. There was, for example, the emancipated and middle-class female lawyer who condemned ‘law’ and in an abuse of our history claimed that everything we have got, we have got by breaking the law...

Everything? Was it law-breaking that won for our people that educational opportunity which has emancipated so many of us? Was it law-breaking that was responsible for the various reforms brought in by Attlee’s government? It is worth remembering, in these years of Labour decline, that R. A. Butler thought, in 1950, that it was a matter of pride that the British race has been able, shortly after the terrible period (1939-45) through which was have passed together, to show the world that we are able to produce a social insurance scheme of this character.

Perhaps the Scargill-led Left would regard it as a mark of shame that a future Tory Chancellor should have had a good word to say about a Labour scheme. The Left would not have welcomed, either, Boothby’s statement at the Young Conservative Conference of 1949 when he said that the country had gone through the greatest social revolution in its history.

Was this ‘social revolution’ achieved by law-breaking? And did the much-spoken of Tolpuddle Martyrs really achieve anything? In the mythology which has replaced history for too many on the Left, the Martyrs are supposed to have forced a change in the law regarding trade unionism.

That they were unjustly treated, that the local magistrates and the Home Office combined to ensure that they were savagely punished, this is true. What is also true is that the existing trade union movement failed to prevent their being sent to Tasmania. Robert Owen who had claimed that a general strike would bring down governments and force changes in society, saw his Grand National Consolidated Trade Union crumble in the wake of the Martyrs’ departure.

The overturning of their sentence, their subsequent release and, for some, a return to Britain - all this was achieved not be breaking the law, or by trade union action but, by the careful work of lawyers, and by the continual campaign of liberal-minded politicians.

But the Marxist-Leninist Left will have no truck with the slow work of the political campaign; indeed, given their failure to win political support in the past, given the evidence of the polls that their policies serve only to cost Labour even more damaging losses, one can understand the Left’s reluctance to pursue the legal and political path.

Rather they would applaud the lawyer advocating a breaking of the law; rather, too, they would give a standing ovation to the ‘stuff the law miners’ leader (or leader, at least, of some miners), who echoes some words of St Paul, who wrote to the Corinthians, All things are lawful for me ... Perhaps, on the other hand, Scargill and his vote-losing cohorts, have Burns in mind: A fig for those by law protected! Liberty’s a glorious feast! Or does ‘King’ Arthur wish to follow the path laid down by the16th century poet, George Chapman, who wrote, almost prophetically for our times:

“Who to himself is law, no law doth need. Offends no law, and is a king indeed.”

Or if not ‘king indeed’ perhaps more like those of whom Tennyson wrote:

“O great and sane and simple race of brutes,

That own no lust because they have no law!.”

“No law;” “Stuff the law;” “There is no violence on the picket lines except the violence of the police;” “We will punish those men who cross our picket lines:” or as Francis Bacon said,

“Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to it, the more the law ought to week it out.”

In A Man For All Seasons, Robert Bolt puts Thomas More into a head-to-head confrontation with Rich, who, in the hope of promotion, was willing to break the law. More, then Chancellor of England, showed Rich that the law was all that man has to keep him the thickets of the jungle. And, as lawless violence follows on lawless violence, one begins to see not only what More meant, but also to begin to fear a popularly-backed demand for ‘law and order,’ whatever that might mean in the hands of a harder Right than we have yet seen.

Support

The socialist cartoonist Vicky committed suicide because, it was said, the quest for socialism had failed - in Russia as much, at least, as in the West. The latest polls concerning peoples political behaviour indicate that, in its support for ‘lawlessness,’ the Labour Party has managed to alienate even more of its potential supporters. Some 80 percent of people who would otherwise have voted Labour admitted that they would not be doing so because of the party’s apparent support for law-breaking.

It is possible, I suppose, that the party may change tack, although I am minded of the Latin tag ex nihilo nihil.

Western Mail

Late in the year the miners trickled back to work in one mine and one area after another. And while it was, in a sense, a ‘Falklands’ factor’ fillip for Thatcher and the right, it was a massive defeat for the left which, in subsequent years had to watch as more and more uneconomic mines were closed, thousands of men lost their jobs. Who would have believed that we would see only one working mine in South Wales?

1985 At the Party Conference, Kinnock attacked the lawless and costly tactics of the Hatton-led Militant Tendency Liverpool Council. While this attack saw Liverpool MP, Eric Heffer, walk off the platform in anger, it also began the rise of the credibility of Kinnock and the Party. Maybe, in spite of all, it was ‘electable’?

1987 No such luck, as Thatcher led the Tories to a third election victory - the first Prime Minister ever to have done so. ‘People vote with their wallets’ was proven again - the economy was booming and she got the credit for it. So, too, for her campaign against ‘loonie left’ councils. And, it seemed that, in spite of a glossy electoral campaign, people were unwilling to trust Kinnock and the Labour Party - on defence and on taxation in particular.

Poll Tax. For almost twenty years Thatcher, even as a junior Minister in Heath’s government, had campaigned for the abolition of the rating system. It seemed clearly unfair that, for example, in Plymouth, I paid the same rates as did the two retired nurses next door (on much smaller incomes than mine) while, on the other side lived a family with four working people who also paid the same rates.

Thatcher’s bright idea was that every adult would pay a local tax. When he was in charge of Environment, Heseltine refused to bring in the necessary legislation. He was supported by Chancellor Lawson who saw the stupid unfairness of it. However, Cabinet changes saw the ultra Right wing Nic Ridley in Environment and, bending the knee to his Prime Ministerial ‘mistress’, in came the new tax, quickly dubbed a Poll (or head) tax.

I’m sorry that I can’t find the piece I wrote attacking the tax which allowed Teresa and me to pay less for local services than we’d paid when the property-based rating system was used, while forcing people in smaller houses (who’d paid less rates than I did) to pay the same Poll Tax as I did - and so face a fall in their disposable income. The renegade Tory Laird, Nicholas Fairbairn, asked the Commons “Why should my gardener in his cottage have to pay the same tax as I pay in my castle?” It clearly was stupid.

Much protest, some of it very violent - but I assured people in the piece I wrote that they ought not to worry. “It won’t happen: for like a dea ex machina, Thatcher will sweep into the Commons and laughingly dismiss the proposed new system.” How wrong could I be? For, if she got rid of Ridley who brought in the Poll Tax Bill, she promoted Ken Baker to take his place. And as he was to do in both Health and Education, Baker made a dog’s breakfast out of the Poll Tax. Pensioners would pay less: the unemployed would pay even less: households with three or more working people would pay according to some complicated formula - it got worse and worse as Baker, and later Clark and Patten, dug themselves into deeper and deeper holes. The Poll Tax was introduced in May 1990.

In August of that year Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces attacked and occupied Kuwait. Thatcher backed (drove?) US President Bush in his campaign to get the UN to condemn this unlawful occupation, and co-operated with him as he organised the armed forces which would be needed to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Maybe Thatcher thought that another Falklands-like aura would come to her aid and distract attention from the continuing protests against the Poll Tax.

Anthony Paul was among those who were sent to Saudi Arabia to prepare bases for UN armies. In August 1990 I wrote a piece about his early involvement in the Gulf.

A Father-And-Son Version Of The Gulf Crisis ...

They brought the war into our sitting room - that was a typical comment about American TV reports of the war in Vietnam. In Britain we had some experience of this instant war-reporting during the relatively short Falklands war. We are currently getting a much more informed view about media coverage of a crisis now that we are embroiled in the Gulf.

Almost hourly reports on radio; regular rations of more reports plus pictures on all TV channels; press coverage by the column-yard (how many trees have been cut down to make the paper?): interviews with experts of all kinds (some with BBC2’s sandpit and Peter Snow to help them).

On a more personal level, there are interviews with people who have fled the region and made their way home, and with people still out there, including members of our forces.

Local TV stations and newspapers bring us reports about the effect of the crisis on this and that member of our local communities.

Now bear with me for this account of how, unexpectedly, one of my sons and I swapped places . . .

For several years I have been going to Saudi Arabia to run a short training programme. Each July-August I have stayed in one of Jeddah’s many prestigious hotels and met middle managers from one of the kingdom’s industries for a series of workshops.

I should have been there now, and I have mixed feelings about missing my yearly trip.

I will not miss the overpowering heat; people who complained recently when our temperatures sometimes reached 30C have no idea of what it is like to try to walk (never mind work) in a temperature of 45C.

Even at midnight the very air you breathe seems almost to burn its way to your lungs; no gently strolling for your health’s sake.

I will miss the fascination of working closely with well-educated Arabs. I learnt to come to terms with their lassitude - partly an offspring of the heat, but largely a result of cultural background.

I’ll not forget the problem of trying to change travellers’ cheques at 10 am. Plenty of clerks and other bank employees and, luckily, no customers; go to correct counter; offer passport and book of cheques; ask for £200 to be changed into local currency. Two seated clerks, otherwise occupied in looking at either the walls or each other, suggest I come back at 11am. “Can’t. Have a class to work with in the hotel over the road.” “Try the bank next door.” Can you imagine Lloyds sending you to Nat-West?

I never came to terms with their fatalism, recently well publicised by King Fahd’s remark that the hundreds killed in an underpass accident at Mecca were fated, by Allah, to have died at that time, “and if not in the underpass, somewhere else”.

Insh’allah - loosely translated as “if it please God” - does really dominate much of their thinking. They don’t take out insurance - personal, household, fire or whatever: if a disaster is going to happen, that’s what Allah intends, and he will somehow or other take us through the crisis.

Laughingly, they would refer to their airline as “the insh’allah airline” or “please God it will take off.” I was more concerned with the presence of mechanics, pilots and other humans in the flying process.

Nor did I always come to terms with irrationality, an inability to apply any kind of logic to an argument. This was most clearly brought about when conversation strayed (as it often did) into a political discussion. The CIA was to blame for the building-up of the Shah of Iran and his downfall, for the rise of the Ayatollah and for his bad publicity in the west, and, as you may have read, for the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam.

Much of their irrationality led to a great deal of rhetoric - currently being used in demonstrations on behalf of “Arab brother hood”, “the unity of the Arab nation”, “defending the Holy Places from US and British invaders.”

As Mrs Thatcher pointed out, we may be in danger of forgetting that Iraq invaded Kuwait, that two days before the invasion Saddam had assured the Arab League that he had no intention of doing any such thing, and that his promise to “get out once the Americans have left Saudi Arabia” cannot be trusted.

So, because of the crisis I’m not out there. But my son is.

Along with many of his RAF colleagues, he was woken at 4 am two weeks ago, kitted out and sent to the Gulf.

As many older readers may remember, “war is 90 percent boredom and 10 per cent activity.” For those sitting it out in the Gulf, it may well be that the boredom factor may account for almost 100 per cent of their time.

I feel for him - and for all the others - in the heat and the uncertain politico-military climate. I feel more than that for his wife and three babies: too few of us will see much mention of their like in the media reports.

I know that the RAF, like all the services, is a volunteer one: no one forced my boy to join. He and his wife knew what they were letting themselves in for - both of them were in the service when they married. I know, too, that someone has to halt the banditry of people like Saddam Hussein. Pray that the cost of that halting may not be too high.

Western Mail

Mention in that final paragraph of Anthony Paul’s wife, Patricia, has reminded me now (November 1998) that I have suffered a severe loss of memory (again?) as I enjoy writing these final chapters. For nowhere have I thought to write about the progress and lives of the children as they left school, went to a variety of Universities (or, as did A.P., joined the forces) and going to work. Nowhere have I written of their marriages or of their children. I apologise to all of them for this selfish stupidity. Teresa and I have taken a great deal of prideful pleasure from their varying successes and, maybe more importantly, from their successes as parents. In 1997, when I was either in hospital or recovering at home, I was reminded of how fortunate I was in having them around me and supporting Teresa.

And in August 1986 we had the company of all some of the grandchildren and their parents who helped us celebrate our wedding anniversary. “From age to age . . .” - I think I may have written that in several places earlier on. Now, in 1998, the phrase (and the sentence of which it forms part) mean ever more to me. So, my thanks and apologies to all of you for having overlooked you too much in this long text. Maybe you’ll write your own addendum’s (or addenda?) for your own children’s sake when you get to the ‘sear and yellow leaf’ of old age.

Back to 1990. While Bush was engaged in getting Gorbachev onside, and persuading several European and, more importantly, Arab states to join the anti-Saddam alliance, the Tory party was convulsed by bitter attacks on Thatcher by former ministers. Most notable was our own Geoffrey Howe whom she had humiliated and who, finally, resigned. His resignation speech was a TV spectacular. He called on other leading Tories to consider whether Thatcher should be allowed to ‘rule’ with such disregard for Party and public opinion. In November 1990, as riots against the Poll Tax continued and while the economy lurched into depression, Heseltine stood against her in a leadership contest. She got more votes then did ‘Tarzan’ but not quite enough to satisfy the rules laid down for leadership contests. In a second round election, under a different set of rules, John Major headed the poll and, with the withdrawal of rival contestants (Heseltine and Hurd) was unanimously elected Tory leader - and Prime Minister. Thatcher joined Heath in the ranks of embittered former Prime Ministers, a role which both of them have continued to play.

So it was Major who, with Bush, gave the go ahead for the start of the Allied offensive against Saddam’s occupying forces in Kuwait. By that time, January 1991, AP had returned from the Gulf but young Peter had been sent out, which led to the writing of another piece.

Waiting For My Soldier Son’s Next Call

Like many thousands of others, I have a son serving in the Gulf - with the First Armoured Division.

Like them (I hope) I get letters at least weekly and a phone call about once a fortnight. Like the other men, my son goes to a rest and recreation centre after two or three weeks out in the desert. From such a centre he calls us - at £4 a short spell. I pass over the fact that the US forces have the privilege of free calls.

Two days ago I had a call which, unusually went on through one, then two and finally three ‘time-up’ signals. £12 a shot from a relatively depleted allowance. Then, the last words, “Well, Dad, my money has run out. I’m off back to the desert tomorrow. My next call will be when it’s all over.”

And, for the first time. I realised that maybe there won’t be another call. Certainly for some parents there won’t be, and my son is in as much danger as every other mother’s son out there.

As Dr Johnson might have said, this realisation concentrated the mind wonderfully. Immediately I sat and wrote my son what might, indeed, prove to be the last letter he would receive.

I spoke of the party we would have when, please God, he gets home. I suggested some of the things we would want to talk about. I quoted one of our favourite son’s as starters:

Oft in the stilly night,

‘Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,

Fond memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

The smiles, the tears of boyhood’s years,

The words of love then spoken,

The eyes that shone now dimmed not gone,

The cheerful hearts new broken.

They don’t write them now as Moore wrote, nor sing them as McCormick sang them. But the song does for my purpose.

I suggested that we would want to have a fond memory of the process of learning to ride a two-wheeler, his happiness as a cub and a scout with his armfuls of badges, family holidays with the other seven children, his singing in the boys’ choir and school operas and concerts.

His generosity in time and effort with handicapped people, most notably in helping take some of them to holidays in Lourdes; the many friends he has made and retained over the years; the high esteem in which he is held by so many sensible adults; his overcoming of his dyslexia.

His success at Sandhurst, the continued good opinion of him by his superiors (although I shudder at the remark on a report: ‘No doubt, as he matures, he will learn to speak more politely to senior officers.’ Very doubtful).

We will talk of the pleasure with which his mother and I watched him grow and mature, saw him act in loco parentis to soldiers some of whom are older than he is, as like the Lord ‘he grew in age, grace and wisdom with God and men.’

I hope that every other parent of a serving man feels able to have similar fond memories of boyhood years with their smiles, tears still in eyes which, like ours, are dimmed if not gone.

I ought to write a similar fond letter to each of my seven other children, all of who in their own various ways have brought us so much pleasure. It is a sad reflection on me that I probably won’t. Sad, really, the tremulous reticence of loving parenthood.

I was glad to be able to write to my son about the letter which our Cardinal had asked every priest to read at Mass some Sundays ago. This was produced after he and his fellow Bishops had met to consider the threat of war. It was their considered judgement that it was, at the very least, possible that a Gulf War would meet the various criteria which medieval men such as Aquinas had drawn up for The Just War.

The Cardinal hoped that the politicians, who had to make the awful decision, would weigh up the various

arguments. If they did, and if they then declared for War, the letter prayed for success.

I could go along with the Cardinal’s hesitations about a declaration of war. Who wouldn’t? Well, for a few, my own local Bishop, two or three of his companions and one or two heads of religious congregations. They felt able to pronounce, with no hesitation at all, that a Gulf War would never be a Just War. Such happy confidence.

As the days have gone by I have waited for these chattering Catholics to come out - in word or demonstration - in support of our fellow Catholics in Lithuania. Today the Soviet-troops open fire on the freedom-seeking Lithuanians. But no word from the ‘radical’ elements in my Church over this.

Finally, what does my Bishop’s statement do for my chances of persuading my children to listen to their Church? On the one hand, the majority of our leaders have, albeit reluctantly, blessed the efforts of the politicians. On the other hand, my own Bishop (‘and I am the representative of the Apostles of you in this diocese’) attacks, in so many words, that opinion.

Two opinions on a moral issue? From a Church which claims to teach with authority? I have to say that, today, I am prouder of my son than my religious leaders.

I hope, as I wrote to one of them, that they will have the charity to pray that I will get another phone call ‘when it’s all over’.

Western Mail

Fortunately, for Peter and for us, the war was relatively short, if brutal and bloody. Teresa and I used to watch TV, sometimes through the night, remembering the introduction to “keep your eyes open for Kate Adie: she’ll be where we are.” And, on the day of my Mum’s death, we saw the Iraqi military leaders sit with Allied leaders to sign a surrender. We had to wait several days before we had ‘another ‘phone call’ to tell us that Peter was safe. The local Catholic community had been very supportive, with prayer cards being put up for Peter - and for other young people from here who were in the Gulf. It was our pleasure to invite many of them to join us and some of the other children to the party held to welcome Peter home. Only he can say how much the experience affected him - and, that, we might say, is another story (and for another to tell). Back to politics. Major led the Tories to what was generally agreed a surprising victory in the 1992 election, following which Kinnock resigned as Labour leader. His successor, John Smith, continued Kinnock’s work of modernising the Party and so helping to make it more acceptable to a wider electorate. Teresa and I were on holiday around Lake Garda in Italy when, on 12 May 1994, Smith died of a heart attack. We were part of a coach party. Someone came in with the news of Smith’s death. The majority of our fellow tourists were Tories, as various discussions had proved. But everyone, but everyone, was shattered by this disaster. And when we got home here, and watched the funeral, read the press comments and heard the TV commentators, it became clear that Smith’s death had affected the country in an almost inexplicable way.

Maybe it was the shock at the death of a man who was clearly of Prime Ministerial calibre. Maybe it was an almost angry reaction against Fate which had snatched victory from Smith’s grasp. I think that he had

stood out as a beacon of hope, more vivid because of the corrupt, sleazy, inefficient and helpless Tories. It was Blair, Smith’s successor, who in 1997 was the beneficiary of the work of Kinnock and Smith (and of his own modernising work) who saw off the Tories in a landslide victory. I have two memories of that election campaign. One evening we had a ‘phone call from some Tory office or other. “Can we count on your support?” I explained to the benighted idiot at the other end that, while I didn’t totally approve of Blair’s ditching of too much of traditional Labour policy, there was no way I could be got to vote for the party of David Mellor (the toe-sucking partner of some actress or other), of MPs who took ‘cash for asking the right questions in Parliament’, and of Party leaders who had no policies to offer exept ‘trust us’. Trust them? Had to be joking.

But the best memory is Teresa’s anger at seeing David Atkinson’s election leaflet. It described him as “married with two children” - although as we knew, he had been divorced. One evening, came David running from door to door across the road, while party workers knocked us up on our side. Teresa goes to confront our ‘knocker-up’ with an attack on the dishonesty of the leaflet. As she was going on, Atkinson looked across the road and shouted, “Hello, Teresa.” Poor lamb; little did he know that his reputation was being shredded.

Almost everyone, and certainly everyone in our wider family, seemed to have enjoyed the Labour victory. Most of them seem to have gone on rejoicing, even though the ‘New Labour’ government has done, as yet (1998), too little to deserve much praise. Maybe it is, as Father Peter Griffiths said to me, “Good to have an honest Tory government in power.” He and his fellow-Jesuits, with their ‘option for the poor’ must feel let down - as do many others of us. So Halloween 1998 comes to an end. I reflect now, late in the evening on the decline of so much - education, Church, old socially-conscious Labour and I understand better why, for some months now, I have been singing the old Irish song.

The Old Home

Lonely I wander through scenes of my childhood,

They call back to memory the happy days of yore,

Gone are the old folk, the house stands deserted,

No light in the window, no welcome at the door.

Here’s where the children played games on the heather,

Here’s where they sailed their wee boats on the burn,

Where are they now? Some are dead, some have wandered,

No more to their homes shall these children return.

Lonely the house now, and lonely the moorland,

The children are scattered, the old folk are gone,

Why stand I here, like a ghost from the shadow,

Tis time I was leaving, tis time I passed on.

Chapter 57. And Now . . . .

When he made the first of what have turned out to be a dozen or more ‘final’ appearances, the mafia-linked Sinatra sang:

“And now the end is near . . . . . . . . . . final curtain . . . . .”

I agree with the Rev. Rowland Hill (died 1833) of whom it was written;

“He did not see why the devil should have all the good tunes.”

Nor, I may add, “the good words” either. Sinatra can’t have any copyright to “ . . . . the end is near.” Righteous placard-carriers have for years informed the world that “God is nigh” - or, in Welsh Labour Party circles, “God is Nye” alluding to Bevan of NHS fame.

Now “ . . .the end is near” not only for Sinatra, but for all of us. I was memorably reminded of this by my own ‘brush with the angel of death’ in 1997. Various tests, scans and the rest having shown that I had cancer, I was befriended by my understanding confessor, Fr. Tom Smalley, S.J., before my operation (June 1997). Unhappily, the upshot was that, in spite of myriad drips, bags, transfusions and the rest, I was told that the cancer hadn’t been removed, because it was too near some organ or other. So, having learned to walk again (very gingerly) and having been sent home to recuperate, I was recalled for 30 days of radiotherapy. During this month (as, indeed, when I was in hospital earlier) I saw (and had seen) people, old and young, with much more severe problems than mine.

The aim of the radiotherapy was to shrink the growth, or growths, so that removal might be undertaken with less risk. So on September 29 (Feast of Michael the Archangel) I went back to hospital, drank the statutory number of litres of dreadful concoction and was returned to the operating theatre. This time, thankfully, the surgeon was able to cut out the ‘naughty bits’ and within a week or so I came home again, carrying a list of ‘Dos and Don’ts’ from the clinicians. Among the approved items was ‘Do a little light dusting.’ Such mysterious language! I also came armed with a collection of items linked (the operative word) with the stomach - another mystery, but one which I was helped to solve by helpful nursing staff.

For about five months or so, I was fit for little. Teresa and I went to Madeira in November for a two weeks break: Chris and I saw the publication of two books which we’d completed earlier in the year. But apart from that, I was incapable of even thinking about my desk, this book, or work of any kind. I did, however, have lots of time for reflection and to be reminded of something I’d read earlier:

“Time was running by - as it was for everyone, one day, one hour, one minute at a time, the same for all. But it just seems to run faster now that I’m 70 years of age.”

I don’t know who wrote that, but them sentiments is mine, too.

For Teresa, too, the winter of 1997-98 was traumatic. It was probably a reaction form the stress she’d suffered for the long months of my problem. But, whatever the cause, she collapsed and, for a long month (including the Christmas period) was too ill even to brush her teeth (her bitterest memory of that time.) We were saved, one comatose and other staggering, by the kindness of friends (so many pies, jugs of stew, plates of goodies . . .) and, above all, the presence of the children and, in particular, of Peter and Damien (and Sarupa). Which of us will forget the Pete-cooked Christmas meal? Eat your heart our Anthony Worrel and Co.

One of the many blessings from this time of crisis was that we had time to reflect together - something which, in good health, we had done too infrequently, with one busy at the typewriter and the other about running a home, the neighbourhood and the parish. It was in one such joint reflection that Teresa said, apropos the family history, “We had a golden age.” And, maybe that ought to be the title of this Chapter.

Historians often take 25 years as the span of ‘a generation’ when writing of ‘four or five generations . . . ‘. Our ‘golden age’, then, I take as covering something like the period 1954 - 1979, which, conveniently begins in the year of our marriage and ends with the year of our move to Bournemouth. These were years when the country still had a consumer-led National Health Service, so that we never had to worry about calling doctors out to see sick children, asking for consultations with paediatricians, or having easy access to hospitals when Teresa or her doctor felt that it would be better for a baby to be born there than at home. We also had an education system which, in 1979, allowed Simon to follow the others to university with the government providing both fees and grants. Not until Damien and Gerard went to university was I asked to make a contribution towards their higher education costs - and that was after our ‘golden age’.

During that period, too, I enjoyed the (unappreciated) comfort of a secure job. Nor was I alone in this. Almost everyone who wanted to work had a job - with unemployment rarely rising above 300,000 (which included the handicapped and others who were judged incapable of work as well as the seasonally unemployed and men whose contracted work had come to an end with the completion of, for example, a ship, housing estate, hospital or whatever). When I first went to Coloma College for an interview in 1964, it was being enlarged. And at the College gates was a contractors’ board which carried a large poster: “Wanted; carpenters, plasterers, fitters, electricians ... We’ll pay you £10 a week more than you’re getting now.” No wonder that many men now (1998) remember that ‘if you didn’t like your job, you simply left and got another one.’

One result of that economic security was, in the 1950s, the first signs of that social ‘revolution’ which never came to an end in our ‘golden age’. Foreign holidays, often via mushrooming travel agencies and firms, ceased to be ‘for the nobs’ because, as the Times remarked (superciliously) “even typists holiday in Switzerland.” More significantly, people bought or rented better equipped homes, furnished them with erstwhile ‘luxuries’ - washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, telephones, TVs . . - and bought cars in increasing numbers. If Bevin had been right to talk about “the poverty of desire” of working class people in the 1930s and 1940s, it was surely right for commentators to write and talk about “the rising expectations”. Or, as Macmillan said in July 1957: “They had never had it so good.” Except that they went on to have it even better in the next 20 years.

Now, if Teresa and I think that ours was a ‘golden age’, it is not only because of that ‘age’ considered for itself. For, in this family history, we have had a glimpse of the lives of my parents (say, 1925-50), grandparents (1900-1925) and so on back in time. In earlier pages I have tried to draw attention to the long hours of hard physical work done by most of our men, the slogging work of trying to keep decent homes clean in the soot-laden towns in which our families lived, the lack of educational opportunity which, later, was to give Neil Kinnock the chance to ask; “Why am I the first Kinnock to go to University?”, the large scale unemployment that was common and the low wages paid to those fortunate enough to have work.

Against that background, with its absence of holidays, home comforts and so on, our ‘golden age’ gleams all the brighter. But so, too, does it, when Teresa and I look at the lives of the next generation (say 1975-2000) - which is the generation of our children. Surely in many ways their lives are ‘better’ then ours were - more goodies, longer holidays (with pay) . . . But which of my children consider that their children’s educational opportunities are as free or as good as were theirs? Why have a number of them opted to have their children in fee-paying junior and secondary schools? Why have they to begin, already, to make provision for paying for their children’s higher education? Sure, they are fortunate that they can afford to do so. Or can they? Have they the guarantee, which our generation had, of job security - in education, civil service or the like?

And which of this generation believes that we will continue to have an adequate, ‘free at the point of use’ NHS for much longer? And why the seemingly daily reminder of ‘the need to provide for your retirement’ in a way which was never a major consideration for the mass of people in our generation?

So it is that Teresa and I see our ‘age’ as even more ‘golden’ when placed against the backcloth of this later ‘age’. Sure, I admit, that, in keeping with the ongoing ‘social revolution’ their expectations are greater than were ours, so that their concepts of housing, leisure, household consumer durables and so much else, make our notions of these things as almost prehistoric.

I’m aware of the danger contained in the following lines, which come from a novel:

“Nostalgia can be addictive. Once you start down that path your life becomes a constant “Remember when...” and your brain turns to mush. Retreat into the past, and you’re lost. You’ve got to keep facing up to the present and the future.”

(Lawrence Sanders, McNally’s Caper).

Pleading guilty to nostalgia in some of what I’ve written, I also claim that, even before reading Sanders, both Teresa and I had faced the future (after 1979, the end year of our ‘golden age’). Indeed, we would now claim that, in many respects, our ‘final age’(?) has been even more golden. I have written elsewhere of the writing and lecturing that I have done in this last period. Of greater and deeper significance has been our active membership of a vibrant Church community. We had always benefited from membership of such a community and proved Teresa’s Mum to have been right when she described the church as ‘the best club in the world.’ In Plymouth and, more so, in Wallington both of us had been involved in parish life. Here in Bournemouth, in a Jesuit parish which had the good fortunate to have generous and forward looking priests, we had opportunities to be actively involved in Catechestical work among the young and their parents, and in Teresa’s case, with the Union of Catholic Mothers, Bible study and Prayer groups and the ecumenical movement. If I had the pleasure of getting a Bishop’s Medal ‘for services rendered’ and the Presidency of the Catenian Circle, Mum was President of her UCM and, for many years, the parish representative on the local Council of Churches. The social bonding of these activities is reflected in the letter which I wrote in October 1997:

17th October 1997,

My kind friends,

I apologise for typing, and not penning, this letter: a good friend, Brian Holland, used to say that if I handed in a handwritten letter at a pharmacy, I’d get a load of free medicines in return.

I also apologise for the ‘round robin’ nature of the letter. I would like to write individual letters to the 200 or so friends who sent cards, had masses said, lit candles throughout Europe, called, ‘phoned and otherwise gave Teresa and me your valuable support in these last five months. But, while the spirit might be willing, even the cancer-free flesh couldn’t cope with all that.

So, after 30 doses of radio-therapy and two operations, I am cancer free: no chemotherapy, no further radio-therapy - all naughty bits have been removed. Some will put this down to prayer, some to the skill of the surgeons and radiologists. I have a suspicion that the cancer got frightened off while Teresa was driving me to Poole for radio-therapy. As the Duke of Wellington said of his licentious soldiery, (as they looted Badajoz and Talavera), “I don’t know what they do to the enemy, but they terrify me!” Thus, I think, spoke the cancer in June/July last.

I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone, but I have to say a deal of good came out of my own. I had time to reflect on how good my children are, as children, as parents, and as people. Maybe, without the enforced idleness, I wouldn’t have given myself time to think about them, and I certainly wouldn’t have had the chance to see them all gathered together on so many occasions. Then, too, once I was home in June, I had time to look, in peace, at all the cards that had come and to be grateful for membership of this; praying community.

Back home again, I have a leaflet of advice from the hospital. Some of it is very dangerous stuff. ‘You may do a little light dusting,’ for heaven’s sake. Some of it is very valuable, ‘Take it easy and try to relax’. As one of my disrespectful sons says, ‘That’s all you’ve done for twenty years.’

Teresa and I plan, with the surgeon’s approval, to go to Madeira in mid-November for three weeks. After that I have to report to the hospital to see if my colostomy can be done away with. I’ll miss it - like a sore thumb.

So again, my thanks for your prayers and good wishes and my hope that you’ll keep us in mind for the time being.

God Bless

Package tours of Normandy (and battlefields), the Loire valley, Belgium-N. France (and Vimy Ridge along with the railway carriage in which surrender was signed exactly 80 years ago to-day, November 11). Giving even more pleasure and an even deeper sense of gratitude has been the growth and development of our own family ‘community’. I have already referred to my pleasure at the presence and support of the children throughout 1997 when at one time or another, they all came to the hospital to see the emaciated one. One memorable highlight for Teresa and me was our wedding anniversary in August 1998 when, on the fateful day, we had 12 grandchildren and their parents who laid waste to a mountain of food. Simon’s children had never met many of the others, nor had Mary’s children from Denmark. It was good to see how they all got on, or as St Peter said on Mount Tabor; “It is good to be here.”

Earlier in this Chapter, I reckoned that our ‘golden age’ was 1954-79. If this was so, then I have to suggest that the years since 1979 have been some sort of ‘golden twilight.’ And, almost as ‘sacraments’ (outward signs of inward states) have been the many wonderful holidays we have been able to enjoy. That enjoyment would not have been possible without the extra incomes earned from lecturing at Schiller College and for Barry Henwood, and from writing, all three being features of that ‘golden twilight.’

I don’t propose to list them all in any sort of detail, although Teresa and I have diaries (interleaved with photographs and the rest) which we kept during some of them; 1990 and a month in Singapore and Malaysia when we were entertained by men whom, as boys, I had taught in 1948; the 16 days’ journey from St Petersburg to Moscow along the rivers and canals; the 1994 cruise around the West Indies (when, faced with yet more mountains of food, Teresa kept on remarking; “I wish our boys were here.”); the 7 weeks or so we spent getting to and from Simon in Melbourne when we stopped off in Hong Kong, Cairns, Sydney, Adelaide, Wellington (with Jenny), Fiji and San Francisco.

On a more modest note we had enjoyed holidays with Anthony Paul, Patsy and the children both in Germany and when they were stationed at Mons (which allowed us to visit Ypres with its Menin Gate), when we ‘found’ Bruges, a city to which we returned later. We also visited Peter several times when he was in different parts of Germany. While Damien was at St Peter’s he had a pen pal in Dortmund, Jan Willmans, who came to stay with us for an Easter holiday in Whitsands. Some time later he brought his parents and sisters across and, having stayed here for a day or so, they went to Whitsands for a week, in return for which they invited us to their home - and sent Teresa and I away for a memorable cruise up the Moselle.

The capitals of Andalusia, and packaged holidays of Cyprus and Majorca saw the ‘golden oldies’ make even more friends. More piously, but even more enjoyable, were two pilgrimages led by the Bishop, one to the Holy Land and one to Rome/Assisi - just a month or so before the earthquake, which wrecked that Franciscan city.

By then, 1996, we had bought a series of timeshares in Madeira and Tenerife, and in one or other we have spent 6 - 8 weeks of the winters. Indeed, I am trying to get this chapter finished before we set off for Madeira again.

However, all that ‘enjoyment’ is not unalloyed. Whether abroad or, more quietly, at home, there are long periods of reminiscing or, as Teresa used to say, “of Dowlaising”. Some of this is relatively silly: why, for example, every time I turn on a tap do I think of the stricture of poor Brother Hugh who was third-in-charge in the La Salle Novitiate in 1943-47. He supervised the washing up and kept on about “not turning on the taps too quickly nor turning them off too tightly,” fearing that washers might break. Sometimes, indeed, more often, the reminiscing is sentimental -as I look at photographs or sing ‘songs my mother taught me’ either alone or with Pete. Sometimes, more sadly, the memory is of failure, of being second rate as a careless writer, a slap dash teacher and an overbearing father. As someone wrote:

“The worst thing you can do is disappoint yourself.”

Tell me about it.

I know that, as he got older, my father suffered the same sort of regret. I know, too, that, amazingly, so did the wonderful Father Tom Dunphy, the Jesuit to whom I owed, and owe, so much. So, too, did the poet who wrote:

Poet redeemed & dead

Feeling good, green light the

earthly paradise,

where is it, poet? Not

in this or that in, on this

or that fell, supplying

this or that cheese, but in

old age, inoxious,

knowing its guilts and not

forgiving itself but assured,

you knew how; of pardon.

From To Scorch Or Freeze,

(Carcanet Press, Manchester, 1988)

“And now the end is near . . . “ Many years ago, when poor Pat was dying in Retford, I was called up in St Elphege’s Church, Wallington to read at Mass. I read, as instructed, from St Paul’s 2nd Letter to Timothy, Chapter 4:

“I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.”

At that point, I stopped reading and, to the alarm of Father Hough, the young curate, turned to the congregation and explained that this Epistle was very relevant to my dying brother for whom I asked them to pray. I then went on with the reading:

“As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day ... “

Very applicable to Pat - and to many others of whom I have written in earlier Chapters of this “from age to age...”

I would hope that the first part of that reading may be true in my own case, although I dare not presume that the second part will be so readily applicable. Who, indeed, would be so presumptuous? In any event, “...the end is near...”. One of the ‘songs my mother (and father) taught me’ is entitled Absence and is the cry of a girl/wife left behind in Ireland by an emigrant boy/husband. I hope that some of you might sing/say it in memory of me:

Sometimes between long shadows on the grass,

The little truant waves of sunlight pass,

My eyes grow dim with tenderness the while,

Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.

And sometimes in the twilight gloom apart,

The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart,

From my fond lips the eager answers fall,

Thinking I hear, thinking I hear thee call.

While I was in the La Salle Novitiate in Castletown, County Leix, my friend Eugene taught me a third verse:

God bless, God guard, God guide you every day,

And keep your footsteps lest they stray away,

Until we meet on God’s eternal shore,

There I shall greet you, there we shall part no more.

Amen to that.

Ed.

Since the initial writing of this book in 1998, much has happened within the Bournemouth Lane family. This final intrusion is intended to fill in some of the gaps with five inserts, from Chris, Clare, Simon, Damien and myself.

When I first computerised the typed script, I offered to Dad the thought that things were missing and very kindly Dad included a few of my suggestions.

More recently, while inserting the pictures, and yet more of my notes, I noticed that we were now 6 years on from the completion of Dads typing and I suggested a further 1,500 words, a continuance (if there is such a word) to finish, say, on the night of the Golden Wedding party. You may ask why? Dad did.

My reason - because we could easily miss from the story:

Dad’s full recovery from bowel cancer

Mary’s second degree

Kathryn and Helen with their achievements through university so far from their home and family

Marianne and her very active social life in the church and political circles and the kindness that she shows to everyone, especially my Dan

Joe and his rugby successes for the school, club and county

Dan’s struggle with dyslexia and epileptic fits, his difficulties in school and the huge amount of understanding, kindness and help provided to him by Cath

My divorce

Peter’s marriage to Lisa

Gerard’s marriage to Helen

The birth of further grandchildren to give a total, to date, of 22

Peter leaving the Army

Kevin’s help and advice over the years

Simon’s involvement with the Sydney Olympics

And the list could, infact, does, go on

His reply to my suggestion was, “but it would only be more of the same”. Can you imagine the fun Dad could have with writing about Tony Blair and his ‘theft’ of 50 billion pounds from the pension funds and maybe even the illegal invasion of Iraq and the disgraceful actions of the paedophile and homosexual priests, and then, hopefully, a few words about the family thrown in taken from the list above?

Since I typed the above, I have spent a weekend in ‘the flat’, where I found, on Dad’s desk, some scribblings which I are the requested last 6 years. We will see. (They were his ‘final words’ – in more ways than one, and they take in much of the above. As they were not typed (and therefore not finished, it would, I feel, be incorrect to add them to this piece of Dad’s work.

With Dad’s permission I invited his sisters and my brothers and sisters to send me 5 pages or so, containing their story, if for no other reason, to make it a more rounded Lane story, and a chance for our respective children to learn more of their roots. Of the many stories I hoped for, I have received four.

So here are four stories from Chris, Clare, Simon, Damien and myself to help fill in some of those gaps. I have edited out small pieces that are not for public airing, my story being edited by Chris.

Finally, from Ed. Over the past 4 years Chris and I gave many many hours towards gatherings of the Lane, and for the days following Dad’s death, Chris worked very hard, making sure Mum had someone with her, ensuring that the masses would take place, the mass sheets and memorial cards were printetd, making literally hundreds of phone calls, “Oh, hello, this is Chris Lane. I’m afraid I have some bad news”. I only made 4 calls and each one was horrible.

Chris’ tribute to Dad, given at the Requim Mass was written, rewritten, practiced and then rewritten. While those around him grieved, Chris got on with the mechanics of the post-death process, uncomplaining, and sometimes unappreciated. Dad would have been very proud of the time, care and effort.

And starting in order of receipt, ( and in the main, untouched since Dad’s passing) here are our stories, Chris’